Guild Wars 2

I feel that enrage timers are perfectly fine as long as they’re limited to a few encounters. They’re not “bad design” in and of themselves, “bad design” is leaning on ANY mechanic too heavily in order to add difficulty to pve encounters. In this case, the dps check is counterbalanced by an invincibility shield and healing turrets — much better thought out than “hur hur, here’s a bag of hit points, kill it quick!”, as you can actively effect the outcome with MORE than “just” dps.

Takami’s opinion in the original post is a slippery slope fallacy, btw…

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

All it takes are two confidential votes for you to be kicked…no matter who’s the party leader..

Granted… but we were in the middle of the fight and I was productive. Other people in the group had no access to party frames as well. While I guess it’s possible that it had to do with the group, why would 2 completely different groups kick me for no warning, especially at the exact same point in the fight?

I switched to another character and had no issues. Perhaps the bug is related to my engineer…

This has happened to me 3x now.

This is not the group doing it to me, since a guildie has been lead twice, and I was lead the third time. The third time it kicked the whole group.

Is this happening to anyone else? It’s also worth mentioning that when I join group or start group, I get no party frames, even though I can use party chat. These issues could be related.

MonMalthias.4763:

• FT isn’t in a bad place, but the Auto attack really needs that extra something, like Burning on First pulse, or upping individual pulses damage whilst only pulsing for 5-8 so we don’t kill ourselves with Retaliation. It’s got acceptable DPS, but you’d be patently wrong to say it has parity with Grenades or Bombs; or the kiting ability with Grenades or Bombs.
• As a Mid-range kit, there are no gap closers or openers that come with it, nor is there a reliable anti-kiting tool unlike Freeze Grenade and Glue Bomb.

If they:
made #2 a blast finisher
made #1 apply .5seconds of cripple every other tick (or something less gimmicky that makes the cripple last slightly less than the duration of the flame channel)

The kit would be just about perfect, imo.

Raijinn.9065:

After the nerf to elixir s, and the reasoning behind it, I’m all for a nerf to this.

^

Distortion in general is op.

Ensign.2189:

They aren’t attacking farming as much as they are (slowly) chipping away at popular farming spots that give returns far in excess of what you can receive anywhere else.

Those farming spots are a problem because they depopulate the rest of the game.

There is always going to be a difference in income between ‘power farming’ and ‘playing the game’, but they are (rightly) working to minimize that difference as much as possible.

Yet… they created the free chests at the dragons. Yet… the efforts to reduce “power farming” affect the people just playing the game, since the rewards for most areas between the farming areas are sparse.

People can argue that “farming” is not “necessary”, but with drop rates being so low (with the exception of small areas of the game) and requirements being so high to craft the desirable items, game design is pointing us at a different direction. “Play the game more causally” ignores some pretty fundamental human psychology, as ablative experiences (read: “the carrot”) are one of the main motivators for engaging in activities such as gaming.

The solution is to increase demand beyond the concentrated few items of ectos, T6s, and lodestones, then increase supply until people stop complaining about how the game is unrewarding… but that’s easier said than done.

NevirSayDie.6235:

It was a significant nerf, but as some top engineers have noted, the previous elixir S was in serious contention for the single best stunbreaker in the game. Three seconds of mobile invulnerability is never useless in WvW, as positioning can change drastically in three seconds. I’ll have to see how it feels in tournaments—my gut tells me it will still be better than R/boots/goggles for most builds.

Using abilities while tiny was really fun, though, and I’ll miss it. WvW engineers did get hit pretty hard this patch, although healing turret buff is not as trivial as it sounds.

To answer the question: yes, I use 409 in tournaments and WvW. If healing turret turns out to be a viable alternate source of condition removal I may change that. I can’t imagine walking into a tourney without reasonable condition removal (1 super elixir every 16-20 seconds does not count). WvW/hotjoins are easier because people aren’t as good, but condition removal is still really important.

Healing Turret/Toss Elixir R is a critical mass of reasonable condi removal, even if the toss is a pain to deal with… throw in Overcharged shot for snare removal and perhaps 15 points in either tools or inventions and things suddenly start looking pretty workable.

Nilix.2170:

Changing Elixir S is doing the same thing but not as heavily. The people who use it proactively can deal with it because they still use it as such. Securing kills in PvP all day every day. But what of all the people using it reactively? What about the people who used the trait for defense? Before, it was a means of just getting away or surviving. Keeping it for defensive reasons requires a completely different kind of play.

Yeah, we all know that the change sucks, but personally I’m undecided about how much it impacts me personally since I spent all last night erasing about a year’s worth of muscle memory on this skill. Right now, I’m thinking that Elixir S will still be fine as a defensive skill since you can just chain a dodge right at the end and just chain kitswap into gear shield/heal/whatever’s needed. 3 seconds is longer than most of the commonly used immob skills, so the advantage is still ours.

