Guild Wars 2

The NPCs in WvW are also quite outdated.

If you look at the one they’ve put in EotM, those ones are more serious. The sentries actually take a little bit of effort to kill, and they can actually be quite a thorn in your side if you’re fighting an enemy player in their proximity.

The aetherblades can also be pretty deadly if you overdo it in that middle section, and the keep lords and such are pretty much non-solable… well, some of them still probably are.

In the new WvW borderlands, they’ll be using those kind of NPCs rather than the lame paper ones that they’ve always had in the standard borderlands we’ve had now. So once those come with HoT, that should help solve the issues regarding lame, useless, insignificant NPCs.

I was noticing a crap ton of blind coming off of rangers I was fighting, so this is probably what it was.

Not that you can’t do something similar with the birds already, but I’ve ran into people doing it with wolves and such.

Been trying this out with d/d and I’ve been liking it so far.

I’ve been trying out knight’s gear. Not as much damage, but it is more durable. Also been using different sigils and runes, like sigil of blood and runes of vampirism. Some decent tweaking one can do there.

I’ve also been trying it with well of blood instead of CC (that is, full wells). I imagine CC will be better in general, although well of blood can possibly be better in a coordinated team. The offhand dagger helps make up for the condi clear loss, although you have to make sure to hit with the dagger.

It could potentially be quite interesting with something like ritual of life, but giving up quickening thirst is a tough call. Haven’t tried testing that out yet, but imagine it wouldn’t work too well unless the team was highly coordinated.

I haven’t been able to test it out yet (still trying to get all my other 40-ish builds in place), but it was like everyone was saying all along. The only thing that kept litany from being any good was the cast time. I always advocated it to be instant, but reducing to 1/4 second is still quite good.

I would also suggest elixir U as an alternative to elixir B. While I believe elixir B will be the most useful in general, elixir U can be very useful for bursting people down or for countering an enemy burst since it provides you another stun breaker. The toss also provides you with some useful albeit situational utility.

Autofuse bomb dispense would also be worth considering, though it’s hard to argue with the usefulness of AMR.

Then of course you could always take supply crate since it works with everything.

But it’s a solid build overall, at least in the current environment. Been seeing these things quite often in PvP.

It actually works nice for my build with a steady 96% crit chance, but keen edge was quite nice to have as well.

But I can stack 25+ bleeds on my own without keen edge, I don’t know that I really need that thing… might just be extra strength that doesn’t need to be there.

Yeah, the healing spray is just not worth it right now. Tickling someone for a little bit of healing instead of actually killing or CC’ing the guy trying to kill them is a very poor decision.

You could possibly use it when you have something like a WvW zerg back off a bit to regroup, when the pressure from the enemies isn’t directly on you, but otherwise it’s just pointless. Absolutely pointless in a solo scenario as well since you can’t use it on yourself.

TBH, I’d rather a more bursty healing spray. Something that can only be used every, say, 10 seconds, but that basically heals for 10 times the amount that one cast of the spray currently does. That could make it worthwhile to use mid-combat since you’d spike your allies with a quick heal, and then could go back to fighting, instead of sitting trying to constantly spray them and actually helping them die faster since you’re not pressuring the enemy.

Also, I forgot to point out the irony that coated bullets was removed from the game, yet grenades were made to pierce.

Good job everyone. Good job.

There will be guild halls in the future, although I don’t know if those will facilitate reset-rally sitautions appropriately.

I can’t recall if it’s possible to just spam the button on the WvW menu instead of using the portal, but an alternative change is to adjust the way people enter WvW on reset. If they made it so you didn’t have to be at the actual portal, that might make it a bit more convenient for people.

At least there is a waypoint by the guild bank now. I’m not sure why they’re intent on only having one of those things around. Hell, they don’t even have one in the citadels, which is insane, although you can use that guild registrar trick to access a jumbled up version of it.

Bubby.6475:

Yooo Engi Grenade toolbelt skill. literally 90% me on 3.5k armor 25k hp war. lol

That thing is bugged right now, it’s basically causing every grenade to be two grenades, so it’s doing extreme damage. I imagine it’ll be one of the first things on the chopping blocks once they do a good pass of bug fixing.

Depends on the particular purpose you’re fulfilling on your team.

A lot of engineer players will fill more of a roaming kind of build, rotating between points to contribute to team fights going on at those locations. Without having the mobility from either of those trait lines, it can hamper your effectiveness at doing that.

If instead your role on the team involves you being more localized around one specific node, or if the map doesn’t require you to move around as much, then it could be quite possible to function without that sort of mobility.

