Guild Wars 2

Lemondish.3268:

Sorel.4870:

For rezzing, things get a little more complicated. In pvp, even without action camera and since I don’t have a “select next ally” keybind, I often click on the health bar of the team mate I want to rez in the team UI, which selects him/her. I then press the action key to start the gyro rez. That should also work with the action camera.

Problem with these examples is that neither can be done without disabling action camera becuase you cannot click on UI elements while using it. Sadly, tab targetting doesn’t work for this. You need to select and lock the target with the right click to be able to stomp them. If there is anything in the area, it’s impossible to do.

Oh, now I understand your problem. I didn’t think of that problem specifically, but it’s clear that one of the thing I dislike about action camera is the fact that it locks you out of the UI.

A band-aid fix would be to add keybinds to: “select #X player in your team/party”. That way you could do gyro rezzes more easily. If Anet is really serious about action camera, they should also consider a fix to this whole “lock out of the UI” think, like a keybind for temporarily disabling action camera.

What would be better in my opinion, would be to allow stomp/rezzes with the function gyro without targeting, similar to what now exists for stomp/rezzes “by hand”. The targeting fixes the priority target in case more than one player is downed, but for a huge number of cases this would be useful, even for players who aren’t using the action camera.

Thank you for sharing these issue. Even though it’s not considered competitive, there’s no reason action camera engineers should be at such a disadvantage.

Kodama.6453:

So just accept that we got the lamest elite spec mechanic of all and hope we get something better next round….

I suppose you don’t play that much pvp/wvw, and I can see how function gyro can be useless in pve.

However, it would be really easy to please our pve friends. One thing, naturally, would be to make new raids/dungeons/fractals where enemies have a downstate (with high healthpool to promote stomping instead of just cleaving), and having the other NPCs rez them. Another idea, already proposed, would be to have the gyro gather resource nodes.

Another idea I find really cool, would be to replace the third downstate skill (the explosion) by a “use your function gyro”, either to rez yourself of stomp a foe in a downstate fight. It would see little play in pvp (most downed players don’t survive long enough to see their third skill), but it would be useful in open world pve (yes, some players die there). I remember a 1v2 I had in pvp, where I went down just after gyro stomping the first opponent, and my gyro which was still out rezzed me, allowing me to win. I think that “saved by technology” is fitting the theme of the engineer, and it would make the mechanic more unique (it would be the only elite mechanic that affects the downstate).

Kodama.6453:

Wrong. You have to target the enemy you want to stomp with function gyro. And guess what? Auto target doesn’t work here. So even if you have auto targeting next enemy on, you can’t stomp him then. You have to target the enemy manually. Tried it many times.

Ok, thank you. I don’t really play the game these days, but when I come back I’ll definitely do some tests. It could also be that, since I don’t use action camera, I’m used to selecting my downed foes, and that I’m in fact targeting them.

If you’re correct, it’s clear that autotarget wouldn’t work for function gyro, since you need to see the “press F” message to even get access to the skill. But there is little reason to use auto targeting anyway, so I guess I never thought about it.

Ok, you have some valid points, but please, PLEASE, stop using the word “pve” to describe everything you dislike. PvE = killing artificial intelligence. That’s it. Rewards are not specific to PvE, ease is not specific to PvE (I can’t beat my computer at chess, no matter how hard I try), and pretty skins are not specific to PvE. Just thought I’d make that clear.

Unfortunately, nothing was done about that when the trait was meta, despite the numerous threads on this very forum. Now that the traitline does not see a lot of use in competitive pvp, it’s even less likely to change soon. It’s a pity, because it’s a trait with a lot of flavor, but which lacks a simple QoL improvement to really be fun to use.

I think even with action camera, you can stomp a foe as long as you are in the right radius by pressing your action keybind (‘F’ by default). I don’t think you even need to have the foe in your FoV, let alone having to target him.

For rezzing, things get a little more complicated. In pvp, even without action camera and since I don’t have a “select next ally” keybind, I often click on the health bar of the team mate I want to rez in the team UI, which selects him/her. I then press the action key to start the gyro rez. That should also work with the action camera.

The consensus in the community is that you should report this person for “botting”.

We’ve asked several times on this very forum for new motives of report to be added, “afking/match manipulation” being the most obvious. So far, nothing new on that front, sorry.

It also affects you grenade throws, if you play grenades, so there’s that.

I wouldn’t go the dire route, since it doesn’t synergies well with the Firearms traitline. It’s a matter of personal preference though

In WvW, I play Rabid pistols and armor, with trikets mixed between Rabid and Apothecary, and Celestial (I would replace the Celestial by Rabid or Dire, but I’m cheap). The precision allows you to reliably proc Incendiary Powder and the bleeds from the minor trait. Plus, you have a lot of toughness, so you’ll easily beat all the edgy teens playing one-shot thief.

