Guild Wars 2

MonMalthias.4763:

The purpose of this thread is to explore various ways we can change certain traits for the Engineer such that:
- They are no longer predicated by RNG and thus more reliable
- Without RNG to hold a mechanic back (due to risk of consistent reapplication), traits can be changed to be more situational and therefore more powerful
- By making traits more situational, trait choices can predicate new playstyle choices: more builds are possible
- Having a reliable situational trigger deepens tactical depth by allowing counterplay. Counterplay reinforces and rewards mechanical skill

I was answering your question. The RNG we are discussing here is the application of conditions upon crit mechanic. I was just pointing out that there is clear counterplay to that because the damage is not frontloaded and by definition there is at least sometime to react. If the problem is condition spam (which this effectively is) a player can defeat it using condition removal mechanisms.

You don’t like RNG, I get it. Most good players hate RNG because they want to know what their keypress does, every single time, it’s what makes things like Elixer X, U and many of the toolbelt elixir skills (non-traited) impractical in serious play. It makes it difficult to really excel with the class. Hoewever I think the IP example you use really isn’t the best example of this, because as you point out it is reltively consistent pressure that an opponent can understand and expect (they will most likely be getting a 5 second burn every 10 seconds). That understanding allows a counter.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Do you think that Engineer is improved in gameplay with RNG procs? If so, how do you counterplay against such procs?

There is clear counterplay to all conditions in the form of condition removal/melandru runes, certain foods in WvW, support builds with condition removal, etc…

If the current Meta is heavy condition then you need to adjust your build to account for that, almost every class can have very good condition removal on a relatively short cooldown IF they decide to spec for it. Many classes can apply that condition removal to others as well.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’ll also point out here that I am not involved in this system, outside of making sure the interests of WvW are appropriately represented as it is designed and implemented. If you have suggestions for different ways to handle this, you should find a more appropriate forum.

I don’t think Devon is completely abdicating responsibility in this statement, but I think he is subtlety trying to tell us what we already know: WvW is one part of the game (and not a focus), decisions are made by committee, he is one voice among many. I’ll wager a bet ANet has internal metrics indicating that there are more PvE players (which ironically is a function of the amount of PvE someone has to do to WvW) and/or PvE players are a more profitable segment of the player community. As a result development resources will tend to focus them.

We are all Oliver Twists over here. We will take the soup they decide to give us and like it.

Phineas Poe.3018:

amiable.4823:

The real question is how they would bring the class in line with others?

Why do you think the Engineer is not already in line with other classes?

Perhaps I was inartful in that line. A better way to state it in response to Decklan is: How would they bring class mechanics line with others?

The real question is how they would bring the class in line with others? I imagine the simplest mechanism would be to reduce current kits to weapons, and then keep the unique toolbar mechanic. That would be an enormous change to how the class plays however and would require a substantial re-design of almost every aspect of gameplay. Would it be worth it to do that or would they just keep band-aiding the problem? I tend to think the latter. In the meantime I suspect the engineer meta will probably need to be focused on weapons for damage and kits for utility, because we are likely going to see scaling issues for several months at least.

TheJewpacabro.2907:

If Anet ever adds GvG mode….what will happen to WvW match up forums!?!?!?

I’m waiting on achievements for PvF, because a lot of you guys deserve them! That’s what the community should be demanding.

After playing around a bit with rocket boots they are literally a must-have in WvW. It’s effectively a ride the lightning that cures annoying conditions and acts as a blast finisher. It also gives you a low cooldown-high damage attack ability.

Black Cat.1024:

amiable.4823:

Black Cat.1024:

Why is this not considered a mobile class again?

Mostly because what you have to give up for said mobility in terms of dps and tank.

No I don’t, except for the 10 points for swiftness, I go 30 in alch for HGH, and 30 in firearms for juggernaut, and the Rocket Boots utility I use in general.

