Guild Wars 2

D I V A.6018:

I would love to see your suggestions about Aegis/Fury/Vulnerability/Weakness
DIVA

I think Vulnerability is in a good place where it is now. It was a little too overpowered during the betas and, although it’s pretty bland, I think they’ve found a safe place for it with the “1% incoming damage per stack” mechanic.

Fury is a problem for me. Whereas it is digustingly one-dimensional (Haha, let me get 20% Critical Damage for a fixed duration and nothing you spec into can change it—la, la, la), it’s still very powerful. Since you can stack it, there’s the option to using the self-enhanced stack mechanic like I showed with Burning and Weakness, but one would have to be very careful about that to the point where I don’t think it would be worth doing at all. Maybe something like “For every 15 seconds of Fury stacked, you get a guaranteed Critical Hit” or something, but again that’s sort of shallow.

Olba.5376:

Mobs don’t have Precision stats, though?

The precision reduction is mainly for PvP. The 4th Degree Burn is sort of a PvE-only aspect (since its easier to get groups that can stack the duration that high and maintain it there) that can be achieved to an extent in PvP (but also mitigated more regularly there due to Condition removal).

Aegis

• Given its relative rarity as a Boon granted among skills, traits and runes, it would not benefit from a self-enhancing stack mechanic like Burning.
  —> Block the next incoming attack; if you blocked an attack, then for 3 seconds, you are shielded from massive damage.

The “shielded from massive damage” clause refers to losing health within a range of 20% – 10% from a single attack. The specific percentile for each respective instance of Aegis would be calculated based on the source’s Healing Power. This means, with 0 Healing Power, a target with Aegis on could not lose more than 20% of his total hp from a single attack. The potential damage mitigated from a single hit beyond 20% of a player’s total hp would only lower from there with higher Healing Power until the effect capped out at 10% total hp.

This idea is in lines with the GW1 enchantments: Protective Spirit and Spirit Bond. Those were useful and pro-active mechanics, and they should see play in GW2 at least in this Boon.

Weakness

• Now upgrades itself based on its total duration. Stacks in duration.
  —> 0-6 second duration = Weakness: Current Functionality
  —> x > 6 second duration = Exhaustion: Endurance regeneration decreased by 50%; 66% of Non-Critical hits are glancing blows (50% damage); Skill use drains 3% of your Endurance

Maybe Weakness doesn’t need a buff. And if it does, perhaps this one is too strong. With the right adjustments, I personally don’t believe this suggestion to be that overpowered given that most skills and traits inflict 2-5 seconds of Weakness on cool-downs that prevent solo stacking. The only loopholes would be the Warrior mace main-hand auto-attack, the Thief skill Skale Venom and the Thief trait Lotus Poison. Beyond that, it’s either impossible, incredibly difficult or luck of the draw to achieve a Weakness duration longer than 6 seconds by one’s self.

A NOTE: All numbers and even specific stat reductions in this suggestion are subject to critique and are mainly placeholder variables. The point of this post is to provide general concepts for improvement rather than nail down the numerical specifics of how those ideas would function in active play.

Burning

• Now upgrades itself based on its total duration. Stacks in duration.
  —> 0-3 second duration = 1st Degree Burn: Current Burning damage coefficient
  —> 3-6 second duration = 2nd Degree Burn: Current Burning damage coefficient; Target’s precision is reduced (reduction based on source’s Condition Damage; capped at 200)
  —> 6-10 second duration = 3rd Degree Burn: Current Burning damage coefficient; Target’s precision is reduced further (reduction based on source’s Condition Damage; capped at 400)
  —> x > 10 second duration = 4th Degree Burn: 105% Current Burning damage coefficient; Target’s precision is reduced equal to 3rd Degree Burn calculations; Target’s Toughness is reduced (reduction based on source’s Condition Damage; capped at 200)

All stat reductions are calculated according to the Condition Damage of the last person to inflict Burning on a target. In this regard, in addition to contributing to a stack of Burning on a target, it is possible to overwrite another person’s Burning on that target with a more or less effective version based on a group’s coordination.

This version of Burning would be more useful for PvE where large groups of people could stack long Burning durations onto a target with a massive hit-point pool and thereby somewhat reduce its Toughness in the form of a pseudo-Vulnerability stack.

It wouldn’t be horridly imbalanced in PvP since stacking 10 seconds of Burning would require quite the skill and possibly even trait investment. Even if one were to stack a Burning duration on a target past 10 seconds, by one’s self, it is difficult to achieve a 4th Degree Burn for a substantial amount of time (maybe enough to get off a few attacks before it degrades into a 3rd Degree Burn). Furthermore, since it’s a condition, it is subject to removal.

Blind

• Now split into two types of Blindness.
  —> Clouded sight [place-holder name]: Functions as per the current Blind mechanic
  —> Blind: Next outgoing attack misses; if you missed an attack, Precision is then reduced and 50% of all Non-critical hits are glancing blows (50% damage) for 3 seconds; does not stack duration (Precision reduction based on source’s Condition Damage; capped at at 800)
  —> This condition would receive an even more dramatic on-screen effect than [Clouded Sight], or perhaps [Clouded Sight] would receive no on-screen effect and that effect would be kept on Blind.

The new Blind would be a sort of offensive Protection that could be used to mitigate incoming damage on either yourself or other teammates. This sort of change would promote active play in how players could choose how and when to utilize this powerful Condition in the midst of battle. More importantly, since the duration does not stack, there won’t be players running around with their damage capacity stunted for 10-15 seconds. If two respective instances of the new Blind were to occur on a single target, the second would simply overwrite the first and restart the Condition from the initial “Next outgoing attack misses” stage.

The split into two Conditions would allow ANet to safely buff to certain skills that utilize the current Blind as their main utility gimmick without completely changing them otherwise. Skills like Ray of Judgment, Signet of Air, Counterspell, Signet of Midnight, as well as others could inflict the new, buffed version of Blind instead of [Clouded Sight], thus buffing their utility and better justifying their use as Weapon Skills or Utilities. Furthermore, it would avoid a game-wide Blind buff that would be difficult to balance given that some current Blind skills are easily spammed and that the Thief has a vast access to the Condition.

The ArenaNet Workshop.

But seriously, they did this several times for GW1 weapons. I would be surprised if they didn’t do it again for GW2. Community involvement is a great way to take some stress off of concept designers and also give the players a way to directly contribute to a game. With a game that is heavily invested in cosmetics like GW2, there’s honestly no way to go wrong with this idea.

Only an Engineer would pull the thing that just downed him closer to his dying body.

nofo.8469:

Only an engineer, don’t worry.

Everybody else go home. This guy won.

Anchoku.8142:

Most obvious problem I see with this idea is that Rangers are supposed to be the pet class. Giving Necromancers equal control but more pets would make them the pet class so more control and better AI may make Necro OP.

The simple suggestion that making Minions (nothing more than mediocre damage and 1 utility that, upon use, either destroys the minion or initiates a long cool-down) more easily accessible to Necromancers would suddenly defraud Rangers speaks volumes about the poor design of the Ranger Pet mechanic.

That said, BlindedPeace has given me another idea. What if a Necromancer’s F2-F4 (or maybe just the F2 and F3; no F4 because three might be broken) skills were just left open to some of their unique utility skills (minions, wells and corruptions; specter’s are out because they generate Life Force too rapidly)? Out of that pool of skills, the Necromancer could slot in whichever two they wanted into the F2 and F3 skill slots and then pay for them using Life Force in addition to them having a cool-down.

Again, that might be broken, but it opens up even more options and paths for the Necromancer than it just being Minions. It would also get these “RANGERS HAVE PETS RAAAH” people off my back.

