Guild Wars 2

You are researching for your engineer complaint thread aren’t you…

Oh i meant threads.

hint Use swirling aura, or even better magnetic skills.
go test it, and maybe play some more engineer in general (i know eles have it tough, but no need to lash out at everything else), maybe you will find comfort here while waiting for ele changes.

cont^

Stealth based:

• Gain 1-2 seconds of stealth when you loose more than X health in a single second(low icd). stealth is generally considered a drawback in a spvp environment. Yeah points again. So if PU mesmers are not considered a problem because they can’t capture a point, then why can’t we do something similar. This trait is similar to thieves traits, but the idea here is a short cooldown, ultra short duration stealth to prevent being focused to hard in a teamfight on a profession that lacks stealth increase or general trait support.

• Gain x seconds of stealth when you stand still for more than x seconds in combat, breaks on movement(icd x seconds). A odd idea and very niche that is not really directed for spvp, but for wvw, where smart use of other stealths as well as line of sight could save you from larger forces passing by. Would probably take a lot of flak though.

Mobility based:

• Blink away from your enemy when struck by a melee attack below x health(ICD medium) Yet another tool to prevent training, similar to a thief trait, but different in conditions, and yeah the thief trait needs something too. Could use a portal/lightning effect with a telegraphed delay before blinking to give both you and your enemy time to react (1 second).

• when hit by crowd control, run twice as fast for X seconds. Does not break stun. Combined with rocket boots or other leaps like acid bomb or when hit by chill/cripple this could be a lifesaver for the opportunist. Effect identical to super speed.

• when you are below X health, run twice as fast. Similar to above but without a duration and a health requirement instead. This would give us some serious disengage options.

Offensive based (okay yeah, we do have HGH in the tree, but this still is food for thought):

• Gain might and fury when struck by crowd control.This might seem a bit excessive considering that its sistertrait also gives might, the idea here being that the more you push the engineer around the more enraged he gets.

• deal X percent more damage for every condition on you, conditions are reduced by X percent duration for every boon on you. This can serve as a way to achieve retribution for a power user against a heavy condition environment, and encourage good usage of boonstrips.

Everyone is welcome to post your ideas for interesting change to help us avoiding a broad kitrefinement while still allowing new gameplay possibilities.

To start things off:

Automated response:
This really gets the blood boiling for any necromanc-… sorry i meant condition class. I say its both a well designed and badly designed trait. It would be good if there where other traits for other professions with high risk-high reward concepts to act as a buffert soloution for when a certain build type starts trending through the roof. Be it condition builds, extreme CC, extreme spike or what have you. The shared factor should be a high risk or difficulty to get to use it coupled with a high reward for doing it. To empower yourself against a certain situation but getting exposed to others. For structured pvp atleast this would encourage a better teamplay where the ideal setup is as diverse as possible and where you coordinate and swap tasks with your teammates. Now gw2 isn’t necessary that game so as much as it pains me to admit (power based balanced AR engineer roamer) it might have to get a rework, if nothing else then to make sure nothing else is nerfed for its sake. This does not mean that we should totally kit-refine it into oblivion like the other classes and developers would like for example making it trigger at 25% health with a 5 sec immunity to conditions and have a 60+ seconds cooldown. Instead if we could see a major rework that preserves its valuable contribution to our defense and staying power as well as its ability to create a gamechanger under certain conditions.

So here are some suggestions for the trait divided into different categories depending on role:

Condition removal based:

• Convert all conditions into health/boons when you are struck below 25% health. X seconds cooldown (medium). This gives the engineer who lacks a good option of condition removal outside of healingturret a good way to fight back against a necromancer, by giving him cleanses at low health, as long as he prevent’s the necromancer from getting him beneath 25% health within the recharge window.

• Lose/convert/transfer a condition on toolbelt usage. A common suggestion by engineers to allow it to be more generally applicable and reliable as a condition deterrent. Problem is that in a elixir based tree it does step on cleansing formula 404.

• You are immune to new conditions when you have 4 or more conditions on you. Engineers do have access to single condition clears from medkit, elixir gun and so on, this change would make them more reliable and protect from mindless condition spike from necromancers/grenade/bombs/PU mesmers etc. No more would signet of spite being a death sentence. Damaging conditions would still hurt, but it would be easier to clean them up and punish lack of thought. Of course it would never ever be applicable for pver’s but thats a general thing for all of these ideas and including its current state, not to mention a problem with pve.

Stability and stunbreaks based:

• You gain 2-3 seconds of stability when you are controlled below X% health(low to no icd) We do not have a particularly viable access to stability in the builds that need it. This idea would prevent chainstuns and encourage stunbreaks even in situations where you are bound to soon be hit again. A health limit would prevent it from being considered to powerful while still giving you a lift when you need it. Would be a nice trait against hammer warriors, mesmers and general wvw trains.
• when you are controlled while already being controlled you break out of stun and gain 1 second of stability (no icd) similar to above, encourages more careful use of CC and helps you in ganking situations.

• You are immune to crowd control when below X health. similar to AR, but not preventing you from being killed from a certain stat combination.

So, now we are on the radar again (boy does the beta feel like a long time ago).
This time it isn’t because we instantly burst someone from inside them, or revive ourselves or because of loading people up with such a conditionburst that they die faster than to a powerbuild.

It’s because we are good at knocking people out of circles. Yup. That makes us rule the one gamemode that the game got in a structured format. Funny how the class supposed to be all about holding ground, controlling and delivering area denial is really good in that role. Anyways the build in focus is simply called the “Decap Engi”, and while there is a lot of confusion about exactly what this build is people seem to agree to the view that a decap engineer use:

1. Heavy CC. Uses rifle and other CC like airblast to launch people off the point and follow up with netshot to ensure a decap versus one player.
2. Defensive stats. Rolls high healingpower and toughness to be immortal in 1vs1.
3. Healing turret. Uses Healing turret for uninterruptable large aoe heal and conditionremoval with a knockback from traiting.
4. Immunity. Picks automated response to be unkillable against condition builds.
5. Insta win elite. Supplydrop for a instant win against any class.