Viper offers condi duration, but you have enough condi duration with Incendiary Powder and food, especially since serious players cleanse your condis before their full duration. It also offers power damage, but pistols have terrible power damage.

This is the build I typically use in WvW roaming, if you are interested:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdQQJAqancoC9dhlcBubBEqiF2iSsjminA8DLxAgO4H+lH-TViHABHp0DgHAwZ6AQb/BmUGUi6PLfCAoUJoFaJIEgi1A-w

If you don’t have HoT, this is my vanilla roaming build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdQQJAqalUUh6rYJXwdLQ7FLsFF4HWiBgYHNFPR4SdRvGA-TViHABHp0b5TAATKDA4BAYhWif3fgSlgnpDoE1fIEgi1A-w

Hope that helps.

Everyone knows you need an ele to win in this game. In every team-based game you lose without a support. Since auramancer in the only support build in the game, ele=win

I agree. My life has been better since I accepted the fact that I’m a ruby scrub

Engineer has plenty of escape skills: Throw Elixir S, Sneak Gyro, Rocket Boots, EG#4 (kinda). I’ve been playing engi in WvW roaming for a long time, and they are really useful there. It’s just that in pvp, the meta engi build is supposed to be a point holder and doesn’t need to run away that much.

It’s your opinion, and I respect it. But Khylo is also my favorite map. I don’t think it’s small. If anything that’s the map that favors thieves, mesmers and revenants the most, and I assumed they were the “mobile classes” (with druid, which is definitely at a disadvantage on Khylo).

I agree that the camera on mid is sometimes annoying. But you can somewhat make it better by tuning your collision parameters in the options. And frankly, why the treb hate? You can at most get one-two shots in before the enemy starts to expect it and dodges, while you’re being outnumbered on the map. I’m not saying terrible, but it is more of a situational/strategic weapon than a really OP mechanic. If it was you would see teams camping the trebs all game, but you hardly see anyone use them after the initial split.

I don’t know what you’re on. But I want some.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Mid – back line does not have a lot of cleanse.

Maybe that’s me being crazy, but get some maybe? :P

Moves… and countermoves

Celine.6857:

Rerolling yourself all the time can be extremely frustrating, yes. You need to hope the other Tempest knows what they’re doing and how to play the class. I’ve rerolled sometimes to have them be utterly useless. I feel more confident in my own ability than someone I don’t know to have the guts to reroll, sad but true and I’m not claiming to be awesome.

That said, I have little issue with 2 of the same class, when it goes to 3, a quick discussion of a reroll should occur.

Well, that’s the problem: often when they don’t reroll, it is because they are not very experienced!

The one thing Anet could do to improve this class-stacking issue is to fix whatever needs fixing to allow us not to load HotM when rerolling. It takes forever, for nothing! For someone playing on an old computer with no SSD, rerolling is really painful. I need to do it in the first few seconds I’m in the map (which also takes hours to load in the first place), and when I come back I have, if I’m lucky, one or two seconds to change a utility skill. No rune change, no weapon change, nothing!

Rerolling before the game should be an important part of conquest, yet aside from the waiting time, nothing has ever been done to improve that aspect of pvp. I suppose this is because GW2 is an RPG, but this argument is not very esport-oriented, if I may. Please Anet, make it happen!

Was it late at night? I noticed having huge win streaks playing in the AMs, maybe because the other players are tired, or drunk, or simply to few to give me balanced games.

The same happens in every collaborative competitive game. Try Overwatch for example: sometimes you want to play Widowmaker, but one guy in your team wants to play nothing but her and you’re forced to play someone else. I happens to me constantly with thief, but if you are not willing to reroll (or face a difficult game, hindering your team), then you are no better than the “scrubs” you decry.

By the way, if you have enough damage in the remaining three slots, two eles are not necessarily a big problem in soloq. It’s not comparable to, say, two thieves.

Wow, a support build is mandatory in a team game. How OP is that.

The only real problem is that only one support build works in the current meta. If cleric ventari rev or cleric druid or cleric bomb engineer (OMG ANET MAKE IT HAPPEN) were viable, you wouldn’t find it OP at all.

