Guild Wars 2

So lately I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the other skills in into the meta, here is what I believe.

Right now the current meta in terms of utilities skill revolves around the application/manipulation of boons/condis or survivability skills (stealths, escapes, teleports, invurnabilities, etc). I find that if a skill doesn’t have any of these, they often are used.

Gadgets- Most gadgets do not offer anything I stated above. With the recent patch, rocketboots are now better escapes and we see a large increase in their usage. Slick shoes before hand were being used because they can be great methods of escape. The rest of the gadgets often don’t offer suitable things for the meta for their cooldowns. Goggles, for instance, they prevent you from being blind, break stun, and give fury. However, the other stunbreakers make it obsolete. For example, I can just use exlixir gun instead and get a whole new set of weapon skills and a regen stunbreaker with a smaller CD. So goggles just dont offer enough of what is needed in the current meta of utilities to makeup for its CD. Then we have Personal Battling Ram. In a game of aoes, cleaves, and condi spam, a single target knockdown with a CD 25 seconds makes it not viable. The toolbelt skill is eh too, most would rather get rifle turret if they want to go for projectile damage. Finally mines. They got a stealth nerf by taking away their boon stripe capabilities and that was one of theo nyl reasons I used it. Why get that when I can just get a bombkit? Sure it has a longer CD for a AoE knockback, but I’m also getting blind, burning, immobilize/cripple, all the things that are required in the current meta for utilities. If you perhaps restore the boonstripping capabilities, give us the option to throw the minefield instead of placing it at our feet, then making so the mine itself applies 2 stacks of Torment to all those hit, then it would be worth it.

Turrets- Right now turrets suffer from a lot of bugs, lack of meaningful damage, lack of utility, and vulnerability to the current meta. With teh amount of cleaves and AoEs, turrets usually can go down really fast. The toolbelt skills aren’t amazing either, so once they’re down you’re basically a sitting duck with no utilities. There are a few ways you can solve this. Perhaps make it so that Turrets level up the longer they are at, making them more effective. The current stats and setup of turrets would be level 1. Max of level 3. When you pick up a turret it saves it’s level. If it is destroyed then it resets. You could also put in a trait that negates AoE damage. Finally you maybe could make the toolbelt skills worth it and have more utility. As I said near the top, if a utility skill doesn’t have one of those things; it seems to be used less.

Kits- Very few kits do I see people stay in them to attack. They usually take advantage of the #2-5 skills then switch out. Flamethrowers knockback and Blind, toolkits pull/shield/confusion/cripple, elixir gun support (though with weakness changes I’m seeing more people auto attack with this), and those are the ones I see this problem with the most. You need to look at what each kit does and build on that. Take Flamethrower for example. Flamethrower is really good when close range and requires you to be up in their face. This means you need to get the enemy to stay close while surviving yourself. The juggernaught trait is great for adding tankyness, however the autoattack is eh in terms of the utility meta. Perhaps make it so that while the flame jet is dealing damage, it cripples the target. The minute the flame jet ends its attack, the cripple ends. This allows engineers to help keep target close and add group utility through a cone cripple, while giving players a counter player (when the flame jet ends, CC or just keep your distance). Toolkit is another example. This is a great weapon for melee, however our surviveability close range doesn’t cut it. One way I thought this could be helped is that at the end of an auto attack with our toolkit, we could receive a boon that synergies with close range in mind. So things like protection or even retaliation would be viable. Make it so we can’t stack it indefinitly, but it helps close range.

I really hope the meta changes for engineers soon. I find it extremely boring and I have to go with the “less viable” specs because I find elixirs very bland. I’m not saying they need to be nerfed, but I’d love to see the other fun and cool utilities we have start to take a role in combat.

Not sure who your audience is with this post. Top level engineers? Because below the top levels I’ve heard of lots of success with burst rifle builds, knock-back/control builds, And even in the recent N.M.C.C. 1v1 tournament (whatever that was), Lady Steamhawke won in the finals against a S/D thief using nothing but turret utilities! Don’t forget the NA Profession tournament (forgot who does this), where the engi’s won using specs that featured bombs.

The way to build diversity is to balance traits and abilities against each other.

People don’t use the FT as a weapon replacement because the AA damage is hilariously bad. You swap through the kits for 2-5 on all the kits with the exception of grenade and bombs because all of the kits have damage concentrated in very few skills, and the traits tend to amplify that rather than soften it.

You appear to assume that highest damage possible is the intention with the FT.

It isn’t.

I use FT because I like to kitten things up.

I assumed nothing of the sort. I simply pointed out that the reason people don’t just sit in the kit is because the damage is pretty terrible outside of the 2nd skill. I use it all the time for the knockback and Blind.

