Guild Wars 2

Golems cannot condi cleanse, but can players cleanse condis off of ally golems? May not be relevant, depends on whether or not golem zergs bring non-golem condi cleanse teams.

Zetsumei.4975:

No no no, the golem busting builds is a real thing. Call in your condi necros and equip those epidemics. Most pugs are too stupid to realise they need to exit the golem if they want it to stop bleeding out and the epidemics making all their friends die.

Question – we know that healing does not work on golems. Does condition removal work on golems? What about condition conversion (to boons)? If not, then I think this could be very useful…
Also, when a player with condis exits a golem, do the condis disappear completely, or stay on the player?

From recent ANET post:
Hop into World vs. World between July 17 and July 24 to experience our newest special event, Golem Rush, where siege golems are better, faster, and stronger!
During the special event, all golems will be supercharged and have the following effects:
All siege golems in WvW no longer require supply to construct.
All siege golems in WvW will deal 100% additional damage to other golems and players.
All siege golems in WvW will move at 100% additional movement speed.

Now that we have seen golem prices on TP increase dramatically, some (such as myself) will choose not to, or be unable to, buy golems to take part in this event. Instead, I would like to collect a repository here for specific golem-killing builds that we can use to survive and, hopefully, thrive in the upcoming golem madness.

I am at work so I don’t have time to theorycraft builds now, but I would like to get some opinions from others. Keep in mind that players will generally not outrun golems anymore, and golems will hit very, very hard. Our only advantages I can think of are that their attacks are very telegraphed, cannot be used while moving, and golems cannot heal (though a player with full golem mastery can just build a new golem when you kill the one he/she is in!). Oh, and siege disablers are still a thing.

So let’s hear your thoughts and builds for golem disruption, all professions welcome!

I mostly play WvW, so my estimates on SPvP will be primarily speculation.

That said, I think this build with berserker or marauder amulet should be fine in SPvP for roaming, with maybe a few changes. I use Mortar in WvW where having long-ranged attacks is often invaluable. I am not sure that it would be as valuable in SPvP. If you switched Mortar for Elixir X or Supply Crate, then the Explosives specialization would be a lot less valuable, and you may consider swapping Explosives for Firearms, picking up High Caliber, No Scope or Skilled Marksman, and Modified Ammunition.

Streamlined kits would be less integral in SPvP too, so you could pick up Lock On or Takedown Round.

But again, this is just my speculation, since I mostly play WvW.

I also used Elixir U at first (but in place of Elixir B rather than toolkit). I found it didn’t give me enough benefit from HgH/achemical tinctures, so I feel Elixir B is really mandatory. Toolkit is nice too because of the gear shield (among other things).

Fair point on the self-regulating defenses. You don’t really need it as you already have Elixir S on your toolbar, but yeah, backpack regen in a Zerker build is not terribly helpful either.

For thieves, I find that spamming AoE around yourself when they stealth is a decent defense. You have jump shot from the rife as well as mortar fields (the one with the blinding field is very useful here). Ranged thieves (e.g. P/D condition) are probably more challenging, since they don’t need to get into close range much against you.

Thanks for the comments!

I can indeed see that this build is forgiving, but it does look really, really difficult to kill anyone with it. You have a lot of power, but your p/s weapon set will do very little damage. Toolkit will do okay sustained damage for you, but most opponents will not let you stay within melee range (or if they do, they’re a thief or a greatsword warrior and you don’t want to be in melee range). You also don’t have any mobility, so low-health targets can easily get away from you.

If it’s working for you, then play what works. But if you do find that it’s hard to get a kill, I would suggest swapping p/s for rifle. You will lose a little defense, but you’ll gain cc, lots of damage, and a little mobility.

Alternatively, you may consider switching to another amulet (like settler) to get some condition. damage. Then your p/s weapon set will also be more useful.You take a lot of condition damage traits in marksman line, but your condi damage with soldier amulet is very low. Since the June 23rd patch, condis deal much less damage when your condi. damage stat is low. You may then also switch runes to something more condi. oriented, or something more defensive to offset the vitality loss from not using solider amulet, if you prefer.

