Guild Wars 2

(multiple posts cuz maximum 5001 characters)

This is a rant if you dont like rants get out

This is a thread 4 tpvp and tpvp only! If you want to talk about gimp wvw or pve do it somewhere else!

TL:DR –kittenUUUUCKKKK SHIIIE IIIT

Tpvp is not about “can you do it?” its about “how fast can you do it?” with this in mind engineer with his perma swiftness has great potential as roamer but completely fails in the dmg department (for switching points – taking out bunkers and capping asap)

I will mostly talk with an offensive build in mind because i believe that you are required to play guardian if you want to play bunker – everything else is just soooo much worse.

All engineer offensive power/crit based abilities require you to be in melee range! This is an important fact because it is not possible to get an amulet that provides prec+crit dmg+power+good amount of defensive stats.

Which means that we pretty much cant attack any other offensive melee class unless they are hard CCd. (cuz if we do they just kill us instantly with their superior dmg output + better survivability like warri thoughness/stability or thief invisibility or mesmer anything really)

Neither do we have viable condition damage builds in tpvp – pistol damage is a joke (as is EG) and i`ll talk about nades in a bit

TALKING ABOUT SD

As far as i`m concerned there really arent any viable tpvp builds atm. SD in tourneys is just a joke reducing all you can do down to 1 button press and you are pretty much useless after the initial burst (which honestly isnt even that good compared to other classes) – even worse, if you play SD + rifle you dont get poison and if you play SD + P/P or P/S you get poison but you dont get CC so either way you lose.

Most SD skills are terrible anyway i mean look at rocket boots!! A friggin stun breaker that causes friggin stun?? The other ones are pretty much just as horrible as utility skills. Goggles stun breaker + fury? Well if you get med kit (which you should because its the only reliable condi rmv in a SD build) you already have a pretty reliable fury on a 20 sec cd.
Im not even going to talk about rifle turret – imho this is one of the worst choices possible and you are pretty much required to get it just for a little SD spam on 8 SEC! cd (8 Seconds is the same cooldown as the warrior has on 100Blades btw <3)

SD dmg isnt even that impressive to begin with 700 non crit and 1.4K krit? In tpvp you will have quite a few situations where you will need to kill single targets( i.e. bunkers) and in this case this 1 hit really is all that you get from SD!

Honestly if you really want to play something like SD reroll warrior or thief.

Concerning kits:
Imho its pretty much a must to get at least 1 kit to make up for the fact that we only get 1 weapon. Lets have a look at our kits.

Grenades – grenades have turned into a condition weapon – direct dmg is negligible so if you want to go nades you will need crit focused gear + bleed procs on crit as sigil. It is also required to keep a constant cripple or other CC on your opponent to hit. (Unless youre playing kitten which still happens way too often.. 75% of all free tournament games are just free wins cuz the other team is rnd or low rank)

Getting a condition build also means that your nades are very weak to all the crap that makes all conditions builds kinda bad like condi rmv or high vit (hi necros!)

Ok so you not only got grenades but you are pretty much required to get an OFFENSIVE cripple/slow/CC that you can keep going on your target pretty much 24/7 (dont tell me its a team game – no other class needs to do this crap just to make a weapon kit viable so no one else ever does this).

Options for this are pretty much only rifle and elixir gun(2). Well unfortunately rifle doesnt really fit into a crit/condition build (as is required to deal dmg with nades to begin with) cuz you end up either gimping your rifle dmg or your nade damage.
The other option is even worse though – Elixir gun 2 might be an awesome skill in theory but the projectile is SOOOOOOOO SLOW and awkward that i honestly believe you can outrun the projectile – bottom line it never hits anything.
Tool kit has a good cripple(2) as well but unfortunately its not offensive and cant really be used to attack targets who dont try to get up close with you (works awesome defensive against all melee classes though ..) The toolkit trait doesnt help either there really arent enough situations in which you can get up close with your opponent – whail on him for an hour just to get cripple stack high enough then switch to nades and slowly start killing him.. Tool belt skill cripple is too short (seriously if you go 4 a condition oriented nade spec you NEED perma cripple) and too sluggish/slow – hits once at best if your opponent isnt mentally kitten and doesnt last long enough (the cripple that is) Tool kit also benefits most from power and you just throw away another skill just to make nades viable at all.