This is more of a general class issue. It’s relatively difficult to get high single target burst unless you spec into very specific builds and gear that usually lack the nice mobility and defensive abilities. Thieves have mobility and excellent defensive options in the form of stealth and very high single target DPS. If you are using flamethrower (which I assume from juggernaut) you are going to find it takes you MUCH longer to take down opponents than on your thief.

This isn’t meant to imply that Engineers are bad by any means, jsut that the trade-offs are different.

Black Cat.1024:

Why is this not considered a mobile class again?

Mostly because what you have to give up for said mobility in terms of dps and tank.

Welp, do I have the desire to reroll? No.

Yeah, I’m out.

Criselli.7462:

I favor dual pistols with Coated Bullets and Elixir U. You will literally tag every red name in that zerg with 0 issue in addition to doing some solid aoe with Explosive Shot (pistol 1). A well placed toss of elixir U will get you close enough to the zerg to use some of your short range skills.

This. Mask’s dueling build is surprisingly effective at large scale WvW for a few reasons:

1. Good survivability. Toolkit shield and elixir S give you something like 8 seconds on invulnerability when chained.
2. Lot’s of AoE abilities. Pistol 1 can actually do great damage if you find out where your enemy is stacking. The explosion+piercing effects become pronounced.
3. toolkit’s pull is great for getting some overextended idiot into your zerg. Pull a clothy into your group and its practically a free kill. Remember you can keep channeling it while you move…

50% can be achieved with a single givers weapon and some rare veggie pizza (at least in WvW), so it should be pretty easy to test out… All I would lose is about 100 power and 64 condition damage (flank steak and condition damage from a pistol). Meh, it’s worth trying out (flank steak is SOOOO cheap though, rare veggie pizza about 10 times more expensive).

Honestly I am not a huge fan of increased condition duration in WvW because of all the cleanses. Most competent opponents/groups/zergs will cleanse your conditions after a few ticks. I think it is much better to invest in power/condition damage/ might stacking. In PvE though t is godly.

bromi.7809:

Wow, 100nade kiddies are frustrated.

I never played hundrednade, but I recognize it was one of the few viable specs we had. The kit refinement nerf took a jackhammer to almost everything else. I am afraid that my p/p spec HGH spec is next, because it is the only viable spec I see left now. Which is why we are all good!!! Excellent changes Anet!!! Go help Mesmers.

You know, I’m not even mad at Anet, I think they are really TRYING to do the right thing and help us out, but they are so utterly clueless about what the issue with engineers are they are doing all the wrong things. It’s like you are at a bar trying to pick up someone and you have this friend who REALLY wants to help, but they do it by telling inappropriate jokes or trying to amuse your date by making fart noises with their hand. We have had enough help Anet, thank you!!!! Please go back to your table or help Robert now, we are alllllll good!

Please, please for the love of god stop “helping” us. Honestly at this point I just want Anet to stop looking at the class, the only useful build left is p/p elixir (Mask’s build), for the love of god I don’t want them nerfing that as well. Please Anet, we have had enough of your attention, go “fix” some other class (preferably thieves mesmers and/or elementalists).

We are all fine here!!! Go the kitten away!!!!

(Edit: also Tankcat still does its job, so see, we have multiple specs!!! You have done your job, go help someone else!!!!)

crystalpink.2487:

So, Engie will be more useful in zerg after this patch ^^

Maybe… We will need to see some testing to see if this is really going to have an effect. If not we are back to where we were…

NevirSayDie.6235:

I mean, what zerg has an engineer in it?

That will change if Engy’s can hit the back part of walls. Commanders will ask folks to play their engineers solely for this.

cimon.5798:

sorry bout your luck wvw guess it might be time to suck it up and play some pve :P

Oh you!

Any runes (Monks in particular because I am too lazy to run AC)?

Decrypter.1785:

Quaggan backpacks lol ! yey

Really? This makes me surprisingly happy.

Amadeus.5687:

Amiable the patch notes are great! Stop smoking whatever your smoking, ain’t good for your sight clearly!

Well I’m glad you are happy with them. Have fun with your awesome and competitive turret build.

acedragonz.9387:

Glad to know that people like you were wrong… Have some faith in Anet for once.

