Cirian.8917

I haven't bought this expac yet but the discussion reminds me a lot of The Exiled Realm of Arborea (TERA)'s blend of medieval-style fantasy areas (similar to Kryta), "fairy magic" style areas (similar to Sylvari areas), cold bits like the Shiverpeaks, etc, and also, very high tech areas. In TERA's case it was (as far as I understood the lore) a dimension-travelling space-faring species called the Argons. Instead of jade-themed tech, they had cyan-themed tech. Lots, and lots, of cyan. TERA had odd class juxtapositions like guild wars 2 does. Lancers (dude with a shield and a pokey stick) fought beside gunners (every weapon from Unreal Tournament rolled into a giant gun called the Arcannon, or, Arcane Cannon). It was definitely odd, but on the other hand, a symptom of theme-park MMOs. And I would definitely classify GW2 as a theme-park MMO. And it's fine because you just go to those areas you like, and... don't go to the other ones. * A few have been wondering what the norn have brought, and, someone did remember Deldrimor steel. I suspect we have the norn to thank for spiritwood also, as the norn are the "spirit magic" race more, I think, than humans or sylvari even. I find that the norn are adept at materials science, runes, sigils, "old magic", stuff to do with celestials and stars (Jotun magic), and make good members of the Priory (preservers of the ancient / tomb raiders / adventurers). Since I play only norn and sylvari, I'm tempted to see what's happened to Echovald Forest, if it still exists?

The Renegade's shortbow completed the Revenant for me. It's an awesome weapon. Filthy amounts of synergy with Shiro/Jalis utilities and trait lines. Extremely aggressive skirmishing weapon. I'd love to see the pistols reworked a fair bit. When I had a go at reworking the kits, one skill I like that went bye-bye was the elixir gun's tranq dart. Since fragmentation grenades exist, why not put tranq darts that bleed and weaken into the pistol and get rid of the aoe? The pistols could be more of a single target killer, let's say with an "Armour Piercing Rounds" trait to add piercing if you want that. Maybe do something like this, with an "automatic revolver" theme:1) tranquillizer rounds - a single round, inflicting bleeding and weakness2) poison rounds - burst of 3 rounds, inflicting poison3) electric rounds - burst of 3 rounds, inflicting blind and confusion4) burning rounds - burst of 3 rounds, inflicting burning5) paralysing rounds - burst of 3 rounds, inflicting daze and immobilise Something like that. Obviously sticking to the condi theme. 3 damage skills, a defensive blind and an interrupt, nice general purpose package.

The best thing ArenaNet could do is make the core engineer as good to play as core guardian, warrior or elementalist. That means kits and turrets reworked, and core weapons brought up to par. The other thing they ought to do is shout about a gameplay focus that sets the engineer apart from other classes, like say, heavily transmuting conditions to boons in a support role, and offering the widest variety of blast combos. When somebody asks, "So what's the engineer about?", the answer needs to be something specific like "transmuting conditions and blast combos", "area denial and close range support", or whatever as long as it's a clear and useful role. Once the core engineer feels tight, and I mean up to par with other cores, which it's not, then we can look at the elite specs. The elite specs hang off the core, so if the core is rotten, well, the elite spec is going to feel like a shallow gimmick until that's sorted.

I'm not a fan of chance based stuff. So much better when you can rely on your tools to do what they do. And well, you can shoot it into water field, that's pretty useful. You can stealth when you're not firing at enemies. Cluster Bomb on thief works pretty similar and yet it's fine Exactly. A thief can Cluster Bomb into a field a bunch of times until their initiative is exhausted, which in a way, feels a bit like the ammo idea. The classic D/P+Shortbow thief could pistol #5, weapon switch, blast stealth a few times to hide a group of allies, and away they go. The mortar is an elite kit, so the idea of a kit with a blast finisher auto and 4 fields to choose from is a tidy package. The 1,500 range means you can aid allies with combos at a distance. At least when the game came out, being combo-heavy felt really "engineer". It suits them.

