Guild Wars 2

What’s going on with Grenades and are they really that far ahead of anything else -damage wise- in the Engineers arsenal? Did Anet design it that way? A kit that is as mandatory as you can get for any one looking at maximizing damage potential?

Grenades are fun in WvW because they’re spammable AoEs and if you trait 30 points in the top row you can add an extra grenade to every throw. In situations where players are all grouped in a mob grenades are fantastic. This is true for PvE as well.

In smaller encounters grenades are still good, but not amazingly moreso than other strategies. The downside to them is that they’re both somewhat easy to avoid if you see them coming (sloooooow lob), and spam-targetting the AoE circle is a pain. They can also be reflected by projectile return mechanics like mesmer shields and whathaveyou, which is impressively annoying.

I don’t find grenades that good tbh. Sure, they do crazy damage if you trait for it but apart from defending a tower/keep or doing some dynamic events I dont see much use for them. Everytime I see an engineer running around with grenade kit in wvw he’s a free kill.

So I very much disagree about “nades or go home”, I’d say “no kits or go home”, but thats just me.

I’d have to agree with Maska. A Grenadier is awful out in the field, but fine behind a keep wall. I’d rather take my dual pistols and melt faces

Yesterday I tried some combinations in the mist and the biggest thing i thought was, if the piercing trait from p/p do this at every range it would be an very good alternative. And right now it’s at least in the bug list here in the forums.

Of course p/p works right now but compared to the +1 grenade trait it feels totally fine to have the pirce at all ranges. And if I were ANET I also would not change a bit with pistols if i’m planning change/fix the pierce trait. This would awesome.

Also I really do not enjoy the grenades. In terms of fun p/p + FT is more what i like.

I’m not a big fan of the grenades, but they have this one advantage even if you ignore their higher damage:

the 1500 range!

No other weapon an engineer has offers this long range.
I don’t like that to be honest, but I can’t ignore it.

If I want to be as versatile as possible in WvW, I simply have to consider my only weapon that can reach 1500 yards but on top of that: it’s an AoE!!!
This combo makes grenades among the most usefull things an engineer can carry.

Of course it’s not usefull in every situation.
But the fact is that very often it WILL prove usefull.

And that’s not even counting in their highest damage potential of all weapons we have.

So yes: I always carry grenades in WvW, and I feel obliged to trait grenadier for them as well.
Simply because 1500 range is too usefull to ignore.

If the pistol piercing trait would increase the pistol range to 1500, or some other solution, than I would consider it.

But as it stands, even if I don’t use grenades all the time, I feel that 1500 range + aoe on top of that, is a combination too good to ignore.

note: please prove me wrong and say the range doesn’t matter. I hate being limited to a specific kit. Instead I would love to have my flamethrower be just as usefull with juggernaut…

I only use grenades in large scale Zerg fights. Just keep your range and spam all the way and you’ll do just fine. It’s a big plus if you have grenadiers in your zerg team. People won’t be able to dodge well in that kind of situation. In skirmishes I use rifle though.

Kimbald.2697:

I’m not a big fan of the grenades, but they have this one advantage even if you ignore their higher damage:

the 1500 range!

No other weapon an engineer has offers this long range.
I don’t like that to be honest, but I can’t ignore it.

If I want to be as versatile as possible in WvW, I simply have to consider my only weapon that can reach 1500 yards but on top of that: it’s an AoE!!!
This combo makes grenades among the most usefull things an engineer can carry.

Of course it’s not usefull in every situation.
But the fact is that very often it WILL prove usefull.

And that’s not even counting in their highest damage potential of all weapons we have.

So yes: I always carry grenades in WvW, and I feel obliged to trait grenadier for them as well.
Simply because 1500 range is too usefull to ignore.

If the pistol piercing trait would increase the pistol range to 1500, or some other solution, than I would consider it.

But as it stands, even if I don’t use grenades all the time, I feel that 1500 range + aoe on top of that, is a combination too good to ignore.

note: please prove me wrong and say the range doesn’t matter. I hate being limited to a specific kit. Instead I would love to have my flamethrower be just as usefull with juggernaut…

I don’t actually find range to be that important in wvw. at 1500, your targets are out of kill range usually. they can just be rallied. The long air time, means avoid.
It means nothing for killing seige. 240 aoe radius is what matters their. Walls are only like 900 high.