What are you talking about? The OP was basically correct, the patch notes were pretty bad, with a series of minor buffs to everything save turrets (which are still going to be terrible post patch because they haven’t fixed the targetting issues or made them tough enough to with stand the ubiquitous AoE damage in PvE and WvW) and a series of major nerfs including the end to 100nades and making kit refinement basically useless if you use more than a single kit.

Grenade Kit skill: Grenades no longer require the player to have line of sight of the target area to throw them.

Anyone have a chance to test this yet? Particularly are we able to hit the back part of walls with grenades? If so the siege placement meta is probably going to have to change and engineers have suddenly become a lot more useful in WvW siege situations.

Mehknic.2904:

amiable.4823:

Preacher.9018:

Moddo.7105:

Grenade Kit skill: Grenades no longer require the player to have line of sight of the target area to throw them.

that might be a good change for WvW depending on how it works. Can I now throw nades 1500 even if I can no see top of wall area.

Grenades still will collide and explode on collosion during their ark flight. However removing LOS, allows to drop them down from the walls without standing on the ledge – since grenades fly in ark and if you see ground, you can trow them over the ledge. Very very useful if works like that.

What’s important here is if it can hit siege placed back on walls. If it can grenade engineers just became completely indispensable in WvW.

If the wall ledge gets in the way of the arc, it won’t matter too much. They’ll just explode where they would have before.

Can you even get your camera up that high? I never seem to be able to.

On occasion if the moons align (I was able to get a few tricky shots off with mortar), but before it was always a red circle, now it will be a green circle… I have no idea until I get to test it when I get home from work. Being able to drop grenades on rams while you are safely on the back part of the wall is going to be pretty huge though. Just watch those reflection fields!

Mehknic.2904:

Elixir U is the quickness elixir. Elixir X is the elite.

Yeah I know, completely mixed that up in my head.

Preacher.9018:

Moddo.7105:

Grenade Kit skill: Grenades no longer require the player to have line of sight of the target area to throw them.

that might be a good change for WvW depending on how it works. Can I now throw nades 1500 even if I can no see top of wall area.

Grenades still will collide and explode on collosion during their ark flight. However removing LOS, allows to drop them down from the walls without standing on the ledge – since grenades fly in ark and if you see ground, you can trow them over the ledge. Very very useful if works like that.

What’s important here is if it can hit siege placed back on walls. If it can grenade engineers just became completely indispensable in WvW.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Elixir U is a utility skill, not an elite skill. You’re thinking of Elixir X. And it’s another stunbreaker on our bar now for elixir-spec Engineers. PPHGH just got even better.

Furthermore, turret survivability isn’t an issue given that half the reason you use them is to detonate them. I’m not sure if the buffs to the Flame Turret are enough, but the Thumper Turret, Rifle Turret, and Net Turret got some serious love.

One patch won’t fix all our problems, but this is definitely a very big step in the right direction. Relax.

Ack right about elixir u, got htose swithed in my head for some reason. Still the blanket nerf to swfitness hits Elixir U pretty kitten hard.

I hate to rain on folks parade here but these patch notes are pretty terrible. I see no mention of increased turret survivability or better turret targetting, which are the main issues with turrets. The damage is so laughably bad in any even that the 50% increase on many of the turrets will not be noticed. Kit refinement has been reduced to a series of interesting abilities but the 20 second cooldown makes it almost impossible to plan their usage if you are switching kits, 1000nades is effectivley dead. Elixir U is still unusable due to the randomness and is outclassed by supply drop in almost every way (except underwater I suppose). Everything else is a minor bug fix. The ONLY really great change I see is the removal of LOS on grenade kits which will make them much more useful in WvW siege situations. But other than that this patch really doesn’t change anything useful and is again far more nerf than buff.

Having same problem.

ParaldaWind.4523:

So what about badges of honor? Weren’t we supposed to be getting ascended gear and new skins?

This. Am I going to have to PvE to get all my gear or will I finally get to spend all my game time doing something I enjoy and get the same rewards as PvE folks? Why does every game make this kitten mistake?

