Guild Wars 2

So… what about the massively increased level gates for skills? Those weren’t listed in the patch notes and everybody is saying they were a bad idea.

It actually does remove your base stats from extra levels completely. The downscaling coefficient is (base stat at scaled level / base stat at real level) * total stat. So it follows that your base stats will be completely eliminated.

I noticed in the feature pack that every few levels you’ll now gain a large boost to base stats, and a reward window will tell you how much you’ve gained.

But my question is… why was that window added? Base stats are completely removed by downscaling. What’s the point in telling a player they gained +80 power when they didn’t actually gain +80 power…? It’s basically giving the player a placebo reward.

I thought about this for a bit, and it’s probably redundant to make another thread but here’s how I’d do it:

Traits unlock at level 15. You get one trait point at that level and another every 5 levels. At level 30 the Master traits open up and at level 60 the Grandmaster traits open up.

Three ways to unlock individual traits:
1) Objectives (like it is now).
2) Purchased tomes (like it is now).
3) New – PvE trait reward tracks.

There are a few types of tracks, all active at once.
i) Experience track: Every five levels you gain (including at level 80) grants you a random Adept trait that you have not already learned. If you own all Adept traits, this will grant a random Master trait. If you own all Master traits, it will be a random Grandmaster trait. The reasoning behind randomizing this is to still have incentive to complete specific trait objectives, though the trait you learn from this is always one you haven’t already earned. This track is also meant to encourage trying other builds, and ensures everyone has a decent selection of traits as they level up.

ii) Dungeon tracks: There’s one of these for each dungeon, and it’s not repeatable. Beat story mode for a dungeon and you get to choose any Adept tome. Beat an explorable path and you get to choose any Adept or Master tome. Beat all paths for a dungeon and you get to choose a Grandmaster tome.

iii) Explorer tracks: There’s one for each zone. Fully completing any zone in the game will grant a random trait in exactly the same way as reward track (i).

I think it’s good for the game to have noticeable character progression. Right now, a higher-level player has an easier time against low level mobs and I think that’s okay, since the rewards are only a little over half what you’d get from fighting level 80s. If everything is exactly the same level then the game ceases to be an RPG, and higher level zones lose their sense of danger.

People also bring up the issue of L80s stealing loot from low level players, but this almost never happens due to event upscaling and how little damage it takes to tag a mob.

I think to satisfy everyone, there ought to be difficulties that you can toggle on by visiting an NPC in Lion’s Arch.

Normal: Your level is capped at zone+1 (how it currently is).

Veteran: Capped at the zone’s level. Unlocked at level 15 (around when you have access to masterwork gear). Gain +22% to adventure stats (mob experience, coin, magic find) while downscaled. All crafting materials dropped by killed foes are tier 2 or greater, regardless of their level.

Elite: Capped at zone-1. Unlocked at level 30 (around when you have access to rare gear). Gain +69% to adventure stats (mob experience, coin, magic find) while downscaled. All crafting materials dropped by killed foes are tier 3 or greater, regardless of their level.

Champion: Capped at zone-2. Unlocked at level 60 (around when you have access to exotic gear). Gain +156% to adventure stats (mob experience, coin, magic find) while downscaled. All crafting materials dropped by killed foes are tier 4 or greater, regardless of their level.

Legendary: Capped at zone-3. Unlocked at level 75 (roughly once you’re into the end-game zones). Gain +306% to adventure stats (mob experience, coin, magic find) while downscaled. All crafting materials dropped by killed foes are tier 5 or greater, regardless of their level.

Bonuses don’t apply to karma since you would be mingling with other people in the same zone who aren’t necessarily playing higher difficulties, and would otherwise boost your karma gain.

Toggling a difficulty would give you a portrait border when highlighted by other players (the same portraits that enemies of the same difficulty label have). As well, a difficulty can be selected and agreed-upon by the entire party when entering a dungeon.

If they didn’t listen to a two thousand reply thread about this problem, then they won’t listen to this.

