Guild Wars 2

Engineers use boons to keep themselves and allies alive. That’s what Jonathan Sharp says. This post isn’t to complain that he is wrong, it’s to prove whether he is right. I’ve seen a video here an there of elixir engi’s buffed up and kicking face, but I’m not sure whether their success is greatly enhanced by the boons, or whether the boons are just a nice little addition to otherwise high-level play at the expense of taking up 2 or 3 utility slots.

So what boons significantly increase an engineer’s and his allies’ survivability? What boons significantly make the enemy re-think ganking an engineer?

P.S. I ask mainly to figure out a good role for my engi in a variety of WvW situations, because right now my engineer strikes fear in the heart of nobody.

We have boons?

The only reliable boon we have is might. And maybe regen. All others are rng.

Stability? Protection? Retaliation? Yeah… maybe if you keep your pet guardian close.

The only boon that engineer can reliably give to his allies is regen, rest is random. Protection is best buff to keep allies from dying, but engi has no reliable way to keep it up.

There’s no boon that will make enemy think twice before engaging engineer.

Role in WvW? I assume you don’t have organized guild if you are asking here, so your best bet is to join zerg, listen to commander, pick speedy kits trait for perma swiftness, net turret and use rifles 2nd skill and net turret toolbelt skill to root people in place for your zerg to kill them. Also use tool belts 5th skill to pull people from walls then immobilize them with net skills.

You can also try camping jumping puzzles trying to knock people off ledges.

Edit:
@Isslair: You can’t reliably grant might to allies. Unless you mean using firefield combo+blast finisher

Well.
I know that my super elixir definetly boon up peopls survivals, assuming they have the smarts to save their blast skills for it.
Might is what I get from switching back and forth to my medkit – Helps the damage a lot.
You can also have crazy fury. Really, 6 runes of altruism, drop stimulants from medkit, and elixir B is all you need to have a pretty much never ending fury going in a fight.
Packing Ze Goggles would just be overkill.
But does this keep me alive? Definetly, as things die faster.
Does it keep others alive? Yeah.

Oxstar.7643:

Well.
I know that my super elixir definetly boon up peopls survivals, assuming they have the smarts to save their blast skills for it.
Might is what I get from switching back and forth to my medkit – Helps the damage a lot.
You can also have crazy fury. Really, 6 runes of altruism, drop stimulants from medkit, and elixir B is all you need to have a pretty much never ending fury going in a fight.
Packing Ze Goggles would just be overkill.
But does this keep me alive? Definetly, as things die faster.
Does it keep others alive? Yeah.

Aaaand what makes 6 runes of altruism an engineer ability? While I totally agree with you they really help out my team. You could switch those runes over to almost any other profession and be way more effective.

And a Dev saying our boons keep us and others alive is so laughable its sad, the best we could do is keep a couple stacks of might and random swiftness when they need protection or random fury when they need retaliation or random stealth when they need stability. Besides isn’t that what a guardian is suppose to do? Heck even a shout warrior is way more effective at saving his team with boons than an elixer Engi.

Linc.6834:

You could switch those runes over to almost any other profession and be way more effective.

Nope. They procc every 10 secs and any class who has a higher switch time than that is LESS effective. Anyways, the point is Engineer can take maximum advantage of those runes, I.E no other class could do a better job at team buffing with the runes alone (or self buffing) but maybe not a worse job either.

And the point was not if the buffs are engineer-spcific or not but if they helped keeping you alive.

Shout warriors got a lame 15 sec CD shout that does mediocre healing. I can provide constant means of area retaliation in an area while also healing.

The buffs that keep people alive are Stability and Protection. With Aegis to a lesser extent.
We cannot do Aegis, we cannot reliably keep Protection or Stability on allies. Leaving us with Regeneration.

Oxstar.7643:

Linc.6834:

You could switch those runes over to almost any other profession and be way more effective.

Nope. They procc every 10 secs and any class who has a higher switch time than that is LESS effective. Anyways, the point is Engineer can take maximum advantage of those runes, I.E no other class could do a better job at team buffing with the runes alone (or self buffing) but maybe not a worse job either.