Hey everyone. I’ve been playing a lot of this build in WvW for roaming since the specializations patch and it’s been working very well for me so I thought I’d share. It’s one of those bursty mortar HgH builds, with a few differences…
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlcThSuY1Vw+KQ7FLDG04PqRMEfXJCxXASf7B-TFCBABapMAiLAQlq/cmSQsU6BwDAIPdAuv/AA-w (ignore the snowfall runes…I use them for fun, but feel free to replace them with something more practical, like runes of strength. Similarly, you may sub glass cannon for explosive descent)

You can mostly wear berzerker gear because this build has a LOT of short-term defenses
-gear shield, 16sec cd
-2x Elixir S on 48sec cd
-Toss Elixir S on 32sec cd
-protection injection
-stability on toss elixir B, 16sec cd

You are plenty bursty with Orbital strike, sigil of air, aim-assisted rocket, and your normal burst moves (jump shot, prybar, etc).

With HGH and Mechanized Deployment combined, toss elixirs have really short cooldowns (16sec for toss elixir H and B, 32 sec for toss elixir S). I really hope this is intended and isn’t nerfed, because it really helps make elixirs useful again.

You deal with conditions fairly well, due to Alchemical Tinctures and your short elixir / toss elixir cooldowns.

With the berserker gear, mortar kit makes you very potent should you wish to jump into a zerg or get on a keep wall and throw out lots of damage too.

I think it could be a challenge to make the hammer meet expectations as a cool and appropriate (hammer-esque) melee weapon without making it too similar to the rifle. The rifle is already a short-range burst direct damage weapon with heavy CC, which is what hammers typically do (well, minus the burst damage maybe). What should we expect the hammer to do to be different? Maybe sustained damage at the cost of burst? More or less CC than the rifle? Mobility? Defense?

Arioso.8519:

Nilix.2170:

Super save people with double Elixir R or just the fact that you have an extra one without 100s Cooldown.

Wait a minute there…

If you time this right,

Can’t you have a toss elixir R every 20 seconds?

Screw quad lasers, that’s about a 50% uptime of resurrection fields!

And what’s Elixir R’s main utility skill?
Free dodges! So you can proc the skill pretty much whenever you want.

Elixer R will be insanely good with this trait.

Yeah, I imagine this skill will get nerfed in some way or another, or it could be very, very broken in good hands. Unfortunately.

I am really excited to use 4x orbital strike against enemy siege in WvW.

Unless I missed it, “deployable turrets” is missing too? One of the best ways to keep a turret alive was to use this trait and throw it somewhere that melee attacks couldn’t reach it. If we’re missing both deployable turrets and autotool installation, turrets will be very, very vulnerable, and should have the cooldown reduced (esp. rocket and thumper turret) or some other fix.

santenal.1054:

Whats is you guys opinion about the fact that med kit is all about throwing instead of dropping?

If the throwing option were to be removed we could enable auto attack on the number 4 skill and have perma swiftness that way without the hassle of throwing the thing.

The ground targeting definitely makes it unwieldy to use on yourself, which relegates the med kit to being practical only as a group support kit. I think this is fine, if it’s the intention. It definitely feels odd in the current build because the medkit seems like it should be used for group support in its theme, but it’s generally best used on yourself and is, in fact, difficult to use on others without packaged stimulants.

You could still use the new version for perma-switfness on yourself too, but as you say it’s a hassle. But if you want perma-swiftness and don’t want to take mecha legs, streamlined kits, or runes, then this is a reasonable alternative.

It’s nice to see perma-swiftness returned. This makes for interesting choices, I think.
In PvP/WvW, Speedy Kits + Invigorating Speed was a really powerful, and often-chosen trait combo.

Now, there are three things that make it weaker: 1) the longer cd on Streamlined kits means a maximum of 25% vigor uptime (from that trait alone), vs. 50% as previous (with 10sec cd speedy kits). 2) The specialization design preventing players from taking just two points in alchemy for invigorating speed, and 3) the general nerf to vigor from 100% increased endurance regen to 50%.

I expect many players will use tools now without alchemy, taking streamlined kits just for the swiftness, without taking alchemy as well for invigorating speed. I see some very difficult choices in the Tools line grandmaster slot – with the nerf to vigor and the invigorating speed + speedy kits combo, Adrenal Implant will become much more potent, and may be quite competitive with the new Tools grandmaster traits.

My only concern is that perhaps the nerf to the speedy kits + invigorating speed combo was too much, and the combination may not really be used at all anymore.

Delete both. Then make a Revenant and and Engineer. All accounts should have atleast one engineer.

Are.1326:

With todays livestream revealing the new engineer changes, there are a few points I found unclear and wonder if the devs or anyone else here on the forum knows about:

• Coated bullet, is it baseline now? (They said it might be on the first livestream)
• Does Siege Rounds affect Poison durration on Poison Gas Shell, Chilled durration on Endothermic Shell and any combo finishers from Mortar Shot? Or does it only affect the field durrations?
• Does Heavy Armor Exploit have an internal cooldown?
• Do Cleansing Synergy and Heal Resonator affect yourself and allies or just allies?
• What is Reactive Lenses ICD?

