(edited by Swagg.9236)
Shield skills
[Shield Stance] (5-1)
- Cast-time lowered from 3 seconds to 1½ seconds.
- Block duration lowered from 3 to 2 seconds.
- Now chains into another skill upon activation: [Shield Slam].
[Shield Slam] (5-2)
- Cast-time: ¼ second
- Slam the ground with your shield and throw up a dust cloud that blinds adjacent foes.
- Damage: 134 (0.5)
- Blind: 5 seconds
- Radius: 180
- Combo Finisher: Blast
- Using this skill preemptively ends the [Shield Stance] block channel.
Sword main-hand skills
[Sever Artery] (1-1) – NAME CHANGED TO – [Slash] (1-1).
- No longer inflicts bleeding.
[Gash] (1-2)
- No longer inflicts bleeding.
[Hamstring] (1-3)
- Cast-time increased from ¼ second to ½ second.
- Now also inflicts 3 stacks of bleeding for 6 seconds.
Sword off-hand skills
[Impale] (4)
- Cast-time increased from ½ second to ¾ second.
[Riposte] (5-1)
- Cast-time block channel reduced from 2¼ seconds to 1½ seconds.
- Recharge reduced from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.
- Retaliatory attack bleeding stacks changed from 4 for 12 seconds to 3 for 10 seconds.
[Adrenaline Rush] (Sword off-hand) (5-2) – NAME CHANGED TO – [Quivering Blade] (5-2)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: ½ second
- Deliver a keen slash that unleashes piercing blade of wind. This wind blade dazes bleeding foes. Using this attack doubles Riposte’s recharge.
- Damage: 179 (0.55)
- Daze vs bleeding foes: 1 second
- Range: 300
- Piercing projectile.
- This skill uses the Guardian [Zealot’s Defense] attack animation up through the first attack frame
- For the wind blade, this skill uses a single, white colored Guardian [Zealot’s Defense] projectile.
- Movement interrupts this skill’s activation.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Mace main-hand skills
[Skull Crack]
- Level 2 stun reduced from 2 seconds to 1½ second.
- Level 3 stun reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds.
[Counterblow] (2-1)
- Retaliatory attack damage reduced from 336 (2.0) to 302 (0.9).
- The retaliatory attack now also inflicts 10 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds.
[Adrenaline Rush] (Mace main-hand) (2-2) – NAME CHANGED TO – [Heavy Blow] (2-2)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: 1 second
- Smash the ground beneath you with your mace, damaging adjacent foes and launching weakened foes. Using this attack doubles Counterblow’s recharge.
- Damage: 244 (1.0)
- Damage radius: 180
- Launch vs weakened foes: 300
- This skill hits up to 5 foes.
- The player can move while activating this skill.
Mace off-hand skills
[Crushing Blow] (4)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: ¾ second
- Recharge: 20 seconds
- Leap and smash the target area, damaging and leaving foes vulnerable. You inflict extra damage, bleeding and more vulnerability to foes that are already disabled.
- Damage: 336 (1.0)
- Damage radius: 180
- Vulnerability (3): 10 seconds
- Damage vs disabled foes: 402 (1.2)
- Bleeding vs disabled foes (6): 10 seconds
- Vulnerability vs disabled foes (10): 10 seconds
- Range: 600
- This skill uses the Warrior [Earthshaker] attack animation.
- This skill hits up to 5 foes.
[Tremor] (5)
- Cast-time increased from ½ second to ¾ second.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Axe off-hand skills
[Dual Strike] (4) – NAME CHANGED TO – [Axe Twist] (4)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: 1 second
- Recharge: 20 seconds
- Deliver a gruesome strike with your axe. This attack bleeds vulnerable foes and knocks down crippled foes.
- Damage: 314 (0.85)
- Bleeding vs vulnerable foes (5): 10 seconds
- Knock-down vs crippled foes: 2 seconds
- Range: 130
[Whirling Axe] (5)
- This skill now also reflects projectiles for 2 seconds.
- Cast-time reduced from 3¼ seconds to 2¼ seconds.
- Total number of strikes reduced from 15 to 10.
- Total damage adjusted to (10x) 1250 (2.85).
- Skill normalized between PvE and PvP.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Hammer skills
[Earthshaker]
- Damage radius reduced from 240 to 180.
[Fierce Blow] (2)
- Weakness duration reduced from 8 seconds to 5 seconds.
[Hammer Shock] (3)
- Crippled duration reduced from 7 seconds to 5 seconds.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Greatsword skills
[Arcing Slice]
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: ¾ second
- Recharge: 10 seconds
Leap and crash your greatsword against the ground with enough force to damage adjacent foes. Effect increases with adrenaline level. - Damage: 480 (1.3)
- Damage radius: 180
- Level 1 adrenaline: 20% more damage vs vulnerable foes.
- Level 2 adrenaline: Level 1 effect; Rip up to 2 boons from bleeding foes.
- Level 3 adrenaline: Level 1 effect; Level 2 effect; Immobilize (1 second) crippled foes.
- Range: 300
- This skill uses the Warrior [Earthshaker] attack animation.
- For each level of adrenaline, this attack gains a unique effect as well as the unique effects of any prior adrenaline levels that the player already has gained. To this effect, at level 3, [Arcing Slice] inflicts all of the effects described in the tool-tips.
[Whirlwind Attack]
- Now inflicts vulnerability (1) for 5 seconds when striking bleeding foes.
[Rush] (5)
- Damage reduced from 628 (1.7) to 554 (1.5).
- Now also inflicts bleeding (1) for 8 seconds.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Longbow skills
[Combustive Shot]
- Level 1 radius reduced from 240 to 120.
- Level 2 radius reduced from 240 to 180.
- Level 3 radius reduced from 360 to 240.
- Damage and burning AoEs now scale properly with the radius at each respective adrenaline level.
[Arcing Arrow] (3)
- Added a minimum range: 50
[Smoldering Arrow] (4)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time: ¾ second
- Recharge: 25 seconds
- Fire an arrow that blinds your foe. If you strike a foe that is already burning, your arrow explodes and knocks back your foe.
- Damage: 101 (0.3)
- Blind: 5 seconds
- Knock-back vs burning foes: 400
- Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
- Range: 1000
- This skill’s projectile is a standard arrow projectile placed within an orange colored Elementalist [Water Blast] projectile model.
[Pin Down] (5)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Cast-time increased from ¼ second to ¾ seconds.
