Guild Wars 2

I think there are some tweak i think would help

-Reduce by 5 energy shortbow skill #4 and #5 and double the duration of burn to be viable; 15e for 1 sec burn and 20e for 2 sec is too much.

-Fix line of sight on shortbow skill 3.

-Random ideas:
– for a shortbow skill: an arrow in a strait line that evade or knock down(if it replace skill#5), burn enemy that it goes through and teleport us at the end of the line so we can have a mobility skill(something like whirlwind attack form warrior GS).
– if the theme is a warband, why don’t give us a utility that buff ally inside it’s range?

- Fskill cost simply too much for what they do,
-Heroic Command is too energy consuming if used on cd(10 sec cd for 20 energy).
-Citadel Bombardment, maybe used as an aoe burst in pve but still need to be cheaper, in wvw you’ll just die to retaliation.
-Orders from Above, if alacrity continue to be unaffected by boon duration this skill is simply useless because to stack a decent quantity of alacrity by yourself you need both this and ventari and even spamming camping tablet you do 0 dps and don’t reach 100% uptime probably because…too energy consuming(and in pve you don’t want another healer when druid give grace of the land and necro give a lot of barrier, and chrono are still better for alacrity/quickness).

-For WvW/PvP, I didn’t test this thing, but trait line may not be that kittentrange as it seem i don’t think you need the shorbow or khalla legend equipped to benefit from the trait line. What are the benefit? 53% crit without any precision of equip(73% with roiling mists), 150 ferocity & 10% condi duration(doubled by Lasting Legacy), Righteous Rebel reduced condi damage on us, so we can use some more defensive oriented equip and still have decent dps or just go strait dps and destroy all.

From a pve prospective is not like we have some weapon alternative to axe/torch as a condition weapon, so maybe change the last grandmaster trait Loremaster in something like “you lose weapon swap and reduce in half the cd of the tome (cd of the skill and cd of the tome)”.

Or something like “whenever you use a page(or mantra) reduce the cooldown of the tome you’re not using by x second”

And being a trait you can take it or not.

For pvp the shield is pretty good as a power build, block+blast finisher on the water field of the turrent(yeah after 5 year and 2 elite spec we will probably still use the basic healing turret) and stun on hit +ranged interrupt are very welcome to me.

On the pve side it could not matter, i mean if swords skills are good enough is not mandatory to have offhand as good, you can have whatever give you stats. In the current condition rotation we use pistol 3 just because we’re there and barely use 1 hit of pistol 2.

Is not mandatory to use all available skill, even if if we would use(in pve) something like flame legion rune it will probably be pistol off hand.

I’m pretty worried about the selfishness of the holosmith.

If the situation remain as it is we have good damage but 0 survival and 0 group support, and that mean that if our damage got nerfed for some reason or holosmith will not be a top dps we will simply left out of groups.

It would be nice if there would be something like at 0-50% heat we self buff, from 50-100% we buff 5 ally at 50% duration and intesity(if possible), from 100-150% we buff 5 ally to full duration and intensity, to apply at least to holosmith skill like traited Corona Burst apply aoe stabi.lity and might and the arena to apply to 5 ally as well(with the right heat threshold)

As a power there are fore sure chance to run a kitless build, but as a condition build, expecially for pve we will have to use at least bomb and grenade with laser disks because aside form the forge mechanic and pistol 4 we don’t any other kitless skill to apply condition aside from rocket boots toolbelt.

And the fact that Photon Forge give kits 6 sec cd is not a problem because by the time you used you forge skill to pass 50% heat and weapon skill 6 seconds are alredy gone and you can use your kit.

For sure in pvp 6 second could harm but you can play as power and take real utility that will help you survive given the glass cannon nature of the spec

While in the mist I found if really good i tryed some rotation both condi and power.

Condi i feel it still need to use kits: you charge up the heat when you’re charged up leave photon forge for sword(pretty underwhelming)/pistol and use laser disc, then go bomb/grenade/flamethrower because we don’t have many other way to apply condition outside kits and rocket boots toolbelt, but it feels pretty smoth and you can have some option that need a golem to test, especially grandmaster trait 1(3 burn on dodge) vs 3(let yourself explode to have benefit when you’re cooling).

