Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 broke into my house and shot my dog.

Engineer is impacted far more than other professions by retaliation, therefore the answer is just not to play engineer. It’s so simple, and it definitely doesn’t need anything complicated like adding a 0.5s or 1s per target ICD to retaliation. Surely you guys should be able to grasp that. /s

iirc they tried the breakbar on player thing at one point early on during HoT beta or alpha but scrapped it because it wasn’t fun to play with or against.

+1

YourFriendMarvin.4127:

I agree with this, but the healing turret cast time isn’t a big deal. It means you have to be aware of when you heal. It was kinda needed for counter play, pvp wise. As for rifle, yeah you didn’t need to nerf the initial cast. Like he said, the last part is what people are dodging.

It really hurt HT’s usage as anti-melee with the accelerant-packed turrets trait though, and core engi doesn’t have nearly the amount of stability scrapper does, which is why the nerf hit core way harder than scrapper. I agree that HT was definitely overperforming, but I would much rather have seen it nerfed in another way, through increased cd or lowered healing, lowered regen application, etc.

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the PvP Team:
As for Jump Shot, it’s difficult to land both the first and second attacks consistently unless you’re cleaving a downed player. To address this, we’ve moved some of the initial damage to the end of the attack, making it easier to spike. The total damage done by the skill will be the same.

This is actually a nerf btw, considering how easy the 2nd hit is to avoid and how often rifle engi needs to use jump shot for actual repositioning, as it needs to stay mid-range most of the time to actually avoid damage. The problem with rifle isn’t that rifle is bad, it’s that hammer and most of the new HoT stuff are just leagues better. That, and all the additional stability and reflects HoT added makes it very hard to land overcharged shot when it matters. Stop looking at how to bring old meta weapons up, and start looking at how to bring the new ones down. Power creep isn’t good for anyone.

—EDIT— and also revert the gear shield nerf (it wasn’t a problem anyway), and revert the trait buff instead (it wasn’t needed and nobody asked for it). The gear shield nerf and the healing turret cast time nerf hurt core engi more than any buffs you can give could possibly help.

Your matchmaking rating will still be based only off of your wins and losses. Apparently you can just get extra reward pips for the new stats kitten.

I tried to queue up for a ranked match on NA last night and had to leave it after sitting for over 30 minutes in queue. If you’re getting better times, please, by all means, share them with me. Also, balance in this game is still leagues from anything I would consider ‘healthy’. Elite specs are all still considerable upgrades from core, and real build diversity is still nonexistent.

I’d like to see some new 3-stat amulets. Something for front-line fighters, maybe call it Fighter’s Amulet, with power main stat and toughness and vitality as secondaries. This would allow builds that could stand on point and soak a lot of damage, but not deal overmuch in return and require outside help for healing due to a lack of healing power. I’d also like to see a new amulet for that healing support, we’ll call it Healer’s Amulet, with healing power main stat and toughness and power secondary stats.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Each team gets their own top stats.

Rip. If the extra pips were only a thing for the winning team I don’t think anyone would go after them to the extent of hurting their teams chances of winning, but if you can get them on the losing team as well I could totally see some idiots out there trying it.

Do any of you honestly expect the current ‘balance’ team to make any positive changes anyway? Until they get someone who actually understands and cares about the game in charge of balance it’s not going to be getting any better.

So are these extra pips only awarded to players with top stats on the winning team then?

From what I understand, the reason backpack regenerator isn’t really run anymore is that before the core specs patch it worked by giving you a buff when you switched into a kit that provided the healing for the next few seconds, but was nerfed afterwards to actually checking on a per second basis and awarding the healing accordingly, which is far less useful because very few builds actually want to sit in kits more than 50-60% of the time anyway. Not to mention the healing values not keeping up with power creeped healing numbers on other things across the board. So with that in mind I think self regulating defenses is still your best bet in that slot 99% of the time, especially for a build with only baseline toughness.

Since you’re not running tools, one thing you could consider for increasing your survivability would be running supply crate over elixir x. Crate brings you a ~7k heal with supply drop that lines up very well with elixir s, as well as an additional cleansing burst on overcharge and a blast finisher on top of its nice AoE stun, making it a great option for keeping yourself or another alive in fights with no team support. You do miss out on some downs and the general disruption support toss x brings, but I feel like it’s significantly less useful to you without tools and kinetic battery.

I’m not really a fan of relying on intelligence procs for crits, but if it works for you by all means go for it. Doom sigil does seem a bit wasted though, with your build already having 2 solid sources of poison, and I’d rather change that to geomancy for damage or frailty for a solid cover condition.