- Immobilize duration reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds.
- Bleed stacks changed from 6 for 12 seconds to 5 stacks for 10 seconds.
- Added a unique casting animation.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Reserved for future posts.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
WARRIOR: THE CASUAL
Why should any class in an MMO be singled out as the “easiest class to play?” Why does any MMO need an entire class devoted to be the baby wheels of the game? Labeling an MMO class as the easiest class to play from conception is a poor idea because it can cripple that class’ skill ceiling without any real explanation for it; either giving the class unfair advantages over other classes so as to keep everything simple or limiting its capabilities for the sake of simplicity, thus rendering it less effective than other classes.
The latter was mostly true for the beginning of GW2. In the early months of GW2, most “effective” Warrior builds in PvP were hard-hitting, well-cued, one-dimensional spikers with one or maybe two main combos to execute before running out of gas and dying. Killing someone as a Warrior wasn’t necessarily a matter of skill (because their rotations were simple and could be executed in almost any order) as it was a matter of timing and/or catching a player off-guard with a [Bull’s Rush]. To this effect, the Warrior was in a poor spot when looked at through competitive lens within the context of PvP.
Fast forward some time and we have the dreaded [Healing Signet] buff combined with several buffs to various skills over the months until we have the Warrior that we see now. Now, killing someone as a warrior isn’t so much a matter of skill either as it is simply a matter of hitting someone repeatedly while stacking passive effects that generally prevent death. Warriors are now top spot in PvP, but only because nobody can remove trait-related, banner-related, stance-related or signet-related effects that make every Warrior into an unstoppable juggernaut while it unleashes every skill on its target for free.
So we see that the warrior has gone through both phases of the bold words that I wrote in the first paragraph. Both of those are unfair: one being unfair to the Warrior and the other being unfair to everyone else in the game. How do we fix this? We make the Warrior smarter. We make him less of a dirty casual. We make him get good.
The changes that I’ve proposed are along the lines of introducing fluid mini-combos or build-up mechanics into various weapon sets. The beauty of the Warrior is that it has an enormous number of weapon skills from which to choose. To this effect, it has a vast number of conditions and available skill slots for unique skill functions. Taking advantage of this variety is the best way to make Warrior into something that isn’t so mundane to play and/or unfair to play against.
To this effect, no argument of “But Warrior’s fine because it works for me and I’m a casual,” will be considered valid within this thread. “Working as intended” does not mean “balanced.”
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Reveal on Blind/Block? Not with the current state of those. Aegis lasts upwards of 20 seconds, blinds last 5sec+. If you chance all blocks/blinds to having a maximum duration of say 2 seconds I could see this change beeing sensible.
Obstructed/out of range? Hell no. You can already outmaneuver backstabs by using mobility skills, there is no need to go even further with this.
Dodge? Well yes and no. Yes, since dodge frames last for about 1 sec, which is prefectly fine for “skilled counterplay”/“mindgames”. No, because this game is lacking polish in terms of attack range/pathfinding checks. If and only if these issues (pretty much dodges only/always beeing counted as successful dodges if you really dodged something) get resolved, this could be some way of adding more counterplay.
But then again, players complaining over missing counterplay to D/D thiefs already disqualify themselves. The counterplay is dodging the c&d and facing the high cooldown stealth skills (hide in shadows, shadow refuge, blinding powder) by using their own utilities/brain.
The ways D/P can get stealth could be looked at however, since there is no real conterplay to it.
To be quick about it, I’ll just say that you’re asking for a freebee. Thieves get a freebee with their stealth openers. No cool-down; no initiative cost; spam it until it hits. That’s not how skills need to work in GW2. Cool-downs reward opponents for proper counter-play. We shouldn’t have a class of powerful abilities that is immune to this balance for no real reason.
Stealth is perfect invisibility. Use it to sneak up on a target. If you’re a thief, you don’t even have to sneak: you have teleports.
Moreover, [Shadow Refuge] renders invalid every point that attempts to argue how a stealth opener is supposed to be a clutch action.
As for your point about D/D Thieves—what D/D thieves? Where are they? I don’t see any.
Seem like you didn’t answer any of my questions.
So then, let’s talk about Power damages. They are done by a combination of base damage, level of precision (chance of crit), percentage of crit damage and tons of additionnal passive damage multipliers. Why don’t you touch these traits granting passive damage multipliers? Why don’t you add a flat cap to how much damage multiplier you can have?
It’s because players build with tons of damage multipliers that they can instagib other player. Why don’t you try to resolve this issue before touching base damage?Rigt now I’m more worried to see greatswords warrior or staff elementalist running both sigil of the night and sigil of force then more sigils of battle. Stack of might are already super easy to gain, passive damage bonus are way more valuable on weapons.
Sigil of Force will never be efficient enough to warrant a balance-change in PvP. Sigil of the Night is PvE only. WvW is not actually PvP, so PvP-related balance changes should not be made with it specifically in mind.
Moreover, the effectiveness of stacking a Sigil of the Night with a Sigil of Force shows best results when a player gets in multiple hits during a small time-frame. To this effect, [Hundred Blades] and a simultaneous [Meteor Shower] + [Lava Font] would receive the greatest benefit from such sigil stacking; and those kinds of attacks are ones in which the target has to stand inside of an AoE for them to have any real effect.
In the end, I see no reason to worry about stacking +x% damage sigils from a pvp perspective.
I made more number adjustments to some skills including several initiative cost adjustments. I was overpricing some of the initiative costs on a few combo skills, so hopefully the restructuring makes them a little more viable.
RNG isn’t necessarily bad and in some cases you can build and keep certain expectations even with RNG.
That’s called loading the dice. In a game like GW2 it’s honestly best to load the dice because it gives both the player and the player’s opponent a sense of consistency when it comes to skill effects. Offensive RNG isn’t healthy because it undermines key factors that go into universal damage mitigation such as dodging.
Take a on crit trait like dhuumfire, critical infusion, vigorous precision.
There’s an enormous difference between a passive proc instantly triggering an offensive damage/condition-related effect compared to an inherently defensive or self-applied effect. Both can be imbalanced, sure, but self-applied passive procs don’t inherently undermine universal damage mitigation mechanics as offensive passive procs do.
If my crit chance is reasonable I can rely on sigil of fire and sigil of air.
The issue isn’t your crit chance here or even the RNG factor of Sigils of Fire and Air; it’s the issue that those two sigils inflict substantial, instant and possibly ranged damage without any cue. That’s the reason for the changes.