Adrenaline is the (apart from the Thief) most boring Profession Mechanic in the game. Most often times (with the right traits) it’s best to refrain from using the one skill it gives you at all. This limits Warriors to their Weapon Skills and what they’ve packed along with them in their Healing, Utility and Elite Skills. In efforts to be made “easy to play” no class should be dumbed down to this level.

So here’s the suggested change: three weapon sets tied to F1-F3; F4 is now the Adrenaline Burst skill for the active Weapon Set.

That’s it. Give the Warrior the ability to handle three weapon sets at a time, adjust some numbers (recharges and damage) and, bam, you’ve got a class with more variety and utility that makes up for its boring Profession Mechanic. Warriors would still take the obviously most powerful weapon sets, but could now debate on how they would utilize that third weapon set given their access to so many main-hand/off-hand options.

Bumping because change to title (I’m planning on making more of these types of posts for other professions).

Bumping because change to title (I’m planning on making more of these types of posts for other professions).

Kyskythyn.6471:

Do I get F keys for my wells, too? o.o
Not everyone uses minions…

I guess it doesn’t really matter what the F2-F4 skills became, but it would have to be one unique type of utility skills (bringing two into the mix would just drain the utility skill bar of options). I chose minions because of their chain ability (pop one to summon it and do damage, and then trigger its abilities later on), the fact that they move about and also how they can add more chaos in general to a battle with their presence. Wells sit there and have a passive effect on a small area for 5 seconds.

The Guardian’s current profession mechanic as it stands now is 3 signets. If you removed the word “Virtue” and replaced it with “Signet,” there would literally be no way to tell the difference. That’s a rather shallow design.

Additionally, it seems that Spirit Weapons were really a missed opportunity for something special. Right now what we have are mindless pets that do poor to mediocre damage, and get one mildly interesting skill on a silly-long cool-down. They have no legitimate impact on combat. I think they could be something more—something that’s better integrated into the identity and play-style of the Guardian.

So my suggestion is mainly in the image at the bottom of this post (it might be best to reference that before proceeding further), but I’ll flesh out the rest of the details in text here:

• Spirit Weapons are now tied to Virtue skills and, while active, function as actual weapons that take up appropriate weapon skill slots.
  —> Current Virtues retain their respective recharge times.
  —> A Virtue will begin recharging normally whenever it is triggered (a Virtue will continue to recharge even though a player is wielding its respective Spirit Weapon).
• Upon activation, Spirit Weapon Skills will superimpose themselves over top of one’s normal Weapon Skills in the appropriate spots.
  —> As an example: while the Shield of the Avenger Spirit Weapon is active, it will super-impose itself over top of your 4-5 skills—even if you have a two-handed weapon—thus granting you new 4 and 5 skills for its duration.
  —> You can only have one active Spirit Weapon out at any given time.
• Spirit Weapons can be slotted into any one of the Virtue slots and are interchangeable outside of combat.
• Spirit Weapons operate on [Initiative] (placeholder term, but it would function the same way) that regenerates naturally at a rate of 1 pip every 2 seconds.
  —> If a Guardian completely exhausts his or her [Initiative], his/her currently active Spirit Weapon is dismissed and the [Initiative] bar is sent into a 15 second cool-down during which it will not regenerate [Initiative] points. This would prevent the Guardian from employing Spirit Weapons during that time. After the cool-down is over, the bar would resume regenerating normally. However, during this cool-down, the Virtues can still be triggered, recharge normally and maintain their passive effects when fully recharged.
• The term “Guardian’s Aegis” in the Virtue of Courage description refers to a new version of the boon Aegis unique to Guardians. After blocking the initial attack, Guardian’s Aegis lingers for 2 seconds and reduces incoming damage based on the source’s Healing Power (damage reduction improves on a curve that starts at 0%, but is capped at 25%).
  —> This is to give meaning to Aegis’ duration and more depth to its usage. Instead of being a whimpy interrupt, it can now mitigate burst damage and multiple-hit attacks to an extent.

I’m still trying to think of whether it would be a good idea or not to make the Virtues into chain skills that would allow a player to pop a Virtue for its effect without conjuring a Spirit Weapon and replacing 2 or more Weapon Skills if he or she didn’t want that. Yet at the same time, it would slow down a Guardian’s ability to cycle through Spirit Weapon effects, which is really what I was going for with this idea.

There is also the F4 key which dismisses any active Spirit Weapon so a Guardian could theoretically just trigger a Virtue and then follow it up with F4 immediately in order to maintain his or her current Weapon Skills (even though that’s a bit unwieldy, and honestly you should be exploiting the fact that you get new Weapon Skills just for activating an ability).

Making the effects intrinsically tied would completely change the way Virtues work—but since that’s sort of what I’m trying to do with this suggestion, I guess I’m convinced that it’s for the better.

So this topic is really old, but I had a new idea recently. What if there were two types of Blindness: the version that sees play right now (that will be called just “Blindness”) and the version with the duration that I’m trying to describe and flesh out in this forum post (it could be called something different like “Deep Blindness” or I don’t know).

Whatever it’s called, having two kinds of Blindness would make it easier to buff several skills that use the current, whimpy Blindness as their main gimmick. If those underpowered skills (Ray of Judgement, Signet of Air, Signet of Midnight, ect) inflicted a Blindness that had a meaningful impact on combat, they could be more worthwhile to bring along. At the same time, it would spare ANet from having to work on balancing Thieves who have a crazy ability to spam Blindness already with Initiative-based skills.

It seems Spirit Weapons were really a missed opportunity for something special. Right now what we have are mindless pets that do poor to mediocre damage, and get one mildly interesting skill on a silly-long cool-down. They have no legitimate impact on combat. I think they could be something more—something that’s better integrated into the identity and play-style of the Guardian.

More importantly, the Guardian’s mechanic as it stands now is 3 signets. If you removed the word “Virtue” and replaced it with “Signet,” there would literally be no way to tell the difference. That’s a pretty shallow design.

So my suggestion is mainly in the image below, but I’ll flesh out the rest of the details in text here: (somehow I accidentally posted two versions of my idea—the second one is the final draft)

• Spirit Weapons are now tied to Virtue skills and, while active, function as actual weapons that take up appropriate weapon skill slots.
• Current Virtues retain their respective recharge times.
• A Virtue will begin recharging normally whenever it is triggered (a Virtue will continue to recharge even though a player is wielding its respective Spirit Weapon).
• Upon activation, Spirit Weapon Skills will superimpose themselves over top of one’s normal Weapon Skills in the appropriate spots (i.e. while the Shield of the Avenger Spirit Weapon is active, it will super-impose itself over top of your 4-5 skills—even if you have a two-handed weapon—thus granting you new 4 and 5 skills for its duration).
• Spirit Weapons can be slotted into any one of the Virtue slots and are interchangeable outside of combat.
• Spirit Weapons operate on [Initiative] (placeholder term, but it would function the same way) that regenerates naturally at a rate of 1 pip every 2 seconds.
• If a Guardian completely exhausts his or her [Initiative], his/her currently active Spirit Weapon is dismissed and the [Initiative] bar is sent into a 15 second cool-down during which it will not regenerate [Initiative] points. This would prevent the Guardian from employing Spirit Weapons during that time. After the cool-down is over, the bar would resume regenerating normally. However, during this cool-down, the Virtues can still be triggered, recharge normally and maintain their passive effects when fully recharged.
• The term “Guardian’s Aegis” in the Virtue of Courage description refers to a new version of the boon Aegis unique to Guardians. After blocking the initial attack, Guardian’s Aegis lingers for 3 seconds and reduces incoming damage based on the source’s Healing Power (damage reduction improves on a curve that starts at 0%, but is capped at 25%).

I’m still trying to think of whether it would be a good idea or not to make the Virtues into chain skills that would allow a player to pop a Virtue for its effect without conjuring a Spirit Weapon and replacing 2 or more Weapon Skills if he or she didn’t want that. Yet at the same time, it would slow down a Guardian’s ability to cycle through Spirit Weapon effects, which is really what I was going for with this idea.