Supposedly in China level-scaling works exactly the same, which means the game difficulty will stop making sense. It’s like this:

Level 20: Okay difficulty.
21: Harder
22: Harder
23: Harder
24: Harder
25: Difficulty suddenly drops
26: Harder
…
30: Difficulty suddenly drops

It doesn’t make any sense. They’ve made up a problem that never existed and then decided to solve it.

The “revamped” trait system and level-gating of basic features were all problems that people widely complained about in the Chinese release of this game. Why are they being back-ported to North American and European releases under the guise of “new features”?

Way to pull the “play better” card.

Regardless of what you do, the game will latch on to the person in front of you when you use it, as soon as you hit them. This issue is beyond the player’s control which makes it easy to abuse.

There’s something very annoying that happens in this game, and it also happens in PvP.

For projectile or cone skills that are channelled, if you have a target and that target moves behind you, the skill immediately stops and gets put on cooldown. However, if you don’t have a target and your foe moves behind you, the skill continues.

This can be used as a gimmick in pvp against targets using channelled cone or projectiles. If you see an enemy using a flamethrower for example, or an elixir gun, or any other skill that functions in a similar way, all you have to do is continually walk straight through their model whenever they attempt to use the skill and it will be forced on cooldown rather than simply continuing to be cast.

Instead of forcing the skill on cooldown, why not just default the character’s skill direction to be straight ahead? This seems like a strange oversight that can very easily be abused to completely shut down certain builds.

In PvE, no. Turrets are borderline wasteful in PvE, and your traits are best spent elsewhere. They aren’t worth the sacrifice in personal damage and their health and toughness, even when traited, will not save them from being one-shot against end-game mobs.

In SPvP, they are useful for low ranks. In higher ranks, players know that turrets are easily destroyed and once that happens, a large chunk of your build is shut down.

I’ve seen an alarming number of matches where a fifth person joins at the last second before the match starts and sits afk for the entire thing.

Please add a gold deposit to ranked matches that gets returned if the player has more than zero points by the end of the match. Seriously. If someone queues in a ranked game, charge them 1g and add 1g to the reward if they accomplished ANYTHING during the match. People who keep queueing up and going afk for rank points should start losing gold.

I don’t know about you guys, or if it was always this way, but recently the boxes I get from reward tracks have started giving gray trophy loot. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t happening before. I get an alarming amount of unsalvageable junk now.

So… engineers are not allowed to have effective builds? Is this what it comes down to?

Necromancer minions have lower cooldowns, higher health, higher toughness, don’t bug out when you overcharge them, have more effective chain skills, and are allowed to deal critical damage and can be restored via regen or AoE heals. And despite that you complain about turrets?

Guess what… if turrets wreck your kitten then that’s how it should be, because it’s totally your fault. They can’t move and are extremely fragile, and their AI immediately fails if faced with more than one target. If you see a turret engineer, take advantage of their long cooldowns and pound the turrets with AoE. The engineer will be completely vulnerable. This is what players do beyond the extremely low ranks because they KNOW that once the turrets are down, the engineer turns into a towel for 30 seconds.

I know this because from rank 15 to about 25 I played a pure turret defense build and totally destroyed all of the idiots who tried to focus on me while my turrets blew them away. After that, players started AoEing my turrets first leaving me worthless until I die. It’s why I changed builds.

Anymras.5729:

insanemaniac.2456:

Grackleflint.4956:

Jeezus, what has happened to the Engi community?

have we ever been anything but overly negative about even the smallest tweaks?

its pretty typical of the gw2 community in general:

• “how are these condis killing me, condi builds are op, i quit” (while using scholar runes, air/fire sigils, power food)
• “champ bags dont give money now, gg, cant farm, game ruined, i quit”
• “automated response got nerfed? but i needed that trait, cant play engi now cuz engi wasnt good for anything but decapping”
• etc

look at any nerf in the patch notes and i guarantee there are 5+ threads in the relevant forums complaining that the nerfs are unjustified. and there arent really ever any positive threads on the same subject. and if someone attacks the OP for being an idiot, +1 infraction, message deleted, because they have a right to complain.

