Guild Wars 2

Carighan.6758:

To be fair, we’re looking at two ways to make this problematic:

• Have kits copy the weapon damage. This was wildly criticized as an idea here on the forum because it benefits rifle-using kit builds more and would lead to “excessive weapon swapping”.

You have to take into account that rifle has only 1 sigil-slot compared to 2 slots on p/p or p/s (though it probably isn´t enough to compensate).

Also don´t forget about infusion-slots (I´m sure we´ll see better than blue infusions in the future)

Nirvana.8659:

If you write this kind of QQ ofc you don’t have a clue.

I’ll tell you the difference for berserker gears :
Exotic berserker : 179power ; 128 precision ; 9% crit dmg.
ASCENDENT berserker : 188 power ; 137 precision ; 10% crit dmg.

Do you really think 9 points of power precision and just 1% crit dmg difference can change our dmg?

Not having a clue? Lol, that´s great:

better take a look at the increase in weapon strength from exotics to ascended (+ 5%, which was equal to 48 power for kits, couldn´t check it out though since this last update).

Even better: the stats you listed are carried over to kits anyways (as also from exotic weapons), basic weapon strength not so much . . .

Though in the end I agree with your conclusion: the difference does look not that big today on paper – BUT will increase with higher quality infusions available.

Weapon strength of engi-kits obviously was increased to 1017 which is +5% up from the old value 969. This is according to the + 5% weapon strength from exotics to ascended.

Funny thing: the increased weapon strength on kits can also be seen in the mists´s spvp-lobby (open Hero-panel without a weapon equipped and compare to the power-value when using a kit).

These are good results for engis – except the spvp-part (assuming Anet continues balancing based on spvp where other classes didn´t get higher weapon strength).

Weapon strength of kits obviously was increased to 1017 which is +5% up from the old value 969. This is according to the + 5% weapon strength from exotics to ascended.

So we received a free “ascended-buff” for our kits which I consider ok as the weapon strength is still below pistol´s.

Funny thing: this is the same in the mist´s spvp-lobby.

These are good results for engis, except the spvp-part (assuming Anet continues balancing based on spvp).

Maybe the better question would be: increase level-cap or not?

Talking about time:

hydeaut.1758:

No weapon-stats on kits will become even relatively worse with ascended weapons/better stats on legendaries.

This quote is from 2012.

But let´s see what today´s patch will bring.

Gibson.4036:

I suppose patch notes tomorrow will give us an idea.

It took more than 3 months after release until atleast sigils and additional weapon stats worked on engi-kits (like +power and crit-chance, -damage from berserker).

In the same patch kits received a fixed weapon-strength which was even a lazy fix as rifle-users still lost the higher weapon strength from rifle while on a kit and also 1 sigil-slot compared to p/p and p/s.

According to a SC on Dulfy an ascended greatsword has 1045 – 1155 weapon strength which should be +5 % up from an exotic.

This higher weapon strength on ascended weapons would be useless in the current system while using a kit as the weapon strength doesn´t apply to the kit.

Anet could increase the fixed weapon strength for kits (which I doubt they will do, atleast at the same rate as from exotic to ascended weapons) – and engi still would have no need for an ascended weapon when using kits.

Dulfy has a screenshot of the stats of an ascended greatsword on her page which states a weapon strength of 1045 – 1155.

According to dw2db.com an exotic greatsword has 995 – 1100 (5% + for the ascended).

As the base-damage doesn´t get carried over to kits we´re probably doomed with kits – unless the base-damage of kits will be higher after today´s patch (what I don´t expect)

TehPwnerer.7215:

I’m mostly impressed with the new mechanics and the ability to actually, FINALLY be able to FAIL an event like this.

I’m so sick of "oh look Teq (or Shatterer, or whatever) is up.. Time to get get my free blues and greens! It’s about time we actually have some challenging open world stuff =)

You like challenging open world stuff? When was the last time that you killed that Karka-queen on that lost islands noone cares about?

When placing an aoe-skill (gren. 1-5) I loose my original target and get a friendly target instead, all the same if auto-target is enabled or not.

