Guild Wars 2

Penguin.5197:

BrimstoneAshe.5043:

While they are fixing the rifle turret, how about actually putting three barrels on it like the icon shows? Because the it’s current look of a sausage maker on a tripod is rather laughable.

Yes. Maybe changing their aesthetics is part of the “some other cool stuff you’ll see”.

I mean who wouldn’t want to play with those awesome looking turrets behind that charr https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/engineer/
(They look similar like the rifle icon to me)

On the subject of aesthetics, is that icon for the weapon kits a concept piece for the flamethrower backpack I’m seeing?

Dude, I want that backpack. That is so much cooler than any hobo sack.

CriSPeH.8512:

90% of the Engineers problems come from being centered around having higher armour.
That is why Engineers are so hard to play, all of their Survivability comes from user-activated skills whether its blocks, dodging or invulnerable.
Our invulnerable skills arent ground covering and they remove our skill bar. (unless you requip a kit while invulnerable for 1-2 “free hits”.

When you see the vids of Elite Engineer players like Maska or TankCat you can see how much good blocking/dodging and mostly knowing when to disengage and re-engage factors in to how well they do.

Even going full PVT with Toughness you are still too squishy for the amount of time we have to stay at close range.

I won’t deny it adds to the difficulty, because you have to be aware of the field and a screw-up can leave you pretty vulnerable, but Engineer isn’t the only class who plays their survivability almost totally in user-activated skills (either defensive ones or CC)—Mesmer and Ele both do the same thing, both have very popular melee range weapons/builds, but I don’t think anyone would say that it’s a problem for them. Thief and Ele both do a lot of disengaging during the fight, too, so these kinds of things are more staple of the armor classes we’re at and above than the one we’re under.

Our problem with it, though, is that we’re so cluttered with having a lot of our utility/damage in our utilities (kits especially) that we don’t have a lot of breathing room around (or for) our damage mitigation—we have to cram a lot more in a smaller space, or accept that we’ll be lacking in more areas because we don’t have the room.

Which is part of what makes Anet’s versatility clause so painful for us—I see a lot of potential in us having a tool for every situation, and in us being controllers of the field, but we’re so bogged down we don’t actually have a lot of room for versatility after all.

I wouldn’t say they have no physical capabilities, because lugging grenades farther than rifles seem to shoot or carting around what’s probably a hundred pounds or so of bombs (and those are not small bombs) or the flamethrower would definitely take being pretty fit.

But they share being the least magical profession with the Warrior, and probably think they’re so much smarter than those brutes and they’re going to invent themselves into super soldiers except we’re still in like the equivalent of the Victorian Era for technology (the non-magical variants, anyway) so their eccentric genius gets hit with some limitations.

The only thing about giving us weapon swap right now is that we have so few options that aren’t necessarily going to work together cohesively in a build—and since you can’t bounce between them as rapidly as kits, I’m finding it hard coming up with something that would actually make us more viable than we are just because we can now flip between a pistol and a rifle (pistol/pistol and pistol/shield might be more functional, but that’s still leaving out an entire weapon that might see better use depending on the build).

It’s a nice idea but I don’t see how it’s actually going to help us be more versatile—not until we actually have at least two viable weapon sets for a build (who runs a power build with a pistol?

… But I would totally love getting a hammer to compliment my rifle in a power build though).

That kits have to take up our utilities while being the official reason we don’t weapon swap is pretty shoddy design though. I liked the idea I saw before of having the weapon-swap be a special kit-slot, and any additional kits you wanted would go in your utilities. It would do a lot more for giving a lot of builds some breathing room, I think.

A lot of toolbelts are pretty lacking as a utility replacement, too.

I’ve had my male Sylvari say “That was fun. Can we go again?” at the end of dungeons and it makes me smile every time. Also, combo field lines: “Did you see that?” “I make a pretty good team!”

Vulnerability and protection too—“I need cover!”and “Safe from harm.”

I’m also fond of my female Sylvari’s “Oh, what’s happening?” when confused.

I’ve noticed we have very rare lines when using racial skills (such as take root) but I hear them so infrequently I can’t remember what they are.

State of the __ usually aren’t for the sake for feedback, and the interview wasn’t structured for them to give Anet balancing ideas—but ultimately the quality of an interview is largely on the interviewer, and if they ask shallow questions with no follow up we unfortunately don’t get any real information out of it. It seems like the best interview reps would be people who’ve done a variety of classes each enough to be deeply aware of their strengths, weaknesses, and playstyles.

Honestly I think that’s as much an issue on the side of the interviewers, because the people doing it (and I don’t know how people are chosen/volunteer for these) looked to be from one particular side of things—and I guess the main interviewer had questions people sent in but it’s so different reading from a prompt and from actually understanding the issue and being able to better flesh out your inquiry. The Mesmer section saw the other two start speaking up and grilling about very specific things, while I didn’t really see much follow-up from them in the Engineer section (presumably, none of them play one and are intimately aware of common concerns).

