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Shadow steps can be used to go through walls/ceilings. E.g.you target the ceiling on krihlo but you end up on the roof.
Bird pets have to be able to walk to their target.
That first one’s not actually a bug. It’s been around since beta.
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Engineer downed skill #2 activates inconsistently. Sometimes it works, other times it simply goes straight to cooldown.
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I posted this in the Thief forum a few days ago but I feel that it would be better placed here. Right now, DH traps are flagrantly countering Thieves. A big part of this is how shadowstepping across DH traps actually triggers them, even if you’re going to the other side of them. Too often I have been blatantly wrecked and insta killed not by skill of the guards, but rather by shadowstepping ACROSS Test of Faith, just for the shadowstep pathing to think I walked through it. In the process, it triggers the traps twice and insta kills me.
This is a big problem for me and other thieves and needs to be toned downed. Shadowstepping should NOT trigger DH traps.
Amen brother. There’s also dragon’s maw which will cc you if you shadowstep out of it. Really wonky.
On the same note, engineer’s #2 downed skill for me only seems to activate half the time. The other half it just goes on cooldown for me.
Please fix these things ANet. Small details break the game.
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This topic is funny. I’ve never lost to a pistol thief on my guard. D/P thieves and staff thieves? Sure. But not pistol thieves.
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There isn’t “a” reason for toxicity. There are many. Much of it stemming from the magical power of keyboard anonymity. Human nature. The fact the game is about direct confrontation and conflict. The fact that the performance of others impacts your results.
I’d start with those. The basic ingredients for toxicity.
This. There’s so many things going wrong with PvP combined with the naturally toxic nature of the internet and competitive behavior.
Throw in achievements in the mix, and it’s all a wash. ANet doesn’t seem to have done much to improve problems, and seems to just throw problems in a spin cycle.
Oh, and I’ve lost 5 matches in one night at time of posting. This kind of kitten matchmaking really adds to the toxicity. I just want to finish my dailies so I can stop playing this game.
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(edited by Vagrant.7206)
DH and Necro are two classes that are super easy to play. There’s a relatively low skill cap. But if you faceroll 1-8, you can wipe much higher skill cap classes with relative ease.
That’s why people complain. People may complain about rev, engi, thief, or mesmer, but they have the higher skill caps and take more effort to play well.
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I think Druids have just a wee too much bunker in them. With a Toughness and Healing Power build, Druids can contest points for the whole match solo. When I’ve been fighting 1 v 1 using my Engi, I get him down to half HP, then poof, full heal. 5 minutes later, I need to call for backup because he just won’t go away. IMO, Druids are more OP than Dragon Hunters.
The irony is people used to complain about engineers doing this, and now it’s druid’s turn.
GG ANet WP
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Future dueling area they’re never gonna finish implementing.
Seems a bit late to implement.
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Just noticed the section where the underwater stuff used to be is gone, replaced with a grass field and viewing sections.
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I have over 750 Tomes of Knowledge sitting on my chars/bank. Please make them useful for SOMETHING. At the very least let me use them in a “consume all” to get the spirit shards. Double clicking and hitting ok per tome is not fun.
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After yet another instance of a bad player blaming the thief for problems in a match… Is there any way to deal with the abusive behavior of other players besides blocking them? It feels like you should be able to rate people’s behavior.
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MMR provides relative indication of a players skill.
If you want you playerbase to have challenging matches, then MMR is used for matchmaking.
PIPs indicate a players progression thru a league/ladder/season.
If tyou want to run a “league/season”, then you need something to show progression through the league/season.
Its just a question on “how do you want run your league/ladder”. And how do you incorporate these “PIP’s” for that particular league.
But once you have the MMR rating to measure skill and create challenging and balanced matches, what “progression” are pips supposed to measure?
On a perfect scenario, where the odds of winning should settle at around 50% for every single players and game, the only “progression” we can truly measure is the amount of games played, so it’s basically a reward track.
Exactly. That’s why I like the idea of the pips system being used for matchmaking. You can advance as far as you like and see progression, not something that’s a pure grind.
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Why dont you tie the pips directly to the MMR? When MMR decreases so do the pips – in any league. So a single game does not equal a pip.
Well, the pips should be the MMR rating, ideally. Every season they get reset, and you face people who have a close amount of pips. You can move up and down divisions and tiers while always facing people with similar pip values.
That way when you hit a wall, you really do know that you are “where you belong.” And it gives an objective measure of your pvp skill to other players.