Power feel awesome in the mist but when you go in pve/wvw you realize that the key feature of the elite spec, the photonforge mode, suffer the problem all the transformation skill have: they’re attack is based on a 772 weapon so you autoattack go from 1k/strike to 670/strike that’s still worse than the bomb kit and to me put a dent on the pve viability of the spec unless some number change or the fixx it so it scale with the weapon rarity like kits do.

There’s a post on reddit with some tooltip screenshot taken at 2261 power and are not really encouraging for power as it seem that sword auto is about 530 damage and photonmode #1 is 750 damage per hit, both less than the bomb auto that is about 1k.
So even with the 25/50% crit chance boost, if it remain as it is, sword is really underwhelming for both power and condi because aside from the sword#2 that launch 1/3(7) blade that stack a bleed each(+ proc based on crit) there’s nothing else; it’s probably tricky unless I try it because autochain#3 reduce the cd of the other sword skill of 3 sec, and with the help of our chronofriend maybe sword 2 can become decent(even it has to be noted that if you have the 7 blade you lose 3 stack of burn on dodge, so it need testing).

With a trait photonforge #1 become an explosion so it benefit from some explosive trait and laser disk inflict a lot of stacks of bleed so there’s the chance that we’ll be viper/grieving but with less kits(disabled for 6 sec when we enter photon mode) or maybe the “rotation” will become even more crazy in the end is not like “we cannot use kit” is more like “kit have a 6 sec when you enter in pmode”.

I’m really eager to try this elite spec this weekend and try it with different stat and rune.

if you want to go tanky power is better; i mean you can always use rabid(condi, prec, tough) as condi, but as power you’ve got Big Boomer(explosive) that give you vitality and ferocity based on your power, and Blasting Zone giving 120 flat power; the scrapper give Mass Momentum giving power based on 10% of you toughness and Adaptive armor giving up to 5 stack of 60 toughness each, hammer have a lot of utility as a projectile reflect, block and a little evasion, Bulwark Gyro give 33% damage reduction and another proj reflect, Purge Gyro remove condi(also Adaptive armor give reduced condi damage taken) so there’s a lot of survival tools here.

The holosmith will probably be very different to the actual engie because he want to keep the heat level high to do more damage but while you’re outside the photon mode you will lose heat very fast 5-10% every 3 sec and when you enter the mode you have the kit disabled for 6 sec, also we need to know if using a kit will make you exit the mode or you can use kits in photon mode(I doubt it).

It possible to switch from viper to the new grieving stat POWER, CONDI DAM, precision, ferocity as the sword skill give a lot of passive crit chance and the firearm line give us even more crit plus bleed and burn on crit.

Also if i understand correctly the new Laser Disk skill can stack a debuff that make enemy take up to 24% more damage(2% x 12 pulse) for 6 to 9 sec on a 30 sec cd, that huge if you think about a raid boost a shame I don’t see a trait that reduce exceed cd.

Another shame to me is that to me power engie mean static discharge but holosmith toolbelt skill have more that 30 sec cd that a lot.

So as a trait line we’ve got holosmith, firearm+ explosive if we can use kits or tool if we can’t for static discharge (and with the info we’ve got now it tell nothing about cannot using turrets).

I’m totally hyped can’t wait to test it.

All this is pure speculation from me but…

From the few information i can pick up from the trailer, the class feature photonforge mode could be something like a form(like death shroud or celestial avatar) that alter your skills, but instead of being depleted over time, it could have a function similar to the rage bar on the warrior that will be fueled by doing damage in that mode granting bonus damage at different stage and exploding harming our character(and maybe ally) on full bar.

