Guild Wars 2

Not a bad idea actually, supporting that. Or make mobs non-skippable somehow.

Premise, I didn’t read most of the posts. I’ll simply quote one of my posts from another thread since you insist calling me an “elite player”.

“You see, I’m not an “elite” player by any means, I think I’m pretty average as far as “skill” goes. When I run a SM dungeon I don’t prepare before-hand, don’t respec, don’t bring specific/good gear and group everyone regardless of their class. Still I got through AC (whose difficulty, imo, should be slightly lowered), CM (pre-patch you could do it with your eyes closed), and TA with relative ease and little-to-zero wipes

All I do is call a target, read the text under the enemies, don’t overaggro and write some lines in /party when a particularly tough boss/trash requires a strategy ( “kite the melees, focus the rangeds” or “equip condition removals for this fight” are good examples). I don’t think this classifies me as an “elite/hardcore/pro gamer” but rather as an average mmo-player. Mind you, my PUGs weren’t perfect: one guy in TA kept dying, yet we made it through."

In short: average players can clear the SM dungeons with a little effort. You don’t need l33t mad skillz.
Should Anet lower the current difficulty/add a lower-difficulty tier? Probably. Is it because the dungeons are insanely hard? No. It’s because people and are, in short, “doing it wrong”:

You make a good point, and altough the guestimate % still seems too high I can understand that a decent portion of the playerbase isn’t able to clear SM dungeons in their current implentation. Let’s leave it at this, since I don’t think we can really gauge the proportions and it’s not really helpful either.

What really bothers me is the amount of exagerations going around. See above crimson and xielkino to confim my point. You see, I’m not an “elite” player by any means, I think I’m pretty average as far as “skill” goes. When I run a SM dungeon I don’t prepare before-hand, don’t respec, don’t bring specific/good gear and group everyone regardless of their class. Still I got through AC (whose difficulty, imo, should be slightly lowered), CM (pre-patch you could do it with your eyes closed), and TA with relative ease and little-to-zero wipes

All I do is call a target, read the text under the enemies, don’t overaggro and write some lines in /party when a particularly tough boss/trash requires a strategy ( “kite the melees, focus the rangeds” or “equip condition removals for this fight” are good examples). I don’t think this classifies me as an “elite/hardcore/pro gamer” but rather as an average mmo-player. Mind you, my PUGs weren’t perfect: one guy in TA kept dying, yet we made it through.

Now, who am I to judge how easy/hard SM dungeons should be? Nobody. You want Anet to lower their difficulty? Fine to me, I’ll start to play explorable dungeons anyways. But when doing so, keep in mind (I really hate to be that guy but I have to do it) that dungeons are impossible for you because you have yet to understand the basics of your class/the game and are playing with your brain switched off.

tl;dr
Should SM dungeons be faceroll-easy? I don’t care, as long as there’s an intermediate options for players like me who aren’t yet ready for explorables but would be bored by less difficult story modes.

Voxnor.1657:

Is tuning down story mode to allow 80-90% of players in to it going to hurt you in some way?

I don’t have anything against another, lower tier of difficulty, except for the fact that it would take the developers time/resources to develop that, and I’d rather them work on something else. Also, where are you pulling those numbers from? Forums are not an accurate way to analyze statistics, and even here I’d say that the % of people complaining about difficulty isn’t even near what you said. The lower tier of difficulty would be implemented for, at best, 20% of our playerbase, the one who pretends to do dungeons with their brains switched off. Are you seriously trying to tell me that 90% of the players couldn’t decently clear TA story mode?

As someone who ran AC, CM (pre-patch) and TA story mode and cleared them with their first PUG, I think their difficulty is a bit off, but not by much. CM was definitely too easy, while AC was too hard. I’d say that the perfect sweet spot in difficulty would be TA.

Dungeons, even story mode ones, shouldn’t be cleared without a little bit of effort. Nothing too hard, mind you, but there should be just a little bit of coordination, not 5 players all individually spamming their l33t “dps rotation”. You could say that most of our playerbase wouldn’t be allowed to “experience the content” if the skill floor doesn’t get lowered to “button mashers” tier, but what’s the pleasure in a fight you just won if all you were doing was mashing keys? I enjoyed TA and AC way more than CM.

Fixeon.5076:

There is no dueling in this game for a reason.

Are you trying to say that they didn’t implement duels because of (supposed) imbalance? Because that’s wrong on so many levels.