I thought deployable turrets was broken when you slotted accelerant-packed turrets… but it’s working fine now? Am I mistaken about them being bugged before?

Rfreak.6591:

Well dunno about you guys but healing turret’s overcharge isn’t responsive, actually it seems they didn’t even manage to fix overcharge’s responsiveness in general for turrets… which actually makes healing turret bad outside of PvE, and even then it’s not so great, I mean I’d rather pick an elixir gun for the heal and manage to stack some bleeds while healing than using something this unreliable.

(The water field won’t activate until the turret begins the animation, if you remember how overcharge in general worked then you can get the idea)

There’s a timing element involved. You can get the field to drop right away, but hitting cleansing burst too early will actually delay the field [edit]now.

Oh, Elix S now cancels channels when you hit it. Tiny dunk still works though. Unsure about Self-Regulating defenses.

MentalPause.9183:

So I just tested the healing turret. Drop healing turret seems to pulse every second, which means the overcharge should happen 1 second after deploy. Also because the pulse is every second you seem to almost always have the water field up. maybe a very short time without it. Seems very good overall from that alone.

The old heal turret water field animation has been re-purposed to show the regen range of the turret, and cleansing burst now drops a “normal looking” water field. Regenerating mist still has the old water field animation.
——-
The elixir S change does indeed suck.

New heal turret, I wuv u.

JubeiTM.5763:

If the turrets are not mobile at all, at least they should grant passive buffs similar to Warrior banners:

Net turret: chance to immobilize your foes on critical hits.

Thumper turret: grants stability
Rocket turret: increase power
Rifle Turret: increase precision
Flame Turret: remove a condition every 5 seconds

I really like this idea.

Ostricheggs.3742:

The overcharge acts instantly if you lay it and use it instantly.

I know. You have to double tap the skill in order to cancel it with itself… which also occasionally puts it on the cancel cooldown (5 seconds) while giving you the full effect. Since that’s firmly in the grey area of possible exploit, I’m purposely leaving it out in a discussion of the pros and cons of the skill. If they change the mechanics though, that is all moot…

Heck, now that I think about it, a full condi clear every 20 seconds with water field, regen, initial heal + overcharge+ blast finisher on the same cooldown as the detonate sounds insanely OP.

It occurs to me that despite getting some solid info on the changes, we’re not really informed yet…

Ostricheggs.3742:

The healing turret change is going to open up a LOT of builds for engis in tourneys. The lack of condi cleanses forces us 20 up alchemy, 15 up tools (with R) or 15 up inventions (with healing turret).

It’s a good change.

I don’t mean to sound hostile, I just know that people naturally react like idorts when faced with nerfs.

Healing turret changes sound confusing. The overcharge condition cleanse isn’t viable for pvp because the effect is delayed until the next regen pulse, not because of the cooldown. Also, what’s the point of the overcharge providing a water field if the pulses already do so? These changes sound like a net nerf if they don’t change the mechanics, but a net buff if they do. The changes also take what is basically our best burst heal and make it… something different. That’s certainly something to be wary about, even if it’s not necessarily alarming.

We’ll see…

After more than a decade of MMOs, one experience has always been a constant: people react badly to nerfs. This is even more true after people have devoted time and money to gear up for a build, and all that effort is rendered pointless. Why would things be different now? The only thing different about this game is instead of treating nerfs as a last resort, A-Net uses it as a primary balancing tool and seems oblivious to the negativity it causes.

Even worse sometimes A-Nets nerfs are reaaaalllyyy poorly though out…

stof.9341:

Indeed, Engineer HGH doesn’t need a nerf because it puts a lot of boons in use and the we have yet to see how much boon hate will punish that.

More than that, there’s a lack of discussion on counters to this build, and that silence is deafening. I don’t mean general stuff like “boon hate”, I mean getting down to specifics like builds, traits, comps, and play style that can counter the build, which are also viable. We’re not seeing high level players with working knowledge of how the build functions talking about how to counter it. This build certainly has weaknesses.

There’s less than half a conversation here.

P/P gives you everything you need for chain killing mobs. Black powder to neutralize melee mobs, and again for ranged mobs (standing in the puddle and shooting out of it or shooting through it gives you blinding projectiles, smoke field + projectile finisher), and it does OK damage from range… but it’s not very good burst and has zero aoe to speak of. Honestly, anything ranged should have an easy time leveling in this game, since kiting is so strong. Melee might be harder for a squishy class, but it does much more damage.