Casia.4281:

I don’t actually find range to be that important in wvw. at 1500, your targets are out of kill range usually. they can just be rallied. The long air time, means avoid.
It means nothing for killing seige. 240 aoe radius is what matters their. Walls are only like 900 high.

I was mostly thinking sieges etc, less about players unless you’re just nuking the zerg.
For nuking the zerg the distance changes all the time anyhow of course. Not sure the 1500 is the main thing there.

I feel like the range matters when reaching the sieges from as far as possible, since they are mostly placed at strategic distances.

Good to read your comment though, it shows I might be putting too much into that range.

This does leave the original question though:
if it’s the 240 aoe radius, than aren’t we still stuck with grenades? Regardless of range?
Bombs seem a bit tooooo close to be as viable

Bombs traited for healing in a siege detroying commando team on the other hand, that does seem like a good option.
But that’s not what we mean when we mention ‘wall defense’ and such.

Kimbald.2697:

Casia.4281:

I don’t actually find range to be that important in wvw. at 1500, your targets are out of kill range usually. they can just be rallied. The long air time, means avoid.
It means nothing for killing seige. 240 aoe radius is what matters their. Walls are only like 900 high.

I was mostly thinking sieges etc, less about players unless you’re just nuking the zerg.
For nuking the zerg the distance changes all the time anyhow of course. Not sure the 1500 is the main thing there.

I feel like the range matters when reaching the sieges from as far as possible, since they are mostly placed at strategic distances.

Good to read your comment though, it shows I might be putting too much into that range.

This does leave the original question though:
if it’s the 240 aoe radius, than aren’t we still stuck with grenades? Regardless of range?
Bombs seem a bit tooooo close to be as viable

Bombs traited for healing in a siege detroying commando team on the other hand, that does seem like a good option.
But that’s not what we mean when we mention ‘wall defense’ and such.

Frost is 240 with or without grenadier. you can always swap to grenades when you need to kill that treb/mortar on a wall.
I don’t run portal on my mesmer. ALL the time.
I swap blink, feedback, null field, invis, and portal as needed.

Need to portal past a choke point/seige? blink, viel, portal, mass invis.
Stack up raid, open portal , run up and blink past any guardian walls, aoe. Run past everyone, drop portal, drop mass invis. Now, your raid ports in, and is invis. Run to lords room.
Alternatively, timewarp if you are portal bombing to kill siege/players.

While in normal fighting, blink, feedback, null field, timewarp.

Should test FT2 at killing siege on walls. It seems to have clipping issues though, probably wont work.
Mortar 5 hits. but huge CD.
should test acidic elixirs too.
If they fix deployable turrets. That will open up SO many pve/wvw builds.
(I kindof think deployable turrets on walls is why it doesn’t work. its not a bug, its disabled for being op)

There are a few places that extra range is nice. But honestly, not that big a deal. It doesnt make or break anything.

Killing PLAYERS on walls, doesn’t need that 240 at all. bouncing attacks, pulls, smaller aoe. all work. (Bouncing attacks sometimes work on seige back from the edge as well, somtimes. if the enemy is foolish enough to create a chain for you. Especially true vs cannons/oil. Piercing pistols vs a manned cannon/oil is just lol, with exploding x3, and static shot.)

In PvE I really agree. God, one regular hit with grenades is as much as a (high) critical hit with my rifle… not even mentioning pistol.

But SPvP is diffirent. Because players are moving grenades are too unreliable, and rifle offers really nice control. But they still do alot more damage if you hit.

The grenades are really useful for deterring revivers in WvW. When in a zerg fight and you see a player fall at arms reach, just spam all your grenades at them and you’ll almost guarantee a kill unless a full mob of them revive the person at once.

Minda.9270:

The grenades are really useful for deterring revivers in WvW. When in a zerg fight and you see a player fall at arms reach, just spam all your grenades at them and you’ll almost guarantee a kill unless a full mob of them revive the person at once.

flamethrower #4 fire field can do just that as well
But the grenades look more menacing for others to go stand under…

Grenades > All only in certain situations,
1: Large wvw zerg while u have protection by being on top of a wall
2: Underwater
3: vs Doors in wvw/ Trebs in Spvp

Other then that id rather use the other options available for engineer

What mistymts is trying to say: I like the damage of the grenades on stationary targets, but Im not good enough to use them on the move.