Of course, having improved mobility is just valuable in general, so it’s never a bad option to take.

Alternatively, you could slot the heavy armour exploit trait in firearms, which can actually give you 100% swiftness uptime if you crit often enough. However, this will only be swiftness available during the fights, so it might not be too useful for getting between nodes.

Otherwise, certain utilities like rocket boots or elixir B can help compensate for that node-to-node mobility need.

Now if you’re just doing hotjoin, you might as well do whatever you want to do.

Well I made my previous post with the hope that this wasn’t another “let’s start up another kittening match” thread, but I’m not surprised at being disappointed.

This is why we can’t have nice things, people.

From the testing I’ve done, it does not appear to work with some pets.

The two I tried specifically were the jaguar and warthog.

With the jaguar, it looks like the enemy gets taunted, but then they just attack me anyways because the taunt breaks or something when the jaguar is stealthed. At least that’s what happens to NPCs, not 100% sure about places.

Also, the warthog doesn’t seem to be able to proc the trait at all. I imagine it’s the same for the whole porcine line of pets.

I was trying to get something to work with unsuspecting foe, but I think that’s just not going to be an option for skullcracker builds anymore.

In any case, it looks like skullcracker has survived and maybe even thrived post-patch.

Gonna try some other trait combinations to see what I can get to work. In particular, I want to become detached from something like cleansing ire. Brawler’s recovery should help out with that, plus I can but a sigil of cleansing on the greatsword for condi swap each combo, more or less.

Going to try and get it to work with last stand, maybe even go full stances, including defiant stance and frenzy. However, something like WvW will probably be better with bull’s charge and healing signet since the combat is more mobile.

I think there’s two parts to this.

The first is that the defence tree had three possible weapons for it, those being shield, mace, and hammer. They wanted to keep at most two weapons in each specialization line, so one had to go. Hammer was the one that went.

I think the other part is that they wanted to try and shake the meta a bit by taking the popular hammer out of the defence line and making it so that warrior would be less inclined to take it. However, I imagine most warriors will go with defence and discipline anyways.

In any case, I’m not sure that it would be any better in the defence line. There’s already the tough choice for shield specialists in giving up dogged march. Having the hammer there could mean a choice between that trait and something like cleansing ire.

So while burst mastery and heightened focus would be nice, I don’t really think they can put it in a sport where you won’t be giving something else nice up.

In fact, that may have been one of the better places to put it. Most people won’t use hammer to build adrenaline fast in the first place, and it’s burst skill doesn’t have extremely high damage. The CC combos can all be landed without quickness. Any foe with a stunbreaker or blink is just going to get out of there anyways, quickness or no.

I mean, they could’ve stuck it in, say, tactics or something instead, but I think hammer builds would’ve bought the farm completely if that happened.

Yeah I’ve noticed the insanely high damage from this, a lot of engineers trying to use it as a point-blank stealth opener in PvP atm. Of course, some of my builds seem to be keeling over from the 40 stacks of bleed that end up on me, so at first I thought it was just the new level of damage.

Worth having fun with for now, but I imagine that’ll be one of the first things on the chopping block when they finally get around to doing a good bug fix pass.

Is that even supposed to proc shrapnel? I know it’s a rocket, and “explosive”, but they may have deliberately prevented it form procing such things because it’s a free attack.

Of course, if it’s procing steel-packed powder, then I guess it should probably proc shrapnel too.

I haven’t actually tried this trait out yet, if that wasn’t obvious.

I’d rather have the old flat cooldown reduction back, but keep the overcharged effects. Those are more interesting than the boons were on the old gadgeteer.

But all you guys wanted your “active play”, so this is what you get.

If nothing else, the cooldown reduction should be boosted to at least 33 given the extra activation conditions. Something like A.E.D. could be really good if it didn’t have such a long recharge on it, although I haven’t tested to confirm that it is actually bugged with AMR. That would kind of suck.

Yes, you can also press the W key again or just hold it the whole time and reactivate auto-run after you land.

You might also try pressing the weapon swap key while holding a kit just as you’re doing the roll after the landing (or even just as you land). I’m not sure if it will still stop your movement, but it can sometimes make the landing a bit smoother. Worth testing out.

I don’t foresee an issue with it as long as you don’t discriminate against people based on things like race, religion, sexual orientation, &c. That is, there shouldn’t really be an issue if you don’t restrict guild membership to heterosexual members only (how you would go about proving this anyways is beyond me).

Then of course you would just have to ensure that you didn’t have any sort of offensive names or remarks as part of the guild name, motto, banner, &c., or things that could be perceived to be offensive.