I don’t think running without tool kit on a build with no toughness is a good idea though. Tool kit has been an integral part of successful core engi builds for a long time, and I don’t think the nerf (why?) has changed that.

If they’re running d/p you can use your healing turret to bodyblock shadow shot and then immediately follow up with detonate and overcharged shot for good damage/cc. You can use stealth just as well as they can with toss elixir s/stealth gyro, and you should be abusing it for covering openers and repositioning. Don’t be afraid to blow jump shot for repositioning either— you’re probably not going to land that second hit against any semi-competent thief anyway.

Ivantreil.3092:

idk why, but tool kit simply doesnt work for me, utility googles, elixir u, elixir b or rocket boots have done me a better work for me than tool kit

I feel that too, tool kit has more survival, but you dont damage more than the other options that i mentioned, i guess pry bar cant carry the kit so much after all.

You don’t take toolkit in a condi build for prybar. You take it for the vuln & cripple covers on throw wrench and the auto, and the repeated application on box of nails, which will let you pressure eles with diamond skin up and give you a much better shot against anything with high condi removal (read: most of the meta). On top of that you gear shield, which is still the 2nd best defensive skill core engi has when traited, and an unblockable CC that is still great to use as an opener or for baiting defenses with stows. There are a ton of fun things you can do with the kit like proccing on-swap sigils and other effects while blocking, and playing mind games with magnet, which is twice as fun if you have toss elixir s stealth as well.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Correct me if I am wrong but, conditions on bomb skills wasn’t buffed right? It was the raw damage. I doubt bombs will do better now than before as a condition build alternative.

My 5 cents.

They did buff the confusion duration on concussion bomb from 5s to 8s, which is nice, but not particularly game changing.

It was a problem in GW1 RA because all players were equal in the eyes of the MM system— it only cared about putting players into matches as fast as possible, with no ratings assigned to them, hence the ‘random’ in the name. GW2 has MMRs for every player, so to get into a match with someone specific you’d need to have an MMR close to theirs as well, and even then you’re just as likely to end up on the opposite team as you are theirs.

The core specs update followed by the introduction of scrapper killed engi for me.

PierPiero.9142:

Sins.4782:

It was a bit too good traited, but the solution to that is to tune down the trait they overbuffed in the first place, not to kill the base skill…

You guys are too negative. It is not bad 2 seconds block every 13.5 seconds . ANd in this patch we had also something good. In my opinion now core engi is really better. shield if traited is quite strong now and if you take ft and rocket boots you have good damage in condi and 2 heal combo’s ( classic turret + f1+rocket boot) . it is not bad at all . Try it .

I would agree with you that 3s every 13.25s is far too strong if this was still pre-HoT. Since HoT though there have been a ton of unblockable effects introduced, both damage and CC, that make it rather unlikely that you’ll actually be able to stay blocking for the full 3s anyway, or that you won’t take heavy damage while doing so still. As I’ve said, I’d like to see it go back to 3s every 16s traited instead of 3s every 13.25s, and I think it’ll be balanced at that point.

I don’t think the issues with condi engi have been resolved yet— the shield buffs did nothing to address the problem of p/s simply not having enough damage to be good without sacrificing multiple utility slots to augment it. Regardless, the gear shield nerf did hit core power engi very hard, which does rely largely on that block for damage mitigation.

I haven’t been able to use rocket boots since they changed movement speed mods from working with it. It just feels so… slow now, like it’s hardly worth using as a movement skill.

Edit: I’d also like to advise nightmare runes over balth if you’re using wanderer’s. Your big burns are going to be cleansed before they can tick out most of the time, and you’re wasting some by going over the duration cap for burning. Nightmare gives you longer lasting cover condis, which makes your burns a little harder to cleanse, and it gives you some much needed condi defense on the transfer on elite use. Tormenting runes are also a good choice for the extra cover. I’d also recommend changing your sigils for more cover conditions: frailty and tormenting are both good choices. I also think geomancy is flat out superior to earth right now.

It was a bit too good traited, but the solution to that is to tune down the trait they overbuffed in the first place, not to kill the base skill…

Gear Shield was only decent because they overbuffed the Power Wrench trait in the first place, and even then no one ran it except on core builds that weren’t good anyway. Nerf only serves to kitten core builds harder in PvP, and pushes you even harder towards hammer, as if it wasn’t already by far the superior option. Shield buffs are decent but they don’t address the main problem of not being able to deal sufficient damage without pistol offhand 4, so it still won’t be used by the condi builds that would hugely benefit from its defences. Gyro death nerf was probably necessary, but could also probably have been done in a much better way.