RebelYell.7132:

Agree with you wholly. In addition, after the Cataclysm revamp, I never found myself underleveled for the zone I was in, but meanwhile, I keep having to pick a new starting zone in GW2 because the one I’m in had the recommended level for all the hearts go red.

Heh… it only took several years for that to be the case. My early Cataclysm experience was leveing a Druid bear tank and realizing that I was completely unable to tank low-level dungeons due to a complete lack of aoe skills until level 40 or so. They didn’t change that until a month into the expansion.

A balanced experience is a reiterative process, and it’s never a quick one…

Starbird.4029:

Why does ‘l2p’ equal ‘l2 use x weapons because y weapons aren’t viable until z level’. This is the kind of mindset that made me hate WoW.

There’s always going to be certain weapons/traits/whatever that are better for some aspects of the game than others. That’s not unique to this game. Why would leveling be different? Anything is viable while leveling, it’s simply that you’re going to have an easier time with certain set-ups than others. Leveling with a shortbow is about as easy as it gets in this game. No one is telling you to forgo other options, just be aware of what you’re getting into with other options.

Snow White.9680:

No one is saying you’re a bad player, we’re saying you need to learn to play. Everyone does when they pick up a new game.

“L2P” has always been a derogatory meme.

Signet of Forums.4397:

It is “soulbound on use.” Altaholic here, and I’m definitely not buying eight of them.

I suspect that the gem exchange has a lot to do with the price point. ~15g is a pittance for an effect such as this, even if I’d never purchase gems with cash for this item.

Edit: That’s a shame too, since I look for any excuse to purchase gems to support the game. I can’t justify it at that price point though…

HARRELSONNN.4872:

You know, I just had a revelation. The more I think about the more I see Derv making a comeback. Either added as a medium or they make them heavy armors. They were hugely popular and make some sense too.

Go into the mists and look at the mannequins behind the armor vendor. Tell me the one to her left isn’t a female Dervish set.

Astral Projections.7320:

Well someone has been thinking about the dervish in Guild Wars 2.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/dervish/

Tried linking a dervish build and instead of an address string, “Dervishes are too OP to be saved!” Popped up. Funny.

If they made Dervishes in this game, I’d have to make a new main…

Kamahl.3621:

Smartcasting and a lot of experience microing with Starcraft. Already have to juggle to output the insane damage I manage, cycling between rifle, elixir gun, grenade kit, and either toolkit if I need a block for that boss / dungeon run, or flamethrower if I have no cares.

Sounds a lot like me, except I don’t use smart cast

@ the OP: 3 hotkeys that are VERY useful to have: Look backward, call target, and take target.

Running forward while throwing ‘nades backwards is tricky master if you’re still learning the basics, but it is EXTREMELY valuable. I actually practiced running around with look backward turned on in Coriolis Plaza in LA when I had a bit of downtime, and started figuring out how to hit a static spot while jumping around in that area after I mastered that…

Note: You might want to learn to run away from mobs sideways when you’re starting out. It’s much, MUCH easier to kite enemies by strafing and throwing to your side, since you can see a couple feet in front of you as well as the mobs behind you. It’s definitely slower though. That being said, I still do this sometimes if I get a bit out of control and need to catch my bearings, since it’s better than standing still or running away while not attacking at all.

Call and take target are invaluable for flying or fast moving enemies, so you know exactly where their hitbox is, and because it’s easy to accidentally deselect your target with ‘nades. It will also help with kits that work better while not targeting anything, such as Flamethrower… Even when I do guild runs and we’re calling targets over vent, I’m still using call/take target as my own personal Main Assist. That way, there’s no reason that I can’t land that clutch net shot on EXACTLY the target that I need despite having nothing selected the moment before.

Anyway… sorry if I rambled a bit, long day. The above might not work for everyone, but it certainly worked for me. Good luck.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I have used it a lot more recently, especially in CoF p1 in place of the Grenade Kit. But the Flamethrower is a viable option in a lot of areas where the Bomb Kit simply is not.

Eh, I’m pretty comfortable meleeing just about everything, even when built glassy. Which bosses are you talking about specifically?

The Rooster.2615:

Removing the aoe cap is a simple fix that can be done immediately.

Make a different type of zerg more powerful, it will totally stop zergs!

The short-sightedness of many of the posters in this thread continues to astound me.

Taril.8619:

I believe it started when some people posted a few videos of them playing 0/10/0/30/30 and 1vX in WvW.

This then caused an influx of people playing the spec and it became the go-to spec, thus people got to know how strong it was.

The builds that they were using in the vids were a known entity as far back as beta. It wasn’t being used simply because D/D was buggy as all hell, and fire grab earthquake, magnetic grasp, ect. missed for no reason at all, mist form didn’t count as a cantrip for traiting purposes, and a bunch of other things that I forgot…

…Check out the patch notes for the ele on Nov 15 and Dec 16. THAT is when the build took off, in combination with the downed state buff.

