Guild Wars 2

So, I’m having a lot of trouble dealing with condition stacking classes. I feel like I just don’t have enough cleanse to survive anything with my pretty standard soldier rifle build.

Typical situation:
Mesmer appears. We fight. I notice that I have 6 confusion stacks and am missing enough health to heal. I Use healing turret to cleanse. We continue fighting. Mesmer does their usual invuln, stealth, blink etc to stall before unloading again. I notice that I now 12 confusion stacks. Heal is not up yet. I die. I seem to take about 30k damage from confusion regardless of how well I dodge / block. 30k from torment most of the time too. I move around a lot to dodge and position. I feel like it’d be suicide to stand still.

Burning is pretty bad too. It’s harder to cleanse vs some classes because they just reapply it so often. But the common theme is, I take a few stacks of burning when my heal is on cd and I just have to disengage or else I will die. Most of the time I die even after getting away because it’s just so much damage per tick and heal is too far off cd. The death readout says things like: Burning – 60k damage, 14 hits.

Would need specifics on your build, but overall you’ve pretty much detailed the Engi’s biggest weakness. From what you say it seems like you at least know not to blow cleanses on the first condition, you recognize when you have confusion, how many burning stacks, etc. Speaking generally that’s about all you can do.

The only other thing is to avoid the condi generating attacks in the first place. Like you said you cleanse confusion against a Mesmer but they stealth and you know they just put it back on. If you know it’s coming dodge, block, stealth, Elixir S to prevent it so you don’t have to cleanse.

Watch the conditions before you use your healing turret. Alot of the conditions go away after 3 seconds and after 3 seconds use the turret to cleans what remains. Much of the condi problem lays in timing your turret correctly. This doesn’t mean they can’t give us some more condi cleanses like maybe adding 1 more condition removal to the turret. Passive condition removal sucks because it is wasted alot of times on debuffs that are useless and trivial that go away after a couple of seconds.

Basically this: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Soldier_Rifle with kits + mortar

but using Tools instead of Alchemy because I found the passive condi cleanses were being wasted on non-damaging conditions. Tools also allows SD and Lock on, which I find helps a lot vs stealth classes.

That is a good point about some stacks not being as damaging. It’s difficult to tell without mousing over them in the middle of a fight though.

You should be able to tell from the icon itself whether it needs to be cleared. 4 stacks of Vulnerability? Meh. 6 stacks of Burning? Clear ASAP.

Also regarding Alchemy, if you want decent condi clear there isn’t really a better option than this. There’s only 2 passive condi clears in the whole trait line. One every 15s and one when you hit 75% health and use Elixir B. Otherwise you can get adequate cleansing from using a couple elixirs, on top of the general healing and support that should help counter conditions a little bit.

Adamantium.3682:

You should be able to tell from the icon itself whether it needs to be cleared. 4 stacks of Vulnerability? Meh. 6 stacks of Burning? Clear ASAP.

Also regarding Alchemy, if you want decent condi clear there isn’t really a better option than this. There’s only 2 passive condi clears in the whole trait line. One every 15s and one when you hit 75% health and use Elixir B. Otherwise you can get adequate cleansing from using a couple elixirs, on top of the general healing and support that should help counter conditions a little bit.

Transmute still only removes a single stack of a condition if multiple stacks are applied (ring of fire 3 burns > 2 burns every 15s). It’s also hard to justify Alchemical Tinctures as “adequate” cleanse when it doesn’t affect both Elixir X skills, the 25% auto-S and all of the Elixir skills on egun..

I never said Alchemy makes you great against condis, we’ll never be a Celele. The fact remains that Alchemy is your best bet against conditions.

Against mesmers at least you can try to keep them cced and hit them with a lot of burst as quickly as possible. They’re frail enough that you can often down them before they can really stack up the condition damage…at least, in my experience. Your mileage may vary, of course. Sometimes, though, there just isn’t anything that you can do…I remember taking 60k damage from confusion alone once.

coro.3176:

I move around a lot to dodge and position. I feel like it’d be suicide to stand still.

I feel like this is the opposite of what you should do, especially if you’re eating three or four stacks of torment. Any second you spend moving will turn those three stacks into six stacks, which is probably why you’re dying. But beyond that point, I think it would be helpful if you knew where it was coming from so you know to avoid it in the first place.

If they’re using the scepter, be mindful of Illusionary Counter. It’s a huge part of why you’re probably dying to torment. The counter attack is dodge-able, so keep an eye out for when they’re using it and dodge immediately after they block.

It’s also helpful to remember that most condition weapon skills on mesmer are projectiles, and therefore need line of sight to be effective. LoSing their attacks is also very helpful, but if you are forced to get up close it’s also smart to remember to dodge into their clones as they are shattered, not away from them.

Condition builds in general are always going to give us a bad time. It’s just how we’re designed and balanced. Your best bet would be to bring Alchemy back into your build. The Transmute passive is kinda meh, but Alchemical Tinctures is amazing and synergizes with Hidden Flask at 75% and Self-Regulating Defenses at 25%. It also gets much stronger with elixirs included, and HGH reduces the cooldown of Super Elixir, which is also nice.

