Guild Wars 2

Impact.2780:

Welcome. As you’re new to thief we’ll inform you of something important to consider when talking about class skill and trait changes:

Don’t trust ANet to buff thief, even if it’s their honest intention.

Thief was buffed, and in the coolest way possible. Daredevil is probably my favorite elite spec, and it gave us a lot of new tools which are excellent in theory. You can play a melee fighter with staff, or a super evasive interrupt build with Dash and PI.

Unfortunately, other professions were overbuffed.

Tempest needs some fixes, along with most other elite specs, but they are not nearly as broken as bunker mesmers were before the precog nerf, mainly because if you strip their protection and CC/burst them, they can be killed quickly. Unfortunately, revenant was designed in a way that completely counters burst builds, but if you’re brave enough, a thief or a shatter mesmer is a very good tool to have in your team to counter tempests.

Maybe you’re just in the division you belong to? I won 15 games in a row since sunday, solo queing, as a thief. That was in saphire. If you’re stuck, it could just be the system working as intended.

That being said, you can still get lucky and grind your way to ruby. The system caters to both categories of players.

Impact.2780:

Some start to perform your role instead of you so you can’t get stealth decaps and have a weaker team fight.

Those bloody reapers dueling on far…

muscarine.5136:

Was on a 14 win streak, one win away from ruby, and then some numbskull ele decided he wouldn’t play because he had a teef (me) in his team.

I had the same thing happened to me. I told him I was on a 12 games win streak on a thief, but I was forced to reroll Scrapper, a build that’s much weaker on Khylo. We lost.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’d even argue that in most normal cases not having the Kd would be better.

I need to try this tonight, but I’m pretty sure the KD can be stowed. So evade frames would be much better than removing the KD.

The three issues with thief in pvp are, in this order:

1) Many thief players don’t know how to rotate correctly, because it’s much harder than other roles
2) Many players don’t know how to play with a thief, and get discourage when they see one on their side
3) Thief is objectively less effective than a lot of other builds

When people ask me to switch class, I usually do, because I don’t like to play in a hostile environment. But frankly, thief is nowhere as bad as these guys think. I prefer a thief on my team than an ele capable of 1v1ing anything but getting decapped constantly.

…In jumping puzzles. Thank you, staff #5!

Aidenwolf.5964:

Thief is the worst profession in the game in all game modes and it’s sad.

Always with the QQ. Thief is actually god-tier in map exploration with Dash, and in jumping puzzles with Staff 5. Stop crying :P

It’s not “holding us back”, it’s confining us into a role. Since the main pvp game mode in GW2 is Conquest, it’s usually not a good idea to give crazy mobility to a profession capable of bunkering a point. Just look at how ridiculous bunker mesmers have been this last couple of weeks. That’s because mesmers weren’t meant to be bunkers, but to be mobile roamers, thanks to Portal. In essence, if thieves were powerful bruisers or bunkers, it would be impossible to out-rotate them. I think that’s in essence what you meant.

But is that really a bad thing? Anet has tried to articulate two aspects of balance since release: having 8 (now 9) professions that feel very distinct, and having these profession able to fill different roles, to avoid the trinity of other games.

Because of profession design, some professions have always been better in certain roles. Mesmers and thieves have always been the best roamers. Necromancers are tanky teamfighters or point holders. I think guardian (and now mesmer) is the only profession with two viable builds filling extremely different roles.

Is that a bad thing? If you are a hard-core roleplayer with just one character who you imagine to be an honorable duelist, maybe. If you are a competitive pvp player, not that much: if I feel like holding points, or wrecking havoc in team fights, I just don’t play thief, and play one of the other professions. I like that thief has such a specific role. The game would not benefit for having 9 bruiser professions: how boring would that be?

That being said, the real thing holding thief back now is not SB: it’s the powercreep. Once things get nerfed, you’ll find yourself extremely useful, if you’re ready to embrace the thief playstyle.

Yeah, thanks Karl. Thief was always my favorite profession design-wise along with mesmer, and I love what Karl has done with daredevil. Now, let’s just wait till pvp is playable again and we’ll be having a blast.

Rome.3192:

I run D/P with Dash and Fist Flurry. I don’t usually use stealth or backstabs a lot since my burst comes from Steal+Fist Flurry and I rely on interrupts for PI damage. The benefits of using Dash are the fast decaps, immunity to immobilise and condi cleanse for Reaper chills (since Withdraw and Signet of Agility are my only other condi clears). Bound is really, really good tho, so I guess it depends on your playstyle.

