Guild Wars 2

DreamOfACure.4382:

Shhh… You’re actually making the grenade-nerf whinin- I mean criticisms actually seem illegitimate.

Grenadiers- I mean “we” don’t like that.

This thread is about s/tPvP. Grenades were terrible in those game modes even before the nerf and noone in their right mind used them. This is the one part of the game the gimmick builds work though and a buff to Engineers wasn’t necessary.

Gotta wonder what ANet were thinking here.

Engineer scores high marks on style but is low on substance.

Kolisch.4691:

Doomdesire.9365:

I don’t see the green arrow that indicates that’s he low level?

Someone point it out for me, I must be blind as there’s no indication here that he is below 80

the player killed is no longer in the picture it seems. Look at the screenshot again, he’s been hit by also another class, he’s safe from combat, and now looking at his dmg. What level 80 hits only a few hundred on grenades?

Those non-crit numbers for grenade 1 are actually fairly typical for a fully exotic geared lvl 80 with 30 points in Explosions post nerf. Going full glass cannon you could probably squeeze a little more out of it, considering Super Elixir was “fixed” as well that would be a very bad idea though.

Tekyn.5376:

I just read some interesting posts over on Guru that talked about how grenade builds are now supposed to be condition damage based? Has anyone tried that since the patch?

With Shrapnel you can stack bleeds a lot better than before now, but that’s still a pretty terrible trade.

Direct damage > condition damage and with the current mechanics bleed is the worst of the bunch except in 1vs1 or solo against landscape mobs.

Probably because they are not remotely talking as much smack as you guys do.

Buttercup.5871:

But the two things you call “fails” made me very happy. They are giant leaps forward in the right direction.

I’m absolutely amazed some players refuse to acknowledge that.

Yes, there still are issues with certain pet mechanics and build diversity, but after the 14th Dec patch these aren’t really worse than what most other classes have to deal with. Pets not hitting moving targets and too much travel time for arrows were the two major issues affecting pretty much every Ranger build and they have been adressed.

More progress especially in the bug fixing department would have been even better, but even so this was pretty much the promissed “Ranger patch”.

The max range for most classes is 1200 rather than 1500, so I don’t really see why Engineers must have another option at 1500.

Other than grenades there isn’t any realistic option for 1200 range either though and that is a problem. Elixier Gun is not a viable choice to do damage even in a support build and rifle has a lot of its damage potential restricted to mid and melee range.

Wasdclick.1764:

We’re the smart profession.

Well, no, according to ANet that’s Elementalists.

Solo most definitely, group probably not as long as bleed is capped at 25 per enemy. For trash it doesn’t matter either way, but on bosses you’re screwed if even one other bleed specced player is hitting it and there are many specs out there that can stack bleeds quite easily.

S/tPvP is the one and only part of the game where all those many gimmick builds can actually be somewhat useful ( in the hands of a very good player ).

The problem with grenades hitting moving targets is the very slow travel time, not the targeting itself. I don’t see how that mod, which may or may not be legal, would help.

Pets not doing damage to moving targets was mostly fixed this patch actually. Coupled with the speed increase to arrows the pressing issues of Rangers have been adressed, now they pretty much just need some streamlining of their trait lines and some adjustments to spirits and signets to have a decent variety of competitive builds.

Depends on what you’re looking for. There are still some niche builds that will do just fine for their intended purpose, they’re highly specialized for the most part though and will suck for everything else.

Makes you wonder how ANet justifies the hybrid tax placed on Engineers exclusively…

This guy is either hardcore trolling or hardcore delusional. For his sake I hope it’s the former.

Rump Buffalo.2594:

Condition removal is very poor (this is also an opinion shared by spvp top teams and is considered to be the main issue with warrior). We seem like we have a good deal, but once you realize shake it off is borderline mandatory in many situations you’ll see how wrong that assumption is.

Uh, what ? If you want good condition removal, or pretty much anything good, really, you have to use the appropriate weapons and utilities and equipment and build for it. Works that way for all classes, ya know.

Claiming Warriors have weak condition removal is utter BS, but unfortunately quite typical for the insane amount of baseless whining on this board.

The other kits were and are useless for DPS because they are useless for DPS, not because the grenade kit was actually viable.

Gilgamesh.2561:

Heh, try this — very easy to maintain 25 stacks of might with flamethrower:

• Sigil of Superior Strength
• 2 x Superior Rune of the Fire, 2 x Superior Rune of Hoelbrak, 2 x Superior Rune of Strength
• Berserker’s Gear
• Juggernaut
• HGH
• Fast-Acting Elixirs
• Equip 2 utility elixirs

And why would you do that other than for the lulz ?

havoc.8569:

Hatshebad.5608:

Just craft up a warrior to lvl 80…

Lol no. Go guardian for straight up PvE facerolling. Go thief for facerolling with a twist (stealth to bypass content, permanent blind, etc).

