Guild Wars 2

This may sound dumb to some of you, but it is something that is really bothering me. I have looked up the damage formula for GW2 and it is…..

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

According to this formula, the Armor Value as it shows in your hero panel is al that is used when calculating damage mitigation.

Commanders on my realm (Maguuma) like to refer to front-line fighters as “Heavies” They may say something like “Heavies to the gate” etc. The majority of players that I have talked to on my realm say this only includes someone who wears heavy armor. Now, I have analyzed this from a numbers perspective. Looking at the difference between heavy and medium armors for example. On average, heavy armor has 25 more defense then medium. Since armor value is simply the sum of defense (from 6 armor pieces and shield) and toughness, that means that a medium armor wearer with a shield has 150 less potential armor. So all things being equal, I can see where a toon wearing heavy armor has a higher armor potential.

However, I look through a lot of builds and talk to people. And I see build choices being made that negate that potential. For example…..

Most of the guardians I see run 2H weapons. This means they do not have a shield. That drops 61 defense. Further more, many classes have the ability to trait for extra toughness while carrying a shield (usually 90 toughness). 90 + 61 is 151. That means that unless the guardian takes Strength in Numbers (which some don’t) then they are on and even playing field with the medium armor class now. mathematically.

I play an engineer. I have 3200+ armor, 24K HP and can heal for 30K+ every 16 secs. You cannot keep a condition on me. But yet other players claim that when the commander calls for “Heavies” to proceed, that I am not included. This is really irritating to me.

At this point I have gotten so frustrated by this seemingly close minded way of thinking that I am considering changing servers. Before I do something that drastic I wanted to post here and see if I am just missing some really important fact.

I can outlive and outheal guardians and warriors alike. I can clear condis fast and keep them off. I can heal and boon allies extremely well. I can pressure enemies with enough damage to make them pay attention to me and then I can stay alive while keeping that attention. So what else is required to be considered a front-line fighter.

If you look plate has 300 more base toughness. This is a heavie. This rolls over to the fact that when building for damage they can forgo a little more defense then most can in there builds.

It’s not just the base toughness/armour that makes “Heavies” the preferred choice for frontline. They have many other defensive abilites built into the class that make them better suited for it than medium/light classes; in particular lots of access to stability, blocks, and invulnerability, on top of very good regen/healing.

Sure, you can build an engi with huge healing, but you have to sacrifice alot of DPS to achieve it. You can build an engi with lots of blocks/invulns, but again you gotta sacrifice either some healing or some DPS. You can build an engi for strong cleansing, but then you sacrifice something else. Your stability is never going to compare, and neither is your (physical damage) AoE DPS. But “Heavies” can have decent healing, lots of stability/blocks/invulns, decent cleansing, and still have decent (direct damage) AoE DPS.

I’m not saying it’s not possible to make Engi work in large fights, I’ve seen people do it. But you are starting from a disadvantage. And, IMO, the stability access is a real deal-breaker.

“Heavy” is just a term for generalization that’s pretty typical to rpg/mmo games. It may not always make the most sense in every game but neither does the “DPS” title either.

Engis can’t regen over 500hp/sec like warriors and guardians do, and that’s not even including their heal skill.

If you’re that tanky though, you’re classified as a heavy and you can follow the heavies. It’s more based on your armour/toughness stat anyways.

If I see an engi with those kind of stats though… you do no damage ._.

@Ragnar

I do understand your point. I also play a guardian. However, I have found a way around stab (for the most part). I can tell you that I live longer on my engi than I do my guardian. Also, I feel that the engi is more predisposed to healing and condi cleansing than the guardian is. So I think that comes down to every profession has their strong suits and weaknesses.

As for the damage, I don’t agree there. I can do quite a lot of AoE damage with the flamethrower and retain my healing and defensiveness.

My point was not that guardians were not more predisposed to being heavies. In fact, I feel they are. I have spent a lot of time on my engi getting him to the point he is at. My point was, it seems to me that built right other classes besides heavy armor wearers can be just as viable.

@Samhayn

I don’t see that heavy armor has 300 more toughness. When I look at a piece of Soldier’s gear it has the same numbers no matter what armor prof it is. As I stated in my post, it does have more Defense. However it is only 150 not 300.

@Reverence.

I’m sorry, but with 3800 AP I do good damage. Maybe you have not seen one built like mine

bigrob.3510:

@Reverence.

I’m sorry, but with 3800 AP I do good damage. Maybe you have not seen one built like mine

Let me guess, you’re running a mix of Cleric’s, Soldier’s, and Sentinel’s (Maybe Apothe instead of Cleric’s). You have healing bombs, elixir gun, Healing turret, Backpack regenerator.