And the point was not if the buffs are engineer-spcific or not but if they helped keeping you alive.

Shout warriors got a lame 15 sec CD shout that does mediocre healing. I can provide constant means of area retaliation in an area while also healing.

Weaponswapping in combat is a 10sec cd, pre-traits some professions have to reduce that cooldown. Attunement switching also triggers this. We might not use it worst, but we dont use it a whole lot better either.
And it is irrelevant, because were talking about Engineer abilities here. Not something commonly available. These buffs can help anyone keep themselves or others alive.

But they wouldnt need it so much now would they? I can go on my Guardian, and without spending a single traitpoint i will always be able to instantly grant myself and allies in a 1200range with Protection, Stability, Regeneration, Aegis, Swiftness and Retaliation. All at the same time, while youre still throwing around small AoE elixirs, hoping to proc Protection.

Not that Retaliation matters much since it doesnt prevent damage from happening, or mitigates that damage.

I think you are mistaken guys. Runes of altruism proc of using your healing skill, not swapping weapons. So yes, they are really good for engineers who use medkit. I don’t think any other class can use this type of proc as well as engineers. Maybe mesmer with the mantra of recovery as it has a 10s cd but most other profession got a longer cd on their healing skill (thief and elem got a 15s healing skill though).
I wish there was a set of runes which grants aoe protection when using a healing skill. I use Dwayna’s that grant aoe regen but protection would be nicer.

@Terra, if you’re talking about shout skills, they only have 600 range if I’m not mistaken, not 1200. I wish it was 1200 or even 900 would be fine as I feel 600 is a bit short sometimes when you’re in melee and have mostly range in your team or that the fight needs mobility. But guardian is already powerful as it is so I don’t think these shouts will be buffed.

Terrahero.9358:

The buffs that keep people alive are Stability and Protection. With Aegis to a lesser extent.
We cannot do Aegis, we cannot reliably keep Protection or Stability on allies. Leaving us with Regeneration.

And really, does it matter if your swaps of whatever is below 10 secs or not? Altrusim bonus, and every other switch based buff for that matter, is never under 10 secs.

Linc.6834:

Linc.6834:

You could switch those runes over to almost any other profession and be way more effective.

Nope. They procc every 10 secs and any class who has a higher switch time than that is LESS effective. Anyways, the point is Engineer can take maximum advantage of those runes, I.E no other class could do a better job at team buffing with the runes alone (or self buffing) but maybe not a worse job either.

And the point was not if the buffs are engineer-spcific or not but if they helped keeping you alive.

Shout warriors got a lame 15 sec CD shout that does mediocre healing. I can provide constant means of area retaliation in an area while also healing.

Weaponswapping in combat is a 10sec cd, pre-traits some professions have to reduce that cooldown. Attunement switching also triggers this. We might not use it worst, but we dont use it a whole lot better either.
And it is irrelevant, because were talking about Engineer abilities here. Not something commonly available. These buffs can help anyone keep themselves or others alive.

But they wouldnt need it so much now would they? I can go on my Guardian, and without spending a single traitpoint i will always be able to instantly grant myself and allies in a 1200range with Protection, Stability, Regeneration, Aegis, Swiftness and Retaliation. All at the same time, while youre still throwing around small AoE elixirs, hoping to proc Protection.

Not that Retaliation matters much since it doesnt prevent damage from happening, or mitigates that damage.

Oh please. Elixirs is not part of my build at all.
But I imagine elixir engys reason in the way that whatever result they get syncs well with their build.
And your buffs are quite shortlived.
Retaliation doesn’t matter? Dude. You think EVERYONE is condition specced in this game? I’m not sure how much of the direct damage is reflected back but it’s enough to matter, and it increases the damage your enemy takes as well.
Typically ranged classes are condition specced. Melee, death blossom thief being the exception, usually go for direct damage.

And altrusim bonuses are only possible every 10 secs so how fast you can swap through kits or attunments is irrevelevant as long as you can procc it every 10th sec.