Most of the player base wouldn’t want these changes I feel. The slower paced the combat, the less unpredictability that you introduce the more likely fights can be determined by a simple spreadsheet.
Your spreadsheet plan implies that your opponents will sit still and allow you to hit them despite having access to active dodge and possibly other repositioning/block/evade skills. Spreadsheets worked in GW1 and most other traditional MMOs; but the stakes are a little different in GW2. By shifting away from passive procs and auto-targeted damage, GW2 can become a more action-oriented MMO in which victors are determined by aim, timing, positioning and damage mitigation management.
Chutes and ladders is a game for children. Simple to understand, easy to execute, easy to learn.
I understand what Chutes and Ladders is. I’m saying that using it as a metaphor for my balance design doesn’t make sense because my balance design is focused around the preservation of offensive damage legibility and focusing damage into clutch, well-cued attacks. Chutes and Ladders is a game based entirely on the roll of a die. Dodging an opponent’s attack is not something for which you roll a die in GW2—or it shouldn’t be; it actually kind of is at the moment in many cases. That’s the problem that I’m working to correct.
You’re taking it a step too far. I can be so literal if you choose as well.
You can be as literal as you want, but if you can’t substantiate your analogies or metaphors, then they hold no ground.
Your “balance” wishes slow the game down, eliminate all surprise. How is that fun?
How is earning your damage fun? It gives the player a sense of accomplishment when actually killing a target instead of knowing that he/she relied on passive, instant procs to carry him/her.
It caters to the casual crowd,
The casual crowd is the crowd that relies on passive, instant procs to do the work for them.
Dodging shouldn’t and can’t be the panacea of the game. It should be a mechanic which when used intelligently improves survival.
Without a dedicated healer class, dodging and healing skills are in fact the global panacea for every profession in GW2. There are no other universally available means in the game by which a player can mitigate damage. Combat should be built to emphasize this. That’s what I’m doing.
Chutes and ladders is a game for children. Simple to understand, easy to execute, easy to learn.
I understand what Chutes and Ladders is. I’m saying that using it as a metaphor for my balance design doesn’t make sense because my balance design is focused around the preservation of offensive damage legibility and focusing damage into clutch, well-cued attacks. Chutes and Ladders is a game based entirely on the roll of a die. Dodging an opponent’s attack is not something for which you roll a die in GW2—or it shouldn’t be; it actually kind of is at the moment in many cases. That’s the problem that I’m working to correct.
I don’t know how well-cued you want damage to be, but your Thief overhaul forces them into a 10 initiative, 6 second long combo to deal any kind of damage at all.
If you want nothing to happen at all, you’re well on your way to success.
I’ll take a look at the Thief again tomorrow. I was thinking that a few of the combo skill chains were really set too high with initiative cost.
Balancing a game around PvP is actually ideal because a game balanced around PvP requires that PvE be filled with encounters that imitate player-vs-player encounters in order to keep everything consistent. Imagine PvE filled with enemies like Svanir, the Chieftain, the Heart of the Mists dueling NPCs and such. Combat wouldn’t require things like Defiant to sustain itself, it would require players reacting to enemy onslaughts and responding with proper positioning, organization, use of light of sight, terrain and CC. It’d be much more active and engaging that the current “hit it repeatedly until its dead” paradigm that pervades most of PvE.
It is just wishful thinking. We can’t have an AI comparable to real players for any monster out there, it would be too heavy as far as computational costs go.
And PvP is quite different in scope, anyway. Small maps, capture points…you don’t even need to kill enemies, if you can stay alive and push them out.
The rest of the game doesn’t work like that.
The enemies in the heart of the mists or on pvp maps aren’t even any smarter than any other enemy that a player would encounter in the overworld; they just have more skills and often deal more damage than the average NPC. It’s practically that simple.
An inversion to the way that Grenades cluster themselves over their flight path would reduce the effectiveness of point-blank grenade spam, make long-range grenade attacks into clutch, lethal strikes and relegate most grenade-related combat to mid-range (at which grenades are the most balanced). I don’t see a problem with this at all.
Because they would be inefficent at short ranges due to the invariance,
That’s the point of the change.
inefficent at mid-long ranges
They’d be most efficient at mid-range after such a change; the same range at which they are the most balanced right now.
because enemies just won’t stay still getting hit when you can just walk out of the aoe (or come toward you, in pve)
That’s where player skill comes in.
and you’re putting all of this in a weapon that hasn’t got any particular “high reward” skill, being all about sustained damage? (the only bursty one is the toolbelt, basically, as far as bursts go…)
Throwing the entire grenade kit at your feet while next to a target is an enormous amount of burst.
If we just keep Grenadier as a “refund the base power of [Grenade Kit]” trait, the [Grenade Kit] will never be good on its own nor will Grenadier be an interesting trait. Grenadier needs to introduce a new functionality to an Engineer’s play-style that may not even necessarily involve the [Grenade Kit].
No, it doesn’t necessarily need to be “interesting”.
Why would you not want a part of a game to be interesting?
Seeing how it worked so far, i would be content enough with a trait that doesn’t hamper the base weapon to start with.
Especially seeing they continue balancing it toward the traited version, nerfing the base one even further (see: poison grenade nerf).
They should just make a balanced base version, and make grenadier gives some buff that isn’t overly good – and that probably means making it a master trait. But having it as a grandmaster trait – especially with effects that increase damage – is a sure way to make a mess.
I’d much rather make Grenadier something that isn’t necessarily tied to the [Grenade Kit] at all because that simply removes the issue of deciding to take the trait because you know it will make your [Grenade Kit] more powerful. Instead we should make a trait that does something completely different (maybe something triggered off of tool-belt skills even) so that Grenadier is promoted more as a play-style option rather than a necessity for bonus [Grenade Kit] damage.
Chutes and ladders is a game for children. Simple to understand, easy to execute, easy to learn.
I understand what Chutes and Ladders is. I’m saying that using it as a metaphor for my balance design doesn’t make sense because my balance design is focused around the preservation of offensive damage legibility and focusing damage into clutch, well-cued attacks. Chutes and Ladders is a game based entirely on the roll of a die. Dodging an opponent’s attack is not something for which you roll a die in GW2—or it shouldn’t be; it actually kind of is at the moment in many cases. That’s the problem that I’m working to correct.
Swagg, if we implemented all your desired changes across all changes, it’d be little different from playing a dynamic version of Final Fantasy 13… Meaning fast paced turn based combat.