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Thief may be popular, but it’s painfully weak. The current meta is AoE heavy, which is no bueno. If you don’t have a perfect ping and reflexes, you can get hosed way too quickly (even then, it’s still too easy to die).
I play with really bad ping (avg: 250) and it works well enough to get me to legend x2 this season so far. Honestly, rotations and knowing match ups is waaay more important than ping. What you should be able to dodge, you can dodge with that ping. Only thing I can think of that I wished I could re actively dodge is quickness berserk mace f1. Honestly, at high tiers, it doesn’t matter what class you play, you need to dodge stuff and have good reflexes. Thief makes your life a bit easier in this regard since you only need to +1 instead of 1v1 anyway.
Finding +1’s is tricky. More often than not, the +1 becomes a 2v2 with a DH in the middle.
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/fifteencharacters
We HAVE both. That’s the problem.
Pips just do not work. It’s not a good system. It’s a race to the top. The only “competitive” aspect of it is who can get there the fastest. Pips just signify how far along the track you are, not how skilled you are.
MMR with leaderboard works. We had it in the past. It wasn’t perfect, but it did give you an idea of how skilled you were.
Careful what you ask for!! It wasnt perfect is the key word here, they swapped it for a reason.
Yeah, I should reconsider that.
I was gonna say, that system was kinda wonky. It was… functional, but not ideal either. I honestly like the pips system, I think it should be used for matchmaking purposes — IE matching you with opponents within a few pips of you. After you reach legendary, it should attempt to match you with enemies close to your prestige.
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(edited by Vagrant.7206)
Thief may be popular, but it’s painfully weak. The current meta is AoE heavy, which is no bueno. If you don’t have a perfect ping and reflexes, you can get hosed way too quickly (even then, it’s still too easy to die).
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I actually agree with this. I play a condi engineer and I sigh every time I face a necro because plague signet counters almost my entire build. It’s really stupid. I have to go out of my way to avoid necros. One skill shouldn’t be able to counter an entire build.
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/fifteencharacters
Because achievement and reward progression is tied to pips. What incentive does someone have to maintain a high MMR? It inhibits their progress and doesn’t necessarily feel fun.
If your matchmaking system is based on the pips, then high skill players will quickly ascend to legendary tier, and matches will start to sort themselves out by skill. Progression won’t feel slow and irritating, nor will matchmaking be hidden behind an invisible veil.
If your matchmaking system is based on MMR… then achievement and reward progression should be as well. Thus, having a high MMR would be worthwhile and people would be interested in upping their personal game to get higher and earn the rare achievements.
But with both… I’m pitted in 50/50 win/loss matches and I can’t get tier progression. It’s like the worst aspects of both MMR and pips…
I’ve been sitting 5 pips under diamond for a while now and I can’t reach diamond. It’s extremely aggravating, especially after a slow start where sapphire was near impossible to break out of, and where I spent 3 hours last night and accomplished nothing. I spent another 2 hours today and ended up EXACTLY where I started. Why play the game at all?
If you have been stuck at the same place for 10+ matches wouldn’t it make sense to say that is likely where you belong?
Obviously you are not capable of swaying the outcome of a match too much, so how is it you figure you should be in a higher tier?
Surprisingly no.
Because matchmaking is restricted to opponents who are (mostly) in your tier, you aren’t actually facing all opponents who have similar MMR ratings to you. For example, earlier this season I was stuck in sapphire because I kept getting 50/50 win/losses. I managed to make it into ruby after much luck and effort.
And as soon as I made it into ruby? I zipped almost all the way into diamond with a winstreak of around 10 matches, stopping where I am now, just 5 pips short of diamond. And now I’m stuck again. If I had tanked my MMR at the very beginning of the season, I could have easily made it into Legendary tier by now.
It’s not “where I belong” because there is no place where I “belong” in a system that is segmented. I can probably find players of equal MMR in every tier.
TL; DR: I don’t belong in any one tier, because tiers are an entirely different form of segregation from MMR.
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(edited by Vagrant.7206)
I just played 3 hours and got nowhere.
Remind me how this is about fun again?
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I’m tired of being jerked back and forth in place for 10+ matches ANet.
I want to earn achievements that are tied to pips. But I can’t do that when MMR is what determines your matchmaking instead of your pips. On top of that, we can’t even find out what our personal MMR is anywhere, so we’re subjected to mysterious forces.
Please pick one or the other for matchmaking ANet. This is really frustrating.
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Put a delay on when allies can start rezzing. I see it start INSTANTLY before they hit the floor.
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There’s no counters to necro shroud.
Actually there is a counter to necro shroud: don’t let the necro get shroud. honestly if people expect that necro has no shroud when they just attack through spectral armor then that’s their fault.
