Guild Wars 2

I’m currently testing the following PvP build:
GW2skills

Applied Force, when beefed up and padded with Vigilant amulet (the only Concentration amulet), Leadership runes, Superior Sigil of Speed, Alchemical Tinctures and Elixir U, grants enough Quickness in combat such that you will at no point in time lose its effect. With this PvP setup: Applied Force grants 22s of Quickness every 40s, Elixir U grants 13.5s of Quickness every 40s, and Sigil of Speed grants 7.5s Quickness every 40s.

From traits, buffs and Sigil of Accuracy, the build still runs a serviceable 53% crit chance and 1050 Toughness (albeit no Ferocity/Vitality). Also included is a rolling 20~25 Might, permanent Swiftness/Fury and very high Stability up-time (you won’t get 100% unless you camp FT, which is the wrong way to play since FT1 is awful).

A few other numbers to consider:
Toss Elixir B grants 9s Stability on a 20s cooldown.
Healing Turret grants 9.25s Protection on a 15s cooldown.
Camping FT (you shouldn’t) grants a permanent 2 stacks of Stability if you do hang onto it (you shouldn’t).
Optional Variant: swap Sneak Gyro for Elixir X for a permanent Quickness Rampage.

With the above in mind:
is this balanced?
Should we consider it balanced solely because a counter class exists (Necromancers and Revenants), when we have the capacity to stealth and outrun them while focusing on side points?
Is the damage so low on Hammer that the Quickness does not compensate?
Is the defense so low due to lack of Vitality that the Protection does not compensate?
Should we have boon slaves in the meta when Ranger, who had a similar build for one day with WHaO, had it removed overnight?

Yes, I am aware that the build has a very obvious counter, but is that really enough justification? This feels broken for how easy it is to play (camp FT out of combat, use FT2 in combat every 6s, else spam Hammer and use FT only for utility).

Your thoughts and criticism are greatly appreciated.

Please paint me the composition scenario in which actually playing any of what you described (except not camping FT) is viable or fun? Gz on discovering scrapper-meat-shield meta build. Be sure to carry the legendary hammer while you play this in 5/5 pve guild premade stronghold, against pug… and lose

In past few day I was testing simillar idea in wvw roaming but with rifle instead of hammer. Basicly Commander’s (power, prec, tough, concentration) armor and weapons, Zerk trinkets, Agility sigil, Leadership runes and boon duration food I got into 100% boon duration. That way you get up to 9s quickness (6s from trait, 2s from rune and boon stays up 1s after timer ends) every 10s without Elixir U.

Now there are multiple ways how to keep 25 stacks of might with that many boon duration. I find best for this HGH way instead of FT and used Elixir H Elixir Gun and Rocket Boots for stacking and maximum mobility. Last utility is moderate you can use Elixir B or even Blast Gyro for extra spike damage for example. Elite Sneak gyro ofc.

Results was awesome basicly 4-6k autoattacks loaded with almost perma quickness was devastating for most of the targets:-)

Actually I think you can make this build much better and work well. Will test.

The trait Applied Force has a base uptime of 30% with the requirement of permanent 10 stacks might. I think this is ok for a grandmaster trait. It is supposed to be strong.

And ranger was a complete different thing with WhaO, if you want to run high quickness uptime as engineer now, you have to invest heavily for it (like equip, runes and traits all focusing on this one grandmaster trait to improve boon duration). Ranger didn’t had to invest anything for permaboonspam, they just had to use the healing skill WhaO. I think this is a large difference.

Well you deal no damage with it so it’s fine.

Applied Force is best used in PvE. Do not use it in PvP. PvP should be about either burst / hassle (conditions) or self-maintenance; adaptive armor will get you much further. 100% quickness is useless in scenarios where A. there aren’t enough targets to generate a threat, B. nothing has enough HP (and players do not in PvP; I mean hundreds of thousands or more…) to generate a time sink or C. the tactics surrounding quickness do not present real opportunities.

Tried this build, actually not bad. I made the following adjustments tho:

• Swapped Elixir B for Elixir Gun → More condi removal, extra stun break, strong AoE attack. (Enough Fury from No Scope + Hidden Flask)
• Invigorating Speed, pretty good with Sigil of Speed.
• Inversion Enzyme, SRD is more a death trap than a savior, and against reapers you can convert your chill in resistance.

Xyonon.3987:

Well you deal no damage with it so it’s fine.

You acutally deal lotta damage since you attack twice as fast with most commonly with 52% crit chance and 25 stacks of might. You are only a quite squishy, even if you have prot.

Can you decribe how you want to do dmg with quickness?
With which spells specifically? Which ones benefit a lot?

I dont think that a build like this with so much quickness will work very well in pvp for Engineer.

For perma quickness to work, you need to be able to press abilities frequently that benifit from quickness a lot.
We dont have many abilities in that build, that benifit a lot from quickness.

You want your hammer abilities to hurt and I think you can do that better in this case, with ferocity than quickness.
Correct me if wrong, but Electro whirl, Rocket charge and Shockshield dont benifit an aweful lot from quickness. Nor does Thunderclap.

So often you will use abilities that dont benefit a lot from it, or you get kited a bit for example. At those times, Quickness doesnt help much, whereas Fercocity and Vit would.

I just dont see a point for so much quickness. Looks like to much to me and it comes at the cost of health and ferocity, from Marauder amulet and also traits like Adaptive armor, which I would both rather have than overkill on quickness.

I would say Elixir U and Applied force are plenty if you want a lot of quickness.
Why try get more?

Rocket Whirl does benefit alot, since alot of times you can only hit once with it (unless you have bad enemy). With Quickness twice. Your enemies wont see thunderclap coming very easily, your Flame Blast will not only shoot faster but also travel faster, you can quicklier heal yourself with healing skill and super elixir and ofcourse your flame thrower AA is alot quicker.

Why would you want more quickness? Because of boon strip. Next to that the swiftness from sigil of speed procs my vigor which is nice.

And btw, dont underestimate the burning. Even without condi damage it ticks 300 damage constantly + with IA you can get ticks up to 2K, which is not a bad addition

The V.8759:

Xyonon.3987:

Well you deal no damage with it so it’s fine.

You acutally deal lotta damage since you attack twice as fast with most commonly with 52% crit chance and 25 stacks of might. You are only a quite squishy, even if you have prot.

Is quickness twice as fast again? I thought it was 50% faster. It makes it 50% faster not reduces action time by 50%. Or may I am wrong.

I play something like this sometimes. Its fun and can be effective, but will get eaten alive by necros and thieves especially, and anything that can kite and put out condis. Its pretty good against other power builds though.

Xyonon.3987:

Well you deal no damage with it so it’s fine.

Succinct, albeit an oversimplification. The build does decent damage… at best; it doesn’t do so much damage that it outweighs the immense defensive capabilities of the current meta build. I stopped using it, although I don’t think it disproves my original thought — that 100% Quickness and 66% Protection uptime is ripe for a niche build, just not this exact iteration.

Yashuoa.9527:

For perma quickness to work, you need to be able to press abilities frequently that benifit from quickness a lot.
We dont have many abilities in that build, that benifit a lot from quickness.

Which skills in the Engineer skill set benefit most from Quickness? Shrapnel Grenades? FT1 was the most noticeable change in the thread starter’s build, but it’s not enough justification. Something that benefits more and deals more damage could change that.

It was fun, at least.

The build is fun in PvE and low level PvP but nothing else. It won’t be worth it in higher level PvP so its not OP. I tried using something similar in WvW and the results were not great.