Your idea of “legible combat” is well, questionable. It strongly favors casual play, but completely oblitterrates the chance of ever being able to execute high level play in any form or shape.
Removing skill from a skillbased game, and making everything telegraphed to the point of watching a movie and casually pressing shift is not the solution.
Taking advantage of instant-activation, passive, RNG, ranged procs is not skill.
i recall seeing a post somewhere saying we shouldnt make grenades throw 3 without grenadier because it would just make the builds we want to nerf stronger. and i actually agree with it after some thought. the main thing about condi grenade build is they can kitten out so many condis so quickly and repeatedly that you overwhelm the defenses of pretty much everyone. if grenades always threw 3, why would a condi build ever take more than 20 explosives? you dont lose damage, you only kinda want the stats anyways…
This is why I want Grenadier to be a GM trait that might not be so dependent on just [Grenade Kit]; rather introducing a different mechanic to the Engineer profession.
what if.. we
1. let grenades always throw 3.
Already thinking about it.
2. increase cd on grenades 2 to 10sec or cut bleed duration in half. (face it, most of the condi power is here)
That was a change that I’ve already made—well, the change was to make [Shrapnel Grenade] more of a powerful burst skill on a reasonable cool-down for a profession that can have multiple weapon-sets.
3. add grenade range into forceful explosives, move to master (and rename?)
That could actually be an interesting idea. Moving Forceful Explosives to master would also influence how [Bomb Kit] users select their traits.
4. combine short fuse and explosive powder and move them to grandmaster, buff to 15% damage (10% seems weak?)
Could be an option. Seems a little bland (that’s just me being me), but it definitely would make a GM trait that would influence how explosives-centric Engineers play without focusing too much on a single kit.
However, my only concern with that would be making [Grenade Kit] naturally throw 3 grenades and then making a GM trait that further boosts that damage by 10% or even 15%. That just seems like unnecessary power creep. It’d rather introduce a different functionality instead of just a flat damage boost.
5. think of an interesting adept and master trait to create out of thin air
I actually really like this idea. Merging somewhat underpowered or undesirable traits can open up the door for new ideas to influence how Engineers play. The possibility of a new adept and master trait sounds really cool.
oh i know, move accelerant packed turrets up to master too to screw w/ decap engi.
I actually really like that trait. I’m sad that it’s part of the decap engineer set-up because it’s honestly a very unique and strong trait that isn’t necessarily unbalanced on its own. That’s the trouble of nerfing decap Engineer: it uses a bunch of naturally balanced skills all together in a big spam fest that turns into an overpowered combo. It’s really unfortunate because nerfing the pieces individually would destroy the decap Engineer, but it would also destroy those individual pieces that were otherwise fine on their own. Destroying those otherwise fine pieces bottlenecks the Engineer’s build options even further than it is now.
Yes, I thought it was a good idea too.
That it would be, like, near useless. Dodging its aoe at long range is a problem only in pvp, and only because you’re forced to stay in a small area. And the high traveling time would even make attacking from a distance difficult in PvE, and useless in WvsW – you can already move out of the way by walking, and that’s with them being spread out.
Again, it would be a nerf just for the sake of PvP.
An inversion to the way that Grenades cluster themselves over their flight path would reduce the effectiveness of point-blank grenade spam, make long-range grenade attacks into clutch, lethal strikes and relegate most grenade-related combat to mid-range (at which grenades are the most balanced). I don’t see a problem with this at all.
That’s actually a very good point to argue. Traits like Grenadier really do pigeon-hole trait distributions for the Engineer because of just how much stronger (SERIOUSLY, A 50% DAMAGE AND EFFECT INCREASE) that that trait makes the [Grenade Kit].
I wonder about that. If the [Grenade Kit] were to be nerfed at its base level and then the Grenadier trait were to be changed to effectively refund those nerfs back into the [Grenade Kit] are we really solving anything there? The trait would be even more necessary than ever. I feel like the whole thing needs a full functionality change that would either add some new functionality to the [Grenade Kit] itself (maybe an on-swap effect) or have something to do with tool belt skills.
You’re missing a point here – they already balance it counting the traited version as the baseline. That’s why having it traited is so important – the untraited version is terrible to start with.
As now, instead of having a balanced base version and a good traited version, we’ve got a subpar base version and a balanced traited one. The trait is effective in what it does…but they’ve nerfed the base weapon for the sake of the trait to do so.
No other weapon or utility is balanced like that in the whole game.
There is no need for nerfs – they’re already balancing toward the traited version, after all. Since they don’t want to give a balanced version as a base one because a serious grandmaster trait would end up making the weapon too strong, then just shift it down to master and give back some of the power to the base weapon. [/quote]
If we just keep Grenadier as a “refund the base power of [Grenade Kit]” trait, the [Grenade Kit] will never be good on its own nor will Grenadier be an interesting trait. Grenadier needs to introduce a new functionality to an Engineer’s play-style that may not even necessarily involve the [Grenade Kit].
Because PvP plays by its own rules, and they’re different from any other situation you can meet in the rest of the game.
Balancing all the game toward PvP is just detrimental: every mode should be balanced on its own.[/quote]
Balancing a game around PvP is actually ideal because a game balanced around PvP requires that PvE be filled with encounters that imitate player-vs-player encounters in order to keep everything consistent. Imagine PvE filled with enemies like Svanir, the Chieftain, the Heart of the Mists dueling NPCs and such. Combat wouldn’t require things like Defiant to sustain itself, it would require players reacting to enemy onslaughts and responding with proper positioning, organization, use of light of sight, terrain and CC. It’d be much more active and engaging that the current “hit it repeatedly until its dead” paradigm that pervades most of PvE.
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Added a torch skills update.
You clearly didn’t understood the balance preview about sigils.
I’m talking about people running two-handed weapons with Sigils of Battle on each weapon now because of the extra slot. Even if it’s just one weapon, all this update is doing is pumping more passive might and damage procs into the game, thus speeding up combat even further and making actions even harder to discern.
So that we have no precision when the travel time is minimal, and high precision when the travel time is maximum and the enemies have all the time to move out of that precise spot. Sure, what could ever go wrong with that?
Yes, I thought it was a good idea too.
Also, grenadier has an issue you aren’t considering. That is, the whole kit is balanced about having said trait, instead of being considered as an added bonus. The changes proposed wouldn’t address that issue at all.