I play a similar build, even though bound makes a lot of sense with d/p. The problem is, even with bound, you’re a mediocre team fighter as a thief, and an ok duelist. Since our only real strength is our mobility, I feel like dash is generally more useful in pvp, except maybe for staff builds that have a lot of on-point pressure while remaining pretty survivable.

Warlord.9074:

Sorel.4870:

Whatever you do, don’t queue in ranked with a warrior. You’ll just attract negativity.

Unless you are good.

Even then. When I queue on my thief, I have people threatening to afk before the game even starts. I won 15 games in a row solo queuing on my thief, and the only games I lost during that period was when people basically forced me to play mesmer. I’m sure the same things happens to you.

choovanski.5462:

Sorel.4870:

In PvE: go for it.

In PvP: it depends on how much you know about GW2 already. If you’re asking to know what your first character should be, or if you relatively new to pvp, I would definitely advise you to play warrior. It’s fun, and relatively easy to pick up: since it’s relatively straight-forward: you will be able to rapidly focus on watching your foes’ animations, or on your positioning, which will you good reflexes.

If you’re already decent in pvp (over rank 60, I’d say), then you might find warrior a bit weak. Whatever you do, don’t queue in ranked with a warrior. You’ll just attract negativity.

warrior is hard and punishing in the current PvP meta. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who isn’t looking for a laugh.

It’s not in low tiers, and it won’t stay that way forever, so I’d still recommend it for someone taking up pvp.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

If you read through patch note history you’ll find the buff/nerf ratio for warrior is 2.13:1

So essentially for every one buff they have received, they have also been dealth 2.31 nerfs. This pretty much on paper means they are weaker now than before they ever received their very first buff.

A buff is a qualitative variable. Your claim is risible.

You make it sound like Anet has something against warriors. While I agree that most elite specs but warrior’s were overtuned, let’s not forget that warrior was the overlord of the meta several times in the history of the game.

You claim shoutbow was not as strong as the new meta builds. But you’re only strong relatively. And a shoutbow warrior (sometimes two) was absolutely needed on every team back then.

There was a time where it was common to see two hambow warriors on a team.

Let’s not even talk about the goold old Frenzy-HB days.

Sure, warriors are in a terrible place, but try to consider the meta as a whole and not from your mono-profession biased point of view.

MMR reset is a very painful solution, and it has absolutely no interest whatsoever. Do you want easy games? People are complaining that they are winning 50% of their games, but that’s a proof that MMR is working correctly, right?

The problem then is with leagues. I still think that high-MMR players should be rewarded more pips on average to progress faster even if they get matched against equally skilled opponents.

That being said, I think emerald is the only really painful grind, because a lot of good casual players are playing there. Once you get to saphire, the average level suddenly drops, and if you’re good you’ll progress much faster. I’m almost in ruby, and I’ve yet to lose a single pip in saphire.

I agree. I think the skill would be much better if it was insta-cast, on a 75s CD. That would be on line with other skills like Arcane Shield.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Walls are undodgeable to prevent ppl from just dodging through them in which case they would loose there purpose of “blocking the way”. But dmg should never be undodgeable. I agree that if feels kind of odd in case of Lightning Rod, but think, it is better for the game this way. Even though it won’t matter much in the current state of the game …

Even if it wasn’t bugged, the damage would still be very avoidable indeed: don’t walk through the wall. Similarly, you can avoid getting stunned by shocking aura by using stab or just not attacking. In theory, Lighting Rod is an amazing skill, and it’s absolutely not a passive proc. That’s like saying venoms are passive: they are just active on other skills.

In PvE: go for it.

In PvP: it depends on how much you know about GW2 already. If you’re asking to know what your first character should be, or if you relatively new to pvp, I would definitely advise you to play warrior. It’s fun, and relatively easy to pick up: since it’s relatively straight-forward: you will be able to rapidly focus on watching your foes’ animations, or on your positioning, which will you good reflexes.

If you’re already decent in pvp (over rank 60, I’d say), then you might find warrior a bit weak. Whatever you do, don’t queue in ranked with a warrior. You’ll just attract negativity.

I’d be glad with the AA being sped up a bit and the number 3 interrupting the AA automatically without having to stow weapons.