My point was that if they want more diverse builds, they need to find ways to keep the power more equal across skills.

Grenade 2 hits as hard as the rest of the skills together. The GM trait they cooked up for the kit makes that gap even bigger, rather than diluting the damage increase across the skills. This makes swapping into the kit for 1 skill every 5 seconds even more appealing.

As it stands today, you can juggle kits and pistols for condition damage, or juggle rifle/ft/(eg sometimes or turrets) for control spam, or do something like Rifle /SD for burst.

People are using the kits like elementalist attunements, and just firing off the good skills and swapping back out. Unlike eles, these attunements don’t have cooldowns, and you get to pick which ones you want. Until they give people a reason to stay in the kits for more than 1-2 skills, they’ll probably have the same basic build archetypes.

edit: I should add that those game play types are perfectly valid and should remain in game, but I think that the design was intended to churn out more stuff like HGH nades in addition to the current crop of builds.

Knox.8962:

I assumed nothing of the sort. I simply pointed out that the reason people don’t just sit in the kit is because the damage is pretty terrible outside of the 2nd skill. I use it all the time for the knockback and Blind.

My point was that if they want more diverse builds, they need to find ways to keep the power more equal across skills.

Grenade 2 hits as hard as the rest of the skills together. The GM trait they cooked up for the kit makes that gap even bigger, rather than diluting the damage increase across the skills. This makes swapping into the kit for 1 skill every 5 seconds even more appealing.

As it stands today, you can juggle kits and pistols for condition damage, or juggle rifle/ft/(eg sometimes or turrets) for control spam, or do something like Rifle /SD for burst.

People are using the kits like elementalist attunements, and just firing off the good skills and swapping back out. Unlike eles, these attunements don’t have cooldowns, and you get to pick which ones you want. Until they give people a reason to stay in the kits for more than 1-2 skills, they’ll probably have the same basic build archetypes.

edit: I should add that those game play types are perfectly valid and should remain in game, but I think that the design was intended to churn out more stuff like HGH nades in addition to the current crop of builds.

yeah, that is true. Right now I feel no other builds except HgH are viable. You can run them, but they’re not good. On top of that our class really has no place in pvp anymore. We were once condis, but now necro took that spot. I honestly feel like that is how necros should be, they should be the master of condis.

I somewhat agree with the OP that within small scale, espeically 1v1, pvp, and wvw roaming that there is not a lot of diversity.

So much of small scale is focused on condition builds, so a good amoutn of survivability is tied into condition removal, and we only have one solid source for that which is elixir spec’s. Healing turret, med kit, are okay but they are not enough on their own.

When you add to that the need to boon strip, and or stack boons such as might, protection, swiftness, ect. Your really left with being heavily reliant on elixirs with HGH, and 409.

I play SD, and I love SD, but I know that it is not as good as HGH and I have a lot of problems when conditions are stacked on me. I do not have a good way to clear them and it makes fighting a tanky condi build, which is fairly common these days, extremely difficult.

There are nice things from gadgets, turrets, and kits to be sure but there arn’t any utilities that really compete with trait elixirs, grenade kit, and bomb compete with trait elixirs, grenade kit, and bomb kit.

You realize you only use a kit for 1-2 abilties, but you also realize that you can’t replace that kit and get the same thing someplace else, even if you do not use the bulk of the abilities.

But this is about tPvP only, right?

The game has 3-4 game modes (because tPvP is quite different from the open sPvP), in fact I’d argue 6:

• Open World
• Dungeons
• Fractals
• WvW (could split this into roaming and zerg, but roaming balance closely follows sPvP combat balance)
• sPvP
• tPvP

That’s a lot more to keep in mind than just tPvP. Not saying the criticisms are wrong, but many things which are powerful in PvP are useless elsewhere (or pointless for the spot they cost), and vice versa.

Turret toolbelt skills are fine. I don’t know, have you actually played with turrets recently? The thumper turret has a 1-second stability stunbreak, Rocket Turret’s TB skill is now on a 30s cooldown and the when a rocket from the turret hits a target it sets everything within the explosion radius on fire, and Flame Turret has ALWAYS been useful. Rifle Turret is the only one which I find useless and Net Turret’s cycle time needs to be fixed.

The only major problems with Turrets is firing at the right target and their large-for-no-good-reason hitbox, that is all. I’ve spent a lot of time playing with turrets so I’m not just talking out my rear.

I don’t really understand all the calls for more diversification in builds for engineers. I have been running builds that are NOT HGH or SD forever with great success and I have lost count over how many fellow WvW engis I have talked to who is running
some weird kitten build with great success.

Who are you people who fail to find the builds?