Making the effects intrinsically tied would completely change the way Virtues work—but since that’s sort of what I’m trying to do with this suggestion, I guess the topic is up in the air. Feedback is appreciated.

ANet doesn’t understand that there’s a discrepancy between the words “challenge” and “damage-sponge boss.” The reason Arah (and many other dungeon encounters) are horrible and people seek to find exploits for them is because they’re so horrifically fat with hp. It’s not fun. It’s not a challenge. It’s tediously boring. That’s it. It’s poorly designed and it drives me up the wall that ANet would spit in the face of GW1 by including such encounters (and with such frequency).

Rhinzual.7861:

You know there’s a class that already has minions (sorta) as a class mechanic: rangers. You guys get minions as a class mechanic and expect the devs to nerf your damage across the board to compensate, hoping you’ll always keep the drooling-moronic pets out in the field, attacking everything you come across and a Group Event’s Champion (or dungeon boss) AOE attack wiping them all out so fast and there goes a chunk of your damage.

Necromancer minions aren’t meant for straight damage, but rather utility (except for the Bone Minions, I suppose, but they also have Blast Finishers which are very useful). The point of this suggestion is not to give Necromancers a damage boost, but rather more utility and to raise their skill ceiling by expanding their unique profession mechanic.

The Ranger mechanic is awful. Truly awful. I’m not saying that because I dislike Rangers, it’s just that their pet mechanic is horrifically designed and executed. Rangers should be more like Elementalists in how they relate to their pet (full skill sets for when a pet is not in combat and full skill sets for when one is) in order to promote better combat synergy and management. Furthermore, there should also only be one pet. Rangers as they are now are little more than novice Pokemon trainers that burn through their rosters like oafs because things keep killing their pets with stray damage.

Bellocchi.4593:

I support this thread.
For the OP’s idea to work, however, Life Force generating abilities would have to be revised and adjusted so we don’t get LF starved all the time.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Bone Minions would be a staple for F2. That blast finisher is way too useful.

It could be given a longer cooldown to balance the usefulness.

I wasn’t thinking cooldowns with this idea since everything could be done by spending Life Force. I was thinking just across-the-board damage balances to an extent. Then again, I guess it would make sense for there to be Life Force cost and a cooldown. That’s a little more like GW1 skills and that was a pretty well-balanced system. The good news, though, is that this is an idea that would require only some number tweaking rather than a complete class overhaul.

Pixels.6532:

I like this idea, I would just tweak it a little bit. Instead of F2 – F4 summoning minions, they should be minion controls similar to the ranger.

F2 – attack my target
F3 – return to me/do not attack
F4 – die

I never understood why one had to re-target, then press a button to get one’s pet to attack his or her new target in GW2. That just seems ridiculous and a waste of a perfectly good F-key. Just have them re-target upon attacking something. I’m shocked that that hasn’t been a feature since day one.

Also, minions are meant to be disposable (hence the “Kill it to do something cool” chain skill effects). It probably wouldn’t be worth using an F-key on a command that would keep them alive by reducing their damage output (since they would be fleeing from a target) especially if you had enough Life Force in reserve to just summon out another one.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

They can give us a torch instead , which summons 2 flame minions.

Or you could get a torch off-hand with more interesting utilities than two minions, and have those two minions added to the option pool for your F2-F4 skills. IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES.

So what about making Necromancer minions into part of their class mechanic? Death Shroud is pretty cool (I’ll honestly argue that it’s one of the better-designed profession-specific mechanics in the game), but it flirts with narrow-minded tendencies. That is to say that, even though it gives you four new skills upon activation, it’s still just one button—one option. In that regard it’s rather one-dimensional and predictable; just slightly better than what the Warrior has: adrenaline (aka the most boring mechanic in the game).

Open up the F2-F4 buttons for the current Minion utility skills and make them cost Life Force to summon. This would not only give Necromancer minions a staple place in combat as slottable utilities, but it would also dramatically raise the skill cap by forcing Necromancer players to constantly manage their Life Force spending on their fleshy friends weighed against what they would want to keep for themselves in order to utilize Death Shroud’s invulnerability and extra skills. Furthermore, ANet could continue to add Minion skills in later expansions, thus only broadening the Necromancer mechanic at that point.

Obviously, Flesh Golem would remain an Elite Skill.

This list depresses me and I don’t even play Necromancer. All of my whys and hows. I commend you for the work you put into it, though.

“August 28th, 2012: It wasn’t ready.”

Honestly, this is what drives me furthest up the walls: I love GW2 because it does so many good things so well (movement control, active dodging, the overall look, ect), but then I hate, hate, hate it because it does so many basic things so poorly (poor skill responsiveness, bugged traits and skills, bugged EVERYTHING ELSE, no variety in PvP, ect). More importantly, it feels like half of the game spits in the face of all of the good things about GW1.

Sometimes I wish ANet would just take the game away from me. Just one day come out and say: “Nope, it’s got all these issues that collectively make this a bad game right now. So we’re taking it away and we’ll be back in two months with a good game.”

I mean, I could write a thesis on the things that make GW2 a bad game—THAT’S NOT GOOD. AND DON’T MAKE ME DO IT BECAUSE IT WON’T MEAN ANYTHING because ANet doesn’t listen to anything on here. I’m just sitting here. With this game. With all of its problems. Identifying the problems and discussing solutions with friends. And then we all collectively know that the ideas that we have are worthless. It’s HORRIFIC. HORRIFIC.

KillEveryoneElse.3940:

i prefer the idea where the builder (and only they) can salvage the siege for some supplies and a xx% chance at the blueprint back

I actually like that idea. Why not both? You could move the thing if you wanted, or just salvage it if you didn’t think it was worth the trouble or as a desperation move while retreating?

Syeria.4812:

None of these things (at least as of my posting, I see you have placeholders too) actually address the root causes of zerg behavior.

Oh wait—I know what I wanted to say now. They maybe don’t address zerging directly, but they speed up the game by giving players a lot more options for things. Supply camps are things that give useful boons now so there might be extended combat over certain areas that aren’t normally contested. It adds more dimension to the game. And while that dimension can be smashed by a zerg, what if there were a bunch of areas in the EB that had value? You can’t just zerg one point, gain it, and then have a great victory anymore. In focusing all of your efforts to smash an area with a zerg, you’re leaving open areas that can be taken by smaller groups of people like Supply Camps or groups moving catapults or equipped with ladders.

I think that the solution (or at least its beginning) lies in making buildings and NPC sentries unique in WvWvW. That way players are attracted to more than just Stonemist or keeps and towers. That attraction can tear up zergs because groups now want those bonuses as well as the bigger buildings.

Syeria.4812:

None of these things (at least as of my posting, I see you have placeholders too) actually address the root causes of zerg behavior. Essentially, the biggest cause of zerg behavior is that anything that can be used by 5 people can be used by 25 people to equal or (usually) greater effect. Yeah, 5 people can easily take an unupgraded tower, but if the tower’s upgraded (walls and doors) there’s not much they can do as they’re generally going to be busted by a larger group before they’re able to take that. But with 25 people, not only can they potentially fight off a group that attacks them, they can take a tower wall down 5 times faster (theoretically, basically a group of 25 sets up 5 times as many catapults as a group of 5 can).

You’re actually right. I guess what I’m trying to do is give people more options than just slapping gates for 20 minutes like oafs. Yeah, if I really wanted to break zerg mentality, I could maybe suggest something like a trebuchet be movable by a single person. A single person could take a trebuchet and move it to an effective location and start shelling a position by him or herself.

