Guild Wars 2

zen.6091:

1. Bomb 1 is actually a pretty strong spam 1 skill.

Yep, let’s be honest about what it meant by “good at zerging”. It means how spammable and low risk are the AoE skills.

Chaba.5410:

zen.6091:

1. Bomb 1 is actually a pretty strong spam 1 skill.

Yep, let’s be honest about what it meant by “good at zerging”. It means how spammable and low risk are the AoE skills.

Plus, they’re not that useful in mobile situations, which is all the time in zergs. And even less when trying to chase them down

(It’s late and I’m tired, but I hope this makes sense.)
I both played engineer and elementalist (and some guard) in WvW. Engineers arent bad for zerging and they can do well, but they get outclassed by GWEN. You would rather have another warrior/guard/ele/necro. Some examples:

Warbanner (battle standard) vs Elixir R
Stand your Ground vs Elixir B
Even the normal hammer weaponskillset is better than bomb kit (It provides a nice aa, but thats it basically)

You don’t need another firefield if you got some eles. You also don’t need the waterfields as they are inferior to the eles one (shorter and less reliable). Also our weapons either inflict a lot of condition damage or single target cc ir damage and not so much utility. Pistol/Shield + bomb kit is not as good as a staff ele or a hammer/s+w warrior or a staff/gs guard. What the engineer lags is a reliable source of stability and a defensive/team focused weapon set.

Short reply: Make a power or partially celestial hybrid build. Use rifle, Elixir gun for stun break and utility, Rocket boots for mobility, Grenade kit or bomb kit for damage. Take some traits, which make it easier to stay alive like protection injection, backback regenerator (or invigorating speed if you are really good at timing your dodges, but the lag in huge fights makes it harder).

I have spent over 1950 hours playing as an engineer, big part of it in WvWvW. Retaliation is NOT a learn to play issue as some players keep telling here. Retaliation is still broken. It can potentially trigger up to 7*5 = 35 times with grenade barrage. The grenades have a long travel time at maximum distance and you cannot cancel them after them after you have thrown them. Maybe the enemy group didn’t have any retaliation when you tossed the ‘nades, but when the nades actually hit them, they all have retaliation on. I remember several times being hit over 10k retaliation damage from just grenade barrage + few other grenade skills. This should be fixed by Arenanet. Retaliation shouldn’t trigger so many times for one skill, which does much less damage on the enemies. Retaliation can be easy kept up spamming just guardian hammer #1 and hammer #2. Maybe limit retaliation so that it can trigger max 2-3 times per second.

Engineer has 3 weak points, which makes it bad for zerging:
1) lack of heavy armor / sustain inside the zerg. Engi’s best power weapons, bomb kit #1 and rifle require close range to deal maximum damage and burst. For some reason even rifled barrels trait doesn’t increase rifle range by 200 like it says, but only 100 for rifle #3, #4 and #5. Warrior rifle has 1200 untraited range and requires 2 point trait to make all its attacks pierce.
2) relatively low access to stability and bad stunbreaks (EG healing mist has long cooldown and the regeneration itself is weak, other stun breaks are not even viable for most builds)
3) condition removal outside the elixirs is bad and elixir healing just sucks. This means if you stay at the back lines or far on the sides the enemy condition builds will eat you.

I don’t think the balance changes planned will make engineer any more reliable for zerging, but rangers will see more use. GWEN is still the way to go.

^^ This. You can drop youself right quick, and in a hurry

Remember, skills aren’t balanced around WvW-size zergs. They nerfed confusion and retaliation in WvW as a band-aid attempt when the real issue was how it procs on specific skills. Not sure I have a lot of faith in a real fix.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpPr1XxkLseNiaBF6bsxAIqr85IcgnC-TVCEAB2s/gVKNcSZGXKBVU9HP0QAwDCwN9AOfCAIFATKjA-w

My Engi build. I run with Oblivious in Desolation, and I outlast most warriors/guardians in a melee train against SFR blobs. Every 20s you have a waterfield +2 personal blasts, your bombs heal roughly 250 every 1s for AoE, and damage people for 1-2k every second. Blind bombs, 2 blocks, 2 invulnerabilities, a pull that is the bane of any Commander lacking stabilities. Supply crate for AoE interrupt, and a AoE thrown stealth if someone is downed and about to be stomped. Easy to learn, easy to play. Engineers are very viable in a melee train, just too many people have no idea how to play an Engineer.

Oh, change Auto-protection to Stabilized armour if you’re not very good at dodging trains. I only run auto protection because I don’t tend to get stunned or knocked-down.

aShotOfDaniels.8574:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpPr1XxkLseNiaBF6bsxAIqr85IcgnC-TVCEAB2s/gVKNcSZGXKBVU9HP0QAwDCwN9AOfCAIFATKjA-w

My Engi build. I run with Oblivious in Desolation, and I outlast most warriors/guardians in a melee train against SFR blobs. Every 20s you have a waterfield +2 personal blasts, your bombs heal roughly 250 every 1s for AoE, and damage people for 1-2k every second. Blind bombs, 2 blocks, 2 invulnerabilities, a pull that is the bane of any Commander lacking stabilities. Supply crate for AoE interrupt, and a AoE thrown stealth if someone is downed and about to be stomped. Easy to learn, easy to play. Engineers are very viable in a melee train, just too many people have no idea how to play an Engineer.