@the OP: Viable? Most definitely. Optimal? I don’t think anyone is trying to claim that…

I’ve already said a lot on this topic:

Silentsins.3726:

I’ve begun thinking of FT as less of a full kit and more of an Air-Blast-on-a-stick. 15 seconds is a great cooldown for an AoE knockback.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Knockback
It helps to think of it in terms of another, more different http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Mine . In those terms, you’re trading a blast finisher for a -3 second on the knockback cooldown, an additional instant blind (Smoke Vent), and positive synergy with kit refinement.

Bynji.1907:

I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts on the flamethrower at 80. I’m having a blast so far.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIqSYn1yuF17IxIFd+zgeA46eXRKyfjB;T4Ag0ynEOJdS9kyJqhMDJGyOkbI5QjIOZA

Air Blast provides knockback redundancy with Overcharged shot, allowing the latter to be saved as condition removal, and to sometimes send an enemy REALLY far when they’re used together.

The FT kit refinement is arguably the best part about the FT, providing an on-demand aoe burn and a condition removal (likely bugged, but who knows?). Between the kit refinement swaps for FT and elixir gun + Super Elixir for point removal, Overcharged shot for snares, and healing turret for condition bombs, the 3rd U slot is freed up for a stunbreak. Omnom ghost bars and the sigil give you something to exploit all that extra crit with. All this would be decent if FT damage was reasonable!

Despite all those positives, I still consider FT to be third best in role: It’s basically an anti-melee melee kit on a class with only 1 gap closer. This is the same problem that bomb kit and tool kit have, except that bomb kit has BoB, smoke bomb, and glue bomb as excellent standalone reasons to bring the kit, and the last 3 bomb skills scale better than FT for both power and condition damage. Toolkit is perhaps best-in-class of the 3 (except in condition builds. that belongs to bombs) with the same strengths and weaknesses, except Gear Shield, Throw Wrench, and Magnet give you something to do against ranged enemies without leaving the kit.

I feel that while better damage would make the Flamethrower viable, it will need more than just that to make it competitive with the utility of our other kits.

and

Silentsins.3726:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Why does it need to be used at 1500 range to have a place over the Grenade Kit? The Grenade Kit is great at what it does, but you are no where near as durable/safe at close range.

The “durable/safe” aspect of the FT is completely negated with even half-way decent kiting skills. Even on my war and guard, I’m rarely standing toe-to-toe with mobs even with melee weapons; using PvP reflexes to dance in/out of melee range between attacks lets you solo group pve mobs quite easily even without any ranged weapons slotted at all. Since the targeting on flame jet and flame blast makes you face your target, you can’t really kite as effectively.

None of the above prevents me from using the kit in PvE, PvP, and three dubs though…

All of that being said, I feel that the fundamental issue with the kit is in not really damage-related with the recent buffs to the kit. I feel that the basic problem is that the flamethrower is far too similar to the bomb kit in terms of what it brings to the table. There’s simply too much overlap between fire field, knock back, and blind on both kits. THAT is the main reason why the condition removal on the old kit refinement had value: it let the kit bring something that would be otherwise hard to fit into a build, and it was something that the bomb kit didn’t bring. That’s ALSO why the original juggernaut had value as well (even though it was OP): stability is somewhat hard to get on this class.

I feel that the only thing that this kit needs is something distinct and preferably scarce on the class such as stability, condition removal, boon stripping, ect… I’m being intentionally vague because the specifics don’t really matter, as long as the addition is useful and thematic.

Other than that, I genuinely feel that the kit is “almost there”.

killcannon.2576:

And yes, a smart group will currently beat a mindless group, but that shouldn’t be just incidental

It isn’t just incidental. It never was.

Ponder.3647:

It’s true that everything has been done in some capacity, and yeah what will typically work best will be discovered and labeled cookie cutter. What I think is cool, is that while there might be a cookie cutter “best” spec(s) to run, breaking away from said build won’t necessarily render you useless.

The truth of the matter is simple: dodge > class balance. It’s not any more complicated than that. This is not to say that enges are in a good place relative to other classes, but dodge makes a bunch of less-than-optimal features more viable, is all…

Yamsandjams.3267:

This is the reason exactly.

I was running an alt through Queensdale, and there were two rocket turrets positioned on the water pipes. The absolutely annihilated any of the bandits that ran up there during the various events. I’m not sure where the engineers that laid them had buggered off too, but they were probably sitting afk somewhere getting credit for every event that the turrets farmed for them. Given that the event reward is based on your non-scaled level, it would’ve been a great way for them to get some risk-free farming in.

