Guild Wars 2

Now I tend to be pretty casual in WvW, but I enjoy it. I generally play my engineer, because I like lobbing grenades at things. But I was on my server’s TS listening to them discuss well trained zerg teams. We brick walled on one a few days ago that was made up almost completely of Necros, Guardians, and Warriors. They spammed CC, and stomped us. And it got brought up that condition builds are terrible for zergs, because most Guardians run cleansing builds. My question to the wonderful people of Engineering forum, is do you feel conditions are a hindrance to the zerg with cleansing being much easier these days? Do you think that person is just being silly and conditions are still awesome? And I shouldn’t worry about my little condition engineer grenade thrower of kitten fluff(I play Charr mostly), and continue with the spec I love. Am I still providing for my team? Should I consider a power build more focused on blast finishers much like they state is a far better choice, CC and hit hard they say…? Should I just take my guardian along, who is sturdy and more designed as zerg supporter?

I always use my grenade kit, the second kit is often bomb kit, tool kit, flame thrower, or rarely a mine for a doorway. Then I try to run around with the a stun breaker or flee like Elixir S, or rocket boots depending on the situation. My build is the average grenade build of 30/10/0/20/5 and I’m using rabid gear. My runes need changing. I was testing out perplexity back when they were first released(I made myself a heap of them), and wanted to see if the added condition damage and confusion would be a good choice in smaller fights. I tend to take extended breaks from GW2, so I never did test it out. But I see no one else uses them, so I assume it was a poor choice and a waste of mats =P

I’ve been rolling Full Dire in WvW for a while now and I think Engi’s are really the only class that Conditions can work in a meta of constant cleansing, the idea being that you put out so many conditions that you overload the cleansing, and even force them to cleanse. Poisen grenade is wonderful for this, as most guards will try to cleanse poisen so their heals aren’t nerfed, but because its a field it will get reapplied.

Unfortunately is seems you ran into a highly specialized ‘zerg busting’ squad, which prey on blobs of pugs all the time, conditions wont do much to these guys, instead focus more getting CC skills off to pick them off one at a time. Typically they will go straight for squishy backlines. Which is where I feel engi’s excell at, backline defense/offense.

Back when I rolled with a condition build, I was fully decked out in rabid gear and I used runes of the undead (cheap and effective). I never really worried about condition cleaners. We lob grenades faster than they can cleanse, so it’s just a short term gain for them. Plus it’s the damage grenades do that is to worry about. Pretty much every time I defend a gate by carpet bombing the zerg, they tend to pull off and resort to siege instead.

Personally, I prefer to run an average build using full celestial gear and boon duration boons. Although I main an FT, every now and then I switch it up and try other things. Celestial provides an excellent balance of condition and power, which I like a lot. It’s unfortunately not a casual build because it takes a long time and a lot of money to acquire, but once you get it you won’t have to worry about trite armour configurations. Just play and enjoy being average

Conditions wise, you should be focusing on condition duration rather than condition damage, we can stack obscene amounts of vulnerability on a 15 target aoe cap. Focus getting through the Lemongrass and Dogged March and our chills/blinds/cripples/immobilizes/vulnerability stackes will be just fine, we can provide enough pressure to keep them up through the shout spam.
To play condis in a zerg, you just gotta adapt. Any coordinated group would try to either dive through the heavy blob or maneuver around to get to the back line. Make sure to blind those heavies and start putting those nasty necros and elementalists out of combat. You don’t have to kill them, just push enough condition pressure so they have to worry about their own health instead of dealing damage. When they restack for Water Fields, make sure to drop those poison grenades from a safe distance. See someone downed? Bomb the kitten out of the people trying to rez/stomp. 1.5k range is your friend, and so is our amazing survivability.