And considering that there is no CD on kit swapping engineers can compete with the best of them in taking advantage of altrusim runes. Hpw effective these buffs are to the engineer himself depends on him – But he can buff his team by using the runes as well as anybody. And himself for that matter.

Retaliation does not reflect any damage at all.
The target, with retaliation up, still takes the same ammount of damage as he would have without retaliation.

Retaliation does some damage per hit, it’s a fixed ammount. Regardless if the hit on you was 3k or 300 …
The fixed ammount is pretty low.

So what makes retaliation good if it’s a low ammount and even worse: if it doesn’t mitigate any damage at all?
It’s a proc per hit, so anyone who does a lot of hits on you will get a lot of those low retaliation procs hitting them back.
It can ammount to a lot in a very short time… if they hit fast enough.

Funny then how it makes me take less dmg and the enemy more. Maybe it only really works for bunkers.

Oxstar.7643:

Funny then how it makes me take less dmg and the enemy more. Maybe it only really works for bunkers.

Maybe your profession has a trait that does this, altough i dont remember any such trait. But baseline retaliation DOES NOT reduce incomming damage.
Hence why its a pointless boon when we are talking about boons keeping people alive.

Unless you wanna go down the “but it kills enemies a tiny bit faster!”, but then we must include Might aswell as a boon that keeps you and your allies alive longer.

The point is, They hinted that the Engineer was somehow special and that it was the profession that uses boons to keep himself and other alive.
Funny because so does the Guardian, Ele and Necro and they all do it considerably better then an Engineer ever could.

On topic:

engineers can put up regen easy enough.
They can also make good use of might runes etc, as described.

But as far as the important boons go, I don’t see how we are good at buffing at all.
We can give boons by throwing elixirs mostly, and those are all random as hell.
For me that makes the whole ‘boon’ idea for allies incredibly unreliable.
I will give you ‘something’ but that could be stealth when we want stability, swiftness when we need protection… etc.

Of everything recently said by the dev’s about engineers, there is sooooo much I don’t see:
- what is ‘good at medium range’ in pvp suppuosed to mean?
- what is a strong engineer build that is so versatile that it needs nerfing? There are only strong engineer builds focused on one specific task…
- buffing by boons? Euh, random and all that…

bit confused at these comments from the dev’s.
It would actually take a lot of changes before the engineer is even remotely what they say it is…

Kimbald.2697:

Retaliation does not reflect any damage at all.
The target, with retaliation up, still takes the same ammount of damage as he would have without retaliation.

Retaliation does some damage per hit, it’s a fixed ammount. Regardless if the hit on you was 3k or 300 …
The fixed ammount is pretty low.

So what makes retaliation good if it’s a low ammount and even worse: if it doesn’t mitigate any damage at all?
It’s a proc per hit, so anyone who does a lot of hits on you will get a lot of those low retaliation procs hitting them back.
It can ammount to a lot in a very short time… if they hit fast enough.

Retaliation damage forumla

Damage dealt depends on the level and power of the retaliation’s source. Retaliation deals 267 damage per hit at level 80 with the base power of 916, and +1 damage for every 13.4 power above that. It is not reduced by the target’s armor.

And I find it funny they say we survive with boons but nerfed our only reliable source or boons (elixir b) to hell last update

1. No. Engineers have only 3 reliable AoE boons, at max, 4 stacks of might with HGH and area regen + 1.2 heal turret det. (or 2.4 if you are using rifle turret and det both, common in static discharge build. And retaliation if you are using EG and combo-ing off of super elixer with turret dets or shield #5?
None of these boons are going to save your life or anyone else’s more efficiently than any other proffession can. Heck even a warrior do better healing, drop one banner then use banner #5 on an ele buddy water field for 3 heal blast finishers, with one utility slot.

2. Any other potentially lifesaving boon or non-boon effects are RNG, which isn’t worth anyones time
Elixer S- Stability or Stealth
Elixer U- Stealth or reflect/absorb field. Two very different affects, completely situational
Elixer H- Short Protection/Regen/Vigor. Protection is done way better through runes and other proffesions, same with vigor.