In this case, OP is complaining that an easily exploitable bug that rendered the Rocket Turret absolutely broken (due to delivering a knockdown every four seconds) got fixed without affecting the functionality of other parts of the turrets.

I’m a little confused by this.
Did they not fix the bug? I actually haven’t tested this.
Did they state that they had done something about other bugs or functionality in that patch note? It certainly doesn’t look like it to me.
Are we supposed to be angry that they chose to resolve an issue that made Rocket Turret overpowered? I’m not – I consider a bug to be a bug, whether it’s advantageous or not, and if they resolve it, I’m certainly not going to complain.
It’s also worth noting that they’ve been hotfixing the most recent, obvious Turret issues very shortly after introducing them in the first place.
Why does this thread exist?

I’m not complaining about whatever repeated knockdown effect you’re talking about. I’m complaining about the fact that overcharging two of the turrets still removes a major trait effect.

Vajra.3914:

Just saying: if the turrets disappear (destroyed, picked up) before the shot get to the enemy, the shot won’t affect the target; I kinda thought that after 2 years they would fix that.

Edit: Also tried Riffled turret barrels, and the range fact seems working on rocket: what’s the matter then?

The problem is that once you overcharge the rocket or thumper turret, after the overcharge ends the turret’s normal attack will lose the bonus range of Rifled Turret Barrels.

Don’t know what the heck the 2nd poster is talking about.

Just saying. This note:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-15-2014/first#post3925921

Had no effect on the functionality of turrets, and Rifled Turret Barrels is still broken for the rocket and thumper turrets.

Turret specs require the engineer to give up a ton of personal firepower and defence in order to make the turrets actually usable. I don’t really believe that the engineer is unkillable. That’s laughably inaccurate.

Racial kits like Charrzooka and Norn transforms aren’t scaling with weapon rarity like profession kit skills.

Is this intended? IIRC, the racial weapon kits / transforms used only rare weapon power at level 80, so they’re quite a bit behind other kit skills.

Just tested thumper turret. It loses its bonus range after overcharging as well.

I tested it myself and yes, ascended weapons are causing kits to deal 5% more damage than exotic. It’s annoying that we can’t see how much weapon power is going into the kits but I tested in Southsun against a wind rider using the elixir gun.

Regular shots using a level 80 exotic rifle with 128 power and 50 power from traits (178 power) was dealing at most 274 damage (I shot a bunch of times and recorded the max damage shot with no might or vulnerability).

Regular shots using a level 80 ascended rifle with 188 power and 0 power from traits (188 power) was dealing at most 291 damage.

So with the ascended rifle equipped I had 10 higher total power, but at level 80 that wouldn’t account for 17 more damage per hit. 5% of 274 is ~13.5 more damage per shot and I observed just a little bit more than that.

The way it works is really weird. So, with RTB the range is 1500. Without it, the range is 1000.

Deploy turret – it fires consistently with 1500 range.
Overcharge turret – it fires an overcharged round with 1500 range.
Turret reverts to 1000 range shots.

… (time passes)

Overcharge turret – it fires an overcharged round with 1500 range.
Turret reverts to 1000 range shots.

For some reason, it seems that transitioning from overcharged mode BACK to normal mode causes the turret to lose the bonus range. But the overcharged shot always has the bonus range.

The rocket turret does benefit from explosion traits, even the one that causes explosions to sometimes apply bleeding. It just doesn’t reflect itself in the tooltip.

However, deployable turrets working with other traits is a flat-out lie. They do not benefit from the increased range of rifled turret barrels if you use deployable turrets. I have no idea why they decided to put that in the patch notes when it’s obviously not fixed.

Also, overcharging the rocket turret still causes it to lose the bonus range from rifled turret barrels.

Aaaand it also doesn’t get the bonus range at all if you trait deployable turrets.

