Guild Wars 2

i wish the best of luck in seeking red posts and support leviathan

when you “deactivate photon forge” there is a 3 sec delay then you lose 5% heat per sec and then at some other threshold (time? another 3 sec?) you lose 10% heat per sec. dunno if that includes leaving photon by say dropping weapon (or if thats a thing, will find out this weekend i guess, not really into streams any more).

additionally the heat therapy minor suggests you lose heat after exploding, probably quickly if rumble is an indicator for this games heat mechanic.

complicated is so engi

who needs power with all that burning thatll be flying around. s/p!!

kurtosis.9526:

I never pistol auto, always cycling through kits/weapon skills that do damaging conditions, and suppression as needed. But not following you, I didn’t say anything about pistol auto, where does that come in?

thats kind of my point, that pistol auto is something to be ignored and not used, and with such a complex build its np to forget you even have an auto.

lets say you tryhard with bombs/ft/nades. then about half of the time youre putting out dps, youll be pushing each kits 2. that alone is nearly enough to require only 1 auto chain from sword to refresh its 2. lets say you do a combo like sword 2 → pistol 4 → 3 kit 2s → sword 1 chain.

at the end of this combo, sword 2 will have something like .5 sec left of its cd. if it puts out 5 bleeds, theres really no way it can possibly be worse than pistol autoing 3-4 times instead of using the sword auto. it might be a little less condi dps if it only gets 3 from your heat level. but you also get 2 long vuln and better power damage.

so all you lose by giving up pistol is a blind, and you gain a situational (maybe) filler attack and a gap closer. the dps should be similar to pistol at least. what im not sure on is if sword autos can beat nade autos. they might be tuned to be in line, but that statement assumes things about the balance team, things i dont have confidence in yet. gotta play to see.

overall, on pistol, 1 is a never touch, 2 is filler, and 3 is must use for dps. on sword, 1 is situational at minimum, 2 is must use, and 3 is situational at minimum. sounds like a strictly better weapon to me. here we go again.

kurtosis.9526:

EdwinLi.1284:

Yep a combination of Power and Condition skills which will be useful for players who have Viper Gear.

I don’t know, Holosmith + Condi is looking a little janky. Holosmith’s traits have some support for Condi in the Adept and Grand Master lines, but Sword only does a little bit of bleeding on Skill #2 and that’s it, and only one Photon Forge Mode weapon skill applies a damaging condition (#4 on 10s cd). And only one Utility/Toolbelt skill – Laser Disk/Blade Burst – applies Condi (some decent Bleed stacks it appears, but on a 30s cd). The new Elite applies Burning but on a 60s cd.

I was hoping the Holosmith spec could replace Tools in the current Explosions/Firearms/Tools P/P + Full Kit Viper Condi meta build while keeping the weapon + full kit loadout. But unfortunately it looks like to spec Holosmith you have to trade Mortar Kit for the Holosmith Elite Skill, since that Elite skill changes your F5 to activate/deactivate Photon Forge mode.

So the way I’m reading it is you basically have to trade Tools Spec + Mortar Kit for Holosmith Spec (and additional sources of Burning from its traits) + Photon Forge Mode (basically a kit but with only one damaging condition skill) + Holosmith Elite Skill. Hard to tell just from eyeballing it if that’s a good trade for a Condi build.

Explosions/Firearms/Holosmith might be able to become the new Condi Engi meta due mainly the Adept and Grand Master burning traits, but it’s not clear yet and looks kind of janky so far.

how often do you pistol auto? really shouldnt be autoing at all as a condi engi, and if you do happen to on sword itll only be once and then 2 will be off cd to spit out another 3/5 bleeds and mesh better with kit priorities

i think itll be the dps option, mortar is almost worthless for dps but this elite should have like twice the priority rating of ft4 and probably(?) a much more generous dimension… that alone is nothing to laugh at. then theres the random burning from traits too, free dps with no cast time.

you cant do a whole lot in wvw without a stun break any more. pre hot you didnt really need one as much, but post hot theres too much cc flying around.

exotics are still fine, and rabid is still ok, but viper and trailblazer are just plain better. you feel like you do no damage because of a combination of this and more readily accessible condi cleanses.

the game has changed a lot.

i used those same utilities for ~3 years until hot came out and forced me to change. that wasnt 4 years ago, dawdler.

schloumou.3982:

insanemaniac.2456:

but i admit that some time at/after hot released they did something to screw up BoB -> mortar -> fire/smoke -> healing and it somehow no longer works properly. but thats unrelated to turrets.

