Guild Wars 2

There’s nothing remotely balanced about 15k backstabs. All it proves is some people will defend absolutely anything.

Even snared a thief still HS spams at the same speed a player runs. The difference is they don’t HS spam FASTER than a player can run. If you have range to begin with you can stay ranged from a snared HS spammer. If you’re in melee to begin with you won’t get out of melee, at least not for several HSes.

What’s ridiculous about HS is how it’s spammable damage + leap + finisher all rolled into one so even very bad players can just press one button and do ok in small engagements. It’s not the ability is overpowered per se it’s that it makes even very bad players marginally competent in small fights in a way that is bad for the game.

Disagree completely. Flamethrower has 450 range IIRC. That’s well outside melee and one of the best things about flamethrower is that you can kite melee with it from outside melee range. Flamethrower is indeed bad if you sit in melee range using the auto attack over and over. But that’s obviously not how it’s supposed to be used.

IIRC +healing scales so badly that it’s very rarely worth gearing for on any class or any spec.

No ele spec is constantly finishing its own combo fields. Staff is the only ele weapon with a lot of combo fields, and it has only a few finishers. Scepter uses one single fire field to stack might using multiple finishers but that’s about it. Dagger/dagger has limited combo fields and limited finishing options.

JQ is dead. Ruined by glory hunters.

This will happen to every top server until you have to pay a significant amount of money to transfer.

Two posters above ^^

Which is why what they did to juggernaught makes no sense. Why have an ability that tries to incentivize people to stay in flamethrower for a long time when the abilities clearly arn’t meant to be used that way?

There’s nothing particularly hard about playing the gimmick mesmer phantasm spec. In fact it’s maybe the easiest of all because you don’t even have to do much on your own besides try not to die.

Wolfe.3097:

Yukishiro.8792:

I was just responding to the silly people saying “just use a cripple or chill!” HS has a 450 jump attached. If you’re spamming it you close distance quicker than someone can run away from you even if you are chilled or crippled, unless they also have swiftness.

Again the problem with HS is it does too many things at once for just spamming one button. It makes awful players into vaguely competent ones and no ability should do that.

uhm no, the 450 jump is shortened when the thief is chilled. you can in fact run faster then it less the thief uses haste.

Of course the jump is shortened. If you’re spamming it it’s still as fast as running in the opposite direction is. With cripple Hs goes 225 units, with chill it goes 200. A character running goes about 200 units in the time it takes HS to go off. If you’re spamming it you can keep distance, although you don’t gain it. So if you can get an initial advantage (say by dodging or just by getting 200 units away before the bad thief hits HS again) you can stay ahead barely. At least until the thief takes 2-3 seconds to look down at their keyboard and find their dancing dagger skill and press it. Then you’re back to square one.

edit: If they lowered the leap range to 300 cripple and chill would be good counters. At 450, not so much without something else to open up a little range first.

That’s not been my experience. In my experience unless you have range to begin with if you start in melee range with a HS spamming thief and apply a cripple or a chill they will still be able to keep distance with you unless you have swiftness.

I mean sure if you start at 200-300 units away from them you can stay ahead long enough to make them burn most of their ini. But that’s not what we’re talking about. And that’s obviously not even getting into the other 5ish skills a thief can use to close the gap if you somehow do get a little range.

I was just responding to the silly people saying “just use a cripple or chill!” HS has a 450 jump attached. If you’re spamming it you close distance quicker than someone can run away from you even if you are chilled or crippled, unless they also have swiftness.

Again the problem with HS is it does too many things at once for just spamming one button. It makes awful players into vaguely competent ones and no ability should do that.

If you’re spamming HS it’s actually very hard for anyone to get distance on you. A chill or cripple isn’t enough on its own to be able to get distance against a HS spammer, you also need an immo or stun or a gap creator of your own.

Learn to dodge a little bit later and you’ll avoid the damage. You need to be in the dodge during the time it tries to apply the damage.

I agree it’s stupid how some leaps home and some don’t. But it’s how the game is. You just need to adapt and learn to dodge a split second later instead.

The only class in a really bad place right now is the Ranger. They’re just pretty bad.

All the others are fine. Necros have too many bugs and could do with access to burning, but they’re definitely playable and competitive.

Also the idea that warrior is overpowered and mesmer isn’t is extremely lol. Your comments about elementalists are also totally wrong.