My problem with thief in soloq is that people don’t really know how to play with a thief. They expect you to 2v2 against scrappers or bunker mesmers, drop instantly in their outnumbered fights, or prefer to fight on points that are not ours rather than fight for the points I decap.

In a team, you can still be rather effective, depending on what’s against you.

Xiuras, if I were to take you on my team, what role would you fill? I can manage to fit a ranger, a guardian, an engineer or even a thief in my team, because they all give me an advantage that is either unique (thief mobility), or close to another profession (druid is not far from tempest in term of role). Warrior offers none of this: it’s a poor team fighter, a poor 1v1 point fighter, and a poor decapper. Maybe for a Spirit Watch comp…

Kayberz.5346:

the skyhammer itself is one minor example where its forcing you to use dodges on something you normally wouldnt have to, this so much isnt a big deal, but its when its coupled with the other aspect of the map that it becomes a problem, the holes and falling to your death

That’s not really a problem. In Khylo, nobody gets hit by the treb, despite the animation being less obvious than the hammer, and controlling the hammer means you’re one less player on the map. It’s all fine.

The “fall-to-your-death” part is a bit more of a deal-breaker. As someone suggested, adding gliders, and a "ground level” with stairs or jumping pads to move back up would be a great way to make the map more fun. That way, you could still get a free decap if you manage to push a player through a platform (the same way you can get a free top buff on temple if you manage to pull your foe in the hole), but the player in question would not die. Plus, gliding is fun, and I’m sure a lot of pvp players would like to see it added to unranked.

I think both specs in their own right are responsible for this lack of build diversity. Thief for example still has, in theory, features that are great in conquest (mainly, its mobility and burst damage). But it has very little condi removal (hence, it’s countered by Mallyx rev), and its usefulness relies on its capacity to quickly burst targets, which is nearly impossible against revenants and mesmers that have a ridiculous amount of “oh-kitten” mechanics. The same can be said of warrior, that simply does not have enough survivability compared to these two monsters.

Add the crazy immunity to conditions, and you have a good idea on why the meta is in that state.

Possible solution: nerf a lot of the additional survival abilities that HoT provided. It will probably be enough to bring burst build back in the meta. The good things about the cele meta (if there was one) was that two comps were possible: full celes (bunker) with a thief, or mesmer/thief to burst down targets. This last option does not exist anymore post-HoT.

dank.3680:

Also, this system obviously has no problem doubling/tripling professions OR reaching outside of rank to fill spots..

Yes, and these games are, in general, less fun. That’s why it’s preferable that the system tries to make a new, fairer game from scrap rather than taking a random solo queuer with a different MMR and a different profession than intended, and have a less balanced match.

I would love a new Conquest pvp maps, but Anet’s last experiences with that were rather bad, be it because of bad design, or because of forum warriors’ reluctance to change, or both.

I really, really hope Anet is ready to walk this treacherous road again, but I think too much damage has been done on this front.

Thematically, I would love a map evoking Dry Tops. Or a Zephyrite ship, providing you can’t fall to your death (it didn’t quite work with Skyhammer).

Snorcha.7586:

Blodlyrisk.2801:

Ignoring queue pops negatively impacts the other 9 players who would have been a part of your match.

Jeez, how can you defend this when every single other matchmaking system in all other games are smart enough to find replacements for missing players, there’s no excuse for incompetent development.

Which games are you talking about? Have you read the MMR algorithm? How would you find a “missing player”? Take someone which just so happens to be in queue with exactly the same profession, the same MMR, the same league? A pretty rare bird if you ask me. And things get even more complicated is said player is queuing in a party.

A 3-minute time-out seems like a reasonable punishment for someone who makes nine other players waste 7-10 minutes in queue.

Shylock.4653:

AirWick.1769:

I honestly don’t know what to do with them since, the rewards for these at the moment are nothing I could possibly want or need.

If you find nothing better to buy with them you can use them to buy “Shards of Glory” which you could sell in the TP.

There is that. You can also buy cute wings: they are not legendary, but oh my, so pretty.

At this point, I’ll be happy about pretty much anything that would spare the life of these innocent profession NPCs.

Some people will reach Legendary division before the end of the year. The length of the progression is not the problem in itself. Whether or not it is a grind is another matter entirely.

Aenesthesia.1697:

Yesterday i decided to team up. Most in my team where sapphire. I thought: good, they will know what they are doing.