Your idea about damage scaling makes sense, but I don’t even know if that’s possible to somehow allow gates to know how many people are attacking them (unless maybe every area outside of a gate was secretly changed into a cap point that could monitor how many people were present; but then again, ANet doesn’t have cap points that scale with numbers it seems). I don’t know—I guess I just had ideas and I wanted to get them out.

Capture Points have subtypes now. By that, I mean WvWvW needs points that actually mean something besides “Hey, I’m getting points for this.” This mainly applies to things like Supply Camps and those Sentry NPCs that are always getting killed and changing colors every other minute. Possessing a camp with a subtype would grant a specific bonus to things your world already owns or things that you can make.

• Resource Camp (Stable): Your world’s Supply Dolyaks move 50% faster (does not stack with Swiftness).
• Resource Camp (Mill): Upgrades to keeps and towers that your world owns take 33% less time and cost 10% less.
• Resource Camp (Granary): Your world’s NPCs have 10% more health.

Stuff like that.

The sentries should grant more personal effects—things that you would gain either by being very close to them (boons in that case) or by talking with them (maybe they could give you a consumable to use; limit 1 per player). Having a sentry that could give you a WvWvW version of the Ash Legion spy kit or something would be pretty cool and worth fighting over. Obviously, given the number of sentries in WvWvW, there would have to be a huge well of possible effects. I think it would be best if there was just that pool of possible effects, and upon capturing a sentry post, the sentry that spawned there would simply generate/possess one of those effects, chosen at random.

Orbs of Power have returned to WvWvW and now have Spirits of the Orb that players can summon out to affect the tides of battle. There are now three respective Altars of Power per borderlands area, each with their own individual orb. Orbs of Power no longer grant stat boosts, but rather grant a team other, more specific advantages depending on which orb they control (these advantages only affect the borderlands in which they are invoked). A world team in a borderlands map can only hold 1 Orb of Power at their world’s altar at a single time. These orbs return to the NPC altar after 1 hour. After capturing an orb, a single player can pick it up and, either place it back onto the altar with no consequence, or drop it on the ground to summon the Spirit of the Orb which lasts for 3 minutes before disappearing. After dropping it onto the ground, the passive effect that it generated disappears and the orb vanishes. If a player is downed while holding an orb of power, the orb vanishes. Whenever an orb “vanishes,” it goes into cool-down. After 1 hour, it will re-manifest itself at its proper altar.

• Bonuses (these are all placeholder names because it’s a wacky idea anyway):
• Spirit of the Wind
  While a world is in possession of this orb, its spirit (a Champion Oakheart with sparkly, ethereal effects would be cool) roams the borderlands. All those in its range (an enormous range, at that—like 10,000 radius range) are granted 15 seconds of swiftness every 10 seconds. Those who are nearer to the spirit (within 600 range) gain other boons (Protection, Retaliation and Regeneration; 5 seconds of each every 15 seconds; the spirit itself does not gain any boons).

When this Spirit’s orb is brought from a World’s altar (not the Capture Altar full of NPCs, but the Altar to which a team would bring it after snagging it from the NPCs) and dropped at a location, it spawns the Spirit of the Wind (A Veteran Oakheart with pretty ethereal effects). This spirit manifests itself for 3 minutes before disappearing. It grants Swiftness and Haste (Haste: 5 seconds; Swiftness: 25 seconds; effect pulses every 25 seconds) to all allies within 600 range. It also cures Immobilization, Crippling and Chill (effect pulses every second). Furthermore, it constantly manifests a windstorm around itself, protecting itself and all nearby allies from projectiles (effect equivalent to the Elementalist skill [Swirling Winds] but with a 900 range radius of effect).

Eh, I’m getting tired and I want to move on to another idea. Another spirit would be another wandering Oakheart, but that Oakheart would function as a waypoint for the World that possessed it. This waypoint cannot be contested. Dropping the orb simply summons the Oakheart to that position, thus giving a World team a free, uncontested waypoint wherever they wanted for 3 minutes.

Another one… well, I’m out of ideas, but it’s still be cool to see some other monster that a team could conjure and have float around a borderlands causing havoc. Summoning it might conjure up with it a bunch of long-range siege engines along with it (maybe 3 arrow carts, 3 catapults and a trebuchet), giving a team the firepower to maybe take a keep.

New items! Ladders and Palisade Walls.
Palisade Walls are a wide strip of sturdy, wooden wall that could be purchased in the form of blueprints and then constructed on-site wherever a player saw fit. Nothing can pass through them normally, but they can be destroyed by normal attacks if they take enough damage. They have hit-points that somewhat exceed the average Veteran NPC and cannot be upgraded, but can be repaired. They cost 80 supply (that number is mostly a placeholder, but it should be pretty high) to build. As for their exact size (since the range system for GW2 is rather poorly defined), I guess they could be about 1200-1500 range units in length and 100 units thick or something like that.

• Palisade Walls are useful for creating choke points and terrain traps where none normally exist. They can help your allies instantly know where to focus their fire and hinder large enemy troop movements if your team has the proper means to defend the walls and the chokes that they create.

Ladders are war utility engines that can be bought in the form of blueprints and constructed just as any other siege engine. They cost 10 supply to build and require 2 people to move them around at a speed equal to 75% base player speed. When initially built, they lay down on the ground. Two players carry each end while the ladder is in transit. Each player gains the skills [Set down] and [Throw up]. The way ladders interact with walls will not allow either player to successfully use [Throw up] except when within range of a wall (not just any wall, but the specific part of a keep that is considered a “Wall”). [Throw up] requires 2 seconds to fully complete and can be interrupted either by skills or the downing of one of the players holding the ladder. If [Throw up] is interrupted, the ladder is destroyed.

A single Wall cannot have more than 5 ladders on it at any given time. The ladders themselves are quite fragile (around 7,000 hp seems fair) and can be destroyed by regular attacks. Once placed, the ladders will have a small piece of themselves jutting up over the top of a wall. This, and a comparable area at the foot of the ladder down below, can be targeted for attack by enemies. The walls of Stonemist Castle are immune to ladder placement.

Only 1 player can use a single ladder at a time. It would work here by giving a player the [Climb ladder] a channeled skill after interacting [pressing the "interact" key] with a ladder when it is bound with a wall. Fully channeling [Climb ladder] takes 2 seconds to complete (which would result in the player being on top of the wall) and grants the player Stability for 2.5 seconds upon use. If the ladder is destroyed while a player is in the middle of channeling [Climb ladder], he or she is downed at the foot of the ladder. ANet, you need to work on a ladder-climbing animation (Clipping be kitten ).

• Ladders can provide the option for sneak attacks on walls. While NPCs and players alike can work to destroy individual ladders, enough placed simultaneously and/or in waves can allow a small squad of fort raiders to rush in and secure an area quickly.

Zerg v Zerg.
Many of us hate it. I personally do. It makes me feel useless knowing that the only real way I can have an impact on a battle is by joining a bulbous mass of people in their efforts to imprint their weapons on a door for ten minutes.

The reason for Zerg v Zerg in WvWvW is that there are honestly no other options worth looking at most of the time. The only thing that’s really going to earn points is capturing keeps and supply points, and the best way—at the moment—to do that is to get some guy with a Commander icon, get a bunch of lemmings to follow that icon towards an area worth points and then run into walls and NPCs long enough until they change color.

To keep the fight going and keep it interesting, WvWvW needs to look at the things that change hands most and give them interesting boons to teams that own them. They also need to speed up assault mechanics in general. Here are some solutions:

All siege engines are now movable objects. After initial construction, siege engines can be transported from place to place at 50% base player speed after the proper investment in man-power and/or supply. All siege engines now have the additional skill [Move], which allows a single player to move a siege engine very slowly (except in the cases of the Catapult and Trebuchet, which require more) and calls for help from nearby players through the use of a Dolyak icon that appears over the siege engine in transit.