Your traits probably look something like 10-0-30-20-10 or 10-0-30-30-0

You aren’t going to do a lot of reliable damage, you don’t have enough aoe disruption (you have some, but not enough), and you don’t have any stability.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Cleric engineers, but they just aren’t as useful as guardian/warriors on the front line. Though the bombs can be some excellent utility.

cat.8975:

bigrob.3510:

@Reverence.

I’m sorry, but with 3800 AP I do good damage. Maybe you have not seen one built like mine

Let me guess, you’re running a mix of Cleric’s, Soldier’s, and Sentinel’s (Maybe Apothe instead of Cleric’s). You have healing bombs, elixir gun, Healing turret, Backpack regenerator.

Your traits probably look something like 10-0-30-20-10 or 10-0-30-30-0

You aren’t going to do a lot of reliable damage, you don’t have enough aoe disruption (you have some, but not enough), and you don’t have any stability.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Cleric engineers, but they just aren’t as useful as guardian/warriors on the front line. Though the bombs can be some excellent utility.

I run soldier’s armor and weapons with clerics trinkets. I run e-gun, flamethrower and bomb kit. Flamethrower is my main damage and the auto attack tooltip says 5x 1620 for damage. It also gives me an aoe knockback and blind. A fire field and a little napalm aoe explosion.

e-gun 5 heals for a lot and i blast it for area retaliation. e-gun 3 cleanses those around me of condis. bombs provide good effects and explosions heal. Big Ol Bomb is a good knockback. Healing turret and backpack regen are in my build.

My build is 0/0/30/30/10. Between stabilized armor and protection injection, when control effects are used i take 53% less damage. However, due to Transmute, my food and runes of Melandru, condition duration is very low. Thus you may hit me with a 2 sec stun for example, but I will only be stunned for about 1/2 sec. Then I have 5 secs of protection thanks to your stun. I do have a stun break if I need it. Also, with automated response if I do get low on hp then condis can’t be applied. I can honestly say that I have not seen the lack of stability to be a big problem. When roaming I have taken groups of 2 and 3 on my own.

I have eaten enough front-line guardians and warriors both in zerg battles and when roaming to know that my damage is not lacking. In fact, there are times that they turn and run after I hit them a few times.

Full stats are….

Attack Power: 3609
Condi Dmg: 350
Armor: 3228
Health: 21162
Healing Power: 1020

Again, my point here is not to say that guardians/warriors are not as good as me. They can do what I do with less effort in some cases. However, my warrior cannot heal for anything near what my engi or guard do. My point here is to say that an engi (or another class) can be as effective if built and played in the right manner.

When I made this assertion on my server I was told that heavies always had to wear heavy armor. When I mentioned that guards and warriors could have bezerker builds the answer I received was “then they are idiots”. My server would not even consider a support guardian as a useful team member. This kind of mentality is very frustrating to me. I was hoping by posting here that I would find that it was just my server and not the GW2 community as a whole that is so closed-minded.

bigrob.3510:

Flamethrower is my main damage and the auto attack tooltip says 5x 1620 for damage.

The 5x 1620 is an INCREDIBLY misleading tooltip. That means that the sum of all 5 ticks is 1620 damage TOTAL. It’s a TERRIBLE autoattack, and flamethrower should only really be used for everything else.
#2: HUGE burst, great power coefficient if you can land both hits on someone.
#3: Powerful, low cooldown cone knockback.
#4: Fire field, burn application.
#5: No cast time pbaoe blind, perfect for stomping.
#Toolbelt: More burn.

Oh, and Attack Power is a meaningless stat, because damage is calculated by POWER * WEAPON STRENGTH rather than POWER + WEAPON STRENGTH

so gimme yer power ;D

bigrob.3510:

This may sound dumb to some of you, but it is something that is really bothering me. I have looked up the damage formula for GW2 and it is…..

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

According to this formula, the Armor Value as it shows in your hero panel is al that is used when calculating damage mitigation.

Commanders on my realm (Maguuma) like to refer to front-line fighters as “Heavies” They may say something like “Heavies to the gate” etc. The majority of players that I have talked to on my realm say this only includes someone who wears heavy armor. Now, I have analyzed this from a numbers perspective. Looking at the difference between heavy and medium armors for example. On average, heavy armor has 25 more defense then medium. Since armor value is simply the sum of defense (from 6 armor pieces and shield) and toughness, that means that a medium armor wearer with a shield has 150 less potential armor. So all things being equal, I can see where a toon wearing heavy armor has a higher armor potential.

However, I look through a lot of builds and talk to people. And I see build choices being made that negate that potential. For example…..

Most of the guardians I see run 2H weapons. This means they do not have a shield. That drops 61 defense. Further more, many classes have the ability to trait for extra toughness while carrying a shield (usually 90 toughness). 90 + 61 is 151. That means that unless the guardian takes Strength in Numbers (which some don’t) then they are on and even playing field with the medium armor class now. mathematically.