3. The lifesaving things we do well that in a stretch we can call boons.
A. Super elixer with kit refinement, not longer since fix
B. Elixer R toss- Arguably beaten by Ele and Necro res, since Elixer R will not res people getting continually attacked and may miss due to blind and can be destroyed by smoke/reflect wall, while Ele it is instant and has different effects

Off topic
4. Retaliation scales with power, and punishes multi hit, AoE, and rapid attack severely, good example of this is if every grenade in grenade barrage hits a group of 3, all with retaliation and decent power, the user may drop dead, most Ive lost is about 3/4 hp at once.

Darn, I was hoping I was missing something and would get responses that supported Jonathan Sharp’s claims. Could he be referring to our many comboing possibilities?

About retaliation…the wiki says it does not reduce incoming damage. But even if it did it would have to be much less than 33% or it would be far superior to protection. Anyway this puts retaliation in the offense category, not defense.

To Bargaw: I have played many hours in WvW and know the many roles that can be played. Frankly I don’t want to follow the zerg as much as either a) defend points, or b) roam with my guildies. With my necro and thief I have a pretty good idea what type of WvW gameplay is best for the various builds, and even though I’m not a skilled player, I know I’m contributing in that role. But for my engineer the best role I can come up with is loading up on vitality and toughness and being a meat shield while everyone else does something. Frankly I know there is also a skill curve here, and I’m near the bottom of it, but I really don’t think I should feel practically useless.

Terrahero.9358:

Oxstar.7643:

Funny then how it makes me take less dmg and the enemy more. Maybe it only really works for bunkers.

Maybe your profession has a trait that does this, altough i dont remember any such trait. But baseline retaliation DOES NOT reduce incomming damage.
Hence why its a pointless boon when we are talking about boons keeping people alive.

Unless you wanna go down the “but it kills enemies a tiny bit faster!”, but then we must include Might aswell as a boon that keeps you and your allies alive longer.

The point is, They hinted that the Engineer was somehow special and that it was the profession that uses boons to keep himself and other alive.
Funny because so does the Guardian, Ele and Necro and they all do it considerably better then an Engineer ever could.

Ya? I don’t see necros having fury forever.
Or Guardians stacking 15-20 consistent might stacks.

Oxstar.7643:

Ya? I don’t see necros having fury forever.
Or Guardians stacking 15-20 consistent might stacks.

Two guardians can use the staff #2 and stack 24 might to an entire party in two seconds and then switch to a different weapon. Point being if you are going to troll on a serious thread stop wasting space, I hate scrolling back and forth to find what people say because of filler crap. Retaliation does not reduce damage, if it does it is an unintended affect of the boon and will be removed or a trait effect.

Lets not forget Empowering Might for guardians. Every crit you get (subject to 1s cooldown) gives 5s of AoE might. So with a little boon duration, a staff/hammer guardian can keep retal, protection and might up for long periods.

But that’s a guardian and boon spreading is their home turf. Comparing an engi to that is like comparing the anemic nerd down the street to a competition-class bodybuilder.

AFAIK the ‘blahblahblah on healing (10 sec cd)’ runes actually have 15 sec cooldown.

exactly, i seriously think Oxstar is trolling. Please go back to your own forum, you spreading misinformation. I have stated in another thread before, RUNE OF ALTRUISM (RoA) is bugged. The proc is 15 seconds every heal skill. Anyone who keeps mentioning giving might & fury to allies every 10 secs (based on tool tips) is obviously a non Rune of Altruism user. They are just theory crafter coming into Engineer forum to troll. If you are RoA user, you would have noticed the effects do no proc every 10 seconds. This is because if you build around using RoA, you definitely would have paid very GOOD attention to its effect. If you said you are truly a user of RoA and not noticed the the proc is every 15 secs, then you are obviously a very WEAK engineer for not noticing this bug.

TLDR: Rune of Altruism proc is every 15 secs and not 10 secs. You cannot get perma fury on engineer with just med kit “5” and RoA (unless you have high boon duration).

