Guild Wars 2

Greetings everyone! I need your help!

As some of you may know I’m working on a huge spreadsheet for the Engineer, for determining wich skills, kits and stats are most optimal for each situation (mainly focused on raid). Tough, right now I’ve encountered a rather special case I’m not sure to get the best solution for. This is about the power engi and the 3rd utility skill.

Apparently you’ll be dealing slightly more damage by using the Rifle Turret’s Surprise Shot on CD, instead of the Elixier Gun’s Acid Bomb.
“If this is true, why didn’t we find out earlier” you may think now. This is because of Quickness (wich is 100% uptime since HoT).
You see, Acid Bomb is a “movement skill” like Jump Shot, Rocket Boots or Rocket Charge. Those skills are unaffected by quickness, so you will need it’s full cast time duration to use it.
Even tough, Acid Bomb is still a great skill and Surprise Shot (without a cast time at all) isn’t affected by Quickness aswell, the main point WHY this matters tough is that other attacks are so fast that you could use 2 auto attacks + 1 Surprise Shot MORE THAN TWICE per 1 Acid Bomb.

Now what I want to ask you guys, do you think it’s worth to bring a pure damage skill, with 0 utility for only – let’s say 300 – increased dps over the EG? Let’s think about a fight with Sabeth, where you don’t really need anything but Acid Bomb on EG, but even then, Super Elixier may be handy from time to time…

This said, if you prefer EG for a small cost of DpS, would go for another 300 less dps and use the toolkit for a good block for some situations and an increased ranged dps for when the druid should go melee, aswell the ability to pull the one thug / arsonist that sometimes chases the druid?

And then there is also the FT wich has the same dps as the Tool Kit, but definitly more dps on ranged, but again different or rather no utility at all for this fight. Altough a 0 cast time blind may come in handy.

So, what do you think about that utlity / dps trade off? Is 300 really that much? How about 600 difference? Where is the border between losing too much dps for utility?
I would like to hear your thoughts to determine the final “best” kits for Sabby.

Greez!
- Ziggy

one of the biggest tradeoffs i see with eg vs anything else that is useful is that eg brings a stunbreak while pretty much everything else comes with a cc. when the dps difference is that small, i prefer to take the one more applicable to the situation based on that difference in utility. im surprised that surprise shot is that good, but i guess thats quickness for ya.

for sabetha, i would prefer a cc i think. getting kicked by bandits is an issue, but its not something you expect because theyre small and hard to see in the massive clusterkitten of particle effects. i infrequently react quickly enough with a stunbreak. however, for knuckles, rifle turret is a low cd cc, so thats nifty.

i would say the same is true of vg. he walks out of puddles (for one thing), low cd cc is good in later phases, and a stunbreak doesnt do anything.

Thank you for that input. I wasn’t thinking about the CC part of the rifle turret, that’s pretty good actually. I don’t think you need a stunbreak tough, aslong as the Mesmer pulls properly and you blind them after that.

So a +1 for the turret. What about FT tough? It’s a good amount more ranged damage but slightly less in melee. Probably depends on what your purpose will be in the end. I mean mes can go ranged too and barely loses any damage nowdays.

hmm strictly as a choice between eg and ft, ft also fits the same thing as rifle turret… if it brings comparable damage, then its a matter of cc + combo utility gained by having a long fire field vs stunbreak. personally i dont really count the blind as worth much because while instant cast is excellent, its reeeeeally short range and break bars make blinds not great. but like if youre standing on the temporal curtain its pretty good.

rifle turret is lower skillcap, which is a huge thing too. you dont have to have a feel for ft 2’s cd, and surprise shot is always staring at you.

damage wise it’s like this:
melee: rifle turret > eg > toolkit > ft
ranged: ft > rifle turret > toolkit > eg

So I’m not sure about the choice here Q_Q I played today with toolkit and it was ok, I’ve had 20k dps on sabby on melee but never really required the pull, nor the block tough. The block was good for ranged tough, but not ultra important.

I expect FT to be a good pick against the flame turrets since you can use skill 2 on range against them, so it’s really “the ranged” weapon. For melee I’ll probably stick to EG or simply rifle turret all day long.

Utility > DPS.

DGraves.3720:

Utility > DPS.

I personally agree with that! Thanks for your opinion!

thats a really good reason to pick ft for sab :P

tbh if theyre all within about 1k dps of each other, it hardly matters which you pick. if 1 of them does an important thing for you that isnt necessarily damage, you should pick it, whether its the highest dps of the 4 or the lowest. because that thing that it does will potentially save you more time than an extra 1-5% dps.

if it was a larger hit to dps, like 10-20%, i would strongly suggest finding some other way to cover that important thing, because that starts to be a significant dps hit.

but 1-5% is in the range of “well if i just l2p, i can prolly squeak out 300 more dps”, which is just plain insignificant.

as an extreme example: its why i would recommend running slick shoes at gorseval even on a condi engi. if your group wants you to take care of that 1 thing so they can put out better dps rotations and not take cc (or rather, not think about saving ccs for the right time), then just do it. you lose a huge amount of personal dps, but you reliably break the bar. if your group would struggle with the cc otherwise then it will save you wipes.

but for that example, youre actually sacrificing something in order to take care of a thing. 300 dps is not a sacrifice.

I think it would be good if you could make arguments for both utilities in your spreadsheet, such as ‘low/no quickness, stationary boss, stunbreak/cripple needed -> egun’ or ‘high quickness, moving boss, need more CC -> rifle turret’.

Thanks again for those inputs. Good ones. But what do you like most of those:

Elixier Gun
+ Mobility with Acid Bomb if you take a cannon, want to eveade the flame wall or when you want to use it for damage on Sabby and jump to the Flame turrets / vice versa.
+ Small heal with Super Elixier + Healing Mist.
+ Barely useful Stunbreak.
- Damage only for melee.

Rifle Turret
+ Great damage for melee and ranged.
+ CC (knockback).
- Nothing else … :/

Flame Thrower
+ Great ranged damage.
+ CC (knockback).
+ Small blind.
- Terrible melee damage.

Tool Kit
+ Good melee damage.
+ CC (pull), also able to pull thugs who might be dangerious for Druid / cannon runners.
+ Medium ranged damage.
+ 3s block.

What would YOU pick for Sabetha?

Xyonon.3987:

Thanks again for those inputs. Good ones. But what do you like most of those:

Elixier Gun
+ Mobility with Acid Bomb if you take a cannon, want to eveade the flame wall or when you want to use it for damage on Sabby and jump to the Flame turrets / vice versa.
+ Small heal with Super Elixier + Healing Mist.
+ Barely useful Stunbreak.
- Damage only for melee.

Rifle Turret
+ Great damage for melee and ranged.
+ CC (knockback).
- Nothing else … :/

Flame Thrower
+ Great ranged damage.
+ CC (knockback).
+ Small blind.
- Terrible melee damage.

Tool Kit
+ Good melee damage.
+ CC (pull), also able to pull thugs who might be dangerious for Druid / cannon runners.
+ Medium ranged damage.
+ 3s block.

What would YOU pick for Sabetha?

I think you should relax tbh and I mean that in the kindest way possible gonna give yourself a headache you obviously put in a amazing amount of time and effort to think of all this situations and that’s what imo makes eng so great its versatile you literally answered your own question in the post above it depends on what you have available and whats needed.

You’re probably right. I’ll just use the rifle turret for the max dps then, just to show what the engi is capable of dealing.

Thank you all for your inputs! I really appreciate it