Guild Wars 2

Well written!

What personally struck me was that the numbers weren’t really impressive. I wanted to calculate how effective A.E.D. is in comparison to our other heals, since I first figured that A.E.D. ought to have good potential sustain, if you manage to use the skill properly. Say you forget all about how it offers zero condition removal and group utility (when all the other heals have a means to offer some). It becomes obvious quite fast that currently A.E.D. is not designed for sustained fights at all. I was very disappointed. Apparently using A.E.D. requires a very specific build/philosophy to fights. (unless you have permanent regen and guardians saving you perhaps? They would probably not like you using A.E.D. instead of HT.)

Let’s compare our heals for sustained fights, with 0 boon duration, no additional blasts for healing turret, no traits for anything but AED, not taking toolbelt skills into account for HT. (Elixir requires traits so not considering that right now)

• CD-traited A.E.D. (12280 (1.7? scaling), 32 seconds)
  Theoretical maximum base HPS 384, 0.053 HPS/healing power
  Impossible to pull off

• Healing Turret pick-up (5040 (1.0) + 5s regen 650 (0.625), 15 seconds)
  379 HPS, scales 0.108 HPS/HP and scales with boon duration and blast finishers

• Healing turret blast (5040 (1.0) + 5s regen 650 (0.625) + 1320 (0.2), 20 seconds)
  350 HPS, 0.091 HPS/HP, scales with boon duration and blast finishers

• Med Kit (4920 (1.0) 20 sec + 1000 (0.5)*3 12 sec)
  Base HPS 496, 0.175 HPS/HP, scales more with traits, requires activity

A.E.D. does not scale with…. anything really. It doesn’t even scale well with on-heal effects. And to top it off, these calculations do not take into account the facts that A.E.D. theoretical HPS does not “start off” until you first use it and that you have to take damage to proc it. It is true that A.E.D. offers heal when you most need it, but that does not make up for the downsides.

Now when you ask how plausible it would be to slot it, I say extremely unlikely for sustain. Considering the group utility, condition removal, potential different gameplay possibilities (preparation-mode, heal amount scaling to needs, etc.) of both Med Kit and Healing Turret, A.E.D. seems extremely lacking.

How would I use it?
A.E.D. negates one attack, the one that would kill you. That, the toolbelt and the bursty healing on a long CD points to a hit-and-run static discharge style. So somehow you need to be able to evade damage with A.E.D. and play bursty and fast.
Or perhaps if you can guarantee yourself dying before 25% so you can double-use it once.
Or perhaps with Elixir R…?

A.E.D. burst heal doesn’t really secure anything, and as the flowchart points out, it has multiple ways of counterplaying it. I might still not use it even if it was instant, although it would “only” leave poison and condis to use against it in the hands of a perfect engineer.

Gadget traits would be awesome, yes. Other than that, perhaps lowering the risk of using A.E.D. a bit would help – such as triggering the heal at 10%? It’s still low and doesn’t remove the counterplay but increases your chances of survival post-A.E.D. This is especially important in PVE where the heal is probably unusable.

I have this issue as well, it usually happens at times of intense combat, most often in WvW and PVE big zergs.

Meanwhile, another person playing the game in the same apartment never has this problem due to being connected with a cable, apparently. OR something else.

Personally, I would use the mortar if the fields didn’t magically stop working once you leave it. The mortar is too bad overall to actually stay in it, so at least the fields should still work. The bleed’n’chill AOE would not be bad.

I have found the problem in my case, and fixed it, and now I can play.

My problem is that for some reason, I don’t get any resolution choices in the game menus, only Windowed or Windowed Full Screen. I had WFS set on, and for some reason this crashed the game. I started the game with the -windowed command, which got me into the character menu. Maybe the patch ‘reset’ something so I had to face the problem again.

(These problems only started after I began using a HDTV as my screen.)

Good luck!

I have exactly the same problem, except that the game doesn’t recreate Local.dat after I backup it, and it creates no error log.

My graphics drivers are updated, so is DirectX. I run WinXP. I have no programs running that should prevent playing. It’s quite frustrating as it worked perfectly before patch, and after patch I can’t play at all.

I guess I have yet to try running GW2 with no background programs…

Edit: I also -repaired the client, but that didn’t help.

Perhaps then the breath could be a very fast one? I think that is more of a technical problem, as I don’t think it would be less balanced to have it be fast. It’s fast now for sure.