-_-

Just tested it.

The rocket turret still loses the bonus range from “Rifled Turret Barrels” if you overcharge it…

Agreed. When I heard that all of the traits and skills will have to be unlocked to use them in PvP, I couldn’t help but look at all the superficial grinding that was injected into the Chinese release of this game.

Given that the two skills they added cost 25 skill points each, I have no doubt in my mind that all of the PvP traits will cost ludicrous amounts of money. This was a grind that never existed before, and never needed to exist, but now they’re adding it.

Why?

Adding roadblocks to PvP doesn’t help ease players into it. The best way to ease players into PvP is to let them try out anything they want, which they can already do. If a player is so slow that they can’t figure out how skills work by testing them on the golems, then said player is too slow to play PvP without suffering a massive heart attack and dying in front of their computer.

Condition removal counters conditions, actually.

I’m referring to the same zones that count for “Maguuma” dailies – i.e… any Maguuma zone. I think the first couple of Sylvari zones also count as Maguuma.

Whatever you do, don’t tone down the amount of tail wagging.

Tail holes: yes
Weak tail wagging: no

So there’s been a bit of talk about how racial skills are underpowered, and this is because we don’t want there to be a “master race” for certain professions. But this problem could be eliminated and build variety could be enhanced if all races had access to all racials.

My idea:

Add a “knowledge” meter for other races. The meter goes from 0-5 for each race, and can be increased by completing skill challenges in foreign zones. For your current race, it starts at 5 (i.e. all racials immediately available for your own race, just like it is now).

Unlocks:
- L1: Can purchase 1SP racials.
- L2: Can purchase 3SP racials.
- L3: Can purchase 6SP racials.
- L4: Can purchase 10SP elite racials.
- L5: Can purchase 30SP elite racials.

Completing all of the skill challenges in a zone would boost the knowledge level of two races by one rank and unlock new foreign racials, depending on the general inhabitants of the region.
- Maguuma: Asura and Sylvari (home to both races)
- Ascalon: Charr and Norn (now home to the Charr, but they are close to the Shiverpeaks and assist Norn refugees and trade)
- Kryta: Human and Charr (home to the humans, but also much talk about hatred of the Charr and peace treaties)
- Shiverpeaks: Norn and Asura (home to the Norn and the Priory, which often uses Asuran technology)
- Orr: Human and Sylvari (knowledge of human gods and the Wyld Hunt)

I kind of balanced the above so that each race is counted twice, though the Kryta relationship to Charr is kind of loose.

There are enough zones in the game to more than max out the reputations, so this would encourage exploration without forcing people to complete everything in every map (just skill challenges in some of the maps). It would be nice to have more build possibilities in PvE by allowing people to unlock all racial skills!

After looking at certain elite skills that replace your weapon bar, I noticed they also act like environmental weapons. That is, they replace your weapon damage stat with a different value, like engineer kits, conjured weapons or banners.

The thing is, while conjured weapons and engineer kits were eventually changed to exotic power, many of the elite skills in the game that work the same way were not updated. For example:

Charrzooka: Has rare-tier weapon power at level 80.
Mortar: Rare-tier weapon power at level 80.
Guardian Tomes: Rare-tier.
Transformation Skills: Rare-tier.

Transformation skills are possibly an exception since they also provide large attribute bonuses, but it hardly seems balanced to update the weapon power of certain “kit” skills while ignoring other elite skills that function the same way.

Also related to this: skills that are not utilities and are not weapon skills (such as engineer tool belt skills or traits that deal direct damage) base their damage off of the power of your main-hand weapon. But since two-handers have higher weapon power, it means that these other skills lose effectiveness if you’re using a one-handed weapon. This doesn’t seem balanced either.

There are diminishing returns on weapon power when in downscaled areas. For example, if you take a level 80 exotic weapon into a level 30 zone, its power will get truncated to a level 80 rare and then downscaled (you can verify this by swapping between an 80 exotic and 80 rare and seeing your (attack – power) not changing).