• The speed at which the minimum requirement of people can move a siege engine is 25% base player speed (except in the case of the Arrow Cart which is 66%). Beyond the minimum amount of people to move a single siege engine, more players can join in to speed up the group’s movement (up to a cap of players and speed). Furthermore, siege engines (again, except for Arrow Cart) cannot go up staircases. The maximum base speed at which a siege engine can travel is 66% and is only achieved when a siege engine has obtained the maximum amount of helpers that it allows in a move.

• While moving a siege engine, the player that initially started the movement by using [Move] gains the skills [Set down] and [Leave]. [Set down] stops the siege engine and its group’s movement, frees up the other players that were helping and, if it applies, beings the siege engine’s reconstruction process. The player with the skill [Set down] also directs the movement of the siege engine and all of those who are helping. [Leave] allows the player to leave the siege engine. If the engine is left with no one on it, while in transit, it simply remains where it is.

• The other players each gain the shout skill [“Double Time!”] and [Leave]. [“Double Time!”] grants all allies in a 300 range radius Swiftness for 3 seconds and has a 30 second recharge. [Leave], like the first player’s version, allows the player to stop helping with the move.

• The speed of a respective siege engine scales appropriately from 25% to 66% based on the amount of people moving it in relation to the maximum number of people allowed to push it.

1. Flame Ram: minimum 1 to move (max 3); no supply required to move (transports as is post-construction)
2. Arrow Cart: minimum 1 player to move (max 1); no supply required to move (to move an Arrow Cart, a single player picks it up in the box form as it was pre-construction; in order to set it back up, a player must set it back down and then reconstruct it for 8 seconds; a player can abort the reconstruction process or drop the package in transit in case of attack, but the Arrow Cart will be destroyed)
3. Ballista: minimum 1 player to move (max 5); 5 supply to pack up for transportation; 5 supply to reassemble (upon packing-up for transit, the Ballista turns into an open-top cart with ballista pieces inside/sticking out; during reassembly, the cart assumes the late-stage construction state that is the Ballista but surrounded by construction lattice)
4. Catapult: minimum 3 players to move (max 8]); 10 supply to pack up for transportation; 10 supply to reassemble (same principle for transportation as above except there are catapult pieces in the wagon)
5. Trebuchet: minimum 5 players to move (max 12); 15 supply to pack up for transporation; 15 supply to reassemble (same principle for transportation as Catapult and Ballista)

Oh, I’m sorry, I got off topic, haha.
I guess to address sPvP itself with regards to your problem as a Warrior (“My class mechanic sucks.”), the only solution would be for GW2 to add… well, yeah, more variety to a mission other than “Stand in this circle to win!”

ANet should do Fort Aspenwood again, except this time make both sides trying to take a castle instead of one team eternally on defense and the other on offense. Jade Quarry was a fun map too (capture shrines and keep your shrine NPC defenders alive lest you lose the shrine, but also make sure your shrine NPC carriers took their packages from the shrine back to your base to score a point). Even just straight up deathmatch too—I mean, Random Arenas? How is that not a thing? How is the only PvP option in GW2 an abomination of AB that shames all of the fun memories I had slashing and capping through Kanaai, Etnaran, Saltspray, Grenz and the Ancestral Homelands? More importantly, how in Dwayna’s name does stacking a point not influence its cap rate at all? That’s just basic, ANet.

I swear, these people are just trying to make me think that they’ve always secretly hated all of the good things about Guild Wars 1.

Defektive.7283:

Hi, my name is Defektivex.

I primarily play a Warrior.

Well, right there’s your problem. You’re playing the class with the worst unique mechanic in the game. I was going to make a write-up on this. Warrior has a horrifically boring and one-dimensional mechanic. No wonder you feel like you’re going crazy. I couldn’t do it. Elementalist is really the only class in this game with a truly interesting mechanic. Necromancer is alright. Everything else is “Yeah, alright, I get 4 more skills, I guess,” or something just plain awful like Ranger or Warrior (Engie is pretty bad too since most of their class abilities are all RNG gimmicks). Guardian Virtues are pretty brainless too. I wish GW2 gave individual professions flexibility and uniqueness with class mechanics and not just “HER’S UR ODDER UTILITEE—GO MORE DAMAGE NOW.”

Bump because good post.
Fixing most dungeons would simply require an across-the-board hit-point reduction on all enemies (AC is pretty alright as it is, though, except for some of the bosses). Then bosses would just need more anti-personnel attacks and gap-closers to make them really threatening. I would be fine with the token system as it is (it’s honestly not that bad) just as long as playing a dungeon (HotW, SE, Arah) wasn’t like trying to chop a tree down with a metal bat.

WvWvW just needs more options for defense and attack. Destructible palisades could be a new item added to the game. Players could purchase walls to build anywhere they wanted in order to impede enemy troop movements and that could be destroyed by regular attacks. Ladders would be pretty cool. You could buy a bunch of ladders and throw them up onto walls around gates. They could be destroyed by regular attacks and only 1 person to go up at a time. Also, Orbs of Power should grant more active effects. Something like summoning spirits of the orb (drop the orb at target area to summon the spirit) to create mobile waypoints that can’t be contested, or serving as an indestructible siege engine for a short period of time upon activation (maybe its given like 5-10 trebuchet shots before powering down for a long cool-down or it could even just return to its original pedestal). I would fight for those.
Most importantly, siege engines should be movable objects (the engine would transform into an open-top wagon with its unique pieces sitting inside). They would require some supply and a minimum number of people to pack up and move. While they are in motion (quite a slow transit; maybe like 50% player speed), they can’t be used and it takes a set-up time once everyone decides to place the machine back down and use it again (which would also cost some supply). The minimum requirement of people to move and the set-up times would be different depending on the siege engine in question.

That’s probably because GW1 didn’t have damage sponge enemies for the most part. It was kill or be killed and you had to be ready for it. For it’s simplicity and lack of dynamic movement features that are present in GW2, GW1 was a much faster game in general.

mnwolfboy.9348:

I don’t know, its not like it costs that much just to respect. at lvl 80 its only like a few silver. I think its like 3silvers and 50 copper. It might as well be free to respect.

It’s not the price that’s the problem (because it isn’t), it’s the fact that we have to find one of these NPCs if we ever want to respec. It’s inconvenient and it makes no sense considering this game was based off of Guild Wars 1.

Rain King.5914:

They will probably introduce trait management eventually. I doubt it will allow you to totally respec your points -that’s just too good to be true.

I also think the trainer was a wasted opportunity. They should keep the expense of the book but it should be part of a “class” where you fight your trainer to earn the right to use the book.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. That would be pretty cool, though—have to fight a master profession user in order to get your book.

Rain King.5914:

I’m not sure I like your suggestion as it would slow down the pace of double dagger combat in my opinion.

I dunno—maybe. I just think that it would be nicer to direct the leaps without needing a selected target. Maybe set range to 700 or something to keep it from being too imbalanced. There could be damage and immobilization on impact which opens up the possibility of jumping into mobs or groups of players and inflicting mass 2 second immobilize.
But, again, if they just fixed the skill itself this wouldn’t really be a problem.

I don’t know if this is a bug or not, but for me this skill is either bugged or has horrific responsiveness half of the time. Too often, I’ll use this skill to close a gap or simply immobilize someone and I’ll end up shooting off, flying towards my target, only to suddenly start bouncing back and forth between two areas like a Pong ball on stimulants. In other cases, I will use the skill at very short range in order to simply keep my target in place. The only problem with that is that I’ll most likely hit my target, immobilize it, and then freeze in place locked in the “I’m flying towards you now” animation for about 2 seconds before being able to do anything again (including use skills). I have a feeling that it might be uneven ground (even just like a single tiny ridge that one could otherwise probably just walk over) that really ruins this skill’s ability to close gaps effectively.

