Guild Wars 2

Guanglai’s suggested build on gw2guru.

No I didn’t record myself so you’ll have to make do with my guildies POV (I was the engi.) cause my computer already has enough trouble with fraps with no engies and explosion + fraps makes my skin crawl. Another guildie will upload his POV later I think. Anyhow that was a pretty fast kill and a good show of both lightning hammer AND engi.

Engi is good. So are ele. Get it into your head. Ele are true warrior replacement in a group that knows how to handle it, that’s with lightning hammer, let’s not talk about what fiery gs does.

Elementalists don’t have Banner of Strength / Discipline and Empower Allies.

Eles are too high risk for pugs to use properly.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Elementalists don’t have Banner of Strength / Discipline and Empower Allies.

We still keep one war but you prolly didn’t even watch the video. War replacement as in we don’t stack wars, that’s for bad groups. One war is the most we use at any point in time.

colesy.8490:

Eles are too high risk for pugs to use properly.

I care so much about pugging.. oh wait.
Funnily enough I recently did a CoE pug when all my guildies had already formed full groups 5 days ago and one of the pugs was an LH ele. He was actually pretty good and we had no mesmer in the group he did all the punting with the hammer launch and there was no fault to it. Well, I’m playing on US servers, and you are EU. EU pugs are the literal plague on the earth, that’s why I transferred to US early in the game to begin with.

Nikaido.3457:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Elementalists don’t have Banner of Strength / Discipline and Empower Allies.

We still keep one war but you prolly didn’t even watch the video. War replacement as in we don’t stack wars, that’s for bad groups. One war is the most we use at any point in time.

You really think I wouldn’t watch a 29 second video? You may also want to check the wording of your original post. Here it is just to be safe:

Nikaido.3457:

Engi is good. So are ele. Get it into your head. Ele are true warrior replacement in a group that knows how to handle it, that’s with lightning hammer, let’s not talk about what fiery gs does.

Brazil’s just picking on your wording saying ele can replace all warriors because you didn’t run with spotter/frost spirit.

No1’s going to argue for warrior stacking in an actually meta group, but it does work very well for the pugs that can’t manage to wrap their heads around more complicated tactics. Just getting one of the other 4 guys to carry the 2nd banner would be enough of a chore.

Brazil is jelly that there is a group out there that can handle ele without wiping everywhere and messing up combo field and rotations. And finally I made the group run without mes because Dempsey can’t handle the fact that we can, in fact, do it faster than dnt without timewarp too with elementalist heavy groups.

Nikaido.3457:

Brazil is jelly that there is a group out there that can handle ele without wiping everywhere and messing up combo field and rotations. And finally I made the group run without mes because Dempsey can’t handle the fact that we can, in fact, do it faster than dnt without timewarp too with elementalist heavy groups.

I’m not jelly, I’m peanut butter. I don’t think I mentioned anything about messing up combo field rotations or not being able to handle an Elementalist. Are these things that you and your guild are projecting onto me? Most likely. I’m not sure what Dempsey has to do with it either. I think he would agree that not having a Mesmer makes things faster. It also looks like your video was about 15-16 seconds, which is a time quite similar to http://youtu.be/mGJylZBKmos

No, dempsey said we can’t handle destroyer without timewarp in our ele groups. And unless you spectacularly fail on purpose, I think your AC run was plenty evidence that you don’t really get fiery gs on boss other than alpha.

Nikaido.3457:

No, dempsey said we can’t handle destroyer without timewarp in our ele groups. And unless you spectacularly fail on purpose, I think your AC run was plenty evidence that you don’t really get fiery gs on boss other than alpha.

I don’t keep track of what Dempsey says. And yes, those runs are meant to entertain and be full of trolling.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Nikaido.3457:

No, dempsey said we can’t handle destroyer without timewarp in our ele groups. And unless you spectacularly fail on purpose, I think your AC run was plenty evidence that you don’t really get fiery gs on boss other than alpha.

I don’t keep track of what Dempsey says. And yes, those runs are meant to entertain and be full of trolling.

Instead of responding like an actual human being you chose to call him out on using improper english (incase you don’t remember it isn’t his first language). Quit acting like you’re so innocent and that you’ve done nothing to provoke the hostility.