That’s not really a counter. Necro has several unblockable attacks that give life force, as well as the fact that you’re asking people to just ignore you when you activate spectral armor, which can be difficult to spot in a big fight, just like moa casting.
ruining berzerker and completely killing any necro that goes against a mesmer.
There’s no counter to berserker mode BESIDES moa. You have perma stability, massive HP regen, and plenty of blocks and damage ignorance to go with it. A well-placed moa says “screw your passives” and reverses that. And moa can’t be spammed with any particular frequency either. It’s on a long cooldown.
As for necro, most of the time I see it being used against necro is when they enter shroud in order to not die when they’re being focused. Good necros stay far enough away from the fight to nuke without getting focused. Moa is pointless if the necro isn’t under any real threat.
And with celestial form, at least it helps counter the ridiculous heal-to-full and stealth skills they have.
I’d also like to point out that if you do get moa’d… you do have skills still. As soon as I get moa’d, I pop #5 because it’s an evade that lasts a significant length of the moa spell. And I still have evades…
The only time moa is a real threat is if you’re getting focused already — if you’re not in any particular danger, it really isn’t a threat.
because shroud is a ranged attack. yeah right….
The time when Moa is a problem for necros is when they are in the fray. That generally only happens when they are prepared to attack or getting focused on. If they are prepared, they can survive the moa.
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There’s no counters to necro shroud.
Actually there is a counter to necro shroud: don’t let the necro get shroud. honestly if people expect that necro has no shroud when they just attack through spectral armor then that’s their fault.
That’s not really a counter. Necro has several unblockable attacks that give life force, as well as the fact that you’re asking people to just ignore you when you activate spectral armor, which can be difficult to spot in a big fight, just like moa casting.
ruining berzerker and completely killing any necro that goes against a mesmer.
There’s no counter to berserker mode BESIDES moa. You have perma stability, massive HP regen, and plenty of blocks and damage ignorance to go with it. A well-placed moa says “screw your passives” and reverses that. And moa can’t be spammed with any particular frequency either. It’s on a long cooldown.
As for necro, most of the time I see it being used against necro is when they enter shroud in order to not die when they’re being focused. Good necros stay far enough away from the fight to nuke without getting focused. Moa is pointless if the necro isn’t under any real threat.
And with celestial form, at least it helps counter the ridiculous heal-to-full and stealth skills they have.
I’d also like to point out that if you do get moa’d… you do have skills still. As soon as I get moa’d, I pop #5 because it’s an evade that lasts a significant length of the moa spell. And I still have evades…
The only time moa is a real threat is if you’re getting focused already — if you’re not in any particular danger, it really isn’t a threat.
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(edited by Vagrant.7206)
One of the VERY few counters there are for transformation. It is perfectly fine as is.
I was gonna say. There’s no counters to necro shroud or juggernaut or astral form other than moa. If you wanted to nerf moa, then consider what WoW does with sheep form — the enemy is sheeped, but you if you damage them they return to normal. At least then you wouldn’t be stuck for too long in moa form.
What’s moa’s counter?
Dodge.
Seriously, half my moas on my engie miss because of dodge.
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I played necro since beta, so I know exactly how it feels being forced to re-roll due to bad balancing.
Nevertheless, I posted it several times already… I prefer a team with 4 good thieves to a team with perfect comp but bad players any day. And I can tell you… that team with good players will always win, no matter the teamcomp.
Because teamcomp isnt as important as people tend to think. Skill is way more important. You can compensate a lot with player-skill.
The idea behind using the MMR is that players are supposed to be of roughly even skill. If that’s the case (a big if, I know), then team comp is huge. Class stacking is always problematic — some classes just play well with others (IE Eles and Druids, Guardians and Necros, Mesmers and Engineers, Wars and Revs), and others do not (IE Thieves and Warriors, or Thieves and Revs).
Even if you account for build diversity, the design philosophy behind certain classes means they work well with certain other classes, and work poorly with others. Thieves suffer the most because their design philosophy is bad for even team-fights, which are the vast majority of fights in conquest mode (another reason to add more variety to pvp modes).
So you have 3 thieves on your team? Well, then you probably wont win by trying to hold 2 points the entire match. Instead you will have to go for kills, beasts, decaps/caps, always disengaging and keeping the enemy team running.
Problem with decap/cap is overall you get less points per cap, and it takes longer to get the points you need to win. Holding onto points results in a faster, more decisive win. Constantly trading points tends to result in matches that are not blowouts, which is why we see more blowouts nowadays since tanks are the meta.