Example:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIq6Zn1yuF17IxoCdO0jCbf1K6R+tsjB-TgAgzCmIMSZkzIjRSjsGB

Now what people admit that it doesn’t do well:

1. Kill. Anything really, clerics amulet makes sure you will never be a threat to anyone.
2. Mobility. But since you are always busy figthing him on one point he will never have to move right?
3. Stability and stunbreaks. Yeah people can decap from a decap engi cap rather easily, but the point is that the point never really is your point. Get the point?
4. Team support. Healing turret excluded you won’t push out as much support as a midbunker would prefer to do, meaning that you go for the sidecaps.

So what we got in the public eye is a unkillable CCmonster who goes even more immortal against condition users who use a overpowered uninterruptable heal and instant cast CC to decap (not necessary hold) sidepoints. And if you put up resistance with stability or what have you he will kill you with a flick of supply crate. Everyone is apparently now running this engineer and it is ruining pvp. He can’t kill you, and he does not do a stand in for the guardian who have occupied mid since release and neither does he hold it from you since he is even more open to CC than you are and its does not move well between points but its bad for everyone.

So thats me playing a bit of devils advocate and devils advocates devils advocate.

What would i hope to see here? I would want to see fellow engineer’s give their ideas for reasonable changes and opinions on what should and should not stay.

It’s better that we do it than to find next patch that our shield has been removed from the game, that flamethrower does not apply burning, that healing turret now does not create a waterfield and heal but simply gives the regeneration boon, that rifle skills now heal the enemy and that turrets gets nerfed because of a elite or something (oh wait…). Jokes aside there’s such a confusion around engineer’s right now that anything, and i do mean anything risks collateral damage.

Part of this might be because of our relative diversity, people see a lot of engineers and assume that decap is the only possible build, meaning that this needs to be removed when in reality most might simply be rabid engineers with a bit of CC in their build. Thus not only does the problem factors described above risk a nerf but unrelated things like other weapons, utilities and roles. Its even possible to complain about static discharge engineers in these threads and no one except a engineer would raise an eyebrow.

Therefore we need to control the damage, because we might know better what got to do with the build(s) and what does not.

Also it might be a problem with the one gamemode we got, and not with the profession. *hint*more gamemodes please*hint*

Okay i can honestly say i didn’t see that one coming.

Yes, for a ridiculous price they get a chance to salvage a item worth a few coppers.

Or they could just have sold the gems to gold directly (you remember that right?).

The biggest concern is the previous infinite tools lacking a touch, but you could already buy your way to legendaries and what have you with cash so don’t even try.

other than that i see it as a convenience item for people who didn’t complete the achievement for the node or who are too lazy to go to their home instance. I haven’t bought it myself, im not convinced its worth the price.

So.

I was going to try making a balanced cleric/zerker hybrid with altruism as mad as that might sound and even worse, given that i was using power shoes and went 20 into tools for packaged stimulant i was considering using “always prepared”. Then i remembered why i never use it.

It’s not that the 25% damage is pointless in our largely low damage downed state.
Neither is it that those medkits are a bit ironic since you are now downed and usually got no use for them (since i run in a duo most of the time its more as a help for helping the one reviving me, and if i am revived i get a help in healing up).

It’s that they don’t actually heal anything.

On allies at least.

So if you get downed and you get your buddy running over to secure a rez and needs a bit of a pick-me-up (say he/she is on 50% health) and there is a lot of pressure on your corpse (since we can’t move or teleport) they would be great to make sure he/she actually survives to revive you. But they don’t heal anything. They get picked up by him alright but there’s no actual heal. I mean even if they didn’t heal him atleast i could get a boost to ensure my further survival when a lot of damage is flying around, but that would require that they don’t actually get picked up by him (again, without healing him).

So can we either get that allies can’t pick them up or actually make them HEAL?

Also could we please get them improved by packaged stimulant (20%)?

Im still baffled at their idea that every boss in the game will be beaten in 15 minutes.

Wonder why zerker gets so popular when its less of an option and more like a requirement.

Is that really the only way you can make a fight challenging?

People started noticing healing turret not scaling with healingpower?

Lol that was the reason i didn’t roll over to healing turret from medkit when it was changed, since i like putting a chunk of hp in and it felt wasted with the ht (yeah i know blasts and regen, but still it felt-…tainted).

Its still stupid and NO i won’t accept this hilariously bad line of balancing. They nerf a elite by killing off a skill that struggled to be useful anyways? That is no good policy(talk about kicking someone on the ground). Whats next, are they going to halve the medkit heal because it gives such a large heal in supply drop? I mean everyone is using healing turret anyways, medkit isn’t competitive so you should switch to heal turret anyways. No harm done eh?

They have goofed up badly with immobilize stacking and now they are band aiding.

Id rather they remove the turret completely from supply drop instead of nerfing the utility skill that it actually is because of its appearance in a 180 sec recharging elite. And 3 down to 2 seconds, given how slow it attacks is huge. A 1/3rd nerf on anything is big.

Or had they had any decent fiber but still wanted to go through with this they could have reduced its refire rate at an equal measure meaning no hit in up time for it as a turret, but the immobilize hitting with the elite will still wear off sooner. Goal achieved.

But no, who uses skill type X anyways, lets just hammer (balance) it out with a sledgehammer since noones ever going to use that anyway. What a wonderful vicious cycle. Wonder why we get stale metas?

Im sorry but the principle annoys me greatly, and since i actually DO play and experiment with things such as medkit and gadgets and the like i don’t want them to turn careless with things that are not “meta”.

nicknamenick.2437:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Well designed skill should do either two mediocre / weak things or one powerful thing, but not more. Skills which do many powerful things at same time are generally overpowered and broken. Pin down clearly violates this game design rule and has too much good things going on.

Right now pin down has 1000 range, 25 s cooldown and does:
minor amount direct damage
6 stacks of 12 s bleed (huge)
3 second immobilize
and it pierces!
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pin_Down

Compare this for example with engineer rifle #2, net shot:
1000 range, 10 s cooldown
no dmg, no bleed stacks
2 seconds immobilize
can affect only one target, easy to strafe from range (don’t even need to dodge it)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Net_Shot

Compare this also with the warrior rifle #2, aimed shot:
1200 range, 10 s cooldown
minor amount of direct damage
5 s cripple
affects only one target (unless traited)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aimed_Shot

I would argue that 5 s cripple without bleed stacks is much weaker than 3 immobilize.
No wonder why almost all warriors select longbow instead of the rifle.