Syn Sity.5826:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Nikaido.3457:

No, dempsey said we can’t handle destroyer without timewarp in our ele groups. And unless you spectacularly fail on purpose, I think your AC run was plenty evidence that you don’t really get fiery gs on boss other than alpha.

I don’t keep track of what Dempsey says. And yes, those runs are meant to entertain and be full of trolling.

Instead of responding like an actual human being you chose to call him out on using improper english (incase you don’t remember it isn’t his first language). Quit acting like you’re so innocent and that you’ve done nothing to provoke the hostility.

I’m well aware that English isn’t his first language. I’ve heard him speak and he can speak English quite well. I’m also not acting like I’m innocent, and I think you’ll find that I do a good job of handling hostility.

To be fair, every class (not so much Mesmer) can deal heavy damage. What makes a class valuable is what else it can bring.
Though I’m no Engineer expert, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot it can do that an Ele can’t do better.
Ele stacks Vuln/might/blinds whilst maintaining the highest damage in the party (those hammer swings bring shame to anything my axe hits could do, even with the speed difference.)
I’d take an extra Ele over an extra Warrior any day of the week, but an Engi over either? I’m not so sure….
I mean even an extra Warrior can bring constant Vigor and Swiftness, share the banner load and generally be easy to play thanks to high health and now what feels like OP self healing. What can an Engi bring that an Ele and Warrior can’t?

Dolan.3071:

To be fair, every class (not so much Mesmer) can deal heavy damage. What makes a class valuable is what else it can bring.
Though I’m no Engineer expert, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot it can do that an Ele can’t do better.
Ele stacks Vuln/might/blinds whilst maintaining the highest damage in the party (those hammer swings bring shame to anything my axe hits could do, even with the speed difference.)
I’d take an extra Ele over an extra Warrior any day of the week, but an Engi over either? I’m not so sure….
I mean even an extra Warrior can bring constant Vigor and Swiftness, share the banner load and generally be easy to play thanks to high health and now what feels like OP self healing. What can an Engi bring that an Ele and Warrior can’t?

Btw dolan in that video, the eles were running pure DPS traits and not the vuln stacking, so all our vuln was from the engi that replaced the mesmer.. and in this case engi>mesmer in DPS. And it allowed the ele to go for more % modifiers for more personal damage.

Dolan.3071:

What can an Engi bring that an Ele and Warrior can’t?

High damage at 1500 range. Too bad we don’t need that often.

engis can also stack the crap out of vuln, but that’s lost in pug parties where vuln either shows up by itself or is ignored entirely cuz it’s not “MOAR DEEPS”

Can we chalk another win up for Guang?

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Can we chalk another win up for Guang?

All he does is win, win, win no matter what.

GuangWars2, yo. It’s a Guang metagame now.

Too bad guang just makes claims and never presents any form of numbers or tests or consideration for what sticking an engi next to 3 warriors with their arms 5 trait does to the engi’s bleeds (pre-trait change) which, by his own assertions, are important to engi dps.

While it’s not necessarily evidence that engi is best or whatever, it’s evidence that it’s at least just as good as anything else for a role in a speedclear and can handle doing no time warp destroyers etc along with classes like ele. They are no tier two dps classes.

Yes in the end guanglai was right about engis. And I’m running a carbon copy of the build because the only interest I had in trying engi was to drop all the vuln stacking on the rest of the group except for guard. So it’s just some guard blind + engi doing 100% vuln. For my ele groups it’s something I was looking forward to.

You could replace that engi with a thief, mesmer, necro, ranger, warrior, guardian or ele and get about the same result. I’m not saying engis provide terrible dps (mesmers do) but there’s still absolutely no reason to pick one. Just as there often is no reason to take a ranger.

Dub.1273:

You could replace that engi with a thief, mesmer, necro, ranger, warrior, guardian or ele and get about the same result.

And maintain a perfect 25 stacks of vuln in a group that has two ele without the 25 trait in air ? and necro would provide terrible dps trying to replicate that amount of vuln. Also the engi contributes to the might stacking, can handle knocks on the turret golem etc pretty decently.

Imagine using a necro that maintains 25 vuln and does zero damage. The overall killing time difference would be less than 3 seconds. And i said about the same, not exactly the same. If going for a speedkill your team composition would change much anyway.

