Guild Wars 2

Mariticide.1970:

I honestly would love a hammer, mainly because I want to set things on fire and then beat them over the head.

Hmm, rocket assisted hammer…

Or maybe a drill head?

Then again, if this came to be it would be very tempting to roll a female asura and call her Vita…

Penguin.5197:

Although more than likely we would be getting hammers or maces as our next weapon, I would prefer greatswords. I would love my gs chainsaw on my engie

We already have mace, via Toolkit. It even shares model with a existing mace.

I just wish that the gear shield would be visible with Toolkit equipped, and counting as holding a shield (see related trait).

Guardian and warrior are easy to envision. One is the brawler, the other a battle cleric. The necromancer on the other hand was all over the place.

DS started as the necro down state, then turned into the triggered class ability. End result was that someone turn him into a uber-bunker during the last beta weekend, with the result that DS was nerfed without feedback right before launch.

After seeing the DS+retaliation build that surfaced the other day, i wonder if that is what ANet is balancing around. A necro that builds up a bit of LF, pops into DS, does damage, runs out of LF and drops out of DS, rinse repeat.

Dependent on a fire field being up, and the burn has half the recharge time.
Noted, tho interrupts means bupkis against anything big (hello Defiant).
3 sec reflect, 30 recharge. Just about the only real benefit shield has. But it does not block melee attacks and it roots.
2 sec block, 40 sec recharge, no ability to attack while blocking.

Note btw that the guy was pretty much still leveling.

Xyonon.3987:

The shield gives you some utility -> 5 is a nice line stun and 4 reflects projectiles and acts as a combo finisher.

Meh, hard CC has too short a duration to be useful in PVE.

The blast finisher and reflect has some utility tho. But i find that i just as often go P/P for the additional burn, if i use pistols at all.

Balekai.6083:

The only instance where SoV “may” be better than BF for MM is when your BF gets spiked down continuously in wvw or spvp by smart players. SoV helps in this regard (if you never use the active) in order to have a regen up at all time… as long as someone is attacking you…

Yeah, that’ll help… Likely you are being hit so hard that you won’t notice the healing ticks from the passive.

Hell, two trash mobs can overwhelm it…

The ICD would make sense if the passive still did damage (or we would be running around with a permanent retaliation on steroids), but without the damage component the ICD on the passive is overkill. This because we are still taking damage to heal, unlike warrior.

End result is that the passive is nothing more than a convoluted and very weak protection boon.

And the heal pr second of recharge of the active is outclassed by consume conditions, so if you are going to rely on triggering the signet to heal you may as well grab said skill.

I suspect two independent devs had their fingers in balancing the signet, and they didn’t talk to each other. And none of them were present at the demonstration. And with no major patch hitting until Jan. 21. it’s going to be a long cold wintersday for us necro. Praise Grenth…

“play the game, not the UI”…

BlkPrince.2854:

I was really disappointed with the karma armors from each temple there was no variation in the skin design really wish they did something that made each temples karma store unique. Plant people are the easiest i think the kittenes will be the charr they always get the short end of the stick when it comes to armors as for sylvari i think Melandru does sylvari justice

Could not care less about skin designs. What bothers me is that we get a mix of stats pr set, rather than the pick and mix we get from dungeon armor.

Manuhell.2759:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m not saying that those traits justify having other sub-par GM traits, just that we need to stop implying that other professions are more favored than engineers.

I don’t need to imply anything – i’m stating a fact. No other class has got grandmaster traits affecting single utility skills.

I fear that ANet’s logic is that this is a kit, and so a weapon on par with a greatsword. It does after all provide us with 6 bomb themed skills (5 weapon, 1 toolbelt).

All in all I suspect they never intended tri-kit builds to have a optimal trait selection.

K U T M.4539:

digiowl.9620:

Elixir infused explosives? Then again, pistol #1 is not considered explosions…

Would make nade auto attack heal for over 1k at 2k healing, lol.