I think adding some delay to the animation will not solve the thing. 3 second piercing immobilize is already incredibly strong, especially in group situations, concerning that immobilizes are now stacking. Arenanet designers should decide, either reduce the immobilize duration of pin down or tone down the damage part (direct dmg + bleeds). Description wise it would be logical if pin down would only immobilize, but would not do anything else (just like engineer rifle #2).

Comparing it with your turret?? longbow is a kitten weapon! not a lame turrent you can drop and continue doing you spamming

All join condi bunker builds!

Its not a turret, its a skill on engineer rifle (yeah you seldom see power engis but still…)

And the last part is pure gold considering that this is a backbone in condibunker warriors.

(and the turret that actually do imobilize is getting a 33% nerf in its immobilize. Because of supply crate. Its around 15% upkeep on a turret that can die(easily), attacks the wrong target, has a huge hitbox, limited range and a looooaaaad of bugs. Throw bolas atleast travels in the general direction you want it too, and have a higher uptime. + you cant kill it to set it on a much longer cooldown(forcing it to recharge again)).

Just sayin.

So a CC based elite is very potent at CC? Who knew.
Better yet lets do a collateral nerf to a utility skill that was actually close to, well at least entertaining and that isn’t used seriously.

Boy they must really rage if they get hit by moa morph, or a warrior who essentially IS a walking supply crate (mad healing, imob on longbow, stun,stun,stun).

^the thing is, it does require active play.

whether it could be done better mechanic wise is another, but believe me its not passive if you actually want to get some use of it.

^maybe remove a condition when you block an attack?

Funny thing, mobs actually do swarm like flies onto the player with the most toughness, it really get hilarious when (because you got a little toughness from knights armor (zerk trinks) and traitpoints) every mob is constantly spamming you for attention (since you are still the one with the most toughness).

It’s actually a important subject, but the ideal format would maybe be having a scale from “never useful” to “always useful” to score all runes to give more data, showing not only which runes we consider strong (or too strong) but also which runes are never in any situation going to be taken.

But that would probably take up too much time for people to answer, maybe if you could answer as many as you would like and the average value is calculated based on that.

Saturn.6591:

Well, if I shoot you an arrow in the knee, you’ll surely not run around as fast as you normally would. Even if I “just” hit you a couple of times with a sword, or burn you with fire… are you sure you’d be able to run at top speed?

That being said; I’m also against a general increase of movement speed. Maybe add a few more runesets which give a boost to it, but no general free increase.

Getting hit by an arrow in the knee is simulated by the cripple condition.

And i promise you, if you where being chased by a zombie horde you would run faster than everbefore.

There’s such a thing as adrenaline boosts, your body has those systems because generally we don’t want to die. Fight or flee. Pain is a tool to not get ourselves killed, in a matter of life and death you won’t slow down like it was just a gravel grain in your shoe unless they have physically crippled you (which exists as a condition). And mechanically if they just stop chasing you suddenly you are fine and can continue your racer speed but merely being in their proximity after being touched by them apparently makes your character behave like a kid who didn’t get any candy. “But i don’t WANT to run! Im tired! And i got a bruise! Look!”. Nevermind that such a behavior could easily make your intestines become outtestines in tyria.

If we where to be realistic we would increase the movement speed in a combat situation and then have it take its toll when outside of combat (when the chemical coctail calms down and your body pays the price).

Remove in combat speed and its fine.

Its a horrible mechanic included because their AI can’t handle people moving in a game about movement. And then those mechanics make their way into pvp and spvp.

I wonder why wvw is such a zerg fest?

Get hit by a ranger in a proximity of a zerg and your fate is usually sealed depending on class. Because you essentially get a potentially infinite duration -33% movement speed debuff while the gankers can walk right up to you and hamtrain your face in.

As if the game didn’t encourage zerging enough.

Luckily i built myself to outrun them (or atleast keeping pace with them) building entirely for it.

Best thing that happened to the engineer is the new rocket boots, with a bit of smart buildcrafting even warriors have to break a sweat to catch up with me. Together with super speed it gives us a potential 1600 range leap which is excellent for jumping across chasms to surprise or escape.

Turrets on the other hand is usually a no go, i suppose i can for the fun of it condistack my net turret up to a 6 second immobilize just for the fun of it.

One thing that should be mentioned though, if you got a thief buddy, try having him run venoms. Yeah its pretty hilarious watching people go into such a trap. Its like watching a stop motion movie run at a really low speed. And the lifestealing venoms is a huge boost to their dps.

Well 120 seconds would be okay as well, the point being its long cast, its melee range and that it gives slightly more than 1 pulse of elixir R (that also cures a condition every second btw). Its a skill to support reviving, not to insta rez them (hence 2 second cast (almost as long as a stomp) and melee range (meaning any cc will prevent the engi to reach its target. In wvw are everyone running thieves with shadow refugee for zerging? Or the trait that lets you interupt a stomp with stealth on you and your ally because that heals as well as preventing all stomps + making you invisible. But a longer recharge would be fine, the situational use of it would limit it anyway, as it should be. And its not 20% with tools.

20% would be instant revive if it hit someone in the same second they where downed in most combat scenarios., but if that is too much go down to 15%.

Whatever, i just find the toolbelt so totally unengaging considering the rest of our cc, and a actual defibrillator mechanic would be interesting.

But yeah, condition removal on downed could go, cast could be 2.5.

(and its 23 seconds with 30 in tools).

The important thing for it is to be more engaging than a simple 1 second melee ranged stun on the profession thats king of cc.

Even through i will stick to my medkit (or healing turret if the need be) i find A.E.D to be interesting in the way that i plays.

Sadly though the toolbelt looks a little, well disappointing. There is a big gap in efficiency between our toolbelt skills, some are a core part of the play like big old bomb, bandage self, toss elixir S and elixir R. Others are mostly waste of spaces. For the most part a lot of these toolbelts have been tidied up (elixir b got stability, regenerating mist is a stunbreak, lowered cool down on turrets toolbelts and functionality changes in general).

