Guild Wars 2

For that, I’d need to read the whole algorithm, which, tbh, I cba doing.

I’ve seen way worse code. It’s readable and can be easily understood. At least, you aren’t dealing with an abc-programmer or a three-star-programmer here.

Disclaimer: I’m still trying to boil it down to as little terminology as possible, without using tens of different technical terms, so someone, who knows his stuff: When reading “variable” just insert the correct term in the current context, be it object, attribute or whatever.

the dot operator basically means either:
Access the following function from the variable.
roster.countProfessions(profession)
In this example, roster has a function, which counts, how many of a specified profession are in the roster.

or:
Access the following sub-variable from the variable.
roster.ratingLow
In this example, I’d assume, it’s just the lowest rating amongst all players of the roster. Might also be the lowest rating, the roster can ever be matched with. Read the context and find out.

Basically, the dot just tells the program to “go deeper” and access information stored within a variable.

That being said, you can now begin to look through the source again and connect the dots yourself. (stronk pun!)

From what I can tell, just glancing over it without going into detail:

def pickRoster(variables) defines a function, which can be called. It simply says “this following section is a function, which can be used by calling it and supplying it with the variables in the brackets.”

for roster in potentials
is basically a for each loop. You take the list variable “potentials”, which contains multiple rosters and go through the list one by one. The currently selected roster is stored in the variable roster.
Explanation:
FOR – loop function
ROSTER – loop variable
in – how to get loop variable
POTENTIALS – list, where to get the individual roster variables from.

For each of those rosters, the function
if roster.players > playersNeeded: continue
is checked. It simply checks, whether the roster size of the currently checked roster is larger than the required players and if yes, it calls the continue function, which jumps right back to the loop head and starts over with the next roster.
If not, it skips the “continue” and goes right on to examining, whether the roster is a good fit.

I’d advise you read a bit about programming. Especially about loops and conditions, it’s all pretty basic.

Chaith.8256:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Necrotize.2974:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Chaith.8256:

“Turrets weren’t an abomination, Celestial amulets are.”

“Simply a L2P issue.”

“Turrets were the purest form of Engineer.”

The feeling of loss will pass, and you will hopefully walk a mile in a non-turret Engineer’s shoes in ranked queue. My enjoyment in ranked queue has gone up 900% due to less presence of Turret Engineers. While I feel sympathy for those who’ve had their playstyle destroyed (RIP 100 nades), you cannot ever propose a good enough argument that would justify causing even 1 more flavor-of-the-month Turret Engineer in ranked queue.

I have run Cele rifle quite a bit but the class as I played it no longer exists. I have no desire to quit my playstle as my engi was my bunker toon. Engineers were designed to do exactly what I used mine for and need to be fixed.

So basically you’re saying that turrets were the only way to play engineer the way they were designed and without nigh-unkillable turrets our class is essentially useless? Only issue I had with the nerf was conditions affecting them as it doesn’t make sense, but crits make perfect sense and was a nerf that I think was dearly needed. Engineer has the potential to have more skills than any class(aside from ele) and the fact that almost everyone else was having trouble killing an engineer that sacrificed all those skills just for passive offense is a clear sign of trouble. Passive play should never hardcounter or surpass active play.

You can still play bunker engineer, you just have to sacrifice some offensive pressure now like everyone else.

Turrets were unaffected by the player’s stat choice so they would do the same amount of damage Even if the engineer ran PTV which was where the nerf should’ve focussed. Turret engineers sacrificed everything to run their build meaning we were naked with only a rifle vs any attacks coming out way.

Calling turret engineer a passive play style shows a significant lack of understanding on your and the community’s part. I actively attacked and defended (my life and my point) and to say otherwise is false.

Turrets damage affected by the engineer’s stats would’ve meant that to achieve their current damage output the player would need to gear zerker which would sacrifice survivability and if the engi wanted to run soldiers the damage output would be greatly reduced.

Again, turrets were never designed to take this damage and the entire trait line is ruined now. No changes to cooldowns, no cleanses added, no repair skill introduced, it simply destroys turrets to the cheers of players who run cheese builds they consider superior.

Turrets cannot be affected by player stats due to their status as constructs, or ‘gadgets’ (not the utility type.) It’s a technical limitation.

Everyone’s been saying this for years, but it can’t happen.

Also, I’m not alone in saying, I DO say otherwise when you claim you can play the meta turret build in an ‘active’ measure. You never have to leave the point, and your player input accounts for less than a third of your effectiveness.

That’s a lie.
You may not be able to alter the turret’s BASE STATS depending on the player’s stats, but you can always create a buff, which scales up turrets proportionally to your stat spread.