I am definitely in favor of reducing the overall tank meta, personally. Makes for more interesting matches, and more diverse builds.
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(edited by Vagrant.7206)
Hi there,
First, here’s the a recent post on the topic:
With the start of Season 4, we’ll be returning to Season 1’s style of matchmaking which focuses on creating the most balanced teams from the players queueing within your pip range. This change may widen the skill range of players in each division, but we feel that increased match quality is worth the trade-off of reduced prestige for this season. During Season 2 and 3 we added two league features that greatly impacted your ability to climb: start-of-season division placement based on previous season performance and win/lose streak pips, and both of these features will remain enabled for Season 4.
Season 4 matchmaking is already using MMR to create the most balanced teams possible. Teams are no longer “stacked” as they were in Season 2 and 3.
The problem (that we’re solving for S5) is that we’re currently searching for players close to your division to match you against. This means that the pool of players that we can pull from to create a match is much smaller than if we were using the entire pool of players. A player may have a high-enough MMR to put them in the top 100, but if they’re in Sapphire they’re only going to get matched with players that are in or around Sapphire. Season 5 will use the entire pool of players for creating matches – this should help the system create more balanced matches and improve queue times.
As for the “forced 50/50”, there’s nothing on the backend that forces a certain win-rate. This is a byproduct of your MMR settling.
TL ; DR : Tank your MMR if you want any kind of advancement in the pips.
Thanks ANet.
Protip: Don’t use a pip system for achievements if this is how you’re going to “balance” the PvP. It makes it agonizing and kittenin irritating to play PvP, because you can’t advance. It’s literally the worst of both worlds — I’m getting a 50% winrate (so I can never have a “good” day or a bad day or some kind of frigging variety), and I can’t advance. I know that if I ever have a “winning streak,” that it’s all gonna go away unless I get really lucky.
This means I’m stuck and not having fun. At least with seasons 2 and 3 you could advance fast and have fun that way. You got some variation, and when you hit the ceiling you stopped playing. But I’m already at the ceiling, and I just started the season. So what now? It’s not fun.
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(edited by Vagrant.7206)
Good idea.
I think the AR check at the lab is no longer there or I missed it somehow, but in the past I met a couple of people that when asked to check their AR, they received damage.
Being a level 100 Mai Trin run, I was not OK to proceed of course.
At that stage, people who were missing AR obviously, would start to talk trash and swear on all saints that it is not fair, that they do have 150 AR and…the most funny one I met, that they wear full vipers and I am out of my mind to ask him to have 150 AR.
So people will be…I guess people.
For this reason, AR check right at start would solve the problem of getting through the level only to find at the end boss or in middle way that some people in the party do not have the AR and in some cases (I met several) NO AR AT ALL while attempting T4s.
Some warrior trash talked me for half an hour after he blocked me so I couldn’t respond, despite the fact that he/she was ranging the whole Mai Trin fight, and as soon as agony hit them, they dropped 80% of their health. It was hilarious, because I had to convince the party to kick them. So the whole fight I just kept following them around, in order to proc the proximity agony at 100. Just imagine one character following another around in order to prove they didn’t have enough AR.
But no, I was the reason they were dying. Not their poor life decisions to not bring enough AR.
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(edited by Vagrant.7206)
Toughness changes are poorly signaled in fractals. FOr example, after dealing 50% of damage to the Thaumnova anomaly, it suddenly gets harder to damage, with no visual or other indication. This renders the healthbar partly meaningless (The first 50% is about 5% of the 2nd health bar in how much it takes to burn down) and distorts the players’ ability to tell how well they are doing. There need to be clear indicators (and not just hidden among tons of icons below the health bar) as to what is going on.
Thaumanova is a terrible example. Party DPS drops like crazy at 50% health because people are too busy trying to not die to focus on damage. Groups that can continue to maintain their attacks while dodging the fall actually continue to take him down just as fast as the first 50%
If you want to test your theory, take turrets or minions with you. They will continue to do the same amount of damage regardless of which phase he’s in.
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You’re right. It’s not optimal; it’s easy and is a nice safeguard and carry class if you end up on a team with really bad players. That’s why it’s so popular.
Not just that.
At t4, condis can easily outdamage power builds, owing to the way armor is applied to higher tier enemies. I see enemies die much faster with all-condi groups, on top of the high-health and carry potential of necros.
(btw I run a condi engi. I consistently draw aggro from RANGE despite having only 1000 toughness. Means I’m doing a ton of damage compared to the other players)
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(edited by Vagrant.7206)
Taking same skill level and meta builds into account
Thief: gets pooped on by everything but necro and ele.
