Uh, just out of school computer science major here.
I don’t think it should be that hard. Just turn the values in the traits into variables, and then pull data directly from the traits data base into those variables after any patch/maintenance.
So for example, X% of toughness is given as a bonus to precision. X is being filled in by a query to the database that stores the actual numerical data on what traits do.
You’re right, it’s not hard…. if you have access to the data. It’s entirely possible that what manages the tooltips is in a different C++ project or just inaccessible for whatever reason (lots of things can cause this). That makes this more of a project founded in restructuring their data management rather than “can I put a variable into a string” which is, as you described, easy.
True enough.
Update: the skills and balance team are going to take a crack at this and other sigil/rune bugs, so they can decide on a case by case basis whether the tooltip or the effect needs to be updated. (And we’re working on a system that will base the tooltip on the mechanical effects, so we don’t have to make sure they match up by hand.) Thanks all!
Uh, just out of school computer science major here.
I don’t think it should be that hard. Just turn the values in the traits into variables, and then pull data directly from the traits data base into those variables after any patch/maintenance.
So for example, X% of toughness is given as a bonus to precision. X is being filled in by a query to the database that stores the actual numerical data on what traits do.
(edited by timidobserver.7925)
This happened in April and April is the month of April Fools jokes.
-Anet’s April Fool’s Joke-
Hey engineers, we nerfed you pretty hard, but even though turrets will always suck, we made your turrets stronger to compensate. Oh… just joking about making those turrets stronger btw.
I’d never put Lyssa runes on an engineer, but this is good to know just in case.
I agree. Go look at how the burglar works in LOTRO or the Shadow works in SWTOR. The class should not be based entirely around doing damage to people while people can’t see them. Stealthing from an in combat state should not happen as often as it does.
Well… rangers are OP too, particularly the bunker variety. However, the perception is that they suck, so we’ll continue to treat them like they do.
Guardians are so overpowered! I can’t believe that this class has gone unnerfed for so long! Multiple heals, insane damage absorption through multiple blocks and condition removal for days, a Guardian can grind out the win against multiple opponents with ease, not to mention their ability to help the group. When they down an opponent, bam, stability stomp (sooooooo OP), an ability that renders my downed skills useless. This class can literally solo any other class if you play it correctly and quite frankly I think it needs a nerf badly.
Now, I know people are going to come in here and make fun of me for it, but I’ve got an 80 Guardian too so my opinion is just as correct as theirs (maybe even more correct since mine is negative) and anyone actually defending the Guardian? Just OP Guardians wanting to stay OP, which makes sense, I suppose if I mainly played the most OP class in the game I’d want it to stay that way too.
Judging by your post history, you main a thief. I guess you are mad because you can’t hit a half way well played/geared guardian for 17k in 2 seconds like everyone else. Given that your probably totally burst damage specced, you go off and hide if you don’t get your opponent dead before they notice you.
I play my guardian specced to most efficiently deal with thieves and burst types specifically to send players like you scurrying to the forums to scream for nerfs. When you try to burst me as im running through ruins, I turn around and type /laugh, let my asura guardian roll on the ground laughing at you, and then keep going to my destination.
(edited by timidobserver.7925)
Any Na servers have it open?
50%+ of post history spreading propaganda for CD, KN and BG respectively while bandwagoning around
seems legitFrom the wisdom of Reggie Jackson, who is sorta like Ventari, only not like him at all. They seem to apply to us, in a good way, mostly:
“I’m the straw that stirs the drink”
“I was reminded that when we lose and I strike out, a billion people in China don’t care.”
“I don’t mind getting beaten, but I hate to lose.”
“Fans don’t boo nobodies.”
“It’s a fickle town, a tough town. They getcha, boy. They don’t let you escape with minor scratches and bruises. They put scars on you here.”Well, this is awkward.
Are you like this in real life, or just when you roleplay a tree?I’ve got to be honest. This matchup between FA, TC, and DB was going to be epic. Things would have been even, and it would have just been fun WvW. It’s a shame that Bored Asian T1ers had to come in and turn it into a boring match up of waitig until everyone goes to sleep and then flip their stuff.
The SEA guilds like NNK, TVF etc have always been on Dragonbrand. Some of their newer NA guilds have some players in that timezone or staying up late too.