Personally I think you’re over looking the strength of the Engineer. As Winston (Delay) mentioned, they were able to put all vuln stacking responsibilities onto the Engineer, so their Ele’s and such could trait for more damage since they didn’t have to worry about it. The damage it out-puts is also really strong, it’s not just a vuln bot.

Dub.1273:

about the same, not exactly the same. If going for a speedkill your team composition would change much anyway.

The actual damage difference between 25/0/25/20/0 and 25/25/0/20/0 (i assume they were using the first) isn’t huge too. What i’m saying is that the engineer can be replaced without changing the result much, not that engineers are bad.

All they were saying is that you can add an Engineer to the ‘would/could use’ column and out of the ‘throw it in the dumpster’ column. I don’t believe they were preaching that they found the super mega mighty team comp

Didn’t we already know that before? No profession is “throw it in the dumpster” in an organized group. Some are better than others but unless going for a record run it doesn’t matter much.

Dub.1273:

Didn’t we already know that before? No profession is “throw it in the dumpster” in an organized group. Some are better than others but unless going for a record run it doesn’t matter much.

Well, some people on this forum made claims that ele were worse than ranger and that we couldn’t do a decent destroyer without timewarp. Both claims are rebuked here. And with that party composition only two out of 5 had access to quickness (warrior frenzy + engi elixir U) that should tell you a lot about the elementalist sustain.

Elementalists have the highest damage output in the game by pretty far, including their burst abilitys. I’m not sure who made claims about eles doing less damage than rangers or whatever else.

You should look at the DPS class thread again. DocMed even made the claim that LH “aoe damage” is “equivalent to warrior”.. we’re killing the destroyer as fast than they do with only a single war and the engi using quickness. That’s just pure sustain on the ele. That’s ele damage on friggin’ single target with zero fiery gs shenanigan. Let’s not even speak of ele third hit being true 5 target aoe which is actually useful in some places like CM. Or what happens when a guardian or mesmer bring group quickness to the equation. Or the fact that the LH (and engi) can actually bring real utilities without breaking their dps build, being able to do things like taking part in the “knock the golem” game etc (Lightning Hammer has a launch, engi have good access to launch and knockback too, unlike classes like ranger.) And the blind on autoattack can be tasted in dungeons like CM. The stun field is also just as useful as a form of CC as the guardian’s hammer ring of warding except that the guardian doesn’t have to sacrifice dps by bringing a hammer.

Dub.1273:

I’m not sure who made claims about eles doing less damage than rangers or whatever else.

prolly those staff camping eles who only knows about water attunement

But… i always use water attunement in combat

Dempsey doesn’t mind me taking ele, he just grumbles about it :P

For what reason do you use the combatlog?

One word I forgot to put on this thread before leaving for work : I do owe an apology to Guanglai for having mocked some of his theorycrafting sometime before. Although I have zero conviction about ranger providing anything worth taking (this could have, maybe, been the case pre-fury buff to fire field blast on ele since ranger can add some more fury and I don’t really see any reason to pick more than one war these days) he did prove that they have decent dps, and that engineers are also great in an organized party. His build fits exactly the need I had for that 5th slot in a group. People were still calling him out in that dps thread because “nobody provided videos with engineers”. Well, here you go. Do they make runs a lot faster? no. Do they fit the needs of specific party set ups, particularly that of an ele group? god, yes.

I don’t really expect wide adoption even within my own guild beyond the core groups I run though.

swiftpaw.6397:

Dempsey doesn’t mind me taking ele, he just grumbles about it :P

Doesn’t that say enough…?

Syn Sity.5826:

swiftpaw.6397:

Dempsey doesn’t mind me taking ele, he just grumbles about it :P

Doesn’t that say enough…?

Not really. He may not agree with me on some things but that is no cause for hostilities. Sure he didn’t like me at first but I never let it get to me. Turns out he’s a nice guy.

kokiman.2364:

For what reason do you use the combatlog?

(this video is my POV) i was actually just looking back at some numbers since they seemed a bit low considering the build i was running, never switched back to my normal log… also saves me the time from wiping the chat so kinda worked out

Nikaido.3457:

Dub.1273:

Didn’t we already know that before? No profession is “throw it in the dumpster” in an organized group. Some are better than others but unless going for a record run it doesn’t matter much.