Not a smart thief. Smart thieves engage and disengage at will. Constant engagement is certain death for a thief. A good thief can beat all classes (some easier than others), and a bad thief can get pooped on by all classes.
It has to do with a skill capacity. A bad thief has a poor latency (150ms or greater), poor sense of timing, and bad situational awareness. A great thief has an excellent latency, good sense of timing, and great situational awareness. Thief is one of those classes for the twitchy gamers.
My experience as a condi engineer:
- I outlast DH’s, and let them burn their cooldowns. I then spike with condi once I know their condi cleanses have been burned.
- Warriors, I try to trick them into burning endure pain and berserker stance, then simply kite until they run out. Then spike with condi. They tend to win if they know how to keep the CC/pressure up though.
- Thieves? All it takes is a well placed shot or two and most of them die to condis. AoE condis certainly help.
- Rangers are probably the hardest to duel on my condi engi, because they seem to have a lot of cleanses, healing, CC, and stealth. I try to keep pressure constant, and watch what their pet is doing. If ranger is LB/GS, I keep constant pressure. If they are a staff druid, I dodge their pet while keeping constant pressure.
- Eles? If they have obsidian skin (or diamond skin, whatever trait), I try to spike damage enough to reach the threshhold and then dump condis. If not, I simply space out my condis so that their cleanses are ineffectual. That said, some of them can simply outheal everything and ends up being a waste of time.
- Mesmers, I hit hard with condis first to force them to burn their cleanses, then lay on a steady stream of pressure. They usually go down quickly.
- Necros, I try to trick/force into using their plague signet early on, and then dump condis immediately once it’s clear it’s been burned. Smart necros avoid my attention and let me dump condis on their friends, then murder me with my own damage from plague signet.
- Other engies are tricky. Condi engies are about damage mitigation and watching what part of their DPS cycle they’re on. Power hammer engies I CC and kite until I feel they’ve burned their cooldowns, then lay on the condis thick.
- Rev meta is currently irritating. Excessive amounts of blocks, dodges, and more. I have to use my unblockable attacks frequently, then lay condis on when they are on cooldown. I generally try to avoid the current meta revenant, which I feel is a bit on the OP side.
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(edited by Vagrant.7206)
The matchmaking doesn’t take classes into account either, so you have a chance of ending with a very bad comp.
I was just in a game where there were 3 DH on one team and 3 Rev on the other team,
Why isn’t the game mixing up the classes and placing guards and revs on both teams?Just makes no sense to promote class stacking and then say on the forum it’s something you want to improve on 4 seasons in.
I’ve noticed this too. The matchmaking does not attempt to compensate for class or build, or anything similar. This can result in really wonky team compositions that just do not synergize, even if MMR rates both teams the same.
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People are finding that they can’t advance as fast or far as last season.
One logical explanation is that they were boosted by the mmr system higher than they should have been. Now, without the advantage of being on a team pre-set to win, they find themselves over matched.
Nah, the only reason is because we are back to artificially forced 50% winrate from season 1 with pip gains from season 3.
In season 1, if i won vs decent team i would get 2-3 pips, if i lost but managed to get the score high enough i might not even lose pip. So if you did your best and you were good player you still had positive progression.
In current system it is always +1-1, regardless of your MMR and how much effort you put into match, combined with forced 50% wl ratio it makes progression extremely slow, especially if you add trolls/dcs etc.
And dear Ithilwen.1529, you got 50% win rate is not because of your skill but because it is enforced by the system. Anyone that plays mainly soloq has around 50% win rate unless they don’t have many games on their account yet.
Why do people think its enforced by the system and not a by product of matching you with nearly equally skilled players.
The previous two seasons were a total joke with one team being designed to win BY THE SYSTEM. This season is like season 1 where the 50% win rate is merely a consequence of matching equally skilled teams.
I see lots of complaints about balance in all PvP games but this might be the only game where players are so needy that they complain about a system that is well designed in giving you a 50/50 record once your MMR settles down. I would love to port some of these arguments to the DOTA2 forums and watch those toxic mfers just eat this forum alive.
Simple.
The matches are often blowouts.
That’s not an equal matching of skill. Quite the opposite. Getting a 50% winrate on matches that are mostly blowouts means the system isn’t actually doing any kind of proper matchmaking.
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Question: How many of you guys actually play engineers? Most of the people who I see who complain about them don’t actually play them.