In general, you would just have to be accepting of all peoples, even if they do not represent the particular demographic the guild is tied to.

In any case, it would probably be beneficial to familiarize yourself with the terms of service before you go through with such a thing, just so you’re fully aware of what would be required of you.

I think some people might find it a bit odd since heterosexuals are generally not considered a minority group, though there’s nothing inherently wrong with it.

I don’t think they need to brighten up the enemy ones, since solid orange circles are used for AoE damage in certain situations.

Although having a solid blue circle under the bandages and also med kit dispensibles would make them a lot easier to identify on the floor. Having seen literally hundreds of people simply walk past my med kit dispensibles even though I threw it right in front of their faces, I’d definitely be in favour of such a change.

Any elixir gun damage buff should probably go on inversion enzyme anyways. Not to mention the elixir gun can already benefit from HGH for extra damage.

I’d rather have chemical rounds not do anything to the elixir gun, but allow pistol shots to pierce since not having coated bullets is really hampering my elixir roaming build.

digitalruse.9085:

Yamsandjams.3267:

All this states is that the conditions for the combo pop-up is that the mokitten has to travel through or land in the field.

It does not state that a projectile finisher will apply it’s effect in the AoE the projectile causes.

I agree that the context of that statement would appear to imply that the combo effect is supposed to occur in the AoE, but it is not explicitly stated in his post. For all we know, it is actually working as intended.

If that popup appears, I think it is reasonable for the the effect to actually fire. It’s a bug either way. My hope is the bug errs in the favor of being a unique behavior for the skill.

Well, if they treat it the same as healing “turret’s” overcharge not scaling from healing power, then your wish will likely come true.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Yamsandjams.3267:

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Yamsandjams.3267:

It seems insanely high now, but that’s partly because we’re so used to what it used to be. It’s quite possible that we’ll become accustomed to the new levels over time.

So why even have Toughness as a stat if it is basically being ignored?

Actually, I personally think the damage is too high and should be adjusted. But we have to acknowledge that we’re speaking from a perspective which doesn’t exist anymore. If the damage was always like this, would we have evolved to a point where this was simply the normal levels, and the previous levels would have been considered extremely low?

Maybe that’s a moot question, but that’s what I was implying by my statement. It’s something that will need to ride for awhile before enough data is accumulated. Simply one day is not enough to make a judgement call, especially when whatever the meta is destined to be hasn’t even begun to settle in fully yet.

I don’t agree that we can’t evaluate it now.

Your implication is that the player base will adapt to change but I don’t agree it is possible in this instance.

There is no way the tank or attrition player can adapt to these levels of damage. Let’s say you have a 3300+ armour guardian getting melted like a squishy – you have no way to adapt as you can’t add more toughness and traits are not going halve the damage you’re taking.

The only counter play is to become a zerker and kill them first.

This ends up with everyone playing zerker stats which is what Arenanet was trying to get away from by opening up attrition builds.

Well, traditional zerg builds (or at least the ones I’ve been around) have typically favoured a higher toughness-to-vitality ratio. However, that sort of build is weaker against spike damage while being stronger against sustain damage, in addition to being weaker against condition damage in general.

As such, they could adapt by slotting more vitality. I imagine most zerg frontliners lost a ton of vitality with the way attributes were decoupled from the trait lines, so now they’re even more vulnerable to spike and condition damage than they were before.

Will that adaptation work? I don’t know, but people have to actually try it to see instead of simply playing one day in the same gear and labelling it as an unadaptable situation.

Harkan.9017:

The amulet system either needs an overhaul or they need to introduce a lot more amulet types to make up the loss of stats from traitlines.

In this patch, Anet created 2 new amulets: Crusader and Marauder, which were previously known as Valkyrie and Berserker. Then they made Valkyrie actually have Valkyrie stats and now Berserker is pure DPS stats. Bar Celestial, every other amulet other than the aforementioned are all extreme variations of each stat type and is currently causing tons of imbalance issues in PvP, main culprit being Berserker/Marauder/Condi amulets. I have no idea why Anet just stopped at Crusader and Marauder.

It’s because they know that if they made stat customization possible (i.e. being able to configure each piece of gear like in PvE/WvW), extreme stat combinations would be mostly overrun by hybrid stat combinations. Instead, they want you to make a deliberate choice from a set of stats and work around that, instead of every build blending into some grey variety of a berserker-magi-rabid-cleric-sentinel mix, or some such.

It also means newer players face less of a skill floor as far as min-maxing is concerned.