Meanwhile traits stand completely untouched: explosives is still a steaming pile of centaur dung, alchemy/HGH is still 100% mandatory in PvP, and the ‘new’ support/healing traits introduced with core specs update are still trash. Med Kit is still in a worse state than it was before the rework, too.

/r/guildwars2 downvotes everything. You can post something there and get downvoted to -10 in minutes, then turn around and post the same thread 6 hours later and end up at +200.

The new capricorn would be a great map for 8v8s.

Glass Cannon is just trash. It’s a tiny bonus that you’ll only ever be able to keep up in PvE, but you’re forced into taking it on any build not running ‘nades, because your only other choice is a falling damage trait that is useless 99% of the time. It really needs to get merged into explosive descent or something so we can get a trait that’s actually useful added in its place. The ICDs on thermobaric detonation and evasive powder keg are also disgusting. They should have at the absolute maximum a 2s ICD, 10s just kills them completely. I think the other 2 GMs are mostly fine where they are.

The master tier seems pretty bland though, as both the #esports rocket and shaped charge are competing for the exact same thing, increased direct damage. I can’t think of a good solution to that except maybe moving one of them to a different tier though.

I’d really like to see the autoattack removed and the trait reworked into something that doesn’t promote camping the kit all the time. I don’t think ‘press 1 constantly for healz’ is even remotely healthy for the game, and I feel like it promotes ignoring 99% of the interesting stuff in the combat system. I’d also like to see the projectile velocity on the thrown skills increased, as well as making the efects of them AoE in a larger radius, and maybe an increase in their pickup radius as well. The f1 self heal feels pretty bland at the moment, and I wouldn’t mind seeing the heal amount cut down and some additional effects added in to give it more flavor and direction to the kit. Maybe additional condi defense through removals or short duration resistance, or an allied heal component instead?

The amulet really needs to be broken down into 3 or 4 items so we can get some real stat diversity without completely breaking balance. A lot of HoT stuff still needs to be balanced for some stat combinations to be reintroduced though, and unfortunately it doesn’t seem like ANet is very interested in doing so.

If you really want to see how high gyro damage can go, get a mesmer or another engi to moa your gyros.

OT: For some reason ANet has an obsession with making AI minions not scale off of your stats. They probably all have their own power/precision/fero/toughness/vit numbers. The heal gyro at least scales off of your healing power. I’m not sure whether conditions applied by gyros (like the whirl gyro in a fire or poison field) scale off of your condi damage/duration stats or not, should probably go test that at some point.

Ivantreil.3092:

It was a great weapon, but its now outdated, it havent got any significant changes since HoT release, the simple idea it was just use the burst skills that rifle offered, and just move around your kits for dps and aa, 2 and 1 would rarely (never!) see play, but that was ok back then, rifle didnt had problems with projectile hate like it has now, their cc is great, but again, projectile hate! :/

Net shot projectile speed has been increased significantly since HoT. It used to miss almost all the time at anything about ~400 range, now you can actually land it on moving targets.

Lord’s been buffed like 4x already… just nerf the kitten HoT powercreep instead.

Yes; both CCs and stability uptime need to be toned down. And preferably stability should be changed back to its old mechanics once that has been done.

People complain about DHs for the same reason people have complained about thieves and mesmers since the start of the game: they really hate getting killed by something they can’t see. That will always be the case, regardless of whether that something is overpowered or underpowered.

I opened an exotic Gilded Strongbox from the bloodstone PvP track and got another exotic Gilded Strongbox back, that didn’t stack with the old one. Sometimes I wonder what the hell is going through the devs heads when they make this kitten.

To be fair, minstrel’s never should have been put in in the first place. It would have been broken as hell even pre-HoT.

Yes.

It is.

I’d prefer the capture points to be around ~360 radius on average, with ~290-ish being the absolute smallest. There’s far too much lingering 240 radius AoE in-game now for points to be that small.

You will see an engineer with a shield about as often as you find actual hackers in PvP.

Just think, if this was on anything other than rev, both players blowing their highest damaging skills in a row on each other would have resulted in both taking huge damage.

I like that the secondary mechanic doesn’t have such a huge impact, but the map itself feels very 1 dimensional. It’s pretty bland visually, and it bothers me that the ring of buildings and bridges surrounding the midpoint are completely inaccessible, despite looking like something you could get on top of from the relic spawn areas.

Agreed. I’m really not a fan of all the weird asymmetrical shoulders, either.

Can you guys stop with the time limited achievements? They’re not fun for anyone that can’t play all the time.

When did necromancers get buffed this hard?