Awesome, you wrote it ^_^

That's quite a surprise considering what the scrapper had deleted. I had ~4k Barrier on heal, deleted. ~1.3k Barrier when hit, deleted. Rapid Regeneration, which I used with 2x superspeed stun breaks on my F skills, a few thousand healing, deleted. Detection Pulse, deleted. -300 vitality, for me that was 3,300 health gone, 18.3k -> 15k. In the end I thought, well, I'd be better of with Tools, Inventions and Alchemy. Scrapper... it used to have this amazing barrier focus, and now... why not play Water Tempest again? Tempest is the god of healers, if you use action camera that is, it's just, that kind of all it does. Well okay, there's also chilled ground and awesome auras. I'm kinda hoping I don't need to explain why action camera transforms the Water Tempest, but just in case, it means you can ground target a 1,200 range 240 radius splash heal, that happens to be your auto attack. There's also... other things. It's ridiculous in WvW. The only thing it doesn't do is any damage whatsoever. Since templates have been announced (about time...), it'll become trivial to switch between godmode healer and godmode artillery on the Ele with (hopefully...) a single click. Fire Ele is also something that is amazing with action camera, because it means you can lob fireballs at an area of ground and kill with splash rather than targetting enemies directly. It's like, basic "FPS rocket launcher" style gameplay. You do the same on a Water Tempest, only this time, you're firing rockets of love to splash your allies with health. So in a nutshell, I'm at a loss what the scrapper is bringing anymore to make it genuinely worth taking. Of course, that's why I wrote this!edit: and then I looked at the metabattle build. Minstrel/Antitoxin cleanse beast. Fair enough! I can't run that in PvE though, I ran Marshal/Divinity. It used to be pretty solid with the barriers and healing, now though, ehhh... in open world I'm logging in on guardian, soulbeast, reaper and warrior to do hybrid DPS/support. I love flexible builds. I also play every class. I dunno, I just feel like I had something that worked well and I don't like the idea of an expensive gear rework. Incidentally, if anyone's looking to make that Mistrel WvW build on the cheap I can recommend crafting Lunatic Noble's armour as Minstrel's is now an option in the stat selector. You guys both have the same concern do with blast finisher autos being strong. I'm adamant about the elite kit having a blast finisher auto though, it's what makes the kit elite. My thought was, the rate of fire can be slowed down by however much to balance it, but I really like the ammo idea too. It'd be easy to play around with the rate of fire, ammo count, and ammo reload time, to balance the thing.

INTRODUCTIONHi gang! I'm a big fan of the evolution of the Med Kit. From humble beginnings it's become a unique and powerful option. Most importantly, fun. The recent Scrapper patch completely wrecked the way I played with the Med Kit so I took another look at the other kits to find more fun. Unfortunately they haven't really evolved much, have they? I sat down and had a good think. Okay, so what's wrong with the old kits? Well for a start, they don't have very good stat purity with the exception of the Med Kit. With the Med Kit, you take healing power and you're good to go. Because barrier scales off healing power, I really enjoyed the barrier abilities scrappers used to have and I'd play medic bot at bounties. But which kit do you take if you want to compliment your condition pistols, or your power rifle? This is where kits get messy, because they tend to have skills that are all over the place with their stat requirement. This is what has lead engineer players to "piano style", where you'd use one or two skills per kit and cycle through an ungodly rotation. Some would say, rather generously, that this is "skilful". It requires developing muscle memory and dexterity to yield the damage output of what should be a single weapon by spreading skills all over the place. Some would say then, rather