I play Engi although I’m a terrible one. And despite being a terrible Engi, I can stay alive againts any class because the passive and childish defenses this class was given is ridiculous. Sure I can’t kill other players but like I said, I’m a terrible Engi. Now get this, I’m not a very good Engi yet I can sustain with the best of them, imagine just an average Engi. An average Engi is better than a great thief, rev, warr, and Mesmer. That is not ok. So imagine what a great Engi would look like? An unkillable class that can burst with the best of them.
I assume your build is the power hammer build, right?
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scrapper_-_Power_Hammer
This build is designed to tank while applying moderate pressure. It’s incredible for that purpose, so that even a newbie can tank. The thing is, at high level play, that build doesn’t do quite as well as you might think. You may not die that much, but most of your enemies won’t either, unless they are bad at kiting, evading, or other forms of damage mitigation. Thieves and mesmers can run circles around power hammer engineers. Guardians can simply wait out the cooldowns. Warriors can condi and CC like nobody’s business. Rangers can just outheal the damage. Necros can simply chill the engineer and kite, all while corrupting boons.
It’s not that the class or the build is overpowered (surprise, powerful builds end up as the meta), it’s that you need to learn how to counter these builds.
Good counters to the power scrapper? CC. CC the crap out of them. Cripple them. Chill them. Blind them. Deal with their buddies first then focus them down.
I don’t usually play that build because I find it boring. The damage is moderate at best — it’s decent pressure and you can get an occasional spike if you do it right, but it’s ultimately a tanking build that’s boring. No careful timing required, no clever play required. I prefer engi condi builds for that reason.
And if you consider ANet’s design for engineers, that’s not surprising. As a class, they have ALWAYS been designed as a victory by attrition class. They have never had the most amazing burst damage, or the best CC’s, but they could always outlast the other classes. That has been their whole design philosophy, and ANet has stuck to it with the scrapper.
I play engineer as main and mesmer as alternative in spvp. For going against scrapper it is important to “wait” As mesmer I usually make them use their bulk gyro toolbet skill and then i try to condi spam them as hell. Scrapper suffers condi ( not like core engi becouse it has more sustain) and it has low mobility . IF you use a class with mobility use your mobility skills only to make distance and avoid melee. Scrapper is strong, really strong , but in my opinion it is balanced now . It is not simple to take them down neither impossible and in any case if they are good ones it is better to overrotate them and go elsewhere +1 . Many times going 1 vs 1 is not the best thing to do. It has a meaning only if you can win 1vs 1 fast and it is not the case if you go against a good scrapper
That’s my experience as well. It’s a strong build, to be sure, but it can be outplayed.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
Question: How many of you guys actually play engineers? Most of the people who I see who complain about them don’t actually play them.
I play Engi although I’m a terrible one. And despite being a terrible Engi, I can stay alive againts any class because the passive and childish defenses this class was given is ridiculous. Sure I can’t kill other players but like I said, I’m a terrible Engi. Now get this, I’m not a very good Engi yet I can sustain with the best of them, imagine just an average Engi. An average Engi is better than a great thief, rev, warr, and Mesmer. That is not ok. So imagine what a great Engi would look like? An unkillable class that can burst with the best of them.
I assume your build is the power hammer build, right?
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scrapper_-_Power_Hammer
This build is designed to tank while applying moderate pressure. It’s incredible for that purpose, so that even a newbie can tank. The thing is, at high level play, that build doesn’t do quite as well as you might think. You may not die that much, but most of your enemies won’t either, unless they are bad at kiting, evading, or other forms of damage mitigation. Thieves and mesmers can run circles around power hammer engineers. Guardians can simply wait out the cooldowns. Warriors can condi and CC like nobody’s business. Rangers can just outheal the damage. Necros can simply chill the engineer and kite, all while corrupting boons.
It’s not that the class or the build is overpowered (surprise, powerful builds end up as the meta), it’s that you need to learn how to counter these builds.
Good counters to the power scrapper? CC. CC the crap out of them. Cripple them. Chill them. Blind them. Deal with their buddies first then focus them down.
I don’t usually play that build because I find it boring. The damage is moderate at best — it’s decent pressure and you can get an occasional spike if you do it right, but it’s ultimately a tanking build that’s boring. No careful timing required, no clever play required. I prefer engi condi builds for that reason.