I wouldn’t say they’re not inspired, since they’ve got a long list of things they’re working on (contrast the Guardian has… nothing. And they are in a better place but so are Mesmers). But before they look at unique tweaks for us like GS piercing for Mesmers (which hits other classes but I think we have the most common beams) or improving a niche trait they really need to plow through our issues.

This confirms a couple theories I had about their views of Engineer—namely that we weren’t supposed to be hinging builds on an adept trait (though they coukd have had a more consistent fix than stacking uneven cooldowns…) and they recognize why we were doing that is because we have a number of utilities are useless and need to be viable. So I’m hopeful, and I think we’re going to see a lot of good changes even past this coming our way.

Additional damage utility on turrets is nice, but I hope they’ll address their fragility too because they’re useless in defense or offense if they keel over and go on a 30-40+ second cooldown.

Maybe someday our down state will be addressed too, I’d like to actually have a fighting chance down there…

IIRC Feedback lasts the full duration, its graphic is just shorter than the effect. It’s 8 sec traited so that tooltip is right (though it doesn’t update), but every other glamour is shorter than described.

Grackleflint.4956:

athuria.2751:

Question: were you using Jump Shot at all in your rotation? That adds a huge chunk of damage from the rifle, and with the amount of immobilizes you have landing both the leap and the land shouldn’t have been a lot of issue.

I’m pretty sure our low MH damage is our “versatility tax” and not our control, but a one-build demo (that we still have no idea how it was traited) that was tested in only one mode of play (1v1) doesn’t really prove that control isn’t a significant piece in our viability. Especially since your focus on control is so extreme.

I made sure to use all of the rifle’s abilities.

I chose to focus on control because Arenanet’s design philosophy for GW2 focuses on dps, control, and support. Since I already know that self buffing (which really isn’t true support) through elixirs is viable, I didn’t test it. I also know that kit builds are viable, so I didn’t test those. So I tried a kitless control build because control is often cited as a reason why our mh dmg is low. I personally believe it is too low and unjustifiably so. I feel like this a really simple concept to grasp, but it seems to be causing a lot of confusion.

That is indeed what they balance their combat mechanics around, but any build that takes one aspect to an extreme is going to find themselves severely lacking in the other two—especially a build with utilities that are already known to be unfortunately underpowered. There are ways you could sacrifice just a little of that control and get yourself some strength, and make it far more balanced than chaining 10 seconds of control—which with a burst build you shouldn’t need that much time, and with a sustained DPS build you’re probably going to use in spurts anyway (and thus have control skills off cooldown).

I’m sure there’s not an Engineer out there who doesn’t recognize how much we hinge on kits and self-buffing because our turrets and gadgets are lacking, but that’s because turrets and gadgets really need to be addressed—a harder hitting rifle wouldn’t make your PBR on any more reasonable a cooldown or your net turret less fragile, but a more frequent PBR or a more damaging net turret (maybe damage to the base attack, why can’t we trait for razor nets?) could do more for supplementing your rifle’s DPS.

Question: were you using Jump Shot at all in your rotation? That adds a huge chunk of damage from the rifle, and with the amount of immobilizes you have landing both the leap and the land shouldn’t have been a lot of issue.

I’m pretty sure our low MH damage is our “versatility tax” and not our control, but a one-build demo (that we still have no idea how it was traited) that was tested in only one mode of play (1v1) doesn’t really prove that control isn’t a significant piece in our viability. Especially since your focus on control is so extreme.

I think part of your damage issue is that the CC skills you do have on you either don’t cause damage (just about every net attack) or is on a long CD (PBR, overcharge turret) that means you can’t use their damage consistently, and the rifle is largely a burst weapon—ergo, much of the damage you’re carrying is spurts. It sounds like you use the CC to disrupt the enemy while you beat on them, but with these skills I think using it to lock down the enemy long enough to unleash a rapid chain of burst would work best—and I’m theorizing here and don’t know what your traits even look like, so take that with a grain of salt because they may not be very synergetic skills either.

Turrets and most gadgets still need some love to make them more equal in use to our kits (especially cooldown reduction), but I think your issue might also have been the skills you chose not working with the strategy you were using (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, though).

iSwordsman is actually pretty good at staying alive by virtue of having an attack that’s an evade and attacking more often (it’s about 3-4 seconds per attack, so every 3-4 seconds it can’t be hit) and waiting at a range (about 600 units) that allows it to miss being smacked by most melee-range AoE. Also being a leap finisher off our fields makes it extra punishing for the enemy to attack it.

The sword block is great for preventing one-shot bursts/CC and buying precious time to duck out of a mob or large AoE (especially with the side porting sticking you close to the edge far more often than not). And it hits the enemy like a truck, too. You can use it to just block some autoattack and land some nice burst damage too if you want.