Neither XP nor Karma are the valuable commodity in farming. Drops are. I can understand how the above might’ve been a concern at release, but between DR and the war on bots, the “teeth” have long since been pulled on the above point. This is an outdated concern. Worrying about something such as this now that bots are running rampant is like closing the dam after all the water is gone.

@the OP: The change to a 5 minute timer sort of confirms a theory that some of us might’ve suspected but could not know for sure: the devs have been balancing the in-combat efficiency of the turrets at least in part around their persistence in the world. Cutting their life span from permanent to 5 minutes in exchange for buffs must’ve been seen as an even exchange, even though it looks completely arbitrary to us as players.

If you have some time to kill, go cruse the older patch notes and see how many patches that Guard spirit weapons have gotten. Necro minions. Ranger pets. Then, look for turret patches, and notice the relative lack. Gives the impression that turrets are the most complicated of the bunch to balance, doesn’t it?

Jski.6180:

@ Silentsins.3726
What they are doing is using the non dmg aoe to slow there progression the frost field and shock field even the earth slow (shame this is not a field too should at least be a dark one). I do not think these skills have a cap to them i would love to know if this is true or not. Things like Meteor Shower i think only hits up to 5 ppl per meteor not the full spell so if you get a few ele to use it you will see ppl drop.

Of coarse. The point that I’m making is that while damage is capped in WvW, there’s several mechanics in place that aren’t capped, and can be used for a few to take down many.

While the 5 person limit to damage is somewhat pro-zerg, I’m having a good laugh at the expense of the people in this thread that are translating that into WvW being “skill-less”… That’s just basic forum hyperbole that looses all credibility to the poster.

I’m pretty indifferent as to weather or not they have a cap or not, btw… I haven’t seen much of an argument for REMOVING the cap except for “because it would be better” which is not much of a convincing point at all.

Edit: To answer your question: yes, those fields do have a cap, but since they are persistent, they are affecting 5 people at a time in pulses.

Ezeriel.9574:

I think it has more to do with saving on bandwidth and lag than anything.

While I’m sure that’s part of it, the cap on aoes also opens up design space for features unique to WvW such as:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arrow_cart

munkiman.3068:

Might want to give this a read…. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Combos aren’t limited and are the main reason a (5 man team) can take down a 20+ of unorganized mayhem.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Did you not see me say that the GCD is awful?
The changes to the abilities it activates aren’t all awful, 2 of them are far better than the effect they used to have.
But it’s still ruined by the GCD.

I wasn’t really disagreeing with anything you said as much as making a point that I myself just realized while playing the game, and it happened to flow naturally from what you were saying.

I just came to the realization that even IF they put these effects on separate cooldowns, the powerful-looking Medkit KR is actually very underwhelming and niche since I’d have to give up starting fights with Drop Stimulant — unless I decide to run around in medkit all the time, which is equally un-enticing.

The more that I give Kit Refinement it’s fair shot, the less likely it is that I see myself slotting it.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

/sigh, no, not entirely. The Medkit and Bomb Kit got far better abilities than they used to have, so not all of the abilities got kittenier.
Global cooldown is awful though.

Kit Refinement has a 20 second internal cooldown.

Medkit’s drop stimulant is on a 20 second cooldown.

Now, with the above 2 statements taken together, can we not see the level of fail that has gone into this trait? "Oh gee, the new Kit Refinement is a compelling reason to take the Medkit! All I gotta do is… forgo using one of the more compelling reasons to use the Medkit!

The Engineer is now the Ford Pinto class of the game.

TheAltarBoy.3176:

We knew we were losing kit refinement. Did you really expect a 10 point trait to remain that powerful?

Compared to Mug and Elemental Attunement? No, the trait wasn’t inordinately powerful at all. What it did was create one undesirable BUILD. Nerfing that build was simply low hanging fruit, because even though the Thief backstab build hits harder, is easier to play, and has better escapes, there is no one single trait that could be nerfed to make it go away like kit refinement did for 100 ’nades.

Kardiamond.6952:

Does it knockback people? or only damage?

Just damage.

It occurs to me that most of the “new” KR effects are just another, more different gadget effects:
Grenade KR = 1/2 of the mine utility (but better)
Bomb KR =1/2 mine utility (but better)
Elixir Gun KR = 1/2 slick shoes (but worse)
Tool KR = 1/2 slick shoes (but worse)

Sure, the details are different, but the effects will be used in much the same way as the existing gadgets.

…guess a cooldown reduction on slick shoes is out of the question now…

Kardiamond.6952:

Did the mine really crit for 2.4k?

This isn’t the mine field mines then?