I have seen enough modders trick out engine limitations to know, how things can easily be bypassed. It’s certainly not impossible, but there may be technical limitations, which make this kind of solution put a severe strain on the server. This is something I don’t know, but stating, it’s impossible to have turrets scale with stats is a flat out lie.

I guess, when your system loads the turret, it will also have to load the engineer, which summoned them, which may be as far as 5000 or more range away from the turret. Yes, it will probably take quite a bit of fiddling around to get it to a point, where it doesn’t put a huge load on game performance, but it’s not impossible.

As for me, I just switched to playing turret ranger now. It’s far more fun than turret engi, because it’s more mobile.

Velimere.7685:

Please don’t remove them. I get a free Black Lion Key every 10 that I get…

You are wasting tomes.
Why would you spend 10 tomes, when 8 is enough?

I will scratch the warhorn tests.
Axe just rocks. Path of Scars wrecks team fights and can pull escaping foes right back into the range of your turrets.

Stop voting for Foefire or Niflhel, if you complain about a lack of comeback potential.

There’s two things, that totally kill comeback potential:
First, a middle point, which is right in between the two side points, with no way to assault the other side point by going around the contested mid point in a reasonable time(barely dodged the bullet there, Khylo.)
Second, extremely short distances between the points and side points sitting right next to the spawn. If you want to know the problem of Niflhel: The map is simply too compact.

It all boils down to the dominant team’s possibilities to clamp down two points and the weaker team’s possibilities to snatch the enemy’s home point.
Temple has excellent comeback possibilities. People always name the buffs, but even without all those buffs, temple just has a great map layout, where you can just let a dominant AoE composition rot in the pit at the gate and just focus on holding the side points in the upper area.
Temple already has the map layout which allows you to bounce back by playing it smart. Most of the other maps don’t even have proper map layout for comebacks, so tweaking secondary objectives would probably just make the dominant team win even more.

I also really like the map layout of Skyhammer, but the existence of the Skillhammer kind of turns it into a joke.

This thread just crossed my mind, so I thought, I’d post the current development for me:
I’ve started playing a turret ranger: An ai powered ranger using a pair of birds(seriously, rune of the pirate has been the most broken kitten around for how long now?) and an extremely tanky double melee setup with 6 in both nature magic and wilderness survival.

Celestial builds: If you can’t beat em, join em? We will see about that. The turret engineer showed, how effective a tanky frame with enough passive dps can be against celestial builds. Let’s see, if we can repeat that.

Zietlogik.6208:

Chase.8415:

You can use the tomes for mastery points once the expansion hits.

They said they didn’t want to do that anymore, it won’t be an option when HoT hits. Believe me, I was looking forward to that too

zapv.8051:

I love tomes, please don’t get rid of them. At the very worst they are skill points you can convert to gold, so I don’t understand the complaint.

That is their current use yes, from what I can understand, they won’t be usable on 80 characters and skill points won’t exist (just the account currency) so with all 80 characters, I have a feeling i won’t even be able to use them at all. But things can change before the patch hits…but their track record usually suggests they wait until AFTER their decision, and get critical community backlash before they make a change.

naphack.9346:

About the specialization patch: Let the specialization patch be the specialization patch.
The tomes will do something on level 80 characters or when they don’t, public pressure will force arena.net to make the tomes do something again.
It’s not like they will just outright remove any unspent tome from the game.

It sucks, but the way they worded it when answering questions in the AMA was that they will have no impact/use on level 80 characters and will only be used for leveling. No gain to Mastery tracks, no skill/hero points unless it is a pre-80 character.

They could easily make it retain its current use for level 80 characters: Give one point of mystic forge currency.

darres.8203:

Aktium.9506:

Zietlogik.6208:

I was sitting on 3 stacks of Tomes

Just fyi, you can turn those 3 stacks into about100g give or take

how do u do that?

teach me the secrets!

-Use all tomes to get skill points
-buy catapult blueprints, mithril ore and elder wood logs off the trading post
-use skill points to buy siege manuals
-toss everything into the mystic forge to create superior catapult blueprints
-sell superior blueprints on the trading post

You will make about 20 silver of profit per skill point.
Exclude the trading post fee and you still make quite a bit of cash.
If you have a lot of surplus badges of honor, you can also buy the siege blueprints for badges as a way to turn both the badges and skill points into gold.

On the other hand, for key farming purposes, 3 stacks of tomes equal just shy of 100 black lion keys, if you have the patience to put 2000 minutes into doing key runs. This would yield ~30 black lion claim ticket scraps, which assuming a price of 80 gold/skin would be worth 240 gold.
That and a bunch of dyes, minis, etc. and a chance on really expensive stuff.

If you want a quick cash in, just turn them into skill points. Grinding keys takes some serious effort.

