Guild Wars 2

hey im curious as to what experienced tournament players have found to be useful in 5vs5 tournament play.
I mean tournament play specifically because alot of specs hold up in hotjoins but border on useless vs organized competition and teamplay.

So far , i have found only 3 specs.
1. Standard 100 nades.
2. Power exlir grenade/condition. By might stacking, you build up both power and condition damage for your pistol/grens 30/0/0/30/10.
3. Some variety of bunker build (only seems to really cut the mustard on legacy of the foefire since lack of stability wont hurt you that much on this map. )
Ive found #2 to be the best overall, and a fully viable spec that holds its own no matter the level of play.

Ive seen bomb side point holders do ok, but not really well enough to be truly viable.

Im wondering if anyone else out there is a hardcore tourny player and found any other viable specs? i cant find a way to make flamethrower viable ( though it can be ok). I cant find a way to make turrets useful at all.
So once again based of proven experience in tournament play, not hotjoin.
Any ideas for something new to try?

This is something I’ve been running for a couple of weeks now with my engineer Lambchops. Main damage comes from rifle, throw wrench, & acid bomb. Acid bomb is good for throwing down on cap points and hits like a truck when proccing lightning. It also procs area retaliation from super elixir.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0picX3SfF1LJyoHk2n1ZhKIhgUkX1loCVGA;TkAg0CvoqxUjoGbNuak1MoA

Im curious what kinda crits you get. your not might stacking , and your not up power. so you can crit alot but they dont hit that hard? maybe im missing something?

also, you have nearly no cleasning , other than the #4 on medkit. I guess you do have 2 heals though.
Youve had success with this build in tourny play? Maybe ill give it a whirl. Seems for 1on1 than say, mid team fight.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0pCYn1SfF17ICoH1nfdXiU8YN2HFs1DC;TkAg0Cno0xkjIHbQOdkBNEB

When I’m feeling sorta troll I like to use this flamethrower build. It’s pretty hilarious seeing 9k or more flamethrower 2 crits on squishies. The 2 is bugged out so that it can hit up to 3 times (once passing through, twice on the explosion) so long as you dont detonate it mid-air. It’s hilarious.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqal0picHxSfF17ICoH5V9hXiK8YfewWPIEC;ToAAzCpoay0koJbTumkNNWYWB

This condi build isn’t too bad either. You can switch out the toolkit for elixir C if you want, but the toolkit is so luls. It’s like playing hundred nades with condis though, you’re so weak to condis it’s sad

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0p6ZX3SfF1LJxoCfO0jCjf1KSh+r8nCyF;TkAgzCmo2xsjYHLQudkANaA

This is what I run. Just a heavy self-healing bunker. It’s focused on just staying alive. Because of this, to make him useful you have to make sure you stand on a point, with 2 or more people trying to kill you for the entire match. While they try to cap your point, their team will have to fight for the two remaining points in a 3 or less vs 4 situation, mostly ensuring your team victory. To make it work best, you have to know where to know and you have to see how the enemy reacts.

I’m experimenting a lot with this baby. At first I had problems with warriors/thieves glass cannons: while people were attacking me and I was not at full health, they could come and spike me down without me being able to do much. Then i put Elixir S and Self-Regulating defense, and it never happened to me again.

Another problem may be necromancer + other people: their enourmous conditions spamming sometimes makes my work extremely dangerous.

This build can whitstand enormous amounts of damage and many people at once, like guardians and elementalists, with good cc too.

This build served me very well (I’ts the only build I trust to go on tournies with), but I’m still testing how far it can go.

I’ve always found engy bunkers to be fine in terms of durability but lack consistant stability so can get kicked off point. which is why they are good on legacy because the points big enough you can can avoid being bunted off it.

But ill give it a shot.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqicX3ShF17IxoHd+ziOkiCbYRK0f+B;ToAg2CmoAzAmAMLYOwkgNaY+B

This is my personal favorite bunker build. kittens ridiculous. It can be kind of hard to play, just be careful with kit refinement and your blast finishers in water fields.

