Guild Wars 2

Ok, I have played every class since beta and have found a few i love for certain areas, like my high hitting thief for fractals, Guardian for dungeons or small WvW groups, but i couldnt find a spot for my favorite class the engy.

i tried HgH and all the generic builds but i never liked the solo aspect of those builds. so i came up with a build for full support for WvW. i wanted front line ability like my guard but with more support, cuz if my group stays up longer we win.

Pros:
high survivabilty
high group survivabiltiy
nearly indistructable in dungeons
like a bunker build but with more group support
good condi removal

cons:
DPS great in groups but low solo
not a roamer build
have to keep moving, no stand and fire.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcMQFAElUUpPrVXxArRiQPK89VroHV2yU+TB5C-z0xAoLACCQWsIaslxioxqXwUqER1ukioVTKAmUGB-w

To be affective, pop elixer B, run in a figure 8 through the crowds auto attacking with bomb 1, staying near the heart of your group. I know people turn there nose up at power shoes but keeping in bomb kit and being able to keep speed up during entire fight is crutial as you have to keep moving! condis arent really a problume between the food and rune they dont stick long enuf to do anything. if you do get hit with a ton of them you have C and every other elixer drops one, plus at 75% youll pop another B and drop even more.

crit chance is always in the 40-50% becouse of group buffs mixed with B’s fury. in the heart of fights dropping #3-4 bombs to maximize retaliation and blind. fire bomb makes people back up i noticed so its a good push, i like to cut through and push um into group so they die faster with retal and blind on them and group damage. youll get tons of bags btw.

you can do a few combos also with rifle 5 blast finisher (heal, might, invis). also a good way to leap into fight with damage and vuln. If you do get overwelmed and stunned, you can cure easily and drop big ol bomb to clear the area or use knockback for a single target with overcharged shot, plus protection will be non stop procing, at 25% youll get regen, all heals up and elixir S so you shrink up and can heal up and run away.

besides the constant aoe bomb heals and damage, you have regen always up and pop f1 (btw this does stack with bombs and your backpack regen, i tick around 1100 a sec heal) for the group regen on top of straight heals. elixir B tool kit for the stability. plus if thats not enuf drop heal turret, immidiatly overcharge for the extra heals, regen and coni cure and pick up for 15 sec reuse or as i suggest. keep moving and blow it up for extra damage but now its 20 sec. my avatar is the biggest norn around and stands out like a sore thumb, i do this so people can see where to go (and i can see him) for heals. I have many people follow me into a fight knowing ill keep them up longer.

this build works wonders in WvW as im always last man standing with whoever happens to be around me, and in dungeons its as close to a healer as you can get, i can keep groups up through a ton of damage. the damage might be low when solo but you can take down a champ solo if youve got an hour to kill…

Hmm, the lack of the elixir gun and shield is a bit of an odd choice for a support spec, although the stability from elixir B and CCs on the rifle are nice. You also have no stun breaker on this build, which can end up being bad in some situations, but it looks to be quite durable so that might be reasonable not to have one (plus you have the auto elixir S). But with only two blast finishers you might be missing out on some helpful combos.

Also, keep in mind that elixir infused bombs will only heal up to 5 people, including yourself. This isn’t as powerful as a water field because multiple parties can blast to field to provide AoE healing for their individual parties. This generally isn’t an issue in PvE because it’s common practice to stack the mobs and thus everyone is always being healed by the bombs. In WvW it’s a bit of a different case. Like you said, you really need to keep moving with this build, meaning you will be dropping your bombs at different locations at all times. Unless people are staying more or less exactly on your position, the group healing benefits will be completely lost. Since the nature of WvW combat is generally much more mobile than PvE or sPvP, I’d question whether you’re actually getting the group mileage out of this that you could potentially be getting. Mind you, bombs can be a pretty solid choice if you know how to use them correctly, so perhaps the healing should just be viewed as a side benefit.

I’m also not sure going with cleaning formula 409 is the best choice. The AoE condi removal is nice, but you then have to take elixirs and have to use power shoes to provide your mobility instead of having perma swiftness through speedy kits and taking something like stabilized armor, cloaking device, or energized armor. If you are looking for group condition removal, you should drop the elixirs and go for the elixir gun, which will remove many more conditions from a group than two toss elixir abilities will. The other alternative is to slot automated response instead, although I don’t feel that’s very useful in large combat scenarios in WvW. The value you get out of elixir C is also reduced due to the amount of condition duration reduction you invest in. Something like toolkit or elixir gun could possibly add a lot more value without having a drastic effect on the survivability of the build.

The 40-50% crit chance isn’t possible unless you have specific team builds. Fury will only provide an additional 20% up to 24%, and multiple fury sources don’t stack. This means you must at least have a warrior using banner of discipline and a ranger using spotter in order to achieve close to 40%. You’d also need to have at least a minor bloodlust bonus, although it’s very common to have that.

One thing you didn’t point out was to try reserving smoke bomb for securing stomps or using for coordinated stealth. Securing stomps is a good task to allocate to support people since they often won’t have the sort of firepower necessary to apply a lot of pressure to the enemies.

IMO, a full support build should never be the last one standing. If it is, then it may have not done it’s job correctly. Enough healing, condi cleaning, or boons should be provided to your teammates so your enemies are forced to kill you in order to properly kill them. Or at least that’s an ideal scenario, at any rate… obviously it won’t play out like that in reality all the time.

I feel this might work a bit better for a commander role that is leading the charge rather than something that is specifically specialized in supporting allies. In that case, it’s important to have something that’s durable like this build and that will be the first thing that goes into the zerg, and that can sustain itself for long periods of time while dealing with groups of enemies. I’d still look at possibly ditching elixir C though, I think you can slot something more useful there (i.e. toolkit, elixir gun, rocket boots, slick shoes).

Builds in my sig

One other thing I forgot to mention: Elixir C has some weird counter-synergy with cleaning formula 409. Since it converts all conditions to boons, it already functions as a full condi cleanse on its own. However, cleaning formula 409 causes a condition to be removed on using it, and then remaining conditions are converted to boons. This means that you actually get less boons from using it, thus cleaning formula 409 actually makes elixir C weaker.

The toss version can still benefit from it though.

The wiki doesn’t have a note about it, but I’m pretty sure it still works this way unless they changed it in some patch and I was just too dumb to read it.

Yes Carpboy i tried a couple of yours out and found them to be fine, and I realize the gun and shield offer some diffrent play styles. maybe i should have retitled this “Zerg Support”. in a mass battle frontline if you swap out of bombs you lose all healing and so do your teammates. yes you can cure better but your not healing at all unless you drop your turret for the water field and it gets aoe’d in a split second, which is why I double pop it and explode. max heals and damage.

between the bombs, aoe regen, turret and elixers if needed I have no problume keeping large groups of people up. Tried speedy kits with those builds and works but again swapping even to gun with heals and cure limits who i can help and i lose all heals so i dont last as long. this is just enuf from bombs to stay on them and i have enuf survivability to wander to who is taking most damage and keep them going.

im hardley ever in a group unless with own guildies, so i can just help where most pressure is happening. even in smaller groups we can do more and stay alive longer then any other toon i play, even guard which is great at keeping group going. In big groups someone seems to always have boons out there and cures and banners and might etc, i could try and go more versitale, but this is just a diffrent take on that. most have the buffs covered, instead of adding a small % to that I will make sure you have enuf heals going on that you only need to use your own less often.

It seems to work becouse if things start going south i tend to have people flock around me, bad guys do damage, big norn does heals, everyone else kills with less pressure. Its single minded and simple but it works extremely well for what it is…