But I think the removal of attributes from trait lines now warrants this sort of functionality, even if it just means reinstating the old gem system with the amulets.

Looks fine to me, although I’d question whether refined toxins is worth it over ambidexterity. Depends if you find you’re able to keep yourself at high health frequently enough.

I don’t know what pet you want to run alongside the eagle since the eagle works really well with those traits, but I’d suggest running the warthog so that ANet has a better chance to see how badly the porcine line of pets need buffing (I want my pig to be good).

I’m actually surprised they let that go on for as long as it did. Completely understandable and reasonable change as far as I’m concerned.

I use a naga with shift+# to activate the F-abilities according to their respective number (i.e. shift+1 is F1, shift+2 is F2, &c.). As such, the change was easy for me as I just do shift+5 to get the F5 skill.

I know advising you to learn a particular style of mouse to play the game is a crappy suggestion, but it’s the best suggestion I have. Otherwise I’m not sure what to suggest for you.

As an aside, alt+tilde sounds really uncomfortable to me, at least not without completely removing your hand from WASD (unless maybe you have really large hands).

digitalruse.9085:

Yamsandjams.3267:

A note on this: the projectile finisher is very poor.

For something like stoning that the ele has, it’s relatively simply to use because the projectile is targeted towards the enemy.

For the mortar, the actual projectile has to touch the enemy once it combos with the field. Simply being in the AoE explosion radius does not apply the finisher effects.

So it’s like having to manually target your ele staff auto attack, and line up the projectile just right so that it hits the enemy directly.

As such, it’s actually much better at just dealing raw AoE damage since the combo potential is too inconvenient. Maybe if they let the combo finisher apply in the AoE it would serve the purpose you describe, but it’s just not there at the moment.

It’s also bugged. See Josh’s post on how it is supposed to be working:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/What-s-the-deal-with-Mortar/5165482

When it is an AoE projectile finisher like it is supposed to be, it will be much more interesting.

All I can see in that thread is Grouch stating the following:

“As long as the projectile lands in the field or goes through it will give the combo pop-up – it doesn’t have to hit the target.”

All this states is that the conditions for the combo pop-up is that the mokitten has to travel through or land in the field.

It does not state that a projectile finisher will apply it’s effect in the AoE the projectile causes.

I agree that the context of that statement would appear to imply that the combo effect is supposed to occur in the AoE, but it is not explicitly stated in his post. For all we know, it is actually working as intended.

I imagine this may be the same case for similar skills, such as explosive shot (I haven’t tried to test it), but it makes sense in that case since it’s a targeted projectile finisher. This is the only projectile finisher in the game that is ground targeted, so it is treading new water. They perhaps intended for this to be the case, but they forgot to account for the special case the mokitten presents, but we can’t be 100% sure yet.

Kodama.6453:

Elixir gun is no longer just a kit, think of it as an elixir with special functionally, because that’s what it is now. ^^

You’re maybe right about the need of balancing elixir gun, but I don’t think we should get rid of the elixir tag to do so. Like I said, think of it as an elixir with special mechanic. If one elixir would be much more powerful than the others and would be the only one taken, would you get rid of it’s elixir tag to balance it? No, you would balance it’s function by a new way.

That’s the direction we should think, I guess.

It shouldn’t be both an elixir and a kit though. It should be one or the other. That was (I theorize) the justification of making elixir-specific traits not affect the elixir gun post-beta version. There’s already elixirs that don’t even fit comfortably in actual elixir builds, and having elixir gun come in is just exacerbating that issue.

I agree with your notion that certain elixirs should be buffed if they’re simply not worthwhile to include in builds, although that’s an entirely separate issue that will be made more complicated by having elixir gun coming around and being like “hey, why don’t you just take me instead?”.

I would like a dev response to indicate what their justification for implementing this sort of change to the elixir gun was, but that is unlikely to happen (they’re extremely busy), so I can only speculate as to exactly what they’re trying to do. I feel “well, it’s an elixir gun, so it should work with elixir traits” is a poor justification, at best.

BlackBeard.2873:

It is a 100% projectile finisher…It isn’t meant to be doing damage.

See: ele staff earth auto-attack.

Use it for what it is meant for: stacking chills (ice), poison (poison), and removing condis (light). Also, poke damage from forever away.

If you want damage, use nades. They are super-duper strong now.

A note on this: the projectile finisher is very poor.

For something like stoning that the ele has, it’s relatively simply to use because the projectile is targeted towards the enemy.

For the mortar, the actual projectile has to touch the enemy once it combos with the field. Simply being in the AoE explosion radius does not apply the finisher effects.