There are plenty of builds that don’t use HGH, but most of them fall into the archetypes I listed above.

It’s also worth noting that “successful” is a pretty wildly variable term. I’m pretty sure that you could select skills and traits at random and be “successful” in open world PvE.

I’ll add turrets to the list of functional setups, but I think that the realms that they are viable in is fairly limited.

spot on. The problems are much deeper then just the skills tho. It’s the traits that need a complete rework.

For example we only have two might builders and they are a build over time system. Much like the problem of getting a buff to happen automatically by reaching 80% health to gain boons the system they use for engineers boons is highly flawed. If for example you have all toughness and vitality gear on and you’re fighting regular mobs and veterans your health will most likely never reach below the threshold to actually give you the boon.

The other problems with their boon system is there’s not enough of them. In other classes like Thief and Ranger the trait system allows for boons to occur from just using regular class specific skills. One can venom/teleport/steal and gain three boons on the thief without issues and a sizeable amount of might right off the bat.

They’ve yet to improve the use of gadgets to include this type of functionality on the engineer and quite frankly some of us are wondering why.

If they added the ability for boons to occur when certain gadgets and turrets are activated wouldn’t that immediately improve the diversity of the builds?

There’s also the problem of having to do twice and three times as much for a skill to go off in these other abilities other then kits. For example, the healing turret has an extremely short duration for the fields it creates when one has to do the three move system of getting a heal from it. Drop/overload/explode is just way too much imo while other classes and just do 1 move maybe two to get the same results without blinking an eye. It’s really unfair if you look at it objectively, that they require so much from the engineer while the other classes can just button push once and get the same results.

I say improve the traits all around for the engi, give us incentives to actually use the gadgets and turrets and that should improve the diversity of our builds right away.

Knox.8962:

There are plenty of builds that don’t use HGH, but most of them fall into the archetypes I listed above.

It’s also worth noting that “successful” is a pretty wildly variable term. I’m pretty sure that you could select skills and traits at random and be “successful” in open world PvE.

I’ll add turrets to the list of functional setups, but I think that the realms that they are viable in is fairly limited.

To me “build diversity” is a very ambiguous term. There is one build right now that is not working properly and that is turrets and this is mainly because of bugs. Every other build has it’s place and purpose, most builds have several areas (PvE, PvP or WvW) where they can be used.

Often when people bring up a lack of diversity, it is because they can’t use turrets in a ZvZ fight or some other specialized build outside the area that that build shines.

There are builds that have diversity, there are builds that are specialized, there are conditions builds that rely on HGH, there are those that do not, there are direct dmg builds with or without HGH, there are tanking builds, there are support builds. And there are hybrid builds. We have several great engineer players who regularly play around with builds and then post videos and links here, I have learned a lot.

I don’t know, I feel like we are playing two different games. Sure there are some issues that needs to be fixed and I am an avid fan of continuous improvement, but beyond that the Engineer is the most useful and best profession in this game.

Deified.7520:

yeah, that is true. Right now I feel no other builds except HgH are viable. You can run them, but they’re not good. On top of that our class really has no place in pvp anymore. We were once condis, but now necro took that spot. I honestly feel like that is how necros should be, they should be the master of condis.

then you havent played much since the recent patch.

HGH is terribly overrated and viewed as powerful, when in fact it’s strength lies in how brain dead easy it is to execute and win. Once I left HGH I tried to go back a few times, but I couldn’t, I felt handicapped.

Rifle roaming has become much more viable with the patch to Jump Shot, change in Sitting Duck trait, addition of Modified Ammunition, and Rocket Boots…dear lord Rocket boots.

Get yourself to around 3k power with at least 50% crit rate and 50% crit damage (not very difficult by the way) using Sitting Duck, Rifle Mod, and Modified Ammunition on a rifle with a Superior Rune of Force. Get in nice and close with net shot, do a point blank jump shot, use the Analyze toolbelt skill off of utility goggles, and hit them with Blunderbuss and Rocket Boots away.

Build a roamer around that (bomb kit is great to drop B’o’B and a Smoke Bomb to stealth away with Rocket Boots) and you’ll have some of the most fun you’ve ever had on an Engineer.

I think the root of the problem is that our weapons and kits are intended to be underpowered without investing in them, and there are limited traits for investing, so people gravitate towards the handful of things that really work well, and then fill in the gaps with the things that require minimal investment.

We have a whole tree that mainly only buffs bombs/nades, a 40 point investment to make the most of FT/EG, another tree devoted almost completely to turrets etc.

There are relatively few generically useful traits (probably because those types of traits break down when you can apply them to 3 kits and 1 weapon) so to maximize your effectiveness, you tend to find one of those 40-50 point templates and tweak the last little bit.