It could be that we find the toolbelt transformed in skill that deal more damage based on the heat stage similar to the burst skill on warrior.
Maybe the heal skill can decrease our heat treshold but i think that having the toolbelt treshold skill that empty you bar associated with the fact that only the skill in photonforge mode raise you heat level can grant enough control over the treshold

As power vs condi i think it could be both, if the mechanic are like that and the heat bar power up as flat damage % is a safe way to be viable both as power and condi, the only fact that matter is how the skill will be modified in photonforge mode because we lack a core power dps offhand weapon unless shield will gain some devastating attack. but as a flavor probably heat bar sound more as a condi name even if sword us usually associated with power, but it seem that also weaver got a mixed/slight toward condi sword.

I’m quite puzzled how in trailer it show more than once it using the hammer when the hammer is the scrapper-only weapon

It’s hard to forsee how this eventual form will interact with kits but i would be totally happy to have a kitless spec as I’m pretti tired of spamming grenade and bombs.

I really can’t wait to give it a try if it possible on the preview weekend.

Condi warrior is in a pretty good place, and warrior in general will be there for long time thanks to the solid buffs it provide, so invest in it is a good idea, it bring banners and empower allies that are a lot of stats boost.
Druid will still be needed until anet change Grace of the Land or give some other professione something with similar effect that don’t stack with it, and in general condi ranger is a good dps without an overcomplicated rotation, also spirit+spotter will probably reserve a spot in raid for generic ranger even in the future.
Elementalist it’s the incarnation of glasscannon dps profession, I think the difficulty in its rotation is overestimated unless you will be raiding in an elitist min/max guild, I mean the latest condi build stay in fire attunement and use pretty much its skill on cooldown, and even the staff build is not that complicated something like: stay in fire when you’ve used all relevant fire skill switch to air, use a conjured weapon and storm while overload charge and use it asap, return to fire… , like most of pve is about pratice the rotation on dummy and learn boss mechanic.
Chronomancer, I think it require more time to farm the full set of Dragon stand rune and the ~70 gold sigil than the time required to catch the skill rotation, I’m pretty sure i’ve seen somewhere on youtube a video about making the chrono rotation changing the keybind and using it in sequence from 1 to 10.

I like the idea of ventari revenant, but i don’t like the alacrity.
First as a thematic point of view it makes no sense(i don’t see any purity of purpose here).
Second as a PvE prospective it force us to camp in ventari and just autoattack and spam Natural Harmony every 3 secs(so yeah we pulse alacrity but don’t really use it because using any skill aside from the casual cleanse will waste energy that we have to use to fuel the NH spam. So your actually overhealing the hole time mindlessly just to grant alacrity.

By the way i like the tablet autospawn but in PvE is pretty useless because you’re camping ventari because if you switch legendary stance you lose 9 secs of alacrity for your teammates.

And just to make me a sad centaur the rev has been gifted with the only buff(alacrity) that is not modified by buff duration, yes facet of nature is there staring at you powerless.

Damage buff are always appreciated.

Thank you a lot both, I started a Revenant to see what kind of beast is it and to stack some currency

Sad story intro: I start play guild wars 2 at the lauch and played for about a year; most of my friend stop playing during the queen jubilee but I still continued to play but then during the twilight assault event my account got hacked and I, already almost alone, surrender.

Now I decided to return to try HoT and because the “casual nature” of the game is good to fill some of my free time.

I’ve already recovered the account but the problem is that I have 5 character lv 80(an engi, ele, necro, guardian, mesmer) with no gear(except for ascended berserk back, trinkets, amulet, rings on engi that are account bound), 64 copper and 2.4k karma.

What’s the best way to have some basic gear on my 80 characters to start exploring HoT?
I’ve seen from just logging in Lion’s Arch that a lot changed in the game so starting a new character is an available option to see what’s changed.

Thank you for every advice.

The immage show what’s left in my bank(as materials only the fractal BoA are still there)

I’m using a 10/30/0/10/20 and I found it for me the best support build in berserk gear so I don’t need heal at all and still can do lots of damage.

In my experience wearing zerk and kill mob faster is not just a “oh I finished the dungeon 5 minutes faster” but a full zerker team allow you to kill boss before defensive cd worn off; in a zerker team you kill mob faster so if you have 20 point in radiance you can spam virtue of justice aoe blind(+might if you have 5 point in virtue) more often and your party is safer than a heal because with blind you will take 0 from the next attack while a hit would hurt you for thousand hp in higher lv fractal, and for the moment you have justice in cd you have blind both in sword and gs, and aegis with courage and retreat, and if you already use your virtue you have renewed focus to use them again.