And finally, how much from the first livestream that they didn’t talk about in todays stream is remaining?

Anything else people feel we didn’t get clear info on?

I believe they said the Reactive Lenses cd is the same as utility goggles. I don’t have any definitive answer to the other questions, but I would imagine siege rounds only affects the field duration, not the duration of finisher effects. I would also imagine Cleansing Synergy and Heal Resonator affect both you and allies.

Palindrome.8904:

The issue is the tool belt. Each signet would have the passive effect, the active effect and the tool belt skill. They would be strictly better than any other class’s signets in terms of functionality.

Elite specs often change the functionality of the profession mechanic (in the case of guardian and necro anyways; for memser, it simply adds to it). It may be possible that, with a change in the engineer mechanic (the toolbelt), engi signets may not be strictly better than those of other professions.

Maybe now that rocket boots will no longer increase travel distance while affected by swiftness or super speed, ANet will increase the base travel distance a bit?

Yeah, probably not.
Well, I had fun while it lasted.

Arantheal.7396:

One option would be to alter all TB skills to have drastically reduced cd’s, but need energy in turn, if we take this elite spec. Maybe the same could be done for our weapon-skills.

And if our skills are activated while the energy threshold was too low, they go on a regular cd. The balance will be that we can’t maintain our upkeep skills if we spam other skills, so smart energy-management is required if we don’t want to loose our advantage.

I would really enjoy this system. But it sounds really tricky to balance. I think each toolbelt skill would have to be adjusted individually (converting from cooldown to energy) rather than simply applying a formula, for example (e.g. energy cost = original cooldown *0.8). While this could work, it would be a huge re-balancing issue, it would be very unintuitive, and trying to write a tooltip that would adequately describe it (for transparency) would be almost impossible.

That said, I can’t at this point estimate how ANet will change engi’s profession mechanic for the elite spec, so I look forward to hearing more about it.

There would be a problem with giving the elite spec an energy mechanic that tied to the new skills – what if you didn’t use any of those utility skills? Would the energy be useless? None of the other elite specs require the new utility skills to be used. I would really enjoy an energy type mechanic, but it sounds tricky to fully integrate into the class.

The thief has some skills which influence initiative regeneration. I think it would be cool to have a legend that focused on energy manipulation. E.g., maybe it could have a channeled skill that increased your energy regen rate while channeling. We’ve seen energy upkeep skills that slow your energy regen, but what about something that speeds it up? The other utilities for this legend could be made very potent but have high energy cost, rewarding you for finding the right time to channel for extra energy to cast them. I didn’t play GW1, so I have no idea if this fits Glint or not.

I do share some of your concern here, but I want to make a point about elementalists. While they have 20 weapons skills per weapon, each of their weapon sets also strictly limits them to a set range (melee-ish for D/x, mid-range for S/x, and long-range for staff). I do not main an Ele, but perhaps someone else can evaluate how limited Eles are with this restriction? So far it seems, atleast in general terms, similar to what Rev will be facing.

Artaz.3819:

Staff probably didn’t need the Taunt since there is Forceful Engagement.

Staff also lost Fury boon on 3rd autoattack chain …

Overall, Staff is going to be very hard to balance as stated here with the heal on auto and another heal on skill 4, (so broken for PvE – worse than Guardian Hammer auto Protection boon or Thief Pistol 5 pre-nerf Blind spam). And don’t forget another two pocket heals with Legendary swap.

Revenant Offhand sword has a single target r600 pull… Pull with block/immobilize as the other ability. Warriors commence whine.

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RE: Other comments in thread
Actually, Revenant needs the same thing that Warriors do… a main hand 900 range weapon (i.e. Pistol). Of course Revenant will probably get 900 range main hand dagger (throwing star) or some such.

The other is Revenant needs a mobility weapon 600-x range leap skill. I’m actually surprised Main Hand Sword and Staff doesn’t each have one actually.

I agree that having Hammer as the only ranged option seems unusual. Not sure if Rev needs a gap-closer (e.g. leap) skill on a weapon though. We see a leap skill on Mallyx legend (though admittedly it’s for mobility only and not useful for actually getting into melee range of a target), and there may be mobility skills on other legends too; it could be that Rev gets most of it’s mobility from utility skills instead of weapon skills.

Has it been indicated anywhere that the Revenant elite is getting a new legend? Or this that just an expectation?