And if you consider ANet’s design for engineers, that’s not surprising. As a class, they have ALWAYS been designed as a victory by attrition class. They have never had the most amazing burst damage, or the best CC’s, but they could always outlast the other classes. That has been their whole design philosophy, and ANet has stuck to it with the scrapper.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
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I can’t even get past the first block of 5 on sapphire, and I was legendary last season. Not sure I want to do much ranked at all this season. Seems to be very much 50/50 matches, and it’s just not fun when no matter what you do you can’t seem to change the outcome.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
Question: How many of you guys actually play engineers? Most of the people who I see who complain about them don’t actually play them.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
Don’t forget the karka-slaying rifle found in LA for Princess. It has a unique rifle skin that is unobtainable.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Turl_Sharptooth
Turl Sharptooth provides it.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
Hah.
Yeah, I’ve noticed this several times. Seems to happen most commonly in PvP, but I’ve also seen it happen in Fractals too.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
Has anybody else noticed that the description for the Caudecus pistol describes it as a sword?
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
Just go to your guild hall!
Boom!
You’re welcome.
P.S. Doesn’t work if you’re in combat
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
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Rewards for fractals with respect to effort (time, difficult, etc. ) is the best it’s ever been.
Yeah, because before the rewards were practically non-existent. Doesn’t take much to make it better.
But as it stands, rewards are pretty crap for the amount of time and gold investment you have to put into fractals in the first place. It isn’t a dungeon you can hop into with any gear. You have to take the time to work on your AR, build infusion slots, and get your build together. But it gives rewards that are worse than an Auric Basin meta that isn’t even a multimap.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
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do you all realize you can click the “yes” button and then immediately click the “no” button and then exit the match ?
That has never worked for me either.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
I have to say, the OP’s post lines up pretty well with my experience. I play T4, as I have for a while now.
Chaos: Generally straightforward. Since it was my first time in this fractal, it took a bit longer, but otherwise fun. Only problem was the fight with the legendary brazen gladiator. He ends up being too much of a damage sponge. I think the fight could go a lot better if his health level was toned down a bit. I didn’t really notice the stun on his autoattack, as I was ranged the whole fight. That said, the fight feels more reminiscent of Thaumanova than it does of Aetherblade — when your teammates go down, you almost never can help them. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but it can be really punishing to have another fractal where you’re the last one alive and trying to solo the boss (surprise, happened to me, the condi engineer).
Swamp: The changes with Mossman and the map were fine. Mossman had a ton of wolves, but not unmanageable for the high level. And finally Mossman’s health was reasonable.
The problem was with Bloomhunger. All of his attacks are CC’s, all of them can theoretically one-shot you, and all of them are massive AoE’s. There was no opportunity for melee classes to melee, period. Melee’ing him was tantamount to suicide.
If you get downed by Bloomy, it is extremely difficult for your teammates to get you up due to the CC and AoE nature of his attacks. Because of Bloomy’s constantly moving nature and AoE attacks, it is extremely difficult to break his CC bar. Additionally, the projectile poison that Bloomy shoots out is too quick if you are anywhere near him. You have less than 1/4 second to react at times — that is not a fair amount of time to dodge, and god help you if you’re lagging.
Additionally, when Bloomy phases, if your team is not at full health and prepared, it can quickly become a kitten-show due to the overwhelming number of enemies and the constant need to move.
I also feel that there is simply too much going on, and it is difficult to keep track of everything that is happening. On top of all the constant fighting and moving around, I have to keep track of the poison blossoms and the movement of the wisp AoE. It is visually overstimulating and it is easy to get confused or lost.
My suggestion? Significantly limit the visual effects that are going on during the fight (while making others more obvious, like the wisp. Maybe a bubble or something), and reduce Bloomy’s overall damage. Additionally, reduce the strength of his break bar, to make it achievable to break at range. Very few classes have hard CC’s at a reasonable range (as it should be), but that also means it is extremely rare to break his bar. These changes would bring Bloomy enough into line with other bosses while still keeping him unique.
Overall: There was a lot of melee hate with these changes. While I play engineer and this doesn’t particularly bother me, I noticed it was near impossible for our melee classes to get decent DPS going. If you weren’t ranged condi damage, your damage output was simply crap. I don’t know if this was considered, but it is the result of these changes. My team ended up having 3 necros, a chronomancer, and myself (a condi engineer). Is this the meta you want for fractals ANet?
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
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That question at the end?
Why the hell is the option for “no” always grayed out? I don’t want to join them.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
With the changes to infusion slots on amulets, every fractaler who had an infusion on that slot lost 5 or 7 AR.
That might seem like a small deal, but it ended up costing me 25g to correct. I play level 100 regularly and had 150 AR perfectly. When the patch hit, that dropped me to 143 AR, and in order to make up that 7 AR, I needed 4 +9 infusions.