Annoying as hell sometimes though not an engi-only issue, happens also with my necro.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Would be nice if they just re-designed kit damage entirely and had the Weapon Strength of your Rifle/Pistol be the modifier, and not the Weapon Strength of your kit.

This probably would take a lot of extra coding for 1 single class, Anet prefers simple “fixes” in those cases.

Linc.6834:

To continue the speculation train, they could just leave ascended weapons with the same base damage as exotics, just with a stat increase.

This could be a possible solution but still won´t be sufficient: it was already mentioned, ascended weapons will have an infusion slot – will this stats from a future exotic/ascended infusion also work on our kits? Will the flexible stats from that great looking legendary pistol also transfer to our kits?

Engi needs a power-based main-weapon which can be used together with shield (for example an axe with Ranger´s autoattack)

Hickeroar.9734:

When you come up with an idea like reintroducing the orbs, players almost universally said “do not bring them back with gameplay-altering stat boosts.” . . . The fact is, that with the new way you want to do it, you still guarantee that the team with the most coverage will almost universally control the buff. That’s completely broken, and it’s sad to see the decision was made anyway.

Yes, many matchups are already unbalanced enough – which isn´t fun for all sides imo.

Soryuju hit the point in my opinion, even on full support an engi is outdone by simply combining abilities from a few other classes.

And much of this comes almost as a sideeffect to them, often only using simple weapon-abilities, while also bringing special and often unique support-abilities for boons, stripping boons, CC, walls, . . .

Which unique and usefull zerg-support has the engineer-class?

Even our praised CC is mostly single target and/or condition based “soft” CC. Add the fact that we usually have to sacrifice at least one utility-slot to replace our sucking weapons and supply-crate beeing a waste against zergs (and Mortar everywhere).

The only unique thing I could see for zergs is constant Aoe-pressure through grenades – which is hindered by retaliation, long traveltime of grenades paired with mostly small Aoe-radius (while Necro´s wells and marks hit instantly on full range) and a bad damage-budget spread out on condition and power which gives good damage only with high might-stacks.

Drizzy.1268:

TDA, you’re like a Rock. Hard to wipe !

If youre talking about hills on ar-bl, that was one looooong fight
Lots of good fights tonight, the best one was a 5min fight against [dw] at south camp bridge <3

Afaik [TDA] are former members of [dw] – that must have been kind of a strange feeling I guess. Bad enough to see good people leave RS, even worse to have to fight them.

LightningBlaze.4913:

There’s also downed opponent rallying in wvw without having anything that was killed first.

Elixir R from Engi (even on himself if he see´s it coming and is really fast) could do that for example.

On the other hand there are of course cheats in the game which could need some more bans.

Especially male medium and light armor are the same old and – imo – bad scheme and completely without inspiration.

Whoever designs that stuff, PLEASE at least watch some movies like Bravehart or something similar to even get a slight idea for different looks.

I´ve already posted this in another thread but many of these skins which are already some years old look a ton more inspired, detailed and all:

This is what good armor-sets should look like for me (especially the Rogue-sets, very different theme though):

My first and main-char is Sylvari (male engi) and I find those Sylvari-armors and weapons just awfull or at least a waste of an opportunity, so please not more of that same crap.

But Anet generally doesn´t meet my taste on many weapons and almost all male med-armor.

I came from Age of Conan which absolutely beats GW2 in numbers of armor-sets, style and details for me:

T3-raid sets http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGkCkkBcc14

Epic long lasting big-scale battles over Hill on BB-border yesterday evening – we from Riverside couldn´t take it in those attempts, still it was great and what WvW should be about in my opinion.

I enjoy this week much more then fighting weak servers who complain about blobbing while not having seen a really big zerg from a T1-server so far .

Preventing people from playing the game is clearly a terrible idea, fixing skill-lags not so much.

Anet should simply merge servers with low population, that´s all.

nakoda.4213:

then take off your clyde’s dale blinders. you have very very narrow vision.

That´s actually what I think about at least of half of your posts (to keep it polite enough not to get an infraction).