more bluntly, that this is a god awful user experience! I'm in the latter camp. The Med Kit is a good example of design iteration and stat purity that should, quite frankly, be applied to the other kits. So, I had a go at that. (Edited for formatting.) First I'm going to split our kits into two groups. "Area Kits" - 3 kits: grenades, bombs, mortars. "Assault Kits" - 3 kits: flame thrower, elixir gun, tool kit. AREA KITSOkay, so engineers have three kits that we can designate "area kits", and we can say these are meant to compliment the more single target base weapons such as the pistol and rifle, or give a ranged area option to the base melee weapons of the sword and hammer. These area kits are grenades, bombs, and mortars. I'm going to designate a focus for each kit that feels like it fits their theme. Grenades: Damage Conditions. Bombs: Power Damage. Mortars: Blast Finishers and Combo Fields. With that done I'll go over each kit with their rough skills. GRENADESGrenades will roughly follow the pistols. Granting an area version of each pistol skill, grenades should be inferior against a single foe, but better against many. The damage type is conditions. 1) Shrapnel Grenade - inflicts bleeding. Auto attack. Notes: this needs to fire continually while holding the attack button, like the mortar kit already does. Button mash is unhealthy for a player's body. Fix it.2) Toxic Gas Grenade - inflicts poison, and confusion. 8s cooldown. Notes: inspired by the Toxic Alliance, this stuff is both poisonous and hallucinogenic!3) Concussion Grenade - inflicts blind, confusion, and daze. 16s cooldown. Notes: this is the defensive grenade with a short daze for interrupts, and a confusion damage component.4) Incendiary Grenade - inflicts burning, fear, and torment. 16s cooldown. Notes: "Running makes the flames burn brighter." ~1s fear, 4s burning, 4s torment. Signature grenade. Short fear for another interrupt and because it's hilarious with torment. Bonus for being on fire. While not intended to do horrific amounts of damage, it is intended to be a powerful pressure option.5) Sticky Grenade - inflicts cripple and immobilise. 16s cooldown. Notes: much like the pistol's glue shot, it's the area lockdown option.F) Shrapnel Barrage - 6 Shrapnel Grenades around your feet in a circle. Fall trait copies this. BOMBSBombs are going to be the "hammer kit" of the engineer. Raw power damage, armour penetration, and crowd control are the order of the day. The damage type is power. 1) Battle Bomb - wide area damage. Auto attack. Notes: 300 or 360 radius, no special effects and only moderate damage. Should be worse vs a single target than a melee weapon, whilst being pretty amazing against groups.2) Cluster Bomb - area damage, then more area damage bomblets. 4s cooldown. Notes: Explodes, causing damage, and spraying 6 bomblets. Bomblets explode on landing with a smaller radius. Some decent spike damage potential.3) Acid Bomb - area power damage over time, and vulnerability. 8s cooldown. Notes: This has been stolen from the elixir gun and now applies vulnerability on every pulse as it melts through armour. No blast finisher. Does not move the player. Used to soften large targets, such as champions.4) What The Bomb - creates a rift in space. After a 1s delay, enemies are pulled together. Does no damage. 30s cooldown. Notes: aka the Vortex Bomb, used to pull enemies into a cluster before doing bad things to them. There must be a tell.5) Gravity Bomb - creates a shockwave of immediate area damage. After a 1s delay, enemies are damaged again and knocked down. 30s cooldown. Notes: the hard CC option, much like a hammer knockdown. Inspired by Karka Stomp. Can be chained after What The Bomb / Vortex Bomb to pin clusters of enemies and break CC bars.F) Big Ol' Bomb - no change. Area damage, and blowout. MORTARSThe elite Mortar kit will focus on blast finishing in combo fields for various group utility effects. The fields themselves will be useful on their own to a lesser degree. Skills are going to have a "fire and ice" theme, with a focus on smoke, fire, ice, and water fields. Stealth and healing for small groups should be especially exciting in a variety of game formats. 