Well, some people on this forum made claims that ele were worse than ranger and that we couldn’t do a decent destroyer without timewarp. Both claims are rebuked here. And with that party composition only two out of 5 had access to quickness (warrior frenzy + engi elixir U) that should tell you a lot about the elementalist sustain.

And your kill time was still roughly the same as having a group full of Warriors and a Ranger. I don’t see how you demonstrated that Elementalists are superior.

Can someone tell me a good berserker build for a necromancer?

So after all this, is the conclusion basically “2 engi, 2 ele, 1 guard is a strong group composition, but 3 war, 1 guard, 1 mesmer is fine too”?

Dub.1273:

Can someone tell me a good berserker build for a necromancer?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhhu1IjW6elmxGDfCA6Ru46cMjjXm+w6A-jAyAYrBRTQgpMgUBgkXR0YLuFRjVXjpcJiqBA-e

Other popular build is 30/10/0/0/30. But as far as I can tell the extra crit damage doesnt make up for the lack of precision and target the weak. And seeing as that build usually involves sitting in DS using life blast its no good for dps. Also strength of undeath doesnt give a 5% boost, its just 90 power.

Delay.6908:

Btw dolan in that video, the eles were running pure DPS traits and not the vuln stacking, so all our vuln was from the engi that replaced the mesmer.. and in this case engi>mesmer in DPS. And it allowed the ele to go for more % modifiers for more personal damage.

That makes sense, takes the Vuln stacking pressure off other roles.
But if you start down that road how much DPS is the Engi sacrificing by going for so much Vuln stacking? This is where my lack of Engi knowledge really starts to shine.
And if that is the case, is the Engie’s Vuln stacking and damage comparable to an Ele that specs for Vuln stacking? I’m not saying all Ele’s, in this situation it’d be a 3 Ele team, one or two on Vuln stacking, though even the current setup of one ‘Vuln Ele’ maintains consistent stacks.
And as Nick said, that’s not even mentioning the insane amount of Fiery Greatsword uptime you would achieve with multiple Ele’s, in this situation having three Ele’s O.o

Though I have to admit I’m happy to see people starting to turn away from Mesmer, must be some bitter WvW/PvP resentment but my god do I hate that class….

Oddly enough I spent this weekend testing his engie. It’s good for the vuln stacking for sure. The vuln stacking component is especially useful in mixed parties.

I still don’t know why you are so gung ho on ele’s though. The kill times are comparable to anything else, and it requires additional coordination to achieve that. It seems to be more work for marginal gains. But hey, there is more than one way to skin a cat in this game as we all know.

Cause the gains aren’t marginal if used to it’s full potential.

Dub.1273:

Cause the gains aren’t marginal if used to it’s full potential.

Waiting to see it at the full potential then. With baited breath. Don’t disappoint.

I don’t really play the “moving the goalpost” game. At first people said of our groups that we suck so much that we needed timewarp to do decent destroyers. That ele aren’t even “equal” to warriors for single target. Etc. Then we show that in a fight that doesn’t use or abuse anything the ele has that is superior (like when boss are pushed against walls, or using the lightning flash trick, or the AoE capabilities etc) and show that this is a valid group composition that works incredibly well even under circumstances that do not favor it.
I don’t really need to prove anything at this point, if people chose to act ignorant of things they perfectly understand and know well I don’t need to do anything more, do go on.

And hell, that was just half of the reason this thread was made in the first place. The other half is that people should stop ridiculing Guanglai.
I was mistaken in not taking him seriously from the very beginning, and so are the rest who still persist as if Brazil invented the whole ranger thing and that it was something like a fluke for guanglai to get right: it was not.