Take your loved flamethrower to a zerg-fight against his guild on the borderlands (or any other well organized zerg) and prepare yourself to delete all your flamethrower praising-threads, then you can come back telling us about narrow vision.

Anymras.5729:

. . . is doing exactly what the maker of these probably fake notes wanted

I´m quite sure the notes aren´t a fake, maybe not the final or full notes but there are to much details from all classes. That would be a ton of work for a single person and giving to much room for obviuos mistakes.

There was also a dev-post some time ago, stating Anet would need around 2 weeks only for translations.

Rozbuska.5263:

Also Thumper turret will be now one of must have skills.

Maybe in spvp, not in wvw. Another blast-finisher would be nice though, but the CD is to high to be worth it.

Basically they took away a stunbreaker which was usefull everywhere (Elixir R) and added one which makes only sense in some limited areas. And I highly doubt that KR super speed will be useable as a stunbreaker (which is unreliable anyways because of the global CD for multi-kits).

aydenunited.5729:

It’s a stunbreak on a turret, on a 45 second cooldown that is also a blast finisher. That 1s stability grants you a moment without fear of knockdown/stun/etc. to heal, dodge, or make a clutch movement, uninterrupted. It would actually be a massive deal to anyone wanting to finally run an all turret build, despite your sarcasm.

This won´t change the fact that this turret has very limited direct purpose and neither will it improve the general weak sides of turrets – basically they are again wasting time instead of touching the core-problems.

Most of the other balancing things go in the same direction. Best example Acidic Elixirs – this trait is simply stupid everywhere except maybe spvp.

In the end the nerfs (Elixir R, . .) will still have more impact in making the still only viable builds and good utilities weaker. Yes, no power creep but more nerf creep for the engi.

But also no heavy nerf-bat for overall HGH and grenades again, so I´m personally not so much concerned.

Kain Francois.4328:

Hoping for nice engineer and ranger changes!

Looking at the leaked notes you shouldn´t expect much, just the same old theme: engi gets some half usefull stunbreakers removed and others added to skills which still nobody will take.

No stunbreaker or condi-removal on kits but one more condition added to the game.

Pistol-Grandmaster users get some love, the rest are mostly halfbaked changes without real impact – which I already consider good as an engi-player (aka no nerfs, especially to HGH – besides one more for Elixir R)

Anything new? The only half impressing things I´ve seen from AG since ECL doesn´t carry your server anymore are the lame excuses in this thread – so more of them please, make yourself a reputation, TUP-guys.

osif.8673:

“Our goal is to continue to encourage organized large groups while giving small, tactical groups the necessary tools to put a dent into larger mobs of less-skilled players. We think that it can be fun to run around in a zerg — but we also think that the game should be about tactical acumen and skill more than sheer numbers.”

A quote from Devon Carver.

Hellooo, Devon – time to wake up!

Those “tools” to hit larger groups are already in the game and heavily abused, it´s called stacking of Guards and Warriors with a few supporting classes like Eles and Mesmers behind:

Ok, it may not be so tactical or skilled to run through unorganized groups with a Warri, stacked with boons and to constantly hit 1 but as you probably see more room for unbalancing, you must of course take the chance, so good luck (for all of us).

WvW is and should be about epic battles and not about player vs player.

And running in organized groups needs a lot more organisation, overview and atleast the same skill but often very different builds which would be even bad in smaller scales.

Though running around mostly hitting autoattack for success may be true for stacked Guard-/Warri-groups but that´s a matter of balancing classes (for example through a bigger AoE-cap) and to some extend siege.

And scaling rewards is a dangerous field as it might be an incentive against grouping together. Imagine tells incoming: “No, we don´t want you to run with us and in that green circle, stay out!” Also it won´t help pug-commanders who often already have a hard time to bundle the pug-players on a map.

ANet can work on outmanned buff, siege, Aoe-cap, merge low-population servers, maybe tune rewards a little – but they should be very careful, hurting “zergs” could hurt the core of WvW – which is epic battles.