To change the subject a little I just wanted to give a shout-out to the SBI thief that kept dying over and over again as he tried to take out the Treb in red NW tower a few days ago. You never gave up and I found that very endearing.

A nice companion thread would be “How to be a good WvW follower,” I have a few.

1. Don’t argue with a commander, especially on voice comms. You can make suggestions but don’t keep doing that, it is annoying and distracting, try to keep your talking to a minimum unless to inform the group of something important (we are being flanked on the left side, portal just popped behind us). Use push to talk.

2. Whenever possible always be carrying supply, preferably 15 if you can get it. The first thing you will want to get when the wvw rewards come out is whatever option allows you to carry more supply.

3. Listen to your commander, don’t overextend. It’s hard not to when you are chasing but good commanders often know when you are being baited into a deathtrap.

4. If there are voice comms available get into voicecomms as soon as you can. It takes 3 minutes to download mumble or vent and maybe 30 seconds to set it up. You don’t even need a microphone, you just want to listen.

5. When calling out imporant information in voice comms or squad/map chat be specific. “Tower is getting attacked!!!” doesn’t tell anyone anything. “Northwest tower being attacked, they have 2 catapults on the west side, about 15 attackers” gives leadership enough to work with.

6. Don’t be an idiot with siege. Don’t drop siege unless asked to by the commander, don’t build siege unless the commander requests it. Supply is a very valuable resource, wasting it is a no-no.

7. Try to be respectful of other players. Don’t hop into unattended golems and go for a ride or refuse to leave if asked. Don’t rage if you get wiped or are losing, try to learn how you can be helpful.

8. Bring your own food and oils, use them.

9. It costs 3 silver to respec. Your awesome small group/pve spce may not be as good for WvW. If you are curious about how you should spec, ask, people will be helpful. Obvious spec choices for groups are group healing, aoe, boon additon and removal and crowd control.

Hickeroar.9734:

JaironKalach.4938:

You, sir, as a commander are about to enter into the entertainment business.

Best. Quote. Ever. (and quite true…)

This is why Cmdr Jadon and Odinzu gain such a dedicated following. They do things with flair, a good attitude, and a ceaseless stream of experience and karma.

This, this a thousand times this. Morale is everything for every tier except perhaps tier 1. If you don’t have a queue to get into a BG assume you have a morale problem! Folks are playing this game for fun, if you make it fun, even if you are losing you will eventually get enough folks to win. In general be optimistic but assume everything will be 5 times harder than you think. Don’t be afraid to break off an assault if it looks like things aren’t going your way and attack somewhere else. Don’t get defeatist or criticize people beyond good natured ribbing. Make fun of the folks not on voice comms (but only do that on voice comms) it makes the folks who bothered to get on voice comms feel special and needed. Most people are terrible, you are probably terrible as well but in general you will do better being terrible and well organized than being the best twitch player ever running around by himself.

I’ve been playing my wife’s necro over my engineer a lot lately. I find the necros really shine in mid and large scale wvw and for a lot of dungeons (as long as you aren’t playing with the 4 zerkers and a mesmer mentality). They are not as terrific 1v1 and lack decent escape mechanisms/moving skills but if you are doing a lot of group-oriented work they can be a powerhouse.

Niim.9260:

I think if the WvW progression system had worthwhile rewards and the progression points you get for a single target was divided by the number of people involved in the death it would be enough to change WvW. It would encourage more folks running AoN style group, and the more of them the less effective zergs become.

Unfortunately every indication is that wvw progression will be boring and the points will just be handed out to whoever tags. Opportunity lost, imo.

AoN style groups are suitable for folks who like a particular playstyle. In general however the point of WvW is not “pwning noobs” it is to take and hold objectives. Those are things that need to be rewarded. Running around in open field and fighting larger zergs has its place, but it is ultimately meaningless if it is not helping your team on the scoreboard (like a flashy star player who always holds the ball and scores the most points at the expense of the team losing the game). Don’t get me wrong AoN is very good at what it does and I’m sure they have a lot of fun doing it, but expecting the rewards system to cater to that playstyle is silly. You are rewarded for being organized, applying force in the right place and taking and holding point bearing objectives. This is as it should be.