… The daze projectile could stand to be a little better (I’d prefer a single target instant, what do I need to daze things in a line for?), but I use it more as a “plan b” for it the enemy decides not to attack me after all— kitten if they do, kitten if they don’t. It can also help you save the hide of some party member at range by buying them another second to move, without sacrificing your illusions.

Retested. You’re right, I got mixed up flipping my traits around looking at that.

I’d assume it’s the iLeap stuff. Blade Training is working with iLeap now, but Illusionists Celerity is not.

On another note, did Mind Stab get the ability to hit in a full 180 arc (same as Gash/Slash) when it got buffed to three targets or is that new?

Female: #6

Male: #6, #1

I wouldn’t say “never be allowed to loot chests on other servers ever” because that’s kind of punishing to people who are guesting to run around with their friends, but if Anet is determined to keep them once a day then having that limit extend across servers (As in, you can loot your chest on any server but they all share the same cooldown, so after that you would not get a chest anywhere until it reset) or having a smaller overflow limit in those areas would help—and not just for people guesting but for the floods of the local server population coming out.

I’ve noticed culling in general has been worse in PvE since that Feb patch that was supposed to help fix it in WvW, but the amount of lag and culling I was getting at Tequatl last night was almost as bad as Lost Shores part 1/2, and I was doing that at an off hour!

iBezerker is definitely still a whirl finisher in PvE. I didn’t notice if the Confounding Bolts popped up but I did wind up planting confusion with it.

sPvP I’m not so sure about. I’m definitely getting the finisher graphic in HotM, but every test resulted in a lack of confusion. Idk if it’s just my bad luck or if it’s broken on that side of things, so if someone else can confirm that’d be great.

If you’re looking for what gadgets do (control/breaking control), then yes (the control on kits doesn’t justify taking them to me if you don’t have a use for the rest of the kit, because they aren’t as strong). Like I said, they’re very specialized—you’ll either have a use for them or you don’t.

As for how the developers feel, hell if I know. I’ve not seen much of anything on gadgets from them probably because Engineers don’t say as much on gadgets. They’re not as popular as kits, but not as broken as turrets, and they just kind of get forgotten about.

Gadgets are really specialized in control, which is what makes them harder to make full builds around because the group is not highly diverse. That said, they definitely have their uses if you have/need an extra slot for some control. I carry Throw Mine around since it’s a pretty reasonable cooldown even without Speedy Gadgets (which didn’t work with it before this patch anyway) for a blast finisher, knockback/down, and boon stripper. The others are on a bit long of a cooldown though, but so are a lot of our skills for what they do.

I keep coming back to flame blast has a secondary detonation ability and all I can care about is that no longer will I have to forlornly watch it roll harmlessly through my enemies and blow up somewhere behind them.

Kit refinement cooldown seems to be shared between all kits—that’ll be annoying to try and manage the secondary effects of the trait on top of the primary effects of the kit since they net you different effects, and I wish they were just each on their own cooldowns—but it looks like they’re bringing kits themselves up so hopefully it won’t be such a pivot point for combat either way.

Edit: Nevermind, missread this. I honestly never noticed Grenade Kit or FT have internal cooldowns on their refinements already, they always set off the moment I switched before. The cooldowns are stacking if you try and use the same kit, but it seems to calculate separately from what’s already there (if you go into FT and wait 10 seconds GB will go off as it should, but if you try and use GB every 10 seconds it won’t work).

They probably should have removed those internal cooldowns if they were gonna add a global one…

(Also Life on Crit stuff was ridiculous on FT but it was never necessary to make it viable. It was nice for needing to bunker down on a certain point but I can’t deny when trying it that if we weren’t having underpower issues it would be too much.)

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vengerin.6013:

I was sure I was about to play GW2 no matter what and I was very into the hype but I played other mmos in the waiting and tested some in BETAs or so…

The Old Republic is… crap. How something created by Bioware and based in Star Wars can be so bad?? Npcs that doesn’t recognice your gender or race, a story that doesn’t care about that too, that doesn’t change a little (yeah, little things… very little), a story with an end (in a mmo >< ) and very, very, very unappealing enemies or friends… And the thing they made in the lore with Revan made me wanna punch them in their faces ><

In Tera I don’t see even a story and in Secret world, in Beta was awful but it changes and grow up better…. I like it, not so much as GW2 but it’s ok.

I really, really think that GW2 story can be turn to be great if they start from this point… Let us call the story ‘till this point the beginning. Bring up the rest of the Elder Dragons, let us get our glory, let us use our choices in the character creation for something more…. And stop trying to make us into companions, we aren’t >_<

Ps: Planescape Torment, ohhh, the memories :P

You may be lucky, I could never find a copy of Planescape. Legitimately.