If you’re gearing with tanky stat(whatever non berserk/assassin/knight) you make the fight longer and is not just a matter of time, it mean that you will run out of cd and pvt won’t save you from hard hit of boss and mob of high fract nor it will regen.

Another thing i notice in tanky pug is that they tend to stay ranged or scattered around so your heal from mace and simbol in general will go wasted, and I personally use virtue of resolve to cleanse condition not to heal ~2k hp unless I know there’s no condition in the fight and some need it.

Imho the engineer got the opposite problem, most of our weapon are hybrid, rifle is more melee oriented than most of the engi comunity would like, pistol#2 connect more hit the closer you are to the target, bomb and toolkit are both good melee option, flamethrower is also a good option if you’re not going in wvw zerk(we have a problem with retaliation), grenade if used in melee range leave the opponent less time to dodge them and have a faster landing so you can spam them faster.
Our problem is ranged option because it’s just rifle autoattack and grenade(only with granadier trait, because without it it do less damage than rifle auto) for power build and EG for condition.

I’d like a script than when I press 1 it start to throw grenade to my cursor position until I press 1 again, I don’t it to be a targeted skill, just throw the grenade so I don’t have to spam 112411111241111111

Signet make no sense on engy because every non-weapon skill on engineer has his toolbelt pair, so it’s like having a “double active signet”, if you’re lazy enough and don’t want active skill but just let your character autoattack while signet boost your stat, as you pointed just reroll one of the other 8 professions available.

From wiki.guildwars2.com:

Boons and conditions applied by turrets use the character’s attributes. Direct damage inflicted to and by turrets is not affected by the owner’s stats.

Maybe fix that and it will be more viable on power build, probably it will require some time.

I use a standard grenade build 30/5/0/10/25 P/S with elixir u, bomb, grenade and have no problem while giving party vulnerability, blind, bleed, chill, might, aoe heal+cleanse with healing turret, reflect projectile.
Do you need anything else?

Grenade are fine in PvE but twice worst in PvP-WvW: players move out of the red circle, retaliation will do more damage to you then you do to them

I don’t think this set of rune is that op, it’s true that 25 stack of confusion is some sort of daze or die situation but is also true that except shield#5 all other interrupt engi have are knockback that can be easily prevent with stability, from this point of view mesmer and thief are a lot better with direct daze but it still have limitations, mesmer diversion has ~45 secs cd, mantra of distraction has 30 and 2,75 sec of cast, magic bullet have 25 sec cd and a thief spamming head shot with his x/P setup is probably just autoattack the rest of the time.
Elementalist have lots of condition cleansing(ether renewal just to say one) or can just take distance from you while confusion run off, warrior and guardian have shout to cleanse aoe+stability, ranger’s healing spring remove condition every sec, necro will just spit confusion back to you or convert it into boon, mesmer…well depend on the build he can shatter or heal to cleanse or just use null field, arcane thievery or mantra of resolve, thief will suicide for sure if he spam something in your face instead of stealth and wait it to run off.
I think in the end is more an overkill, I mean, it will kill faster bad players, but average or good player can play around it.

If we will have the heavy armor I won’t get angry, I mean we’re a midrange profession oriented towards melee: rifle 3-4-5 are melee friendly, pistol 2 hit less the farther you are, pistol 4 it’s 600 range, Flamethrower 1 is 425 range, bomb kit is melee, toolkit is melee; our ranged option are elixir gun which is more a support weapon(you’re lucky if you see a 1k crit) and grenade that are good ranged but the farther you are the more time require to the grenade to land and the more they spread so it become less effective in single target vs mobile target.

I’d like some more weapon so we have to use less kit for dps and have more utility, but, before that I’d prefer dev give some power to kit and turrets(and a ranged alternative to grenade kit), I mean FT sure is better but its direct damage is still low(for a 2,25 sec channeling and no other effect aside the 1 sec burning on the last tick).