Seras.5702:

Generally speaking, I agree with the above.

Only problem I see is if someone takes the modified Accelerant-Packed Turrets and the new GM trait Reactionary Turrets. This would effectively give every turret 3 overcharges that can be used within 3 seconds: drop, auto-overcharge, manually overcharge, overcharge on death by detonating it. Too OP.

For “overcharge on death” I actually meant that it only takes effect if the turret is actually destroyed by an enemy, not manually detonated. It’s meant to be a retaliation-style trait, not a directly offensive one.

These suggestions are for AFTER the bugs are fixed.

- Double the overcharge shot damage on the rocket turret and make it a direct line shot, not an exaggerated arc that smashes into the ceiling and becomes wasted.

- Triple the thumper turret damage. Seriously, this thing is an immobile turret that fights at melee range. It should really hurt if you stand next to it. Possibly add a 2s period of inactivity after being deployed so you can’t just slam it down on people’s faces.

- Double the damage of overcharged rifle turret shots, and bring back the old bleeding effect.

- After nerfing the net turret immobilize duration, bring its attacking period from the bugged value of 13s down to the original intended value of 10s. Double the amount of damage dealt by the shock net overcharge. It’s pitiful. The stated reason it’s being nerfed is due to its value immediately after being placed. That shouldn’t reduce the turret’s effectiveness in the event the engineer keeps it alive.

- Double the health of all turrets (PvE change only).

- Merge the 33% reduced damage trait and the automatic healing trait into one adept trait.

- Move rifled turret barrels to master level (bonus damage and range).

- Add a new grandmaster turret trait: Reactionary Turrets – All turrets instantly and immediately launch their overcharge skill when deployed. This activation does not trigger the overcharge skill’s cooldown. For balance this would likely require an internal cooldown for each turret, probably around 60 seconds.

- Modify accelerant-packed turrets trait: instead of causing a damaging explosion on death, all turrets launch their overcharge skill instantly on death. This happens even if the overcharge was on cooldown. It only triggers if the turret is killed by an enemy, not if you manually detonate it.

- The mortar becomes a mobile weapon kit that no longer roots you while being used. The stability effect is removed. Once cast it spawns in your hands with the current skills as 1-5. You can only drop the kit once, but once you do it becomes a turret with its ‘1’ skill as the default shot and ‘5’ as the overcharge.

Most (all) turrets have less damage and significantly less resistance than necromancer minions. They have higher cooldowns on average and cannot crit, making their damage even lower.

I would say keep the long-ish cooldowns they have now, and aside from fixing the bugs, make them powerful area denial tools. They can’t move, so they should be really good at their job.

- Double the overcharge shot damage on the rocket turret and make it a direct line shot, not an exaggerated arc that smashes into the ceiling and becomes wasted.

- Triple the thumper turret damage. Seriously, this thing is an immobile turret that fights at melee range. It should really hurt if you stand next to it. Possibly add a 2s period of inactivity after being deployed so you can’t just slam it down on people’s faces.

- Double the damage of overcharged rifle turret shots, and bring back the old bleeding effect.

- After nerfing the net turret immobilize duration, bring its attacking period from the bugged value of 13s down to the original intended value of 10s. Double the amount of damage dealt by the shock net overcharge. It’s pitiful.

- Double the health of all turrets (PvE change only).

- Merge the 33% reduced damage trait and the automatic healing trait into one adept trait.

- Move rifled turret barrels to master level (bonus damage and range).

- Add a new grandmaster turret trait: Reactionary Turrets – All turrets instantly and immediately launch their overcharge skill when deployed. This activation does not trigger the overcharge skill’s cooldown.

- Modify accelerant-packed turrets trait: instead of causing a damaging explosion on death, all turrets launch their overcharge skill instantly on death. This happens even if the overcharge was on cooldown.

Dolt.2731:

Bombs also scale better with power than anything else in the game

They have decent scaling but they also are delayed blasts so unlike other skills you can’t apply them easily to moving targets, and they’re easier to dodge. Unless traited the radius is also pathetic.