Oh, change Auto-protection to Stabilized armour if you’re not very good at dodging trains. I only run auto protection because I don’t tend to get stunned or knocked-down.

very good build mate . +1

maybe with more healing power ( in Inventions – toughness trait line it converts healing power to power ) you have more effective regeneration and rejuvenation when melee’s train heals you . i changed a bit the armor to have more sustain inside zerg and have some more critical chance without loosing too much armor or power ( because ot sigil of torment you used )

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpPr1XxkLseNiaBF6bsxAIqr85IcgnC-TlCEAB2s/gVKPEUJImqqooaFapEzDNEA8gAc+EA4megAAIA+5P/5P/5Pbn7cn7cn7sMAMjB-w

for wvw zerging, I feel like engi lacks really strong reliable POWER aoe. with the exception of throw mine and to a lesser extent barrage.

BoB has a huge delay and usually ends up whiffing. Same with the toolbelt from rocket turrent. Rocket turret also dies very quickly.

FT 2 travels too slow, so you end up using it at 100-200 range, basically melee range. (not usually a problem in spvp since the environment is more condensed.)

Elixer 4 another more risk than reward and must be in melee range to use.

FT 1 gets overkilled from retaliation and so does grenades/barrage. (im fine with this)

I really think they should super buff the FT auto in damage and lower the cast time since it is really risky for an engineer to go in 400 range with mediocre condi cleanse/semi-low duration stability. I cant even do half the damage my warrior can do even tho i have supr runes of strength and ~15 might stacks in a power build.

Here, watch me melt from retal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYutTsU5heU&list=UUhAko6R31mFRyl5gr7fF7Mw

Wouldn’t really call that melting. Still pretty broken.

Yea, that’s not a good example of the kind of one-shotting oneself being talked about here. You keep spamming the grenades even though it shows how you’re taking retaliation damage.

To be honest it’s your own foult. You didn’t even bother using healing skill. It only shows that retaliation is great anti brainless aoe spam mechanics.

I could do way more damage than that with my ele while taking way less damage from ret.

I did that simply as an example. And didn’t heal on purpose.

If that were a bigger zerg/group you drop much quicker. Again… just an example. As for the ele comment above… do you see our problem?

The only way I see engis viable is though bomb healing frontline, like being a guardian, but more focused on healing and cleansing condis. 2/0/6/6/0 or something similar. You can easily heal +450 with every bomb, and do some ~2500 healing with Sigil of Renewal + Regenerating Mist and Magnetic Shield.

Nades and FT suffer a lot from Reta, and unless reta mechanic is changed, better avoid hitting that amount of enemies.

Its still just stability, really its just stabillity. If i had access to something like rampage as one, earth armor, dolyak signet … i wouldnt have 8 80s now. Throw elxir B is like the worst skill for stability in history of gw2., Casttime, traveltime, no stunbreak and the duration is lower than a blink of an eye..

Everything besides heavy kit based builds are just free loot. They are very complex to play and not very forgiving. You have to choose between mobility, damage, support and survivalbility so most people just play warriors and eles to avoid such decisions.

If you want to play your engi in zergfights, then get your fixed group with guards that provide stability for you.

We don’t see many Rangers out there with RaO either though.

step 1: slap on zerkers gear

Step 2: Spam grenades

Mayama.1854:

So after reading the “GvG ranger” thread i thought why not make a thread about the other stepchild of WvW zerging, the engineer. What needs to be changed or improved to make the engi good at zerging, frontline, blackline or ganksquad. What needs to be done to make pubcommanders and GvG leaders want engineers in their group?

Edit: I took a long break, almost one year. So if the engi was actually good at zerging at one point I dont know it.

Back when I played, when I tried it on Engi, the 2 things that struck me and ended up being the deal breakers, is how extremely poor their stability and stun breakers are designed to be in comparisons with other classes I played which are Guard, War, Necro, Ele, Mes and thief a little bit.

Engi simply didn’t come even close in this department. Yea I know that your guards are supposed to be for that, but when push comes to shove and their group CDs are up you’re just simply kittened on an engi, whereas regardless if I was doing frontline as a tank type on guard / war, or deeps on my necro or mes, I always had my own CDs available for those occasions. Well, to clarify, mes also had a ton of problems until they implimented the stability mantra, its low CD and a tanky build goes a looooooong looooooong ways. Situation isn’t great but vastly improved from what it was, unlike the engi.

Front line- Bombs/Flamethrower
Mid/Back- Grenades/Elixir gun

i built my eng to have 3200 armor , with flamethrower ( +200 toughness ) i am playing 2 weeks now in front-line without any problem .

when the enemy zerg is not so strong , i really don’t want the +200 toughness from ft .

as for stability in zergs , it is not eng problem but guardians …. guardians should give stability to zerg , and if the formation is all guardians in the same parties , then all other people remained without stability . this is a problem that solved only if you left guards without pt or separate them equal to all parties , choose what you want