That would make sense if HS were just dps. But it isn’t. It’s also a gap closer AND a leap finisher. Those combo fields the ele is laying down? They mean nothing if you don’t have finishers. HS is a spammable finisher. Pretty nifty.

It’s a problem when one class can achieve the same thing with remarkably less effort. Your elementalist example doesn’t address that because your whole point is the elementalist is doing more than just dps even though it takes a lot more work.

Things like HS spam are bad for the game. They allow bad players to be more effective than they should be. Every class should be more like the elementalist and less like the thief.

Ashanor.5319:

Yukishiro.8792:

The problem with HS spam isn’t that it’s good – it isn’t, you’ll get owned by anyone with a clue in a 1v1 – it’s that it’s too rewarding for spamming one ability mindlessly.

The problem with HS spam is it basically makes a completely awful player marginally competent simply by pressing one ability over and over because it does everything for them. There is a reason almost all bad players play thieves: because the class is basically set up to let even awful players succeed occasionally just by stacking damage increases and spamming 2 and hoping HS will do everything for you. No need to aim, no need to move, just spam 2!

All bad players play Thieves? lol

Sorry, but I have met bad players from every single class in the game. If you really think a Thief can just press 2 and be successful, you don’t have any idea what you are talking about. The only way a Thief might be able to be moderately successful spamming nothing but Heartseeker is if everyone else was doing the work for him. That means he would have to be following around an assist train and anyone can follow around an assist train.

Of course there are bad players playing every class. But there’s a reason that most of them play thieves, and it’s not hard to figure out why. You can be moderately successful on a thief even if you are an awful player because of abilities like HS that do a bunch of a different things at once. A spammable damage and gap closer rolled into one that also does a leap finish? It seems like it’s just DESIGNED to help out bad people.

You might want to read the first paragraph too, where I say HS spam itself is not very effective against good players in 1v1 situations. The problem isn’t that HS is overpowered it’s that it allows awful players to be more effective than they should be able to be.

Yeah, that’s what I meant. You used to be able to get 5 blast finishers from the 5 mines. That got nerfed a while ago to stop people from stacking 25 stacks of might all the time.

He said the toolkit skill that drops 5 mines functions as five blast finishers. I haven’t tested that but I assume it only functions as one blast finisher total, not one blast finisher for each of the 5 mines it drops.

Does mine toolkit really apply 5 blast finishers? I’ve never tested since the original nerf but that seems very suspect.

The problem with HS spam isn’t that it’s good – it isn’t, you’ll get owned by anyone with a clue in a 1v1 – it’s that it’s too rewarding for spamming one ability mindlessly.

The problem with HS spam is it basically makes a completely awful player marginally competent simply by pressing one ability over and over because it does everything for them. There is a reason almost all bad players play thieves: because the class is basically set up to let even awful players succeed occasionally just by stacking damage increases and spamming 2 and hoping HS will do everything for you. No need to aim, no need to move, just spam 2!

Oh yeah I never use auto target so that’s probably part of it. I can imagine it might work badly with auto target. Although it works fine for me both when I target the mob and when I don’t.

Awful post by the dev misses the point completely: running the same dungeon over and over is no fun, especially when you can’t do it with your friends because they get nothing from running that dungeon because they want to run a different dungeon instead.

It is just bad design to make each person choose one single dungeon to run 40+ times to get their chosen gear set. Why on earth would anyone think that’s a good model? It is especially mindboggling from a company like arenanet that claimed to be more respectful of its players than that.

The GW2 dungeon gearing model is exactly the sort of thing arenanet would mock endlessly if any of their competitors did it. It is just TERRIBLY thought out.

The obvious solution is to use generic tokens + completion tokens. Each piece of armor takes X generic tokens plus 1-2 completion tokens, which are unique to each dungeon. To get a full set of dungeon armor you would still have to do the same dungeon ~10 times to completion but for your other 30 runs you could do other dungeons instead, allowing you to help out friends.

Elixir gun with kit refinement is awesome for removing conditions in a bunker build.

The long range weapon for engi is the grenade kit. If you don’t like that that is fine but they are not going to rework the whole class just to accomodate someone who refuses to use grenades.

You might be happier changing classes now rather than later. Never say never but the chances of them adding another long range damage weapon is approximately zero.

P.S. Necros and ekitten th have mainly ground target abilities on their 1200 range weapons too. If you refuse to use ground target abilities you will find your options rather limited in this game.