Anyway, time for some math.

bomb kit weapon power at level 80 = 969 on the highest hit roll
naked power stat at level 80 = 916
naked toughness stat at level 80 on target = 916
bomb #1 ratio: 1.250

A naked engineer with absolutely no gear or traits with a bomb kit will deal (on non-crit) against a naked target with absolutely no gear or traits at most: 969×916×1.25 / 916 = 1211 per hit

Medium exotic armour without toughness grants 1064 extra defence.

An engineer with decent bonus power (say, 916 bonus) versus a medium armour target who has no bonus toughness will deal at most: 969x(1832)x1.25 / (916+1064) = 1120 per hit

Verdict: You can make anything look amazing if you use it against a target who is frenzied with maximum vulnerability stacks while having offensive boons stacked on yourself. I don’t really understand the point of the posts in this thread that say bomb kits can deal massive damage against naked vulnerable targets. If you took the same target and clipped them with two hits from Hundred Blades it would probably deal upwards of 60k damage as well, let alone over 200k if they got hit by the full combo.

Penguin.5197:

Tulki.1458:

Penguin.5197:

Indeed. So when shooting with s/d you just gotta remember to shoot while having rifle out.

Engineers don’t have a weapon toggle so that’s not an option.

Instead of on a kit.

It doesn’t matter if you’re using a kit. The tool belt skills still use your equipped weapon’s damage, so if you’re using a pistol underneath that then you still get reduced power.

Dynnen.6405:

Because getting 1m 21 seconds of poison because you got root spammed in poison clouds makes sense

If you got root-spammed anywhere in pvp, then a few poison ticks are going to be the least of your problems. I’d wager that the warrior up in your face swinging away for thousands of damage is going to be more threatening than poison.

Anyway, yes, the direct damage of poison grenades is really low. The AoE markers are shown to you before the grenades land, and the only way you get the full duration is if you stand where all three circles intersect for the entire duration of the poison, which is really really stupid. We’re talking certifiably stupid, here.

Balancing the grenade kit with the assumption that everyone has it traited is a dumb way to do balance. Specialization is supposed to be strong. Grenades are strong against stationary targets. If you are stationary against a grenadier, you should die because you’re playing right into their hands. There seems to be this balance strategy recently where if a build is incredibly strong when it’s supposed to be strong, it needs a flat nerf across the board and I don’t agree with that at all.

This master-rank engineer trait sticks out like a sore thumb in terms of how outclassed it is. Let’s compare.

Go For The Eyes: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Go_for_the_Eyes

What it gives:
- A CHANCE on critical hit to cause blind.
- Internal cooldown of 10s.
- Only works with the rifle.

Compare it to these other master weapon traits:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Forceful_Greatsword
- Works with two weapon classes.
- 100% proc rate on crit.
- No internal cooldown.
- Also grants 20% reduced recharge, which for engineers requires a totally separate rifle trait.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sundering_Mace
- Increases damage against weakened foes with the mace.
- 20% reduced recharge is also bundled in with this trait (again, rifle for engineers requires a totally separate trait).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Merciless_Hammer
- Increases damage against disabled targets with a hammer.
- 20% reduced recharge is bundled in with this trait as well (again, rifle for engineers requires a totally separate trait).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quick_Breathing
- Allows warhorn skills to convert conditions to boons.
- 20% reduced recharge is bundled in with this trait as well (again, rifle for engineers requires a totally separate trait).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Arrows
- Increases damage against burning targets with the bow.
- 20% reduced recharge is bundled in with this trait as well (again, rifle for engineers requires a totally separate trait).

… notice a trend? Go For The Eyes is a master-rank trait, as are all of those warrior traits above. Yet, instead of getting rifle recharge bundled with the blind-on-crit effect of Go For The Eyes, engineers have to use up a separate trait slot:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hair_Trigger

“But wait!”, you might ask. That trait also reduces the recharge for harpoon guns and pistols!
Well, an engineer can never have two of (rifle, pistol, harpoon) in combat at a time because they only have one weapon slot and the harpoon is underwater, so that’s a moot point.