This toolbelt though got a little bit of damage and a 1 second stun on a 30 second cooldown. In melee. Well its not horribad as the old turret toolbelts used to be, but its a bit mediocre. I was expecting a defibrillator to help us revive downed players, going with our “there is no selfish heal on the engineer” mantra. It makes sense for toolbelts of the heal skills to also be supportive.

Therefore i suggest (and i expect a lot of flak):

New toolbelt:
2 seconds cast, 30 second cooldown.

charge your A.E.D to heal downed allies directly in front of you and remove two conditions from them, enemies are stunned.

Stun duration: 1 second.
Heal: 20%.

The long cast means that it is best used by charging it up while running to your downed ally, and hopefully timing it to interupt the stompers if they do not have stability. Any kind of damage done to them prevents “insta” rezzes. The skill is essentially a help to revive allies and not a guaranteed revive from range (and you won’t revive yourself as with R). The condition clear is there to help negating stray poison without entirely countering body pressure applied by necros, engineers and other condition builds with cover conditions. Oh and while 1 second of stun might not be much on the original skill, when you use if to revive an ally it is a helpful addition.

And finally i would just like to discuss the matter of scaling.

The reason i dislike the change of transmute is that the old version actually scaled with the challenge ahead. 10x as many conditions? 10x as many converts! It didn’t matter if you fought one necro or an army of them, it helped in a equal fashion. In this game the masses already have so many supporting wheels its uncanny with group reviving, aoe cap and combat speed. We do not need to remove the few traits scaling with the encounter, in fact i would argue that we need more of them. But i agree with the randomness factor being unfun in a lot of cases for both the player and the opponent. Therefore, and this goes for the tools grandmaster armor mods as well (yeah good that your shield blocked one clone attack, now about the rest of the REAL people tearing you a new behind) i would suggest changing it to:

“every X condition/attack is converted/causes aegis”.

Going by the chance for it to proc now it would be equivalent or close to 12 conditions between transmutes. When it triggers you get a dozen stacks of “exhausted/shield depleted” and each condition/attack removes one of those stacks. That leaves counterplay to the enemy, to not use his fear or immobilize when your stacks are gone. Because lets be honest most of the times it will simply convert one short duration bleed (and not even the entire incoming stack, just one of the incoming 3 bleeds) to a short degen. With 15 seconds icd we do not only leave the trait in the hands of the enemy, but it also is limited by that one bleed every recharge. And given how conditions fly all over the place i would be happy to not have that power warrior autoattacking with his rifle destroying my help against that necro blowing his nose in my general direction. And yes there is a big difference between converting one of the three bleeds applied by a shrapnel grenade and removing 25 stacks of bleed every X seconds (comparing incoming and already applied conditions). Or removing 2 seconds of the applied burning versus a whole minute of stacked burn.

So far the interest in armor mods has been cool to say the least, but if it gave more help the more you needed it, it might be more reasonable, the more attacks the more help. A heavy but slow hitter might get a attack blocked and loose a lot of damage, a mesmer with duelists and flurry might not loose as much per hit, but the blocks triggers more often.

Well enough of my rambling.

Once again, if you fear for AR this is the last of the heals after maybe H i would think AR is abuseable with. AR is based on living on the edge of death for a indefinite amount of time, the fatal damage could come at any given time during that. If the engineer activates that to cover his kitten when under AR, wait those few seconds and enjoy as he screwed it up for himself whether by healing for the full or just 5k. Either you managed to “kill him” and you don’t have much problem with AR in the first place or you don’t, and his low heal simply put him on a nice comfy point for you to condiburst him/her to Hades. And even if he heals for the 12k, he is now susceptible for burst anyway, and he got fewer condi clears to survive to the limit. To fully abuse *AR you need elixir C, which got a 40 sec cooldown. Alternatives is trying to clear as much as possible with turret(which risks healing you up again most of the time if used for clearing) or elixir gun and antidote from medkit, but there is a great risk that because of that necro signet nuking you, a burn or a stack of bleed make it through, and then you really need a decent heal like turrets regen or medkits medpack, simply using A.E.D WILL get you killed in such situations. “yay im imune to conditions for 1 second, ouch now im condibursted again”. This is not a defence of AR but STOP making it out like A.E.D will make it worse. This heal is based around knowing when you are going to get killed. Bunkering outside of the old R usage was not based around that. The difference between this and elixir R is that R occupied a utility, this takes up a heal. Remember how many bunker engineers we saw regularly in the meta before healing turret? That turret gave engineers the ability to have a good HPS, acess to two water fields and aoe heal and a condition clear. You think that this heal, a rather easily counterable heal that does not do considerably more hps than medkit (hell i can probably heal for atleast 20k during that time + clear 2 conditions and gain 20 seconds of fury and easy use of on heal runes with medkit during the time that A.E.D heals for 12k, not to mention if the enemy choose not to kill him during those 5 seconds, which means 5k heal on a 40sec cooldown for that engineer who is then royally and majorly kittened if he is trying to fight any kind of attrition war).

This is a hit and run heal. It is made for glassy SD engis (yeah we see a lot of those) who knows that as soon as someone looks at them then either the enemy will be dead in 5 seconds or they themselves will be, meaning its easier to predict. Also the only point in that tool belt is to trigger another SD. Who knows i might actually try a glassy engi again just for giggles. But this is not the heal i would choose for a bunker build.

BlackBeard.2873:

Chaith.8256:

Caffynated.5713:

This has to be a joke. You’re giving warrior MORE invulnerability? You’re giving eles a 3rd arcane damage skill to add to their all in burst? You’re giving phantasm condi bunkers a passive heal?

Does ANet even play this game? Seriously, everything you do is WRONG.

Healing Signet is a lot harder to deal with. It literally never stops. Defiant Stance is going to be a really short window where you do negative damage to the Warrior, cool fact, that allows you to stop dealing damage and stunt his healing. I doubt it’ll get much play over the OP healing signet that’s too good to activate in any circumstance.

I actually like Defiant Stance. Invulns on a warrior are out of control b/c they are too strong when combined with OP HS. This is more like a better version of shelter perhaps (if it negates all damage), making bunker warrior more viable. The skill also has counter-play.

I am concerned about more instant damage on eles (plus an instant heal, usuable while cc’d). There is a lot of play in the design, but the other arcanes need to be changed to reduce the instant damage.