You get so many dodges it’s absurd. I feel like engis in that build stay alive a LOT longer than a guardian. The only problems I’ve seen is the lack of stability, as you said, which can lead to you getting bursted down by chain CC, and the lack of potential for stomps which is the job of the bunker in most cases.

But it’s still a ridiculous build, I have no problem tanking 2 people for over a minute, possible even longer depending on class and whether or not you are able to self rez yourself.

And remember to stay out of kits while you’re taking damage. The extra armor from the shield and reinforced shield doesn’t kick in unless you have your shield actually out. 3400 armor is the kitten

Condi-Burst is still around, played by Teldo, Hiba, and many others.

http://www.intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRR;0B-Z-Vg0u5FQFx0;9;4T9-T-49A5;319A;1VN1;11-hoHAhoHA7Zi

Rune choices and Amulet choices are subject to change of course, pending personal preferences and bugs.

100-nades
HGH conditions
Bunkers (bombs and stuff)

Ayestes.1273:

Condi-Burst is still around, played by Teldo, Hiba, and many others.

http://www.intothemists.com/calc/?build=-VRR;0B-Z-Vg0u5FQFx0;9;4T9-T-49A5;319A;1VN1;11-hoHAhoHA7Zi

Rune choices and Amulet choices are subject to change of course, pending personal preferences and bugs.

I honestly would not recommend that permutation of HgH in the slightest. I personally think it’s the worst of all types, and I’ve tried them all many many many times over.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalspSXHxSfF17ICoC5loHPGlNZfewWpFEC;ToAAzCpoCyUkoIbOugk5MWYKC

this is far, far better. Geomancy sigils are kitten and don’t fit well into the playstyle I believe engis should be played as. Furthermore, rampagers makes you incredibly squishy. Like, kittenedly squishy. Rabid’s emphasis on toughness takes away a negligible amount of crit and physical damage, but gives far greater condition damage and survivability in return because of how well alchemy’s stat distribution works with it. Even worse is the nightmare runes which are STILL bugged out to not give any condition duration while lyssa runes bring sharpshooter up to 4 seconds as well as the burn proc up to 3. The lack of might stacking in the geomancy build is made up for via enhanced performance sacrificing needed sustainability from short fuse, and the might stacks from enhanced performance force you to use your heal skill more often than you’d like. The might is also far more “bursty” because the durations are so low. The sustained that comes with additional might duration runes makes it so that your battle sigil and general might stacks from HGH stay up for a very long time, often times making up the gap between rabid and rampagers in physical damage.

TL;DR use the build above, it’s better I swear.

I’ve tried it and I simply disagree. I think the Geomancy Sigil is the key to the burst in the first place. Rampager’s I agree with and I personally like Rabid as well. I should’ve mentioned that I actually use that myself. Nightmare runes are bugged, but I did point out that Rune and Amulet choices should be changed due to withstanding personal preferences and bugs. I’m honestly using Undead right now, because I’ve tried Might stacking variants and I honestly felt like it was weaker. This is purely anecdotal experience though, and if there is math/evidence out there that suggests otherwise I’d be glad to switch. I went Undead simply as a short-sighted temporary thing over Nightmare, in which case it doesn’t seem so temporary anymore. I personally don’t feel Short Fuse is needed, but I won’t take away from it’s usefulness. The Might is more bursty I’d agree, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t necessarily pop the elixirs on cooldown, I save them for the situation at hand.

Ostricheggs does play more then me in terms of high level things though, so perhaps my opinion in this matter is a little less valuable. Isn’t Lyssa bugged alongside Nightmare though?

yea, to each their own I guess. If you have success with your own then more power to ya.

I just can’t see myself playing with geomancy, rampagers, nightmare runes or enhanced performance ever, but a large majority of good engis disagree.

just my 2 cents.