I play an engineer. I have 3200+ armor, 24K HP and can heal for 30K+ every 16 secs. You cannot keep a condition on me. But yet other players claim that when the commander calls for “Heavies” to proceed, that I am not included. This is really irritating to me.

At this point I have gotten so frustrated by this seemingly close minded way of thinking that I am considering changing servers. Before I do something that drastic I wanted to post here and see if I am just missing some really important fact.

I can outlive and outheal guardians and warriors alike. I can clear condis fast and keep them off. I can heal and boon allies extremely well. I can pressure enemies with enough damage to make them pay attention to me and then I can stay alive while keeping that attention. So what else is required to be considered a front-line fighter.

quit whining… i play a mesmer and run an effective 3.8k armour, im still classed as a weak mage

i built my mesmer originally as a commander (the frontline mesmer build) and i cant even begin to imagine how many times i was laughed at or ridiculed, with permanant protection and 3 clones up (which is easy to do) i have an effective armour of 5654 with staff im incredibilly survivable and can heal better than any other class on the game with around 15k hp every 15 seconds,

my point is, idiots play this game and enjoy pretending they know what theyre talking about, youre always gonna get sheep that follow the meta, but thats not what makes truly great players, it sounds like youve got a good build keep up the good work

i forgot to mention i remove 4 conditions every 10 secs aswell

bigrob.3510:

I can outlive and outheal guardians and warriors alike. I can clear condis fast and keep them off. I can heal and boon allies extremely well. I can pressure enemies with enough damage to make them pay attention to me and then I can stay alive while keeping that attention. So what else is required to be considered a front-line fighter.

First, please link the engi build that is better than bunker guardians and warriors (I just started playing one so I am curious). Second and this is just IMO, heavy implies the two classes that wear heavy armor not that a player is tanky or not.

Most importantly, bunker built Guardians and Warriors are nearly lag immune. They also come to the fight with massive party buffs (stability being the most important), constant group heals, group condition removal, they output a massive amount of control, AoE spam and when well stacked are almost impossible to bring down. To sum up, they are easy to play, easy to master and most importantly proven. The engineer while capable in skilled hands is an entirely different beast that does not fly on auto-pilot like true “heavies”.

I’ve seen some PvT engis that do pretty darn good as frontliners.
The problems about “heavies to the gate” not including engis is that you lose your toughness bonus when you man a ram, and most heavies don’t spend a long time at the gate. The only boon to being at the gate is flamethrower going through it. Most groups aren’t stupid enough to stand at the gate during a defense.

Considering how most Engi skills are condition based in nature; it plays against type and you fall into same situation as LB rangers and venomshare thieves that you can run with the zerg; but don’t really add a lot to the party.

When the commander talked about heavies its only to make things work on the battle. He could say : ‘’Heavies and other player that have a tanky build and can’t do something similar as heavies, but make you know your stuff and already tried so you don’t just run and die at the door. Pls’’ But its a bit too long to say and not everybody would understand quick enough.

When you say heavies, even new player will know that this mean. In combat you can look at every exception out there.

When a commander says he want “heavies” up front, he’s really saying “kittening people with half a kittening brain that know when the kitten to dodge and arent kittening rally bots that res the entire kittening enemy raid which we’re about to engage”.

very well said xD i say the same thing when commanding, i pretty much know on my server who can hold there own, im not gonna call anyone out if they want to go up front as im one of them

Your build sounds very we crafted, but I’d like to see it in gameplay.

Like some posters have stated you still cannot bring the party buffs, cc’s, stability that heavy classes can. While I’m sure you can do well on your own, it doesn’t seem to bring much to the group.

Then again, I’d like to see some footage of your gameplay with this build. I’ve played every class for various hours and builds, and Engineers take plenty of time to master and are excellent in experienced hands. Guard/Warrs are the opposite, being very easy to dominate

Engi might be the hardest char to play well. I ran a similar build at one time and never had a prob being up front. Well the only prob was retal with a FT. The 7 might stack and 400 extra toughness was nice.

Reverence.6915:

Engis can’t regen over 500hp/sec like warriors and guardians do, and that’s not even including their heal skill.

If you’re that tanky though, you’re classified as a heavy and you can follow the heavies. It’s more based on your armour/toughness stat anyways.

If I see an engi with those kind of stats though… you do no damage ._.

Not true, dire, carrion, rabid.

I consider my necro to be a “heavy” with some utility swaps and weapon swaps to melee only. Stands at 26-31k health and 2950ish-3200ish armor pending gear worn and tack buffs (guard tacks, bloodlust etc).

In this set-up I have 2 stunbreakers, 2 full condi cleanses (1 is low CD), I use my DS as 2nd healthbar (or immunity if you will) and still do well on damage. The area that I lack is stability and insta cast immobilize cleanse. But I can and do get pretty heavy when I want to. though most of teh time I prefer running a ranged staff DPS hybrid build.