Most of the others seem o.k., but I really think you could make an unkillable engie with A.E.D + Elixir R + Inertial converter (trait) + automated response. I think a build abusing these things will see a great deal of QQ in the coming months, as engies specialize in decaps, can have great mobility, and now survive forever. Sound familiar?(looking at you cantrip ele).

I don’t think A.E.D will be the best thing to combine with AR. I got a hefty cooldown and will heal you up above the condilimit, making you a target for condis again. And for elixir R it won’t be as abuseable with dual R ressing, you will not have the the chance to abuse both heal and toolbelt recharge as both are short duration based (to abuse them with recharge traits you have to use them before getting under 25%. Better would be using one of them and save a slot.

But all in all i wouldn’t call this a bunker heal as much as a hit and run heal. Hps, condiremoval and general support is still superior in the other heals, even if it heals you to full.

But ill admit the thought have crossed my mind.

Peetee.9406:

Scarlet and Trahearne will fall madly in love and live happily ever after.

That is the worst fate i can imagine for her.

Desolation here hoping for a european branch.

^well i would argue that vengance is potentially the most damaging downed skill if you look at it like that. At least rangers (good rangers…) can petswap to a wolf for example and chain rupt you like a kitten (daze, knockdown,fear, daze is back and so is the rez). For example of damage done in a decent downed state, see mesmer and his decent auto, his hard hitting phantasm and an aoe “interrupt”.

But what determines a pvp fight is who gets stomped first, not who deals a bit more damage (the best damage is the one that gets done) than others in downed state unless you are very, very lucky (and then the engineer is hardly the one with the most dps, especially when you consider that berserker builds aren’t really a engi thing for spvp). And if you get stomped or not depends largely on what your number 2 skill is. And our skill 2 can be countered in so many ways its not even funny. And if it hits, its not like the warrior who at least got a knockdown. Its a short pull. With a long cast. With low damage. It can be blocked, invulned, blinded, reflected, stability ignored, telestomped, stealth stomped. It’s single target.

Hell i rage the most when someone going for the stomp does not even realize that his stupid pet/minion just blocked my chance of surviving that second longer to let the ele (or whatever) who got downed before me (but who gets to sprint like an Olympian while being immune to damage, cc and stomps) get stomped on the (required!) second try and allowing me to rally. Instead i get stomped by his pet taking that bloody toilet paper roll and i rally everyone who is in downed state and in worst case we lose that point. Because a random critter stood in my way.

But someone got to have the worst downed state, might as well be us. ;-P
(seriously though i think the necro downstate is worse, but well-.)

JustTrogdor.7892:

Gem store armors don’t come with stats like the T3 you bought.

Especially since the t3 is rare and not exotic. XD

And the hilarious thing is that since the original design of cultural armor also more or less forced you to transmute from the gemstore, the ones getting shafted are the ones supporting them in the first place!

This is glorious.

Seriously though i find it to bee a bad sign that the ship is sinking when developers start pushing reskins out the front door. Either they are desperate to show NC that they can still make money and/or they just realized they could simply get as much cash for less work by reselling a slightly modified version. Both alternatives are scary.

Nova Stiker.8396:

How is this trait is remotely considered OP is beyond me.

Basically, this trait is asking the Elementalist not to take 1,300-2,000 damage in a fight to be effective.
ArenaNet is so out of touch with it’s community…

Last time I checked, Necromancers are going the zerker route anyways because scepter has no projectiles, fast and spams 3 conditions in a single combo, surviving thanks to fear and weakness.

HEY ENGINEERS! Want this kitten trait, all Elementalists will happy to take the trait Automated Response, something useful.

As an engineer ill happily trade.

JonPeters.5630:

One more thing I forgot to mention. The nice thing about Incendiary Powder was that it was a nice build neutral go to for adept tier. Right now the new build neutral traits there are Exploit Weakness and Empowering Adrenaline. I think a good discussion might be why these are not up to par as build neutral adept tier explosives traits.

Jon

Whats your position on automated response vs the new diamond skin? (risk vs reward, ease of use etc.)

JonPeters.5630:

Right now I am thinking 85% on diamond skin as high health eles could break this at 80% imo.

Also thinking 25% cooldown on the alacrity traits so we can move slowly. If we go 30% and have to nerf after that I would not be happy. The diamond skin thing is possible for dec 10th. The cooldown thing on alacrity traits is more likely to be the following patch because it has a lot of testing requirements that concern me.

Jon

Im sorry what??

Have you ever seen the heaps of complaints thrown against Automated Response?

Im a user of it in both wvw and spvp (zerk/knight tanky hybrid and warrior/necro commatmebros bunker in respectively) and i would argue that it is not overpowered, even if i can understand the arguments against it. This is. You know why? Because using AR to its full extent you have to actively juggle your health to not be to much nor to little. If im using it against a necro for example i first try to eat a nice stack of bleed without too many cover conditions, then i use gear shield to soften the descent, i stunbreak if necessary and i try to cleanse the conditions applied. Then i have to calculate my healing and maintenance to never rise above 25% health as one condiburst at that level coupled with a fear can send me spinning into the other limit awfully fast. And the lower bound is composed by death. Any power user can make my life a misery if they decide to lend a hand and i have to constantly evaluate the combat situation. I find it ironic that one of the counters against it was the transmute trait that gave you regen from bleeds, meaning that if the target leaved me alone for a few seconds and then bursted i would be in trouble, but with the nerf to that i won’t get as much regen anymore so i can’t really make that argument. Anyways now how is this trait different? Lets compare: what happens if the engi sinks below 0% hp? He dies. What happens to the ele? He still got 90%health left and can easily clean and heal up to correct his mistake. What happens if the engineer goes above 25% health? He can now be condibursted again, just like the ele when below 90%, its just the problem that the engineer is at 25% health and the ele is at 90%, and its easier to heal up than to sink down in a controlled manner, and if there is one thing eles are good at its playing HP rollercoaster, so getting back up would not be a problem. I find AR to be a really fun and potent trait that requires a LOT of active play to use, but this is essentially just AR+++ with none of the risks involved.

but then you don’t really remember that we got that grand master trait do you?

I think making it a bit more universal at a larger gap (say 80%) with -25-33% direct damage, -40% condition duration as a hybrid between AR and bark skin with the advantage of not having the risk element involved would make it a potent and universal grandmaster without stealing the spotlight of the other two which are more risky and should equal more reward in their respective fields.