I think the biggest problem with any MMO is that they want the story both ways. They want the player to feel good and the center of the world (maybe), but on the other hand, EVERY player can’t have that or you wind up with some interesting things. I mean, look around the game at other players. See all the humans? They’re all the Hero of Shaemoor. The norn are all The Slayer of Issormir. All the charr lost everyone in their warband except one person, while taking out the ghost of Duke Barradin.

Yes, it’s epic and it makes you feel good as you play those first few chapters of the personal story. But once you stop to think it gets ludicrous . . . and it starts to unravel. Unfortunately, you went and peeked at the man behind the curtain. You pulled Santa’s beard.

This is a problem I don’t know IF it can be solved. Everyone wants to be the hero of the story, but the limitations prevent it from working out where everyone has a definitely unique story to be the hero of. That’s just not possible (yet) in an MMO as written by the developers.

I almost want to go back to some of the older, ancient MMOs where you were just some idiot who wandered around doing things of minor interest except for one-off events.

It’s a limitation because it eventually conflicts with player expectations. They can give us plenty of glory—but they can’t give us the glory a lot of people seem to want. Because everyone is the hero, and because everyone is approaching it from different angles, anything the player handles is effectively a void in history because nothing specific can ever be made of it. We get to do all sorts of cool things and be praised for it, let’s be honest—but these are all impermanent things that won’t be remembered because they can’t be remembered. It’s why we can’t be a god, or Marshal of the Pact, or have our Prophecies characters properly remembered, or have actually been the driving force of EotN.

It’s a little bit of a recursive issue because players want to feel strong and special and not just be a face among the crowd, but they can only be allowed to go so far because the reality of it is that we’re always just a face among the crowd—among other players.

I think it would have been interesting too if the personal story had all been minor racial you-are-not-a-special-person stuff, but Anet likes to tell large tales and so you have to accept the storytelling limitations that come with that (or I guess just not enjoy the story).

Named NPCs mostly all have unique dialogue options, and some of them also change based on your race/gender/order/personal story choices (if you have a Whispers character, see how many hidden agents you can root out). Not all of them are strictly related to the lore, but a lot of them talk about the history, the present, and themselves. And a lot of NPCs in towns/outposts/before and after events/etc will stop and talk to each other if you catch it.

Paying attention to and engaging NPCs in any part of the game can really tell you a lot, and it’s what keeps me engaged in the world—I’m always finding someone I never talked to before, or who actually says something different to an alt, or overhear a conversation for the very first time and it adds something lively or tells me something I didn’t know before.

Geikamir.6329:

Those are exactly the things I hate about him. Well that and his mono-toned voice giving me orders.

“On me commander.”

“Shut it, Trahearne or I’ll crush you into this bridge.”

Those things, to me (sans voice-acting), I think are more the fault of how they handled our character than how they handled Trahearne’s (abrupt intro aside)—that is, slowly removing all of our connections and identity until we’re left with a stand-in husk for the story, whereas Trahearne has only one stable identity that can be addressed. If our race, order, choices, history had ever actually been acknowledged (consistently, and not “I happen to pick the same storyline with a character I met earlier and if I talk to them they might recognize me”), if it had continued to play a part in our story I don’t think Trahearne’s side of things would have been so egregious—it would have felt more like a side plot to our own story, but it’s hard to be our story when it’s not our character. I Our story didn’t have substance and Trahearne’s did, and that’s why it stands out above us and makes it and him look more important than we do.

Bearzu Smash.5962:

BobbyStein.2315:

. . . since we have plans for Trahearne and other existing characters in future live updates and expansion content.

Please. No.

Please yes.

What frustrates me about Trahearne isn’t him barging into my story, stealing spotlight, or having a bland personality (or voice, although I’d say what he really suffers from is a rigid character model that can’t make up for his tone with actual body language). What frustrates me is that there are hints and suggestions of his deeper character scattered all in the first half of the story that are just sweeped under the rug as short dialogue options (with other people) or throwaway lines at the end of a mission that you can’t engage in, can’t talk about, can’t delve deeper into and see. He just gets treated as a plot device with superficial relationships (including with you) once you get to Claw Island.

And this isn’t limited to Trahearne—a lot of characters suffer from existing for their roles and not as characters, and there’s just so little attention given to their quirks and being (like their past) that they feel empty. And they don’t have to be that way—they were clearly ideas there, they just weren’t followed through on. I’d like to see these characters get fleshed out like they deserve, I’d like to see those that were done well and then put on a bus (see: almost everyone in the early personal story) given more screentime. I’d like the current characters to be salvaged rather than just tossed away as a failure and moving on to the next thing, because I don’t think they’re so far gone that that’s necessary. The story is young, we have plenty of room to refine it.

I’d also like to actually be able to maintain a relationship with them that doesn’t turn cold after the mission storyline is done.