Well you would have to go 30 explosives, 30 inventions, and pile on the healing power gear. Never mind hammering that key into submission.

but it was mostly a brainfart

ProxyDamage.9826:

None. They’re all pathetically easy now. Just indistinguishable cannon fodder.

Warrior or guardian?

The dolls, because confusion in PVE is tuned for use against mobs rather than characters.

Elixir infused explosives? Then again, pistol #1 is not considered explosions…

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I don’t know why people still think the passive does damage. It literally does 0 damage, with a 0% scaling from Power.

Its the name.

Have anyone actually tested if minions can or can’t siphon using the SOV active?

“a combat system completely unique to other mainstream MMO’s.”

Err…

At this point, ANet could just as well redesign turrets from the ground up.

Dropping overcharge and instead incorporating it into the basic attack pattern of the turret would remove half the bugs.

And making turrets more disposable by removing retrieve/detonate (quite a number of builds seems to use turrets as additional blast finishers for water fields) and instead starting the skill recharge at once would help make turret builds more mobile.

And if ANet worry about having a field filled with turrets, give them health loss over time.

The big thing overall would be that we now would have access to the turret related toolbelt skills at all times. No more running around with a turret in the utility slot that is never used unless the idea is to blow it up, because the toolbelt skill is so much more practical…

NevirSayDie.6235:

herrard.1274:

It could obviously have been worded better to avoid confusion. The fact that there is confusion means they did not word it properly so there’s blame to spread here.

That’s a fair point. Communication is a two-way street. I’m not sure what the policy is on releasing the exact skill coefficients for power or healing power. Without explicitly stating “the old healing power coefficient was .1, and the new healing power coefficient will be .15,” I can’t really think of a different way to say it.

ANet has developed a mindset that GW2 should be about “skill” over theorycrafting. This means that they are withholding a whole lot of info, leading to people instead gathering it by trial, error, and stopwatches.

When the game launched, non-channeled skills didn’t even list their windup times, and are still missing any data on the after-attack delays (sorry, brain failing me on the actual term). The very delays that make things like the auto-attack on pistols no better than the rifle, even tho it has shorter windup.

Also known as “when it’s done”…

Wonder if this is the kind of builds that ANet have in mind when they balance.

nekretaal.6485:

I’d get rid of it. Add a base heal of 4k to signet of the locust and boom new heal skill.

With this group balancing things is impossible.

Here are the problems:

1. Conditional Requirements are assumed to happen even if that’s unrealistic

We got slapped with ICD, because there were conditions that could have been met that could have given us big numbers. Like, if we got hit with hundred blades in time warp, that’s a lot of healing, even though this is not desirable at all.

Yet there seems to no worry about the warrior healing under similar conditions…

2. All potential traits for the skill are assumed to be taken

This is why the theif and ranger skills are so bad. The skills aren’t balanced around themselves, they are balanced around themselves with all traits. To make these even usable you’ve got to invest a ton of trait points. That you have weakened yourself considerably just to get your heal to work isn’t a factor.

This is why necromancer can’t have legit lifesteal numbers from a heal. A lifesteal necromancer with the heal, traits and food can’t be overpowering, but in the real world it just means that the food is ok but the heal and traits are garbage. And, again, if you take 30 point in blood just to get your heal to work, you are weak.

And in the end, this is why we don’t see build diversity.

I did a post over on the suggestion forum, but here is a condensed version.

Passive: put a stacking debuff on anyone hitting the necro.

Active: remove debuff, siphoning health based on stack size.

grave of hearts.7830:

its not perfect but i am sure i have seen more guardians complain theyr new heal is crap than necros.

Could be because the demo stream showed the guardian heal bringing the guardian back to full health, but under a condition that is hard to find in SPVP (WVW and PVE may be a different story).

Passive is nowhere close to healing signet.

Healing signet heals pr second, no matter what the warrior does.

SOV only heals when the necro is hit.

If it was still a siphon, the restrictive passive would make some degree of sense. but without the armor bypassing damage aspect, the other restrictions are overkill.

dypfryst.5132:

too unreliable, won’t use

echo that.