And the number of players on a map is capped anyways and the zerg can´t be everywhere, so there´s always room for mobile smaller groups somewhere.

Elvirais.5472:

A lot of us at Piken were so frustrated that when we finally broke through inner Stonemist yesterday, we ran straight up the stairs to take out the arrowcarts :-)

Lol, I wondered why you guys did that instead of whiping the few of us left in the lordroom. If I had seen this coming my guard probably would have left the arrowcart on the stairs he was sitting behind so bravely.

We didn´t have a commander anymore on EB by that time btw., he was fed up that all the pugs kept defending Stonemist and only a few followed him, so he went to homelands (not that he could have held it much longer at this point, even if he had wanted).

Last time we fought Piken (together with Baruch) we were soon behind in points and more often had outmanned buff than queues on EB even at primetime – seems to be different this week.

Seemed also like a good occasion to bring my low-level guard to WvW this weekend and paid off so far, made 10 lvl (being lvl 19 already!) and 6 and a half WvW-ranks so far.

And no, I won´t give you a good open field fight soon with my guard, when I see our lines breaking and my utilities on CD I probably will rather turn and run – though I feel now almost sorry for all your Piken-tears.

Finally kudos to Gunnars for bearing what Anet stumbles accross in their pocket.

Kyuzo.4675:

I have received 6 wvw chests so far and each chest gave one piece of siege, 5 badges and one green. Underwhelmed atm but perhaps the higher ranking chests have a better chance at something worthwhile.

One guildmate had even an ascended ring in one of his chests, don´t know his rank though.

Given this and the lower laurel-cost I think WvW-players are in a very good spot concerning rings and necklaces.

Paying less laurels and a chance for a precursor already seems to inflict longer cues for WvW-maps anyways, so be careful what you wish, it might backfire.

And laurels are the only gate against getting everything instantly.

YourOwnFear.2743:

While other classes have a lot of room to make builds it looks to me that engi has 2 viable ways to go right now, SD or HGH.

I´m running static discharge in WvW and SD suffers from defensive abilities which made self-regulating defenses a must have, especially in zerg-fights (where protection-injection or cloaking device most times don´t make sense) – and where it´s a lot less usefull now.

Chaith.8256:

I am extremely ashamed of this thread, guys.

You should know, there´s more to this game than tPvP point-defense.

waka.9826:

hydeaut.1758:

No healskills while in Elixir S is a heavy nerf . . .

No it’s not…. use your heal then use elixir s. It doesn’t cancel it.

But using kits while elixir s, yes thats a nerf

Especially the auto-elixir S trait is hit really hard and Med-kit had more to it than the toolbelt-heal.

No more med-kit-heals and utilities, no more speedy kits, vigor on swiftness, enhanced performance, no more medical response in Elixir S – this is all lost with including heal-skills in the nerf. There goes a TON of synergy out of the window.

Phineas Poe.3018:

the change to Elixir S is hardly a big deal..

In PvE, maybe . . .

This change both hits the Elixir and the auto-elixir trait where I could go into med-kit, which gave me heal-packs, speed, 1 condition remove, vigor if traited – no big deal, of course . . .

Elixir S: 4 sec. until down-state

No healskills while in Elixir S is a heavy nerf . . .

Nice vid – but only fighting an unorganized and bad pug zerg on 2 narrow points with a good group.

And seeing some hints for further grenade nerfs I´m not sure if I like such videos, devs might take them serious.

Against a “real” zerg you would have hit some walls and dodging bunker-warris and guards stacked with boons before they simply would have run over you.

Yamsandjams.3267:

I like the Ascalonian armor set you get from the AC dungeon tokens. It’s more soldier-like and less ranger or thief oriented. It actually has a proper helmet too instead of some hat, mask, or goggles. Sits well with me when using pistol and shield.

In my opinion that´s the only armor-set which really deserves beeing called medium armor, all the other stuff (including all other posts) just looks like cloth-armor on the main-parts – very poor choices and design according to my taste.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I consider things like “hundred nades bug” to be OP, where a single attack dos 26k damage in an AOE.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

So why is this not ok but thief burst is?