Rune of the centaur suffers from this bugged 15 sec cooldown as well.

@op I play an elixir spec and I have 4+ boons on me all the time during a fight. these greatly increase damage, survivability and mobility. Elixir B is a must and with 5 points in alchemy you drink another one at 75% hp (1 min cooldown afaik). Considering that you can trait for longer durations and shorter cooldowns and also toss elixirs at your feet, you pretty much guarantee permanent boons. The tossed elixirs might be random but they will help you keep boons up as well, especially in longer fights.
In any fight I have fury and retaliation on demand, permanent might stacks of 5+, reliable swiftness and regeneration and the ocasional protection/stability/vigor.
As for keeping your allies buffed, that is simply not the case, not in wvw anyway. It’s just not practical. The only toss with a decent radius is H (240), everything else is 180 afaik, it’s too impractical to toss an elixir and hiting both you and a ally at the same time, although there are some exceptions. It works in pve/spvp, just not in wvw.

“Occasional” is the key word here. In a situation where your survivability is at stake you need those buffs with 100% probability.

I have all boons in game on me when in fight. But that’s because I’m playing in a competent party with guardians, elementalists and other usefull professions. Not because I’m an engi.

Iove our boons. At 75% health you get lik 4 or 5 . Then you can turn all cond on you into boons. Which you can get end up too all the boons in the game which is really funny when your jumping off the tower into attacking force and your never dieing and you looking back and the guardians and anyone else that tries just flop .

I always have swift and vigor on me in a fight . This class is fun b/c its hardmode. Just wish the boons would last longer then they do.

Oh you can get them all with just eng just go to get alot of cond on you.

Isslair.4908:

“Occasional” is the key word here. In a situation where your survivability is at stake you need those buffs with 100% probability.

I have all boons in game on me when in fight. But that’s because I’m playing in a competent party with guardians, elementalists and other usefull professions. Not because I’m an engi.

I said occasional referring to the boons with shorter durations/fewer sources I have access to in my build. It does in any way contradict the rest.

I have most boons on me when I fight. And it’s not because a party carries me, it’s because I’m an engineer. See, goes both ways.

Please describe how to reliably get stability\protection. Just because you have a chance to get them doesn’t mean you will get them. Such a self-delusion.

Isslair.4908:

Please describe how to reliably get stability\protection. Just because you have a chance to get them doesn’t mean you will get them. Such a self-delusion.

I never said “reliably” regarding those boons. And the biggest problem for me is NOT their randomness, it’s their duration and source. 7 seconds on protection, 6 on stability, fully traited, which makes having a high uptime on them by stacking time with other sources impossible.
However, in most situations where I desperatly need stability I just use elixir S instead. It’s not a boon, but gets the same job done.

If you think it’s all self delusion, check out my vid somewhere on these forums and take a look at my boons.

Isslair.4908:

We have boons?

The only reliable boon we have is might. And maybe regen. All others are rng.

Stability? Protection? Retaliation? Yeah… maybe if you keep your pet guardian close.

I’ve seen this as well. At best the boons we have are completely random or occur from throwing potions from the toolbelt. So exactly where is our defense? and if we are to believe this was done on purpose why in the world would we need to use a completely randomize potion build to do the same things other classes get so easily. Why can’t stability, retaliation be added to the potions like Elixir B that people use all the time or to Elixir S or some other machinery we use like rocketboots. Requiring a single gameply build in order to get the things that other classes can do on the fly really isn’t useful. (stability while using a mortar doesn’t help me run across a bridge with wind that will knock me off).

The get back to the original question.

“Do Engineers use boons to keep themselves and other alives”

Yes, in the loosest sense every single profession uses boons to some extend for self preservation.
The question up to debate is, is this something of a role for the Engineer? To be that guy that rolls around a load of buffs on himself and allies?

And the answer is quite simply No. Other professions do it better so its not a role that fits Engineer specifically well. Other professions can do it better without even spending a single trait point.