Kanto.1659:

Bummer. Anet and their semantic rigmaroles. Would it hurt so much to follow the usual thing they do of ‘increased from 10% to 15%’ instead of ‘an increase of FIFTY PERCENT!!!’.

Because they have never officially unveiled any of the co-efficients, those are all community research. And saying “we increased it by 50%!” is much better pr than “we increased it by 5%”.

all in all, outside of the #6 heals, very few skills and traits generate heals with a co-efficient anywhere near 1. The ones i can think of are reserved for elementalist and guardian…

Only reason i can think of why the ICDs are in there are that ANet is still scared of what kind of monstrosity they may unleash if they allow the necro to have both effective siphon and effective LF generation.

Meaning that they expect the necro to be popping in and out of DS constantly, never really dipping into dangerous levels during fights.

This may have held true, if any kind of healing could affect the necro while in DS!

As long as that does not hold true, dipping into DS is a liability in low health situations unless you can time your healing skills perfectly (and outside of consume condis, our heals are HOTs rather than instants).

At the same time they give warrior a pop and forget heal skill that convert 100% of incoming damage into heals, no ICD or anything within LOS. Just walk into a brawl, pop the skill, and watch the health rise back up.

Its as if they are still balancing like it was release day…

Phenn.5167:

What bugs me is the stream of hype that comes from the dev team on these skills and then they’re not even worth considering. I just…don’t understand. When I heard the initial description I got excited and rightfully so. But now it’s a joke. I’m beginning to wonder if the skill/balance dev team even plays the game. They certainly don’t seem to understand how the synergies and builds work with regard to high level play. I just…don’t understand.

They do. But as the demo stream showed, they do so as warriors and guardians (they knew exactly what traits to pick to make the new guardian meditation heal heal for a massive amount during the demo)…

Bhawb.7408:

No, redesigning PvE would help. We can’t realistically outdamage warriors, they just need to make PvE harder so it can’t just be 5x berzerker builds maxing DPS.

Harder? Nah. But make evade and DPS a option, not the only viable build. Right now the damage pattern of most mobs are a basic attack that individually barely tickles, a telegraphed spike attack that do 4x+ that of the basic, and in the later zones a virtually unlimited supply of CC.

I think a massive issue with necromancer is that attrition and tank are closely related. And ANet specifically designed the game to make it impossible to tank. And the SPVP relative, the bunker, are also being slowly dismantled to make SPVP more “exciting” for spectators.

Seras.5702:

It will make for a nice escape in WvW. Pop AED, jump off cliff. Massive heal and nobody is gonna follow you without dying or losing a huge chunk of their life.

Except that the devs pointed out that fall damage will not trigger AED.

IMO, turrets should be fire and forget in much the same way as necromancers do wells. The only place where turrets in current form makes sense is SPVP capture point bunkering. Everywhere else the very idea of keeping turrets up for extended periods is pretty much bunk.

As such, overcharge should pretty much be the default. Picking turrets up should join the dodo, and we should be able to always use the relevant toolbelt skill (bye bye detonate).

Dunno, the tooltip specifically calls out players… (ninja’d)

Had a little brainstorm over at Suggestions. Wherein the passive would tag the attacker with a siphon debuff upon hitting the necromancer, and the active would consume said debuff to heal the necromancer. Slap a suitably long recharge on there, and the risk/reward revolves around how long the necro is willing to stay in the fight before healing.

Passive: Once pr second a stacking siphon debuff is put on an attacker that hit the necromancer.

active: siphon debuffed opponent(s), erasing the debuff stack, and put the signet on recharge.

The risk is that to put marks out the necromancer have to be in combat and taking damage. And once those debuffs are “cashed in”, the necro have no heal for the duration of the signet recharge.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

Yup! Let’s do a comparison to the warrior’s healing signet.

Necros get 300 health back, only if they get hit.

Warriors get 392 health constantly.