But obviously, if a weapon should be balanced in its base form, a grandmaster trait that works only on it can’t give anything other than big bonuses – enough to shred any balance there was.Thus the issue, imho, is that grandmaster traits relative to single weapons/utilities shouldn’t exist to begin with.
That’s actually a very good point to argue. Traits like Grenadier really do pigeon-hole trait distributions for the Engineer because of just how much stronger (SERIOUSLY, A 50% DAMAGE AND EFFECT INCREASE) that that trait makes the [Grenade Kit].
Some of the effects should be transferred back to the kit, and the remaining part in a master trait – something like 10% increased damage and range – akin to ranger’s eagle eye.
I wonder about that. If the [Grenade Kit] were to be nerfed at its base level and then the Grenadier trait were to be changed to effectively refund those nerfs back into the [Grenade Kit] are we really solving anything there? The trait would be even more necessary than ever. I feel like the whole thing needs a full functionality change that would either add some new functionality to the [Grenade Kit] itself (maybe an on-swap effect) or have something to do with tool belt skills.
And i can’t agree with the range reduction as well – it would be another nerf just for the sake of pvp.
Why would a pvp-related nerf worry anyone? PvE is ridiculously easy in this game. I’m not trying to be facetious here—I’m serious.
Updates to damage numbers across the board.
Lol, you reduced the coefficients even more?
Increased a lot of base damages and damage coefficients across the board.
What happened to skills like Infi Strike being supposed to be on the same level as Savage Leap?
That was actually one of the changes; the two skills now inflict identical damage despite the fact that [Savage Leap] actually has a cool-down.
I like how you’ve gotten so much negative feedback that you have either ignored out-of-hand (such as my feedback) or chosen to address by repeating the same mantras and exercising a policy of “I’m right and you’re wrong because in my opinion X and that is not your opinion so therefore you’re wrong.”
Nobody’s going to take “feedback” or “arguments” seriously if they start with “Looks like you haven’t gotten any smarter.”
Guild Wars 2 was a game with combat designed around the player anticipating an opponent’s moves and appearance by reading the opponent’s actions and gear,
No it wasn’t, otherwise there would be visible casting bars.
A game can revolve around countering an opponent’s moves and not require cast-bars everywhere. By your logic, every 2-D fighting game ever would need cast-bars, Dark Souls would need cast-bars; even something like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance would need cast-bars. A game based on reacting to an opponent’s cues can exist without them. Those cues just need to be defined well enough in order for the player to react in time or plan around. GW2 fails to do this time and again across all of the professions as well as in universal gear.
As for your enormous list of skills, the vast majority of those skills come with investments that require the player to commit active cast-time, post-cast effect delay time, prerequisite conditions or sometimes more than just one of those things order to get considerable damage in. The few that don’t are the ones that I am trying to address with these threads.
Of course, not all of these skills are very good, or hit often enough to always do more damage than LS, but many, many of them deal more damage than LS does anyways
If the skill doesn’t hit, it doesn’t deal any damage. Powerful skills like [Big Ol’ Bomb] or [Ice Spike] are skills that can be actively avoided by players given their cast-times combined with their post-cast effect delay times. There is no way to compare them to [Larcenous Strike], which not only has a mere 1/2 second activation time, is also a melee skill with a prerequisite chain skill that grants evasion while attacking and moves into a target from range. Moreover, [Larcenous Strike] doesn’t even possess a cool-down. There is a canyon of discrepancy separating the ease of getting off a [Larcenous Strike] compared to something like [Big Ol’ Bomb] or really any of the skills you put on your list.
(100b only needs to hit a few times to do more damage, for instance),
And [Hundred Blades], again, requires a lot of prerequisite set-up (snare or CC) for it to ever really be good outside of maybe corpse cleaving a downed player. There’s no way anyone can really put [Hundred Blades] on the same level as [Larcenous Strike] because of the build up that [Hundred Blades] requires to score a substantial amount of damage especially since Warrior doesn’t possess something like [Infiltrator’s Strike] or any other number of direct-to-target teleports available to the Thief.
I’d just like to touch on some of your proposed changes to Grenade Kit.
- Overall I can see the intent behind your changes, however, I feel that the majority of them cut into the Engineer’s capability at mid-range.
- Many of these changes are un-necessary. The only thing required to increase the skill floor of Grenade Kit is to alter the spread by inverting the formula used to calculate the random distribution:
- At close range (0-400), Grenades have maximum random spread. This makes fighting in melee with Grenade kit difficult.
- At mid-range (400-800), Grenades have moderate random spread. This allows Engineer to have enough spread to maximise possibility of hits, whilst still having close enough spacing to enable overlapping Grenade hits.
- At long range (800-1200), Grenades have minimum random spread. This makes leading your target and prediction extremely important as you can no longer barrage a point and be sure of multiple hits; whilst making any hit extremely deadly. This also has the effect of minimising the impact Grenade Kit has on a point in PvP when freecasting at long range.
This is actually a very clever way of addressing the Grenade Kit’s disproportionate power when used within melee range.
- Grenadier as the GM trait does not require a Charge skill mechanic. What is needed instead is for Grenades to have 3 grenades thrown as baseline with damage re-distributed such that overall damage is 25% higher than at present. Grenadier would then increase damage by 25% (an extremely handsome amount) to current Grenadier values – for no overall change to maximum values. Range would increase from 1200 to 1400 instead of to 1500 as it is right now. People will feel any change in maximum range, and 100 units is a not insignificant nerf, as it makes several plays on certain PVP maps like Grenading the Trebuchet on Khylo quite difficult.
- This change would make Grenadier less necessary for Grenade Kit to function properly whilst being no less important. Grenadier would then be favoured more for Power builds; whilst Condition builds can be risker and sacrifice range without impeding Condition application.
That’s definitely one way to open up the Grenade Kit to power. When it comes to lowering the base damage on Grenade Kit skills before Grenadier, do you think that it be better to mess with the damage coefficients or with the base damage?
/facepalm
Most talked about meta build these days: decap engi
I have yet to see someone post a decap engi build with grenades.
The trouble with nerfing decap engineer is that it would require nerfing several individual skills that only really become the decap engineer when put together. Individually, those skills aren’t entirely broken. Nerfing them is tricky because while it could resolve the whole decap engineer build, it would probably destroy those individual skills; ensuring that nobody would choose them again as individual options in other potential builds.