To clarify, this problem isn’t unique to engineers. The majority of the traits in the game are the clear winners in many builds (or the random choice you make to get to the higher tier trait that you really wanted)

Sepahbod.4653:

HGH is terribly overrated and viewed as powerful, when in fact it’s strength lies in how brain dead easy it is to execute and win. Once I left HGH I tried to go back a few times, but I couldn’t, I felt handicapped.

Care to elaborate?

Zindrix.1750:

Sepahbod.4653:

HGH is terribly overrated and viewed as powerful, when in fact it’s strength lies in how brain dead easy it is to execute and win. Once I left HGH I tried to go back a few times, but I couldn’t, I felt handicapped.

Care to elaborate?

Enhance Performance > HGH

And its at a lesser trait investment. Both is preferable, but a 10 second Med Kit rotation is optimal over Elixir H. For best results use 20/20/0/30/0 for HGH, Enhance Performance, and Juggernaut. Maintaining 17 stacks of might should be fairly easy once you’ve established a rotation.

So what’s the best build for when you’re roaming in WvWvW, round a corner, and come face to face with a 50-man zerg?

Obscure One.4357:

Rifle roaming has become much more viable with the patch to Jump Shot, change in Sitting Duck trait, addition of Modified Ammunition, and Rocket Boots…dear lord Rocket boots.

I’ve been doing sPvP with Rifle and all gadgets, and it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in quite some time. I’m glassy as hell, but as long as I keep cc up and time my dodges well, I can shell out the big damage.

Anyways, I just came back from “that other MMO” where I play a demonology warlock, where basically you need to keep your pets alive for ideal damage. You get a passive that makes your demons take like 90% less damage from AoE attacks and I can’t help but feel like this would work well as either a chosen trait or a passive in the turret tree. That way someone that wants to kitten a turret engi can still single target dps them down at the disadvantage of letting you engage them freely, but at the same time they can’t just AoE your turrets into the ground with no drawbacks. Just my 2 cents.

Sepahbod.4653:

HGH is terribly overrated and viewed as powerful, when in fact it’s strength lies in how brain dead easy it is to execute and win. Once I left HGH I tried to go back a few times, but I couldn’t, I felt handicapped.

I only enjoy HGH in a pure 4-elixirs-dungeon-support-build + Elixir gun setup.
That’s super focused and highly specialized though.

I also feel like HGH is overrated. You have to maintain 20+ stacks to actualy do the damage you can with other runes. This is for WvW by the way, as sPvP has way lower condition damage.

I run with a 1.45k condition damage build, no might stacks. With Might stacking runes I has only 1.2k where I get up to 1.7k with a good stack going. Yes, this is higher, but I also lose diversity in kits and utilities and I only have these burst might stacks every 20 seconds or so. I rather take my 2 kit build with no rocket turrets that’s almost as strong but isn’t a) limited to taking 3 elixir traits and b) uses utilities that help me survive in other ways. With HGH it’s basically kill or be killed. With toolkit, grenades and rocket boots, I can outrun small group of players and kite them very long.

Also, to the OP: I don’t like your suggestion for kits. While buffing them is good, I actually love the engineer playstyle of only swapping in to useful skills. Every other class is limited with a cooldown, making them use lesser skills. We don’t have cooldowns, which makes it so we always use whatever is best for the situation. That’s what seperates the best engineers from the regular ones.

There is always a skill useful that’s not on cooldown and we always have access to them. Gear shield is on cooldown for 3 secs? No problem, swap to something else, use 2 skills and go back. I love this and it essentialy means absolute freedom in playstyle. While I think other things need to be brought up and fixed, kits is not one of them.

Build diversity on engi is actually amazing if not the best among most classes, 1 utility can impact how you play an entire build, and as a class, we have the biggest ease when choosing what kind of build we want to make since most skills have both dmg/conditions added to them, also.. we have the most divertsy when It comes to play style, 2 people can take the same build and play it completely different since skills allows for that flexibility and engineer is a highly reactionary class.

Build creativity died a little once HGH became popular and everyone started running it but now it’s coming back. personally… I just came up with a crazy hybrid build which allows me to deal full condi dmg while dealing 1.5-6k direct dmg hits… engineer has too much viable things to offer, you just need to explore it

vinceftw.5086:

I also feel like HGH is overrated. You have to maintain 20+ stacks to actualy do the damage you can with other runes. This is for WvW by the way, as sPvP has way lower condition damage.

