My guess is that it’s 125 base, unaffected by healing power, but possibly affected by random WvW bonuses. So in PvP it would always be exactly 125, but in PvE/WvW it could maybe get up to the 130s.
What the trait actually does is “Become immune to conditions when health is below 25%”. It didn’t work if inflictor had more than 100% + duration, that was a bugfix.
I don’t think anyone uses Automated Response though. Pretty much the only viable builds Engineers have left after the “love patch” require HGH and that goes into the same slot ( Grandmaster Alchemy ).
Basically it works like this: If you like a condition based elixier+pistol build centered around HGH you’ll be fairly happy ( and a “good engineer” by the standards of certain posters ). If you don’t want to be pigeonholed into that kind of spec you won’t like the changes and are probably a “bad engineer”.
While I applaud the DS UI change, I can’t say I’m overly impressed with Anet at the moment. Why is it that the Necro gets virtually no love whatsoever when the already OP Warriors get a nice buff to their banners, and Engies basically have their entire class rebalanced?
Both classes received heavy handed nerfs far outweighing the minor buffs actually, although in the case of Warriors they came in the form of the global quickness adjustment rather than a class specific change.
3. start your shooting on the enemy getting hurt by the acid bomb.
This is a smart change, for a build using only EG it’s actually a usefull thing.
The new KR is good for most one kit builds actually, with the obvious exception of 100Nades ( personally I’m not sad to see that one bite the dust, cheesy burst builds are lazy design ). Isn’t the entire point of the trait to support multi kit usethough ? If so, it now utterly fails at its intended purpose.
Maybe we’ll get proper attention next now that engineers have finally been brought up to par.
You better hope Necros don’t get the same treatment Engineers did, that’s all I’ll say.
They got some pretty major buffs… I mean grenades no longer need LoS.
No, they further pigeonholed Engineers into what was the strongest build already before the patch ( HGH ) and butchered most of the semi viable builds. For specifics check the Engineer sub forum.
First impression: Big nerf to multi-kit-builds and if you’re using an Enhance Performance might stacking build like me you’re completely screwed with the KR change.
Add the death of 100Nades and the bug fix to flame thrower and HGH elixier builds will be even more prevalent than they already were.
Mixed signals by ANet again: They actively discourage flexible multi-kit-builds, yet keep the hybrid tax in place, because Engineers are so flexible. In less favourable terms that is schizophrenic design.
So while the Engineer patch list may look long and great for those who don’t play engineers, it’s really long overdue fixes/buffs/nerfs. Hopefully our necros are next up for the April patch.
Yup, very mixed bag and judging by how the last couple of patches turned out for Engineers in game after glowing patch notes, even that might be overly optimistic…
As for Necros, it could have been worse I guess ? Not much more to say really.
On 26th of February people were drooling over 10s Grenade Barrages…didn’t turn out quite that way. Let’s wait and see how the changes actually work in game.
The core problem of turrets is the massive downtime. Until that is adressed, turret builds will not be viable.
Good thing they decided to clean up the mess they made of kit refinement. I’ll reserve judgement of the outcome until I actually get it to test in game though. Wouldn’t be the first time the wording in the patch notes is … euphemistic.
Same goes for Super Elixier, that buff looks to good to be true. ( Note it says Impact base healing though, i.e. not the ticks )
It’s more of a global change rather than an Engineer specific one so ANet will hopefully spend a little more thought on it than they did on the terrible implementation of the Kit Refinement nerf for example.
I very much agree with the post above me though that they should fix conditions first and then evaluate how much of a problem boon stacking builds actually are. With my Necro I can already give boon stackers a hell of a time, with some adjustments to conditions they’d be free kills pretty much.
The solution is certainly not to give the already existing counters to boon stacking to the already overpopulated classes however…Warriors need some more sustainability not an IWIN button against Guardians and bunker Eles.
For a reminder, warriors have a 10 point trait that increases damage by 3% per boon on themselves. They could very easily make this include boons on target. It’s the simplest and most likely approach to whole boon hate thing.
Let’s hope ANet doesn’t take the easy route then. The one thing Warriors definitely do not need is more damage.
And why exactly should the game mechanics favour small groups over zergs again ? WvW is about large armies fighting each other, that’s the entire point.
If you’re looking for small scale battles, there’s an entire game mode devoted to that, ya know.
Those of you dissing the Warrior in WvW are too focussed on 1vs1 or very small scale battles. If that’s how you wanna play, then more power to you, but it’s not what the game mode is about.