Kimbald.2697:

I’m not a big fan of the grenades, but they have this one advantage even if you ignore their higher damage:

the 1500 range!

No other weapon an engineer has offers this long range.
I don’t like that to be honest, but I can’t ignore it.

To be honest, I find it a little silly. In a game with magic, bows, and handguns, the equal longest-range man-portable weapon is… thrown grenades? I can see valid balance reasons for it (namely, that grenades are the engineer’s long-range kit) but from a realism factor I must say I’d like to see a replacement long-range kit introduced sometime and the range of grenades pared back.

Kimbald.2697:

flamethrower #4 fire field can do just that as well

No it can’t. The fire field just applies burning, there’s no actual damage per tick from it like the warrior’s longbow adrenaline skill.

grenade kit and bomb kit both have a huge disadvantage and thats the 1 second timer before they go off. This isn’t the best kit people and they are truly less powerful then the rifle because of it. they have only two uses in the game, using them for anything else is usually suicide.

The frost affect does not last long enough to keep enemies from reaching you, and poison does not do as much damage as fire, that is still imbalanced.

6% bleed is a useless trait as you are also without any real dps from these explosions because enemies just keep coming while they are poisoned bleeding and on fire.

Cond damage needs a boost to work properly again because without it the cond’s engis have just don’t do much damage really.

tigirius.9014:

The frost affect does not last long enough to keep enemies from reaching you, and poison does not do as much damage as fire, that is still imbalanced.

6% bleed is a useless trait as you are also without any real dps from these explosions because enemies just keep coming while they are poisoned bleeding and on fire.

The chill lasts 7.5 seconds, that’s longer than any other class can apply in the game (there might be a ranger pet with traits that lasts longer, I’m not sure). And it’s on a relatively low cooldown, to boot.

The 6% bleed trait is also quite strong. You have roughly a 17% chance to apply at least one bleed with every grenade attack, and guess how long these bleeds last? 15 seconds. There’s no internal cooldown on it like the burn trait, and 15 seconds of bleeding does as much damage as the 2.5 seconds of burning. This also means that, if you’re hitting multiple mobs (as you will very often be), you’ll be giving those long-lasting bleeds to several creatures, not just one target burning.

If you’re referring to PvP, I admit I run the burn trait instead – you want them dead now rather than later, and the mob issue doesn’t arise nearly as often.

Grenade’s raw damage and its ability to inflict vulnerability is unmatched. However, I recently switched to a power P/S build with piercing trait and sigil of fire because I didn’t want to get RSI.

Not as strong, but the AoE spam still it gets the job done.

Grenades with grenadier are by far the highest dps weapon engineer has.

They also apply vulnerability very well thanks to steel packed powder and 3 crit chances for precise sights if you take that, boosting the damage even more.

Oh yeah, just for laughs, they are the highest range weapon too (despite the facts it’s stupid you can throw a grenade farther then you can shoot a rifle and that the travel time means you won’t reliably hit anything at max range)

If you can stand using them (I can’t, I don’t want to cripple myself over a video game) then any other choice is really kind of stupid, they are just so good.

I use rocket turret with deploy-able turrets and accelrant packed turrets to knock enemies off walls at keeps / towers. It’s fun. I wish thumper worked in PvE or flame.

I stopped using grenades and outside of pve it’s not a big loss for me.

I actually feel more effective in what I do without grenade kit than with it in WvW.

My guild does no really do the A – typical keep / tower sieges. We prefer to be mobile and flank around towers / push out than to stand and spam.

Grenade has better damage when it hits than tool belt rifle, I can’t argue that. But I’ve found in fast pace WvW where you high mobile that grenade is very hit and miss.

Even when you get good at ground targeting while moving it is still hard to effectively hit a moving target as you try to move in coordination with your group.

I found that I spent a lot of time and energy focusing on grenade placement, which often caused my movement to lag behind, and got me caught out of group movement.

I also noticed that I could not run grenade and lead at the same time.

So for me tool belt rifle works better, because I can be more mobile, and focus more on movement then lining up my attacks.