Yep. got it to hit 4 targets too (1,026 damage non crit in a full zerker build all the same damage, which I suppose suggests a static damage value and not a range). The radius of the explosion is MUCH larger than the initial collision range (perhaps 360-400 range on the explosion), but getting things to run over that tiny initial mine is as much a problem as ever.

Seras.5702:

I will say that I don’t know if so much has been said about a 10-pt trait before.

Mug would like a word with you…

Rfreak.6591:

Elixir Gun- leave a trail of glue (probably 100 radius each drop) that will immobilize enemies when stepping on it (your ability to do so lasts just 3s, each glue trail lasts 3s)

-The collision for the drop matches with the animation.
-The drops will not overlap. If you stand still, you only get 1 drop.
-Drops disappear when enemy runs over it.
-Does nothing against neutral mobs until aggroed.

It’s pretty easy to get a pve mob to run over 3 of them if you run away in a straight line, but it’s eminently avoidable by any other player that wishes too. Have to grab a buddy to see if the “dodge through” plan completely negates it.

Rfreak.6591:

Grenade Kit- cast a single mine (from Mine Field, so you know its effectiveness) that lasts 20s on the ground (range circle not yet addressed)

The target’s targeting circle LITTERALLY HAS TO TOUCH the mine’s small animation for it to go off. Everyone say it with me: NERFED TO DA GROUND!!! At least it’s critting for 2,441 damage…

Rfreak.6591:

Bomb Kit- casts a Magnetic Bomb that explodes after 2-3s and pulls enemies towards you (seems to have a 360 radius, doesn’t seem to be affected by Forceful Explosives)

-3 target limit.
-zero damage
-Targets and pushes around ambient/neutral mobs, but doesn’t aggro.

I see myself using this trait with a dedicated bomb build. That’s about it.

Chaith.8256:

The goal of this patch was to bring really good kit refinements (nade, EG) down, and bad ones up. (Bomb, med-kit, etc.)

Even money says that the patch simply swapped them in usefulness.

Mif.3471:

Everything is either a bug fix, or a buff that isn’t big enough to stuff no one cares about.

Hrm… I’d say it’s too early to say. Elixir U just got MUCH more powerful with a stunbreak and an on-demand projectile wall (even though I would’ve liked to keep quickening zephir instead of Frenzy).

Rifle turret just got interesting purely because of cooldowns. It already had niche uses in static discharge builds. Rifle + heal might be enough to justify turret traits by themselves, as heal turret is arguably our strongest heal since the bugfix last month.

The change to Kit Refinement is… awkward. The trait is fundamentally a defensive/support trait sitting on the bottom of an offensive traitline. The 20sec global cooldown is severely punishing to multi-kit builds. My initial impression is that it’s not going to play as well as it looks on paper, since it’s both awkwardly designed and placed. It’s also likely to push us further toward specialized builds.

Those are the only changes that I see making much of an impact.

As an aside:
“Throw Napalm skill: Reduced cooldown from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.”

Lol… The cooldown was already 30 seconds.

No Walking.6349:

No, we need a trinity.

MMOs need a better generation of gamers… this one fails utterly. This is only one of the reasons.

Chuo.4238:

Personally, I want to see a bit more intelligence in dungeon bosses, not just a couple mechanics added to a giant health pool. Yawn.

This is what I want to see too. Then again, look at the majority of the people in this thread: “Dungeons too hard.” “I’m to broke in-game.” I honestly think they’d have an aneurism if they added more mechanics to deal with on top of everything else.

hchadw.1097:

Game needs more refinement now instead of nerfs.

I’m failing to understand how people are seeing it as an “either/or” thing. They HAVE been doing server refinements (major one coming with the same patch as this change, in fact) and will continue to do so.

The nerf needed to happen regardless.

Nike.2631:

Too many players participating on a daily basis is the kind of problem MMOs dream of having. I’m not so sure that shooting rewards in the head is a solution that’s really going to benefit ANet as much as maybe improving the stability of the events would have been.

It takes several hours just to work through the 12 bosses on the timer anyway. The number of people who are capable of doing this with more than one character consistently are pretty much outliers. Honestly? A guaranteed 12 rares a day is still an enormous number. I don’t see how anyone could deride this change as a bad thing, or argue that abusing the Maw’s short timer on the current system is a good thing.

“Engineers were just walking up and doing 24k damage on people”

Except, they don’t.

The combo is around ~17,000 on a light golem, assuming all crits (8x kit refinement at ~820, 8x barrage at ~1200, 1x static discharge at ~900).

Your standard bunker ele has 15,700 health, with an instant ~2,400 heal just by switching to water, and 2,470 on evade, (and cleansing wave, cone of cold, soothing mist, regen on attunement swap, and their normal heal).

Necros have an instant, second health bar.

Most other classes have either better armor, or other passive defenses.

Backstab theives still exist.