1) Duels are for fun and even heavy imbalance in certain matchups it’s not a reason enough to purposefully discard them. See WoW, for example.
2) This game has actually the best balance I’ve ever seen when it comes to duels. I’ve succesfully defeated every class (against decent players) with both my guardian and my engineer. My friend did the same with his mesmer and his ranger. Certain classes might be more resilient to certain builds ( i.e. Necros vs condition dmg builds ) but it’s nothing unsurmountable.
3) Thieves defining trait is their single target burst capabilities. They are not in any way shape or form the dominant duelists of the game, as you are implying.

I think that everyone can agree with me when I say that Elixir X doesn’t bring anything other than frustration to the table and is, as a consequence, never used. Every single Engineer I’ve seen in PvP is using Supply Drop ( if that’s its name ).

Oooops, sorry about that Isabis, I could swear retaliation was just a % of the damage taken reflected back to the enemy… maybe it was like that in beta? I’m sorry, you proved me wrong. I still stand by the point that confusion is okay, altough I’d have to crunch some numbers and see if the difference in dmg taken of slow vs fast autoattackers amounts to something meaningfull.

Daays, you are a league of legends hater which invalidates everything you’ve written although I didn’t even read it. See I can get on a high-horse too.

P.s. not adding anything useful to the thread since I was uninformed. Just wanted to take a stab at that guy. I’m out

It makes minimal difference, especially in big fights where siege weapons are involved. It’s also, probably, a mistake by Arenanet. Why make everyone but one or two stats combos much harder to acquire?

Also affects only WvW and not sPvP. So yeah, in GW2’s pvp gear is not a factor.

Since an “OP is either a troll or pretty stupid” warranted me a post delete/warning, can you moderators guy please close thread such as this one and possibly warn people who mistake this forum as their personal blog?

Because HS is/was a ridicolously strong skill and the shortbow needs to be looked at? If you don’t think the thief is, in the least, one of the stronger hotjoin pvp classes then you are in denial. Not saying that all the complaints are warranted, but that there’s a bit of truth in them.

P.s. this comes from an Engineer who easily rolls every thief that’s not being played by a significantly better player then me, for the simple nature of my particular build.

If the developers are nerfing an OP skill they are doing to lower its strenght and therefore buffing another aspect of said skill would defeat the purpose of the nerf.

The mine kit nerf, however, is an exception : the kit/toolbelt wasn’t OP to begin with and was only useful for its -abuse level- combo finishers. Having completely removed them should warrant us a considerable buff, hopefully soon. Else we are left with another non-viable kit ala Toolkit.

No. For Retaliation, faster attacks =/= more damage taken.
For Confusion, stop autoattacking maybe?

What engineers goes underwater anyways? We only have one weapon which has zero conditions so only direct damage ( meh ) engis or point defense engis get to to underwater.

I never thought of it that way and honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t think of that myself. It was okay to reduce the CC on the kit but really, they removed the one who had the most synergy…

What is underpowered today, will be overpowered tomorrow. Don’t let your concerns about the current strenght of a class -condition- your choice. Go Necro!

See what I did?

The mechanic in itself is fine, some skills just need some tuning.

Try the flamethrower, I currently equip it simply for its knockback, It’s toolbelt skill, while not being exactly strong, helps with the condition damage build.

Exactly. No fees, no talking to npcs. You get an achievement and you get to the next tier, which is 75-150

Cool, worded this way I honestly can’t think of a way to disagree. We have, indeed, weak downed skills when it comes to pve. They aren’t as terrible as some people say, but we are definitely between the weakest classes when downed. Reworking is a big word though and it probably won’t happen, nor do I support it. A buff, on the other hand… Maybe have 2 do something useful against melee mobs, or increase it’s damage?

P.s. sorry for being quite hostile in my previous post, I tend to get way too personal.

You are pretty disinformed, or intentionally “forgetting” about certain aspects of these downed skills. You are outright lying about skill 1 in particular, of which you know nothing about. So you are not proving anything.

I’ll focus on pvp, since I feel like you are right by saying our downed skills are -slightly- sub-par in pve. Again, keep in mind I’m talking from a sPvP/WvW perspective.