But the competition knew better: the new meta has clicked really fast, and even though we were consistently downing players, they were being flash revived and we ended up dying when they got a lucky proc.

I got sick of it and went to power necro with well of suffering so i could at least damage downed players and it worked, we won the next match against the new op meta.

But still, 1-5 in a team with people that are suposedly above my skill level and were playing rather poorly, that’s so bad (how did they even reach sapphire?).

I’d like to talk about this last point, because it’s almost never discussed on the forums, where the loudest users seem to be solo queuing only. Yes, forming a team with an average MMR is not going to make you roll over the competition like everyone is saying. At least in EU, when I queue with a full premade, I almost always face other full premades. And if your team is newly formed, even if you are all good individually, you are going to lose A LOT in the beginning.

It happened to me when I started playing with a bunch of real life friends. The first step is to find a comp that works (not always easy since not everybody is capable of playing multiple professions). Then, you need to practice with them on who rotates who, and what each of you is supposed to do in team fights. What typically happens is that you go on a losing streak in the beginning, and then win every game till you go back to your real MMR.

venusiano.8246:

- Bunker mesmer resist a lot but is unable to actually hold points (since distortion prevents capturing).
- Bunder mesmer do no damage and is unable to kill anything.
- Other classes play bunker better.

The original post is a troll (read his history), but I just want to point out that blur, unlike Distorsion, does not prevent point-capture contribution. So Well of Precognition can be used without losing cap. And mesmer is currently the absolute best pick for a bunker. It can even cure conditions quite well with the Heal mantra.

Definitely not match manipulation: queue with who you want.

Frankly, it’s not even match manipulation when the Abjured does it. The two real exploits you can do are:

1) Smurfing, meaning getting a second account in a lower division to help your team mates get easy games.
2) Tanking your MMR by losing on purpose when you have no pips in a tier/division.

I agree that HoT specs are too strong currently, but come on: you can’t expect to be a competitive player if you don’t have access to every build in the game. You could not be a competitive GW1 player without buying the expansions either. If you want to win, stay in touch with the game, practice on new builds to know how to counter them, and experiment with all the new possibilities the expansion offers.

That being said, you’re not a competitive player anyway, so you can be successful enough on non-HoT builds. I would suggest bunker staff ele, shatter mesmer with Illusions or condi engi.

naphack.9346:

You can always have it in your inventory and link it in map chat when someone is salty about being owned.

This. I have a Packet of Salt for now, but this will be a fine replacement.

Ryan.9387:

Booms.3952:

So your guys’ suggestion is that diamond players get 2 hour q times, only to face the exact same people due to long q time diversification?
Nice

I suggest a reset to their rank and pvp meta achievement.

So their effort in abusing the challenger leaderboard would be wasted.

Good solution. This way, they would be forced to play against amber players. 10/10.

I agree with you Booms. These good teams simply have nothing to fight against. How is that fun? What should they do, soloq in unranked? What you have to understand is that it is not a flaw: it’s how MMR works. If they manage to carry an extremely bad player against decent players, then good for them.

edit: apparently, masculine secondary sexual features are banned on these forums, so I just used your account name.

RedDeadFred.1256:

Sorel.4870:

Pip loss is in essence a good idea: it gives some prestige (in theory) to reach the highest divisions.

The problem right now is that MMR is not taken into account at all when determining how many pips you win or lose. So, whether you’re good or bad, you have a 50/50 chance of winning your games (which is good), effectively preventing anyone (except top MMR players in a team) from reaching higher divisions.

A good fix (suggested by someone on the forums, and I think used in LoL) would be to lose and win pips partially based on your MMR. If you have a higher MMR than the average in your division, you will lose less pips from losing, and win more for winning, keeping the same match-making system, until you reach a division that contains players of your skill level.

Your mmr does affect how many pips you gain or lose. You also won’t be only winning 50% of your matches if you’re good. The only reason it was like that at first is because everyone started in the same division. Now that people are getting more spread out, in general, the worse players are still lower down while the better players have climbed. I have about an 80% winrate ever since the leagues were introduced ankitten ow in mid-sapphire.

The system is fine, it just sucks that they didn’t do placement matches and made everyone start at the same spot.

I do hope you’re right. Last time I played Helseth was still stuck in emerald division with me, but maybe it’s gonna get easier now. Basically, I must just wait till the other players have faced this frustrating system or a while before raising.