So is Mr. Sharp wrong? Well no, technically we use boons to keep ourselfs alives. Pretty much every profession does.
But people shouldnt be confused into believing that this statement means Engineer is the grand daddy of boons, because we arent anywhere near that.

being an engineer is giving me arthritis i have to constantly mash my utilities and Tool belt skills and keep on juggling while keeping my distance and kiting i only got 2 hands with 5 fingers on each and mostly use 4 from each at a time on keyboard. but yeh all that mashing brings the same result of hitting 1-3 keys as any other class. heres the order of one of my skills combo: 9,8,2,7,5,4,F2,F3,F4,2,5,3,4,F1. and That is my basic opener combo wich doesn’t do much.

Since the devs seem to love their RNG factor for the engineer class, I would like to see elixirs grant boons/spells with similar uses.

Toss elixir S – stability/stealth – both very useful for stomping enemies, no change needed

Elixir U – make it grant ONLY stealth skills or ONLY reflection/area-denial skills.

Elixir H/toss Elixir H – when I want swiftness I get protection, when I want regen I get swiftness…why not just give all 3 with a random amount of heal or duration?

Elixir X – a random elite skill is not an elite skill. Even tho both random transformations grant stability, supply crate is just better in all but the most rare situations. I’d much rather see some some creativity on ANet’s part – give us a unique transformation….transform us into Bob the kitten Builder for all I care!

Maskaganda.2043:

@op I play an elixir spec and I have 4+ boons on me all the time during a fight. these greatly increase damage, survivability and mobility. Elixir B is a must and with 5 points in alchemy you drink another one at 75% hp (1 min cooldown afaik). Considering that you can trait for longer durations and shorter cooldowns and also toss elixirs at your feet, you pretty much guarantee permanent boons. The tossed elixirs might be random but they will help you keep boons up as well, especially in longer fights.
In any fight I have fury and retaliation on demand, permanent might stacks of 5+, reliable swiftness and regeneration and the ocasional protection/stability/vigor.
As for keeping your allies buffed, that is simply not the case, not in wvw anyway. It’s just not practical. The only toss with a decent radius is H (240), everything else is 180 afaik, it’s too impractical to toss an elixir and hiting both you and a ally at the same time, although there are some exceptions. It works in pve/spvp, just not in wvw.

I believe it was your video which prompted me to make this topic. I was impressed by your video, but it made me wonder how much of your success was build, and how much was skill. I’m inclined to think it was 95% skill, 5% build, and that you’d probably do rather well with any intelligent build. As for me, I need my build/profession mechanics to be something of a crutch (say 50/50 skill/build), and I’d bet the vast majority of other players are the same.

So if I understand correctly your idea is that all boons in general add to survivability in one way or another, and in aggregate that has significant impact. I suppose I could buy that, but it’s not the full story. In order to keep those boons up you need to have all of your utilities be elixirs and you need to spam all your elixirs when they’re off cooldown. That makes it a VERY specialized build, not something I would consider versitile. And it still doesn’t really help teammates, which you also said.

Eviator.9746:

So if I understand correctly your idea is that all boons in general add to survivability in one way or another, and in aggregate that has significant impact. I suppose I could buy that, but it’s not the full story. In order to keep those boons up you need to have all of your utilities be elixirs and you need to spam all your elixirs when they’re off cooldown. That makes it a VERY specialized build, not something I would consider versitile. And it still doesn’t really help teammates, which you also said.

You touch upon the heart of the matter.

The devs claim engineers need to pay a price in damage, for their versatility.
While in reality, there are no versatile engineer builds that do good.

There are only good specified engineer builds.

If you make a versatile engineer build, you can never get the traits to make it work.
You always lose on many aspects of your ‘versatility’, ending up weak at every task.

Every engineer build that people had succes with, is in reality a very specified build, focused on a certain task, function, or type of damage.
It is never a ‘versatile’ build.

Not more than other professions are versatile simply by design of the game not having a trinity…

I only create versatile builds myself, and I have yet to find one that can stand up to any of the succesfull specified builds engineers have!