Hmmmmmmmm.

with a 0.5 HP modifier no less. a passive 1000 heal, anyone? Quite possible with 1500 HP…

Honestly tho, the real insult to injury was the devs going out of their way to demo a spec-ed up guardian to show the power of the new heal. Yet the necro demo virtually all about “see that red glowing icon? Nice and scary, right?”.

I guess ANet got siphon spooked after the siphon food incidence…

Never mind they seems to have the mindset that Death Shroud makes us uber-tanks (when played correctly…).

ronpierce.2760:

You know. If this heal had a 20 second Cooldown, but if the on-kill thing triggered, the cooldown doubled, I think that’d be good… I mean, I don’t play engi, but I do think it’d be a little more meaningful. You’d have a basic heal throughout the fight. Then you’d have a life saver near the end, but then you’d have to survive longer without heals. Personally, that’s what I’d like

20 second CD, if it prevents death, the CD is doubled.

I am honestly not sure if their engine is capable of that. Is there any skill that has such a mechanic right now?

Bhawb.7408:

Lordrosicky.5813:

It was terrible anyway so who cares. Who wants to heal by being hit? Completely illogical.

The passive wasn’t about gaining HP from being hit. It was a flat damage mitigation per-hit. If you got hit for 3k, a 300 siphon would have been a 10% damage reduction. That is quite strong, especially when you consider the perma-retal as well.

Unless there is a slight error in the tooltips of the demoed skill, the passive effect no longer do damage…

Then again, they didn’t demo the passive side at all. Only the active part by attacking golems.

One way to settle this would be to create a range of characters were the only difference is body build. Then take snaps of them wearing the same armors to highlight the difference.

coglin.1867:

nicknamenick.2437:

You can see the problem here.. they are both very defensive builds but stacking only power isnt doing that much of burst damage, if you compare this with condition damage its just to easy to get burst condition damage + allot of defensive stats..

You do not know what your talking about. One thing condition damage absolutely is not, it bursty or burst damage. Condition damage is steady dots, while power direct damage is equivalent damage and in many cases more damage, simply applied upon use of the skill.

I think the bursty here is not so much about huge amount of damage in a small amount of time, but a huge number of varied conditions in a small amount of time. Enough conditions most likely to overwhelm the cleansing capacity of the target. After that the target may well be considered dead man walking.

I guess that when a transformation happens in the game, our current “entity” within the servers view of the zone is removed, and a different one put in its place. And with this new entity comes certain limitations not found in normal character entities.

Likely a quick hack early in the development of the game engine that has stayed, because nobody have taken the time to scrutinize every last entity the engine spawns and removes over the course of the game.

I would not mind gold so much, if the karma armors from the Orr temples were as flexible to set up as the dungeon armors.

Dungeon armors come in 3 different stat sets, but all share the rune of that dungeon.

Karma armor come in a fixed mix of 3 stat sets pr temple, so if you want the same rune but a different stat combination you need a stack of transmutation crystals.

End result is that you can’t experiment as much with karma armor as you can with dungeon armors or piles of gold (and running dungeons are a good way to get both armor tokens and gold).

Shoyoko.7309:

I remember the only time mortar was important and used was when we had the southsun cove event.
Lots of mortars elite was lined up while all the other classes was fighting in the front line, engineers was kicking kitten at the back and popping crabs everywhere.
A truly magical moment for all engineers.

Too bad i was going necro at that time, but then i pretty much did the equivalent. Switched to staff and minions, and just sat back to refresh them ever so often.

Sube Dai.8496:

Wasbunny.6531:

Also should be pointed out that world bosses (dragons) can’t be criticaled(?) and because of the condi cap conditions are extremely underpowered in those events. The new Tequatl for instance pretty much requires PTV, none of my condi characters even bother showing up anymore.

They’ve done that to try and make pvt and clerics useful.

I don’t think ANet had any specific intentions with it, it is just and artifact of the world boss dragons being “objects”. And with the reworked fight it became a DPS race for the first 25%, thanks to the timer.