And for old profession comeback probably the ritualist would be light, dervish medium and paragon heavy(if we don’t consider the guardian a fusion between paragon and monk).

For a solution for crossing heavy and medium wearer, you could do like in many other game where light wearer can use only light armor, medium can use light+medium and heavy wearer profession can use anything. I mean the stat are the same, an exotic berserk chest will gave the same stat no matter if it’s heavy, medium or light.

I don’t like that build, 100 grenades is a burst combo build created for pvp.

There you lost half of your burst damage coming from kit refinement equipping ‘nades kit for a FT that’s a “tanky over-time” kit while you’re full berserk and will be 2shotted by everyone.

You also take away your survival skill: elixir S(you’re without stunbreaker) and toolkit(2 for cripple, 4 for block, 5 for grip) and you didn’t even take cleansing formula to free yourself from condition/immobilize, you’re a dead man walking.

You also don’t use the perma-swiftness from speedi kit but still have invigorating speed while your only source of speed is elixir B + random elixir H +random toss B.

You take grenades (and rifle) while FT is a pretty selfish kit that require you to be in it most of the time to stack might via juggernaut.

With only 10 point in tools you will gain less from static discharge and in particular from grenade barrage and throw wrench, the toolbelt skill from TK do lots of damage while toss elixir don’t and if you’re throwing them to enemies for discharge(non targeted skill has a lower reach of the bolt) you’re probably not buffing anyone but just wasting a cd or a static discharge if you’re granting boon to ally without enemies around.

I like to use 100 ‘nades in wvw because it can be used as a rifle+discharge+combo burst in solo roaming or as a grenade spammer during zerg fight(and it’s not that tied to ’nades as you may think, I use rifle and TK a lot). But this build is too much hybrid.

And your ranged option are worse because without the grandmaster in explosive you throw only 2 grenate from 1200 range instead of 3 from 1500 range.

But if I shoud use something like whis I would use some knight or soldier set(maybe knight armor+berserk jewel) take away grenades(’nades without granadier trait is not worth it) for elixir S, rifle is a better ranged weapon than an untraited grenades. Invigorating speed is nearly useless, and replace deadly mixture with cleansing formula 409.

It’s just my opinion.

I use a 10/30/0/30/0 might-stacking with FT and elixir with Pow/Prec/Cond + celestial/berserk jewel with earth+strenght sigil and hit for ~2500 direct + ~650 burning + ~110 × 5/6 stack of bleed

I play only engi and ele and I don’t know so much about other profession because I never reached lv20 because got bored but…

Speaking of versatility between an ele and and engi everyone praise ele, because they’ve got 4 attunement with many skill and awesome utility but to me ele is not really more versatile than an engi.

I mean, if I engage a D/D elementalist I know that I have to pay attenction to updraft when he’s in air, fire grab in fire and dodge after 3 secs(not when he start cast) churning earth, if you can avoid few real threat eles effectiveness drop a lot(they’re still great at granting boon and heal to ally) because they’re bound to 9-12 seconds of attunement cd and huge(45+secs) burst/utility skill cd, but those long cd are compensated by the ability to switch between elements.

Now let’s say I engage an engi, if he/she has a rifle, it’a a static discharge and range won’t matter or is a 100 ’nades that will try to come in melee to burst me, if he has pistol, will he be a bomb kit fan or a pistol+elixir or will he use elixir gun or what else…

Engi got a lots of possibility and with just the weapon set don’t give enemy info about his build, I agree many our tool are bugged and/or underpowered but engi have lots of potential flexibility.

Eles(for now) are better as a support and have more things “that work”, but they’re more pigeonholed than we are.

Maybe I need to explain better the survivability.

I’m not saying we’re bad at tanking melee opponent, in fact we’re pretty good bunker against melee opponent and as a pointholder, but our effectiveness as a tank decreese in wide space because people will simple go out of our bomb field .