Like I said, maybe this isn’t a bug, but if it is then it’d be nice to see a fix.

If it isn’t, why not just make the skill a full-on targeted leap that applies some damage and its immobilization effect to the small area at which you land? I think that would solve the problem pretty succinctly. It would also make the leap finisher for this move a lot more reliable.

I never quite understood the reason why I had to pay some no-name NPC in order to expand my character’s available traits. I wonder the same whenever I feel the need to re-order my invested trait points in PvE. Is GW2 really suffering this much for another mediocre gold sink? That’s all the Profession Trainers are at this point. It seems silly to try and justify them as a valid gameplay mechanic since not only do they not really have a solid effect on an individual player (What is 4 silver if I run just a single dungeon path?), but they do nothing but slow down play by forcing players to seek them out whenever they feel a need to adapt to an active change in long-winded combat or exploration (either in PvE zones or perhaps over the course of an extended WvWvW encounter). More importantly, considering Guild Wars 1 was the basis for this game, it feels like a huge slap in the face when I’m forced to pay gold to spend my own earned trait points and then, once more, to re-order them.

However, I also understand the balance that ANet is trying to establish with this mechanic. Obviously, you couldn’t just switch attributes and skills in GW1 outside of an outpost because everything was instanced—and to that effect, the system was balanced. It’s sort of the same thing in GW2 at the moment, but since there’s so much more going on in the world of Tyria now, I’d like to propose a middle ground:

1. Remove the “Pay to unlock traits.” You can’t justify that. It’s only 3.1g total (which isn’t a lot), but it’s the principle that matters. This is Guild Wars. I shouldn’t be paying to use my profession’s innate abilities. Those are a given as part of my development.

2. Introduce the “Hero’s Handbook” as a means of adding versatility to the current trait system. The Hero’s Handbook would be a level 80 item that could save up to 2 full trait builds between which a player could swap while out of combat. This allows a sort of “second weapon set” for traits and lets a player gear themselves around two possible play-styles that could serve a group in two very unique ways. I suppose a player could also just bring along two entirely unique sets of armor to really push build diversity as well. In order to initiate the build switch, the player would have to activate the Handbook and then “Meditate and Memorize” (for 5 seconds or so) their alternate trait set-up. This action would require a player to perform the “channel” animation similar to what someone would to do gain a “commune” skill-point. This “Meditate and Memorize” action could be interrupted, and in that case, would need to be restarted. A player’s trait swap would not be in effect until a player had fully completed the “Meditate and Memorize” animation.

3. Maintain the Profession Trainers where they are, but turn them into scribes that can either reset your traits entirely as they do now (for a small fee) or can allow a player to delete a previously saved trait build in their Handbook (again, for a small fee). This would allow players to edit their Handbook should they ever see fit after the initial build saves.

The Hero’s Handbook would represent the culmination of a player’s work getting to level 80 and unlocking all of his or her trait points. With that experience should come versatility, and I think that something like the Hero’s Handbook mechanic would really represent that without being outright unbalanced.

I never quite understood the reason why I had to pay some no-name NPC in order to expand my character’s available traits. I wonder the same whenever I feel the need to re-order my invested trait points in PvE. Is GW2 really suffering this much for another mediocre gold sink? That’s all the Profession Trainers are at this point. It seems silly to try and justify them as a valid gameplay mechanic since not only do they not really have a solid effect on an individual player (What is 4 silver if I run just a single dungeon path?), but they do nothing but slow down play by forcing players to seek them out whenever they feel a need to adapt to an active change in long-winded combat or exploration (either in PvE zones or perhaps over the course of an extended WvWvW encounter). More importantly, considering Guild Wars 1 was the basis for this game, it feels like a huge slap in the face when I’m forced to pay gold to spend my own earned trait points and then, once more, to re-order them.

However, I also understand the balance that ANet is trying to establish with this mechanic. Obviously, you couldn’t just switch attributes and skills in GW1 outside of an outpost because everything was instanced—and to that effect, the system was balanced. It’s sort of the same thing in GW2 at the moment, but since there’s so much more going on in the world of Tyria now, I’d like to propose a middle ground:

1. Remove the “Pay to unlock traits.” You can’t justify that. It’s only 3.1g total (which isn’t a lot), but it’s the principle that matters. This is Guild Wars. I shouldn’t be paying to use my profession’s innate abilities. Those are a given as part of my development.
2. Introduce the “Hero’s Handbook” as a means of adding versatility to the current trait system. The Hero’s Handbook would be a level 80 item that could save up to 2 full trait builds between which a player could swap while out of combat. This allows a sort of “second weapon set” for traits and lets a player gear themselves around two possible play-styles that could serve a group in two very unique ways. I suppose a player could also just bring along two entirely unique sets of armor to really push build diversity as well. In order to initiate the build switch, the player would have to activate the Handbook and then “Meditate and Memorize” (for 5 seconds or so) their alternate trait set-up. This action would require a player to perform the “channel” animation similar to what someone would to do gain a “commune” skill-point. This “Meditate and Memorize” action could be interrupted, and in that case, would need to be restarted. A player’s trait swap would not be in effect until a player had fully completed the “Meditate and Memorize” animation.
3. Maintain the Profession Trainers where they are, but turn them into scribes that can either reset your traits entirely as they do now (for a small fee) or can allow a player to delete a previously saved trait build in their Handbook (again, for a small fee). This would allow players to edit their Handbook should they ever see fit after the initial build saves.

The Hero’s Handbook would represent the culmination of a player’s work getting to level 80 and unlocking all of his or her trait points. With that experience should come versatility, and I think that something like the Hero’s Handbook mechanic would really represent that without being outright unbalanced.

Oglaf.1074:

Speaking of it, anyone found a reliable way to kill Aldus Stormbringer since they “fixed” his adds?

He’s such an easy boss with such brain-dead minions that I normally just melee him and dodge his Frozen Ground attack. Then again I like to run a D/Focus Auramancer with a bunch of projectile mitigation and protection so I normally do pretty well just tanking him. He’s sort of like the final boss for p1: he’s not difficult per se, just keep wailing on him until he’s dead and dodge his attacks. His normal ranged attack may not have a big wind-up animation, but he attacks at relatively predictable intervals. Also if you’re meleeing him you can use the little railing pillars at the bottom of the stairs for cover if you need to avoid his ice shard auto-attack.

Honestly, for the minions that he summons—I think it would be more fun in general if he just summoned another huge pack of enemies like the first mob you deal with upon walking into the room instead of like 3 or 4 stupidly fat enemies with 80,000 hp and 2 attacks. Just have another mob of comparable size to the first one (in number and hit-points per respective unit) file in in packets from all corners of the room to form a big group of aggroed baddies right in front of Aldus. There could maybe be one veteran in the mix.

Also make Aldus teleport and a two individual-target melee skills or something. His whole “I’ma stand on these stairs and play with ice circles” is a terrible boss mechanic.

Oh, and another thing. Caudecus’ Manor suffers from this same problem across the board. Funny thing is, the only difference is that most individual enemies already have a pretty acceptable number of unique attacks. If CM just saw a simple decrease in HP across the board, the dungeon would become a lot more bearable and engaging. When you play the dungeon and find rooms full of thieves with spammable 12-stack bleeds and poison, KD attacks with little to no cool-down from melee and long range and rangers that stack like a minute of distortion, it feels needless to then say “Oh, yeah, and they all have 50,000 hp. Enjoy your dungeon.”

It’s like ANet is trying to see how much of the dungeon people can skip because it’s just not worth suffering through it.

ArenaNet, what happened?
Remember Guild Wars? The game where you could make your character, dress him or her up, gear according to a build or two and hop back and forth between PvE and PvP whenever you wanted without any stat changes? What happened to that?