AoN groups are structured to totally decimate unorganized groups, it’s not some sort of unique skill level that they possess (and spamming the Dunning-Kruger wiki link makes me think that you yourself are suffering from it, as the whole point of it is that the more skilled you are, the LESS confidence you have in your abilities). AoN groups are pretty easily countered by not being an idiot and letting them draw you into an open field battle that they have optimized their groups for. Their groups tend to run very specific builds designed to support each other and they are using voice comms to coordinate movement. If you are not in a group with that level of organization don’t play their game.

While they are running around ganking noobs focus on taking objectives, in general groups like AoN hate PvDoor. Only engage them if you have a group of similar minded folks coordinating on voice comms. If you see them withdrawing let them withdraw, don’t chase. What they are beating you with is superior organization. Organization in WvW will ALWAYS be greater that your individual skill. I would greatly prefer a group of mediocre players in voice comms over super elite duelers who aren’t.

The thing I like about WvW is that as in a real war a host of non-battle related things matter. Look at a server like sorrow’a furnace, which has a large population but is stuck in the lower Tiers. The issue with a server like that isn’t just manpower, it’s morale. There are too few effective leaders and folks get demoralized so they don’t come out (at least when I was on the server) creating a negative feedback loop. You see this on higher Tier servers as well, where the week is often won in the first 48 hours. If it goes poorly for your team, the bandwagoneers all do PvE that week and don’t come back. It is incredibly rare for any server to come back from a weekend deficit for this reason. In general the population imbalance is not as extreme as folks make it out to be. The real question people need to be asking isn’t “How do I break the zerg” but rather “how do I motivate my own server’s population to come out?”

The answer to this is pretty simple: Folks will come out if you make it fun, even if you are losing. How do you make it fun? Competent leadership helps a lot. Server voice comms as well. Don’t rage over voice coms if you are losing, laugh a lot, even in the face of defeat. View defeats as learning experiences, praise folks for good work. Set up a positive feedback loop. This is a game, folks are playing for entertainment, no on wants to listen to you rage-spooge because some idiot set up the wrong build order in garrison on reset. make fun of that person, but don’t act like his noob mistake is going to cost you the week (even if it does).

Servers can win against superior numbers but it requires strong and active leadership to do so. A bunch of pubbies running around getting slaughtered won’t do anything. You can set up any keep and most towers into a siege-out deathtrap that may eventually be taken by a large enough zerg but at the price of a LOT of loot bags. (Yay loot). I don’t mind losing a tower if I got 50 loot bags out of the scenario. Obviously there is a point of diminishing returns, fighting 3 to 1 numbers sucks and certain servers have really bad bald spots during particular time zones. Know where your weak spots are and set up a defense during those time periods you are week and a good offensive in the time slots you are strong.

TLDR: Instead of focusing on population imbalances focus on morale and leadership, you will be surprised how far that gets you.

Let’s be honest about what the next patch is most likely to bring:

1. The complete nerfing of one of our only viable specs (100 nades).
2. A plethora of minor buffs to a bunch of lousy skills and utilities. No one will use them anyway.
3. A minor buff to some other weak kits that will still make them generally nonviable, but will cause certain engineer defenders to rush to boards and theorycraft how awesome these changes are going to be for the Engineer. None of these folks will post a video of these builds in action.

Conditions in general are getting buffed though, so I suspect Masks build will stay as viable as ever, tankcat also won’t get nerfed because it does such pitiful damage no one really cares about it.

Stiv.1820:

The reason Thieves have not had significant nerfs that no one here wants to hear is they are balanced at the higher end of the skill cap for all professions. They are OP at the lower – mid ranges that are common in WvW and hotjoin.

