As engineer, I kind of hate all of my elites, Charr included.
Artillery Barrage: could be cool but for some ungodly reason the range is 450 which is basically right in front of you. Also, 4 minute cooldown! Yikes!
Charzooka: 3 minute cooldown! Lasts 60 seconds or 15 shots. Doesn’t do anything particularly unique or useful. Pretty sure I do better with my pistols.
Warband support: 4 minute cooldown! Gives you two pretty uninspiring NPCs for 30 seconds or until they die, which is really quick. They can’t even handle a single random trash mob by themselves.
I love the look of the Charr and 4 of my character slots are Charr largely for that reason but their elites are awful and none of my characters use them. Even the Supply Crate, which is pretty luckluster and has a long cooldown, is better than the Charr elites.
I use the Warband support every time it’s available. I find it pretty useful. The cooldown is silly and the fact that they’re only there for 30 seconds is pretty sad too though. I’m a guardian so I love having them out plus my spirit weapons. I was always jealous of those necros and their little minion parties…
I find it most useful for when I’m trying to run through Orr. If I come upon a group of enemies I just toss the Warband out as a distraction and keep running.
I used the warband first, when I ran turrets, to take down skill bosses. I liked feeling like my own unit of destruction. I tend to use the charzooka now, but I still find warband to be good when I need to keep the enemy off of me.
Akorn Oakheart, Engineer Extraordinaire
House of Kern [HoK]
Darkhaven
As a Charrdian, I love the Charrzooka. It gives me range (something Guardians sorely lack) and works well with my might buffing and my condition damage (Charrdians love them some FIRE).
Plus…it’s a Charrzooka. I was drooling over the idea of the skill the minute I saw it on the list!
I made the mistake of grabbing Artillery Barrage as my first elite on my Engineer thinking “Well that fits an Engineer perfectly, she must have set up a remote artillary gun somewhere in the area that I can call for support from”. Worst mistake ever. Skill is completely useless in every concievable way. Low damage, terrible cooldown, no range… garbage. In essence all I did was keep myself from getting an elite for another 10 levels.
Warband Support is pretty decent. Getting 2 NPCs is nice and they do decently well drawing fire and have a bit of useful knockback / CC. Still dwarfed in usefulness by most profession elites, but at least its usable.
Have yet to get Charrzooka on any of my characters. 30 skill points is steep. I did buy the consumable version in Fireheart Rise, but I assume thats a poor emulation of the actual skill, since it only has 1 attack.
I have a Charr guardian and yes I agree…..the Charr elite racial abilities are pathetic. I haven’t used a single Charr elite ability in months. Artillery Barrage has way to long of a cooldown for paltry damage. Charrzooka is always a huge dps loss. And Warband Support has a huge cooldown and they usually die within ~10 seconds of being summoned. So yeah, all in all….worthless. And being a guardian, pretty much the only elite ability that is remotely useful is the 3 second invulnerability which recharges my virtues. The two tome elites can be useful in certain situations, but overall, Renewed Focus is the only way to go with a Charr guardian, hands down. Which is sad really…..it severely limits charr guardian play style.
Naw, I think they are trash cooldowns. I use Thieves guild or Dagger storm on my charr thief. The only time I ever use Charrzooka or Artillery Barrage is on the pillar on the last boss in cof path 2. I swear thats the only thing they are good for.
Yeah the cooldown is nuts. On my Guardian I use Renewed Focus because while it’s not that great, at least the cooldown is 90 seconds. On a Thief I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t use Dagger Storm most of the time. Stability! Reflection! 90 second cooldown! Really the built in stability is what keeps it awesome. Elementalist is more of a tossup but their longest cooldown is 3 minutes and there’s nothing the Charr elites do that they can’t already do better.
I can see some value for the Charzooka on a Guardian in WvW because it gives you something to shoot from walls but it’s a 3 minute cooldown for something that only gives you 15 shots. Meh. Every other class has better ranged options anyway.
Made my Guardian a Norn, actually, because at least turning into a stealth cat is useful sometimes.
If the Charzooka had twice as many shots in it or if artillary barrage was range 1500, I might actually be tempted by them. Actually if Charzooka was range 1500 that would give it some use even to classes that otherwise have superior ranged DPS.
As a thief, Warband support and Thieves guild are both the same thing but one has a faster CD than the other. As a result, I usually always use Thieves guild over Warband when I’m not using dagger storm. It’s unfortunate the CD is soooo long.
Not really. I only use the Charrzooka when screwing around. Warband Support is useless on a thief since its pretty much a crappier version of thieves guild and Atillery Barrage just doesn’t seem very good.
But then the only racial elite that gets much use from me are the human ones on my mes for pve.
The charrzooka is useful if you’re speccing for conditions and/or burning (and no other elite makes use of the condi damage + dur), or if you have both your weapon sets as melee and need a ranged weapon for a short time.
They should up Artillery Barrage to 900 range so it’s actually useful.
The charrzooka is useful if you’re speccing for conditions and/or burning (and no other elite is makes use of the condi damage + dur), or if you have both your weapon sets as melee and need a ranged weapon for a short time.
They should up Artillery Barrage to 900 range so it’s actually useful.
Agreed, my condition specced engineer makes great use of the charrzooka since it provides a lot of 1200 range skills that are very hard to come by as an engineer and almost every skill inflicts burning which is nothing but good for condition specs.
Yeah, charr elites are pretty worthless, artillery barrage is completely useless as well. I hope the devs take a look at them, as currently Charr probably have the worst racial elites out of all the races in the game.
On my engi, I use the Charr racials with some decent frequency. Hidden Pistol is a nice bursty toolbelt addition. Battle Cry is also good for ally buffing.
Also, if you are running explosives in your build: Throw Mine + Shrapnel Mine and explosives on dodge roll are nice to lay down in choke points where you can lure players/mobs across them. Or, wait on high ground and rain nades on them as they pass over your traps.
I used Artillery Barrage twice in my life time. Once to find out it might suck, and the second time to confirm my shock from finding out how terrible it really was.
I have a charr ranger and use carrion gear, I recently tried the charzooka, and its great!!! At defending towers/keeps in wvw, just lay down #5 and watch them scatter like kittenroaches. But could we have the skills be a blast finisher instead of projectile? Pretty please!!!!
What tricks do you need for Artillery Barrage? I don’t find it useful at all, but maybe I’m doing something wrong…
I love charzookah, I love warband too, but the cd on them is just plain ridiculous and makes them rarely a viable option to bring along. They do have uses while out grinding though, one of them actually has a knockdown which is good, but the survivability and massive cd on them is bad. Artillery barrage…complete and utter garbage. Half the time the shots don’t hit a single thing, and when they do the omgwtf cd on it along with the point blank range is just??? If the engineer’s traits worked properly with it, it would be an awesome elite to bring along, sadly nothing can help that skill, it is garbage incarnate.
I have a Charr warrior and nothing compares to the Profession elite SoR. In fact, the only racial “skill” I have used is Pain Inverter on an Asura engineer when I want to be a confusioneer on occasion.
But could we have the skills be a blast finisher instead of projectile? Pretty please!!!!