Oh, and I like the suggestion of the reverse Wash the Pain Away. But then again, it might be because I play interrupt thief

edit: cleric amulet does not exist, but you get the idea

I don’t get why you don’t like Dueling. Deceptive Evasion is amazing, but so is Blinding Dissipation and the almost 100% fury uptime from the last minor. To be honest, when I play power shatter with Domi/Inspi/Chrono, I miss Blinding Dissipation almost as much as DE (chrono and iDefender compensate a bit the loss in illusion generation), and the loss in damage is noticeable.

One thing that could go a long way to buff the kit in general would be to have the bomb trait made baseline (the “explode faster” part at least), and make it apply also to BoB: 2s build-up and it explodes.

Oh, and please, PLEASE change the visuals Anet.

If only the Elixir S proc was to be removed, you would be surprises how easy it actually is to kill an engineer. It would also be a lot less frustrating. Other than that, the reflect of hammer #2 is on too short a CD maybe. The rest is rather balanced with the Rocket Charge changes: a slow pure melee weapon needs to deal decent damage to be worth playing.

Of course, it would need to happen as a part of a general effort to remove passive invulns and CC: Nightmare rune, Self-Regulating Defense, Defy Pain, Mirror of Anguish, rev taunt trait, etc.

PierPiero.9142:

I did not chose wander or rabid becouse a good vitality helps a lot to manage conditions . Mantra of resolve traited with Harmonious Mantra let you remove conditions 3 times every cast … it is not so weak . It is one of the strongest condition clean of the game …. in my opinion in this meta it is a must if you don’t have the inspiration trait line . Changing this trait let you really more weak against conditions .

Good points, but did you try to use the heal mantra a well? My point was not about Mantra of Resolve being bad, but about Harmonious Mantra being maybe underused with only one mantra.

Goosekilla.2796:

Sorel.4870:

How I read this image: ele and rev are mandatory, but then you can play any of the remaining professions, as long as it’s not guardian

Yeah, I’m kind of surprised by that tbh. Is DH not any good? I thought their traps could present a reasonably potent threat, taking up the whole node and doing decent damage. My guardian friend and I have gotten some pretty sick wipes on the other team (like take out 3 of them instantly) combining his traps with my hammer/nade spike.

It’ reasonably good in soloq, but the damage is predictable, and good players can easily focus them down.

Morwath.9817:

ellesee.8297:

2500 is really good for GW2.

1st season had… ~7k in best moments?

Lmao, not even close. You’re thinking about the Finals. The weeklies had about 1.5k viewers in EU during the first season. Last year, the Go4 weeklies had something like 500 viewers. 2.5k is still a droplet in the Twitch ocean, but yeah, it really is good for GW2.

One thing I noticed in this thread is the wrong usage of the word “PvE”. A legendary backpack is not a PvE item, since you can get it purely by playing pvp (even if noone played PvE, the T6 mats can be bought for laurels or looted in some boxes in the Glorious Reward Track). PvE means you have to kill environmental AI monsters. You don’t in that case.

NeHoMaR.9812:

Of course not, do you play PvP? you really think completing the achievements is enough to get 1000g? think again my friend.

Yup. Last year I only played pvp, opening loot boxes only when my inventory was full, and naturally not buying anything (you don’t need gear for pvp). One day, for fun, I threw 4 random gold (boots, rings and one Mystic Stone) in the MF, and I got Zap. So I thought “hey, I should craft Twilight”, and I realized that in one year I had enough gold and laurels saved up for the remaining gifts (I also explored one map per month between 2013 and 2014, so I had the Gift of Exploration ready). I got it the following week. All that playing maybe one hour a day on average.

You can go to gw2efficiency, it tells you how much all the stuff you have in your bank/collectibles is worth. You would be surprise by how much is already there, if you play pvp and don’t spend too often.

I am almost sure it does. I’ve been using Medic Gyro in pvp and wvw for a few weeks now, and I noticed a condition being cleansed when using Medic Gyro.

Also, yes, Medic Gyro is a solid alternative to Healing Turret. It is instant (that’s why you’re almost forced to play it in WvW roaming), the toolbelt skill is amazing, and with Rune of Water (that I use mainly for the boon duration), it is also a decent burst heal. Not to mention that traited with Final Salvo and Rapid Regeneration, you get a lot more healing than you think.

Aza.2105:

I see this suggestion a lot. And it doesn’t really make sense. Most interrupts are on at least 1/4 casting times, some more. Taking server latency into consideration and the fact that the time between the end of the evade frame and a new evade frame is slim. Even a player who is skilled would not be able to consistently interrupt a thief at the end of their evade frames.

Do you play the meta d/p thief build? If not, I encourage you to try it: it will teach you how to consistently interrupt whatever skill you want by timing your headshots. You can even interrupt a Scrapper after the first leap of Rocket Charge (but most of the time you won’t try because the reward is not worth the risk, still cool though).