Also, what happens if I play with less experienced guild mates? I would then have get even games in lower division, and end up in the same division as my team (around our average MMR).

Pip loss is in essence a good idea: it gives some prestige (in theory) to reach the highest divisions.

The problem right now is that MMR is not taken into account at all when determining how many pips you win or lose. So, whether you’re good or bad, you have a 50/50 chance of winning your games (which is good), effectively preventing anyone (except top MMR players in a team) from reaching higher divisions.

A good fix (suggested by someone on the forums, and I think used in LoL) would be to lose and win pips partially based on your MMR. If you have a higher MMR than the average in your division, you will lose less pips from losing, and win more for winning, keeping the same match-making system, until you reach a division that contains players of your skill level.

deda.8302:

@Sorel
Did you even read whole thing or its just my way of phrasing things to complicated for you?
If its to complicated im sorry i cant help you with that,but please refrain from …… remarks
or just troll somwhere else pls

No need to get personal. Take a deep breath and try to realize you are getting angry at someone you’re writing to on a forum, and try to have a civilized discussion.

I think your diagnosis is right: it’s extremely hard as of now to progress in leagues, even if you’re a better than average player, and especially if you soloq (but not only: you face the same problems as a semi-casual premade). Your solution would be, if I understood you correctly, too be promoted weekly based on your “score”. But what score are you talking about? Win ratio? MMR?

If you think about MMR, I’m not too far from your perspective. But Anet sees leagues as a progression, and I know some players like it that way. Also, you would need some kind of MMR reset to sort players in leagues, which would result in a lot of bad match-ups in the first weeks.

If you think about win ratio, this simply wouldn’t work, and ressembles the current system: except at the very top and the very bottom, every player and every team should have a 50% win ratio.

A good solution would be something in the middle: keep the new system (yours is too different to the one we have now to be realistically implemented), and make it so that you win more pips and lose less if your MMR is statistically higher than the average in your division. That way, high MMR players would progress rapidly through the lower leagues, while still playing interesting games.

tldr: losing pips is good, if there is an additional way of sorting players by MMR implemented in the league system.

Marauder Scrapper is a very, very strong build, and is probably the best marauder build that was ever available for engi, because it uses three defensive traitlines to be a beast in duels.

Some condi builds however work great without Scrapper (although you can make them work with the Scrapper traitline). Soldier rifle still works, but I feel like it’s stronger taking Scrapper over Tools.

ReaperJr.5967:

Vague Memory.2817:

The league has nothing to do with skill. If you have a high MMR you get pitched into teams that are likely to lose the match, giving you a losing streak. After you’ve lost enough matches and your MMR is lowered you get rewarded with a winning streak to fill out a tier. There is no point in tanking games to lower your MMR, because the MMR system does this for you.

There is no such winstreak. Once they pitch you enough losing games to hit 50% you will just get normal matches. As of now my winrate has dropped from 64% to 60%. Keep em going anet. -rolls eyes-

It sucks, but a winrate of more than 60% on a short period of time most likely means your MMR is now artificially high, and now you’re being put against opponents that are too strong. If it stabilizes higher than 50%, it means you did something right to improve (like counter-comping, tryharding because of league, etc.), and in that case good job!

Rieselle.5079:

Since MMR is hidden it’s hard to be sure, but generally you can’t “boost” your MMR beyond your skill level. You’re misunderstanding how glicko works.

So when you have a high MMR, and you’re winning a lot in Amber, you won’t gain much MMR when you beat lower MMR opponents. By the time you get to Emerald, your MMR is still your “true” MMR.

You won’t suffer extra losses, just because you won your way through Amber.

The missing ingredient seems to be something that LOL has:
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/League_system

According to that wiki, in LoL, if your MMR is higher than the expected amount for your division, you will gain more points for a win, and lose less for a loss.

This means, if your MMR “deserves” to be Sapphire, but you’re in Emerald, then even with a 50% win rate, because you gain more points and lose less, you’ll eventually rise up to Sapphire.

Now this looks like a very sensible system. The main problem with leagues as of now is that it has nothing to do with MMR, and unless you’re one of the best player in one of the best team (meaning almost no other team is worthy of fighting you), you will mostly get balanced games (which is fun), and as a result rely on luck or exploit to progress through leagues (which is not). And that, regardless of how good you are at the game.