TL:DR

• Make it a more universal, less risky trait than bark skin and Automated response.
• While above 80% health, take 25% less direct damage and conditions applied to you last 40% shorter.
• this makes it a extremely potent tough-guy trait when combined with runes for further condition reduction and protection, but it does not completely steal the spotlight of the more specialized and risky barkskin and automated response, allowing them to coexist.

Maskaganda.2043:

The change to IP will hurt. Not sure if what I’ll roll now, might go 30 points into firearms or back to 20 in inventions.
What bothers me most is losing those 10% condition duration from explosives. Two options here, givers weapon or the new toxic consumables.

Transmute change is nice tho.

From someone who is running AR in a zerk hybrid in wvw im sad to se transmute nerfed like this. Only situation this Will have its moment is when using guards to gain stealth for escaping with throw bolas thanks to cloak, or if a necro is stupid enough to beginn the burst by entering deathshroud and fearing you without a bleed bomb. Usually im all in for more Control over the effects, but as Long as the application of conditions themselves is as random as it is it Will still effectively just be as random as it was with less protection against Heavy condition pressure. I liked that the more pressure your oponents spat out, the more aid you got against them. And even if you had a million necromancers spamming you you would still get 8 percent less bleeds, poisons, torments and so on. If a player over the Course of 15 seconds applied 12 conditions to you it would in that scenario be equivalent, and by this i include not Only the number of Times they are applied but also the size of the stacks, meaning that if say a theoretical skill applied 25 stacks of bleed, with the New version it would become 24 stacks of bleed and a few seconds of regeneration, and with the old it would become 23 stacks with twice as Long regen. And the New one would then be on recharge while the old is ready to eat more. It worked well as a statistical weapon against conditions as those often had a large sample size during a fight. You Will be able to laugh at the poor sod throwing a bola as an opener, but Most of the fight it Will go wasted on a auto bleed from someone turning it to a few seconds of regen. Currently the power warrior spamming his 30/40 damage bleed does not affect the chance to turn the necromancers 120+ bleeds Into regen, or vulnerability Into protection, or the fear Into stability. With this patch it Will. Its one of the few random traits that Works well, and one that scales with the task ahead. Now it Will counter the builds with no random condition application (and how many are those?) but with Only a few select important conditions such as a warrior with fear or bolas or a mesmer who goes for the shatter immobilize (if you Do not get hit by the 1s cripple, nor by any exploding clone 15 seconds before or hit by an auto or a sigil proc or a proc trait or Another player spamming his auto and so on). Sorry for the weird formating, writing on a phone.

I would recommend you to run one with air if you have trouble keeping up, but well its mostly amazing with scepter and fresh air, but then running a scepter build you would be able to finish him off.

Maskaganda.2043:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGfULPLpnwI

some tuesday morning roaming, mainly 1v2s and a duo engie team fighting 6 and 8.
vid will most likely be blocked in germanialand, deal with it!

would say “great fights this week!!11” but the lag ruined it for me.

Well there was a guardian too, but oh the casualties of war. :C
There’s always that guy who is by necessity of the plot destined to die.

I thought it was a fun trait as it had a strong downside to it (-50% movement speed on a close range weapon), they should just have made it tick in a few seconds after you switch to it to prevent just switching to it for the stomp.

Yeah, it was nothing like a thief dropping blackpowers at will or stealthing or so.

Darek.1836:

miriforst.1290:

I’m curious, why should an engineer not have any right to comment on the meta? Is it the bombs?

because you will win 110% of the time against any guardian regardless of build regardless of skill level because conditions are extremely OP against guardians atm. you can say they “counter” guardians, but what the kitten? every condi engi build should not kittening counter every kittening guardian build. that’s horse kitten.

Every or just hgh?

I’m curious, why should an engineer not have any right to comment on the meta? Is it the bombs?

Latinkuro.9420:

I never thought about it but yeah, it makes sense time warp should be a glamour type skill so it can benefit from glamour traits.

all the other buffs make no sense at all.

what is an elite ?
an elite is a skill no other profession can perform it is a specialization of sorts of your class mastery, so ok, but wait !

warrior has quickness !
thief has haste !
engies have haste !

so to make mesmer elite actually an elite it should be the only skill that provides quickness with 100% speed increase instead of 50%, otherwise it’s not an elite it’s just yet another quickness skill.

You need to check up elixir X.

I’m on the hunt for fellow engineers who would be interested in playing a different kind of spike, mostly for keep/tower attack/defense but also support in large scale battle. This will probably not be effective at all, but it could be fun. What it is essentially is using the new rocket turret toolbelt skill with full offensive gear. It got a higher damage base than jump shot and good scaling. It is aoe. It is slooooooow but it is stealthy. when i tested with a friend in spvp he got no red circle beneath him, and the arc is so large that people don’t see it coming before it hits them from straight above. Think of it as an invisible 1500 range dragons tooth with a longer delay. You can fire it, run off might stack and even use elixir x for a lucky power increase and then hit those guys on the wall for, well a lot. Im not really optimized yet and my highest was 9,5k on an lvl 80 ele, but others have reported hits of 13k+ hits. It is also fun to throw in the occasional close range shadow refuges and following it up with a jump shot. But what i would like to try is forming a party working as a mobile artillery, taking out grouped people with coordinated strikes of this. Is this effective? No, probably not. Would it be fun seeing the people oblivious of the 5+ rockets ready to deliver 10+k damage in an aoe each soaring down from the stratosphere getting suddenly thumped into downed in an instant? Well that’s what i hope. Who knows we could even try out covering the downed with chained mortar concussion barrages if we feel like it. Too bad leg specialist was fixed so fast, having a warrior on the mortar is/was fun (for us, not the poor sods stuck in it).
TL: DR I would like to recon the interest to try a rocket strike team for objective defense/attack and large scale support. VoIP might be good. Just for fun.
This is the anthem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lOXCdxsYXPc#t=170

Adamantium.3682:

Rezzet.3614:

loving it in wvw

How are you using it? I don’t see how this is good when you have an eternity to dodge it. I’d love to learn something.

It is surprisingly stealthy at the cost of a long delay, it leaves no red circle at the target. The arc also means that few people see it coming from a graphical point of view.