They increased the casttime of HT.

insanemaniac.2456:

manipulating the field stack just requires attention that you arent giving if youre screwing up your might/stealth blasts.

I wasnt talking about my fields. The lowest field gets the finisher hence you create a pretty large area in which noone can use a field. Think OP meant that too.

then stop using healing turret to blast when you are at risk of underwriting your desired field. or find a safer way to avoid the water field. you can place it super early, or you can place it late. additionally, the blast occurs at you and not at the turret.

the increased cast time is not what im talking about. theres something with short fuse that screwed up the timing. it hasnt been reliable since pre hot. fortunately (/s) weve had ps wars and revs for might batteries, otherwise it would prolly matter.

RabbitUp.8294:

insanemaniac.2456:

RabbitUp.8294:

insanemaniac.2456:

if the announcement is going to be about 10 mins, then you shouldn’t expect anything but the release date, how to preorder if anet is doing that, the area we are going to, and maybe a couple of the more major features. as in, announcing “another round of elite specs” and not anything more in depth than that.

the hot preview took like 4 hours to stream all the specs.

The schedule says the announcement will be 30 minutes.

too short to detail elite specs

Of course.

But it’s not the duration, why would anyone ever think they would reveal everything in their very first stream?

sounds like a question for not me since we seem to feel the same way :P

@ title:

no, i dont hate the new healing turret. i need 1 less button to use it, and if you were overcharging it multiple times then you were prolly making threads about how hard it is to survive on engi. manipulating the field stack just requires attention that you arent giving if youre screwing up your might/stealth blasts, but i admit that some time at/after hot released they did something to screw up BoB → mortar → fire/smoke → healing and it somehow no longer works properly. but thats unrelated to turrets.

the other turrets though, im not really a fan of only being allowed 1 overcharge per cast with no control over when it overcharges.

RabbitUp.8294:

insanemaniac.2456:

if the announcement is going to be about 10 mins, then you shouldn’t expect anything but the release date, how to preorder if anet is doing that, the area we are going to, and maybe a couple of the more major features. as in, announcing “another round of elite specs” and not anything more in depth than that.

the hot preview took like 4 hours to stream all the specs.

The schedule says the announcement will be 30 minutes.

too short to detail elite specs

if the announcement is going to be about 10 mins, then you shouldn’t expect anything but the release date, how to preorder if anet is doing that, the area we are going to, and maybe a couple of the more major features. as in, announcing “another round of elite specs” and not anything more in depth than that.

the hot preview took like 4 hours to stream all the specs.

Dream Shake.8741:

Nos.9803:

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain

Inappropriate quote. More fitting would be “Reputation takes years to build and only seconds to destroy”- Arnold Rothstein, Boardwalk Empire

just goes to show his immaturity

maybe theyll tell us on the 1st. dont expect it though, theyll prolly want to do a stream the next friday.

one does not expect meteor shower to rain eternities, why should one expect flamethrower to spew quicksilver.

grenade barrage is a privilege, not a right. anets just following the precedents.

theyve only ever overwritten grenade barrage and projectiles for any other legendaries. im not sure why one would expect already specially animated hammer skills (albeit somewhat muted), any mortar skills, or any grenade skills to change…

Sasori.8642:

As usual, it’s WAY overtuned compared to other fractals. At 25, it makes 99 Nightmare look like a joke. The balls you have to hit into the corner pillars get stuck WAAAAY too easily and have far too low of a range to trigger. The ability that you’re supposed to use to jump out of fear/into the bubble/act as a third evasion/etc. is a real clusterkitten if you play with action camera like I do. There are too many mechanics in general and I can’t imagine doing it successfully at 100. This is supposed to be a FRACTAL, not a RAID. People are expected to be able to do this DAILY not WEEKLY. Why does he have more mechanics than some of the easier RAID BOSSES?

action camera makes everything worse in every game.