So it’s like having to manually target your ele staff auto attack, and line up the projectile just right so that it hits the enemy directly.

As such, it’s actually much better at just dealing raw AoE damage since the combo potential is too inconvenient. Maybe if they let the combo finisher apply in the AoE it would serve the purpose you describe, but it’s just not there at the moment.

kiwituatara.6053:

Yamsandjams.3267:

I don’t mind the might on the frost spirit, but it should be at least two seconds, and at least two or three stacks. A single might stack for such a short duration would accomplish next to nothing. Fury is also a good alternative though, although I don’t think one second of fury is really that valuable either.

Stability on the storm spirit would probably be too good, and I don’t think it fits the theme of that spirit. It makes more sense to have pulsing stability on the spirit of nature since it’s a more powerful boon, generally speaking.

Also not 100% sure about that resistance suggestion. Could easily be too powerful.

As far as the activation times though, spirit detonation would be quite convenient if it were instant. It’d be much easier to inflict a clutch blind or daze.

Having Fury every 3 seconds synergizes with Remorseless trait very well.

Resistance wouldn’t be overpowered considering that a full spirit ranger has no condition clears apart from the elite skill. But I guess if not resistance, then 1s reflect every 3s.

Activation of spirit actives takes wayyyyy too long. It’s mostly based on luck if you’re able to land them.

Didn’t think of the remorseless synergy, although I’d like the boon to still be useful in general. For instance, if call of the will provided all it’s boons for 1 second on a 3 second cooldown, it would have nice synergy with remorseless, but… that’d be about it.

I think that’s a good point on the resistance bit though, although then it might make the fire spirit too necessary. Perhaps that should go to the water spirit? I guess regen doesn’t really fit that well on the sun spirit though.

Of course, they could always do an alternative buff, which would be to apply two boons at a time instead of one. So water could do regen and resistance, sun spirit could be vigor and something, frost is might and fury, earth is protection and aegis (although it doesn’t make much sense to have aegis and protection for short durations), storm spirit could be swiftness and something, and spirit of nature could be stability.

Or maybe only a few of them would have two boons (i.e. water spirit, that thing needs all the help it can get), whereas the other ones could just be one boon but slightly longer durations or stacks.

I don’t really see why the trait can’t function like experimental turrets though. Apply the boons for longer durations, but on a longer ICD (i.e. 10 seconds). In fact, experimental turrets allows for inherent 100% might and swiftness uptime, I don’t see why spirits can’t be given the same treatment… well, maybe perma vigor and stability would be bad ideas, but you could always make those 30-50% uptime or whatnot, have the might and swiftness be 100%

Asudementio.8526:

Drennon.7190:

I was thinking mug

This is the correct answer

Is that still bugged with hidden thief? If so, then no.

Otherwise, I’m for it, even if it means toning the damage and healing down a bit.

The grenade kit was nerfed even harder than this back in the day, and it’s still here, years later.

Just sayin’. This thread is nothing new.

Kodama.6453:

Yamsandjams.3267:

So in your build example, why not take elixir gun instead of elixir S, which would let you build more might, have a source of secondary healing, condi clearing, and still keep a stun breaker? Obviously you would lose the stealth and invulnerability, so it’s not like you wouldn’t be trading anything away if you slotted elixir gun instead, but the build would be more effective at what it’s supposed to do. That is, deal even higher damage.

Actually, the player himself is defining what his build is supposed to do, not you. ^^
If he is getting a hard time avoiding damage in PvP, Elixir S is a life safer on it’s own because of invuln and stealth.

And that’s the point, Elixirs should be taken because of their effect in first place and not because they got the elixir tag. That’s buffing them but the elixir itself should give you the reason to take it. So instead of nerfing elixir gun, buffing the effect of elixirs could maybe be the right way?

Yes, he defined that it is supposed to do high point blank damage, which more might stacks facilitate.

In any case, that’s a possibility, yes.

But note that I’m not advocating we nerf elixir gun. It was already good at what it did. It didn’t need to take something that was previously only doable by elixirs and provide it at a lower opportunity cost. If it loses the HGH synergy, it wouldn’t suddenly be bad. The only thing it would be missing are the skill cooldown reductions, which could be ported over to the inversion enzyme trait, which is already specific to the elixir gun.

If I wanted to nerf elixir gun, I’d advocate for something like less damage on its auto-attack. It’s more or less superior to the pistol auto-attack, particularly since coated bullets no longer exists in the game. It’s a bit odd to offer better sustained damage on an auto-attack and render one offered by your equipped weapon effectively worthless to use.

sevenDEADLY.5281:

I definitely read this as “med kid enjoying in use now” Def butchered annoying.