If any gandarian engi would like to test precision striking with this im up.

I like it, now i will never have my rocket turret up.

I know there are other more viable aoe ranged nukes like grenade barrage, but its so fun to lauch a nuclear missile hitting 9k on that non upscaled glass ele on the wall and any other glass up there with a incredibly arching missile. also fun to lob into a shadow refuge and close range and then jump shotting.

Undocumented change though.

Dajas.4715:

Tolmos.8395:

And what’s hilarious is that engineer with 25 stacks of might still does less damage than a thief with no stacks of might.

It’s obvious to any engineer that this player didn’t achieve the 25 on his own. It’s possible with certain HGH builds, but this player isn’t running one of those. Those stacks came from external sources.

First off this is a condition build so no a thief does not do more condition damage without might! bleeds shy off 200 and burns that tick at 1050, you show me a thief that can obtain that without might.

And as for it is obvious that i didn’t achieve the might on my own, did you not watch the vid? you obviously know very little about the engineer class.

i defiantly agree that might it can be ripped from you very easily, but i suppose that’s where knowing other classes is vital and would defiantly not recommend doing a massive might burst when facing a necro or a thief with a sword, it’s just about playing smart i suppose!

And that got nothing to do with full ascended, 25 corruption, leech, bloodlust, consumables at all amiright?

Best place to compare statwars would be spvp, where people atleast pretends that balance still matters.

Haltair.3062:

Simonoly.4352:

BB had a lot of Thieves on one of the maps. Was fun stomping them, especially all the ones splurging their initiative.

Sounds strange to my ears. Stomping thieves is not easy taking into account their skills….xD
Good luck anyway.

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

Was it you that i encountered at our (gandara) borderlands? I noticed Ods and that there where thieves everywhere. Sadly i died trying to help my downed gandarian thief member (he wasn’t as good as me at running away). I have way to much solidarity when it comes to those things, im a sucker for rez traps.

But i got some sort of revenge in smashing one of your charrs into pieces with my bare hands before making an exit. Oh i wouldn’t stomp him, only an idiot would have tried to stomp a thief in a party where every jack carries around shadow refuge. Ive dueled some of you earlier and i noticed that. Words can not describe how anoying it is to fight a group of thief with every trait and skill available that says “stealth” on the tooltip. But kudos to your brave pistol/pistol thief, he is very fun playing against. I hope he was not angry at me for launching him of the cannon.

Something i’ve always notice is how you work spread out but during an encounter everyone just seem to converge on the position from every angle, its a good thing the terrain promotes rocket boots to use to cross obstacles.

P.S. I expected everyone of you to be a thief, but you had a guardian at the stairs point! Blasphemy i say!

I was the cowardly engineer, i was told that i am good at running by you, and when a guild of thieves tell you that you are good at running, they mean it.

Do. Not. Excuse. Bugs.

You can keep people AOE immobilized with grasping vines on ranger, but of course you can destroy the roots as you can destroy the short range slow firing (tooltip says 10 sec fire rate for 3 sec immobilize but in reality its more like 13 sec), easily dodged net turret (did i mention their low hp and how they are obliterated by aoe not even touching them?). And every turret equipped is giving up a weapon, a decent stunbreak or a condition clear.

And besides i argued for more involved turrets (having manual control for different tasks) and adding hard drawbacks (such as only being able to fire in a certain direction leading you to choose between large firepower in a small area or covering the blindspots at the loss of concentrated fire) but making them a force to actually consider. Just for giggles i played a bit of tournament play with turrets. You know who died? The one running up to a point where i have decorated the lamp posts with turrets without a care in the world. They did not try to pick them off before the fight, they did not try to prevent the initial overcharge and they just preformed the basic chains and combos that they have always done, with their “active” play It resulted in a chain of rocket and nets keeping them to the ground and those who could mistformed/teleported/ran out of there when they got up and they did not return, or in case that they did they used the same bloody nonexistent strategy as before. you would think that the defensive turrets placed in positions to cover the point would enforce more care and planning. Interestingly the ones most carefull to counter my turrets was thieves, as they usually run around with little health. They tended to find the right angles and use the shortbow to remove my turrets (and its bouncing yay) which in turn leaves me with the choice of leaving the point and try knock him of that vantage point, often in spaces where my turrets can’t aid me and thus a lot of the traits don’t work or letting the turrets be destroyed and put on full recharge. He could also choose to leave the turrets and use them to land free cloak and daggers on if they are poorly placed. And this was before the nerf that cut their effectiveness in half.
As much as i like the thrill of improvised combat on the fly i also, maybe to an even greater kick love to carefully construct a plan of attack/defense and adding to that give space for improvisation and backup plans. when the enemy then walks into the pattern you predicted and make every mistake they could do in the situation because you force them to puts a smile on my face. So add more weaknesses, add more micromanagement and add more power to them. the entire thrill of them should be analyzing the area, finding the angles and preparing counters to people countering your counter. Oh and when it comes to reactivity, how more reactive is really elixir b, elixir h, grenades and so compared to traited out turrets? When you are defending your position you might choose between throwing up a turret on a ledge to help it survive and give you assisted firepower, or you could place it at your position and detonate it to disrupt the enemy on your tail or overcharge it and let it stay depending on its role. You can throw a turret to stop a stomp/rez, you can blast with them for comboing (should i detonate my healing turret for a larger spike heal or pick it up for a faster recharge). is the enemy standing with a object blocking the turrets los while firing away at you? knock him back or pressure him out of there. Or maybe it is good that he/she remains there as he/she might not be in a capping position. You will have fewer “okitten” buttons so you really have to stay on your toes and use every dodge to its full potential. The activeness is kinda already there, but the planning and strategy part is lacking. Crowd control is about shaping the flow of the battle into your liking, and turrets could be a part of that aspect, even if they in the current iteration are just yet another immobile, squishy, low damage, slow firing bugged AI unit.
If they don’t want to ever see them used, fine remove them and add more kits or something, but DONT say that they are supposed to never be used and they are there to fill up space for other useful things.
TL:DR Make them more active and engaging, promoting the strategical/tactial style of play as complement to 360 noscoping. The engineer is a lot about directing the battle, her/his role is to analyze the fight and push it in the direction the situation requires. It should not just be about “i throw grenades at people and explosions are cool”. And as well as all professions must be able to excel at the role they are given/have taken, so must utilities and weapons. Turrets role are to be stationary defensive structures. If they do not do that role well, change the or remove them and give us something that we are allowed to use.