My engi is only lvl 44, but I can see the class having this sort of potential and will experiment with it once its at lvl 80 and I get some gear on him.

Though I should say, I do not provide spammable group utilities and cleanses like on my guard or war. The necro well of power is actually far better then eitehr guard or war can provide (especially when traited which I have), but it is on a long cooldown.

So I thin kits not the stat disparity, or abilities themselves, but rather the fact that guards / warriors can have them nearly spammable, whereas engis, necros, etc. can not.

bigrob.3510:

@Ragnar

I do understand your point. I also play a guardian. However, I have found a way around stab (for the most part). I can tell you that I live longer on my engi than I do my guardian. Also, I feel that the engi is more predisposed to healing and condi cleansing than the guardian is. So I think that comes down to every profession has their strong suits and weaknesses.

As for the damage, I don’t agree there. I can do quite a lot of AoE damage with the flamethrower and retain my healing and defensiveness.

My point was not that guardians were not more predisposed to being heavies. In fact, I feel they are. I have spent a lot of time on my engi getting him to the point he is at. My point was, it seems to me that built right other classes besides heavy armor wearers can be just as viable.

@Samhayn

I don’t see that heavy armor has 300 more toughness. When I look at a piece of Soldier’s gear it has the same numbers no matter what armor prof it is. As I stated in my post, it does have more Defense. However it is only 150 not 300.

not the armor it self but the class has more base armor.

If the commander is telling only heavies to attack the gate, it might be because he has a rough estimate of how many players he has with him who have heavy armor and asking only those to attack so your group does not proc orange swords. Regardless of the other semantics being argued in this thread, just thought I would mention that.

“Heavies” is anyone who can survive and thrive in a hostile environment without their face melting off.

My ranger runs as a heavy, whereas my warrior runs fairly glass.

my warrior have 3600-700 armor and still not in full tank and ascended. every 180 armor is equivalent with 10% dmg reduction. warrs, guards have great HoT beside the armor. they can stand at the door and just regenerate. often lights die while my health bar is not move.

Dawdler.8521:

When a commander says he want “heavies” up front, he’s really saying “kittening people with half a kittening brain that know when the kitten to dodge and arent kittening rally bots that res the entire kittening enemy raid which we’re about to engage”.

This. And melee players who are built to survive the front line, including d/d eles, well necros, even some people build tanky mesmers.

“Heavies to the gate” was an example. In that situation, we were being told to surprise them when they came in. They were unaware that we were in the tower and we were going to slaughter them as they came in. The commander was saying to have survivable players in the front and ranged against the back wall.

Some of you seem to agree with me that it is not the class so much as it is the ability of the build and player. That gives me hope at least to find other people who think past what is obvious.

Yes I understand that guardians can do what I do easier and people who want to take the easy route are encouraged to use a guardian. However, I guarantee that while I may not boon as much as they do I heal the group for a whole lot more then them. So ideally, a front line with both of us would be much stronger.

Again, some of you keep saying guards are better at this or that. My point was not that one is better or worse. My point is that a front-line engi (or other class) can be just as viable and just as helpful in different ways. The best groups I’ve run in were diverse and didn’t rely on just one tactic.

GW2 is built so you don’t have to use cookie cutter builds. You have a lot of freedom to create toons that play to your strengths. That is one of the appeals that it holds for me. Having a brain is a plus. In battle, I do not want to roll with a bunch of lemmings. So if a person can perform in a given role then we should be open-minded enough to accept that. If they can actually do it of course.

I do very well in WvW on my engi and can outlast guardians and warriors alike. I play this build as a front-liner in the zerg, as a roamer, and as a cap defender in PvP. It is very common for me to get 3v1 fights and win. So I know that my survivability and damage is high enough.

I am going to xfer (probably to TC). I guess I will just do some guesting and try to find a WvW guild that is not closed-minded. Thanx for all the replies.

I agree Rob, good luck on what you decide.

Well that clears that up…I was thinking the call was for doughnut/Cheetos chubs to stop eating and begin fighting.

RedCobra.7693:

quit whining… i play a mesmer and run an effective 3.8k armour, im still classed as a weak mage

wow, what a constructive observation. {major sarcasm}

anyways, I would have to agree with the OP. If I could replace all the warriors that accompany me in WvW with engineers with similar if not identical builds, I would do so without question. To be completely honest, I’ve started an engineer class recently simply because I now see their abilities to support and survive. The engi goes great alongside “heavies” and their immobilizations are great for holding choke points. I know two in particular here in ferguson’s crossing that can wipe 6-7 man groups by themselves just by laying turrets and kiting players into their turrets to immobilize them there.