Bonus: Both also faceroll pvp

For generic PvE content Warrior actually rolls ( even ) more face than Guardian. It’s pretty much just soloing Champs that Guards have an advantage and that’s not remotely worth doing other than for giggles.

Pets not being able to hit moving targets was the single biggest issue of the class by a huge margin. If that’s really fixed, it will go a very long way towards making Ranger competitive. I didn’t really have time to test it thouroughly yet though.

Decreased travel time on arrows is a very significant boost for bow users as well.

Obviously there still are quite a few issues left, but unlike the November patch these changes will make a very noticable difference.

A few much needed bug fixes and some streamlining.

Good stuff overall.

Given the flexibility of certain other classes have it seems rather silly to single out the Engineer and place a hybrid tax on it. In this game all classes have to contribute damage even if they’re specced defensively or as support and in that regard Engineer wasn’t in a good place before the patch, with grenades being the only viable option ( for mobs not on speed and WvW walls, anyway ).

Imo there really aren’t any must have runes for Engineer. Most of the effects are kinda gimmicky and if the class isn’t short on something on its own it’s gimmicks. Look at holes in your stats or what stats you want to enhance further and pick accordingly.

Personally I’m running with rubies, because I’m finding it somewhat hard to get to a decent crit rate without them and I feel I have enough toughness/vit ( 30/0/0/20/20 build and mostly power/vit/toughness Orr armour ).

The disparity between running the same few select dungeons over and over and basically every other activity in the game is way too large at the moment. If I wanted to do that, I’d still play Age of Conan or Everquest 2, they do a much better job at that kind of content and have tons more thanks to their age.

Unfortunately aquiring the same rewards any other way takes many times the time and effort , if it is possible at all.

At the moment there is no ultimate end game armour, with ANet firing up the gear spiral that’s probably subject to change though.

Which one of the exotic variants is best for you, depends entirely on your build and playstyle.

Ahlen.7591:

I have a warrior and it feels pretty useless compared to my engi. It can do more damage, especially burst, but it’s utility is absolutely awful compared to engi.

Losing 50% utility for a 20% DPS gain isn’t that great imo. (Random numbers, do not represent reality)

Given the amount of damage, defense and mobility Warriors have, their utility is pretty amazing. Like everything else about the class it’s kinda rugged rather than flashy though.

Poor mobility on a Warrior ? What game are we talking about here ? Definitely isn’t GW2.

KirinDave.6451:

Why are people so eager to defend the engineer’s rifle as it stands?

For some reason this class seems to attract more than its share of people who…like to make wild claims, to put it mildly.

Recently.1043:

blurps.2340:

This is actually a fine exsample of why Warriors are the most balanced and most finished class in this game. Building and spending adrenaline as fast as possible as well as trying to keep it full at all times are both perfectly valid options, what’s better for you and your build depends on your choices.

Just the way it’s supposed to be.

I kind of gotta disagree. At least for PvE, most of the times its not worth it to use you’re adren if you have heightened focus/berserker’s power. Burst skills are more useful in PvP where the additional effects matter (stun on hammer/mace and snare on sword) The gs and axe ones are basically never good, pve or pvp since the pure damage from the skill does not offset the subsequent loss in damage afterwards.

You’re confirming what I said actually.

If you build for the various boni at full adrenaline, using the burst skills will usually not be desirable except for the ones that can completely change the course of the fight. The traits support your choice to go for these boni very well and that translates into a slightly altered but equally viable playstyle.

Working as intended and exactly my point.

This is actually a fine exsample of why Warriors are the most balanced and most finished class in this game. Building and spending adrenaline as fast as possible as well as trying to keep it full at all times are both perfectly valid options, what’s better for you and your build depends on your choices.

Just the way it’s supposed to be.

Asura have the best non-elite utilities for most classes imo. Pain Inverter is great if you’re not something like a Mesmer, who has plenty of confusion anyway and the Radiation Field is a combo field I think, Warriors don’t have that many of these. In WvW you can use the racials and I usually run with Pain Inverter on my Ranger and sometimes on my Engineer ( my Warrior is Charr ), most opponents will not notice the confusion condition and kill themselves

When it comes to the elites, the Warrior class ones are substantially better than the Asura golems though, other than maybe for style.

Scryar.2954:

blurps.2340:

Thudda.4392:

Hope you guys get things worked out regarding wvwvw population. We had same kind of issues few weeks back, now they are gone. we got queues to every borderland at eu primetime.

Anyways, there have been great battles all around. Be it eb or some bl. Yesterday seemed like both enemies lacked manpower they had at weekend.

WvW on Elonafels is not in a good place right now. For various reasons a lot of the regulars and people making up the numbers stick to fotm or do not play at all. No clue what’s going on on Deso.