I was referring mostly to CO and RE. It just seemed like it was going to be a really great match up until the bored T1ers decided to make our tier boring as well. At this point I welcome going back to T3. That injection of T1 players completely ruined the tier.
(edited by timidobserver.7925)
Honestly, turret specced engineers should be able to create turrets just as often as mesmers create clones. The clones are mobile and do more damage.
I can think of a number of reasons to stay in a low tier. Bad computer. Not wanting to deal with super zergs of more than 50 people.
I’ve got to be honest. This matchup between FA, TC, and DB was going to be epic. Things would have been even, and it would have just been fun WvW. It’s a shame that Bored Asian T1ers had to come in and turn it into a boring match up of waitig until everyone goes to sleep and then flip their stuff.
Crazy engy is going to die a horrible death due to lack of stability. The lack of stability is what makes me wary of any bomb build in a zerg. With the utility slot nerf to elixir S, using bombs in WvW is even less appealing.
Indeed. But I guess different tiers, EU and NA, have different meta. Here in EU tier #1 the melee train used to be meta. Thus a lot of hammer warriors and also guardians. You needed to time your dive into enemy zerg very well in order to come out alive (go in at wrong moment and you get hammered into mushy squish). But I was using grenade kit for that. I still dive into enemy zergs, even as a commander. I find it a bit safer, because the meta uses a bit less knockdown + stability now. More PuGs, less organized tightly packed teams. But there is a lot thieves (also in zergs). You can even have double thief team looking for weak victims in middle of a zerg fights. Elixir S nerf hit so bad I had to scrap that skill. Elixir S is pretty much a recipe of getting downed in WvWvW, because you cannot heal or stow any kits during that 3 s. I wish some engineer trait or utility (e.g. a gadget) would give stability as stability is so sorely needed also for many dungeons and pve play as well. Engineer condition removal is solely dependent on elixirs and cleaning formula 409. Medkit drop antidote is not that efficient condition removal as you need to walk over it and WvWvW fights tend to have tons of immobilize (e.g. warriors use leg specialist trait).
Overall the recent patch reduced engineer survivability in WvWvW and the confusion nerf hit some builds really badly.
Yup. Pretty much if you are wvwing in a zerg you should be chucking grenades. Mask’s build also still works even though the confusion nerf hit it hard.
Bombs, not so much unless you have a shout/hammer guardian friend and are specced into boon duration so that you can take advantage of stability when he uses it.
Eh, flamethrower gets an honorable mention. With juggernaut you can get really really tanky. Though, in the end you are only really good at tagging enemies, but you can only hit 3 people at a time.
The turret traits aren’t all that useful anyways. More pressing matter to attend to imo.
30% damage reduction isnt much when they have no armor to begin with and die in one hit due to low HP.
Auto-tooling trait only effective for when turret not getting focused. Even them you are better healing it yourself or picking it up and placing back down. You cant out heal the damage the turret is taking. even if u sat there with toolkit.
I don’t like turrets either, but it is a matter of principle at this point. They continuously nerf the profession and throw turret buffs at us to mollify us. Even if turrets will suck regardless, they need to make this stuff work.
Nah, I don’t really want more PVE in WvW if it can be avoided. I’d settle for just augmenting the ability to defend keeps during off peak hours. I play on T2, so regardless of how many npcs are setup, they’ll be downed pretty quickly it it won’t really matter.
Good idea though.
(edited by timidobserver.7925)
Thanks for making WvW completely unfun and unfair to play. The double teaming is not over exaggerated, it’s disgustingly obvious. Where the hell our TC’s commanders that I ran around with pulling insane plans that had people going “Wtf just happened?” Things are so disgusting, I dont know which is worse, the obvious double teaming, or the fact that our commanders who know what the kitten they are doing seem to have vanished like a fart in the wind.
Well, I wouldn’t really call double teaming the goal. FA knows they aren’t going to win, so they are settling for punishing TC for the constant punishment and torture that TC has given them for a long time. That equates to focusing mostly on TC as opposed to DB.