It doesn’t “have” to be, but as it stands there’s really not any reason or sense for it, either for the Pale Tree to change her image of the Sylvari or for them to suddenly get transformation powers or for them to want a second form, as the Sylvari seem comfortable in the anatomy they do have.

It very well could be—or it could be that the other tree is close enough to the Bloodstone out there (where a bunch of human sacrifices were made) that there were enough human bodies for it to pull from too (we also killed a ton of White Mantle humans in general out there who probably never got properly transported to a proper burial site, so there could be plenty other places with an abundance of dead human in the soil. Aurora Glade involved lots of White Mantle death too and would probably be on the way).

Of course, it’s also possible that the two trees don’t have the same reason for having humanoid Sylvari—just as it’s possible they don’t both hold sentience, or a tied to a/the Dream. The Pale Tree may have made a conscious decision and the other tree may have come naturally, or just pulled from what it could find with no idea what it was really looking at.

Killyox.3950:

Oglaf.1074:

Killyox.3950:

This is their true form.

Pale tree observed humans while it grew for a very long time and learned how humans “work” and emulated it and created Sylvari.

This is their true form. For anything else Pale tree would probably need another 100-200 years looking at different life form and thinking how to emulate it.

Also there are many Pale Trees.

You forget that the Pale Tree also creates Sylvan Hounds which are entirely different than the Sylvari.

Please provide source because Sylvan Hounds afaik are not product of Pale Tree.

They are. You can talk to Parroen in the Omphalos Chamber about the puppies there, and he’ll tell you the Pale Tree sprouted them this morning. I feel like we got that information well earlier in an interview or blog post, but I can’t name which one it might have been.

Blacklight.2871:

Killyox.3950:

Blacklight.2871:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

i thought it was either because…
the pale tree seed was influenced by ronan carrying it (i believe this is what is stated on the wiki… but am too lazy to check)
or;
it was planted on a human graveyard; and emulated what it found

Those are the most accepted reasons for why the sylvari look like they do, dating back to forum discussions years ago. There’s also a theory that sylvari can’t exist without an imprint to replicate, so they have no “natural” form, and another theory that the Pale Tree is a type of dragon, or they are the antithesis of dragons. Basically, dragons embody entropy and these trees (there are more than one) embody renewel. Together they form an engine of change in the world that keeps Tyria turning (metaphysically at least).

Personally, I expect we will see new Pale Trees (although they may not be pale, specifically) with their own unique sylvari populations, introduced with each major expansion, right alongside the new dragon threat.

We already get info about other Pale Tree in the game, up in the maguuma jungle regions and we get to meet 1 sylvari from the other Pale Tree. Thing is; he does not know nightmare court nor does he know any teaching like velen’s but he is honorary.

He does not know what a “Pale Tree” is until you explain it to him. They also look human like but don’t have anything nightmare court like. He also does NOT have a link with his own Tree like our sylvari do. We can assume there are others too.

I have a theory about that too. That individual is a left over from the last time the dragons appeared in the world. When the dragons were defeated, the trees themselves also eventually disappeared, along with their sylvari children who could no longer be reproduced. This one odd sylvari, for some reason, stayed around. But over the centuries (millenia?), lost touch with the reason he was here in the first place and eventually lost the memory of who he was. Aside from the dragons, he may be the oldest living creature in Tyria.

Love to see more of that particular story revealed.

If you take Caithe’s path in that story you’ll find out he’s quite genuinely newborn—the place he last remember is exactly where his pod is, and that’s only a couple week old memory. We definitely already have another existing and grown tree out there.

Whether it’s better to shatter or keep your illusions up really is entirely dependent on which way you build yourself for. Our mechanics are kind of a blank slate that we customize to our liking, and both ways are effective but with very different playstyles.

Mesmers don’t have the stealth of a thief, true (and it is unfortunately buggy and a lot of it won’t stack properly), but we also carry many evasions, blocks, interrupts, and some damage reducers to mitigate damage—which, ultimately, is the game Mesmers play. We are more fragile than Guardians (edit: I guess Warrior would be more fitting, because Guardians play the damage mitigation game too in a different way) or Necromancers and we don’t have the mobility to escape in and out of combat like a Thief or Elementalist, so our survivability is mostly in preventing ourselves from getting hit in the first place, or at least lessening the blow.

Ohoni.6057:

Well, even if a trait doesn’t directly say “reduces cooldown on staffs” or something, it would still benefit a weapon if it enhanced an effect the weapon often generates. The problem with the weapons is that the default effects they generate don’t seem worth using, they are all very lackluster in and of themselves, but by applying mid-tier traits they apparently become useful. The goal would be to make them worth using without traiting, and then, if you like, you could trait them to do something else too.

All of the traits related to interrupts really aren’t game changers and are not going to make your weapon “worth it” unless you’re building around interrupts as a whole. Dazzling doesn’t work with either Counter Blade or if it procs on Chaos Storm. Blurred Frenzy isn’t a distortion and hasn’t ever worked with those traits, so that’s another weapon buff out. I will grant The Prestige sees a really substantial boost in power from the buffed Prismatic Understanding.