I run with a 1.45k condition damage build, no might stacks. With Might stacking runes I has only 1.2k where I get up to 1.7k with a good stack going. Yes, this is higher, but I also lose diversity in kits and utilities and I only have these burst might stacks every 20 seconds or so. I rather take my 2 kit build with no rocket turrets that’s almost as strong but isn’t a) limited to taking 3 elixir traits and b) uses utilities that help me survive in other ways. With HGH it’s basically kill or be killed. With toolkit, grenades and rocket boots, I can outrun small group of players and kite them very long.

Also, to the OP: I don’t like your suggestion for kits. While buffing them is good, I actually love the engineer playstyle of only swapping in to useful skills. Every other class is limited with a cooldown, making them use lesser skills. We don’t have cooldowns, which makes it so we always use whatever is best for the situation. That’s what seperates the best engineers from the regular ones.

There is always a skill useful that’s not on cooldown and we always have access to them. Gear shield is on cooldown for 3 secs? No problem, swap to something else, use 2 skills and go back. I love this and it essentialy means absolute freedom in playstyle. While I think other things need to be brought up and fixed, kits is not one of them.

I’d like to add that Chaithh’s idea of Enhanced Performance and Sigil of Battle + Minor Corruption, with Might duration runes lets you obtain around 1.5k Condition Damage at 12~15 permanent might stacks, in s/tPvP. That frees up your heal (turret) and 1 utility slot for FT/Toolkit etc. You also blow people up incredibly fast and gain the ability to run away/spike heal better. I’d really encourage a look through his ideas… it’s a refreshing take on the HGH concept.

Kits usually bring control along with damage and offers unpredictability. You get smoke, fire and light fields and you can leap/blast finish in any of them to gain many benefits (Smoke Bomb combos are nice). To add, Heal Turret + Detonate/Rocket Boots/Shield 4 Detonate/Rifle Leap/Big Ol’ Bomb/Elixir Gun Leap gives you so much spike healing it isn’t even funny. I agree that kits shouldn’t be designed as a “permanent” weapon; Engineers pack lots of odd bits and pieces and they can use whatever they want, whenever they want. There is usually no tell when he CC’s you.

Kits are also too useful compared to gadgets – makes me wonder when will they be up to par. How can you make a 1-time activated ability match the usefulness of having 5 at the click of a button? Sure, some skills may be clutch… but i’ll take a kit over a gadget if I have a spare slot.

I agree. The only gadget I actually use is rocket boots. The new ideas for might stacking are interesting but I rather use sigil of energy/corruption. Coupled with constant vigor it gives me quite some dodges while my conditions tick away. Also, you ahve to remember that runes of the undead add quite some condition damage on itself. It boosts it by 200-300 somewhere in my WvW build, that’s 7-9 might stacks I just have without any stacking, permanently. I think might stacking can be great but it’s a bit of a crutch. They can be converted, stolen, and it’s more offensive orientated. I like having 2 kits for multiple purposes.

Besides, our conditions are strong enough to not need might stacking imo. My bleeds tick for 133 with full corruption I believe. I rather have my runes/sigils and traits have a more defensive set up.

well you take a gadget when it offers something different from or better to the option you can get from a kit.

A good example no kit really replicates the escape leap from rocket boots, or as a better example, the condition removal from elixir C.

for gadgets to be viable against kits they must offer somethings kits do not provide. Another example is utility goggles. The blind immunity is very unqiue and in certain fights against certain builds it is extremely useful. But overall the cooldown hinders it, and it has a more niche use.

you might simplify it so that kits give me 5 abilities gadgets / elixirs give me one, but the question then becomes how many kit abilities are you using, and when are you using them?

The general issue I have found is that a lot of in kit abilities are better than the base turrets / gadgets. So rather than taking a gadget / turret / elixir with a similar ability, you snag a kit with a better version of the skill with few extras.

Think PBR’s utility skill, and FT #3. I use them in the same places for the same reason, but without any points put in FT has a faster CD, and is AoE. PBR is not bad but it is overshadowed.

my issue with the non hgh / 409 builds is that you do not get enough condi removal, and in a lot of small scale fights lacking condi removal is death.

The best thing about elixirs is that with trait’s put in them they gain (extra) abilities. Might stacks, boon stripping, condition removal, vigor on swiftness, 2-3 extra things. It is like having 4 abilities in 1.

I agree with the condition removal claim. My Non-HGH build is weak to that. I only have my healing turret.

What use are those 1-2 condi removal skills in any fight with necro /condi ranger lately you are just food haha

JobCreator.1956:

So what’s the best build for when you’re roaming in WvWvW, round a corner, and come face to face with a 50-man zerg?

I would probably say bombs and rocket boots.