1) Mortar Shell - area damage and blast finisher. Auto attack. Notes: the rate of fire should be about 1 per second, slightly slower than current. It should be able to blast mortar fields three times per field.2) Fire Shell - Burns enemies on landing and every 2s after, for 3 burns total. Blasts for area might. Lasts 4s. 8s cooldown. 3) Smoke Shell - Blinds enemies on landing and every 2s after, for 3 blinds total. Blasts for area stealth. Lasts 4s. 30s cooldown. 4) Ice Shell - Chills enemies on landing and every 2s after, for 3 chills total. Blasts for area frost aura. Lasts 4s. 16s cooldown. 5) Water Shell - Cures a condition on landing and every 2s after, for 3 cures total. Blasts for area healing. Lasts 4s. 30s cooldown. F) Orbital Strike - A targeting laser paints the ground. After 2s, a pulsing blast finisher causes heavy damage to the targetted area and repeatedly blasts combo fields. Pulses twice per second for 2s, for 4 pulses total. 60s cooldown. Notes: based on "Ray of Judgement" from Guild Wars, with added blast finisher goodness. If you're going to have an elite, it had better be good.ASSAULT KITSSo, the assault kits have a themes combining frontal cones with other short range effects. The tool kit is a melee option that could be a fun tanking kit. The flamer in particular has some very old technology in it that I'm surprised hasn't been updated with the Heart of Thorns technology advancements, so let's have a go at that now. FLAME THROWERThe flamer is a hybrid weapon split between power and condition damage. However, the current form has a poor auto attack for condition damage. Utility effects also needs a little love. Nothing too radical to change with this kit, although you might find some changes rather juicy. 1) Flamethrower - 4 pulses of damage, inflicting 1s of burning on each hit. Auto attack. Notes: the current version inflicts 10 strikes, with 4s of burning on the final strike. That means if you dodge after the 9th strike, you don't inflict burning. This is despite the fact that you're literally wielding a flame thrower. That's stupid! This change means you inflict burning with every strike, and the 4 seconds are spread over 4 separate strikes. Reducing the number of strikes down from 10 to 4 also diminishes the engineer's ability to swiftly kill themselves on retaliation, what with the 50 possible retaliation procs per auto attack. That was also pretty stupid, especially in the Mad King's labyrinth where Lich retaliation could do ~900+ damage per proc, for about 23,000 DPS of reflected retaliation damage. That was enough to kill you around 3 times over per auto attack. 2) Napalm Blast - no change. Notes: this is your staple blast finisher, used for blasting might and stealth. It also inflicts a spike of damage and burning.3) Air Blast - add a "swirling winds" visual effect for the invisible reflection bubble that surrounds the engineer. Notes: did you know it reflects projectiles fired at your back? Well, you do now.4) Flame Wall - replace area with Heart of Thorns technology. See notes. Notes: the current version is a clone of the Elementalist's fire focus skill, which never made any visual sense on the engineer anyway. This area of effect can be replaced with the style used by Revenant's mace skill, Searing Fissure. This rolling out of a flaming area not only makes more sense visually, but it's much easier to blast for might with skill #2.5) Vent Smoke - create a smoke field for 2s, blinding foes on the first and final pulses. Blasts for area stealth. No change on cooldown. Notes: this one was always a wasted opportunity for clutch stealth. The engineer can't backstab. Rather, they use stealth defensively.F) Incendiary Ammo - Grants burning to every hit of the next attack skill. 