About the specialization patch: Let the specialization patch be the specialization patch.
The tomes will do something on level 80 characters or when they don’t, public pressure will force arena.net to make the tomes do something again.
It’s not like they will just outright remove any unspent tome from the game.

Why would I give up my second turret for warrior runes? The second bird is a wrecking ball. It’s not uncommon, when I get jumped by three players, that I(well, the birds) still get one opponent into down state before they finally manage to stomp me.

Speaking about the second turret, I never really tested war horn. Call of the wild might push the tropical bird’s damage through the roof with that fury.

About Healing Spring: I thought about it. It certainly makes the build more like a turreteer, sticking to a point and staying there.

Edit: Healing Spring tested and found to be superior. Gives regeneration to tropical turret and removes conditions.

Zietlogik.6208:

Please….

I have no use for tomes of knowledge even right now, and they will have even less of a use post Hero Point Update.

Create a new human character, level him to 10 with tomes, run personal story(~15 minutes), get black lion key.

A man, who was obsessed with turrets had the urge to fill the void in his wretched heart, after turrets were made worthless. The no-skill scrub just couldn’t learn to play a proper build. He wanted to have the game play by itself, while burying his opponents in AI driven attacks and thus his dark heart brought forth an unspeakable abomination: The turret ranger!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAsXRjEq0xaFLusQ1aALhqdDEAj6rT1d0+A3cJ7KB-TpBHwAFOCALLDA4QAM4EAE4BAse/BA

As I feel like turret engineer had a vital spot in the meta, that is being a counter to mindless celestial facerolling, I kind of wanted to create another ai driven tank build.
I stumbled upon the combination of a bird pet and rune of the pirate to create a pair of hard hitting birds, but I still haven’t fully optimized the build.

The build is a pure melee build with maxed nature magic and wilderness survival.
Don’t question the sigil of leeching, it’s just how I roll. I am a sucker for sigils of leeching and it’s there to stay. It was already hard enough to drop the first one for a sigil of doom, when I switched to axe offhand.

As for optimization, the offhand weapon kind of went from dagger to axe. Dagger was great for the extra evade and the extra poison, which allowed me to have a second sigil of leeching, but overall, it was rather lackluster. Pulling an escaping opponent back into the birds is just brutal and the reflect is not too shabby either.
Also, the build is kind of weak in team fights and the axe might help to mitigate that problem, bringing an extra interrupt and a reflect to the table.

The master traits in both WS and NM are still shaky. I have found the cooldown reduction on evades and blocks to be more relevant than regeneration procs, but an argument can be made for picking oakheart salve over martial mastery. In nature magic, there’s also the possibility to boost the greatsword. I kinda like evasive purity, because the build is already pretty taxed, when it comes to removing conditions and as any build with a lot of passive regeneration, we just don’t want a high poison uptime on us.

As for the 2 points in beastmastery, I just felt like the pet needed those extra stats. A point can be made for moving those points over to marksmanship and picking up keen edge.

Playtesting revealed, that the build plays nothing like a turret engineer(RIP) and has high mobility and a rather high skill cap, when compared to other ai driven builds. Utilizing that mobility is key, which makes it a rather bad turret replacement (yes, put your pitchforks down, the build doesn’t promote passive play at all…)

I will certainly continue playing the build, maybe test, how well the bird survives, when I swap the points from beastmastery to marksmanship, as I could really use more condi removal, even, if it’s on a passive proc.

Shalloe.4867:

Blanche Neige.7241:

Jordo.5913:

The .001% will definitely slow the numbers from rising quickly, but just like RNG will be RNG to us the players, RNG could screw Anet and allow 1000 people (or whatever their cap is) in a single day before Anet has a chance to lower the drop rate, and one would have to be a fool if they don’t think Anet has a fail safe to keep that from happening.

Of course they do. They are certainly monitoring the number of drops regularly. They can lower the drop rate past a certain threshold is reached. It can even be automated easily with a few lines of code.

You only have to put a counter that increase by one every time a portal is dropped for the first time by a player’s account.

Check the counter’s value everytime a portal is dropped vs the threshold’s value.

If the counter’s value is greater than the said threshold, then reduce the drop rate and increase the threshold value. Repeat.

the drop flags an account for access for the beta and you don’t need to keep the item. So surely any counting done would be of account with access and not how many items have dropped

SELECT COUNT (*) FROM ACCOUNTS WHERE BETA_ACCESS = TRUE;

Yes, no need to have an independent counter syncing over multiple megaserver shards. The beta access information is a flag in the login server, so just check for the information there. You also don’t have to perform this check on every drop. Just checking periodically, how many players have access would be enough.