Xunil.2408:

That’s for one key – first action A, then B, then … macros

look they have their policy and they will stand by it but its hard for them to actually prove youre doing a thing or not unless you either talk about it in game and then get reported or a GM walks up to you and you dont respond intelligently enough for them to unequivocally say you arent botting. so if its the kind of action where if you accidentally afk for the wrong 5 minutes then a GM would say its botting, you prolly shouldnt risk it.

thank you linsey))))))))

holy kitten anet ban them already. by accepting that cash they are stealing your green. that is money that you could have gotten a cut of and you have a user agreement that (probably) says users will not steal from you and boy howdy did they kittening break that. git. them. gone. or forever be pushed around by your user base. who even cares how good they are at the game, they just cost you more than they made you by streaming for 4 years or whatever.

Amaimon.7823:

People seem to misunderstand my topic, my point is not that there should be an exact number of mastery points, but rather, that the excess doesnt get wasted. I agree with everyone, that when its just for unlocking the masteries, players should have a wide variety of options.
But I’d just hate see the currently unused 23 points in my wallet remain there forever.

you look at it the wrong way. instead of calling it waste, call it choice and say that excess allows you a jump start on future masteries.

yeah its not bad and looks mostly like a generic scrapper build but i think the problem is scrapper doesnt have the mobility needed in wvw. you wont die when you dont go straight zerk but anyone with a mind to roam wont let you gap close often enough to kill them either.

i run marauder, durability, and eg on one of my scrappers (the power wvw one) and pretty similar to the rest of what youve got and it does a bit better than condi scrapper at surviving but condi scrapper is a better ganker… but in the end, overall, scrapper just leaves something to be desired in wvw. the op weapon doesnt have enough range or sticking power and kits take too much of your time doing 1 thing at a time to really net kills.

I remember when it didn’t black out utilities and i was sad when they changed it (boy was that a long time ago)

unfortunately anet doesn’t really do about faces. to their detriment.

are you looking to get 50%+ protection and or reflect uptime from a single toolbelt?
do you want a stunbreak on 5-10 sec cd?

most other cdr traits have a decision process that goes like:
am i taking one or more of the utilities? do i have the spec already? great! the other 2 traits are useless anyways!
but if im not already taking the spec, then obviously the utilities are useless!

its pretty shallow, and im glad that scrapper eschews that cdr in favor of adding lightning fields and superspeed to the deaths and sad that also dazing was kittening op as kitten.

seemingly random immobilize spam would prolly be enough of an annoyance to make 2/3 of the playerbase quit

anets turnaround time is about a year lol

do you think it hasnt been passed around already

searing fissure is a static puddle that you can move away from (easily)

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

It’s the class design that’s going to limit this, since just like the Necromancer the Engi is better suited for condi play.

is that so

since all i can do is pointlessly speculate on holosmith when i wont have to speculate in about 3-4 months, how about a list of current builds instead:

raids

• engi – both, but power doesnt need concentration
• necro – neither really but condi is ok

fractals

• engi – both
• necro – both and both are braindead easy

pvp

• engi – power dominates
• necro – both

wvw

• engi – power > condi, but at least condi can assassinate and bail which isnt really an option in pvp
• necro – condi for roaming, power for zerging

seems to me that engi is better suited to power right now because its harder to play condi well. and necro is just all over the place and can be whatever you want. neither is really better suited to condi in the broad and general way you are claiming.

you dont know if its condi.

Vagrant.7206:

insanemaniac.2456:

somehow i knew you would move the goalposts.

You should probably learn what moving the goalposts means. I’m not asking for evidence or proof and then backing up when that particular requirement is met.

I’m clarifying that you missed my point and presented my argument as a straw man.

Wikipedia

Moving the goalposts is an informal fallacy in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded.