20s cooldown. Notes: Incendiary Ammo will proc on every hit of an engineer weapon or kit skill from slots 1-5. It will not activate on utility skills such as, for example, Shredder Gyro, nor from toolbelt skills such as Static Discharge, nor sigil procs or rune attacks such as Mad King's raven swarm. That would be silly.ELIXIR GUNApparently this is quite good in PvP. However, its awful elsewhere besides a few heals and utilities. The auto attack is hopeless in PvE. Stat wise, it's the most schizophrenic kit imaginable, requiring power for acid bomb, condition damage for the bleed and poison, healing power for the super elixir, and perhaps concentration for the boons. Seeing as this thing fires liquids, it would make most sense to concentrate on healing, boons, and conditions. It also needs an auto attack that can take on multiple foes at short range. Let's begin! 1) Nerve Agent - Elixir. Spray a cone of elixir fumes, inflicting poison and vulnerability on foes with every strike. 4 strikes. Notes: a poisonous version of the Flame Thrower's auto attack, with more emphasis on condition damage and healing denial.2) Nightmare Fuel - Elixir. Spray a cone of elixir fumes, inflicting confusion and torment on foes with every strike. 4 strikes. 8s cooldown. Notes: a more potent version of the auto attack with different conditions. Bonus points for adding the Toxic Alliance's visual effects.3) Cleansing Mist - Elixir. Spray a cone of elixir fumes, cleansing conditions on allies with every strike. Also cleanses the engineer. 2 strikes. 12s cooldown. Notes: the old "Fumigate" skill has been split into the auto attack, and this cleansing skill. This version is also a self-cleanse.4) Red Mist - Elixir. Spray a cone of elixir fumes, granting 4s of fury, 12s of might and 4s of regeneration to allies with every strike. Also buffs the engineer. 3 strikes. 16s cooldown. Notes: a buff skill with a great name. Use it to turn your allies into rage machines.5) Super Elixir - Elixir. No changes. Notes: it's already great.F) Healing Mist - Elixir. 30s cooldown. Notes: it's already great. The cooldown was too long. HGH will trait 30s down to 24s and Tools will take it a little lower than that, which is fine.Trait notes: I'd change HGH's might down from 15s to 12s. Partly this is to give it the same might duration as Red Mist, but also because it has more skills to proc from. HGH is now granting might from Cleansing Mist and Red Mist, in addition to previous elixirs. TOOL KITThe underwater version of this kit is slightly better than the land version, and not just because of the Box of Piranhas, coolest named skill in the game. With the hammer being more offensive, with advancing attacks, I decided to give the Tool Kit a more defensive flavour with a tankish fighting style. Damage output is modest, while CC output is quite high. The "Power Wrench" trait makes the CC especially potent. This kit's damage type is power. NB: if the engineer has a shield equipped, it should appear in their offhand. If not, they should be equipped with the Gear Shield. 1) Auto chain. Uses the underwater version, with evade on the 3rd attack. Notes: an identical tanking auto chain as Ranger's greatsword, but with a more one-vs-few style than a one-vs-many.2) Box of Bees - micro "Bee" gyros envelop the engineer for 3s, dazing foes for 1/4s after 1s and 3s. 180 radius. 12s cooldown. Notes: Meme skill. Use it to annoy foes swarming the engineer. The old conditions have been removed.3) Pry Bar - smack a foe for heavy damage and stun them for 2s. 18s cooldown. Notes: used to disable your main target for an extended time. The old conditions have been removed.4) Gear Shield - no functional changes. 18s cooldown. Notes: unlike the rhythmic evade in the auto chain, this is your "defense on demand".5) Magnet - no functional changes. 18s cooldown. Notes: used to pull a foe to you.F) Throw Wrench - Throw a wrench that returns to you, taunting foes it hits for 3s. Can only apply taunt once per foe. 18s cooldown. Notes: this is your new aggro magnet.Trait notes: "Power Wrench" is an especially strong cooldown trait, at 33%. BoB reduces to 8s, and the rest down to 12s. CONCLUSIONI don't expect any of this to actually happen, but if I've entertained you a little then I consider this a complete win!