I read it as that at first too. The OP might’ve hit the character limit for the title and thus were forced to make that truncation.

I don’t mind the might on the frost spirit, but it should be at least two seconds, and at least two or three stacks. A single might stack for such a short duration would accomplish next to nothing. Fury is also a good alternative though, although I don’t think one second of fury is really that valuable either.

Stability on the storm spirit would probably be too good, and I don’t think it fits the theme of that spirit. It makes more sense to have pulsing stability on the spirit of nature since it’s a more powerful boon, generally speaking.

Also not 100% sure about that resistance suggestion. Could easily be too powerful.

As far as the activation times though, spirit detonation would be quite convenient if it were instant. It’d be much easier to inflict a clutch blind or daze.

What the heck was the change? I couldn’t find it in the update notes.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Yamsandjams.3267:

It seems insanely high now, but that’s partly because we’re so used to what it used to be. It’s quite possible that we’ll become accustomed to the new levels over time.

So why even have Toughness as a stat if it is basically being ignored?

Actually, I personally think the damage is too high and should be adjusted. But we have to acknowledge that we’re speaking from a perspective which doesn’t exist anymore. If the damage was always like this, would we have evolved to a point where this was simply the normal levels, and the previous levels would have been considered extremely low?

Maybe that’s a moot question, but that’s what I was implying by my statement. It’s something that will need to ride for awhile before enough data is accumulated. Simply one day is not enough to make a judgement call, especially when whatever the meta is destined to be hasn’t even begun to settle in fully yet.

I’d rather they just give you six configurable armour pieces like in PvE and WvW.

It can still have the simple “all in one” functionality that is provided by the amulets system, but just implement an option for tweaking each of the six armour pieces for players that want that level of customization.

I think they might be a bit afraid that “min-maxing” will be too prevalent, but that’s entirely what competitive RPG-based combat systems are all about.

I think they also might be concerned that “bad” stat combos simply won’t get used anymore… but I think that’s more about the fact that they’re bad. Simply saying “well it’s either that or full zerk” isn’t really a friendly option.

I think we’ll just have to ride this out for awhile, they’re going to have their hands full with a ton of things. But I think that implementing some form of stat customization in PvP could alleviate a lot of these “the damage is too kitten high” problems.

It’s worth trying this level of damage out for awhile, it might be preferable.

It seems insanely high now, but that’s partly because we’re so used to what it used to be. It’s quite possible that we’ll become accustomed to the new levels over time.

Although there might just be some broken stuff that needs some adjusting though. At any rate, it doesn’t warrant a knee-jerk response.

Susulemon.3204:

what i did was i had it equipped, and let one of those forest creatures kick me down, didnt break from stun :s

Perhaps it only triggers off of “stun” and not on “knockback”. I know it says “disabled”, but maybe that’s inaccurate.

Further testing may reveal the truth. But it could very well just be bugged… I have a feeling it’s one of the age-old “let us change the tooltip to match the bugged functionality” cases though.

I don’t even know why people are calling it the mortar when it’s spelled mokitten, but whatevs.

Tor.1365:

Well, I found one (just one) use for the ground targeting – throwing swiftness boosts to yaks for speeding them to keeps. But since I can’t really use the rest of the cleansing boosts reliably, I still run HT and only switch to medkit briefly for this small niche utility.

Of course, I could just alt to a warrior to do the same thing, and medkit can go back to being totally unused.

You could do this before, just had to drop it in front of the yak. Tossing it only saves you a few seconds of time at best, and increases the odds you accidentally place it outside of the yak’s path.

I did do a cool thing earlier where I threw the swiftness pack back to a mesmer falling behind the zerg. But then they ran right by it, despite the fact it was glowing and humming… -_-

Tor.1365:

and lots of might via HGH

Yes, I agree your idea would probably fun and maybe even effective at what it does (even if it was, overall, not a very competitive build). But this part I’ve highlighted is part of the issue. You can stack more might if you use elixir gun than you can if you were using an actual elixir.

So in your build example, why not take elixir gun instead of elixir S, which would let you build more might, have a source of secondary healing, condi clearing, and still keep a stun breaker? Obviously you would lose the stealth and invulnerability, so it’s not like you wouldn’t be trading anything away if you slotted elixir gun instead, but the build would be more effective at what it’s supposed to do. That is, deal even higher damage.