In the past, when CC and unblockable stuff were less common, all the sport was to time your Magnet on engineer to interrupt Shelter. But the cast time was so long that you had to press the skill before the guardian pressed his heal keybind, so you had to hard read him. Good times.

Agyaggalamb.4796:

With the current state of pvp, pushing esports is a long shot. This is too much different from GW1 PvP where what was happening was clear.

This is completely anachronistic. The word “esport” didn’t even exist back in the days, and even if GW1 was a recent game with better graphics and a better engine, it would still not be an esport. Because MMOs are not esports, and because the number of viewers is directly linked to the number of people playing the game.

Again, the problem with GW2 as an esport is not that people playing the game are not interested in watching it. An important (and growing) portion of the community is watching the Pro League. It is that the game is three years old, that it is an MMO, and that the player base, even if it grew bigger with the free-to-play model, is still super small compared to the esport giants!

Sayak.6473:

Lets remove sPvP.

Sure dude. GW2 is very, very, very far from the esport dream, but the viewership of the weekly tournaments has been multiplied by five since the Go4 last year, so Anet has no reason to remove an aspect of the game that the players obviously like.

How I read this image: ele and rev are mandatory, but then you can play any of the remaining professions, as long as it’s not guardian

You don’t need to farm gold. If you played enough to complete the achievements, you probably have enough gold saved up.

edit: or laurels

snarfrificus.4230:

You cannot kite them, because they also ranged attack you and burst you with condi’s while doing these dodges and they can to infinite do this, they barely need to dodge, i have counted this with my guildie once every couple of minutes they needed to dodge once to continue the spam.
Also it seems you really never ever used this build.

Do you know the names of the skills? Your description of your experience is difficult to understand because you’re not using an explicit terminology.

“Ranged atacks”. On d/d, it is hard to close the gap. spamming dodges and dead blossom tipically doesn’t work, because the range is bad, so you CAN kite them. They can try to HS to you, but HS is very punishable. Or throw a dagger to cripple you, so watch out for this animation and punish.

One way or another, this build needs a lot of initiative and endurance regeneration. So tipically, they run Roll for Initiative and Channeled Vigor. Your best bet is then to interrupt Channeled Vigor. You sound unfamiliar with the build, but it’s when the thief is glowing, arms to his flanks, head up.

Also, if him cleansing annoys you, just don’t attack. He only cures condition when evading an attack, so condi burst him, and then wait for him to kill himself with confusion.

Shiyo.3578:

Does rune of nightmares interrupting you really cause interrupt traits to proc? If so that’s really crazy, overload air and then get rune of nightmare procced and have multiple conditions on you without that person even knowing you exist.

Not fun imo.

Yes it does. On the fun side of the spectrum, so does the 6th effect of the Rune of the Sunless. It’s hilarious on a baseline hambow condi warrior.

Kageseigi.2150:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

easily negated by EITHER stability or resistance

Thieves have no access to Resistance.
Thieves have virtually no access to Stability.

I’m not totally sure, but I think the rune effect can be blinded. That’s one of the reason I always Blinding Powder into Steal into Fist Flurry to land my burst.

But yeah, in general, you just have to hope that someone in your team has already activated the passive. FeelsBadMan

Rainweaver.7302:

1: Land a hit on a condition warrior
2: Gets interrupted by the rune effect
3: Instant fear, weakness, 2 stacks of bleed and 4 stacks of confusion

Yeeeah…

The best feeling in GW2: die as a thief while your opponent didn’t even press a button :P

This build is not broken, it is just… not fun. Just like DH was: balanced, but with unblockable CC traps, invisible walls and random knockbacks. But not being fun in the eye of some people is not a good reason to get nerfed, so we’ll just have to swallow our pride and learn to live with them.

They are actually rather easy to fight: kite them to make their waste their dodges and to tilt them, land a CC at the very end of their Death Blossom (or in the very beginning), or interrupt Channeled Vigor. But above all, please: let one guy duel him on close, and that’s it. I’ve lost games because of some random scrappers/druids/warriors or even eles (!) were 2v1ing a condi thief on close.

Leagues are fun. It gives people a reason to try their best. Season 3 on my opinion is the best we had: I have played 60 games, I’m in ruby, where I probably belong. Sindrener, in the same number of games, made it lo legendary. In nearly every game I lose, my team and I could have played better and win the match, but lost because of mistakes. Let the ragers rage: for players that aren’t delusional about their own skill level, leagues have mostly positive aspects. The only thing I dislike are the long queues in unranked, that basically force me to only play builds I’m already good at, but hey, it means that people enjoy ranked, so who amI to complain?