In larger fights shout/LB Warriors are excellent all around and GC Rifle builds just murder people. Add the melee burst and frontline builds and the class has the largest build diversity of all in that setting.
Of course the simplistic playstyle can get old fast, but that’s another issue entirely.
I gues what I’m trying to say, give us more viable builds, that can be used in all parts of the game!
Well, that’s the problem right there. They will adjust the class to have more viable builds eventually, but how many players are going to sit around and wait until that actually happens ?
Judging by the pace they’ve been going so far they’ll probably get around to it by about 2020.
Glass cannon Longbow Ranger gets an absurd amount of bags. I collect substantially more on mine than on my grenade Engineer and wells Necro, probably about as much as on both of them combined.
Just clean up after the zerg and kill all the downed opponents, there’ll be bags all around you and preventing enemies from rallying and being rezzed is actually a very valuable and underrated contribution to your side’s effort.
I’m hoarding my laurels for now and if I were to spend them, I’d start with my Necro. Too many mixed signals about the direction the devs want to take the Engineer in the last couple of patches, or all of them so far really.
With world events being back from the dead, this really needs to happen.
Amoung the gazillion fireballs, lava fields, bubbles of all colours, poisonous gas clouds and other glowy…stuff, seeing attacks like Dwayna’s tears or what basically amounts to multi one hit death at Grenth is nigh impossible even if your machine can handle what’s going on on the screen.
Fear not, the next patch will bring another half-baked change making all the popular builds even clunkier and more annoying to use. A couple more of those and you won’t have to worry about Engineers again, due to extinction.
Don’t need a bunker to survive in dungeons, certainly not as a Necro. Using dagger main hand 24/7 would be a bad idea for most if not all players of course…Just bring mid and long range options and swap depending on what you need for the fight ahead.
Yeah I’m not entirely sure why they gave Prybar a boost, but then I’m not entirely sure why WvW has double Confusion damage either.
ANet halfed confusion damage for s/tPvP at some point and then forgot about it appearantly.
In WvW in a might stacking build Prybar is ridiculously overpowered now, especially if you’re playing Asura and can fit Pain Inverter somewhere in there on top…No idea how they did not see that coming.
One thing I’ve been meaning to try out was using 2x superior altruism runes and 2x major altruism runes for 5x might on the team. Has anybody tested this?
Oh man. Someone with x2 Superior Altruism needs to try this! Should be easy/cheap to drop 2 Majors into some crappy blue armors for a test.
The effects don’t stack. In fact, the 2 stacks by the major runes will take precedence over the 3 stacks of the superiour ones, so if you equip 2xmajor and 2xsuperiour you’ll actually get one stack less than using 2xsuperiour only.
So is this why Cursed Shore is completely devoid of players since patch? I thought I was going mad!
Either you are or your server is weird.
On my home server and those I guested on since the change, CS and Malchor’s Leap are packed like they’ve never been before and Balthazar Temple is run regularly as well.
It’s funny how some rejoice.. yet I see the crafting bit and get really irritated. :p I wish they’d extended choice to monthlies as well. I’d greatly prefer to do fractals and dungeons over crafting.
While I agree that the pick x out of y system should be extended to the monthly, the crafting task takes 5 minutes tops even if you have no tradeskills on any of your characters yet.
It is so nice to finally see that the guaranteed drops are having a positive impact on the economy. Exotics are no longer 4-5 gold a piece and you can actually buy exotics and rares for 30 silver a pop.
Thanks Anet for your diligence in changing this problem and allowing players to get rewarded for their time in Tyria.
Hopefully this will repair this economy once and for all.
So now inflation is good for the economy then?
Inflation? How? I think you mean deflation.
It’s neither actually. Just a drop in prices for a rather narrow range of goods because of vastly increased supply.
Balance varies drastically depending on what part of the content you play, i.e. leveling, dungeons, s/tPvP and WvW. It’s really good in s/tPvP and WvW, manageable when leveling due to the generally low level of difficulty, but very poor when it comes to dungeons.
The difference in impact on team performance between my Engineer/Necro/Ranger on one end of the scale and my Guardian/Warrior on the other is just completely absurd, my staff Ele ranks somewhere in between, depending on how well the group will utilize combo fields.