People have suggested a MMR reset, which would have the major drawback of giving us unbalanced games for a month, but your solution looks much, much better, and relatively easy to implement. Thank you for being constructive on these forums. It’s a rare sight.

Vague Memory.2817:

The league has nothing to do with skill. If you have a high MMR you get pitched into teams that are likely to lose the match, giving you a losing streak. After you’ve lost enough matches and your MMR is lowered you get rewarded with a winning streak to fill out a tier. There is no point in tanking games to lower your MMR, because the MMR system does this for you.

This is not exactly how it works. Despite numerous false claims on the forums, there is nothing inherent to the algorithm that gives you losing streaks after winning streaks. The thing is, if the system was ideal, and every game was won or lot according to prediction, you would keep a nearly constant MMR, and have random fluctuations over your equilibrium point.

Now, a lot of factors influence these fluctuations. You probably have noticed that soloq games are a lot more unbalanced than premade vs premade games. I think the most important, in soloq, is the team composition. Because of this random factor and others, you can have rather large fluctuations around your equilibrium point, leading to win streaks or lose streaks.

The best way to prevent losing streaks is to play two or three different builds with different roles. And, if possible, to duoq with a friend who can also counter-comp.

deda.8302:

In any sport known to me you dont lose anything if losing.

Really? In every sport I know of that has a league system, if you lose too much you get relegated in a lower league. That’s exactly what leagues are supposed to be. Yes, it means you can not just grind to get rewards, you need to actually be one of the most competitive players. In theory…

In practice, the implementation is flawed, but you can refer to one of the numerous threads on the matter.

trytonianYeti.4389:

The video made me realize about something off topic – NA doesn’t have an admired pvp personality like EU does with Helseth.

Folks with no sense of humor may dislike him but that guy is one charming mofo.

I was under the impression that members of the Abjured were admired and liked by the NA community, especially Toker and Phantaram. They sound like nice lads.

Yasi.9065:

As long as you get punished for playing good, you will see people trying to manipulate their mmr.

The whole mmr system is flawed, has been flawed forever, will be flawed forever because anet is just incapable of writing anything but mediocre algorithms.

Have you read the algorithm?
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

It’s actually decent, the main problem with it coming from the low population, especially during the night. It’s not even thanks to Arenanet: Glicko 2 is an excellent way of sorting people in 1v1 games. If you soloq in a team game, well, you need a lot of time to get to your final MMR, but all of this is pretty normal.

The problem here lies in the league system. You need win streaks to progress in leagues, while your MMR does a good job of putting you in games where you have around a 50/50 chance of winning. So if all goes well (and for most solo queuers it does, given we’re a lot), you should rarely be able to win 5 games in a row: you’d have a 3% chance of such event happening.

A possible solution: sorting games. You play ten games, with very versatile MMR, and the outcome of those ten games decides in which league you are.

tico.9814:

Why are elite specs even allowed in ESL and pro league? Sorry but reasons like these are why this game is not esports but more of a joke. You have to buy the expansion in order to take advantage of the situation , this is a p2w game now, those who don’t see it are blind, just take a look at the meta. I’m not touching pvp.

Ok, most elite specs are too strong, and balance is in a bad state.

That being said, this p2w argument is ridiculous. Even if elite specs were balanced, you could not be a competitive player without trying the new builds to know how they play. So you would need the expansion anyway. Every game with expansion requires you to get the expansion to keep up. GW1 did it, for example.

Dahkeus.8243:

That and the access to protection for classes that generally are balanced around not having much protection.

Take marauder scrapper for example: HGH makes might stacking a big part of damage. Boon duration is a huge bump to this. On top of that Engineers have next to no protection and have generally been balanced around that (they have lots of blocks/invulns).

On the contrary, engineer always had a lot of protection access compared to other professions, with just Protection Injection (and since it’s after a CC, you’re sure to always have your protection when you need it the most). Things have changed, but they still are among the high protection uptime classes, if you take the protection on heal trait in the Scrapper line.

Durability has a lot of advantages. First, it’s one of the only runes that offer +125 basic stats (here, +125 Vitality). The only other exemple I know of is Pack runes, and they also are very popular. It also gives +20% boon duration, which is good for builds that rely on other boons than just might (like Mallyx revenants, bunker mesmers, eles for protection, Engis for stab, protection, etc.). Last but not least, it gives Protection and Resistance on a 20s CD, which is incredibly potent, as Dahkeus mentionned.