Mishva, I did a full condi duration build before and from my tests, it wasn’t as good as a full condi damage build. This was with full givers weapons, runes of the mad king and whatever that second rune set was. I had something over 100% condi duration with food buff. With that setup, I noticed I couldn’t kill things as fast as I did with a full condi dmg build. Although it’s not a bad support build. Confusion bomb + static shot + prybar adds a nice amount of confusion, which I found to be the highest dmg dealing application for that build.

The way I see it, you already get 30% condi duration from fully spec’ing out the power trait, which you’re going to do anyway for a grenade build. With rare veggie pizza to add an extra 40%, that gives you 70% total and you get to maintain ~2K condi dmg. In my opinion, ~2K condi dmg is the sweet spot where condis start to show some decent numbers.

Nate.8146:

Mishva, I did a full condi duration build before and from my tests, it wasn’t as good as a full condi damage build. This was with full givers weapons, runes of the mad king and whatever that second rune set was. I had something over 100% condi duration with food buff. With that setup, I noticed I couldn’t kill things as fast as I did with a full condi dmg build. Although it’s not a bad support build. Confusion bomb + static shot + prybar adds a nice amount of confusion, which I found to be the highest dmg dealing application for that build.

The way I see it, you already get 30% condi duration from fully spec’ing out the power trait, which you’re going to do anyway for a grenade build. With rare veggie pizza to add an extra 40%, that gives you 70% total and you get to maintain ~2K condi dmg. In my opinion, ~2K condi dmg is the sweet spot where condis start to show some decent numbers.

Yeah, I could’ve been more clear. By condition duration, I didn’t mean to tell people to go with Giver’s, just to make sure you have +70% duration with food on. If anything, 4 Traveler’s + 2 Lyssa’s for the +90%, but that I have yet to test.

I’ve been running condition damage and grenade spam, works good for stopping the hammer charge in its tracks and allows you to dive through and pressure the squishier back lines with your heavier armor classes.

I run p/p or p/s though (if i need the extra defenses). Rifle is there if i need a bit more control but often that’s overkill.

Excellent, thanks for the suggestions. I’ll ensure my condition duration is pushed to 70%, I think it’s around 50% right now and look into dire sets. And make sure my condition damage is 2k+. Lots of good news. Grenades are just such a fun build.

And yeah it was a specialized zerg group, it was depressing how perfect they performed, and my guild wants to follow suit. I like my charr a bit too much to abandon it. My Guardian is fun to play, but I like the distance and versatility my engineer offers.

I was wondering if this might work ok?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqiY3zyuF1LJyoCdGoC6lIF5nl95xbxWQIA-j0CBYhCh0CgkIBJ9kIjNRFqaqIasqaER1qkYmbKrmcR2qDQKAYmGB-w

Raven.5281:

Excellent, thanks for the suggestions. I’ll ensure my condition duration is pushed to 70%, I think it’s around 50% right now and look into dire sets. And make sure my condition damage is 2k+. Lots of good news. Grenades are just such a fun build.

And yeah it was a specialized zerg group, it was depressing how perfect they performed, and my guild wants to follow suit. I like my charr a bit too much to abandon it. My Guardian is fun to play, but I like the distance and versatility my engineer offers.

Just don’t go for the obvious hammer/staff front, your guild group should be always circling around in order to get the backline, it’s way more effective than headbutting into the melee portion. Take advantage of our superior mobility and tankiness and just dive in, you will be seeing a lot of power necros and eles in those groups and you should be aiming those, just make sure to drop a few grenades on the blob to tag, maybe a grenade #3 for a long blind or even #5 when they are regrouping for the water field spam. Save your Supply Crate AoE stun for the Stability down time (which happens 10 seconds after the initial engage in a 30 second window according to my experience) so you can separate those backliners or use it to create a kill box with an extra 6k heal from the bandages. Always make sure to regroup, we have lots of blast finishers that come in handy for those water fields, only over extend if you have an easy stomp or kill that will possibily rally people AND you have the means to escape (Rocket Boots off cd, blocks off cd etc). One engineer in a 20 men group should be more than enough.

Have fun out there in the field