Razor.9872:

Cynz.9437:

Tim.6450:

People actually think that elite specs are so OP and need to be nerfed to the level of core specs which I consider an indesirable goal.

Actually we have every right to demand it since Anet did promise us (and lied just like about MMR reset) that elite specs will bring variety but won’t be stronger than core. The sole reason why elites are so overtuned is sales, nothing else.

Source?

Here you go.

Fivedawgs.4267:

Sins.4782:

Regardless of their intentions, it’s still a huge kitten move to go back on their original design philosophy of sPvP being a completely level playing field, where skill is the deciding factor, not higher levels or better gear or access to better abilities.

If they wanted to fix this they could either split queues for core/f2p vs HoT players, or allow elite spec access to core/f2p in sPvP, or just balance the kitten game so that elite specs aren’t the best option 100% of the time for every class. At this point all of those seem very unlikely, though.

Nope, it is for everyone who own the game!!! what arent you getting., EXPANSION ARE PART OF THE GAME.

I bought the game twice m8, and HoT once. It ain’t fun crushing people playing core, and it certainly ain’t fun getting crushed when playing core. It isn’t competitive at all, and serious PvP players want competitive. News flash: everyone who has posted in this thread has bought the game at least once, f2p can’t even post on the forums. We’re all customers, and we’ve got a right to complain when a product we liked suddenly gets worse.

Regardless of their intentions, it’s still a huge kitten move to go back on their original design philosophy of sPvP being a completely level playing field, where skill is the deciding factor, not higher levels or better gear or access to better abilities.

If they wanted to fix this they could either split queues for core/f2p vs HoT players, or allow elite spec access to core/f2p in sPvP, or just balance the kitten game so that elite specs aren’t the best option 100% of the time for every class. At this point all of those seem very unlikely, though.

I don’t think ressing is really an issue right now with how strong cleave is, but there are a couple outlier res traits/skills I’d like to see toned down. I also think the 1 to 1 rally thing is a good idea in general. If you do decide to re-implement downed penalty or lower HP on rally, please change it to remove all conditions on rally, as it’s currently possible to lay down enough condition pressure on a downed player that they die before they can cast a heal/cleanse after a power res, and these would only make the problem worse.

Jerus.4350:

Samug.6512:

With power creep that is happening these days taking pistol over shield is a muss anyway… Unless ANet is going to completly rework shield, next to reducing cooldowns they need to give us an one-handed power weapon to pair with it.

For rifle, first thing I’d suggest is give it evade on Jump Shot to somehow match it to the 3-seconds-evade hammer skill, also make autoattack’s damage higher (or shoot faster, so we have a machine gun when quickness is present ) to compensate lack of purely defence abilities.

Rocket Charge is not a 3s evade, it’s a 1s evade with a 2s+ animation that can’t be canceled… it’s pretty clunky and weird with it’s own drawbacks.

I wouldn’t turn down an evade on Jump Shot, though I do feel that we’d be better with making offensive changes to rifle to give it that niche rather than just try to shift it to compete with the hammer. I would point out that rifle has an innate defensive advantage though being that it’s range.

It can be cancelled by entering a kit and pressing weapon swap. I do wish they’d make skill cancelling more uniform, as right now it seems to come down to just remembering which skills can and can’t be cancelled in which ways.

Rather than an evade on Jump Shot, I’d like to see it simply execute faster. I’d be interested in seeing the rifle trait changed to simply halve the recharge of Jump Shot as well. That would turn the rifle into a strong mobility option as well as giving it a good damage boost in PvE.

To make it actually good in PvP though you’d have to buff it up to the levels of power creep elite spec stuff is at, but I’d much rather see the power creep brought down than the rest of our stuff brought up.

Just HGH puts it at a 96s cd, but HGH + Tools puts it at 78s. If they’re running tools and elixir x though, chances are they’re running the kinetic battery trait as well, which technically lets them use it every 40s, but more realistically means they can use it twice within 10s with the usual 78s cd. If you find yourself getting moa’d by the same engi twice in a row or twice in under a minute, you should probably focus them as they’re probably not running scrapper (and thus have next to no sustain).

Half the direct healing from healing turret comes on placement, and is self only. The other half is on the overcharge, and is AoE (the usual 5 target limit, prioritizes players). The regen it applies is AoE but stacks duration, so a player will only be receiving healing from one instance of regeneration at a time. It’s not useless to have multiple people using healing turrets (or supply crates), but it’s not going to be huge healing either. You’re still best off using the overcharge, using any blast finishers you have, and then picking it back up (or detonating if necessary).