Guild Wars 2

I’m feeling really ineffective playing soldier rifle (nades, toolkit, slick/elixir s) in ranked these days. Here’s why:

Rifle

• Overcharged Shot. – This is already a risky skill because if your opponent has stability or aegis or invuln or almost any defense really, you’ve just cc’d yourself and got nothing out of it. Now it seems like there is much much more reflect going around. Reflect makes this an absolutely terrible skill to attempt in a teamfight if you’re up against some of the classes that have easy access to it.

• Jump Shot. – Also high risk. You’re committing yourself to a leap that where you are vulnerable to all damage and cc. The damage is okay, but it’s nowhere near Revenant’s Unrelenting Assault. That does more damage, grants a ton of might, but most importantly it is less vulnerable to interruption. In heavy teamfights, I’d say my jump shots are interrupted more often than not. Jump shot is also bugged, iirc, because it is affected by chill and cripple. I believe there was a post about that not being the intended behavior. It makes it nearly useless for attacking a Reaper or escaping once loaded up with conditions.

Toolkit

• Magnet Pull – do I even need to mention this? It’s been bugged since forever.

• Gear Shield – It’s not bugged, but it isn’t great at preventing damage. There are a lot of things out there that cut through block. Unblockable Necro marks are probably the most annoying, followed by DH traps, Rev skills, etc.
  It’s just unreliable now. Like, in the past, you’d have 3 enemies bearing down on you, and 2 allies coming to help maybe 10 seconds away. It used to be an easy decision. Pop gear shield, block for a few seconds, dodge. Now, you pop gear shield, but immediately get chilled or feared by Necro marks, then cc’d and killed shortly after. Maybe it would have been better to run away until your allies got there, but you didn’t know that they had unblockable skills, so it’s hard to make that choice.

Any advice? Has everyone switched to meta scrapper hammer?

all my scrapper builds use tool kit. the utility is still excellent even if magnet is buggy.
two 20sec cd blocks is great to have, prybar is still great damage, & magnet is an unblockable pull so it’s great for killing revs.

rifle is still strong, and I’ve seen it a lot in EU teams. I’m liking hammer more right now, but rifle is still my goto for wvw.

I’m not sure what youre on about. Yes reflects vs your rifle really do a number on ya, but so what? Most reflects have obvious visual cues, and overcharged shot is pretty much an instant cast. Unblockables going through gear shield? Yeah? Whats the problem here?

Problem is that engi slowly loses power against new professions/traits. And now you have to find new ways, lose your old build and make up something new, even if you are playing core engi. Old tactics are failing us hard. So we need some new ones. I think that is why some weapons are losing popularity/power really fast, and some are becoming popular.

Knowing when and how to use these weapons pretty much eliminates most of the issues outlined here (magnet bug is still tough to work around in most situations):

• Overcharged Shot – Just don’t use it on targets with stab or invuln, lol. You can also combo it with stability (elixir or a stunbreak, but even if you didn’t need you, you’d never want to waste a cooldown like this on a target with stab/invuln.

• Jump Shot – No idea why you’re even comparing this to UA. It’s a much shorter animation, especially if you’re using it for burst. The only time the animation lasts for long is if you use it over a long distance, in which case it’s the same issue with any movement skill. Besides, you can always kit-swap to cancel the animation.

• Magnet Pull – Yea, buggy as hell, but good players will often avoid it anyways. Only use this to bait dodges, when obscured by a ton of AoE effects, or when you know a player is out of dodges/evades/invulns. This is particularly good for interrupting anyone who’s blocking (such as guardians healing).

• Gear Shield – Yea, don’t wait until you’re almost dead to use this. There’s a lot of unblockable stuff that’s in the meta, which is why this has fallen out of favor. It’s not a bad skill. It’s just not well suited for the current meta.

As for advice, I think the best advice you can get is this: Don’t get caught up in thinking “this is a bad skill because of this weakness”. Instead, think “how does my play style need to change to cover weaknesses and make the most of the strengths of the tools I have available”.

This mentality will lead you to your best uses of the skills which then allows you to make the best decisions in which skills to use.