Because there is play in thief burst. There is play there, and that spike isn’t a single attack that’s 150% your max HP in damage. Thieves need to execute a series of skills in a row, in which at any time the victim has the potential to mitigate or have some sort of play to save themselves or stop the thief. You just don’t see that with the 100nades stuff, or its a window so narrow that we as devs weren’t happy with the play from both sides of the equation as attacker/defender.

I´m aware that balancing is not your part of the game but if this really gives an insight why the other devs took 100nades out of the game I´m really shocked: because it would really proof those balancing devs had no clue what 100nades was and what you had to do to make it work.

First part of the combo was grenade barrage from kit refinement and the trick here was that the engi had to stand DIRECTLY in the enemies model – half a meter away and the grenades would spread out and only half of them would be hitting the main-target. And usually it clearly takes more than a narrow window to directly move into another player and gives options enough to counter!

Second part was the toolbelt skill grenade barrage – which also needs the enemy to stand IN THE CENTRE of the AOE or half the grenades will miss!

And even on those TWO abilities together 26k damage is highly exaggerated (many builds added static discharge or pry bar while still getting not so high).

I´m not defending 100nades, because how it worked while standing inside another player was obviously a weakness of the engine. But this seems to give evidence that Anet has no clue about engineers and bases constant nerfs on thin air.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Weapon strength, the number that changes based on the quality and level of your weapon, does not transfer and is set at the level of an exotic pistol at level 80.

Last time I checked this kits had a lower weapon strength than exotic pistols, more like an exotic torch. And the lower weapon strength might decrease the damage from toolbelt-skills.

But overall differences will be small and the issue mostly fixed – as long as Anet doesn´t introduce ascended weapons with higher weapon strength!

There´s an interesting quote from dev Robert Hrouda concerning skill and OP-damage-abilities (comparing Thieve-GC to 100nades):

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Because there is play in thief burst. There is play there, and that spike isn’t a single attack that’s 150% your max HP in damage. Thieves need to execute a series of skills in a row, in which at any time the victim has the potential to mitigate or have some sort of play to save themselves or stop the thief. You just don’t see that with the 100nades stuff, or its a window so narrow that we as devs weren’t happy with the play from both sides of the equation as attacker/defender.

According to that there shouldn´t be a nerf to HGH (though kind of saying 100nades was easier to pull off than a Thieve-burst makes me speechless . . .)

darkace.8925:

To listen to you guys talk, you’d think the engineer doesn’t even have weapon skills.

Actually I think that all the time when I´m on rifle . . . (unless I´m playing my Warrior of course)

SupahSpankeh.8452:

. . . but where’s our rep?

Don´t worry, an engi playing turrets and KR in tPvp (which is already a narrow part of the game in it´s own) might be about as representive as a Necro with a greatsword.

My main is engi and I don´t care about some shiny legendary, but I can understand that this is an issue for some – but how could that be solved? Making legendary versions of kits?

Actually I would like them to make our main-weapons worthwhile on their own, just like for every other class (which works in some parts of the game for pistols and shield paired with elixirs), but I don´t think they will ever do this.

What personally bothers me more though: ascended and legendary weapons with better stats – how would kits be affected? I doubt they will give all kits better base-stats which would be on par with ascended weapons.

Interesting, you´re using runes of the grove? I thought about them for a wvw-roaming build because of high protection uptime and the root – which is on a very long cooldown though, is this worth it in spvp?

My bet is on a nerf for +condition-duration food

I´ve also thought about something like that before but the long CD on the toolbelt-net digusted me. Looks better now with the lower CD but still the question is – how the hell shall I apply damage?

Seems only useable for static discharge-builds on first glance.

There are also some synergies with special runes, Net-Turret from Supply-drop and other traits.

Bad things are net-turret AI and beeing only single-target.

Yes, you shouldn´t take med-kit if you run with other kits and kit-refinement – very funny thing.

Go to the mist and try out how much difference it makes for your grenade barrage if your target is exactly in the centre of the radius or not.