It has been stated previously by ANet that Revenants will have roughly as many utility skills as other professions, 20 skills (not counting heals or elite skills). If we are expecting 4-5 legends, this suggests 4-5 utility skills per legend.

skowcia.8257:

Invictus.1503:

skowcia.8257:

They have 4 utilities, but they showed us olny 3 so far.

Source? I’ve been following the Revenant closely since they announced the profession and never came across this. I’ve seen devs say they haven’t ruled out the possibility (as they say about a lot of things), but never anything even suggesting they are actually planning to do it. Perhaps you found something I missed?

Guess i follow better.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/2/18/8061219/guild-wars-2-profession-reveal-revenant-pc-mmo-arenanet

Cronacher describes one of Jalis’ utility skills. Revenants using this legend will be able to call down a rune from the sky that damages and weakens enemies as it descends. Once it actually hits the ground, it will push enemies away in order to form a safe space for allies.

Its something we havent seen yet.

That sounds very similar to their inspiring reinforcement skill (though not exactly the same). I suspect that was an old skill that may or may not be included in the HoT launch, as that article was from mid Feburary. Though I certainly hope for more than 3 utilities per legend…it would be very, very difficult to make all three utilities relevant in all game modes.

Vavume.8065:

Kaos.9162:

Problem with adding things for ranks is that it rewards the eotm karma trainers more than regular WvW players.

Problem with not adding rewards is no one feels rewarded, but honestly they could easily nerf the amount of wxp available from objectives in EOTM if they were to go with a reward system like I suggested.

I think the additional weapon/armor skins is a very reasonable idea. I also agree that the advantages of giving people an outlet for their points significantly outweighs the drawback of potentially increased karma training. Anyways, as long as karma-training is more effective in EOTM than in normal WvW maps, then the normal WvW maps shouldn’t be affected much.

To be fair, I think ANet has a difficult situation here since players have WvW points spanning 1-2 orders of magnitude. They have to simultaneously make players with 50 points feel like they can do something meaningful with them while also allowing players with 5000 points to continue to advance. I am not defending their solution, since it clearly caters to the former group at the expense of the latter, but I am recognizing the difficulty of the problem.

One solution I can think of would be to increase the point cost per rank of a WvW skill even more, rather than normalizing it (as Manimarco Devil said).
E.g. supply capacity rank 1 cost = 5 points, rank 2 = 20 points, rank 3 = 100 points, rank 4 = 500 points, etc.
While this could work in concept, I doubt that it would make players happy.

Another option might be to reduce the number of rank points awarded for each WvW level as your level increases (e.g. at rank 100, you only get 1 rank point every 2 levels, and at rank 1000 you only get 1 rank point every 5 levels). This would work really well if WvW ranks were a new system. But changing the current system to this method would retroactively reduce many players’ point totals, which would also lead to raging (even if the system would be more balanced as a result).

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Is the problem statement I made earlier valid (the difficulty caused by the wide range in points available to new vs. experinced players)? Is it worthwhile or even possible to try to make both groups feel rewarded?

I know many of us (myself included) are now accustomed to the +100 power and +250 vit. But I fail to see a compelling, non-arbitrary reason to keep it. All experienced players received this benefit, so even if my power level will decrease, everyone else’s will too.

I certainly agree with some arguments that there aren’t enough point sinks for people with lots of WvW ranks, but that is, I think, a separate issue.

UnknownRH.4592:

Lol when they added it people complained and when they removed it people complain. Internet being internet.

Definitely this.

RabbitUp.8294:

fluidmonolith.3584:

Am I missing something? Was it ever confirmed that one of the elite specs would be getting Defiance? Does someone have a source for this?

“Equipping an elite specialisation takes up one of your three specialisation slots and grants you three minor traits and nine major traits for use. How does a trait that removes a condition every time you evade an attack sound? I’m personally excited about a grandmaster trait that has the power to grant my character a defiance bar!”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/news/specializations-part-two-reward-tracks-and-elite-specializations/

Sounds good, thank you for posting this. I do agree that defiance sounds more warrior than engineer-oriented…however, it doesn’t seem like it would just be giving warriors more of what they already have in stability?

Am I missing something? Was it ever confirmed that one of the elite specs would be getting Defiance? Does someone have a source for this?

Yamsandjams.3267:

IMO, one of the biggest issues with immob (aside from some of the insanely long duration it can get) is that it can often be as effective as a stun. Certain abilities can’t fire properly when immobilized because your character is not able to rotate, and if someone moves behind you, you can’t actually fight back.