So that doesnt really work well to begin with.. lets have a look at bombs

First of all you pretty much cant have both bombs and grenades in the same build simply because you require too many traits and the stats are completely different.

If you want nades you are pretty much required to get grenadier + shrapnel
If you want bombs you are pretty much required to get bigger bomb explosions.

^thats it – you dont get 10% more damage or might stacking on heal skill use, even though might stacking would heavily benefit both and 10% dmg increase would heavily benefit bombs

It also doesnt work together from a gear perspective – Bombs work very well with power gear (up to 3.4K on a normal bomb hit definitely possible) while grenades require condi crit gear – the only skill in bomb kit that benefits from condi is 1 measly burn. Not only that but the cooldowns on both grenades (not that it matters 4 nades) and bombs are horrendously high if you cant get the reduced cooldown trait. Nades dont really give you any utility to begin with – maybe the posion ae (on a 25 sec cd out of which ppl can simply walk out) is neat but everything else is plain kitten

Bombs in specific also are pretty much impossible to attack with unless you get hard CC on your opponent they will never hit against good opponents and any melee with berserker gear will just tear you to shreds faster than your 1st bomb even explodes.

Utility is kinda alright with bombs but again it just stands in contrast to the high base damage with high power that bomb 1 provides – while the other 2 are condi dmg and ppl can just walk out of the fire and get into cover/stay passive for the duration of confu (confu really doesnt hit that hard unless you got good condi dmg anyway or your opponent is spamming like a kitten

Again if you want to use power based bombs you are required to spend more utility on CC just to hit anything – and you will be torn to shredds if you try to use bombs against offensive melees anyway.

And again we dont really have good CC options that synergize with bombs simply because most CCs are too short and you need to walk upclose 1st then plant bomb then wait for it to explode… takes forever only way to do it is use net turret.

Now for the fun parts..

Elixir Gun
(1) terrible – maybe for stacking weakness in a defensive build
(2) as mentioned before never hits anything – projectile can be outrun
(3) neat for poison – same bug as FT though
(4) neat but not useful in any way – mediocre damage over mediocre time – need opponent to remain in field – need more utility for CC if you want to use it offensive
(5) only real use 4 condi rmv healing is a joke

bottom line for EG you lose 1 utility slot for something that has no real merit – if you want condi rmv there are better skills out there which dont use a utility slot or simply do a better job (elixirs/just get med kit if you dont use elixirs)

Flamethrower
(1) low damage + bugged —> no wai
(2) low damage + terrible projectile behavior
(3) I*d call skills that do this “pushback” as its not a CC (like the rifle KNOCKBACK) just a tiny nuisance that doesnt cause real down time – works as interrupt 4 heals though..
(4)can easily be avoided by ppl with a brain
(5)another 1 time blind on high cd woohooo…. allows you to live that 1 second longer

Tool kit is the only useful kit for the block alone. Catch kitten with (5) but the cast is so long anyone who can play dodges it.
(3) is a strong (melee!) power based attack
(2) has a very long cast time – get kit refinement for aoe cripple
(1) low damage for having to constantly be in melee range -> bombs work better if you get them to hit

This leaves us with elixirs – and elixirs are just terrible for dealing damage – yes there are a few game winning ones (like throw R) but other classes have imba rezz abilities just as well – some can even rezz more than one at once without the awkward lying in a glittering circle hoping not to get knocked out of it

Elixir U is horrendous – only haste skill to require a drinking animation lol – also doesnt synergize with anything we have cuz as i said our offensive options are heavily dependend on crowd control and having to wait through a drinking animation after throwing out our hard CC is just wasting time (as is throwing down the CC after activating haste and possibly not even hitting the CC)

Bottom line direct dmg is pretty much not an option for engineer cuz all good direct dmg skills are all melee (ohh yes rifle is melee!) and require you to either die instantly to other offensive melee characters or use hard CC of which we dont have enough (1 utility wasted for net turret as hard CC and 1 for bombs or whatever)

condi dmg is not an option cuz pistol dmg is a joke and we again need much more CC just to be able to stack bleeds with grenades (and it doesnt even stack that good..)

blahblahblah fml