Honestly I think personal preference is severely underrated when we talk about builds. I think a lot of subtle adjustments are perfectly viable, and it doesn’t negate the viability of the other subtle variants. Geomancy to me is incredibly easy to use with just one kit swap, and the extra damage cooldown every ~10s is nifty. There is a point where I think just stacking extra Might isn’t as good as adding in extra damage sources. There are obviously times though in ranged situations where I want to swap and either waste the cooldown or simply not swap.

yea, I get that. When I tried geomancy it felt a lot better in small scale fights (where my own build was already good), but I was just so kittening squishy that attempting to get in melee range against some classes to use geomancy ONLY because it was about to come off CD and I would waste it otherwise felt awkward. It just kinda mucked up my mojo forcing me to do something I would have preferred not to do just for the sake of a bit of extra damage. It’s was still nice, but it sucked kitten at team fighting in comparison IMO.

Range is our friend ;D

Yeah I agree range is our friend, I just liked the extra damage output especially for team fight situations. I’ve never had a problem with ducking in and out for the proc, especially since Grenades are so much easier to land point-blank. You can definitely see how our opinions differ here, ha.

Only thing that bothers me about 30/10/0/30/0 is lack of speedy kits, its nice to have a reliable source of swiftness-other than once every 32 seconds or rng. AT least on some maps.

Yeah it’s a weakness of most HGH builds that you can’t afford to pickup Speedy Kits. Elixir B somewhat helps.

How much does it hurt damage to drop the 10 points up firearms i wonder.

Good question, I’ve debated it myself but the Pistol cooldowns do provide a lot of the damage. It’s worth a try though, it’s straight up utility for damage but just like you said a question of how much damage.

What ayestes said. I’d say speedy kits isn’t really worth it between the 100 additional condi damage/precision, sharp shooter and hair trigger.

All of those are really really good for HGH engis. I was speedy kits when I first ran HGH, but the 10 up firearms is just too good.

Did someone ask for NUMBERS?!

Alright, lets say we lose the 20% cooldown on pistols (I run 30/10/0/30/0 here).
The difficult part is exact damage loss in combat is difficult to calculate, however, we can theorycraft on static targets. So, lets say we have 0 condition damage for a baseline, but still factor in the +100 from traits (we’ll assume everything else is the same, including direct damage). So, poison volley will do 134 direct damage and 10 seconds of poison at a base of 84 damage a tick on a 10 second cooldown. So, 974 damage every ten seconds. Traited, we get 94 damage a tick, so 1074 damage on an 8 second cooldown. Blowtorch does 3 stacks of 2s of burning per stack, for 328 damage a tick on a 15 second cooldown, totaling 1928 damage untraited. With the trait, you have 353 damage a tick over 6 seconds with a 12 second cooldown. Static shot is our odd dog for this bit. It’ll do 65 damage a stack per attack on a 15 second cooldown, with a max of 4 stacks per target. We’ll just say 1 attack per second for simplicity’s sake, and say 394 damage per second (tick). Static shot traited would be 72.5 damage per stack every 12 seconds and 134 direct damage, total damage of 424 damage per tick over 3 seconds.

Now lets simplify those numbers:
Untraited- Poison Dart Volley- 97.4 dps (974 damage every ten seconds)
Blowtorch- 128.5 dps (1928 damage every 15 seconds)
Static shot- 78.8 dps (1182 damage every 15 seconds)

Traited- Poison Dart Volley- 134.3 dps (1074 damage every 8 seconds)
Blowtorch- 176.5 dps (2118 damage every 12 seconds)
Static shot- 106 dps (1272 damage every 12 seconds)

Right, now, percent difference. Not 100% accurate, as the distance between damages will be smaller with higher condition damage, but it should be enough to give us a good idea. So, untraited we’re doing 303.7 dps with cooldowns and whatnot. Traited, 416.8 dps. How much more is (max-min)/max, so (416.8-303.7)/416.8 gives us .271, or 27% more damage. Now, this is an ideal scenario, so you’re likely to do less damage in combat, and have a closer traited/untraited amount by high condition damage, however expect to lose 20-25% damage off pistol without the trait.

If you find something wrong with my math, let me know. Also, have a nice day!