One of the first answers Guanglai got in that thread: “too bad you don’t have any empirical data to back those claims cause they sure would help your ridiculous arguments”

His claims do not sound that ridiculous when you run with engineer and get good times with it.
I also found that in a couple dungeons like CM where you need reflection you can chain reflection even in pugs with bad dps with just a guardian and the engineer. The guard cast wall, then shield, then the engi throws elixir U and the guard will have WoR back when it’s needed. Tested in CM with pugs that had low dps pairing with a guardian guildie. So you don’t need the mesmer all that much for the projectile absorb/reflection. All that leaves to the mesmer are the boon removal and the incredibly reliable pulls (launch can be slightly unreliable at times and so are gs pulls). The boon removal is actually useful in a very few cases like casting a null field on that group of golem before the lasers in CoE because that retal can insta kill you while using a fiery rush or anything that does a lot of proc. But people in that thread, after all the things Guanglai got right before, still ridiculed him for bringing up that engi is a strong class. If this video can show that engi won’t slow a group down and can bring some benefit in a particular group compo like using one or two ele I would consider it a job done.

colesy.8490:

So after all this, is the conclusion basically “2 engi, 2 ele, 1 guard is a strong group composition, but 3 war, 1 guard, 1 mesmer is fine too”?

We weren’t running 2 engi, and Brazil’s team wasn’t running mesmer for that nice destroyer kill either. 3war1guard1mes is old news.
The conclusion is that whatever you prefer in a team composition there is no point in stacking warriors. CoF records were made with thieves. Most dungeons are faster with other team comps overall. 3war/1guard/1mes is what you run when you have no curiosity left in this game and play it safe and boring.

Is that what you really have to say anyhow, after all the Guanglai bashing? So, you still think his claims are that wild and ridiculous and the guy still doesn’t deserve any respect after all this? We can all be wrong at one point but decency requires admitting when it happens, throwing the towel and stop the bashing. I’m not really proud that I ignored his claims until now. I find it funny that it can persist to this day. I had already made the leap of faith when I geared up my engineer as well as it could be, got through the whole queen’s gauntlet to learn the mechanics solo then jump into dungeon test drives. I hadn’t even done the gauntlet at all yet, too busy farming dungeons with the post patch rewards. Did the gauntlet with his build, his recommendations for what an engineer is supposed to be, and had plenty of fun discovering that class.

Whether X or Y team is the “best” is highly debatable, and actually, can vary from dungeon to dungeon. What is not debatable is that Guanglai got strong theory crafting, builds and that classes are more balanced than most people used to think, whose prejudice (mine included) was heavily influenced by the terrible people who play these classes in pugs and wouldn’t know right from left when it comes to builds.

Is that what you really have to say anyhow, after all the Guanglai bashing? So, you still think his claims are that wild and ridiculous and the guy still doesn’t deserve any respect after all this? We can all be wrong at one point but decency requires admitting when it happens, throwing the towel and stop the bashing.

Firstly, I don’t even remember insulting Guang that much, I mostly just remember dismissing what he said because he was too lazy to make any video evidence of it.

Secondly, while reluctantly I accepted his claim of the ranger being a strong class once video evidence was posted proving it (considering basically every single ranger I have ever played with is some wrongbow/bear camping failure it was hard to accept that it was an actual good class, though even now I’m not interested in pugging with rangers because pugs have no idea that melee is the best thing for you to do on your ranger) and now whenever he discusses class compositions I’ve, with genuine curiosity and no malice have asked for somebody to test it, to which Brazil said he would take guang along in his dungeon group and record it. I have no idea whether that video is up or not, but hopefully it’ll be up soon.

It actually frustrates me a little that we could have known all of this months ago if Guang was actually bothered to make a video or to ask someone to make a video using his classes and class compositions, but instead he just spewed numbers at people and expected us to take them at face value. And then when his opinion of the ranger being strong is proven, he gets mad at people for not believing him. Again, he didn’t post any video evidence, so no **** sherlock, of course people are going to ignore and bash someone who makes claims without video evidence.

Literally the only thing that irritates me about this all is the fact that all of this information coming to light now (plus ANet nerfing) is making my mesmer less and less desirable for dungeons when I initally created one so I could get in to proper dungeon groups which bugs me because I enjoy playing it. Nevertheless, so far every single class is now open to me if I want to run a dungeon in a proper group bar necromancer (until information comes to light of them actually being good for anything besides dps) and it’s a good feeling.

I would like you guys with proper organised teams to test necro a bit more tbf. I ran mine in coe the other day and some of the boss kill times felt faster than when i was using my warrior. Our group is far from perfect, we dont maximise might uptime to our full potential because were lazy. But I wakittenting 8-9k auto attacks (final strike) on the destroyer with about 15 stacks of might. Seems like pretty decent dps with such a fast auto attack, locust swarm and wells also add some serious damage to the mix.