Isslair.4908:

On foefire, if you got a bad setup against a meta/defensive one, that’s probably it( and you can’t avoid opponents from pushing lord)

And that’s why it is good. One build – one queue. If anet wants to add different metas and mechanis they should do it in a separate queue.

I kinda dislike it, when the game is all about who can roll their head across their keyboard better.
The other maps got way more strategy involved and promote build diversity. GW2 needs more specialist builds, not less.

I will create an entirely new ranger…
It always kittened me off, that that city-dwelling human was my ranger. Time to create a character with a more flexible back story than “I grew up in Divinity’s Reach.”

Currently looking at a Norn, both for druidic looks and for bear form shenanigans.
I hve a huge Asura fetish, so it might still become an Asura… It’s just how I roll, in the end, everything will become an Asura.

Jenstone.6891:

Khalisto.5780:

=/
I think you could have bought 2 maybe 3 precursors

This…
If you use the MF to get a precursor (expecting to get one)… you will be very unhappy.
Personally I have gotten two out of it, the Lover and Dusk, in the last 8 months.
But I know people who have dropped 3k to 7k trying to get it.
Smarter use of the money…. just buy the precursor….
as they said before… RNG is RNG

Heh…
When I got my precursor, I was like “I need an exotic shortbow. I only have tier 5 mats and I got no ectos whatsoever. Let’s see, whether I can get one by tossing 20 rare shortbows into the forge. Those materials are rotting here anyway.”
Well, the shortbow certainly WAS an exotic.

My name is Rika the Restless. When I started exploring this world, it was vast. I drove off the centaur threat, defeated a mighty behemoth… Not even halfway through exploring the Kessex Hills, my puppet master brought me to the mists.
My puppet master was very fond of me, but he didn’t know, that all I ever wanted to do was see the world. So I was stuck in brutal arena fights, beating other players and soon becoming the finest fighter in my master’s lineup. Still hadn’t seen much of the world, still having nothing but the borrowed arena clothing.
My puppet master became more and more proficient at commanding my trusty pet companions. A lot of the knowledge about properly using a bow by reading the wind didn’t exist back then. I still racked up kills and created a strong bond with my pet companion.
One day, my puppet master came to me and said: “Both that Charr, I no longer want to speak of and the glorious warrior, Peacemaker Napp have been level 80 for a long time. It’s time for you to step out into the world. You are no longer an arena slave, from now on, you shall be free.”
Taking off that expensive arena armor and putting on my old rags, I went back to the Kessex Hills. It was still long before the Arena Fighter Liberation Act would allow arena fighters to wear their own clothes. With my well established bond to my pet, everything became a breeze. I went through the Gendarran Fields to the Harathi Hinterlands and kicked some centaur kitten .
In fact, my bond to my pet proved so potent, when I hit level 60 while crossing the Timberline falls, my master was shocked to find out, he never bought a master training manual(heh, you young ones probably don’t even know, what that is) and my armor was still sitting around level 30. Still, the unity between me and my birds was so strong, I could take down champions just by utilizing pet control from those months fighting in the arena.
Marching through the Timberline Falls, over to Fort Trinity and beyond, I finally reached level 80.
While I got exotics, he never really cared about my looks. One set is a mixture of temple and wvw armor, the other one still has the original crafted skin, but it was crafter from karka shells and passiflora.
Having to farm the passiflora and those shells helped a fellow alt with an even worse fate: Lorka Shredclaw, the Charr guardian, mostly just reffered to as “that cat of mine”. Her ability to reflect karka projectiles was utilized to slaughter some karka, then she was put back on the sidelines.
One day, a decisive event happened: A precursor was bestowed upon my puppet master during a visit to the mystic forge. He called me and gave me this beautiful shortbow, with feathers floating around and told me: “Rika, here’s a fine shortbow. Take good care of it.”
I was happy. Some time later, He came to me with an Asura Warrior, Peacemaker Napp, who handed me a Gift of Exploration. He said “hold this and don’t lose it. It’s important.”
Holding both a gift of exploration and a precursor, I felt confident.
The unfortunate cat also got some work after a long time of inactivity: My puppet master said: “Slay more Karka!” And she went off to Southsun to kill karka for Blood and Skelks for Fangs. I was happy. This was all, so I could get my legendary?
The truth was revealed like a kick to the guts. My puppet master came to me and said: “You still have the gift and the precursor, right? Here’s the other gifts. Throw it all into the mystic forge and put the Dreamer into the bank.”
My world wkittentered. That Norn thief had everything. Mix-matched armor, the Legendary, I always wanted, he even bought her bag slot expansions. While I was still running around with my plain skins and the shortbow, which used to be a precursor, was replaced by a dungeon reward track weapon. He didn’t even bother putting in any sigils.
Heart of Thorns was announced. He looked at the Ranger traits and liked them. He really liked them. But my hopes were shattered. He wants to replace me with a Norn or an Asura. Right now, the Norn seems more likely. I think, he wants to create a character with a very “druidic” look. Soon, I will join “that cat” as an unwanted character. I will probably just be “the weaponsmith”.
I feel abandoned, misled, deceived. I just want those days back, when all I did was fight opponents in the mists. I wish, I’d never left that arena to explore the open world. He had always promised me a full set of Human Tier 2 armor and even that promise was empty. I’ve never seen a single piece of that armor skin. When HoT comes around, I will probably have enough Hero Points from open world exploration to unlock everything, but he will still build up another ranger. That’s just not fair.