My only real question is why the other threads all have the class names in the title combined with some kind of attempt at a witty phrase, whereas the engineer one has the class name replaced with a trait name. It’s inconsistent.
When a single skill is effectively the staple in every single “meta” build for a given profession, that profession’s identity is defined by that skill. I could have done something like that for the Thief, but the Thief really is so far off of the map that it doesn’t really belong in the game; thus that title.
Update to staff skills. One of the biggest issues with Necromancer staff is that it pigeon-holes itself into a single function for 4 of its 5 skills. Not only is the play-style poorly cued but it is also one-dimensional thus being an less than engaging, spam-oriented experience for both the player and any opponent.
The new changes promote a more attrition-based play-style with the pulsing functionality of [Mark of Blood] while also providing the Necromancer with more movement control and repositioning ability via [Chilblains] and [Weaken Knees]. [Mark of Pain] is a support AoE skill that chains into a more active version of [Putrid Blast] that can be targeted and guaranteed to explode without the use of an enemy’s foot. The new [Reaper’s Mark] is a more active, better-cued version of its current form that can also contribute to spike damage if channeled to its final channel tier.
You really want to make this game move at a snails pace.
Sorry if you can’t keep up… But you’d turn this game from high speed chess into chutes and ladders.
High speed chess implies that you can see your opponent make a move, and I don’t even get the chutes and ladders metaphor.
I hope they overlook your suggestions. Sorry my posts are a trend, but so too are yours.
I suppose we each fight for something.
These are terrible changes really swiftness on weapon swap for sigil of air?
Sigil of Fire and Sigil of Air are among the best, most concise examples of this game’s short-comings. Instant-activation, passive, potentially ranged, RNG procs that deal damage remove the ability for counter-play on the part of the opponent. Without counter-play, it removes the ability for the opponent to properly dodge, reposition or even block because the effect occurs instantly and without any cue.
hat game mode do you play because that is terrible change since the impact of swiftness in a fight is small since this only activates in combat like all swap sigils as any Ele how awesome one with air is and 1.5 seconds of super speed.
Any amount of super speed in combat is significant because it can extend the distance covered by a gap-closer or turn your own running into a gap-closer by itself. It would be very strong for melee characters as a means of catching up to a fleeing target or it could be strong for back-line players that might need to quickly reposition or run away from an opponent.
Woohooohooo.
Go away for a few days and the world goes crazy on you. I’m actually surprised that this thread continued to float on the first page, though.
I will admit that I went overboard with a few of these—but look at all of these good responses. People panic when they see something changed and immediately give reasons why the change is bad. I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback and I’m going to go ahead and readjust some of the numbers and functionalities throughout the thread.
Elite skill slot functionality change update.
Updates to damage numbers across the board.
This is a problem that can only be tackled by making defensive conditions – Blind, Weakness – more available to Elementalist through traits
I’m afraid to add too much to offensively-triggered traits because they’re all instant-activation, passive and potentially ranged procs that never provide any counter-play to an opponent. Your idea about a CC-oriented DPS support earth Elementalist sounded cool, though. I’ll try to drum up some ideas for it.
and/or increasing the availability of Elementalist CC by reducing keystone cooldowns such as Updraft, Earthquake, Gust, Shockwave, Comet and Gale – both of which were possibilities I discussed in my prior post.
This is where we should really focus our efforts. Although, we still have to be wary of the already present damage and defensive abilities incorporated into the potential weapon sets associated with those CC options.
Past that would be buffs to healing. 20-40% buffs should be considered in a vacuum if absolutely nothing else is changed. In the event of changes that reduce Elementalist reliance on boons, some of the buffs to heals should not be implemented. … The reality is that underneath the Boons, Elementalist survival is in its heals. There’s not that many Evade frames (Burning Speed should not receive Evade frames because down that path the Thief lies); skills need to be chained to have appreciable effectiveness, and Elementalist sustained DPS counterpressure is severely curtailed by ineffectual autoattacks outside of Air.
I argue that Elementalist heals are mostly fine and its just that every profession’s damage is out of control in the meta-game right now. That said, exaggeration does breed perspective, so it might not be a terrible idea to experiment with increasing Elementalist healing. While giving the Elementalist additional healing power in its skills might work in the current meta-game, I’m worried that it would just have to be nerfed again if we bring everything else that’s currently broken into line. Also, I’m just afraid that it would make bunker cantrip Elementalists outrageous. I’ll look to add your suggestions to the list, though.
Weakness application is rare – which is good, because Weakness is a “junk” covering condition in many builds, yet there are a dearth of skills and traits that leverage Weakness unlike the Earth Elementalist of GW1 . I’m still waiting for Stoning to be replaced by Glowstone as an Autoattack, and for Stoning to actually knock down Weakened foes as it did in GW1.
It would be nice to see [Stoning] changed to a utility skill and serve a purpose identical to its functionality in GW1.
Blinds – again, for Elementalist, they are a clutch tool – yet cooldown on them outside of Scepter can be punishing. Giving utility for Blinds through traits should be the next thing explored. Blind on Interrupt, or making Interrupts inflict Blind, or making Vulnerability proc when a Blinded foe misses a skill should be enough to make a CC/Shutdown oriented build viable when coupled to Earth – while increasing Elementalist survivability by enabling kiting and shutting down the opponent. The tools for Air Magic in GW2 are almost universally revolving around DPS – yet Air Magic in GW1 provided a vast breadth of Interrupts and other shutdown utility that is conspicuously absent.[/quote]
One would hope that Arenanet would have realised by now that actually, cutting Arcana doesn’t shift points. In fact the best response they received was when they enacted a reduction in the need for Arcana overall – reducing the CDR each point of Arcana provided whilst lowering the base CD of Attunements.
Right now Elementalist needs 20+ points in Arcana even still. Shifting Elemental Attunement to Master ensured that.
One could even make a case for shifting Elemental Attunement into Arcane Fury, then making Boons gained being shared to Allies a Master level trait. It would reduce Elementalist reliance on Arcana even more. 5 Points in Arcana? Why not? The Protection uptime and the Fury is all that is required.
I’m not sure making Elemental Attunement into a Arcana minor adept trait is the most balanced idea. For only 5 points into Arcana, giving Elementalists 5.25 seconds of protection every time that they swap into Earth Attunement; or 5.25 seconds of regeneration for swapping into water seems like nothing more than power creep to me.
Of course, the only other way to shift Elementalist away from Arcana is to make Stone Flesh provide Protection upon attuning to Earth instead of the 120 Toughness at cLvl 80.
