Guild Wars 2

I have killed Sloth on my Engi and on my Herald, and find that running traditional Condi Engi seems pretty meh for this encounter. No reflects or cleanses is a problem. And you can bring slick shoes, but Herald with Staff off hand does close to the same effective break bar control for this encounter and offers so much more in the way of group buffs, Tablet, etc, with DPS being similar.

Is anyone running any interesting builds for this encounter on Engi?

Wahoo!

First of all a few things I want to mention regarding this issue:

I agree, Condi Engi is indeed a very bad choice for Sloth, because of quite a bunch of reasons:
The common “2 kit issue because of Slick Shoes” is not the only thing here, but Sloth also loses ALL its conditions each time he goes to sleep. Then there is the lack of sustain if you have a volatile poison or are fixated. You have nothing but a HT and a water field with a few blasts. You’re rather vulnerable.

You don’t “need” reflect as an Engineer. Normally the Chronos and DHs should take care of it. Necros shouldn’t use Corrosive Poison Cloud cuz it only absorbs and does not reflect (deal damage).
But if you really lack reflection use hammer #2 and/or Bulwark Gyro’s toolbelt. Spam the gyro for some additional support for your team.

Slick Shoes are BY FAR superior to the Heralds staff. Sloth has a breakbar of 4000 and afaik the Heralds staff deals 9x 150 (1350) damage to it. Slick Shoes deal 6400 damage.

Tablet is absorb and should not be used in the first place. You want the boon duration of Glint and maybe some resistance for bad times if required. I dislike the idea of Ventari unless your party comp is bad.

Rev dps is not on pair with Engis, you deal way more damage than a Herald.

Now back to topic:

Power Scrapper is the way to go here. You can go for multiple builds but the main core build is found here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/All-Skills-Damage-for-Power-and-Condi-3/first

I would keep the build the same but swap out some utilites:

Use the Healing Turret for the condi cleanse. You can set it up and time it to remove fear if you have poison or are fixated and are already far away from your Tempest’s eye of the storm.

Use Grenades, Bombs and Slick Shoes if you have a perfectly balanced party.
Use Bombs, Slick Shoes and Bulwark Gyro if you lack reflect.
Use Bombs, Slick Shoes and Elixier Gun if you lack condi cleanse. You have a stunbreak for fear and fumigate for cleanse all condis rather fast, aswell a long range condi remove for unlucky people who get feared far away.

You can use Function Gyro for low HP poison duty people.
You can use mortar #5 and hammer #3 after poison duty.
You can block with hammer on tank duty.
You have great aoe damage for adds compared to condi engi or other professions in general.

Power Scrapper truly rocks this boss fight, always take one, it makes the whole fight so much easier IF the Engi can play properly that is ofc :P

Greez!
- Ziggs Ironeye

Great response. Thanks much.

Although I would agree that power scrapper is certainly better on sloth from a personal DPS/utility point of view, if your comp is running a lot of necromancers then condi scrapper is likely better simply because your team will have no other substantial burns to epidemic (epi only takes 25 stacks of each condition, so having a variety of conditions is valuable). Additionally, if you and your team are experienced in the fight, then the advantages of power scrapper (condi cleanse, stunbreak, block) become less important or unneeded altogether. Of course, you should running scrapper in that fight whether you are power or condi simply because function gyro is so good there.

Utility Goggles aren’t that bad either. I used to play with many Necros there but they just aren’t worth taking imo. They have rather low dps on Sloth, they do great damage on grups tough, however if your Chronos work together you can just pull all grups into Sloth and cleave them. Tempests deal more damage and have Eye of the Storm if required.

But I agree, IF you have two or more necros that will epidemic back to sloth, a condi engi for the burnst might be a good idea. But remember, burn stacks can also come from power Engi, so it’s not too bad either way.

Xyonon.3987:

I used to play with many Necros there but they just aren’t worth taking imo. They have rather low dps on Sloth, they do great damage on grups tough, however if your Chronos work together you can just pull all grups into Sloth and cleave them. Tempests deal more damage and have Eye of the Storm if required.

This actually made me laugh, not because its stupid but because it actually didn’t occur to me that groups were using substantially different strategies than mine. My group’s fastest (and easiest) sloth kills, including what we used to get the slippery slubling achievement, have all been with 3-4 necros. I think our comp now is like:

1 pswar
1 druid
1 chrono
1 rev
1 engineer
1 guardian
3-4 necromancer
0-1 elementalist

and it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect. CPC and guardian stuff for reflect, and go crazy with epidemic. So you can see why we use condi engineer, lol.

We probably just made very different expiriences, no reason to call it stupid tough…
The raid hasn’t been out for too long but I still will test more and more.

What I also dislike about Necros is that they cannot go for the shrooms aswell, so you have to chose 4 other people for that.
But you don’t want to use druid cuz of heal, war cuz of might and banners, chrono cuz of current active fields and alacrity or engi cuz of breakbar. So you can pick ele guard and rev.
Sure you can pick a few Necros who will sacrifice their minions but I don’t think that’s a very popular idea.

Xyonon.3987:

We probably just made very different expiriences, no reason to call it stupid tough…
The raid hasn’t been out for too long but I still will test more and more.

What I also dislike about Necros is that they cannot go for the shrooms aswell, so you have to chose 4 other people for that.
But you don’t want to use druid cuz of heal, war cuz of might and banners, chrono cuz of current active fields and alacrity or engi cuz of breakbar. So you can pick ele guard and rev.
Sure you can pick a few Necros who will sacrifice their minions but I don’t think that’s a very popular idea.

We bring a necromancer with blood magic who won’t have minions to turn on us. Having one with blood magic is good anyway to deal with downs in poison or goop. If you send a PSWar on the second mushroom the timing works out with banners. So typically we will do:

1: Guardian
2: Warrior
3: Ele (if used), else Revenant
4: Revenant (if not on 3), else necro

We’re using those:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2IDNUdjd3gnNwhjDjhamCxwLE/5A4AkdwHsBA-TRiHQBA4kAsLle06JAQQlB0T9HntDA50PEklH0jSQSBooyK-e

Without minions I barely can believe that they still deal okish dps :| But well that’s off topic, let’s rather continue this with pm if you want to