Bomb bunker is very viable but it relies on being a point holder. In wvw or any situation where you arn’t trying to sit on a point it’s rather pointless (ha, ha).

That is the only viable melee build I can think of.

If you can’t hit with grenades on a moving target that isn’t anyone else’s problem. Dungeons are really the last thing engis should be complaining about.

More on topic, flamethrower doesn’t fail anywhere near 50% of the time, and the full cycle is 2 seconds, not 5 seconds. You also doesn’t need to be anywhere near melee range to use it.

That said its damage is definitely a bit underwhelming at higher levels compared to grenades. It really ought to burn on each application, or at least for 2 seconds on the final tick, not just one.

Condition pistol or power grenades/bombs both do pretty decent damage. Flamethrower with power does good damage too but it’s very hard to use in pvp of any type.

Engi has a very effective bunker build. It is not a class I would say is low on the defense.

That said, engi defense is very dependent on the target not having stability. If they do your defense becomes rather poor.

I just report hackers for botting. I figure it’s pretty much the same thing.

Stacking sigils only really seem useful in PVE to me. In WvWvW I can’t be bothered to farm 25 wolves after every death and I can’t afford to be switching back to weapon just before someone dies every time to try to get the bonus.

Are you saying grenade barrage (or big bomb) does more damage with a rifle equipped than a pistol, all other things equal? I hadn’t thought about that. Doesn’t really have anything to do with power scaling per se but it’s an interesting point.

If you report the player they’ll eventually get around to maybe banning them 2-3 weeks later. Maybe.

The water sigil is decent because the proc rate is so high that if you do switch to a weapon you have a decent shot at it proccing within a second or two. I don’t really see the point of +5% damage or crit either in a kit build because you arn’t using the weapons for the damage anyhow typically. Although I guess it would help when you switch to the weapon to use big bomb or barrage for the extra damage. If you’re bunker though I would think even a small heal would probably be better.

Orgs are stupid and make no sense at all. Orbs should give you non-combat bonuses, like +karma or +drop rate on badges. Having them give +combat stats makes ZERO sense. It is one of the signs that arenanet doesn’t really understand much about how to make w3 work.

The solution is to render low-poly proxy models with no dye info and no custom armor until the server can get around to loading the custom info. I would rather see some ugly 2002-era models than nothing at all.

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve seen such an obvious /meltdown on these forums. Congratulations I guess.

Again, the bottom line is 2 second TTK isn’t fun and doesn’t promote good gameplay. It’s got nothing to do with theives in particular. It’s just bad game design. People don’t like dying in 2 seconds to a stealthed character because it isn’t fun for anyone involved.

Kimbald.2697:

Especially as engineer: we are often using kits so the woindow to get that 10 sec cooldown in, is getting rather small.

Yes, but that’s true of the on crit sigils too.

The rub of it is no sigils are very useful for an engineer until they let sigils work with kits.

I think it will be all. You are just wrong factually. There’s nothing to really discuss. You can tell me the population of the U.S. is 600 million too and there’s nothing more I can say but “that’s not true.”

Can’t quote for some reason Vayra but your example of the guardian shows why it isn’t the same. Guardians arn’t the only class that can sit on a point effectively. Engis, eles, necros and even warriors can also be effective point defenders. This is true of every other example you mentioned too. Are guardians more effective than those other classes? Maybe marginally. But that’s something that can be balanced by adjusting numbers.

Mesmer portal is just different. If you want to move a large number of people over distance at once you have to have a mesmer. There is no other option. It’s Mesmer or don’t even try the tactic because no other class can do it. You can’t balance it because no one else is even in the game.

“Bring the class” isn’t GW2. If you want a bring the class game there are plenty of them on the market but that isn’t supposed to be what GW2 is.

You could just use the 30% AOE heal on ability activate. The heal is pretty poor (300ish points IIRC) but depending on how low your crit is it might be better than the 60% remove boon on crit.

Smackjack.5071:

Teleporting is teleporting the difference in the extend or range does not change this fact. To fill the role of a mesmer fetching a repair kit can and is being fullfilled by the thief just as much and just as easy. A thief does not require more time to achieve this using its skills just for this purpose any more then a mesmer is (by the time a mesmer has laid down its first portal a thief will almost be at the kit already) and also no more vulnerable then a mesmer in achieving this ,less would be the more likely answer to
this last point.