Legit Prep In.5893:

What use are those 1-2 condi removal skills in any fight with necro /condi ranger lately you are just food haha

A condition engineer is worse than a condi ranger imo. I just try to use the same tactic as on my mesmer, who has no removal. Hit them hard and then go on the defensive. Pople are used to avoiding the big hits but it goes the same for conditions, but now it’s not1 big hit but many small ones.

Fior example, on my engi, I try to land my prybar/static shot, blow torch and some nades and then go on the defensive with gear shield and some kiting.

Torment on mines sounds great both metagame- and flavor-wise.
You blast them with explosives. Chances are, they will have problems walking after that…
In game: You knock them away and they get torment.
Synergy is beautiful, as an Asura would say.

Ralkuth.1456:

I’d like to add that Chaithh’s idea of Enhanced Performance and Sigil of Battle + Minor Corruption, with Might duration runes lets you obtain around 1.5k Condition Damage at 12~15 permanent might stacks, in s/tPvP. That frees up your heal (turret) and 1 utility slot for FT/Toolkit etc. You also blow people up incredibly fast and gain the ability to run away/spike heal better. I’d really encourage a look through his ideas… it’s a refreshing take on the HGH concept.

What build is this?

Choops.3710:

Ralkuth.1456:

I’d like to add that Chaithh’s idea of Enhanced Performance and Sigil of Battle + Minor Corruption, with Might duration runes lets you obtain around 1.5k Condition Damage at 12~15 permanent might stacks, in s/tPvP. That frees up your heal (turret) and 1 utility slot for FT/Toolkit etc. You also blow people up incredibly fast and gain the ability to run away/spike heal better. I’d really encourage a look through his ideas… it’s a refreshing take on the HGH concept.

What build is this?

Search Twitch and Chaithh on Google. He posts his build ideas there. You can also watch his stream.
I’ll also add that the best condi spec/class right now is Necro, with Dhuumfire…

Ralkuth.1456:

Choops.3710:

Ralkuth.1456:

I’d like to add that Chaithh’s idea of Enhanced Performance and Sigil of Battle + Minor Corruption, with Might duration runes lets you obtain around 1.5k Condition Damage at 12~15 permanent might stacks, in s/tPvP. That frees up your heal (turret) and 1 utility slot for FT/Toolkit etc. You also blow people up incredibly fast and gain the ability to run away/spike heal better. I’d really encourage a look through his ideas… it’s a refreshing take on the HGH concept.

What build is this?

Search Twitch and Chaithh on Google. He posts his build ideas there. You can also watch his stream.

Ah, didn’t know he switched his build. Been away for a few months lol. Thanks!

vinceftw.5086:

I also feel like HGH is overrated. You have to maintain 20+ stacks to actualy do the damage you can with other runes. This is for WvW by the way, as sPvP has way lower condition damage.

I run with a 1.45k condition damage build, no might stacks. With Might stacking runes I has only 1.2k where I get up to 1.7k with a good stack going. Yes, this is higher, but I also lose diversity in kits and utilities and I only have these burst might stacks every 20 seconds or so. I rather take my 2 kit build with no rocket turrets that’s almost as strong but isn’t a) limited to taking 3 elixir traits and b) uses utilities that help me survive in other ways. With HGH it’s basically kill or be killed. With toolkit, grenades and rocket boots, I can outrun small group of players and kite them very long.

Also, to the OP: I don’t like your suggestion for kits. While buffing them is good, I actually love the engineer playstyle of only swapping in to useful skills. Every other class is limited with a cooldown, making them use lesser skills. We don’t have cooldowns, which makes it so we always use whatever is best for the situation. That’s what seperates the best engineers from the regular ones.

There is always a skill useful that’s not on cooldown and we always have access to them. Gear shield is on cooldown for 3 secs? No problem, swap to something else, use 2 skills and go back. I love this and it essentialy means absolute freedom in playstyle. While I think other things need to be brought up and fixed, kits is not one of them.

Gear shield only has a cooldown of 3 seconds?!

Not to be a jerk, but I can’t take you seriously when you say things like “swap to something else, use 2 skills, and go back.” to Gear Shield.

Also, classes don’t use “lesser skills” while waiting for their cooldowns. Their #1 weapon skills is usually a very nasty 3 part chain with MUCH higher damage than anything our #1 weapon OR kit skills have to offer.

Kits are weak. Shuffling Kits every 2 seconds doesn’t make you a good player. End of story.

Fatal mistake made by Engineer player after Engineer player, QQing about Kits and Weapons having slightly lower damage coefficients than other classes without any mind put into where the developers placed the balance to it.