I laughed at the turret comment, yeah who needs them to attack anything anyways (net turret wont if you overcharge it when you place it)? Or attack as fast as they are supposed to do (none of them does)?

And i suppose that a ranger with mobile support spirits should be chosen over you know stationary offensive/defensive immobile structures with long recharges (and that are squishy as hell) that only scales with condition damage and healing power?

I know where all the AI hate comes from, but turrets are not the villain. They are stationary, dont block projectiles (ask an engi about this) have a hitbox the size of the sun when it comes to ground targeted AoE and cleave spam. They don’t move around like ants on coffee , they aren’t summoned at every dodgeroll and for most parts they aren’t even a threat.

Arenanet was so afraid of turrets actually being a viable mean of defending a point. Don’t get me wrong, but if you trait grandmaster deep into their traitline, and deep in others for the rest of the traits you would atleast expect it to be reliable defending in a 1vs1. The thing is i could do it with any other spec better and still be viable in more than that one situation.

Of course i know about passive play being bad, but i would like turrets to achieve a goal of being a strategical weapon that requires planning ahead. Other games have had turrets in that form and it creates an interesting dynamic between defenders. The most obvious way to do this would be to have different firing arcs on different weapons, the riffle turret might fire four times as fast as it does now but only do it in a 90 degree arc, meaning you can choose to cover that blind spot with maybe a short range but 360 flameturret on the cost of not covering a certain doorway and so on. Also if the overcharge could open up a “remote control” kit that allows us to activate and target different tactical utilities such as designating a spot for a rocket strike or deploying a projectile shield on the cost of a deactivated turret for X seconds. Something more active, because i like active play at the same time that i love when a plan works and seeing i set in action.

Well whatever im more of a multiple kit guy anyways.

The problem is, condis are hardly the only RNG element in the combat here.

Power builds damage can be even more RNG tied since a crit can easily deal over two times their normal damage. We get situations where a citting facestab deals more damage than a non crit backstab. Or a critting blunderbuss at 400 range deals more damage than a non crit at 100 (less than melee range on a “ranged” weapon).

The least rng dependent might actually be the bunkers of old, but even then they where often at the whims of the aggressors luck anyways.

Oh right and weakness too.

Of course i would prefer if we didn’t have rng crits at all.

Adamantium.3682:

Adrian.3689:

Rozbuska.5263:

That vulnerability instead of bleed is great change imo.

To clarify things, its 1 stack of vulnerability that lasts 8 second per shot and the rate of fire for rifle turret overcharge is 1 per second over a period of 10 seconds. That averages out to an increase in physical damage by 3.6% for a span 15 seconds from activation of overcharge to the end of vulnerability duration. Whereas the current rifle turret does 1 stack of bleed that lasts 3 seconds per shot, which adds up to around 1800 damage for non-condition build or 2700 damage for condition build by end of the overcharge.

In order to benefit from the changes, you would have to have a damage output of above 200k a minute.

Except vulnerability helps EVERY other player attacking that target, making it nearly impossible to really calculate its effectiveness. Unless you are only concerned with the changes for solo play in which case you probably won’t need the full bleed OR vulnerability duration so it’s kind of a moot point…

Sometimes just doing the math doesn’t mean much. You need to interpret the change in the context of actually playing the game.

And that depends on if we are speaking of spvp, wvw or pve.

But i find it sad to see the bleeding go, you specced condition damage anyways with turrets (as they actually scale with it) so the additional bleeding with a main hand pistol and burn from flame/rocket turret made it possible to actually pressure lone cappers.

selan.8354:

Tsezar.6950:

15 sec cd wouldnt make any difference as i said it needs at least 45 seconds

being interrupted is already punishing enough-"

On a heal it might be harsh when around 25% health, but for most part a blind or block is worse than an interrupt, unless you are using one of the elusive channeling spells. If someone interrupts my magnet pull i can have it up again in 5 seconds, if i get blinded it will go on its full cool down. And interrupts are usually harder to “interrupt” with than blinds.

I say this rune is silly, but don’t go all bezerk on it yet, giving a 15 sec icd and decreasing the base duration to 5 sec will go far for the 6th bonus. As for the proc one, tone it down to match the active component. Interrupting can usually be countered in different ways depending on the class you play and the class of the enemy, but simply procing on attacks is silly. Ive never been a fan of “kitten ed if i do kitten ed if i don’t” mechanics (yes torment conceptually is silly as well).

But most of all- for retal and confusion have a 1 sec internal cooldown!.

A backstabber goes rather free of retaliation, but a flamethrower engi? Does he deserve over 5-15X the punishment (outside of for being stupid)? Both retaliation and confusion are balanced in certain situations, but if i have to switch between kits to remove my conditions i take a LOT of extra damage. As goes for procs triggering confusion. They need to normalize it, and then they can reevaluate it and balance the damage up or down or whatever is needed.

Aside from the team sizes, in what magical way does solo queue teach players everything that hotjoin apparently by laws of physics can’t?

Its a bit like the revolutionary thinks, “it’s a problem with the state!” becomes “its a problem with the people…”. And it’s really hard to change the people. And what authority grants you that responsibility? If you are to change everyone, wouldn’t it be easier to start with you just too see how it aligns then?

If hotjoin disappears, where will the players go? Soloqueue you say? But then how do they magically become exemplary citizens? Wherever you go you take yourself with you, and the only result is that soloqueue becomes the new hotjoin with exactly the same bad habits as before because they got the same people as before. so you kitten off not only the hotjoiners but the soloqueuers too who where expecting a format where the somewhat more competitive (but without a team) can practice but which now play like the old hotjoin. I think the game needs somewhere for the bad ones as well as the good ones and everyone in between. It ends up pleasing both.

If you where making the argument to limit teamsize to 5vs5 i would sort of see why (but it would still be a bad idea as it is also bashing people over their head telling them to be serious about their super competitive esport (as competitive as dice)).

Im sorry i don’t take games with rng crits serious from a esport perspective. :S