Yeah, just ckecked all maps(18.10 CET). Undermanned Buff on Desolation and Seafarers borderlands. No queues on Elona and Eternal. I’m really suprised we on Elona cant even fill Eternal anymore:( Really dont know what is happening atm.

Well, me I’m done with WvW until ANet does something about the rendering issues. I’m not going to put up with invisible opponents.

Thudda.4392:

Hope you guys get things worked out regarding wvwvw population. We had same kind of issues few weeks back, now they are gone. we got queues to every borderland at eu primetime.

Anyways, there have been great battles all around. Be it eb or some bl. Yesterday seemed like both enemies lacked manpower they had at weekend.

WvW on Elonafels is not in a good place right now. For various reasons a lot of the regulars and people making up the numbers stick to fotm or do not play at all. No clue what’s going on on Deso.

Epidemic is somewhat hit and miss. If you get to cast it on an opponent with many conditions it is fantastic, but that just doesn’t happen that often. Maybe it depends on the bracket you’re fighting in as well, I’m usually in EU T2 and people know how to use their condition removals. The servers we’re fighting against usually have plenty of shout warriors and other specs specifically tailored to that task.

That Ele setup is for showing off only. What makes certain burst combos OP in this game is the ease even a facerolling noob can set them up with while still having options to disengage and escape.

That doesn’t apply to what’s being used in that video. Outside of that combo the guy is 100% useless and helpless if attacked.

All classes in GW2 are playable and the differences in performance are smaller than in msot other titles even after years of “balancing”. Necro is the least polished though and really needs a pass ( or two ) over traits and abilites. Many traits just outright suck and the setup of the trees is terrible.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I acknowledge your point on the grenades, but at point blank they do usually still hit. Even when occasionally one misses your DPS still remains stupidly high.

When talking about melee range the base of comparison should be melee weapons, because every other class except the Ele will just switch to their melee set. In that context grenade dps is hardly “stupidly high”.

With this build you’ll have bleeding up on your enemies pretty much 24/7, so it comes down to a straight 5% damage increase for the dual wielding trait vs. 10% for the 25 minor one.

Easy call imo.

If you’re an Asura Engineer, you even get an AoE version of Pain Inverter as the toolbelt skill of Technobabble.

Obvious troll is obvious.

I think we were supposed to get on the ship down from the catapult, but of course most people missed it and now we’re waiting at the bus stop.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Anyone who didn’t see this coming, including ANet, does not understand human nature.

Well, they did see it coming, that’s why not having a gear check, the power creep and gating was an integral part of their game design.

Or so I thought until very recently…

Should prob stick with the Guardian then. All three classes are able to solo, group and survive, but the Guardian is the only one of them with decent passive survivability. Ele and Engy require a very active playstyle even when facing trivial enemies.

Would be rather pointless to introduce gating mechanics ( aka “infusions” ) for one dungeon only. So…

Doesn’t work.

“You cannot drop bundles while in the air.”

Edit: Just noticed the post above, I tried with the ^ key of course…Oh well.

havoc.8569:

They also buffed thief’s (and necro’s?) pull range too. Yay thieves..

Necro has always been 1200, but it’s a projectile and before the patch it was even more unreliable than the flamethrower and that’s saying something. The patch buffed the speed of the projectile, so it should be easier ( read: possible ) to connect now.

Traps have been fixed.

The Reef Drake is indeed available in the Mists, looks cool, but its F2 is a cone confusion you’ll never land on anything. Would be decent if it was AoE.

I don’t see a grenade nerf tbh. With the increased travel speed I just might hit something moving in s/tPvP now…

Drusus.6723:

For bug fixes bordering the 3 month mark, this is simply not inspiring.

Yup. For the classes I play ( Engineer, Necro, Warrior, Ranger ) almost all of the changes are relatively minor bugfixes and not a single one of the actual issues are being adressed ( Warrior has none, mind you, still leaves three classes though ).

The game started out with pretty decent balancing overall, so immediate sweeping changes just weren’t necessary. Seeing this patch after three months is disappointing however. What were they doing all this time ?

Given the state of the class it’s hardly surprising most changes would be bugfixes and fixing functionality ( I’m looking at you, Spectral Grasp ). The nerfs they slipped in are mostly for consistency across skills and classes.

So yea, I kinda get where they’re coming from. It’s a little disappointing they’re not a few steps beyond that stage already though. Until the next big balancing pass Necro players will have to deal with a few less bugs, but poor balancing is still here. That pass won’t go live before next year I guess.

Nilgoow.1037:

Grenade Kit now throws 1 grenade by default and 2 when traited with Grenadier. No sigils/stats on kits, heal output from super-elixir nerfed, increased CD and reduced duration on smoke bomb.

Close enough :p