-In PvE you have Turrets to make up (and actually overcome) the difference.
-In sPvP you have Static Discharge to make up the difference.
-In WvW you have access to permanent Swiftness, Vigor, and 3 Might stacks (speedy kits, invigorating speed, enhance performance on Med Kit equip. Use Lyssa runes for a fourth random boon, and Bowl of Saffron-Scented Poultry Soup for a free condition remover.) making you more survivable than the average invader in those ever so common Zerg fights; a fair trade for less damage.

Also it’s worth noting there’s almost no weapon/kit swap cool-down so basically you’re always ready to use a kit skill whenever it’s ready. Much as a Thief can no-talent-skill-spam Engineers can no-talent-kit-spam…course once they nerfed kit refinement it made doing so much less attractive.

Moving forward I would say this becomes a disparity for varied builds as it is limiting when a spec designed for DPS can’t be optimal because the trait it needs is way to deep in a different trait line. Want Rifle Mod to make up that slightly off damage coefficient? Sorry HGH Grenadier, your just gonna have to go without.

My real complaint is that there are very few viable builds using 1 kit as a replacement for a weapon swap and still let you pick a utility setup of your choosing.

HGH nades was Ok for that, although it forced you into elixirs. At the end of the day, there aren’t many options that just use bombs or toolkit or FT or EG with those being your main weapons. You’re basically forced to multi kit swap or use nades.

If the design was never intended to have kits be functional weapons then we’re in a decent spot, but that wasn’t the way kits were sold.

Grackleflint.4956:

Gear shield only has a cooldown of 3 seconds?!

Not to be a jerk, but I can’t take you seriously when you say things like “swap to something else, use 2 skills, and go back.” to Gear Shield.

Also, classes don’t use “lesser skills” while waiting for their cooldowns. Their #1 weapon skills is usually a very nasty 3 part chain with MUCH higher damage than anything our #1 weapon OR kit skills have to offer.

Kits are weak. Shuffling Kits every 2 seconds doesn’t make you a good player. End of story.

Read it again. He didn’t say gear shield had a 3 second cooldown. The point is that you shouldn’t ever find yourself waiting on a cooldown because kits give us so many things to do.

Kits are not weak. Spamming 1 erryday doesn’t make you a good player. End of story.

JobCreator.1956:

So what’s the best build for when you’re roaming in WvWvW, round a corner, and come face to face with a 50-man zerg?

Relevant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6U7rOUSvYM8#t=5s

Grackleflint.4956:

vinceftw.5086:

I also feel like HGH is overrated. You have to maintain 20+ stacks to actualy do the damage you can with other runes. This is for WvW by the way, as sPvP has way lower condition damage.

I run with a 1.45k condition damage build, no might stacks. With Might stacking runes I has only 1.2k where I get up to 1.7k with a good stack going. Yes, this is higher, but I also lose diversity in kits and utilities and I only have these burst might stacks every 20 seconds or so. I rather take my 2 kit build with no rocket turrets that’s almost as strong but isn’t a) limited to taking 3 elixir traits and b) uses utilities that help me survive in other ways. With HGH it’s basically kill or be killed. With toolkit, grenades and rocket boots, I can outrun small group of players and kite them very long.

Also, to the OP: I don’t like your suggestion for kits. While buffing them is good, I actually love the engineer playstyle of only swapping in to useful skills. Every other class is limited with a cooldown, making them use lesser skills. We don’t have cooldowns, which makes it so we always use whatever is best for the situation. That’s what seperates the best engineers from the regular ones.

There is always a skill useful that’s not on cooldown and we always have access to them. Gear shield is on cooldown for 3 secs? No problem, swap to something else, use 2 skills and go back. I love this and it essentialy means absolute freedom in playstyle. While I think other things need to be brought up and fixed, kits is not one of them.

Gear shield only has a cooldown of 3 seconds?!

Not to be a jerk, but I can’t take you seriously when you say things like “swap to something else, use 2 skills, and go back.” to Gear Shield.

Also, classes don’t use “lesser skills” while waiting for their cooldowns. Their #1 weapon skills is usually a very nasty 3 part chain with MUCH higher damage than anything our #1 weapon OR kit skills have to offer.

Kits are weak. Shuffling Kits every 2 seconds doesn’t make you a good player. End of story.

I am surprised at this opinion, Grackle, because the absence of a cooldown on kit swapping makes the micromanagement of myriad cooldowns a unique skill in this game that is quite different from 5/10 sec weapon swapping. Engineers don’t need auto attacks to fill in the gaps because there are already so many different skills to make use of.

In fact, my opinion is that capitalizing on our kits’ GCD by selecting skills that promote a constant cycle of use is a powerful skill to master, and speaks to the high skill floor and complexity of multi kit builds such as nade/bomb or bomb/tk or ft/eg.

To say that kit swapping takes no skill is a very shallow and superficial perspective of our primary mechanisms.