What I want to address is why—WHY, did you think it was necessary to make PvE gear more complicated than PvP gear? When did a player suddenly need more armor accessories and intrinsically tied stat buffs? Is PvE really that poorly balanced?

Customization in Guild Wars comes in skills and attributes (in GW2, it’s weapons and traits now, but it’s sort of the same thing). In PvP, armor plays a bit of a role, but it’s more of a support role (as it was in GW1: a few runes here and there could change the build up a little by giving it some elbow room with some energy, damage out-put, total health or some slight damage resistance). GW2 PvP armor renders itself sort of as an extra trait. It certainly can enhance a build, but armor alone, a build does not make.

This carries over into PvE. You can add all the extra stats you want to somebody’s armor, but do they really define that character like traits, weapon choice or utility skills do? A better question: Is a character wearing only a weapon set and a bunch of over-powered armor more defined than one with PvP armor, but a full set of traits, runes and skills? No. And they never will given how GW2 functions regarding combat builds. What this comes down to is that a true Guild Wars philosophy would state that one’s build in PvP should function exactly as it would in PvE and vice versa.

My only concern is that I fear it’s too late for this problem. GW2 has already acclimated to the dissonance between a PvP build and a PvE version of that same build. The only real difference is the numbers that appear on your body and the bodies of your targets, but that difference is big enough—and with the onset of the FotM ascended armor, it feels more cemented into the game than ever.

All I ask is that you don’t muck this up further. Please no more ascended armor. It’s gone far enough. In truth, if this were a real successor to Guild Wars 1, there wouldn’t be anything in PvE that I couldn’t bring into PvP with me. Find the simple balance you had in Guild Wars 1 and keep with it.

I swung a sword. I swung a sword again—hey, I swung it again!
And that’s all I did in that sinking iceberg town.

Honor of the Waves as a dungeon is quite the slap in the face when I consider that line from the “GW2 Manifesto” first delivered about 2 years ago. Running the dungeon is the experience of chopping down a tree with a dull axe. I see the ending, I can do it, but man is it boring, tedious and why doesn’t somebody just give me a sharper axe?

The problem with the Honor of the Waves dungeon is honestly rather simple: everything just has too much health. That’s it. It sort of reminded me of any poorly designed difficulty system on a video game that only increases enemy hit-points based on how far you go up the difficulty scale. There should exist somewhere a formula: Fun is relative to the ratio between a respective enemy’s total unique, active, anti-personnel abilities (skills in GW2) and that same enemy’s total hit-points. If the enemy you’re fighting has 2 or 3 unique attacks, it shouldn’t have 80,000 hp because (in the system of GW2) it would be horrifically boring to wail on it for 20 minutes while its predictable attack patterns never hit you or really impact the flow of battle at all. Unforunately, that’s the case with the entirety of the dungeon leading up to the boss fights.

For an example of a good fight, let’s take a look at Lieutenant Kholer. Now this guy’s a pretty good boss. Sure, he has a pretty hefty hp pool, but he has several unique attacks to give enough variance to his attack patters and the flow of combat overall. Most importantly, his attacks (except for his AoE tow-line and whirl) are anti-personnel. He attacks you personally. That’s terrifying in the best way possible. However, the only caveat is that once you’ve seen his big attack—there’s no real surprise anymore (especially given that is has a GIGANTIC cue animation). What this means is that dodging it after the seventh time (since the interval between each big whirl attack is so long) is a little more of a snooze-fest than an engaging battle. However, the danger of outright boredom is kept in check because of how much he moves around and attacks individual players directly.

Now taking a look at the boss of the first path in Honor of the Waves, we see that he has an enormous hp pool and constant Protection, Retaliation and Regeneration (don’t argue that you can take down the totems because, while you can, the rate at which they regenerate is rather fast; since it takes so long to kill him even without the totems it effectively gives him the boons for the entire duration of the battle). Those boons are just barely skin-of-your-teeth better than giving him a straight health buff in addition to his already vast hit-point pool. More importantly, none of his attacks are truly personal. Whirling Defense just makes him stand there reflecting projectiles. All of his direct attacks are AoEs, and while he does have a pull attack (with a pathetic range), he has no gap-closers which makes the entire fight a boring ranged battle that turns into an eight-minute Maypole Dance around the Butcher with guns, bows and magic.

I could break down the rest of the dungeon’s bosses—and even the mid-bosses as there are a lot of them—but I won’t since that would be tedious and superfluous as they all suffer from the same issue. The fact of the matter is nobody wants to prove that they’ve outwitted a boss’ onslaught more than five or six times—much less twenty times. Bosses need a lot of hp to deliver a long fight to a player, but they also need several skills to prevent that encounter from becoming five minutes of pressing the same four buttons repeatedly. My advice for the dungeon would be to lower the hp of most, if not all, enemies by about 30-40% and then give the mid-bosses and bosses 1 or 2 individual-target-based attacks and maybe a gap-closer. Make the bosses MOVE. Suddenly, the dungeon becomes a lot more engaging and has a lot less “Now we get to stop here and beat this stationary ice monster with a stick for 10 minutes” areas.

Solution Part 3: Addressing the main-hand Rifle

The Rifle’s current skill set doesn’t make a lot of sense given its effects:
1 – A 1000-Range attack with no effects beyond piercing
2 – A 1000-Range immobilize; 10s recharge
3 – A tight AoE poke with a very short range (400) that needs to honestly be inside melee range (100) for full effect; 10s recharge
4 – A CC burst attack with a very short range (400) that puts CC on the user; 15s recharge
5 – A 700-Range gap-closer; 20s recharge

The best the Rifle has to offer typically comes when the Engineer has his or her target snared and within Melee Range. If that’s the case, then make it so the auto attack rewards that!

New Rifle main-hand skill set:
1 – Blunderbuss (base damage at 100 range: 350; at 400 range: 225; at 900 range: 130—or something similar to those—4 stack of bleeding at 100-0 range; 1 stack at 400-100 range; 0 stacks at 900-400 range)
2 – Hip Shot (still pierces and now inflicts 3 stacks of Vulnerability for 4 seconds; 8 second recharge)
3 – Net Shot
4 – Overcharged Shot (if possible, remove the self-CC and just make the player slide/jump backwards about 600 range; recharge could be upped to 20)
5 – Jump Shot

All of the original skill functionalities would remain the same except for the specifics in parentheses. The recharges could be kept somewhat lengthy in order to promote Engineers switching into their new F-skill Tool-kits or using their F-skill Turrets as Conjured Weapons.

There! And that would be a strong start on the road to making the Engineer a stronger, more defined class that could find a niche in fast-paced, mobile and hard-hitting GW2 combat.

Solution Part 2: Addressing Elixirs and 2 of the Engineer’s least used Elites: Elixir X and Mortar

Elixirs have a good personal effect but rely too much on RNG to really have good support effects when thrown at other players. Elixir utility skills instead should simply be targeted projectiles that execute their effects at the targeted location. The RNG, tool-belt versions of the skills would be removed.

Elixir X is now a thrown projectile.
Solution: One throws it at a target area and that target in that area has his or her Elite Skill overridden by one of the Elite Skill RNG options provided by Elixir X (Yes, there could be multiple targets that receive a new elite). Each target affected by Elixir X would be subject to an individual RNG elite drop, meaning that four people under the influence of a single Elixir X would probably not beget four Tornadoes but rather, more likely, four different forms.

While under the influence of Elixir X, a player’s Elite Skill is replaced with the transformation that he or she was assigned after the Elixir X struck the ground. The player has 15 seconds to activate that before it goes back to being the original Elite Skill. Upon activation, the transformation lasts 5 seconds, or less if the player wishes to [End Transformation] (works identically as does [Stow Elixir Gun]) at will in case there is an Engineer running about throwing Elixir X’s on people that don’t want their elite changed for 15 seconds.

