draxynnic

I miss ritualists too, but the issue with them is that their special 'thing' was placing an object that benefited allies or attacked enemies within a wide area - and that's something which half of the professions in-game already have. Guardians have offensive and defensive spirit weapons, engineers have turrets, rangers have spirits, mesmers have offensive and defensive phantasms (both in one package with Phantasmal Healing) - arguably even warrior banners could count.

The ramping mechanic ritualists used to have (with their more direct spells being augmented by the presence of spirits) is genuinely missing, and it does suck a bit that all that stuff is spread among multiple places rather than consolidated into a single profession like they were with the ritualist, but in the context...it would be quite hard to establish their distinctiveness with other professions having so much of the same stuff.

In general, either way, I would generally see expanding existing professions and fixing the broken stuff as being higher priorities.

kendro1200, on 24 May 2013 - 07:24 AM, said:

Oh, yes, if Defiant wasn't bad enough, let's make even more of the skills available to players useless whenever it really matters, and without warning so that players who aren't in the know try dodging or putting up their barrier and wonder why they're suddenly downed...

What really needs to happen is for more bosses that pressure rather than spike. Blocks and reflects and the like are really powerful versus spikes while other forms of support are useless and, in fact, often counterproductive (because gathering up to support means multiple party members can potentially be hit by an AoE spike). More pressure bosses, however, would allow for more usage of things like healing fields and protection boons to mitigate that pressure. Simply telling players "your toys don't work" isn't the answer.

GuanglaiKangyi, on 24 May 2013 - 06:23 AM, said:

When I said the engineer's damage should be balanced across the board, I meant with respect to other professions - hence why I said that should be done, and then grenades reworked. (Because, really, it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief for engineers to be chucking grenades in threes all the time...)

The flamethrower at least really should be balanced to be an effective damage weapon. Yes, you can air blast or blind for control, but other DPS options have control, and people don't exactly look at a flamethrower and think "well, of COURSE that's going to be a support weapon!" The primary purpose of a flamethrower should be to burn stuff to death - any other imaginative use you may come up with it is an added bonus to killing things with fire. Considering its proper purpose to be a utility kit rather than a main weapon would be like saying, if things had been reversed and it was grenades that were weaker than they should be, that grenades should be just balanced as a utility kit using flash and chill grenades and should not attempt to be a main weapon.

Tool kit is a defensive set, but also a melee set - it should probably be able to to damage on a similar order to other engineer stuff, with the increased defenses and utility balanced by being a melee set. Elixir gun... is probably actually balanced for what it does. That one IS intended to be a support weapon and has some offensive options that can actually be quite nasty in the right circumstances.

What I would probably do is:

Buff pretty much everything to reasonable numbers.
Set grenades to throwing a single grenade regardless of Grenadier, and make Grenadier a simple range+damage buff upgrade (you're throwing bigger grenades) or maybe an increase in the rate at which you could throw grenades.

I don't think it's necessary to buff Steel-Packed Powder or Shrapnel to compensate for throwing less grenades as you claim. I'm of the opinion that the extreme synergy between these traits and Grenadier was not a deliberate consequence - being able to maintain six or so stacks of Vulnerability just off your basic attacks is still a pretty powerful effect if it's backed by a competitive amount of raw damage.

Sure, like I said, it is your right to set whatever conditions you feel appropriate for the parties you form. But the fact remains that if the restrictions you're setting are particularly strict, you are being elitist. You can't have your cake and eat it too - if you're telling people they must be a particular profession with a particular build and a particular set of gear, you can't complain about being labelled an elitist for doing so.

(Well, you can, but you don't really have a leg to stand on.)

madmaxII, on 23 May 2013 - 09:38 PM, said:

Part of this is probably the fun factor. Grenades are, relative to other engineer specs, fairly boring apart from the 'skill shot' aspect for moving targets, which isn't everyone's cup of tea. Lightning hammer builds can get pretty boring when the novelty wears off. Ranger 1H sword leaves you fighting with the controls as much as the enemy half the time unless you've gone to the effort of mastering it, and if it's the acrobatic style that people really wanted, they'd probably have chosen thief. Likewise, necro dagger can be an interesting playstyle, but hardly what most people are thinking of spending most of their time doing when they chose a necromancer at the character screen.

Thieves are awesome, but certainly require skill and practise to stay alive as. The general point, though, is that a lot of those builds run somewhat counter to the image most people have of those professions. Which is probably why they didn't get nerfed in beta - fewer people used them, so there was less opportunity to find out that they were among the most powerful builds for their respective professions. Either way, you can't really blame people for wanting to play a profession the way they envisaged the profession to be played. You are, of course, free to insist that they run the build you want and to kick them if they don't, but you do have to accept that you are being elitist if you do so.

(Grenades I blame on ArenaNet deciding to 'balance' Grenadier by making the grenade kit throw two grenades at once by default. It may have made the trait itself easier to balance in isolation, but I don't think ArenaNet considered the knock-on effects such as the interaction of multiple explosives per throw with Steel-Packed Powder. It's... acceptable for the moment since otherwise engineer doesn't really have any good DPS options, but I would like to see the engineer's damage balanced across the board and then grenadier being made a little less silly.)

I actually very rarely go to the surface when downed underwater, for pretty much that reason. Functionally, the only benefit to surfacing over bandaging underwater is that surfacing has a shorter cooldown, but if that's coming into play you're not going to revive anyway. Better to swim laterally while bandaging if dropping something in the meantime isn't an option.

I think it's basically a relic of a time when you couldn't actually recover yourself when downed and were, on land, 100% reliant on allies to bring you up (#4 just called for attention and sped up the rate at which your allies could heal you).

The ability to move when downed underwater, though, means that most if not all professions are actually better off downed underwater than on land - it means that you do at least have the chance of outswimming your opponent and getting to a safe location to recover. There have been a few times when I've deliberately jumped into water when I was afraid of being downed soon for exactly that reason.