Actually I don’t use kit swapping much as I feel it takes more skill than I have to use it properly. Having said that I primarily use rifle/FT in PvE and WvW. On the occasions I am in PvP, I use E-gun and/or Tool Kit/rifle/FT.
The other night, I dueled another eng using a similar setup. In such a case, it comes down to skill and/or whoever makes the first mistake. I failed to follow up on a chain CC atk and was subsequently beaten (still was close though).

JudgeD.5673:

Actually I don’t use kit swapping much as I feel it takes more skill than I have to use it properly. Having said that I primarily use rifle/FT in PvE and WvW. On the occasions I am in PvP, I use E-gun and/or Tool Kit/rifle/FT.
The other night, I dueled another eng using a similar setup. In such a case, it comes down to skill and/or whoever makes the first mistake. I failed to follow up on a chain CC atk and was subsequently beaten (still was close though).

Kit swapping rotations are as critical for an Engineer as attunement rotations are for an Elementalist. Outside of a few choice kitless builds, knowing your cool downs and comboing off of your skills can indeed be the difference between our survival and our defeat as it seems you’ve seen first hand.

Personally I run a strong CC SD Rifle build (0/30/10/10/20) that uses Rocket Boots, Tool Kit, Utility Goggles, and Elixir X. This has only been a recent build but it functions on principals from my old FT build with its kit rotation which used Speedy Lots, Invigorating Speed, and Enhance Performance with runes of Lyssa turning med kit into a boon factory while the flame jet was active. I haven’t gone back to it post patch but when I used it before, Flame Jets channeling time was just right to be able to swap to Med Kit and swap back to FT for the next flame jet. This tight rotation in kits required a split focus to pay attention to the flame jet, target behaviors, and boon durations/stacks to be optimal.

I may actually try this build again sometime since now it can include Deadly Admixture since Juggernaut is only a Master tier trait now. At any rate that was mostly just to serve as an example of the meta in the class.

I posted this in the turret thread and realized it was probably better suited here:

I only hit 80 last week and am just scraping the surface on end game content, but some/many parties either flat out do not want Engis and ask if I have an alt, or tell me how I have to spec. Very reminiscent of my time playing a Warden in DAoC (Bubble Chant), an RDM in FFXI (Refresh), or a Druid in WoW (Innervate), or a Ritualist in GW1, or a Chanter in Aion or a Science Vessel in SWO, etc…

No MMO maker that I can think of gets the hybrid/support classes correct right out the gate. Eventually they get the polish and respect they deserve, but it is frustrating for someone who is drawn to these types of classes to relive the deja vu over and over again. There is just something about their dynamic that irritates/breaks the “holy trinity”. That said, I had hopes with ArenaNet eschewing that paradigm that things would be radically different. The engineer is certainly not a hopeless/lost cause like some of the above are/were, but it can still be frustrating.

Again, in the end, this thread and efforts by the devs in the last couple of months (from what I have read) has been about breaking the idea that you have to be a grenadier, or juggernaut, or HGH to be an effective engineer. So there is progress, I think some of the long time players just want assurances/information that the momentum continues in that direction and can break the already existing molds/stereotypes that seem to haunt the class.

Its pretty amusing how durable you can get with all the upgrades
the traits have gotten lately. a few months ago i would never
have been able to achieve the durability i had in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VR5boHcuUY Mind
you i wasn’t even going for a full tanky build here.

GoNeKrAzY.7308:

Its pretty amusing how durable you can get with all the upgrades
the traits have gotten lately. a few months ago i would never
have been able to achieve the durability i had in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VR5boHcuUY Mind
you i wasn’t even going for a full tanky build here.

No stunbreak? I would be worried about a good large group with static fields etc. even with stabilized armor.

Aberrant.6749:

GoNeKrAzY.7308:

Its pretty amusing how durable you can get with all the upgrades
the traits have gotten lately. a few months ago i would never
have been able to achieve the durability i had in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VR5boHcuUY Mind
you i wasn’t even going for a full tanky build here.

No stunbreak? I would be worried about a good large group with static fields etc. even with stabilized armor.

Funny that you should mention that. At the time i was actually testing to see how durable i could make a build that had a single condition removal and no stun breaker. I compensated for it quite a bit by using 2 runes of melandru, 2 water and 2 monk, a bowl of poultry and leek soup, stabilized armor, leg mods and protection injection.

A sigil of restoration worked for minor heals mid battle every time an enemy i tagged went down. all in all i was quite surprised i survived as long as i did. since then i have been thinking of getting a sigil of blood for more midcombat heals….. after running hgh with 409 for so long its quite an interesting time for trying out other builds.