I guess you could consider clones/phantasms as part of the weapons, but there are a lot of traits related to those that you can get down in the adept tier—if you build around illusions, you can easily have 2-3 traits you need to strengthen them by 30. And they’re tricky because how you’re going to use them and strengthen them will vary widely depending on the kind of build you’re using. I was counting them more as a mechanic for that reason.

What about this though, “utility” is practically worthless at low levels. I mean, you aren’t running dungeons, nothing requires too much cleverness to tackle, DPS and survivability are far more important down there. It’d be interesting if they could tie a lot of the more utility effects of the attacks to higher tier traits, while the raw DPs were added to the default build.

I disagree. Being able to control and evade damage (phase retreat, blurred frenzy, illusionary wave), having defensive capabilities, etc are useful at all all levels for survivability especially, especially if you don’t have the damage output to wipe the floor with everything before it can kill you. Most of the combat in upper level zones and dungeons is not really different from the combat in the lower levels. If that’s “useless” it’s only because someone just coming into the game won’t be familiar enough to use them until they get a hang of the combat—which, in my opinion, is just a higher learning curve and I don’t consider it disbalanced that some are harder to get the hang of than others as long as it’s a case of how the mechanics work rather than working against the system. In my opinion, the Mesmer as it is is definitely the former.

What do you do to deal with the problem of mob A dying and taking all his associated illusions with him? Do you deliberately target and place illusions on multiple different mobs? Dump them on one mob and then ignore him and focus direct attacks on another? Just not worry about it and keep recasting illusions as they deplete?

And while this wasn’t directed at me, I feel I can give some insight. I do deliberate plant phantasms on multiple targets while I weave around and start tearing them down. In the case of mobs with a larger threat, I’ll put illusions on the biggest danger while I whittle down the mob around it until I can get it by itself. I use staff and swords, but I know greatsword is popular for multiple targets as well because of iBezerker/having the best multi-target capability outside of melee.

I’ve not played a shatter build very extensively, but I believe clumping the mob and aiming clones towards the middle is usually how they try to get the biggest bang for their buck.

Mesmers have a harder time with mobs because they’re very single-target and have to exert more effort for AoE than, say, a Necro. It’s one of those things that really will just boil down to you picking up skill.

And the thing about the trait-reliance is that it’s for the sake of our mechanics, not our weapons—really, the only traits that directly benefit them are cooldown reductions which are staple to builds across professions and more a general fault of their need in order to keep up with the speed of combat. Everyone sites 40+ largely for Deceptive Evasion as a game-changer for shattering (and to a lesser extent that’s when you can grab Sharper Images), but we have utilities for clone generation well before that if you’re going to shatter, and benefits for phantasms/more stats are in easy accumulation at around 20-30, which I’d say is where the Mesmer can very easily cease struggling—that’s thereabouts where I did, and where my thief picked up speed as well.

I hardly want to discourage new players or keep Mesmers less and “in high demand” but I think it’s a misidentification of where our difficulty lies to say it’s in the strength of our weapons, especially when the main determinate is their direct damage and their utility is completely overlooked.

This isn’t just one issue, it’s individual armor pieces that were not scaled correctly and need to be readjusted. These kinds of art problems are being steadily worked on, and your best bet is to go report them as you see them to the game bugs forum (they have a sticky for game art problems) so that they can add them to their list and get to them when they can.

Hammerguard.9834:

Sword off-hand: It’s just crap…

Hahahahahahaha

Ah, but seriously, the great thing about Mesmer weapons isn’t the damage they cause as much as it is the shear amount of utility they carry in them (such as the staff’s defensive properties). This isn’t a bad thing—quite contrary, it gives you an incredible amount of versatility in battle, especially when you come to properly manage both your weapon sets in synergy with each other.

Although I’m not sure what’s pathetic about the sword’s range when it’s the same as just about every other melee weapon in the game. Melee is not an inherently inferior form of combat, and we can do quite well up there with all of our ability to mitigate damage.

You hardly destroyed an entire race—just the subset that was living in Risen-infected waters. There’s still plenty of them up in the lakes and coasts around Kryta.

And yes, it is morally grey to be stealing something they need to survive, but on the reverse the Krait have an extremely frosty relationship with pretty much every other race because they consider them inferior and are more than willing to do things like kidnap and enslave them for their own needs (sacrifice them in the name of their religion, kill them to get them out of the way…). There just wasn’t a lot of sympathy to spare to the plight of a group who would not try to work with you and have a history of abusing your people/everyone else’s people.