“We don’t want a 10 point trait to be this defining.”

Guess they missed Elemental Attunement, Inspired Virtue, Justice is Blind, Shared Anguish, Berserker’s Power, and Shadow’s Embrace.

We want kit refinement to be useful for all kits…

Except for med kit and perhaps bomb kit, it IS useful. They should’ve just buffed those.

I have a hard time being optimistic about the stream. Sure, they said a lot of nice, non-specific things, but they did the same thing back in November with “lots of changes” and it turned out to be a lot of trivial upgrades and a big nerf, and Rangers got their expectations completely shattered (for the worst) 4 months ago with
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-update

I’ll believe positive changes when I see them. It’s my experience that when the A-net devs call their shots like this, it’s usually followed with utter disappointment from the player base when they actually see the changes. “A lot of work” doesn’t always mean the same thing to us as it does the devs. We see that statement and look forward to qualitative, meaningful changes, we often get a few numbers pushed around that took a lot of effort on their part but makes not much difference for us.

RaynStargaze.6510:

Grenades are currently unaffected by the GCD even though they should be (patch notes). So explosive decent just procs the local internal CD for grenades kit refinement skill but no GCD.

Not quite. I did some testing myself about a week ago, and already posted it here:

What I’ve learned about Kit Refinement (KR) so far:
1. Med kit and tool kit are completely unaffected by the change. Med kit is instant, tool kit is every 10 seconds regardless of what you’re doing with the other kits.

2. FT KR has a 10 second cooldown, which it shares with other KR. Meaning, if you use the FT KR, it will be 10 seconds before you can use ANY other KR (including med kit and Tool Kit)

3. If you use grenade KR, it will be 20 seconds before you can grenade KR again.

4. If you use grenade KR, you can immediately do a bomb, FT, or EG, Tool Kit, or Med Kit.

5. Elixir Gun’s KR has a 20 second cooldown, which it shares with other KR. Meaning, if you use the EG KR, it will be 20 seconds before you can use ANY other KR.

The grenade KR is affected, but only if you try to use it twice in a row.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Except the Grenade Kit is actually relatively terrible at kiting, offering only a 2-second chill every 16 seconds (20 untraited). The Grenade Kit is our Fire Attunement. It is a damage-dealing build.

Completely wrong. Frost grenade is 2.5 seconds with the standard 30 in explosives, stacking per grenade, so x3. That’s a 7.5 second snare… the best in the game.

Either way, it seems that you missed the point of my post completely, but others covered it already with:

JohnDied.3476:

The reason the flamethrower is terrible at kiting is not due to it’s CC, it’s due to it’s restricted radius of attack and how it slows down movement.

…and even more so with:

JohnDied.3476:

The sheer numbers have been crunched, the mechanics have been analyzed, the play-styles discussed. What it comes down to simply, is that the flamethrower is a weapon that needs a redesign or some serious buffs (not more of this might stacking nonsense that just serves like a bandaid to a bruise).

What we’ve had so far is arguments from people who go to great lengths to improve a weapon that they enjoy, which is a good thing but isn’t very helpful. We want to improve this weapon so that people who didn’t think “wow I love using a flamethrower” will have a reason to use it. We wan’t this deficient weapon shine at it’s niche in the engineer arsenal and not be outclassed by bombs and grenades.

Fun and effectiveness are not mutually exclusive. Personally, FT is my favorite kit, but I can see the deficits that remain. This is not a conflicting viewpoint at all. For what it’s worth, I still play the kit anyway, would NEVER call it “not worth the slot”, and I do appreciate the direction that they’re taking the kit… but let’s call a spade a spade here, it’s not there yet.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting this kit to have an optimal place in our loadout… and I don’t feel that it’s an unreasonable request either. A-net must agree, or why would the be buffing it to begin with?

Phineas Poe.3018:

Well the funny thing is that you have plenty of room to face your target while kiting them. Just look at the skills you have at your disposal with the FT (and EG):

400-range Knockback (12 second cooldown)
PBAoE Blind (16 second cooldown)
400-range Leap (12 second cooldown)
3-second Cripple (6.5 second cooldown)
100% Vigor (Invigorating Speed)
100% Swiftness (Infused Precision)

Coming from someone who also has a Guardian, I actually think it’s much easier kiting on my Engineer. Especially since I have room in my build to slot the Net Turret as my third utility.

Which is pretty comperable to other loadouts… except other loadouts don’t have the drawback of having to face your target.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Why does it need to be used at 1500 range to have a place over the Grenade Kit? The Grenade Kit is great at what it does, but you are no where near as durable/safe at close range.