I like the toughness because it’s something one can manipulate. Protection doesn’t stack unfortunately so we can’t incorporate Protection as safely into builds as we can additional Toughness. One way to make Stone Flesh more viable would be to maybe make it a temporary buff that one gains for maybe 5 seconds upon attuning to Earth but we increase the Toughness to a much higher level (not necessarily protection level, though).
Overall the issue remains that Elementalist remains quite dependant upon Boons to survive.
That’s why I’ve been looking for places to sneak in additional CC and mobility for the Elementalist. Such additions give the Elementalist more active ways to react to incoming damage (aside from just healing) while also adding new dynamics into combat for opponents.
It’s not that rangers are spammy, but the game is spammy. It’s spammy because there’s limited usable skills with excessive cool downs and broken mechanics like weapon swap cool down which completely limits counter play and actually discourages people from using skills properly.
Why should I save my skills for use at the “proper” time when I’ll lose access to them for 8 seconds when I swap weapons?
While this “spam everything” combat tendency is an issue aggravated by the weapon-swap system, it also comes from the fact that, within any given weapon-set, there aren’t a lot of skills that are balanced by either cast-times long enough or enough prerequisite conditions to the point where it would be a bad idea to instantly activate a given skill at any point in an encounter.
For instance:
[Backbreaker]
- Cast-time: 1¼ seconds
- Recharge: 30 seconds
- Knock your foe down. You inflict a longer knock-down if you struck a weakened foe.
- Damage: 554 (1.5)
- Knock-down: 1 second
- Knock-down vs weakened foes: 2 seconds
- Range: 130
- This skill only hits up to 1 target.
Given its long cast-time combined with its prerequisite for its most powerful effect, is this a skill that one would use right off the bat upon swapping into Warrior hammer? Probably not. The Warrior hammer already has a source of weakness, so it’d probably be best to attempt some sort of snare that lead into [Fierce Blow] and then follow up with [Backbreaker].
If a skill is costly enough to use with regards to its cast-time or prerequisite conditions in order to achieve a maximum effect, a player may think twice about using it off-handedly in an encounter; choosing to instead wait for better positioning or when better conditions are met.
I’m thinking of more ways to incorporate this sort of system into my suggestions as a means to not only add further legibility to combat but also give players a sense of ownership with some individual skills—a good feeling for actually getting off a skill with a powerful effect instead of simply pressing a bunch of buttons really quickly as most weapon-sets would invite one to do at the moment.
You’re always better to blow through your skills asap and what you have left is spam 1. And if you were saving your skills for proper counter play, what will you be doing in the mean time? Oh right, spam 1. Because I’m saving it for when the enemy does something.
I’d have rather seen a GW2 with generic auto-attacks across all weapon-sets because then we could have addition skills per weapon-set and it would relegate auto-attacks to their proper place: time-fillers in between skills. Auto-attacks shouldn’t be the skills associated with maximum DPS.
Get rid of weapon swap cool down, double the amount of usable skills on the weapons and let people slot more utilities instead. That’ll do this game a world of good more than any redesign.
I actually like that idea a lot. I would still argue that removing weapon-swap cool-downs would make a lot of this game too forgiving, but more skills is almost never a bad thing. If anything, additional skills is more room to add in powerful skills with longer cast-times or prerequisite effects filled by other weapon skills that are already in place.
As for more utilities, I’ve actually been meaning to update my one thread about the global profession changes because we really should be able to equip a utility skill in the elite slot. A change like that would light this game up like nothing else.
1. Thief (needs a huge make-over combined with damage adjustments)
2. Ranger (spirits need an entire make-over; pets need more commands)
3. Necromancer (needs animation cues for a lot of skills)
Minimum distance requirements nerf the engineer’s ability to counter melee situations, such as being attacked by a thief. That’s a braindead idea.
I’ve already reworked the Thief to help deny some of its more imbalanced direct-to-target teleport capabilities.
OK, when Elixir F is mentioned as having potential burst damage on a power-based build, I can’t respond in a serious or constructive manner.
[Elixir F] at 300 – 200 range vs a lone target (hits twice) into [Surprise Shot] into [Static Discharge attack] is strong in a power build. People just don’t use it because grenades are objectively better.
In my opinion as power engineer,
It doesn’t matter what someone plays; what matters is making all combat fair enough that it provides counter-play opportunities for opponents.
I play power rifle Engineer and I know that it’s overpowered.
First of all, why do you want to nerf hip shot damage? I wish to have a stronger autoattack with my rifle and you prefer to nerf it, that´s makes an advantage to condibuilds which the engineer has a lot.
I’m already nerfing pistol to an extent with some functionality changes and number adjustments. [Hip Shot] is an incredibly strong auto-attack for its attack speed and could use some toning down. I may have gone a little overboard with the initial numbers, but it does need a nerf. I’ll post when I make a few more updates.
The incresed cd of net shot and blunderbass, i think that you tried to make the list to nerf builds like the decapeer, but you should know that is a nerf for power builds as the same the channel part of overcharged shot.
A 20% up-time on immobilize is overpowered (even if it didn’t stack). A 2-second increase to [Net Shot]’s cool-down is not going to break the skill; the Engineer will just have to develop slightly altered rotations or maybe not use it right away when facing an opponent so as to maintain proper control of the fight.
The jumpshot radius nerf is a joke with no sense.
[Jump Shot] landing damage radius was originally 150 range wide. When it had a 150 radius, it also had a clunky delay. When you equipped the increased range on rifle trait, the delay was up to 1 second long. People still managed to land it by leading an opponent or by using CC to secure the damage. A buff to a 240 radius was absolute overkill that takes any thought of aiming the attack out of the equation. It needs to be toned down.
I like the changes for bomb kit except one thing, the autoattack cd. You want to make the bomb kit less spammer but with that change you are forcing to use every skill one before other and change back to another kit or weapon like a brainless.
“Like a brainless.”
If anything, having to juggle multiple cool-downs and plan ahead around things like delayed effects, stationary AoE as well as timing when to use a skill that is boosted by complimentary skills adds a lot of versatility and engaging play to the [Bomb Kit]. Swapping from kit to kit to main-hand weapons and then back again is not brainless if the kit swapping is meant to orbit around the goal of landing [Bomb Kit] attacks and supplement your damage while you wait for your [Bomb Kit] combos to come back off cool-down.