Also, their lore is terrible.I can just hear the nerdy "I'm an athathin" trope bleeding off of them. (Like, really, I've had a friend do this in a tabletop. Never took him seriously after that...)A "race" of hired killers? Unsustainable.And look at their targets in the story: Kodan and Sylvari. Innocents. Good people. They're not worth indulging. You want everyone indulged to be good guys? Dull! Drow are popular for a reason: people, all people, have a dark side that needs to get out and stretch every once in a while. It's why anti-heroes get a following. It's why TV shows with those tropes get a following: Dexter, Breaking Bad, Sopranos etc. People love roleplaying bad guys or anti-heroes. Why does everyone love Canach? The guy started out as a terrorist in Southsun remember. He gets to be edgy. Dark. It's fun to indulge that side in a game. Think about the popularity of Grand Theft Auto. Players don't exactly play a saint do they. "They're not worth indulging." You have no idea how much people want that stuff indulged. There's a thirst for darkness and the possibility of redemption. If the largos remind me of anything it's drow and their type of cutthroat society. Reminds me a bit of the houses in Morrowind too. And maybe the vampire clans from the same game. Goodie two-shoes societies are boring. There's no journey to be had! Way more interesting for things to be screwed up so people can fantasize about how to fix it or how to survive until the next sunrise. I'd love to see the largos society and see how it hasn't somehow imploded into a bloodbath. Maybe it'll be a society like the one from Elric of Melniboné. And yes, there is a striking resemblence to a certain other White Wolf, a certain Geralt of Rivia... Elric is his spiritual forebear from many decades earlier. Funnily enough the charr were originally villains in Guild Wars but now they've lost that completely. They're fluffy kittens now. Boring! Does anyone get nervous going to the Black Citadel? It's not edgy. No awe. I want something that feels like it's on the periphery between safety and danger in a fantasy world. That's why I like characters like Palawa Joko, and heck I like his empire too. I get annoyed when the writers put words into the player's mouth all the time, cursing Joko. Look at the "heroes". The sunspears lead short, barbaric lives. Brainwashed religious fanatics. Kormir's followers are deluded and abandonned. "Praise Kormir!" Er, why? How about "no". Joko actually gives a damn about his living citizens precisely because they're the future of his undead army. He needs them to flourish and have a decent first life, gain as much knowledge and power as possible, so they can carry that over into awakening, a second life defending their decendants from all the world's terrors. It's just funny to see the discrimination against Joko because he's a lich, oh and a lich couldn't possibly be a good guy. Why? It's just mindless bigotry against liches! :P Of course you can say Joko is a wolf guarding a flock of sheep, but then, that's almost any "hierarchy + citizens" if you think about it: there's a bunch of folks with power and then there's a flock of drones drifting through life. There is no communist utopia of zero hierarchy and perfect equity. Anyway, I suppose what I'm really exploring is "what do people want out of the next racial spotlight?", because if it's just pointy ears then that's a pretty low bar. The sylvari have been a lot of fun as "dragon minions redeemed". Humans are "the dying race", that common elven trope. Norn are just drunk. I think they've been forgotten. Charr are fluffy kittens now. Asura are all narcissistic psychopaths, so there's that. Yes, ALL of them. What are we missing? Murderous blue people with fins? Eh, I'm game.

I was trying to edit my last post but the forum software hates me apparently. Ok here we go, I figured out my image issue. Right, so like a few posters have mentioned (I totally missed this thread's other 2 pages somehow), probably the most elfy race in Guild Wars 2 are the largos, definitely a fan favourite to see more of, probably when we confront the Deep Sea Dragon like I was saying earlier. Check these out from the Largos Gallery:

! That might explain why there are fairground horses in Tyria, but no actual horse in Tyria. Perhaps Tyria is in deep post-elf territory and they've been completely forgotten. And since Tyria is part of a many-worlds universe, maybe they did go into the mists... Ah, now some folks were saying the sylvari are like elves but really the sylvari are more fairy-like tree-folk like you had in Dark Age of Camelot, the sylvan, who co-exist with actual elves in that game. The closest thing to elves in Guild Wars 2 are of course the aquatic largos, man-sized creatures with blue skin and pointy ears similar to frost elves, night elves, moon elves and so on. The more I think about the largos and the possible confrontation with the Deep Sea Dragon, the more I think the OP might get something close to their wish. Maybe we'll find more about the Concordat of the Tethyos Houses? The "Tethyos Houses" do sound a bit elven don't they? Ah! Before you know it we'll have "elven assassins" everywhere.