If they set it so that you could rotate while immob (like NPCs can), then it’d be less potent overall, and certain problems like abilities not firing correctly would likely not occur anymore.

I agree. But the difference between immobilize and stun is that we have stun breakers and stability to mitigate stuns. If you are immobilized, the only thing that is guaranteed to get you out of it is a full condi cleanse. It’s often better to immobilize someone to lock them down for burst than to stun them, because there are often fewer things they can do to get out of it. Because of this, immobilize is often much more powerful than stuns.

Being able to turn while immobilized would help. I think another option is to make a split between PvE and PvP/WvW here. Immobilize durations from players could be reduced by 50% in PvP/WvW, and I think that could also solve the problem.

Manuhell.2759:

It’s difficult to predict what they could do with the engineer specialization. They can’t just add other skills like with the chronomancer – we already use up to 5 button due to the elite toolbelt – but at the same time, they can’t even just change what those skill do – like they did with the dragonhunter – as they aren’t fixed, but tied to our utilities.
Imho, what Unhinged Carrot says won’t be completely wrong.
I think the specialization will remove our current toolbelt – based on utilities – to give us a toolbelt that somehow uses the drones we’ve seen on the trailer (sort of engineer/ranger, maybe?).
Dunno about a second weapon slot, though – it would depend on how we would end up balanced after such a change. Still, unless they somehow limit kits availability, i doubt we’ll ever have that second weapon in an elite specialization.
And dunno about the utility type either. It could be something that uses the drones we’ve seen (but i can’t think of an existing utility type that could be appropriate for them). Or something different. Guess i’ll just wait and see.

Edit: Albeit, if they follow a sort of engineer/ranger paradigm with those drones, we could indeed get Shouts as an utility type (as in we shout orders to our drones, like rangers can do with their pet).
Edit 2: It would also be coherent with what they said in the elite specializations blog post (bolded is mine):

I initially also considered that they may remove toolbelt skills, but this would create a lot of problems that they would need to simultaneously solve:

1) we would lose many of our stunbreaks
2) turrets would be messed up. Without the ability to detonate them, we’d have to wait for them to be killed or despawn after 5 minutes before we would put them down again!
3) med kit would completely not work (in it’s current form, but I know it’s also being revised)
4) and finally, some utilities,which are used primarily for their toolbelt skills, would become largely unusable. E.g. Rifle Turret, maybe Portable Battering Ram, Elixir R.

I don’t think any of these problems are unsolvable, but they would require a significant re-working of a lot of things in order to facilitate complete removal of our toolbelt skills.

I still think it is possible that those drones could be a signet-type skill. Of course, they would not be magical items, since the engineer does not use magic.
When the drone (signet) is slotted, for example, the drone hovers around the character as a visual effect, and provides the signet passive. When activated, the drone could do something, for example sacrificing itself for the active effect. Not sure what the toolbelt skills would be, though.

Engineers getting shouts does not sound fitting to me, but that’s just my opinion.

I was personally hoping that we’d get traps, but apparently that’s for the Guardian instead.

ANet seems to be focused on showing off their new tech with the elite specializations, and trying to promote more skillful and complex gameplay. Most signets right now are pretty passive and have relatively basic active effects. This isn’t to say that ANet couldn’t give Engis signet-like skills, but if they did, they would probably try to make them skillful or complex in some way, as they are with other professions’ elite specializations.

Zoid.2568:

This is really bad. They should cap at 1 and let other people get beta portals!
If that person didn’t get 1 more portal someone else could have got it who needed it. This is really stupid..

Unless there is a finite number of these, I would expect that one person getting an extra portal should not decrease anyone else’s chances of getting one. If it works like normal loot tables (and statistics) would be expected to, your chance of getting a portal is independent of the number of portals looted so far. Of course, I am not a programmer, so it is possible that I am incorrect in how they are distributed.

On an unrelated note, I propose that portals be made account bound on use, just to see what happens. Let the TP fun begin!

I’m seeing the possibility for MH pistol to do some very good things, considering auto-attack is now an explosion, coupled with:

-baseline coated bullets = lots of explosions when targets are grouped up
-explosives grandmaster, shrapnel, chance to bleed/cripple on autoattack
-explosives minor trait for 10% more damage from explosions
-explosives minor trait for vulnerability on explosions
-explosives master trait for increased damage to vulnerable targets

and that’s not even considering the firearms adept trait to improve pistol conditions

I wasn’t able to see the stream, but I did get to look at the Reddit notes.

This all sounds pretty amazing.