Anet developed this game with it being an E-Sport in mind. There is no reason to believe it’s not still a mission of theirs. You don’t get an e-sport by balancing your game around the general WvW zerg type population that doesn’t even bother to understand every profession and their mechanics.

This is just not correct on several levels. Thieves are balanced in high end SPvP because:

A. The meta of sPVP is based solely on point capture/holding and thus favors highly mobile classes and bunker builds. It is a completely different beast.
B. Everyone has a substantially larger hp/defense in sPVP and it is not possible ot overstack offensive stats that lead to very high burst relative to these hp pools.
C. WvW has a much, much larger field of engagement, which greatly favors aggressors and defenders who are able to escape quickly and choose their battles.
D. A well timed dodge/invulnerability in sPvP will prevent a thief from re-entering stealth, in WvW there are a practically infinite number and variety of mobs to proc C&D off of, removing one of the central “skill” components in sPvP.

This issue has nothing to do with “skill level” and everything to do with the differences between sPvP and WvW. Give everyone the 5-10k more health and make thieves hit a lot softer (like in sPvP) and the complaints might differ.

Rashagal.5867:

D W.5179:

cubed.2853:

amiable.4823:

Stealth would not be anywhere near annoying if it automatically re-targetted stealther upon exiting.

I absolutely agree.

Make that another +1, I’d love to see this change. This + fixing culling should solve most of the stealth balance issues.
Balance aside, I find it to be an annoying mechanic that should have never been added, but if we are stuck with it, let’s balance it the best we can.

The reason it doesn’t is because of mesmers. clones and decoys would be rendered pointless if they re targeted the real mesmer. Its bad enough they show which mesmer is the real one when downed.

They are not pointless in a large fight and they serve kittenter fodder. in addition decoy would still provide more than enough time to disengage form combat. In even a small group fight where you may need to retarget they are very useful. But decoy is again one of the primary reasons why mesmers are so high up on the meta. The ability to force opponents to lose targeting allows you to dictate the terms of the fight. This would be less of an issue if culling and tab targetting were fixed. That’s why thieves are so forgiving to play, to beat one you need to have specific tools to deal with the thief or incredibly good reaction times, which would be fine if the class required the same from the thief, currently it doesn’t. How about this: you may not target anything while in stealth, you must leave stealth in order to target. That would put everyone on a more even playing field from a skill perspective.

slender.1482:

engi to give up healing,

Your healing in stealth is FAR better then overall engi healing, especially in the thief bunker specs. In answer to your question as to why folks don’t immediately target you out of stealth the answer is 2-fold. 1. Culling, 2. Tab targeting in this game is absolute kitten, pretty much requiring you to manual target. The combination of one or both of those things make it incredibly difficult to target a thief before they are able to re-stealth. Trust me, sit on the other side of a class fighting a stealther and those two issues become immediately obvious, fixing culling alone won’t solve the problem. Stealth would not be anywhere near annoying if it automatically re-targetted stealther upon exiting.

Dual.8953:

Mayhem.1935:

amiable.4823:

Make utility googles reveal stealthed players… There you go, the engineer becomes useful as a class (anti-stealth) and stealth has a an effective hard counter but requires specialization to use. May want to add a similar utility to necros as well.

This happened in DAoC as well. The ranger/hunter/scout class had a passive ability allowing them to detect stealth. They further had a usable ability with a cooldown that made stealth obsolete to them for a short period. Sorry, dont remember the names but w/e.

If they add a stealth detection it needs to be unable to force revealed. Maybe give the thief a the transparent model allies see them as. Otherwise the detection skill would become a “Shutdown” Skill for the non-D/x stealthers. Stealth might need a statistical buff too to cope with the fact that the thief will have the tankiness of a boonless Ele, with no healing power or vigor.

I was thinking it would only reveal for the player using it. So if they had good group coordination they might be able to ff on the thief (folks will see the general direction/place the person with the stealth reveal is attacking). Make this "personal reveal last for like 5-10 seconds on a long cooldown. Rewards coordinated groups (as it should be).

timidobserver.7925:

Eviator.9746:

timidobserver.7925:

Probably the best thing about the build is that it uses the same trait point setup as my pve hgh might stacking flamethrower build, so I get to avoid any cost when swapping into pve mode. I just have to swap a few traits and gear around.

