Guild Wars 2

I haven’t really ran my engineer in a while, but I started playing her in WvW again. I have full rabits gear and trinkets (exotic) and runes of perplexity, P/S build. I’m running 30/10/0/20/10 build (I don’t remember what had before I took a break). As for utilities I use grenades, tool kit and elixir gun.

I used to do roaming but it gets me bored easily, so I just want to stick to small-larger groups and zerg. Is there a better wait to build around perplexity runes for zergs? Maybe it’s not ideal but still nice for grabbing a single target or pull them down from walls with tool kit. I just don’t want to change runes a the moment since I spent money on them, but might change build completely later if I’ll make ascended gear

Well condi isn’t that great for zergs in the first place, I wouldn’t bother changing your runes just for that. I run the same gear/build, if I want to actual help the zerg more I swap to zerker gear. Usually I’m just lazy and grenades in condi is good enough to tag people.

pheroth.5306:

Well condi isn’t that great for zergs in the first place, I wouldn’t bother changing your runes just for that. I run the same gear/build, if I want to actual help the zerg more I swap to zerker gear. Usually I’m just lazy and grenades in condi is good enough to tag people.

What??? Your last sentence is correct though. Remember WvW zerg fighting is about staying alive. It is not about delivering max damage. The difference between your 1000 attack and 1200 attack isn’t a big deal in that context.

Conditions build for zerg is rather bad idea. While it can do relativly well against group of unskilled champs, it won’t do even part of the job direct damage would do against anyone better.
Another thing is that perplexity runes are rather single-target, so when rest are like “I will damage these 5 players down” with perplexity best you could do will be “K, there are 30 opponents, I’ll get this one!”.

Lert.6287:

Another thing is that perplexity runes are rather single-target, so when rest are like “I will damage these 5 players down” with perplexity best you could do will be “K, there are 30 opponents, I’ll get this one!”.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. One enemy down is one less person killing you, and possibly rallies for your team. If you’re trying to assassinate some backline members, they’re generally a bit more spreadout as well, meaning a single-target focus may actually be a bit more efficient.

I mean, if you can take down one of their eles, that’s a lot of group support gone (water fields, statics, general AoE damage). Sometimes that’s much more useful than throwing stuff against a hammer train and not really threatening anyone.

My first point supports second, which is – conditions are cleansed easly by zerg. Perpexity runes are for condition build focusing on one enemy (due cooldown) and that can be cleased easly which doesn’t give much damage output.
And naturally, over time – the less enemies the better, but what I meant that it’s not much of help attacking one enemy among 30 with rather bad result (cause conditions will be cleansed easly and that’s certain) while others or other builds can do that, but several times more damage and 3-5 more targets.

PS: About that ele example – If I ever zerged, I would rather backstab thief (or even for that case – direct damage granadier) taking down backliner staff ele than perplexity engi.

Well its pretty easy to stay alive with grenades at 1500 range in a zerg. Be careful of thieves

Complexity Runes can be really great for small scale combat in WvW. But for Large Scale, it can be useful with the right play-style.

Bursting the enemy down for small scale combat is currently a more optimal set up in general. However, I have recently noticed a difference of play-styles of people in NA T1 match-ups versus Non NA T1 match-ups. So it really depends on the specific opponent as some (not very many in WvW) will not be using condition removal at all.

Bursting down enemies is more effective in T1, whereas I’m still testing if DoT is effective in T3.

The best defense to most cookie-cutter thieves and other squishies is bursting them down as quickly as possible. You want to kill them within about 5-15 seconds of entering the fight against them or they will probably kill you in that time frame most of the time. At least that was my average time spent fighting them. I’ve found flamethrower juggernaut with more power is the best.

Now for other more tanky enemies, conditions can be more effective- on paper- since they have a high health pool in general. Conditions are really only countered by duration and removal capabilities because Armor doesn’t mitigate their damage.

However, conditions are easily countered by removal and most classes can very very easily remove them and some can have almost 100% complete immunity to conditions. Thus nullifying any condition builds almost entirely.

For example, many Warriors and Necromancers I encountered while roaming in NA T1, conditions were almost useless and a full rotation of full-condi grenades did maybe 10% total damage to a few warriors.

Summary:

1. Conditions can easily be countered by most professions
2. Bursting or high amounts of damage is generally a better way to go.
   Otherwise most enemies will kill you before you can react or kill them through attrition.
3. If you enjoy damage over time, like me, use it! Because your best play style is using the one you like the best!

style.6173:

Remember WvW zerg fighting is about staying alive. It is not about delivering max damage.

it depends. whenever you know what you’re doing, whatever you can do to spike the opponent zerg down is good enough for helping your side. just remind yourself of what a tornado meteor shower can do with a zerg. if you get a kill before the opponent does, you’re going to have a huge advantage. they start rezzing, throwing multiple banners etc. so damage DOES matter, and so do conditions. not all ofcourse. mostly the quick conditions.

Engineers can get away with condi setups a lot more in T1 zergs than the other professions due to the speed and frequency at which they can apply/reapply conditions. There is still a finite number of condi removal available not everyone is in the target radius/target limit. It can still have an impact and force people to burn cooldowns just for the condi removal component on abilities they should otherwise be saving for the utility instead. In some cases this causes them to blow their heal early which makes things better for your team mates. I’d suggest going for a CC centric build if you go condi so you still have an impact with chill/immobilize/cripple/knockbacks(there is never enough aoe stab in a zerg so KBs are effective especially when you hit a zerg in the side when they’re circling around to break their lines) while soft cc may be removed quickly in a high-speed zerg vs zerg scenario when movement and positioning is important some well placed soft CC can cause a group of people to be caught that otherwise wouldn’t, even if it only slows them down for a second.

Using a Condi/CC oriented build with perplexity runes can work out ‘ok’ KBs will be interrupting regularly for the confusion proc along with dropping supply crate on peoples heads for another viable interrupt/aoe stun and not to forget static shield/throw shield especially considering throw shield pierces in a line for a daze on each target hit both directions with no target cap for another potential interrupt. I wouldn’t worry about individual targets unless you want to focus on people being caught in your CC after you drop it if they fall behind their group or if you plan on just focusing their back lines specifically.

In Z vs Z scenarios you’re still bringing some things to the group though so not all is lost and you’ll be surprised how much condi dmg isn’t removed as your average group/pug zerg will blow most if not all of their cooldowns on initial engagement.

With that said power is far easier to get predictable results from. In small scale havoc teams / roaming conditions will definitely shine more.