Torch 5 – Wildfire
Create a large circle of fire. Any trees in range will also catch fire, creating the wildfire efect on their own. When using in Maguuma, beware of chain reactions.

Ever thought, making it even bigger might be a bad idea?

You never thought about the possibility, that the range/radius increase on offhand training might be baseline now?

How about making two more threads?
THE AXE THIEF (RAIDER)
It’s most likely we get an axe…

THE TORCH THIEF (insert random title here)
It’s most likely, we get a torch…

So in the end you can say “see, guys? I WAS RIGHT!”

Tbh, I doubt, thief will get another blunt object to bash in faces. The new weapon will either be condition-centric(aka torch) or ranged(aka rifle), as the current thief isn’t all that well-rounded in those areas.

I always wanted a rock dog

Shadelang.3012:

Maybe if they had only changed the condition aspect. So that condition heavy classes would be able to reliably control/weaken them long enough to destroy them seeing as how condi classes were the only builds truly countered by turrets.

Are you mad?
Condi classes were the number one counter to turreteers.
You don’t need to destroy the turrets if you can just walk onto the point and watch the engineer keel over. Both trapper rangers and condi engis were capable of doing this without problems.
Necromancers had problems 1v1 against turreteers, but that wasn’t because turrets were too strong, honestly, it was because necromancers currently are in a borderline unplayable state.

The only builds, which had problems against turreteers were all those celestial builds and their lookalike, the meditation guardians. The power of those healy, spammy, tanky builds was too low to affect the turrets, which were immune to crits, while their condis were’t potent enough to burn through 27k health. Now any celestial build can just walk up to a turret, slap it once and watch it go down from the combination of a crit and a random condition proc.
Also thieves, but that was more due to turrets having instant reactions to shadow steps and stealth, while being immune to blinds… And thieves have problems going up against any engineer, making a single engineer build more vulnerable to thieves by allowing turrets to be affected by blind won’t fix the fundamental problem here.

So no. Unless you count celestial builds as condi classes, turreteers were never strong against any condi build. The whole build has one way to cleanse two conditions and one way to get rid of movement-impairing conditions.
A ranger can just play cat-and mouse on point, because the engineer can’t use overcharged shot without risking to be stuck in an entangle for an eternity. Of course, bad rangers open the fight with entangle, get blown out by an overcharged shot and then complain on the forums.
The few trapper rangers, I encountered when playing turreteer always melted me on point… I have never seen 27k health go down so fast. That was the few trappers, which despite literally every matchup featuring multiple shoutbows still dared to bring a trapper.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

naphack.9346:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

It is pretty obvious that the Ranger traits are a work in progress. I’m hoping SA gets merged with HiPS, it would make sense.

A trait with two internal cooldowns triggering from the same event is ugly.
If you want to merge it, at least create the following grandmaster:

You would obviously merge the CDs too, to the higher, 60s.
So it would be – When you are CC’d, it is re-directed to your pet and you gain stealth for 3s. 60s CD.

Fitting to the animal abuse theme.
He kicks his pet into the mud, then vanishes, never to be seen again.

Alternatively, the good-willed pet jumps in front of him and takes the hit while he vanishes in stealth and runs away.

shion.2084:

Sorry how does a single ranged 1 attack kill a turret? They usually take a few hits to go down I find.

Try mesmer with GS.

I always liked the scout class from snowball mayhem.
-Charged shot, dealing more damage, the longer you aim
-volley shot, firing unaimed projectiles in a cone pattern. Good to fire into a crowd or to execute immobilized people on close range.

Just to name two great skills.

That being said, I’d also love to get a torch.

Assuming, With power ranger, you mean glassbow.
Yeah, SotF glassbow sucks in 1v1. Maybe try some melee ranger spec. They tend to do good in 1v1 and still have the greatsword mobility.

I’ve been busy floating turrets in pvp for too long, so I currently don’t know, how to build a good melee ranger though.

… When you see skill lag, press f11 and your ping clocks in at 5k.

the topic seems really specific…
1v1 where, 1v1 how? What’s your build? Why do you lose?
From the listed thief spec, I’d assume, you are talking about dueling?