Mork vom Ork.2598:

Wiki also says that it hits six times, and it’s 0.85 per hit. The damage is applied over 5 seconds, but if you take the activation time as a reference, it is the hardest hitting skill.
Especially in PvE, where enemies usually stay in place, it should be used on cooldown.

Except that we fly back 400 units unless we remember to animation break. Meh…

Mork vom Ork.2598:

SmoothHussler.6387:

To have 2-3 more condi removal options on a kit which already gives bleeding, poison, weakness, cripple, vulnerability, swiftness, stunbreak, regen, aoe allied condition removal, healing AND is a blast finisher would be OP as hell. Just step back and think about that for a second.

Also, what most people overlook, Acid Bomb is the engineer’s hardest hitting skill, with a power coefficient of 5.1.

Huh? Wiki says 0.85…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Acid_Bomb

Einlanzer.1627:

I feel the biggest problem with this game in terms of combat/encounter design is that most boons, conditions, and more tactical moves are very overtly balanced around PvP, which tends to mean they are much less effective in PvE than they should be (wooh I stunned a mob for 1 second). In particular, this applies to offensive conditions as well as some defensive ones (including Stealth), meaning that in virtually all situations pure DPS is going to give you more bang for your buck than any support or control oriented setup the majority of the time in PvE encounters.

Frankly, it’s a huge design problem and one of the primary reasons a lot of people find the combat boring (the other would be the relative lack of skill options). The fact that they so overtly balance around PvP with significantly less regard to how well things work in PvE is mind-boggling.

Honestly, they should balance conditions primarily for PvE than make a universal rule about how they work in PvP, such as having half the duration length.

Or introduce longer durations, but the potential for breaking, on PVE control effects. I tried to do a classic MMORPG move on some skritt a few months back. Opened up the fight with a daze on a small group of them, and started taking pot shots at one of the group. I had barely gotten the first shot of when the rest woke up and charged me. In any other MMO, they would have been out long enough for me to do significant damage to their compatriot. And depending on my build, i may have been able to stun/daze them again once they woke up.

That said, i have no problem with the active dodge mechanic. But i want OPTIONS! Right now we are forced to constantly use dodge no matter how we build. Because the alternatives are nerfed into futility for sake of PVP, and because it is the only defensive action we have that is on a short cooldown (10s without vigor, 5s with). The rest of them are on 30s or longer, with effects lasting 1/10 of that.

STRanger.5120:

digiowl.9620:

All in all, GW2 is more action game than RPG.

Not just GW2, every MMO is just an action game, RPG doesn’t exist anymore, because a game that can be called by this term would require, you know, an actual role-playing (and I guess every person who have an idea about that term knows that role in it doesn’t mean tank/heal/dps, right?)
So no change in comparison to other MMOs here, Anet just have their own system how combat works, nothing more, nothing less.

At least in other games, stats and builds matter. In GW2 PVE, you can go whole hog zerker, swap some utilities around, and go form DPS to “support”.

But the issue is not really the stats, it is mob design. They are simply big bags of health with little of the interplay between mechanics that you find in PVP. End result is that fights are simply attrition. And for that you go DPS heavy, no ifs or buts.

lordkrall.7241:

It is interesting that people usually talk about how DPS is the only viable role.
Funnily enough in order to maximize and make said role useful you have to utilize support, but for some reason people seems to completely ignore that.

More that you can do support without a support build, because the few stats that have any impact on support barely do so. the difference between running zerker and chumping on some “support” food, and running a support focused build is minimal in terms of extra support, but staggering in terms of lost DPS on the support build side.

Knighthonor.4061:

digiowl.9620:

Not going to happen, as that would in essence give engineers for free what others got by getting hold of the time limited greatsword skin.

Not sure I understand what you are trying to say.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Greatsaw_Greatsword_Skin

http://www.gw2tp.com/item/36340-greatsaw-greatsword-skin

Given the recent bruhaha over the reskinned human T3, any saw like weapon for “free” for engineers would be a epic PR mess…

I would not mind seeing med kit #5 removing the plural that is mentioned in its tooltip.