First and foremost, skill 1 might apply a random condition (between weakness, chilled and bleed so yeah, no cripples or blinds dude ) but it doesn’t mean it’s the only thing it does. It also does -direct- damage. And the damage, while slightly lower then professions such as warrior or thieves, is respectable ( we are talking of a 10 max dmg difference). The conditions, while not always useful, are a plus. You act like it only applies conditions which is WRONG. So you WILL down an enemy with 1% of hp, get your facts straight please.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Junk Do you even play Engineer?

Second, grappling line. You forgot again that it’s an interrupt. Coincidence, or just trying to prove your point by hiding the truth? It’s also really useful if you are not soloing 100% of the time. You can pull weak enemies to you so your friends in WvW can finish them. The skill is nothing amazing, but still not warranting a “ermagard rework!”

Third skill, nothing to complain at. It’s not the best, it’s not the worst either. Does pretty respectable damage (700+), it’s a combo finisher and has a good blowout. The damage-on-self is not only yet to be confirmed, but probably a bug so it will eventually be fixed.

Tl:dr
Other classes having better downed skills ( namely thieves, warriors and guardians ) doesn’t warrant all this crying for a rework. Our downed skills are neither weak nor strong. They are balanced. There are classes which have far weaker downed skills than us, such as elementalists (only class with 0 stomp prevention, average 3rd skill which they almost never get to use), necros ( average 1st and 2nd, but their 3rd sucks ) and classes who are in the same spot as us, such as mesmers ( strong 2nd, weak 3rd ) or maybe rangers.

Edit:
Please don’t force me to pull numbers from the wiki and do in-depth comparisons. The evidence that our skills are balanced is right in front of you, just do a little research.

PotatoOverdose.6583:

We have one interrupt. The second interrupt (explosion) is usually useless because it takes 20 seconds to be ready.

Someone presses F on you. You wait a bit, and use pull to interrupt. Then they press F on you again. You’ve still got at least 10 seconds before the explosion is ready. GG.

I’m sorry, but that’s how every downed state works beside elementalists’ one. You can use your 2° skill to do something useful, but if someone tries to stomp you twice under 6 seconds your 3rd skill won’t be ready. Do you think interrupting twice someone stomping you in a short frame of time would be balanced? At least you get to interrupt someone, unlike elementalists that can’t even interrupt twice or necros that have an horrible 3rd skill.

I think they are fine and maybe the most balanced downed skills in the game. Don’t like random conditions but hey, it’s simply a downed state autoattack I don’t mind too much. Grappling line is great. Single target ranged interrupt that has some tactical uses ( such as pulling to yourself that pesky low hp thief that downed you towards your friends, or comboing people/mobs with 3° skill ) ? Heck yeah.

It’s funny how you think that engineers are underpowered. It simply shows that you played all 8 classes so you barely scraped the surface of what a class has to offer and thus have an invalid opinion.

“Making the Flamethrower grossly OP”

Yes, both female silvary and female human combat grunts need some attention, as there are a good chunk of them that sound HORRIBLE. The “bad” ones in your video in particular, have been bothering me since beta. They are squeakings, stand out in the crowd in a bad way and are in general, terrible. I want them to be removed. Sorry if I’m being blunt but yeah, they shouldn’t have made it past beta.

I heft hammers bigger than you!

Nah, it’s more than breakable if you know what you’re doing

Nuzt.7894:

I personally think the problem is to many levels, for a game that is suppose to be more PvP based, 80 levels to start is a pretty rediculous number. I’m not saying its hard or that I dislike the game but I certainly didnt buy GW to PvE myself to death.

I realise I don’t have to level bu I still feel obligated to level for some reason.

Not only this game has never claimed/advertised to be PvP based, but 80 levels are just fine when the exp required for the next level doesn’t scale exponentially. Seriously, it takes like 10 days at a moderate pace to reach max level? Doesn’t seem too much to me, especially when it’s only helpful ( and not mandatory ) for WvW

Disagree. The Engineer feels like a complete class and even if it didn’t, why would you “fix” it by making it more similar to an already existing class? Engineer =/= ranger with a passion for mechanics.

aflarge.1439:

Rotgarr, Charr Engineer

Rhothgar, Charr Engineer here….

Shaikhob.2863:

no…. it would be way to op

If I recall correctly Anet said during the beta that they were planning to make sigils work with tool kits

One of the most common suggestions was to make every elixir have one or more consistent effects and then adding one or more effects from a selected bunch

I.e. Elixir W
Grants protection (100% sure)
Grants one of the following boons:
regeneration
swiftness
retaliation

Keep in mind that this is just an example to better clarify myself.
While your suggestion seems interesting, I can’t really see how to implement it.
Unfortunately though I’m just wasting time as I recall one of Anet’s developers saying that they do not think randomness is a bad thing ( and implying therefore that it’s not going away ).