Dolyak/Ox was one of the Spirits that stayed back to hold off Jormag while the Norn fled South and was lost, so that was about a century and a half ago. That’d be super old even by Norn standards so I suspect Forgal wasn’t born then, but even if we assume his father was only in his 20s-30s at the time they fled 70-80 is about the youngest we could reasonably assume he is, and if his father had him late in life. He could be upwards to even 100, I’d say—Norn do keep their health for much longer into their old age.

Are you really using levels, a completely meta game mechanic for the sake of player progression and something never actually acknowledged as existing in actual lore, to justify why a character must be less experienced than you?

Norn live longer than humans do—they can get to 120 . Forgal is more likely around 70-80 years old.

And true, you don’t find out a lot of Forgal’s past, especially if you don’t dig into the dialogue during the quests—but that’s really a general fault of a lot of characters in the personal story, and the way it rushes characters in and out of the story.

The Norn not valuing past accomplishments isn’t really accurate, because a lot of their culture revolves around creating a rich history about themselves that will continue well past their death. Forgal not caring is a personal thing, and really more a warning that he expects you to prove yourself capable regardless what anyone has said about you before—basically, to not ride on the coattails of your fame (which actually does fit into the Norn idea that they never stop making their legend, even if they’ve accomplished great things. They just keep on going).

And for every race, regardless how much of a personal hero you are to your own people, you’re joining a new, organized group that has their own way of doing things. you have to start at the beginning and learn the rules, and when you prove yourself able to do that and that you can play nicely with everyone else you’ll notice just how quickly you shoot through the ranks because you are capable. Most characters (except Charr) also don’t have any experience working for a hierarchy organization like that—you’re wanna-be adventurers, and just because you save a few people from burning builds doesn’t mean you get to enter the military as a Sergeant.

One rune isn’t working as the whole set. The count of how many runes you have actually takes into account both your PvE and PvP gear, despite the fact that they don’t overlap. You’re being told you have 6 Runes of the Engineer with one on your PvE armor, but in reality you only have one and are only getting the first bonus.

Nah, the hero panel is definitely reflecting what your shaders level is now. Before it used to display at low shaders, but now it reflects whatever you have them actually turned up to in your graphics settings. You can toggle between different levels and see.

Sylvari bodies are, as a general rule, much skinnier and more straight-shaped than humans. A lot of armors across all types don’t seem to have been given proper shape adjustments to account for this (and we’re hardly the only race suffering from that, look at Asura and Charr) and so you get really weird scaling issues like waists that don’t fit, poofy skirts, distorted proportions, etc.

Best we can do is keep reporting these issues as we find them and hope they get around to them—there was a thread in the game bugs that was all about our scaling issues, but I can’t seem to find it anymore.

DocHolliday.5921:

I agree with you for the most part. Except for having to be careful about using skills. Just a few examples… first, mesmer or ranger interrupt builds. Should be obvious. But second, you also had to be careful depending on what enemy hexes you had on you. And depending on what skills the enemies had, you had to be very careful when to use skills (for example, don’t use healing breeze if you know someone hkittenter enchantment off recharge). That’s just a few examples I thought of quickly. I’m sure if I were to go back and play GW again (which is seeming more and more likely of late) I’d find a lot more.

I did consider the interrupt Mesmer as a build that would have been heavy in skill-management, but I didn’t list them because while I didn’t play one in GW1 I do play a CC Engineer who does much the same thing—screws the enemy’s flow of battle up, and if I burn through them at the wrong time I am as naked as a newborn baby.

Confusion is effectively our punishment-hex replacement, and it is more simple but requires the same behavioral management Empathy and like skills did, and we do have some abilities like reflective skills that target very specific skill types (projectiles) and force you to move or switch things up. We don’t have quite as many, probably because a lot of mechanics are classified as something very specific and would mostly only screw over one profession, but they’re there.

DocHolliday.5921:

athuria.2751:

Like it’s been pointed out, your skill variety from GW1 was not at all what it was when it came out. We will get more utilities, elites, weapons (and maybe we will get to customize those weapons) over time, like we did in GW1, and like it happens in every other MMO. This will not be the end of your variety, nor do I think the combat system will remain so static that it will never add new mechanics or skill types that will result in new playstyles and builds.

To be honest, I’m of the opposite opinion where combat in GW1 was boring and repetitive for me (I don’t agree there’s no skill/build variety in GW2). You has a lot of skill variety that you could combine in different ways and customize your efficiency with them, but the fighting in and of itself felt very static to me. It had a lot of thinking, but not a lot of dynamics or really engaging your enemy like you can in GW2 (or actively layering skills with instant-casting/channeling). I played it and enjoyed it for the story, but spending a lot of time in combat in the open world ended up just being tedious to me.