WvW is a zergfest. Nothing breaks up/pushes back a zerg at a choke point better than a crazed engi with a pension for explosives. Elixer B -> smoke vent -> napalm -> BoB FTW. Send blinded, burning bodies flying through the air. If you have a like-minded engi to follow right behind with another one, it usually takes the fight out of the zerg and sends them running (while burning of course). :-)
Note this tactic is also brilliant when capping a tower. Since defenders like gathering in the Lord’s room, it makes the pile of loot bags quite deep. Watching burning bodies fly out of the tower to their death (or into your onrushing zerg) never gets old….is that wrong? ;-)
Crazy engy is going to die a horrible death due to lack of stability. The lack of stability is what makes me wary of any bomb build in a zerg. With the utility slot nerf to elixir S, using bombs in WvW is even less appealing.
Better idea.
1. Add a simple menu option to remove scaling for Asura.
2. The easier approach, add select weapon skins that are larger for asura.
Add a new keep and garrison upgrade called Skeleton Crew. The upgrade does the following ONLY when the out-manned buff is up.
-I think most siege have at least one or two skill slots open/unused. Add a special skill slot to all siege that is only usable when you are outmanned. I’d make these new siege skills moderately powerful, so that a small group will at least have a fighting chance. However, I wouldn’t make them too powerful.
-Decrease the cost to build siege in any tower or keep with the Skelton Crew upgrade by 30% when outmanned. Upon second thought, this could be taken advantage of. Alternatively, remove siege despawning and increase the health of siege by 50% when the outmanned buff is up .
-Significantly increase the power and number of NPCs in keeps and garrisons with the Skeleton Crew upgrade when outmanned.
This is a good way to balance out all of the population complaints and night time capping complaints. It also helps out with the whole keep swapping thing that is going on. It makes it more appealing to defend and upgrade during peaking hours in order to ensure that things can be held during off peak hours. Most importantly, this can’t be taken advantage of since the buffs immediately go away when the outmanned buff goes away.
(edited by timidobserver.7925)
I’d like to kindly recommend checking your algorithm. I’ve seen some really mismatched fights that supposedly had equal numbers.
I’d like to shed some light on our thinking with this AC change as well as tell you all what we are doing right now to balance it.
Firstly, when siege weapons were originally created, they had the intent of being really good at some things and not so good at others. The arrow cart is intended to be the anti-personal siege weapon. It is intended that arrow carts are all about controlling an area through damage. If you remain in the area that is being hit by the arrow cart, you will die. You can however, move out of the space and/or find a new way to attack the intended target. That being said, they are not intended to be so good against other siege weapons and we are in the process of addressing that right now. We are also addressing their range when upgraded to be more in line with the range of ballistas.
Secondly, this change is going to require new tactics and those tactics include things like using ballista and catapults to destroy arrow carts. With that in mind, we’ve been looking more closely at the numbers of all the siege weapons and there are definitely some changes that need to be made to bring them in line with their intent. We are going to take a holistic pass at siege weapons in the coming months and drop a rebalance of all of them to get them to more closely align with what they should be doing.
Finally, the feedback you all provide is a very useful part of this whole process. WvW is a living, breathing game type and any changes we make have numerous consequences that don’t become fully visible until everyone starts interacting with them and devising new strategies. Our goal is to provide a complex combat space that rewards skill, tactics, and ingenuity and while we haven’t fully achieved that goal yet, I like to think we are getting there.
Arrow carts cost less silver and supply because they were the weakest siege. If you are going to make them the most powerful siege, then the supply cost and silver cost needs to go up as well.
Okay, you would literally see a direct increase in profit if you allowed cosmetics to apply to kits and put some kind of cosmetic in that applies to the hobo sacks. Engineer players would be more likely to spend ridiculous amounts of money in the gem store buying cosmetics and converting gems to gold, like other professions, if cosmetics item applied to them fully. For example, the new jet pack from MF would fit an engineer perfectly, but why would I bother since I’ll be displaying a hobo sack 70% of the time anyway.
So, to sum it up, you will make money if you fix this. Do it.
Grenades are great for defending towers against small to medium-sized zergs, especially if you’re built for condition damage. Toss them into the zerg and watch the numbers fly. When someone is downed, spam grenades on him and you will likely finish him off (and down/kill any teammates who are trying to revive him).
Do you run condition based grenades or power? I find that conditions in general are not so powerful in WvW if you are running with anything more than 15 people.