In fact, the way the game is programmed, you could slot the elixir gun to stack might, and then swap it to elixir S before engaging (provided you aren’t in PvP). Although you can do similar things with flamethrower and such, so it’s not an exclusive issue.

My point is more that the might stacking and other elixir-specific qualities should be kept to elixirs because it is unique to that class of utilities, or at least it was. Elixir gun doesn’t need HGH to be good at what it does, and it already had a comfortable place in all game modes (except maybe for PvE). Only about half the elixirs were ever run in serious elixir builds, and now elixir gun has come to copy the things elixirs have done without any change to the utility the kit provides.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Yamsandjams.3267:

A class of “low skill floor” utilities that aren’t to be used in any serious type of gameplay?

That’s not what I said.

I said that slotting your build full of nothing but elixirs with one weapon is simply too easy a build to be competitive. The higher a skill floor it has, the better a build should be. Because elixirs are very passive and don’t require a whole lot to be effective with it, it shouldn’t be as effective as kits—and should only be used as auxiliary utilities in support of kit-centric builds.

But why? Why can’t you have an all-elixir build that is a good alternative for at least one thing? I mean, such a build isn’t even fully functional because it lacks access to a weapon swap trigger mechanic. I don’t see how it’s good design to build that into the profession.

I’m not asking that all elixir builds be the best builds in the game. I simply want them to be able to fill some sort of niche that may be, at best, situationally useful.

Now I say “simply”, but obviously it’s not that simple, I won’t pretend it is.

But elixirs previously had a unique place in that they were good choices for might stacking builds. A build with elixir H, B, and one of the other ones could put itself up to 20+ stacks of might without external assistance, as well as providing itself with a variety of other boons like fury and retaliation. They also provided alternatives to condition cleansing outside of the incredibly dominant healing “turret”, making something like elixir H a worthwhile choice if you were specialized into it.

Now that’s not to say that other builds couldn’t build might or clean conditions, but it was a specialty of elixirs. However, porting that functionality over to elixir gun dilutes the purpose of focusing in elixirs in the first place, particularly since you have a three-in-one package at the cost of one utility slot.

Any “elixir” build that wants to maximize its might stacking will run elixir gun due to the low cooldown might procs it has (two of them in an AoE). But people didn’t really need further incentive to run a kit like the elixir gun in the first place, it already had a comfortable spot in the previous meta. Not only that, but that kit synergizes quite nicely with healing turret, so now you can get your water blast as well as elixir might stacks all together.

I don’t see how it’s to anyone’s benefit that all the other utilities be made less effective compared to kits due to any sort of skill cap. If we’re supposed to be running kit-centric builds all the time, it should simply be built into the engineer instead of being a selectable option.

I also don’t agree with the notion that a higher skill floor should necessitate a better build in such a global fashion. I mean, would you say engineer should be flat out better than warrior since warrior has a lower skill floor? How can game balance and build variety be based solely on that?

Again, I don’t care if a full elixir build isn’t as competitive as a standard kit build (although I wouldn’t mind that). But I feel it’s important that it has a kind of niche to fill. Letting elixir gun invade that niche when people ran elixir gun fairly frequently anyways does not, to me, seem to preserve any kind of place for elixirs.

Arioso.8519:

Yamsandjams.3267:

That’s at the core of my issue though. Why does the buff to elixir builds involve slotting less elixirs and taking a kit? If I’m supposed to run kits, why can’t it be build into the profession inherently? Why should I even be allowed to select no kits on my utility bar if it’s not the proper way to play the game?

Overall, I think a compromise on our positions here, would be to give the elixir gun less “Elixirs” so that it’s not blatantly better than a normal elixir in HGH, (Either taking it away from healing mist, or only giving it to Super Elixir, which is then in line with what the mortar kit does)

Yes, I think this would be a decent compromise. If only a single skill in the elixir gun counted as an elixir (i.e. super elixir), it means it would be just as efficient at, say, might stacking as an actual elixir would be, but not necessarily more efficient (although super elixir would still be on a lower cooldown than most other elixirs).

However, I believe part of the reason they made this change was so that the elixir gun could still receive cooldown reductions for its skills, since that trait disappeared from the lineup. However, I don’t see why they can’t just port that to the already elixir gun-specific trait that is inversion enzyme.