This cost me in-game money to correct. While the system wasn’t perfect before, it was functional. Because of a QOL change, I had to pay 25g to continue doing what I normally do.
I would like a refund of that money. Or something. I’m pretty peeved by this.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
Oh, yes I have.
Blocks and invulns may affect you condi users in the short-term, but conditions STILL go through them. With cleanses and resistance, there are costs and sacrifices to your build to get use out of them JUST to survive. If you’re focused by two reapers, no cleanses and resistance are going to help you! Sometimes conditions can even seep through resistance! When the effect pulses, there’s an instant when a condition can be applied. Conditions can also be appllied through sigils, passive and active traits and runes.
Most condition attacks can be blocked/blinded. Only a select few are unblockable, and those are typically AoE condis such as wells (which can be avoided). And power builds have their own unblockable attacks too, which are often CC’s.
And the whole point of condi is it continues to deal damage over time, not that it instantly disappears the second you use some kind of temporary invulnerability skill.
And your complaint about sacrifices to your build? Yeah, we have to do it for power builds too. Part of running any build that lasts longer than a few seconds is you have to counter other people’s attacks — that includes both condi and power. I don’t take elixir S or Tool Kit for my entertainment. The current war power meta (Axe/Shield and GS) is an example of a power build that requires a crazy kind of counter to have a chance to stand against (chained CC, high damage bursts, quick getaways). How is that not more unbalanced than your typical condi build?
condi seem easy but good players need to learn and watch the timing as in power build. when to burst and to use key skills combo. especially when condi are ticking and not burst direct dmg in 1 sec. you need to learn the enemy cd’s and if you fail to do so you wont be able to kill just to put some condi on your enemy when in 2 sec his cleanse are ready to use…
This. So much this.
An effective condi player requires good timing. If I dump all my condis on a necro with transferrance, I’m as good as dead. If I dump my condis on a berserker stance war, I’ve wasted all my damage. The only time I see condi dumps work well is when an enemy’s cooldowns are active or condi dumping on thieves. Otherwise, I have to watch what the other player is doing and time my conditions appropriately, as well as mitigate their damage in the meantime.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
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Flappy bird glider!
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
Gotta say, this season’s matchmaking was really bad for me. Sapphire (where I started) to Legendary were mostly ludicrously easy matches — I had a winning streak of 27 at one point. Once I hit legendary though, it started regularly pitting me against people at the top of the leaderboards. And I solo queue. So I went from ridiculously easy matches to stupidly hard matches in no time flat. I gave up after nearly getting to 2nd level of legendary. My fiancee started at Emerald, and had the hardest time reaching Diamond, because the matchmaking system kept working against her.
Unranked produces somewhat more interesting matches, but often it seems to use me as a balance, with several of my team mates being newbies, which is irritating when it feels like I’m doing all the work. If I had an analogy, it uses MMR rating like weights on a scale. Because my rating is relatively high, it puts lots of lightweights with me. It ends up being significantly less fun than matching me with a bunch of people of similar skill level.
Season 2, if I recall… I ended up getting stuck in a rut in Diamond. Ended up with a 50/50 win rate.
I don’t remember season 1 particularly well.
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
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Thief, Herald, and Warr have a “condi cleanse” in the respect that they can remove movement effecting conditions (immob/slow/chill with shadowstep/riposting shadows/[almost every skill] respectively). They can do nothing about damaging effects (bleed/burn/poison/confusion/etc). So while technically correct, I feel it’s irrelevant to the argument which is why I excluded them since we’re talking about damage.
Shadow return and Infiltrator’s return remove condis for thief. As does the dodge trait. Period, full stop. There is also another trait that reduces the effectiveness of cripples, and withdraw also removes crippling conditions. Those are treated differently.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Return
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator's_Return
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Escapist's_Absolution
are not the same as
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Withdraw
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Don't_Stop
Also, as I said, warrior resistance is better than a condi cleanse, generally speaking. You don’t even experience the effects of the condi while under resistance. And another poster mentioned that bursting removes condis as well.
Purge gyro is not current meta for Scrapper. and you’ll rarely if ever see it used in sPVP above Sapphire (unless they change a lot of stuff with the rebalance).
Actually, it is. 1 of the top 5 players on the leaderboards runs with purge gyro. How do I know? I asked him, because he outperformed my condi engineer in a 1v1. So I now run it too, and it’s quite good.
And I’ve seen other engineers using purge gyro frequently too. Those that don’t tend to die when a condi class comes in swinging (particularly necro).
The great god Lagki demands sacrifice.
(edited by Vagrant.7206)