Why no condition dmg with anything more than 15 people? Sure if u fight 15 vs 1, this poor guy will get any conditionstack – but your conditions tick first if u have more condition dmg than others.
In Zerg vs Zerg don’t see alot ppl with full stacks of conditions, and if I see them, they are instandly dead. There is not more waste through max condition stacks as overkill on direct dmg. And there is definitly no good reason to not play condition dmg in wvw.
Yeh what the guy above said. If it is pug zerg vs pug zerg, then yeh maybe. However, if it is an organized zerg then conditions should be getting cleansed fairly regularly.
Though, I didn’t mean for you to get defensive. I am asking because I am genuinely curious if you guys find condition nades or power nades to be most effective in a zerg. I’ve gotten the desire to get my engi off the shelf, so I’ve been trying to figure out if I want to go for conditions or power on my nades.
(edited by timidobserver.7925)
I had never mentioned gear anywhere in my analyses. Both as tanks, the Guardian will be able to provide more utility and more heals then the warrior can. You don’t see level 30 fractical groups advertising for tank warriors. That being said. I am not in anyway asking for a nerf to guardian. Me personally, I am asking for a grand master defensive tree trait that procs protection, it seems very surprising to me that warriors don’t have one considering they are heavy armor. I will not take over your forums, this is the guardian forums and I am discussing warriors.
No, not true. Guardian can not heal the group for 2k hp x3 with shouts. And warrior probably has better regen with their adrenal health, healing signet and perma regen from banners. Guardian can not provide offensive buffs, warrior can. The banner buffs are huge, guard can’t give the group benefits from: banner of strength, tactics, discipline and defense. Is that not utility?
Even warrior can have a pure of voice like trait with their warhorn:
Quick Breathing Warhorn skills recharge 20% faster. Warhorn skills convert 1 condition into a boon.
vs
Pure of Voice: Allies affected by shouts convert one condition to a boon.
I ask again, what utility is warrior missing over guardian? I know you aren’t asking for a nerf but you have to show actual facts and comparisons. Because looking at the skills, mostly everything guardian does warrior can do it also, albeit a bit differently.
Okay, lets play.
My dodge roll heals for around 1.2-1.4k and I use sigils of energy on both wepon sets so I dodge atleast once every time i switch. So lets say 4 times.
When I switch to staff I can constently spam 12 stacks of might with 100% uptime because of my boon duration build as well as that nice 2.4k heal to the area around me. I switch to Mace Shield to knock enemys away and pop shield for another ~1.2k heal. I haven’t even popped utilities yet. WIth traits I pop my virtue of resolve for another ~2.5k heal. Now I’m selfish and usually use Shelter, but lets say I switch to healing breeze, Don’t even know the heal on this. Hold the Line another 3k In regen because i have so much boon duration and healing power. all the while I am rolling around the battlefield healing everything in my area. Not to mention the retaliation, stability from stand your ground and Save yourself taking All conditions into myself and converting them to boons with pure of voice. After all that I popped renewed focus and pop virtues again if needed.
Well, other than support, you are mostly useless. They should probably chain CC you when your stability is down and then kill everyone around you.
Warrior want protection too, what do you thing about it?Givin them protection too make them a lot stronger than us for my opinion in large battle like wvw. Our Hp pool is ridicolous for a melee class…
Honestly, there isn’t anything that they can give warriors that would make me worry about them. If they got protection, like boon hate, it will probably be placed in the most kitten place in their trait tree thus allowing you to ignore any warrior that actually specs for it.
Probably not. Engineer bugs are not a priority as far as bug fixing goes.
Grenades are great for defending towers against small to medium-sized zergs, especially if you’re built for condition damage. Toss them into the zerg and watch the numbers fly. When someone is downed, spam grenades on him and you will likely finish him off (and down/kill any teammates who are trying to revive him).
Do you run condition based grenades or power? I find that conditions in general are not so powerful in WvW if you are running with anything more than 15 people.
Depends on who you are zerging with and the goal of the zerg. Taking a keep/garrison, you are awesome. Open field combat zerg busting, not so much.
Are you referring to PVE, Spvp, or Wvw? I’ve never tried them before so let me know what you find out.
I’d like to shed some light on our thinking with this AC change as well as tell you all what we are doing right now to balance it.
