Scrapper Raid Tank
Naw, because with the likely loss of rev it’ll be even more important that Mesmer stacks their own boon duration, which means toughness gear, so we’d have to move pretty far just to beat them in toughness, and considering tanking is just about who has most toughness, I would think Mesmer would still be the choice.
I wish we were viable in raids:( I really enjoy the hammer animations, but unfortunately we offer to much variety as a class.
Tanking in GW2 is all about being able to position a boss properly.
Bosses follow the person with the highest toughness.
So it’s about, what class loses the usefulness the least while having to equip toughness gear, and that is Chronomancer.
My main was originally engineer, now I really am a Jack of All Trades in a sense since I play whatever class I need to.
There are two raid viable engineer specs from my experience : Condi P/P or Power Bombs + S/D. They both provide about the same damage.
Condi P/P:
+ Lots of Soft CCs (immob, chill, cripple, blind)
- Slow hard CCs
- Requires Stationary Target
- Difficult Rotation
Power Bombs + S/D:
+ Good Hard CCs (Rifle 4, Launch Battering Ram, Personal Battering Ram, Turret Explosion)
+ Mobile Damage
- Slightly weaker soft CCs than condi variation due to lower condi duration.
The only classes I would say optimal as tanks are Chronomancers and Necros. Chronomancers because a Chrono is pretty much exclusively a quickness bot and their damage output is negligible. Necros, because they don’t really rely on power and precision as much as they do Condi Damage and Duration, meaning they could replace a few viper pieces with some trailblazers for toughness and not lose any significant condi damage.
That said, the only reason to take an ele over a power engi on small targets is because of rebound. The damage they provide is pretty much the same and power engi has more CC.
The reasons to take a Necro over a Condi Engi in raids are 1. Necro’s have stupid survivability and an easy as hell rotation 2. Two Necros epi bouncing is more damage than 2 Engineers. If Epi ever got nerfed, Engineers as they are now would completely outclass necros in terms of damage.
Just a quick addition to what Ging said (which is pretty spot on), Necro’s also have condi manipulation which will have them maintaining a spot in wing2 even if Epi were cut down. Plague Signet is just awesome, and being able to send those condi’s back various ways increases damage quite a lot.
I wish we were viable in raids:( I really enjoy the hammer animations, but unfortunately we offer to much variety as a class.
We are a viable dps profession, just not easy to play.
“Mentoring engineers / mesmers and showing you what you can do with your fantastic class!
Just pm me for my advice! Always eager to help!”
Having done PuG VGs with engineers while I myself was playing something else, I have to tell you, a lot of Engineer players give the class a bad name. The reason being that they just don’t have the attention span capable of controlling seekers in between rotations. That is what makes Engi really shine during VG, the ability to hinder and move seekers as needed, yet most from what I have noticed are not capable of doing this.
When groups see that someone is incapable of doing their most important job, well then they would rather take someone else, like a Necromancer who can just shroud through seekers.
Having done PuG VGs with engineers while I myself was playing something else, I have to tell you, a lot of Engineer players give the class a bad name. The reason being that they just don’t have the attention span capable of controlling seekers in between rotations. That is what makes Engi really shine during VG, the ability to hinder and move seekers as needed, yet most from what I have noticed are not capable of doing this.
When groups see that someone is incapable of doing their most important job, well then they would rather take someone else, like a Necromancer who can just shroud through seekers.
Right again, but going to elaborate because I know I had this issue and I see others too.
For seeker control, your job is not to keep knocking it back away from the group, your job is to slow them down to keep them ideally from ever becoming an issue, only when they are on VG or in a green circle do you need to knock them away. So make use of the Immobs/chills/cripples and save the knockback for when it’s needed. Even if it’s close to VG just let it be, as long as the Melee have room to move and the tank doesn’t have to adjust (they have enough pressure) let them be, also your necros will thank you (ok, just not yell at you) for allowing them to Epi.