A thought occured, when reading one of the threads about removing stat points from trait lines:

Do you think, the celestial meta has been facilitated by the overhauled pvp system, which only allows players to change their stat spread with a single slot?
An example: Condition builds: Currently, the only option is either running high toughness, or running high vit. There is no way to get any ground in between, unless you want to go celestial.

The current system doesn’t allow players to fine-tune their attributes. If they want to run raw physical dps, there is no way to get more vitality than what the berserker’s amulet provides. If they want to go full bunker, there’s no way to squeeze in some more damage.
In such an environment, it’s clear, that celestial stats will look really strong simply because all the extreme choices have gaping weaknesses, which can already be exploited by the minimal stats provided by the celestial amulet: The condi damage may not be enough to burst down a full-vit turreteer, but it certainly is enough to burst down any rabid build, or any other high toughness, low vit build for that matter.
The physical damage with that low selection of stats won’t be able to punch through high toughness targets, but it’s more than enough to force vit-based builds with no toughness boosts at all to their knees.
The low allround package of the celestial amulet is tailored to slip into the cracks of any extreme stat composition and destroy it. Low damage bunkers? Celestial offers more than enough toughness, vit and healing to survive. Berserkers? Celestial offers enough combined pressure to drive them off.

The question at hand is: Would the ability to re-allocate ~25% or 33% of the stat spread to another stat spread, similar to what we could do with the old jewel system, be enough for certain builds to stand up to the meta?
Could rabid condi builds just slap on a carrion jewel and make it work?
Could shatter mesmers slap on a barbarian jewel and survive in the celestial meta?
Could necromancers… No wait, nevermind. Their problems run deeper.

Anyway, what’s your opinion on the topic?
I feel like with the upcoming changes to trait lines, we will definitely need more stat customization. The question at hand is, whether the current meta already is in desperate need for more stat customization.

Whatever it is, let’s hope, they don’t cause another witch hunt…
Forcefully removing builds from the game is just unhealthy for the game as a whole.
Whatever it is, unless people find another bunker build, capable of standing against the celestial meta(I hope, they do. Wanna feast on the tears of all those meta build copy/pasters) we won’t see anything big emerging.

The next hated thing will probably be celestial stuff by itself. People who played turrets to stand a chance against the celestial meta without being part of the problem will now be forced to go celestial aswell.

I wonder, how the possible build diversity went down, when they removed 14/14/14/14/14 builds.

Xillllix.3485:

Honestly today I destroyed like 4 turrets with a single d/d ele fire burst.

It seems Anet doesn’t know how to balance classes: they nerfed turrets by like 250% extra incoming damage instead of doing a proper balancing job and decreasing their hp by something like 15-20%. It is a completely overdone nerf, and honestly, even if I hate turret engies I didn’t want their build to be completely useless/broken, it’s not good for the game.

On top of that they don’t even nerf the insane ranger damage from crazy range or fix all the useless ele skills. I can’t think of any worse balancing in a MMO besides ESO.

did you mean to say “on top of that, they left the overpowered celestial amulet as is, but destroyed the only build capable of contesting the meta”?

Sidizen.9048:

I laugh at anyone who tries to defend Turret Engineer and think that this balance patch was an unneeded change. I quit PvP because of Turrets. They were awful and made the PvP so boring and annoying.

Not even the turret players deny that the build was too powerful.
But we want to see a meaningful change, which balances the game, not a change, which is made to appease the masses by burning a witch at the stake and simply removing turret builds from the equation completely.

People played turrets because the stale celestial meta allowed them to. Turrets were the only build effective against the celestial meta, while the rigid celestial meta held all those builds back, which were actually good against turrets.

You couldn’t make a better textbook example for a strong meta choice up, even if you tried. If you had so much problems with turrets in the old meta, here are some outlines:

You could have run a trapper build, which could just casually walk onto the point and watch the turreteer keel over.
Trapper builds were a strong meta choice against turreteers, but get absolutely mauled by shoutbows and do horribly against celestial builds due to bad stat choices(rabid -> die to conditions, carrion -> die to crits…) and celestial builds having plenty of cleanses.

You could have run a power ranger and swap in a drake, whenever there were two or more engineers on the enemy team. Power rangers can quickly clear turrets from a discance, cap the point and then never allow the turreteer back on point again.
Power rangers got invalidated by the meta, because healy, bursty balls to the walls builds with incidental condition and AoE spam and plenty of boon supports are the norm. The meta revolves around builds, which just run at a weaker enemy and roll over them with their superior stats.