Here’s an unusual experimental build I made and tried out a bit which does not use kits – disclaimer: it does have a medkit, but I don’t really count that…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqalsTpAr9dx+KseRCbBNqwEymeRQuhQ8xIGAA-T1SEABPcCAkR9nQ2fQEtAppDIQlgAYiBIlYWpkohHAwUKHEDQfA-w
This build is a one-trick-pony that does PBAoE condi bombing by equipping medkit while in combat to simultaneously trigger runes of balthazar and sigils of geomancy and hydromancy. The medkit should not be equipped except for this effect, and it generally doesn’t need to be. The effect actually looks really cool, and you’ll damage, burn, bleed, and chill nearby enemies. Never mind the fact that grenades can pretty much do this with far less trait/gear commitment, and at 1500 range…

Coated bullets is used strictly because this is a WvW bulid, and that trait can be useful situationally for firing into zergs, but otherwise I wouldn’t recommend it.

It’s a pretty nifty build and you could definitely catch some people off guard, but there are better ways to get the job done.

I’ve been playing with this type of high mobility mobility build for a little while too – at first, damage was lacking, but I have refined the build into this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlsTpdr9dx+KseRSeBNykUlQVBQGgBIyAOQA-TlCBABGpEbPdA8o+TXKJcUJIEXAg6MxglyBAeAA9s/gYAKC-w

I’m using a mix of berserker’s and knights gear, but defenses are great with the mobility, two stun breakers, high vigor uptime, and protection injection. Build uses rifle, EG, rocket boots, and elixir S. I tried slick shoes instead of elixir S for more mobility but found that my survivability was better with the invulvernability and stealth.

Jumpshot > Acid bomb combo is great ranged damage burst on a point (use net shot first if you’re using it against a single target). I have been able to outrun Nikes with this, and almost chase them down (this build is better at escaping than gap closing).

Palador.2170:

TheDaiBish.9735:

The information is probably coming slow because they don’t have anything concrete to give. For example, It wouldn’t be much of a blog post if all they did for the specialization for the Mesmer was “the Mesmer specialisation is the Chronomancer and they use a shield”.

The bits given in the Revenant blog were given because they were happy with them parts.

Think about what you’re suggesting, though.

If they’re really not all that far along with making the specializations, then they’re talking about an expansion that they can’t promise to bring to the table. They don’t know that they can really pull off what they expect without breaking the code, they don’t know if they can get it anywhere close to right. Telling us anything at all about an expansion at that stage is questionable at best, and it would also mean that they’re expecting us to just do nothing new in the game while they leave the story stuck on a cliffhanger for … what? A year to make all the stuff and get it working? A year wouldn’t be unreasonable at all for that amount of work.

-or-

They’re further along than they’ve stated. Much, much further. They play up how much they have left to do, to make it sound like the big stuff is still up in the air, but it’s not. It’s decided and mostly coded, with just detail work and testing to do now. They’ll have the expansion out in a few months, instead of the year or more that their statements would suggest. They just don’t want people to realize that they have once again been cut out of any real input into major changes in the game. They don’t want players to realize that the guild CDIs and such were made to fish for people saying what they wanted to hear, so they’d have someone to blame for bad choices when/if the time comes and the design stinks. We might get to inspire a few detail changes, but the big stuff is all set in stone already.

So, which do you think? Are they really only able to say “Mesmer specialization will be Chronomancer, and it uses a shield”, or are they playing us while much further along than they’ve let on?

I agree with those two reasonable possibilities, though with perhaps a different outlook. I think it is either:

1) ANet doesn’t want to reveal all of the information before HoT release. This means that they may or may not be nearly done. Their objective could be to further the hype by providing limited-content betas and incomplete feature reveals prior to release, and in doing, so forcing players to buy the expansion to get all of the details.

2) They have a long ways to go before completion and simply don’t have much finalized information to give us yet.

I can hope that (1) is the case, but even so, that would not guarantee a near-future release date for HoT. I agree that, regarding case (2), it may not be reasonable to have announced an expansion with no new in-game content until it releases much later. If I recall correctly from the base game betas, ANet didn’t want to reveal everything and the betas had pretty strict level caps (so things like Orr and Zhaitan were not seen by players until release). In this case, we may be given only an overview of specializations and may not get the full details until HoT releases, for example.