I’m sorry OP, but reading that made my head hurt. In no way I’m trying to flame or attack you, but your english is not stellar and honestly I’m way too lazy to try and comprehend it. I’m just posting to let you know that I fully disagree with the engineer being as underpowered as you say. I think it’s one of the most balanced classes, especially in pvp. Sure, it has its problems (elixirs are generally weak and way too random, the only viable pvp ultimate is supply drop, rifle damage seems a tad low, no reliable stability) but it has its strenghts too ( good point defender, excellent kiting, good damage/survivability ratio ).

Encountered a similar problem two days ago. Was trying to get people to have a strategy in /map ( yeah, silly me ) and most of them they said they weren’t zerging to win, they were doing it to powerlevel to 80…

This problem has been brought up many times during beta and was one of my personal complaints. Not only a good chunk of elixirs ( toolbelt skills in particular ) need a serious buff, but the randomness leads many players to simply not using them. You’d have to make them insanely strong to warrant the % of getting something that you didn’t really want inherent with most elixirs. That ultimate, in particular, is an abomination. Unfortunately I have read a post-beta interview where one of the developers plainly said that the randomness is not going away, because they think it adds more depth to the class : how are you gonna react to the random effect you get?

Bollocks, if you ask me.

No, but what’s wrong with that? If you want to farm faster you go through the easier routes, if you want a more challenging experience and/or don’t want to run the same exact dungeon 60+ you can have some variety.

Skinhunting is a superficial as stathunting but the first is not required to fully enjoy the game, the latter is.

Are you talking about the huge cave filled with bandits in CM explorable mode – butler path? Because you have to SKIP those mobs by going to the ramp on the right

I’m not entirely sure what’s the problem you are asking help for.

Anet plz, /duel

You have to understand that while this kinda takes away part of the feeling of progression most MMOs are built upon, it’s for a greater good. Yes, you don’t get to feel “oh my god so powerful”, but at the same time you are not ruining other players’ experience by slaying their dreaded group boss event in 2 hits. Not only that, but you keep your gear/traits so while you are not as powerful as you “should” be, you still have a significant advantage over the enemies. Get to level 40 then run back to your starting zone and tell me if you don’t 2-shot everything.

Reserved.

(I’ll come back in 3 months)

Just chipping in to let the OP know that the trade post works between different servers so there’s no server-specific economy :P

The Blind Man.3642:

And to all of you “You can avoid 100B easy”. I’d like to see you try when I have 3 CC as my utilities and holding you in place is easier than pressing tab to target you.

I heard this game is all about 1 vs 1 and filling one’s utility slots with CCs to land a 100B. Now I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine : my 3 utility slots are stunbreakers. What does your super OP warrior do now?

I got lemons from a renown heart npc in Caledon Forest, the one on a little island by the small lake to the north, while celery can be gathered in the top left part of the same map. It’s a “farm”, meaning that there are 8 nodes on a 23h respawn timer and that the item gathered from such place is available only there and, at best, another farm.

Edit:
I just opened the Caledon Forest map to help you more precisely. The heart vendor is on the island south of Mabon Market, while the celery farm should be next to the northern limit of the map between Wychmire Swamp and The Romanwoods.

Pandemoniac please. Stop playing the devil’s advocate. People who are selling items at the infamous vendor price + 1c are not only hurting the economy and everyone who’s crafting, but also themselves. They are losing out on money and this whole “free bag space” deal you made up just works for non-collectible materials. I could debunk further your theories, the whole “nearest vendor” thing is laughable, but I’ll stop here..

The only true reason we have these prices going on is because the game is new and players don’t really know how to price items and as soon as a bunch of fools puts the item at +1c, the others just go with the “meet the lowest buyer” option because thinking is hard and make me brainz hurts. Or if you are really so convinced that these prices have working minds behind, then try and explain me why copper ore sells for 19c and mushrooms for 2.

I heard that an observer mode is being worked on, but that’s pretty much all I know. Would love to see a recording system implemented though.

They can wear regular helms.

Necromancers and Engineers are definitely the condition masters of this game right now