You could have run a shatter mesmer, killed the turreteer on point and never allow him back.
But the meta revolves around builds with lots of cleave, AoE spam and incidental conditions. A class with no decent condi removal, reliant on low hitpoint clones won’t thrive in such an environment… And well, then there is thieves. Killing mesmers since 2013.

You could have run a powermancer or terrormancer. While the necro can’t reliably take down turreteers in a 1v1 on point, he can flush the point quickly and decisively in a 2v1 situation.
Necros are… You know the drill.

So now come again and tell me, that turrets were the real problem.

style.6173:

You don’t understand PvP. While you were running around killing turrets, the engi was sitting on a capped point while you were wasting time. Even if you killed the engi at the end, the advantage is still to the defender.

Yes and no.
If you killed the turret engi, you hold the point. He can’t take it back alone, because if you intercept him on the way back to point, he is toast.
Also, you underestimate, how fast rocket turrets went down. A power ranger could just rapid fire + lightning breath (protip: Pack a Drake when the enemy team has more than one engineer and you should be fine even against the old turrets) and the turret is gone. No amount of floating will save that turret and the other way to save it for a couple seconds is an elite on a long cooldown.
Yes, celestial builds will take a little longer to take out turrets and it’s generally not worth it to 1v1 a turreteer with a celestial build, but ultimately bunkers are there to lock down 1v1 fights on point.

Generally, as a turreteer, when a good mesmer player shows up, you will be screaming for a defensive rotation, because he will take you apart from a range within less than a minute and then stop you from ever getting back on point again if left unchecked.

The only problem with turrets was, that allround builds, trying to have their cake and eat it, will have a hard time beating them… And the meta revolved around such greedy builds.
With the removal of the last specialist build, the meta has now become the same builds fighting against more of the same.

I for one am for more specialist builds in PvP. More dedicated bunkers, more dedicated dps, more dedicated teamfight support… Both dedicated physical dps and dedicated condi needs to find a place in the meta. Right now it’s too easy to create a build with no weaknesses, but no distinct strengths… And the turreteer was the only one, who looked at those builds and went “they have no strengths? so what am I supposed to be afraid of there?”
Well, big news, now turrets are vulnerable to both crits and conditions, the two damage modes of celestial builds.
So turrets now went from being a solid choice for breaking the meta to being the most horrible choice in an unchanged meta. Good job breaking it, hero.

Toxsa.2701:

In order to pull the trick out consistently, you’d need to carry 2 LB, which is kind of a suicide in pvp against any decent player.

If you run double longbow you don’t want to double rapid fire.

Ever wanted 8 second cooldown on your barrage?
Run Runes of the Warrior, 2 Longbows and Quick Draw and you won’t be disappointed!

Buy a living arrow cart now and get a wolf pet for free.

I will probably toy with the whole double longbow living arrowcart idea.

And no, the trait isn’t exactly overpowered.
It’s freakishly strong and build defining, but that’s about it.
Look at the most prominent candidates for breaking it:

Maul, Bonfire, Barrage, Rapid Fire, Power Shot, Concussive Shot, Path of Scars, Whirling Defense… That’s it!
It’s not like the ranger has a static field or a friggin meteor shower on their weapon.

Defensive skills which could turn the trait into a too flexible answer on everything:
Hornet Sting, Swoop, Serpent Strike…

Yeah, nothing to worry about on this front either.

The trait is hellishly strong, but it’s on the wrong class to be broken in any way, as the ranger simply lacks high impact skills on their weapons.
Imagine this trait on warriors.
Double Pin Down or double Backbreaker(And STAY DOWN!)…

Ranger weapon skills are like a big toolbox. You have a skill for every scenario. What this trait does is it allows you to use the skill for the right scenario twice.

Kolisch.4691:

Animal cruelty applies stacks on the Ranger. When stacks reach 5, animal runs away from owner, probably to some PETA group. Ranger gains 100 points in every stat. Stacks disappear on death.

Beware of trying to stack animal cruelty on a bear. The last thing going through your head might be a huge paw.

When I saw quickdraw, the first thing in my mind was:
DOUBLE MAUL!
The second thing in my mind was:
SCREW THIEF, IMMA PLAY RANGER IN THE EXPANSION!

I just absolutely LOVE the design of that trait. It’s simple yet powerful, basic yet flexible… And it hasn’t been done in this game before, so it’s unique and potentially class defining.

I was just sitting there with my mouth wide open, staring blankly at the screen. Quickdraw is the single best trait to be introduced by the changes and bound to be core for a lot of builds.

Teutos.8620:

… you think there is any viable indicator how the match will end, and therefore you just go afk.

This.

kitten happens on both sides of the game, so stuff going wrong on your side doesn’t necessarily mean, everything’s fine on the other side.