Arioso.8519:

I too would like a no kit engie to be a worthwhile thing, but without a normal weapon swap, being an engineer with NO kits is literally handicapping yourself with less to work with than any other class, and you seal yourself off from tools like weapon swap sigils. So you should get a heavy benefit to doing so that makes up for the lack of weapons. (Maybe traits that buff us WITHOUT kits, like backpack regenerator should be flipped to only work with a kit OFF, for example)

I know, it’s a complicated issue. The suggestions I mentioned here won’t accomplish any of that, really, but the changes they implemented only make it harder for this to be a reality. I believe it’s a shift in the wrong direction, which is part of the reason I’d prefer they take away the elixir-specific traits affecting the elixir gun (if they just weren’t so lazy and fixed those kitten tooltips three years ago!).

Arioso.8519:

Overall, the solution to making elixirs and gadgets more attractive than kits should be to buff them, rather than nerfing the kits.

In general I agree, although I’m not advocating for a kit nerf, I’m advocating for a buff reversal. In fact, had they announced these changes in the pre-patch notes a week or so ago, I would have made this post then. But this was just tossed on us without any indication it was going to happen.

In fact, some of my suggestions could even buff elixir kit because you wouldn’t have to run HGH to get your cooldown reductions, and could elect instead to run something like iron blooded for damage reduction.

Arioso.8519:

The thing is, I would also like to see ONE kit engie builds, so that the most viable option isn’t to take 3+ kits and always have a huge chain rotation, and the Elixir gun is kind of weak as an offensive weapon, so HGH synergy is what makes it viable as a sole kit choice. I don’t want to see that yanked away already.

It’s not the strongest as an offensive weapon, but it was never tailored towards that in the first place. It fits a support role much better, being able to maintain 100% uptime of weakness on a target, making them vulnerable and poisoned, and healing and cleaning allies. It already does a lot to support the team, I don’t see why it also has to be a might generator when that was previously unique to the realm of elixirs (i.e. tossing your elixirs on the group to give them might and other stuff).

It does, of course, make it more viable in something like a solo roaming setup, but it already had a comfortable place in the existing meta. It didn’t need to encroach on elixir territory (granted the meta is all a jumble right now).

Kodama.6453:

Yamsandjams.3267:

And the elixir gun already has it’s own trait to make it better, I don’t see why it needs a second one. I agree it fits thematically, but not functionally. In fact, I’d even suggest that inversion enzyme is not good enough in it’s current form in that the elixir gun loses things like it’s cooldown reduction and increased super elixir duration if you don’t run HGH. Why not just port those qualities over to inversion enzyme and keep the elixir gun trait as one trait?

As already said, it is about synergy. Look at the ranger class, they got the GM trait Remorseless, giving them back opening strike every time they get fury. Opening strike increases the damage of the attack by 50%.

They got many ways to get fury too with the new system: By their weapon skills, by pet skills, by activating survival skills (traited), by attacking with a GS (traited)….

Now think about it that way: We give you the trait Remorseless and you can trigger fury to yourself by 1 weapon skill only and 5 other ways to give fury to your team members. Thats close to what we got with Inversion enzyme, because it has 1 skill that’s removing conditions from ourselves (super-elixir) and we got fumigate to clean 5 condis from team members. That’s not really synergetic. But making the elixir skills count as elixirs is so much more synergy to combine.

It’s a buff, yes. A good buff. But I don’t think the analogy you present fits quite properly.

For instance, opening strike has always been exclusive to the marksmanship line (although you can proc similar effects on your pet via signet of the hunt and such). If they went and, say, made a trait in one of the other lines that allowed you to obtain opening strike in a similar manner at no extra cost to the user (aside from speccing in that line), that would take away uniqueness from the marksmanship line and make it less attractive overall.

Similarly, the unique quality that elixir-specific traits have had that only applied to elixirs has been ported over to the convenient three-in-one package that exists in elixir gun, at no extra opportunity cost to the user (aside from having to spec into alchemy). This can make elixirs less attractive since you can obtain similar benefits that the elixirs provided while still acquiring all the utility the elixir gun offers.

Furthermore, super elixir does cleanse a condition from whoever it hits even without traiting it, so it already had that type of support functionality built into it. I know that the condition cleansing part of alchemical tinctures doesn’t affect all (or any?) of the elixir gun abilities, but I believe the boon duration portion does. All of the HGH things seem to function with it though, which I don’t agree with.

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Also love how bandage self isn’t affected by the toolbelt CD reduction of the Tools line. Really you can tell they wanted us to use this as a party heal over Healing Turret.

IT’s not? I didn’t even notice that.

kitten

EDIT: That kitten above was a long string of f’s followed by u’s, FYI

It’s also partially because people don’t want themselves to be overpowered. Some people are also not exclusively mesmer players, and don’t want one profession to be simply dominant over the others.

But don’t worry, there’s at least an equal amount of people to also complain about nerfs to balance them out.