The good news is, dungeons aren’t great in this game to start with. So if that sort of content is your sole interest, you’ll probably want to look at other MMOs anyway.
anet wants us to stay longer in kits and make builds aroud them
That would go completely against everything they’ve said and done up until this patch though. ( Alleged ) Versatility is the reason the weapons and ( most ) individual kits are comparatively weak. But in a one kit build Engineers aren’t versatile at all, although I’ll give you that speccing heavily into them was necessary for ( most ) kits to be effective even before yesterday’s update. ( The notable exception is the tool kit, which got buffed even further. Go figure )
In a relationship this kind of behaviour would be labeled as “sending mixed signals” I suppose. Usually that doesn’t go too well for at least one of the people involved.
People would probably be less in arms if the changes didn’t seem so arbitrary all the time. This patch is a good example: The Engineer by the devs own words is supposed to be a very versatile class and suffer somewhat of a penalty for it. I think we all agree the second part of that equation is working just fine.
Yet with the kit refinement change they specifically target versatile builds and punish them some more.
The wording is a bit ambiguous, I’ll reserve judgement until I actually get to test what they really mean by that.
Considering the history of changes to the class, them nerfing all kit refinement builds rather than targeting 100nades specifically probably wouldn’t surprise anyone though.
They can’t realistically give a time because it depends on a lot of different factors.
How do pretty much all the other MMO companies out there manage to do what ANet can’t in your opinion then ?
Because of the way the patching works in GW2 I don’t think its that big of a deal, giving specific times of the day well beforehand is certainly possible though and there are several hundreds of pieces of evidence provided by Blizzard, SOE, FunCom, CCP etc.
In GW2 it helps to not think of classes as underpowered/overpowered, but as finished/unfinished.
Engineer is on the unfinished end of the scale.
If you’re a decent player, you can make everything work, in this game more than in others. If you’re looking for a smooth ride, this class isn’t for you though.
The great thing about today’s MMO market is, that you have plenty of options. There are games where you can gank and grief your heart out. If that’s what you’re looking for, go play one of these.
The community in all of them is abysmal, but that comes with the territory.
Necros are indeed not that great at putting conditions on a target, certainly not in comparison to a trapper ranger. When people talk about the class as condition masters, they’re refering to the ability to control conditions through transfers, Epidemic and the boon<>condition reversals.
Some weapon or kit being close to grenade damage doesn’t mean much anyway. Grenade 1-5 will barely hurt a fly, barrage is the kit’s only saving grace damage wise, hence the “100 nades” build is centered around firing two barrages at once.
The secondary effects are pretty good ( vulnerability, chance to bleed, chill, poison ), but you have to spec for the first two of those, further highlighting the major issue with several kits: If you don’t spec for them ( in thise case 30 ! points ), they’re completely useless.
Engineers played near the skill cap are a very strong 1vs1 class, so I guess you could be quite effective as a roamer on an empty server where you can actually find duels more than once in a blue moon. The class’ impact in mass battles is on the very low end of the spectrum though.
It’s hardly surprising you don’t see many of them in WvW.
Axe 5 on an Asura is hands down the best combat animation in game, pure win. Other than that axes don’t have much going for them unfortunately. Damage isn’t great and utility is better on pretty much all the other options.
That’s not to say you can’t make it work if you try hard enough, but Shortbow for skirmishing and greatsword or sword+everything in melee play in a different league alltogether.
1. Replace Axe/warhorn with staff, it’s just so much better.
1 b. Might want to swap Protection on Wells for larger marks, but that’s a matter of preference.
2. Drop Grandmaster Axe trait and pick Spite XII instead. All Axe is good for is Vulnerability stacking and the trait doesn’t improve that aspect.
3. If you don’t run in a coordinated group Consume Conditions beats Well of Blood by a mile. Choose accordingly.
4. Spectral Grasp has its uses, but it’s very unreliable. You’ll want to swap various skills in that slot depending on the situation. Run speed signet if you’re just crossing the map from one end to the other to cap supply camps for example, of Well of Corruption when defending a choke point. Also keep in mind, that you don’t have to be in a heavy condition damage build to use Epidemic effectively. Stack vulnerability with axe, apply chill with focus 5 and spread the goodness…
Most max range weapons in this game seem to be intended for team based builds and don’t do great in 1vs1.
That certainly applies to the Longbow. Use it when you are running with a team or a zerg in WvW, if you’re soloing or skirmishing you’ll probably want to look elsewhere.
Do you run with MedKit and Enhanced Performance ? If so, you’ll want 2xRune of Altruism and 2 pairs of the runes extending might duration, see http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune for a list.
Otherwise 3 pairs of + might duration. Rune of Strength was the most expensive by a mile last time I checked, so I’d probably skip on those and go for the more obscure ones since the 2 piece set bonus is all you want.