A player whose Elite Skill was replaced by Elixir X’s overriding effect would still maintain its internal cool-down. That is to say that if a player’s Elite Skill was not recharging, and that player used the Elite given to him or her by Elixir X, then that player’s Elite Skill would return after the transaction as it was before: not on cooldown. By the same token, if a player’s Elite Skill was on cooldown and the same thing happened, that player’s elite skill would proceed on cooldown as usual throughout the duration of the effects of Elixir X.

Mortar simply needs a longer range to be viable.
Solution: Mortar’s range is increased to 2000 with the Range-increase Trait granting an additional 20% range (2400 total). 1400 Range is barely 3 steps outside of 1200 range, which makes the prospect of long-range support mostly out of the question for our Mortar-inclined Engineer. Since the player is tied to a single location combined with the fact that 2000 range means that people will probably see the projectiles roaring in after the first one hits makes this an acceptable buff. The Mortar would be good for a few initial hits before either the battle ended or everyone caught on to what the Engineer was doing and began playing more reactively. However, it first needs range in order to deliver that initial surprise.

So here we go—Solution Time!
Merge most of the current Tool-belt skills with their respective Utility skills, then rework Turrets and Tool-kits into the new Engineer class mechanic. Elixir X and Mortar need a rework. The Rifle main-hand weapon also needs a simple adjustment to make more sense.

Solution Part 1: Addressing the Engineer’s F-skills, Turrets and Tool-kits
F1-F4 are now reserved exclusively for Turrets and whole Tool-kits.
F1 is a “Buffed Slot” that grants bonuses to the item slotted in there.
If a turret produced from the F1 slot is picked up as a bundle by someone, it grants its carrier specific bonuses to stats based on the turret. Likewise, a Tool-kit wielded by an Engineer that came from the F1 slot would grant bonuses to the Engineer while that Tool-kit was active.

Turrets, in addition to functioning as they do now (they have an auto-attack and an overcharge that the Engineer can activate), also function as do Conjured Weapons. A player (whether he or she be an Engineer or not) can pick them up, gain 4 more skills related to the turret, and a 5th skill that allows the player to set the turret back down. For instance, the Flame Turret could be something similar to a flamethrower (maybe with an actual reflection air-blast this time) or the Rifle Turret could be a rifle with a Gatling Gun rapid-fire skill). This obviously gives more versatility to an Engineer and his allies, but more importantly it provides the Engineer a way to transport his or her turrets (at least one if working alone) from place to place.

Engineers use tool-kits and turrets enough that it doesn’t necessarily make sense for them to constantly consume 1 or 2 slots on their utility bar when they could use those for gadgets or elixirs. They’re a flavorful part of that profession and deserve to be implemented freely—especially given that the nerfs in recent months have rendered them rather light on impact.

The Engineer has suffered from several nerfs and a wonky class mechanic throughout its existence in the effort to make it “balanced.” Unfortunately, the result of these actions and design have rendered the profession effectively a “non-class,” meaning that it can’t do anything well—only mediocre at best; it has no strong place in the game like a Warrior or Mesmer does because its unique skills have so little impact on most battlefields comparatively to those of other, better-defined classes. They are the Spoony Bard of GW2. However, this can be fixed.

The problem with the Engineer F-skills manifests mainly in the intrinsic relationship between a utility skill and its respective tool-belt counterpart. In this regard, the Gadget and Turret utilities often have underwhelming Tool-belt versions. Also, the Rifle skill-set is a little janky (makes little sense given the effects and current set-up), but that’s another story that I will cover later.

Back to the Gadgets and Turrets—this is because what is effectively happening is that ANet is sort of attempting to double the amount of skills that an Engineer gets with the Tool-belt abilities. The only problem is that both of the skills now have to be balanced in order to be fair. Unfortunately, this justified balancing typically leaves only one skill out of the pair actually worth using or sometimes rendering an entire utility/tool-belt combo not worth bringing along at all due to long recharges or whimpy effects. It’s better to have just one skill with one or two good effects than two skills with effects that simply aren’t worth the trouble of losing a Utility slot.

Furthermore, the Engineer suffers from another tool-belt-based issue: RNG. Building a class mechanic around RNG does not make that class flavorful; it makes it unwieldy. This is the Engineer’s Elixir problem. GW2 is full of active and reactive skills alike that people can activate for concrete effects (I’m going to press this button because I KNOW for fact that “X” will happen). Messing with that—as much as it is in the interest of “flavor”—is not a wise policy. Players need to know what to expect from their own abilities in the game.

OK, so final revision time:

Blindness and Aegis have two types of durations: a passive duration and an activated duration.
The passive duration occurs when a target first gains Aegis or Blindness as well as the icon that says, “Oh, hey, look that’s on you,” but the two statuses don’t actually have an impact on play.
The active duration (otherwise interpreted as the actual description of either status; i.e. what I’m about to write below this paragraph) occurs when someone with Blindness attacks or Aegis is hit respectively, which then cancels the passive duration and activates the secondary “upon trigger” effects of Blindness or Aegis which last for a very brief period of time before fading completely.

Blindness: Next outgoing attack misses; upon trigger, outgoing attacks for the next 0.5 seconds are glancing blows (50% damage); for 2 seconds, it is more difficult to achieve Critical Hits; does not stack duration
– “Upon trigger” refers to when the target with Blindness misses that initial attack. After that miss, the activated effects after “upon trigger” then kick in.
– The total duration is 2 seconds. It’s not a case of 0.5 seconds of glancing blows and then 2 seconds of “You can hit now, just with reduced critical chance.”
– By “it is more difficult to achieve Critical Hits,” I mean that according to the Condition Damage of the source that inflicted Blindness, his or her target’s total Precision would be reduced (the reduction would be capped at 800). This means that while the target could still achieve a Critical Hit by chance, it would still—most likely—reduce burst damage output drastically overall.

Aegis: Block the next incoming attack; upon trigger gain damage reduction for 2 seconds; does not stack duration
– “Upon trigger” refers to when Aegis is “consumed” in order to block an attack.
– The damage reduction would be based on the source’s Healing Power and would be capped at 15%.

These changes would have to be looked over to see how overpowered they might end up being (such as in the case with Thieves who can spam skills that repeatedly inflict Blindness) with regards to not just skills but also passive effects like traits and gear upgrades.

Alright, so here’s a new idea. Instead of making everything about Blindness and Aegis have fixed durations and effects, how about we maintain their durations as they are in-game and then tie a secondary, activated duration to the passive effects that begin after Blindness and Aegis are activated respectively (activation being something that happens on hit)? Then the durations or effectiveness of those secondary, passive effects would be tied to actual Attributes like normal conditions and boons?

For example:
Dust Devil: Blind your foe with a blast of sand – Damage: 134; Blindness: 10 seconds; Range: 900
The target is inflicted with Blindness for 10 seconds, waits 5 seconds before attacking, triggers the initial miss, and then suffers an additional x seconds of Blindness’ secondary, passive effect. Whether that combination of waiting 5 seconds before triggering Blindness’ secondary effect totals 10 seconds or not is irrelevant because once you trigger the initial effect, the variable timer starts on Blindness’ active duration which is based on one’s Condition Damage.

The only thing is that the fixed numericals in the equation that determines Blindness’ and Aegis’ respective secondary effect durations would have to be REALLY small in order to off-set the variables (Condition Damage for Blindness and maybe Healing Power for Aegis) which would be probably in the middle 1000s if not higher. There could even just be a flat cap on durations (maybe 3.5 seconds for Blindness and 2.5 for Aegis or something) so that people could eventually max out the duration of, in case we’ll say Blindness, and we wouldn’t have to worry about builds with huge Condition Damage inflicting 5 seconds of secondary Blindness over and over again on people off of stray combos or something.

Maybe that’s just too convoluted, though.