TLDR:
iMage breathes in a cone instead. More hits, better aoe, noticeable.
————-

I love the torch, the graphics, the idea. But I feel it could use improvement. Let’s see. (I play rabid condition spec, which shows.)

Not many classes have access to the torch, but generally it is a closer range AOE weapon, burning enemies. For the mesmer, it has defensive utility and offers some conditions. In utility, the weapon is different to the rest and quite equal in power.
Right now the weapon seems to be a bit more of a condition weapon, rather than direct damage, but offers only a small burn through The Prestige. The skill is a very good defensive ability and a blast finisher, and is not much to whine about. BUT.

Everything seems to be wrong with the phantasm. Almost everything. First of all, the phantasm doesn’t feel very powerful, as its damage is lowish and its main function seems to be applying confusion and retaliation. This doesn’t prevent it from having an unusually high phantasm cooldown. The condition it applies is confusion, which for PVE purposes does not feel very powerful, and for PVP the confusion is quite small.
The phantasm has high range, which does not fit into the idea of closer-range torch skills, and it does one hit per enemy, firing a… bouncing ball, instead of something more torchy. Almost all the other phantasms do multiple hits, which goes well with traits such as illusions bleeding on crits, which is something you might want to have in a condition build. Perhaps that is how the torch is supposed to be balanced, but iMage really feels bad, and not even fun to use.

Here is my suggestion, which I don’t think is overkill:

The Mage uses a torch, to breathe flames front of it, say ~400 range cone. It could hit maybe 3 times, and the flames confuse or burn enemies, & applies retaliation to allies. (or something else)

The result is that the attack becomes more noticeable and a bit more powerful, but easier to avoid in PVP. Dodgeable is good. For PVE and in general, the torch would be better for AOE, which is what the torch is supposed to be. The multiple hits could apply bleed from the trait if needed, making it a better choice for condi.
I don’t think it would be overpowered at all right now, and the cone range would make it more than OK.

I want casting the Mage with a 30 sec CD to feel awesome, something like the feel of casting the duelist. I can wish! No longer a high range invisible ball of crap from a source I wish I had shattered ages ago. In my condi build, I literally am better off with staff clones.

I tried this today for only the purpose of trolling, and it was surprisingly satisfying.

When I want to make my enemies uninstall one by one, I use rifle, tool kit, slick shoes and battering ram.
1. pick enemy with annoying haircut and no stability
2. Magnet pull (actually knockdowns the target)
3. Walk around target and ram into your group
4. Walk to target and slick shoes for 2x more knockdown
5. rifle launch & root

More seriously, I think static discharge rifle is pretty fun and effective too now with low CD toolbelts.

The bear form is pretty fun for trolling zergs in WvW. Maybe there are better ways to do it, but the bear form charge is a launch on all targets in your path. That and rocket boots + slick shoes combo!

It’d be fun to know what you intend to do with the engi. I find bunker/semi-bunker specs with the engi most fun to play. My engi has a mix of PVT/knight gear, and as weapons I often use some mix of rifle, flamethrower, bombs or tool kit. Engi has tons of control conditions, pushbacks, etc. and outlasting/controlling enemies in spvp/WVW works for me. And it actually does some nice damage too.

I used to play a lot of grenades, but I prefer the control from the other kits, and used grenades more for forcing enemies to move at 1500 range. Personally, I find HGH (especially with elixir H & B) with grenades awful to play.

I don’t know about turrets for damage, but they are very good in smaller scale fights. Net turret and healing turret are excellent, add exploding turrets trait for pushbacks. I’m considering trying rocket turret now that it shoots fast, but the toolbelt ability seems terrible and the CD is pretty high once it is destroyed. Maybe the damage and knockdown make up for it.

While I agree, that everyone should be able to play no matter what the time, I couldn’t help noticing this:
“How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another.”

The people who play at night are indeed a minority, or so I believe and observe. Yet keeping those objectives at night gives an equal amount of resources. Doesn’t this mean that playing at night is more valuable per player?
It’s not simple to fix, but it feels like getting hit when you can’t defend, if you simply can’t or don’t want to play at night. So this is why I like Senik’s idea. Or any similar idea – because if everyone’s time is supposed to be equally valuable, playing at night shouldn’t mean bigger personal effect on the result.