I was there in GW Prophecies from the beginning. I started 1 or 2 weeks after release. It had way more skills even at that time than GW2 has now. But quantity is only a small part of it. It had far, far more skill variety than GW2 does. The skill system in GW2 is just overall far more simple. Hexes/curses are gone. There’s nothing resembling smiting damage. Degen/regen is implemented completely differently, exactly like in every other MMO. Boons are a pale imitation and nothing really at all like enchantments (shatter enchantment, anyone?). There’s nothing really to cause you to be all that careful how and when you use your abilities. With the exception of a few “oh ****” abilities, you use them when they come off cooldown and that’s that. (Yes there’s some few exceptions to that last statement, but the point still stands.)

I honestly didn’t watch my skill usage in GW1 any more then than I do now—I had some sort of buffer that I need to around manage around (energy/cooldowns), control skills I had to manage timing of so as not to waste, and I had skills that were important for specific situations but dropped where they would be useless, which I also have now (I just don’t have to wait to get back to a town to change them) in both skills and traits.

And while I dearly miss proper hexes I don’t think our class mechanic variety was a lot more, in the beginning, than it is now. Classes still have 3-4 different ideas that they focus around, and these ideas function differently between classes like they did before, even in overlapping areas (like summons).

If variety has been lost, I would say it’s not in individual classes as much as it is the loss of dual professions—because our skill list didn’t actually center around 3-4 ideas, it centered around 6-8. There was more breadth because you had a customizable overlap where you could specialize in 3-4 ideas between two different class concepts (or spread yourself out to 5-6-7 ideas, if you wanted), rather than just the ones your class was designed around.

Like it’s been pointed out, your skill variety from GW1 was not at all what it was when it came out. We will get more utilities, elites, weapons (and maybe we will get to customize those weapons) over time, like we did in GW1, and like it happens in every other MMO. This will not be the end of your variety, nor do I think the combat system will remain so static that it will never add new mechanics or skill types that will result in new playstyles and builds.

To be honest, I’m of the opposite opinion where combat in GW1 was boring and repetitive for me (I don’t agree there’s no skill/build variety in GW2). You has a lot of skill variety that you could combine in different ways and customize your efficiency with them, but the fighting in and of itself felt very static to me. It had a lot of thinking, but not a lot of dynamics or really engaging your enemy like you can in GW2 (or actively layering skills with instant-casting/channeling). I played it and enjoyed it for the story, but spending a lot of time in combat in the open world ended up just being tedious to me.

To give you a slightly longer answer, not quite.

Lore-wise, Sylvari do have pollen that falls off their bodies with movement. But there is no actual ingame animation for this, probably because they would be too small to be worth it with your regular zooming.

The recent patch has resulted in a glitch with the positioning of swords on male Sylvari (pictures 1,2). They’re now sitting crooked and pointing out at an angle, and one of them is floating further off the hip. It’s really noticeable.

This has been an issue for a while, but the light vigil legging’s skirt dents inward and clips into the leg (picture 3) when the knees are bent too far, such as when a staff is drawn.

(I noticed the weapons clipping into female Sylvari hips has been fixed, so thank you for that.)

Yeah, the base damage was what I was meaning. The damage calculated for your attack in your attributes is definitely changed, and it no longer lists the increased damage from Deadly Mixtures, but the damage in actual practice doesn’t seem to be changed at all.

I’d also like to see monthlies have more rotation/a grab bag form like dailies as well. Monthlies are a longer commitment than “just trying it out” (and let’s talk about how flat that argument is against the people who already have tried these things and didn’t like them) because they’re something that are expected to be completed in a longer timeframe, and it’s frustrating when they constantly involve an aspect of the game that you just don’t enjoy.

I think both WvW and Fractals should see more rotation, or at least have other options alongside them rather than being a constant staple month after month when they’re parts of the game that require going completely out of your way for if they’re not part of your routine because you don’t like doing them. Especially if they’re going to add a new form of currency with exclusive rewards to them.

Tooltips are inaccurate on every class. But you’re right, it is increasing the damage itself, it’s just not changing the attributes like it used to.

But my numbers aren’t actually looking any stronger in the Mists than before, where base damage also seems to have been increased. :|a Now I’m confused, did we actually get a base damage buff or didn’t we?

Yeah, I noticed just now—are you max level in PvE (edit: or in a level 80 zone, given downscaling was adjusted)? The base healing strength scales with level (1000 at 80), and then it receives a 50% from Healing Power on top of that. At 207 healing I am getting the 1,104 healing drop drop bandages I should, and Bandage Self is over 5k as it should be, but I’m also level 80 and getting full stats with it.

If you’re getting lower than what you should be, that’s probably something to report. :|a

If you could, it sounds like a bug to me. I have very little Healing Power as well, and am still getting 5k from Bandage Self and 1.1k from the dropped bandages that I was getting before.

So there’s where the base damage buff went…

pre-Patch, FT has 916 base damage and, with Deadly Mixtures, 969 base damage. I just tested the switch and FT does now have a base damage of 969 and Deadly Mixtures is not resulting in any damage increase at all.