Thanks for sharing this build!

It looks weak to conditions, but that’s true of any builds without Inspiration. I don’t get your trait choices in Dueling. Harmonious Mantras, why not, but then why don’t you play at least the heal mantra? You could also play Mistrust, which would have a great synergy with your pistol #5 and shield #5, and with Duelist’s discipline. I also feel like Fencer’s finesse brings you nothing: you don’t need Ferocity in your build, and you probably don’t even notice the CD changes.

Instead, you could play Blinding Dissipation, which is a great trait in itself for a shatter-heavy build like yours, and take Ineptitude as a GM trait in Illusions, for mad confusion bursts!

Finally, Carrion is a great amulet and probably works very well, but you could try with Wanderer or Rabid, because with Sharper Images and pistol #4 that could be a lot of bleed stacks. Maybe it’s worth trying?

I know I suggested a lot of changes and it may alter your build too much. But I like this weapon combination. Tell us if you make it work!

It looks like an interesting build, but hammer and Rabid amulet don’t really work together. I suggest you try it either with p/p (or p/s if you really, really want a block and a reflect), or you change your amulet to something like Sage (with Intelligence sigil for IP) and keep your hammer.

I’ll try the build for myself when I find the time.

You should take a break. This game is driving you crazy

Vexarian.1069:

They ARE annoying. The right engi can be trouble as well. I totally forgot that.

A lot of people seem to be having trouble in PvP lately. Maybe there is a class imbalance?

I mean, I accepted long ago that I would not win my 1v1s unless the other player is significantly worse than me, but it is a problem when +1ing. With their sustain, warriors can easily stay above 50% health against druids or necros, so if you want to kill him you must first wait out his two endure pains, which is a huge disadvantage rotation-wise: if the warrior gets +1ed by a rev (or anything really), I’ll lose the 2v2

Warriors are annoying as hell, and so are engis, and so would thieves if they played Accro. Passive invulns are the complete opposite of what should be considered skilled gameplay. Now that it procs at 50%, I can’t even count on my team mates to condi bomb the guy. At least, the engineer can’t do much to prevent you from killing him as soon as he comes out of the S form, but the warrior can still fight.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Which is a problem since personal score in no way measures performance. In fact, it often measures quite the opposite.

You are right, but these scenarios are rare enough that it doesn’t matter. Personally, if I lose that way, I tell myself it was a draw. And if I win, I tell myself that I won and that I carried my team, because hey, I’m a basic GW2 pvp player.

fishball.7204:

I don’t think it’s a good idea to encourage massive score diff because most of the time score diff just means that one side is heavily favored to win over the other. If the teams were of similar skill they already try their best to win as much as possible and this won’t do anything to motivate them.

That’s the whole point. If the skill gap between the two teams is too wide, they need to be separated on the ladder as quickly as possible.

I also don’t agree that it wouldn’t motivate teams of equal skill. I can’t count the times when someone in my team threatened to afk after the first team fight because of his/her “scrub team”, but when we finally won by a large margin.

One of the added benefit of such a system would be to force the losing team to give everything it has to win. So far, I only had a few games that were absolutely hopeless: most games I lost were because my team and I committed one or more crucial mistakes, but were perfectly winnable. In the few cases were my opponents were much better, I would have been glad to let them have two-three pips and get them away from my pip search range.

That’s what Mortar kit was supposed to be, a long time ago.

They are on the right track. The power creep is still very real, but at least you can have fun on any profession now.

Most of the replies on this thread are ridiculous. They are either

1) Talking about something completely different
2) Comparing 2500 viewers to other games or GW2 total playerbase
3) Making unfounded claims about the number of players in the game

Here are the facts. The immense majority of the viewership, on any game that is not new or incredibly popular, is constituted of its own active playerbase. In December 2014, about 25k players were registered on the leaderboards in EU (I jumped from 96% to top 1000, meaning 1000 players = 4%). This can be considered the active playerbase at that time. Compared to that, 2500 viewers is huge (10%)!

Of course, that reasoning is not true, because a lot more players are playing pvp since the F2P transition. But I consider that the order of magnitude remains unchanged, otherwise Anet would have bragged even more. Counting also the NA players watching the stream, I guess it’s fair to say that about 2-5% of the active pvp player base watched the pro-league on Monday. So yeah, 2500 viewers is a lot, if you think about it.

I’ve wrote it a couple of times already, but the problem with GW2 as an esport is the size of the player base itself, not the interest of the players in watching the Pro league. It appears that in fact, a significant portion of the active player base do enjoy watching the streams.