I don’t find condition builds to be as much a problem if I take both Elixir B and the Elixir Gun together. I still wouldn’t opt to 1v1 a condition mesmer, of course, but you should outlast long enough to call for help if you need assistance in defending a point or to get away and go somewhere else.

And there’s nothing wrong with retreating from a disadvantageous 1v1 fight. Better to rotate off point and push a 5v4 on the rest of the map than to force a fight you’ll probably end up losing.

Engi was and is the weakest class to condis. I do not know why ANet want to see us dieing to condis, but they do.

So we die to condis. Playing a FT Condi engi vs any other engi = wait for healing turret → Apply 8+ stacks of burning→ gg

Here is the thing: dueling in GW2 is complete nonsense. The game has too many hard counters. If you add out of control WvW stats some matchups cannot be realistically won unless you face a player way below your skill level. But in that case what’s winning worth? The only time dueling ever makes sense is when you want to get into sPvP and need practice against current meta builds.

That’s why I recommend to always roam with a friend. It is not only more fun because you can support one another but it also allows you to take on fights that seemed impossible before. Learning how and when to support adds a lot more depth to the game than being the king of 1v1 with a shallow and selfish build. (Slightly off topic: a 1v1 power build is in my book not more intelligent than a condition build. Those power builds rely on immunities or stealth, both problematic mechanics in a 1v1 scenario, and try to overcome the target with extremely high damage while being untouchable. Bottom line it is only a form of cool down management.)

That said, playing in a group with a like minded player doesn’t force you to gank everything on sight. I usually don’t. A noticeable exception being the shallow and selfish 1v1 me hero builds.

Soldier amulet, Melandru runes (or Hoelbrak), Sigil of Purity and Generosity are stuff what help a lot with condis

Alternatively, if you want to run a burst build but die just short of killing the opponent, you could consider using A.E.D.

Condi users can’t force their conditions to stop ticking, so they’ll trigger A.E.D.s full heal and remove all damaging conditions (except Confusion for some reason) most of the time. If you run a Static Discharge build you could even pick up Gadgeteer as Grandmaster, since chances are you’ll get hit a lot to stack up kill-level conditions.

Heck, you could even try a full S/D Gadget build against pure condi users. Might work?

Lupanic.6502:

Engi was and is the weakest class to condis. I do not know why ANet want to see us dieing to condis, but they do.

So we die to condis. Playing a FT Condi engi vs any other engi = wait for healing turret -> Apply 8+ stacks of burning-> gg

I doubt that we’re any worse than thief in that regard, except that our invuln prevents cleansing.

I’ve found decent success against condi builds with a condi bomber build. Essentially, if you keep them cced, they can’t condi you.

You can use blinds and knockdowns to your advantage.

IgnisVulpesXI.3015:

Alternatively, if you want to run a burst build but die just short of killing the opponent, you could consider using A.E.D.

Condi users can’t force their conditions to stop ticking, so they’ll trigger A.E.D.s full heal and remove all damaging conditions (except Confusion for some reason) most of the time. If you run a Static Discharge build you could even pick up Gadgeteer as Grandmaster, since chances are you’ll get hit a lot to stack up kill-level conditions.

Heck, you could even try a full S/D Gadget build against pure condi users. Might work?

After reading this, I went with A.E.D on a semi-glassy Rifle build, while it proved to be effective against most condition builds, anything with confusion stacking will just outright outplay this, after A.E.D pulls you from the purgatory, you find yourself with 15 stacks of confusion and killing it yourself faster than when you previously ‘died’ pre-A.E.D, it’s a sad joke really, if A.E.D ever gets to remove confusion, then it’s definitely a good counter versus condition.

Granted, this is from a non-HGH build, but I’m currently running with Hoelbrak runes and -40% condi food coupled with Mecha Legs which makes me nearly immune to movement impairing conditions. But confusion, what kitten.

Yeah, that’s the main problem A.E.D. has. I still don’t understand why Confusion isn’t removed, it clearly is a damaging condition (now even more so since Confusion ticks even if you don’t attack).

Perhaps we could ask for an A.E.D. buff and make it remove Confusion too, maybe even traited-damaging conditions (like Fear w/ Master of Terror and Reaper’s Chill), it could make all of the Engineer healing skills useful in some situations and I don’t think many classes can say that (counting Med Kit as useful since I’m sure someone uses it for selfish heal or interaction with on-heal runes).

Try this, in a few games i played i always get a title top player condi clear or how ever its named..

U have exlir c and mortar -lyssa combo for large stacks + elixir c to cleans teammates + 12sec on elixir r although it pins you to very small location to have full effects for this and is very ussefull for revivals.

Its very defensive and you will find poison your best dd.

P/s for some blasts and range reflect,and justa tiny bit of condi preassure
If focused how ever by pow classes u die ,fast:(

I need to test it with sentinel amulet just for higher hp toughness ,and try to stay alive and rev clean team discarding all dmg…

sry i posted wrong one,here is what i play

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqelUUhCsYFWwdLQ7FLsFF4HWiBQYKeRvmYHNFPBA-TJxHwAm2fQ8DAAwJAoYZAA