This doesn’t make sense. Why do engineers have to buy an adept trait and a master trait in order to match the benefit of one warrior master trait?

Checked actual damage. Tooltips for anything that scales off of weapon damage are completely borked.

Penguin.5197:

Indeed. So when shooting with s/d you just gotta remember to shoot while having rifle out.

Engineers don’t have a weapon toggle so that’s not an option.

It used to do twice as much damage and bleed while overcharged and fired faster.

Now, it does no bleeding, deals only normal shot damage, and the bonus attack speed is bugged and doesn’t get applied.

WELCOME TO TURRETS

I just tested this.

Tool belt skills scale with your equipped weapon’s “weapon power” stat. This means if you are an engineer using p/p or p/s instead of a rifle, your weapon power is about 25% lower than it could be with a rifle, and as a result all of your tool belt skills are scaled down by 25% damage.

Just a word of warning to both players and devs.

1. Engineer. Two reasons: The first is turrets and turret traits, which have been bugged since beta. I have a feeling they just need to be completely remade. They also have too little HP for PvE zones. Necrominion health was increased in PvE to compensate for the same issue, but turrets did not get this. Having a quarter of the engineer’s utility skills horribly bugged makes the profession impossible to balance. The second is the matter of ascended weapon damage versus kits. Simply put, kits cannot benefit from the 5% extra damage that comes with ascended weapons even though engineers lose a weapon toggle in exchange for kits. One suggestion is to give all ascended weapons a passive bonus: +5% damage to kits. This would mean that kit engies can benefit from ascended weapons, but they still have to work for it like any other profession. This change would presumably also benefit things like warrior banners and elementalist conjured weapons.

2. Ranger. I have a level 80 ranger, though I haven’t used them for awhile. When I was levelling and even now, I see people joke a lot about this profession. Since a large chunk of the ranger’s power is pushed onto their pet, the ranger himself is weaker. This makes sense, but I think making the ranger’s pet more active by way of improved pet utilities would be a good start.

3. Thief. This is mainly a PvP deal I suppose, but I think some thought needs to be put into how stealth interacts with enemies, e.g. what should cause stealth to be removed, what shouldn’t.

I know this thread is just asking for a vote on who gets worked on first, but I also think another overarching problem is hit point totals for players in PvE. The health tiers are way too far apart. I don’t think they should all be made equal, but the gaps between low-mid health tier and mid-high health tiers need to be partly closed in PvE.

Jzaku.9765:

Tulki.1458:

All you’re doing is adding channel times to most of the engineer’s abilities to prevent the class from being mobile at all.

I hate to be “that guy”, but these ideas really are horrible. If part of the reason is that you hate dealing with things like spammy grenade kits, maybe you should try being more mobile. While it’s true that grenades are extremely powerful, that only applies to stationary targets. They fly slowly to their destination. The same thing applies to the flamethrower’s fireball, and many other abilities. Those don’t need charge times. The opponent just needs to learn how to dodge.

The entire grenade skill shot argument falls flat on its face when you consider that you can unload the whole kit right under your feet in what is basically a full aoe cleave. OP has addressed this by adding a minimum range. And what exactly are you dodging when dealing with grenades? The very fact that you refer to it as “sustained damage” is already very telling. That’s the problem that OP is trying to address here. Sustained damage is not good for the game when it is the entire point of a build – it makes dodging meaningless when there is no telegraphed burst to dodge. See: Condi vs burst meta arguments.

Your counter-argument falls flat on its face when you realize every class has a ranged weapon. Ironically, grenades are weaker the further away they’re cast. If someone is deciding not to exploit their slow projectile speed, then that’s their problem.