Wikipedia

A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent’s argument, while refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent.

lol

you presented the argument:

Vagrant.7206:

Engineer doesn’t live in a vacuum, you know. There are other classes to compare against, and they have seen meaningful changes in both the balance patches and expansion.

inferring that engi has not seen meaningful changes in either the balance patches or the expansion as a justification for your flagrant and constant angryposting.

it is so patently obvious that the basis of your argument is wrong that i shouldnt even have to point to the elite spec itself or the nerfs in nearly every balance patch to help you see that making such a broad statement as “engi deserves meaningful changes because other classes have gotten them” is ridiculous and out of touch. engi got its meaningful changes. engi wasnt in a bad place, some of its skills are but engi has always had a place in the metas of all game modes after about 2012 (until the slick shoes nerf that made raiding pointless on engi). in fact, this elite spec was so good at its intended niche that weve had 2 years of nerf after nerf after nerf to the dominant engi pvp build.

so i mean sure you can say “taking away gyro daze” or “adding cast times to gyros” are not meaningful functionality buffs, but that is literally what moving the goalposts is:

Moving the goalposts is an informal fallacy in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded. That is, after an attempt has been made to score a goal, the goalposts are moved to exclude the attempt.³ The problem with changing the rules of the game is that the meaning of the end result is changed, too.

stop accusing me of logical fallacies when you dont even know how to wield or avoid them. and stop being so angry.

somehow i knew you would move the goalposts.

engineers have seen meaningful changes in both the balance patches and expansion — scrapper got used in the top echelons of the moste importante pvp competitions and was victorious several times (scrapper was meaningful) and was thenceforth relegated to being nerfed just about every major iteration (and youre complaining about it constantly, so the nerfs must have been meaningful)

genius.

but what would you change

you miss my point. the seller not being on anets list is a pretty good reason to avoid them. yeah it can work, but buyer beware. if you get screwed even once and they take your money, you would have been better off waiting for a lesser sale from anyone that anet backs up with the guarantee of “you wont get screwed”.

look a gray market with a really good deal
buyer beware
but look it worked for me

doesnt make it not a gray market

you can dodge that time gate with wintersday gifts, but it takes quite a few to rack up enough charged quartz

Crey.5263:

FrostDraco.8306:

ThePerfectOne.4526:

I been trying every single day to get into a Raid nobody will help i get kicked for nothing and now i cannot get any better armour !

Your problem is thinking raids is the path to better armor in the first place. I’d kick you too with that attitude.

Correct me if i’m wrong, but aren’t legendary armor sets Raid Locked? That’s like saying you can craft a legendary without doing WvW…

but you can, i mean havent you been playing for at least 2 years and didnt you get 10 gifts of battle from your achievement chest badges of honor before they changed it to a reward track? whats the problem here? who even knows what wvw stands for??

cele isnt a thing any more.

specializations moved IP to firearms, which means a cele build has to take both explosives and firearms to get its damage, but the problem with that is that you cant give up either alchemy or tools/inventions in a pvp setting. so cele builds got torn apart partially by that. the rest of the tearing is due to elite specs power creeping the hell out of everything, so in a pvp setting its hard to justify not taking scrapper because it simply brings so much, both damage and defense, and both at the same time, where everything a cele engi did was either damage or defense. but scrapper is essentially a power only line and brings basically no condi damage. additionally, hot also brought us marauder stats (and crusader, minstrel, vigilant, commander, etc), which all complement a power based hammer build. hot stats have a bigger budget, so the more of them that you use the more you can simply muscle out other builds that are based on older power levels purely with stats.

…so there you have it. splitting celes damage to 2 specs and power creeping the hell out of elite specs killed cele.

i suggest not making trailblazer for engi. thief, necro, ranger, warrior, mesmer, and even revenant now. but not engi. condi engi is still fairly reliant on crit for IP procs to really get enough damage out to kill, and that requires around 25% base crit rate to be reliable, and while mixing say… trailblazer armor/weapons + rabid trinkets is fun and generally effective, doing the same on any of those other 6 classes would get you more mileage and you wouldnt even be forced into building some crit in.

i havent particularly looked into updating my opinion for the last couple of patches though for several reasons. first, not much is really changing with regards to condi engi, but i admit that the flamethrower 2 and 3 changes could do tons of work to make condi engi do more with less. second, condi thief takes that trailblazer gear and barfs out aids puddles literally without needing a 2nd weapon set and you can kill experienced people np. third, another expansion looms. fourth, condi engi is pretty weak to condis — forced into firearms, and out of either alchemy or tools/inventions/scrapper makes for a bad case of 4 move slot syndrome (to take a phrase from pokemon). ill keep watching the patch notes though.

have you leaned on your guild to donate tributes? scribing isnt really intended to be a single person endeavor.