I don’t want to hijack the thread, but please do share! Weapons, utilities, gear stats, runes, sigils and major traits please! Just a link or a PM will do.

I don’t want to hijack Mask’s thread, so I’ll pm you it.

Could you set up a seperate companion thread? I’d be interested in seeing it as well! Also Mask, awesome music, that kitten song has been my earwig all week.

Mayhem.1935:

amiable.4823:

Make utility googles reveal stealthed players… There you go, the engineer becomes useful as a class (anti-stealth) and stealth has a an effective hard counter but requires specialization to use. May want to add a similar utility to necros as well.

This happened in DAoC as well. The ranger/hunter/scout class had a passive ability allowing them to detect stealth. They further had a usable ability with a cooldown that made stealth obsolete to them for a short period. Sorry, dont remember the names but w/e.

I’m not sure how I feel about a passive stealth detection ability (like a signet) but an active stealth detection ability seems totally appropriate. (In most games there is actual passive stealth detection based on proximity and facing). The problem with the current meta is that stealth lacks any hard counters whereas most other abilities do (boon stripping, immobilizes, gap closers, etc…) The result is that classes that stealth (thieves, mesmers) tend to dominate in WvW (along with Elementalists with their terrific mobility) because classes that can dictate the terms of engagement will always dominate open field fights. The way you handle this is giving other less used/powerful classes a hard counter, but make them give something up for that counter (in this case a utility or even an elite slot). Make the ability have a relatively long cd (30-45 seconds) so that if it used at the wrong time and you are unable to down the thief you lose the ability long enough for the thief to counter.

These abilities become very useful when most of your opponents are stealthers, but handicap you against other classes. So as the meta gradually re-aligns you need to weigh the pro’s and cons of using a slot on such a specialized ability. Now it would be a no brainer because there are about 2 thieves/mesmers for every other character type in WvW, but introducing a hard counter might even up those ratios.

Make utility googles reveal stealthed players… There you go, the engineer becomes useful as a class (anti-stealth) and stealth has a an effective hard counter but requires specialization to use. May want to add a similar utility to necros as well.

Am I the only one who likes being outnumbered because it provides a target-rich environment? Only problem is morale issues, some folks get a little too internetz, seriouz bizness out there (and a lot of folks don’t). Caveat: I am a terrible player and my guild is full of other terrible players who enjoy being terrible together and at no point do we claim to be part of any “special forces” other than those that ride the short bus.

Tried this build tonight in Zerg and roaming situations. It’s awesome. The additional survivability with he shield block let’s you run into zergs if you want (as long as your defensive cooldowns are up) and prybar a few folks and run back. The build really shines in small group 1v1 situations though. I don’t consider myself an awesome player but I was able to pull off a 3 v1 and a 2v1 tonight. Admittedly my opponents were not very good, but both groups contained D/D elementalists who hilariously killed themselves to my confusion as they mindlessly spammed their abilities.

I had three thief fights. 2 were baddies who died almost immediately as I pry barred and static shocked them. The third was actually clever and stopped using abilites when I stacked confusion on him. Unfortunately this left him with a Hobson’s choice of standing their unstealthed while I dpsed him or C/d ing and taking 3-5k in damage from the confusion stacks. He healed once so I got a bit of range and kited till my cooldowns were up and started over again. (I suppose he could burn a heal, but i don’t think their stealth heal removes confusion). Verdict this build is great, but it is particularly good against the current meta of D/D elementalists and thieves. Not sure how it performs 1v1 against a mesmer but I imagine it would have similar results.

Once folks get used to it an know not activate abilities when the confusion is stacked I imagine it will get harder to execute.

Honestly for ascended gear I am going for all stats, because we are one of the few classes that really benefit from every stat in almost every spec. I wish they would come out with generalized armor/weapons.

Hmm… I have all the gear for this. I will try it tonight!