Having 50% uptime on a projectile block does sound pretty strong. But I personally would feel very nervous running hammer in anything but a zerg. What do you do if you get jumped by a thief? Or a warrior comes at you? When your attacker fights best at melee range and you have no gap creators, immobilize, knockback, etc…

Do you just autoattack and throw out a phase smash every now and then and hope to not die? Strong as Field of the Mists may sound, it’s probably not worth the tradeoff to me (from a solo/roaming or dueling standpoint).

What? Another topic on specializations? Can’t we just wait for more official information?
Well, what I want to discuss here is something slightly different.

I am referring to the balance between permanent, meaningful choices and the convenience and versatility of impermanent choices.

We have been told that the upcoming HoT expansion that profession specializations can be switched at will when out of combat, just like traits. I question, however, whether this is the best way to handle it. What if specializations were a permanent choice? I will discuss briefly some considerations regarding the current implementation (as we know it) and an alternate implementation with permanent or semi-permanent specialization choices.

In the current implementation we are told we can change specialization at will. This is very convenient. I remember when you needed to visit a profession trainer to reset your trait points. Now that I can do it from anywhere, for free, as long as I am out of combat, I find a refreshing sense of freedom.

But what does it mean to specialize? It is to focus ones skills into a narrow niche and become an expert in that area. In World vs. World, when I gain WvW levels, I get generally-non-refundable points to spend on WvW-specific abilities. I can truly specialize in trebuchets or carrying supply or killing camp guards (atleast until I get so many levels that I max out all the skills…). I do not feel limited by the fact that I can’t reset these points. When I choose to specialize my Ranger as a Druid, am I really specializing? I can go back to being a Ranger whenever I want. So can every other Ranger. When we make a choice permanent, that choice has meaning – when it can be reversed at will, it does not.

However, to truly make specializations permanent would be a tough pill to swallow. What if I want to try out being a Druid but I don’t like it? What if I like it initially, but over a series of balance cycles, skills are changed and I start to dislike it?

I think it would be best to give additional weight to choosing a specialization so that it has meaning, but a truly permanent choice would be too inflexible. Instead, I propose a “semi-permanent” choice – one that can be reversed but is not trivial to do so. Perhaps it has a gold cost or a gem cost. Perhaps it has cooldown. Perhaps it can only be done in Lion’s Arch (these are all examples, but they are not necessarily good examples for making the choice semi-permanent). When my choice has weight, I can truly say “I am a specialist. I am a Druid” or “I am versatile. I am a Ranger”. Rather than being a Ranger/Druid whenever-I want-to-be. Just like everyone else.

But what are everyone else’s thoughts? Is it good to switch specializations whenever you want? Or do you also prefer some degree of permanence and meaning in this decision?

TLDR – specializations as a permanent or semi-permanent choice so that they have meaning – good idea? Or is it better to change them whenever you like for more convenience?

The few champion bosses already around (e.g. Grub) are already ignored because people would rather pvp. You could make the incentive great enough to fight them…but then people would still probably resent being forced to pve in wvw.

It would be interesting to see more champion-level mobs actually involved in attacking/defending keeps/camps…but it would have to be balanced very carefully to avoid unwanted effects (such as further incentivizing zerg-formation if mobs are too tough to be killed quickly by a small team).

Phyrak.7260:

No plausible way to make a decent melee ‘whack-a-mole’ esque build sticking/ bouncing between guns and the tool kit?

With my current build – running soldiers/carrion with engineer runes

When I get home I’ll link my current build for you to check out

Thank you

-Phyrak

I have been playing Engi as my main since launch and have spent much of that time trying to find a Toolkit based build for WvW and SPVP. As of yet, I do not think it’s viable (of course, the toolkit is very good, but you will generally just switch to it, use a cooldown or two, then switch out). You can do a toolkit-focused build and make it work, but there are always better ways to get the job done. I could go into significant detail describing different approaches I’ve tried, but I will just mention a few points for brevity:

-don’t try to fight melee opponents with toolkit…their melee is generally better than yours. E.g. even with toolkit, you still probably want to kite a melee opponent.
-toolkit has awesome power scaling. If I wanted a toolkit-focused build, I would go pure power (e.g. Soldier), or some combination with power/precision/ferocity. Condition damage is good for #3, but then you’ll just switch out of toolkit and auto attack with pistol for more effectiveness.
-try backpack regenerator. This gives you some reason to stay in toolkit (even if it’s not that much of a reason), when you may otherwise just attack with rifle, which has almost as much auto attack damage, and much better burst, and keeps you out of harm’s way.

Good luck, and please let us know if you come up with a good toolkit build!

All hostilities aside, I do still play the game, but I haven’t paid anything since I purchased on release day. I have never bought gems, only converted gold for them.