So again following the logic of your first post (not the one that contradicts yourself) no , the mesmer does not have a exclusive and uniquely effective role in this. Which as a reminder was what this was all about.

just lol. a thief cannot man a treb as well as a mesmer. that is just wrong factually. you can time it yourself if you want. a thief (or an ele) takes about 15-20 seconds longer to do a repair run than a mesmer does.

No each class does not have a “bring the class” benefit. None of those things are “bring the class” skills because none of them allow one single class to accomplish a specific task when no other class can come close.

If you want someone to sit on a node you can pick a guardian or an engi or a necro or an elementalist or even a warrior. You don’t have to pick a guardian. They all have different tools and one may be marginally more effective than the other but it’s not as if guardian is the only viable choice to sit on a node.

There is no other viable choice to man a treb. Mesmer is just much, much better than any other class. Similarly, there is no other class if you want to portal onto the enemy as a group in w3. No other class has a a skill that is even remotely comparable. You mentioned single target fixed range teleports. That you even think that is a serious ccomparison shows about all there is to say about your judgment.

For the third time, you keep ignoring the best example of another “bring the class” skill: staff 5 on guardian. That is the only other skill in the game that comes close to being “bring the class.” A guardian using staff 5 can block off access to a point in a way no other class can. Is it as powerful as Mesmer portal? Well no. But it’s still arguably in the region of “bring the class” in that no other class can do something similar.

Looking at your build you’d be better off going for the 100% uptime swiftness + vigor than going as deep as you do into inventions for the 10% movespeed and the healing with bombs. The 30 inventions talent only heals for like 200ish per bomb and you have to still be standing on the bomb when it goes off to get the healing. Having vigor with 100% uptime would allow you to mitigate a lot more damage, swiftness is 23% faster than the runspeed talent, and it gives you an additional two boons to cushion boon stripping.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

I’m a Grenadier/Bomber engineer.
I rarely use rifle ( When I use it , it’s just for the knock down and net ).
I use bombs while kitting a melee mobs , grenades or ranged one and the mines for both.
This is my build >>
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcEQFAUl0paZHxynF17ISoHS49pWiKUZfeIXtFEC
Power Shoes trait will help alot with kitting.

Didn’t look at the build but that basic setup is pretty clearly what arenanet is pushing engi towards because at the moment nothing else really competes with it.

The spread was nerfed. Meanwhile thief invulnerable aoe spam kitten was left in the game. GG.

Bombs are pretty easy to use. What is your problem with them? You just need to think ahead ~2 seconds to use them effectively.

Killing people in 2 seconds from stealth is not fun and doesn’t make for good gameplay. Whether it can be countered or not.

This is simply a fact. Thief fanbois will continue to ignore this fact but hopefully arenanet will be smart enough to realize 2 second TTK does not make for a good game.

Smackjack.5071:

So how about guardian and thief teleports? Going by the logic in your previous post they posses this skill too. Less effective maybe but you just pointed out that that does not seem to matter.

Of course it matters. Those teleports have a range. They only teleport one person. None of them can be used in remotely the same way Portal can, either in Khylo or in WvWvW.

Your comparison is like saying everyone can DPS so even if one class did 3x as much DPS as every other class that wouldn’t be “bring the class.”

None of your examples fit. Portal is a completely unique skill. There is no other way to do what Portal does on Khylo or in W3. None. You HAVE to bring a mesmer.

You don’t have to bring a guardian to sit on a point. There are many options. You don’t have to bring a thief to kill people fast. You don’t have to bring a necro to soak damage.

You DO have to bring mesmer to be competitive using the treb. You DO have to bring a mesmer to teleport into the heart of the enemy zerg with your zerg. There is no other option if you want to do either of those two things.

Your examples are looking at specific abilities, not how to do specific tasks. Of course all classes have unique abilities. That is why they are seperate classes. What matters is there are multiple classes that can use those skills to accomplish any given task.

Portal means that certainly tasks can ONLY be done by mesmers. There is no other similar skill. The Guardian gandalf skill comes closest.

TwiceDead.1963:

Rifle scales better with power, so does grenades.
Go rifle.

Yeah but power scaling doesn’t really matter: if you’re using grenades you’re not going to be doing damage with rifle much, you’ll be using it for the utility.

It really comes down to whether you want the added movement control from rifle’s root + jump or the added survivability from shield 4 and 5.