Firstly, when siege weapons were originally created, they had the intent of being really good at some things and not so good at others. The arrow cart is intended to be the anti-personal siege weapon. It is intended that arrow carts are all about controlling an area through damage. If you remain in the area that is being hit by the arrow cart, you will die. You can however, move out of the space and/or find a new way to attack the intended target. That being said, they are not intended to be so good against other siege weapons and we are in the process of addressing that right now. We are also addressing their range when upgraded to be more in line with the range of ballistas.
Secondly, this change is going to require new tactics and those tactics include things like using ballista and catapults to destroy arrow carts. With that in mind, we’ve been looking more closely at the numbers of all the siege weapons and there are definitely some changes that need to be made to bring them in line with their intent. We are going to take a holistic pass at siege weapons in the coming months and drop a rebalance of all of them to get them to more closely align with what they should be doing.
Finally, the feedback you all provide is a very useful part of this whole process. WvW is a living, breathing game type and any changes we make have numerous consequences that don’t become fully visible until everyone starts interacting with them and devising new strategies. Our goal is to provide a complex combat space that rewards skill, tactics, and ingenuity and while we haven’t fully achieved that goal yet, I like to think we are getting there.
In the coming months, meanwhile you most of your most noteworthy wvw guilds will be looking for a new game to play.
Anet has kittening lost their mind.
There aren’t a lot of games that came bring what WvW brings to the table for pvp oriented guilds. Even if they continue to break it by doing other stupid stuff like turning arrowcarts into godcarts.
Pretty sure it was indeed removed.
This goes out to all TC Commanders. Siege is very powerful right now. If you can’t siege up something after you take it then don’t bother even turning on your Commander tag. That is why we are getting obliterated right now. We can’t go near even a supply camp without getting hit by 10 arrow carts, but we don’t put up any siege on our stuff.
Very nice guide. Unfortunately I’m still of the opinion that engineer doesn’t work in WvW for the simple reason that retal destroys grenades.
In GvG what you need as a condition class is aoe and survivability both of which would in theory work with the grenade kit.
In my opinion engineers (and rangers) are simply useless in WvW. Organized WvW that is, not standing on top of a wall trowing grenades.
It looks like you are one of those people that can’t separate your failing to be effective with a profession and the profession itself failing.
Oh please, I do just fine in zergs. The thing is I don’t think an engineer brings anything that another class wouldn’t do better. Luckily in zergs this doesn’t matter, because well the more the merrier. However in things like GvG when you want your group of 20ish people to be as effective as possible I can honestly say I wouldn’t bring an engineer.
Fortunately GvG doesn’t matter. Engis bring plenty when you are doing stuff that actually works toward winning the match.
The current state of arrow carts is worth an emergency patch. Literally, some programmer’s pager should be going off for him to get up and fix it now lol. I mean he says that it is in testing, but there is no way that they tested it before they changed arrowcarts in the first place.
Meh, who cares about rangers.
Hi,
I just want to start by saying this isn’t a Guard-hate post, since there seem to be quite a few…I made a guard thinking it was a tank… Easy enough mistake, the name, heavy armor, and big shield all implied tank. I am used to healers on other games, and figured I could channel that protective instinct into a guard easily enough. So I’ve leveled my guard to 80, solo, which is where my problem comes in.
Soloing PvE I’m tough, Love it, she can essentially solo certain group events “Like reclaim the fort from the fire legions” sort of events, not kill the uber champion boss, but still pretty good. I can’t complain. I thought I was pretty tough until I went into a dungeon with some friends and learned the hard way that guards have base HP only slightly higher than Elementalists (If I’m wrong do correct me.)
I have sadly learned that I am not what I thought I was, which seems to have caught a lot of people out. I’m now having a bit of an identity crisis… I’m running at just about 15,800 HP, I have not even begun to work on Accessories yet, definitely need to work on my gears. I am using a combo of Cleric and Giver’s Armor, and a build which is heavy on Vitality/Toughness, Traits picked are mostly supportive to pt. Shouts, Boons, All Symbols heal, Dodge heals, etc. I have watched some videos on builds, etc before posting here.