However, I would likely very quickly pay $50-$60 for a full expansion. Is that profitable? Or is it more reasonable to support the game through micro-transactions fueled by convenience tools (e.g. bag slots, infinite gathering tools) and aesthetics (outfits, weapon skins)?

I almost feel bad getting a continually-updated mmo that’s pretty good quality compared to other mmo’s (though some aspects certainly need improvement), which I’ve been playing for 2+ years now for only a one-time payment of $60.

I do agree with OP though. I don’t finding Living Story to be very exciting and eventually, without significant new content, I will also leave. I have tried several games over the past year to replace GW2 since it does seem to be getting stale. In the end, none of the games I’ve tried have been good enough, but eventually something will be. But I would definitely pay money right now for a big lump of new content.

I am under the impression that the zero healing scaling of cleansing burst is a bug, as mentioned on the wiki, and I do agree that this should be fixed.

I am still not convinced that healing turret is where it should be. It seems like it is meant to be a group support heal, but it is also currently favored in most builds, even those that don’t use it in a supportive manner. In other words, I think it is problematic because it is the best heal for almost all builds (like Warrior Healing Signet, anyone?).

I understand that we have poor condi removal and often take healing turret to help address that concern. So simply nerfing healing turret will have other consequences.

Some of these concerns could be addressed by buffing other heals (or utilities and traits), specifically ones that aren’t very good, like A.E.D. But to get some ideas regarding the state of the healing turret, let me ask everyone this (let’s focus on WvW since that was the OPs intention):
-Where is healing turret used now? (it sounds like “almost everywhere / every build”)?
-Where do you think healing turret should be used?
-If you are currently using healing turret where you think you shouldn’t be using it, what changes would have to be made (either to healing turret, or to other skills/traits) to get you to change heals?

Well, I agree with both points….
1) Slick shoes IS really awesome. As Chaith points out, it neutralizes standard (e.g. non-stability) stunbreaks, and you can do silly things in WvW like split an entire enemy zerg in half with it. And super speed is amazing for getting you out of tricky situations.
2) But as others say, you really are giving up a lot to take Slick Shoes over a weapon kit, and much of the time, it probably isn’t worth it.

I previously proposed reducing gadget cooldowns (and their toolbelt skills) so they could function as a sort of second weapon set to allow them to compete with kits. I think this change for Slick Shoes is an excellent example, so we’ll see if it becomes more widely used after the change. I am certainly going to try incorporating it in more of my [WvW] builds.

One of the cool things about flamethrower, IMO, is that it can almost be used effectively without ever targeting an opponent. Almost. Except for Flame Blast. I would really like it if Flame Blast were ground targeted.

I main engi, so I am not calling for nerfs because engis are OP, but am I the only one who thinks Healing Turret is too good?

Pretty much all other profession heals that affect multiple allies have 30+ second cds.:
-Guardian, Healing breeze, 40 seconds
-Ranger, Healing Spring, 30 seconds
-Necro, Well of Blood, 40 seconds (32 traited)

I think reasonably, healing turret should have probably a 30 sec cd. Overcharge might need to be buffed to remove 3 conditions instead of 2 in this case.

I think this would balance healing turret (IMO, it’s currently too good), and give a more uniform representation of other engi heal skills, rather than everyone taking turret by default for almost every situation. This also gives more thought into using healing turret – do I detonate it for lots of burst healing at the cost of having no healing/condition removal again for 30 seconds? Or do I keep it out because then I can remove 3 conditions again in 15 seconds, plus maintain regeneration?

Depths.4051:

I will agree its a strong ult skill, but I don’t believe it makes you a turret engineer. If your a turret engineer, you’ll likely have invested in traits that benefit turrets, as well as get toolbelt skills from the slotted turrets. You get none of those if you’re a different build, like static discharge or HGH.
I’ll admit that against something like a good thief, I’ll need to rely on my ult somewhat, since a slippery zero thief can be a serious pain if you don’t pin them down.
If the only reason they win is because of the ult, then just buy time till the ult wears off or range them. If you can’t escape the ult, then they are either a good engineer that waits for the right opportunities or you need to brush up more.

Well said. And I know it’s been said before, but I think one of the big things that makes turrets seem OP is that people often ignore them. Perhaps it is only because engi is my main, but if someone drops supply crate on me, I will generally do one of two things: 1) get out of range asap, or 2) AoE down the turrets asap. Leaving the turrets alone and fighting in their range is a good way to die. But I do understand that some builds have minimal AoE capability, so maybe #2 isn’t a good option for them.