Gear shield, sounds good but 20 seconds of cd to a skill that only blocks 3 attacks isn´t fair.
Channeled, no-attack-limit blocks are a bad idea because they give a player the potential to single-handedly ruin an entire team’s coordinated attack with the press of a single button. Having a limited number of negated attacks tied to the block gives the skill a sense of urgency (since the block won’t last forever) and doesn’t force combat development into a slow crawl for 3 seconds.
Channeled skills are going to be very happy with this change.
I’m looking to address that very subject now that you bring it up.
I don´t want to offend you but you are kittening insane with the static discharge change. Why you nerf the only trait that´s make sense for a glass cannon or a power build? Like the damage nerf to surprise shot. Both of them are exclusive for power and glass cannon builds (meaby surprise shot could be used by turret engineer but they want to put the torret, not being in their skillbar) and i´m only seen nerfs for power engineer in yout list.
Breaking up a Static Discharge burst into 3 intervals with 1-second cool-downs is not going to break the build. It might even make the build more effective because players running Static Discharge would be encouraged to be more conservative with their attacks, expending them little by little in order to bait an enemy’s dodges, thus leaving the target vulnerable for something like [Overcharged Shot] or further burst from Static Discharge attacks when they come off cool-down.
Ok, you haven’t understood absolutely anything about how the engineer is balanced.
That is, upon sustained damage.
Have you ever noticed that kits offer virtually no burst damage?
Flamethrower has [Flame Blast].
Elixir Gun has [Acid Bomb] and to an extent [Elixir F] if you use it on a lone player while you are within 400 range of the target.
Tool Kit’s [Pry Bar] is crazy spike damage.
[Grenade Barrage] and [Big Ol’ Bomb] are potentially enormous burst and function as extensions of Grenade Kit and Bomb Kit respectively.
All of those skills are very effective in power-based builds.
Those passive traits you loathe are just another way to improve sustained damage, while avoiding bursts. Aside from making some traits near useless (grenadier wouldn’t be worthly of an adept slot in your version of grenade kit, let alone grandmaster).
When every attack is potentially proccing bleeds, vulnerability and even burning, it becomes difficult to discern when to actively mitigate damage. For the health of the game, it is for the best to make powerful attacks well-cued, give powerful attacks appropriate cool-downs and have powerful attacks pose a certain risk to the user for their use/activation to prevent players from spamming them whenever they see fit.
Oh, i forgot: putting minimum ranges to half of the skills is just terrible.
A 100 minimum range is a very short distance. Such a limitation merely prevents Engineers from throwing grenades directly under their feet and turns the attacks into something resembling a cone attack since the player has to aim in front of themselves now.
ya ok spam your skills vs a good thief and tell me how those thief “slow” cast times work out for you.
Spamming skills indiscriminately against a “good” anything is a poor idea. The point I make regarding Ranger skills is that short cast-times and recharges on the vast majority of their attacks invite the player to spam all of their skills and don’t really punish the player for doing so.
I never said my ideas were revolutionary, just pointing out that there’s a time and place for each skill and that skills aren’t spammy. Instead of refuting this, you bashed my ideas.
Your ideas never held any water. You want to argue my suggestions, but instead of talking about anything relevant to my suggestions (which are meant to address the issue of spamming skills), you go on a rant about how CC-chaining is powerful or how it’s important to CC an opponent before attempting to land a powerful attack. Your “points” had nothing to do with the main argument to begin with.
Reserved for future posts (turrets part 2)
Reserved for future posts (turrets)
Tools traits
Kit Refinement (Tools – IV)
- All kit-swap cool-downs are now on independent recharges.
Static Discharge (Tools – II)
- Now has an internal cool-down of 1 second.
Deployable Turrets (Tools – V)
- Now, instead of the Engineer throwing a projectile that results in a turret at the target location, the Engineer instead goes through a quick summon animation and the turret drops at the target area (similar to how a Warrior banner is summoned) via a smaller version of the Engineer [Supply Crate] skill.
Alchemy traits
Automated Response (Alchemy – XII)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Whenever you suffer from 4 unique conditions at a time, you instantly convert all conditions on you into boons and gain a temporary immunity to conditions.
- Condition immunity: 3 seconds
- Cool-down: 40 seconds
- This skill uses the Guardian [Contemplation of Purity] condition-into-boon conversion table except that converting fear now results in 3 seconds of stability.
Firearms traits
Precise Sights (Firearms – V)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Blunderbuss, Static Shot, Shrapnel Grenade, Concussion Bomb, Elixir F, and Flame Jet inflict additional vulnerability when they hit.
- Vulnerability (8): 10 seconds
- Recharge: 15 seconds
- This is a global/shared cool-down among the skills
- Only the final damage tick of [Flame Jet] inflicts the vulnerability described in this trait.
Explosives traits
Acidic Elixirs (Explosives – I)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Consuming an elixir grants you retaliation and 1 stack of acidic armor. While under the effects of acidic armor, foes that strike you suffer from vulnerability and lose up to 1 boon.
- Retaliation: 2 seconds
- Acidic Armor (1 stack; 20 seconds): The next time you take damage, the foe that damaged you suffers from vulnerability (3 stacks; 8 seconds) and loses up to 1 boon.
- This skill only grants its bonuses when using an Elixir utility skill.
- Whenever a player with stacks of Acidic Armor takes damage, that player’s stacks of Acidic Armor decrease by 1.
Accelerant-Packed Turrets (Explosives – V)
- Effect radius increased from 120 to 150.
Shrapnel (Explosives – II)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- Blunderbuss, Shrapnel Grenade, and Concussion Bomb inflict additional bleeding.
- Bleeding (4): 10 seconds
- Cool-down: 15 seconds
- This is a global/shared cool-down among the skills.
Incendiary Power (Explosives – IX)
- FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
- When you use a tool belt skill, you simultaneously fire a round at your foe that inflicts burning.
- Projectile delay: 1 second
- Burning: 3 seconds
- Cool-down: 10 seconds
- Now, when this trait activates, a fireball appears at the Engineer’s side, lingers for 1 second, and then flies at the Engineer’s current target.
- This trait’s projectile uses the Elementalist [Fireball] model.
- This trait’s projectile shares it projectile behaviour with that of Engineer [Surprise Shot].
(edited by Swagg.9236)
Healing skills
[Healing Turret]
- Cast-time increased from ½ second to 1 second.
Elite skills
[Supply Crate]
- Cast-time increased from 1 second to 1½ seconds.