I used shield back when southsun was new and those kitten karka nearly 1 shot me with that pew pew…. since that, nothing. not even queens gauntlet!

I’m not sure I’d call explosives “mediocre” for power builds. more like “necessary”. for 5 years. at least if you wanna do dps.

Thief was included for laughs too. lol choking gas. that nerf could be seen coming a million miles away.

actually tossing them in the fractal dailies is a good idea cuz you need 3 and something else to get a gear box, which translates to higher drop rates and a more normal feeling about the pace you get them

Turk.5460:

SkyShroud.2865:

Dire isn’t strong, tb is.

My condi necro in all exotic dire gear begs to differ. I literally smash buttons on cooldown and win fights that I clearly should not be winning.

and if you hemorrhaged some gold instead of cheaping out, it would be even more ridiculous!!

@kash: he’s calling you out for saying you got something like 120 outnumbered ticks out of 168. and from my experiences that does seem a little fishy. as in, not casually playing, or playing more than youre stating, or perhaps having ground out more than a silver rank and still calling yourself casual, or even something else. idk and idk you, but his math seems reasonable and hitting up outnumbered maps constantly is anything but casual.

no, i am not poisoning the well by pointing out the essence of what is wrong with how these forums have factually interacted (or attempted to interact) with the devs as a likely reason they do not post here, and yes, you are part of the problem when you post threads like your recently disappeared one. it is not irrelevant. it is not preemptive, it is reactive. i am not ridiculing or discrediting you.

if anything i am calling you out for being rude in a way that anet will not, cuz they will delete your rudeness and they will not respond to it. get off your angry horse and have a civil, profound discussion and a year or 2 later you might be able to look back and say “this patch note was quite obviously spawned of the discussion i had so long ago”. and if you cant handle that kind of a turnaround time, i suggest finding another gaming company to hound that is more in line with the flexibility you desire, because after nearly 5 years around here i can tell you with confidence that that isnt anet.

as for warrior axe, all i have to say is 2 things.

1. after these patch notes, this weapon didnt see any significant lasting uptick in its usage. people tried it out for a day or 5 but ultimately the changes amounted to nothing because its dps and utility are still swirling in the gutter, and thats what this is, swirling. something else is probably holding anet back from actually making significant changes that would bring this weapon up because number tweaks just wont do it.
2. am i talking about engi rifle or warrior axe?

do you play warrior? idk you. so for reference, in pve power warrior is such meh dps these days that raids will kick you and all axe does is dps and those changes didnt bring it up in a useful way in the presence of normal group buffs, quite similar to the state of scrapper in pve actually. in pvp, axe does only damage in a setting where you could instead be doing cc too or also have the option to use strong gap closers/disengages. but yeah its fine for open world. just like scrapper.

now, you might have almost had a case if you brought up necro axe, where the buffs and similarly timed condi nerfs were significant enough to put power necro into pretty wide use in pvp, but still did jack all in pve. but i seem to recall a vague feeling of surprise and elation by the community at large that there was a new build to play.

love the list, cant wait.

i would love to see lumber cores and related dropped scribing mats added to it.
i would not mind seeing dowels removed as i typically only craft as needed and leave my wood in log or plank form.

I don’t think it’s lazy to intentionally enforce the use of active defenses with extremely telegraphed attacks that can be countered by a wide array of skills and strategies and that in fact it’s better for the game to include them to give variety to encounters (but the warriors not seeing any updates since HoT sucks, rush is ok but the poorly telegraphed autos after the rush are a bit much)