Can somebody please help me figure out what my roll is in a party? I am used to soloing, and I’m not really sure what is expected of a guard in a dungeon, or WvW, etc. Is a guard a support class or a tank that I’m using/geared wrong? Something in-between? I’ve seen some people get pretty ticked off at this, but I’m not really bothered by it, I just want to use the character I made to her best ability and be useful to others. Where my heart really lies is in the role of a supportive class/healer, so really anything that focuses on that is what I would find most helpful.
Thanks,
Sorry this is so long!~Emily~
Basically, you are doing something wrong. The problem isn’t guardian, it is whatever you are doing. You should be able to “tank” just fine.
You know, I didn’t have that big of an issue with the nerf until I read this. All abilities that provide invulnerability should have the same balance applied to them.
Maybe go one step further and make ascended weapons only in WvW
Make the PvErs WvW for 3 months just like WvWers had to PvE for jewelry.
This.^
A necro can survive pretty well if played correctly.
I’m sorry if I sound extremist, but this profession had it coming, simply because of the over-reliance on boon builds and ways to enhance those like their duration and intensity, it could be the most effective build generally speaking until now, but it felt all this time like the ‘cookie-cutter’ build of our profession similarly to a Backstab burst Thief build.
All this considering there were clearly other options, more or less effective like consecrations and meditations mixed builds where they offered a different approach and made use of boons in a less reliant way so to speak than a pure SYG, HTL & SY build with tons of boon duration and whatnot, everyone kept overloading on those like the holy grail build and giving it exaggerated highlighting which obviously provoked these changes in how to counter this build, it’s no longer only Mesmers and Necros, but every professions is having their way of diminishing the effectiveness of a boon build because it is linearly overused in the midst of various valid build options and obviously Anet couldn’t touch boons directly or they would potentially break the Guardian entirely but instead went to give other professions weapons to counter those.
Now, to those who keep blabbering about how our low HP pool, then you should sincerely stop gearing with only pew pew’ing in your thoughts, because it is clearly not the fundamental aspect of this profession, for that you can roll a Thief or a Warrior.
As long as you realize that you sound extremist, there isn’t much else to say : )
Good thing, I waited before buying my engi a full set of exotic gear.
Does anyone know if Signet of Judgment gets buffed if traited with Perfect Inscription?
According to the tooltip, it is 10% regardless of the buff or perfect inscriptions. Put it on, retrait to PI, and hover your mouse over the buff icon.
So, the Signet of judgement passive effect tooltip shows 10% regardless of the buff to signets or whether you have the perfect inscription trait equipped. Is this a bugged tooltip or does neither the perfect inscriptions trait or the signet buff do anything to signet of judgement?
I am not asking for you to fix it, but can one of you guys pop in here really quick just to let us know what signet of judgement even does after the update and how much perfect inscriptions effects it if at all.
(edited by timidobserver.7925)
Judgement isn’t listed in the notes. I just put it on the verify that it is still 10%. You know, I may have considered a singet build if judgement got buffed. With it not being buffed, it’s still not worth it.
Also, perfect inscription doesn’t apply to judgement anymore if the tooltip can be believed.
(edited by timidobserver.7925)
So it looks like every singet in the game got buffed except judgement?
WvW isn’t really about soloing, although it is nice to be able to defend yourself if you need too. As far as the important aspects of WvW goes, I think that Engi and Ranger don’t bring a whole lot to the current WVW cookie cutter group that wants tons of Eles for blocking projectiles, water fields, general opness, tons of mesmers for confusion stacking, portals, ect, and tons of guardians for obvious reason.
However, with the upcoming nerfs to certain classes and changes to blocking siege projectiles, some of the classes with over inflated WvW utility are coming back down to Earth. I believe that Engi and Ranger will be more valuable because of this. For example, since you can’t just lolblock projectiles anymore, you will need to go and destroy as much of the enemy siege as possible. A grenader is very useful in destroying siege from outside of a keep.
(edited by timidobserver.7925)
If your a FT engi, it is time to reroll another class honestly. It’s going to be nasty out there.
Even though I agree with the changes, I can understand why mesmers are complaining. Eles on the other hand, I don’t get it. I thought most of them realized that their survivability and combined offensive capability was OP.
It’s a pvp area. Get out...
Make the PvErs WvW for 3 months just like WvWers had to PvE for jewelry.