Also, every skill in this game can be spammed at point-blank range. Thieves can cast and detonate explosive arrows in melee range for massive bleeding, and they can do so even better since they balance initiative rather than cooldowns. Warriors can detonate their explosive shot immediately by launching it at their feet. Why you decided to target one specific profession is baffling.

Oh, and there’s also something called “projectile reflection”. If a grenade engineer is giving you no room to breathe, then your reflects will give him no room to breathe either. I’ve killed engineers this way many, many times.

All you’re doing is adding channel times to most of the engineer’s abilities to prevent the class from being mobile at all.

I hate to be “that guy”, but these ideas really are horrible. If part of the reason is that you hate dealing with things like spammy grenade kits, maybe you should try being more mobile. While it’s true that grenades are extremely powerful, that only applies to stationary targets. They fly slowly to their destination. The same thing applies to the flamethrower’s fireball, and many other abilities. Those don’t need charge times. The opponent just needs to learn how to dodge.

Seras.5702:

I think I might like that bug with Elixir H. Getting 5s protection and 2s vigor sounds pretty nice. Getting 10s regen and then a lucky timed 1s prot could be pretty neat.

As for EG, yea, it’s not supposed to work on any of its skills, despite the tooltip saying they’re “elixirs.” That one’s been discussed a lot.

And I’m almost certain there was a bug where Potent Elixirs wasn’t properly affecting Elixir U but it was fixed. If it got re-broken well….then that’s pretty lame.

Yeah I figured it shouldn’t be affecting Elixir Gun skills anyway, since that weapon has its own family of traits.

Splitting the duration bonus into a separate boon is often wasted though. 1s of protection is rarely useful because many skills have cast times that will already cut that 1s window in half.

After testing out this trait with Toss Elixir H, I noticed something really weird.

Potent Elixirs is supposed to increase elixir durations by 20%. Toss Elixir H has this behaviour:

Randomly gain:
- Protection 5s
- Regeneration 10s
- Vigor 10s

Now, potent elixirs is supposed to give the same effect (one at random) at 120% normal duration. Instead, what it does is this:

Randomly gain:
- Protection 5s
- Regeneration 10s
- Vigor 10s

PLUS

Randomly gain:
- Protection 1s
- Regeneration 2s
- Vigor 2s

So when you toss elixir H with potent elixirs, you can get weird results like 1s protection and 10s regeneration. Instead of picking one boon and enhancing that by 20% with the trait, it picks one boon at normal effectiveness then adds 20% of another random boon. What it should be doing is granting 120% of ONE boon. This is the way Toss Elixir B works with Potent Elixirs.

The trait also doesn’t seem to work with any of the Elixir Gun skills that are tagged with “Elixir”, nor does it increase the duration of Toss Elixir U or Toss Elixir C.

I’m not totally against the nerf to the net turret (3s -> 2s), but if they’re going to nerf the immobilize duration why don’t they return the firing period from 13s back to 10s where it was supposed to be the whole time? That only seems fair because the problem people are having with it in Supply Drop is the initial net shot, not the firing speed.

Also, when the rifle turret’s overcharge was changed from a bleeding shot to a vuln shot, they also reduced its overcharge shot damage by half without mentioning it in the patch notes.

Also, please remove the arc from the rocket turret’s overcharge. Just make it a straight shot. You cannot overcharge that turret in buildings or caves because it just fires directly at the ceiling and gets wasted.

Also (again), many of the underwater versions of turrets are running stats from a previous patch, and are more buggy with trait interactions.

Also (again again), Deployable Turrets has a similar problem. When you enable the Deployable Turrets trait, your turrets get replaced with versions that can be thrown. Unfortunately, those alternate turret versions are also from a previous build and are more buggy with trait interactions. This is really unfortunate because I think Deployable Turrets has the potential to be one of the most fun traits to use.

And finally, turret health is a problem. I’m not arguing that it should be increased in pvp or even wvw, because players generally deal less damage than mobs. But I am saying that turrets should have more health in pve zones. 71% more health – the exact same bonus that necromancer minions recently got in pve. That’s only fair.