The “durable/safe” aspect of the FT is completely negated with even half-way decent kiting skills. Even on my war and guard, I’m rarely standing toe-to-toe with mobs even with melee weapons; using PvP reflexes to dance in/out of melee range between attacks lets you solo group pve mobs quite easily even without any ranged weapons slotted at all. Since the targeting on flame jet and flame blast makes you face your target, you can’t really kite as effectively.

The above is why I feel that FT deserves damage more comparable to melee weapons.

Kardiamond.6952:

Incendiary Powder -> 2 second burn on critical hti from any attack.
Hell with condition duration and precision, you can have perma burn on a single target. That’s like 500 more dps not affected by armor.

Invigorating Speed -> Vigor on swiftness.
With speedy kit, it’s perma swiftness. In sPvP this one of the best buff you can have.

Static Discharge -> bolt on toolbelt
Add 800-2000 damage on each toolbelt use.

Speedy kit -> perma swiftness
I would take speedy kit over kit refinement anytime.

Others class?

Ranger
Zephyr’s Speed You and your pet gain 2 seconds of quickness when you swap pets.
5 points, on demand quickness. The strongest effect in game.

You forgot: Elemental Attunement, Soothing Disruption, Zephir’s Boon, Justice is Blind, Inspired Virtue, and Thrill of the Crime. That doesn’t even include traits that are focused, but extremely defining like mug and purity.

Recursivision.2367:

I’m not saying it’s the best trait in the game. In the end, what I’m saying is it was a powerful trait, it still is. Only builds that relied on it actively are affected by this change. It has not hurt the viability of the engineer on the whole. And the builds that did rely on it are still viable although will require some adjusting.

You missed the point. It didn’t hurt the viability of the class, but it didn’t help it either. So… what was the point of the change? I’m of the opinion that nerfs should be handed out lightly, because are ALWAYS going to be received poorly even when deserved (just look at the reaction to the food nerf). So… what was broken about this trait that made it need changing? Otherwise, a change such as this angers people for no reason and makes the devs look unfocused and arbitrary.

This isn’t the end of the class. That doesn’t keep this from being a ridiculous change though…

Jski.6180:

It looks like the week resets the same time WvW dose. So i guess they did it befor the switch and then just after.

That’s the answer. Some guilds got a jump on day one and did the first hunt immediately, and got 2 Comms. Then, there were problems: some of these guilds got a big jump too, and got a “Mission Failed” message even though they killed all bounties. That led to a hotfix the next day, and an accidental reset of the weekly bonus when they reset the month early (remember getting a new monthly on the 28th instead of the 1st?). The guildies that did bounties on the first day and DIDN’T have it bug got 4 comms.

Kimbald.2697:

As much as I dislike the nerf to Kit refinemnt, let’s not forget this patch was mostly buffs to kits.
And a few fixes we waited for…

The sky isn’t falling.
It’s just that the devs changed their minds about engineers again it seems.
Versatility? Many kits? Instant kit swapping? One kit? Wait on kit refinement internal cooldown before swapping?
Make up your minds already

Yeah… it’s just an “adapt and overcome” thing.

I’m REALLY liking Elixir Gun <→ healing turret for the double water field + finisher and super elixir. The question that I’m kicking back and forth is weather or not the KR super elixir is still worthwhile with the extra micromanagement involved in timing an extra light field in such a way that doesn’t interfere with regenerating mist → acid bomb… my gut instinct says that it is.

So… I’ll deal with the extra hoops that need to be jumped through for Kit Refinement. The thing that still confuses me though is: why did they even bother with the change in the first place? Sure, the trait is useful, but traits like:
Inspired Virtue,
Altruistic Healing,
Executioner,
Shadow’s Embrace,
Deceptive Evasion,
Illusionary Persona,
Elemental Attunement,
Evasive Arcana,
ect.
…exist in this game. You’d have to be smokin’ crack crazy to think that Kit Refinement is more powerful or build defining than most of the above, or that it is more problematic. Maybe someone can point to a broken interaction that caused this change… otherwise, I just don’t get it.

Vuh.1328:

Leadfoot.9071:

Vuh.1328:

Kardiamond.6952:

I didn’t try my 100nade build since patch.

Is this confirmed?

100nade still works perfectly fine.. now with slightly better prybar :p

Why is this true? Do you just have to micromanage better to make sure the KR is off cooldown before popping the burst? Seems like magnet pull -> kr barrage is going to be difficult because it means you’ll have to be sitting in the tool kit for 10s which doesn’t have any ranged abilities – I’m new to engineer so I’m probably missing something.

the kr change only affects flamethrower and elixir gun currently. So 100nade function just as it did before

I thought the grenade KR was on a 10 second cooldown pre-patch? It’s 20 seconds now. That would make it affected by the change, but much, MUCH less so than Flamethrower and Elix gun.