Toxsa.2701:

naphack.9346:

Toxsa.2701:

Adapt:

1. Shared Anguish: (merged with soften the fall)
You take 50% less damage from falling.
When you get CCed, your pet take the CC instead. (CD30)

You just gave me a brilliant idea.
As the line already features animal cruelty in every single slot besides the adept slot, what about:
-leave bond and shared anguish where they are
-add the following trait:

Soften the fall
-Falling damage is redirected to the pet.

I mean, the whole line already shows, how abusive the ranger is and how much they hate their pet, so why not use the pet as a cushion to soften the fall?

Hey, I was eating cookies, yet you make me almost spit out my cookies :O

Seriously can’t stop laughing >D

Don’t handle dangerous objects while browsing the internet.
Nothing good will come of it.

As I wanna go back into ranger (Seeing the Quickdraw trait, my main might aswell shift from thief to ranger in HoT… Incidentally, a ranger can use my dreamer, too, so no loss on that front) I have been contemplating about running a bunker ranger build to hold points instead of a turreteer.
A dedicated bunker ranger could be just as durable as a turreteer and with rune of the pirate and a bird (aka the double bird strategy) the ai based damage may still be on the level of a rifle turret.

Well, I can’t test currently, as I’ve been abusing the crap out of my kittenty ~86kb/s internet downloading the entire android source code (my folder is currently at 23 GB) over the last 5 days…

Toxsa.2701:

Adapt:

1. Shared Anguish: (merged with soften the fall)
You take 50% less damage from falling.
When you get CCed, your pet take the CC instead. (CD30)

You just gave me a brilliant idea.
As the line already features animal cruelty in every single slot besides the adept slot, what about:
-leave bond and shared anguish where they are
-add the following trait:

Soften the fall
-Falling damage is redirected to the pet.

I mean, the whole line already shows, how abusive the ranger is and how much they hate their pet, so why not use the pet as a cushion to soften the fall?

From the current trend, the following minor trait in the turret line seems more probable:

-Turrets take double damage from conditions and auto-detonate on receiving a critical hit.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

It is pretty obvious that the Ranger traits are a work in progress. I’m hoping SA gets merged with HiPS, it would make sense.

A trait with two internal cooldowns triggering from the same event is ugly.
If you want to merge it, at least create the following grandmaster:

Animal Cruelty / Pet Abuse
Pets periodically take conditions from you. Incoming stuns are redirected to your pet.
interval: 10
conditions removed: 3
redirect cooldown: 60 seconds

DarkSyze.8627:

Shadelang.3012:

Yeaaaah. Instead of balancing the build out it killed it.

Eliminate the problem: you are correct!

Sounds like shelling a village where a single terrorist is hiding with heavy artillery…
Or removing the entire jaw because of one sore tooth.

Eponet.4829:

To put it in perspective, it would be like giving legendary weapons significantly better stats than ascended weapons do, removing the mystic clover recipe and the box of legendary crafting materials, and just making the legendary weapons purchasable for 130 mystic clovers. Another 180 or so if you want the infusion slot.

I’d grind the hell out of PvP reward tracks.

robertul.3679:

It’s funny that they decided it’s perfectly balanced to let thieves have both panic strike and executioner. Nobody asked for it.
People have been asking for last refuge fix since the trait exists. I think most thieves would even accept the spot it has to be empty than to hilariously kill them so often.

Adding Dhuumfire but not touching Reanimator? Same story

Okay, to be fair, having 5 points in death magic only caused party wipes when fighting Lupicus, while Last Refuge can kill you any time…

Stark.1350:

So, congratulations. Those who hated the turret build of engineers can rejoice. I did some testing in our guilds custom arena – turrets last mere seconds.

Been playing turrets since release. It was what attracted me to the class. And while it was a build that was slightly OP to those who didn’t understand the counter. Against those who did, they were always fun fights. I built completely around it and really had a fun thing going. For me, this was not a fix. It was a complete decimation.

Not just in PvP either. Mobs march through them like candy and I was always very good at being effective with them in dungeons and open world content. Can’t anymore.

I even ran turrets in WvW. The reflective shield at the right time was devastating. Now? As soon as they’re dropped, they are completely gone to AoE spam.

So thank you for catering to the vocal minority. There’s zero use for turrets anywhere now.

As someone who played turrets since release, I’m interested in your reaction to the inclusion of Sentinel amulet to pvp last february.
Did you already see the writing on the wall?
I mean, including the sentinel amulet was very short-sighted of Arena.net.

Also, what’s your view on a fortified turret build in pvp? (and ditching the rocket turret because the cooldown is too long)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpyq1UxuKseNCdBF6VklQL6GekR/pAA-TJxFABXXG4l9Hc4CAAwDAAA