The problem is that our ranged choices, expecially in pvp/wvw are limited to rifle#1 because ppl will evade grenade(unless you throw them randomly inside a zerk), more so the farther you are more time enemies have to go out of the red circle(slow landing).

And the other skill of rifle require to be melee range.

I think we’re still good because if few people know how to use an engineer well, even less people know how to fight an engineer. Beacause we’re really easy to kite in open field.
I mean if someone immobilize you, if you use a build with elixir and have CF409 you can smash some glass under your feet and be free. But if you use medikit you’ve the n4, but wait it spawn in front of you and you’re immobilized so you can’t free yourself with that(it could be a nice idea have a stun breaker on 20-30 sec cd on kit refinement instead of the useless explosion), healing turret won’t help either.
So we have rocket boot that free us from immobilize but push us back(hey wait for me!), goggles that are fine, and elixir S that is fine but you can use any other skill for 3 seconds, but you still need to reach your target.

Let’s take a renown example, tankcat, it’s very hard to kill but it has 0 agressive power, its weapon are toolkit(melee) confusion from static shot(without any condition damage, because he’s wearing P/V/T gear) and the retaliation from elixir B.

I’m not say engi are bad, but if I should be a close combat fighter without a safe escape(like stealth) I’d like to have more iron on me.

BTW this is my dream I don’t think they will change a profession from medium to heavy armor months after the release.

He’s suggesting to put toolkit as a heal skill, slot n6.
What about use healing turret in slot#6 to heal people, 2 turrets as utility skill and tooltit as a defence/offence+ turret healing and supply crate as elite, wouldn’t it be better?
And if you use TK as a heal slot6 how would you heal yourself? rely on the 3 minutes cd supply crate, it seem pretty poor to me.

Leaving bugs aside.

- Many things need fast landing: toss elixir, grenades, FT#4, EG#5, pistol #5.

- About toss elixir I can understard the flavour of “mix this and that” to RNG, but it lack of effectiveness unless they grant 2 of 3 boon for example, and I’d really love the idea of the 1k heal on them, even as an implementation to cleansing formula 409 and not a base effect.

- I dream more ability to survive. I don’t want new skill, we already have enough, but heavy armor.
We are more close-range oriented than both warrior and guardian, because our only ranged option are rifle#1 and grenade kit (that’s tricky to use because of the slow landing+red circle warning), and as adventurer profession we lack the range of ranger or the ability to stealth away of thief because permaspeed+block or elixir S won’t save you from war-guardian who can leap forward(with speed), a thief that shadowstep to you, an ele ride the lightning/burning speed, or a mesmer blink+sword#3.

Ok, let’s roleplay a little(I’m not a gw2 role player but I like to let my mind be creative):
- Yes airship exist, and you see many of them in the personal story, there’s also one docked at fort trinity. How could you know if the Engineer United Corporation couldn’t have a fleet of personal airship landing crates from the sky on domand.
- For turrets it could be some tecnology similar to dragonball’s capsule that shrink even a car and a house to portable dimension.
- Endless grenade could be some endless bag like the D&D one(magic exist in this world, we’re not a magic user like scholars, but why shouldn’t we use magic items?) or you can see it as a teleportation(it could be the same for supply crate) one of the many beginning of the asura personal story is you and your crew winning the snaff prize for a teleport device that don’t require gates.
- Elixir, expecially the toolbelt throw elixir, are not magic but chemistry, something like “ok if I mix this and that…let’s see what can I have, I’ll test on my teammates”, it is the only reason I found to justify the rng and the cleansing formula 409 and HGH might effect.
- For stealth can be some device that reflect the terrain behind you.
- You can survive many bullet because probably most of the gear sold to adventurers in an era with lots of guns are bulletproof.

You can also have knight gear from Sorrow Embrace and Arah

@daphoenix: I see you already use the ancient karka shell and triforge, how bad are celestial ring(solaria and lunaria) against berserk/valkyrie, I mean does it worth the investment? with soldier/knight armor(probably knight as celestial give you more defensive stats).

I’d really love to use conjured weapon as an actual part of the elementalist arsenal and not a niche skill, but I think that let them be like engi kits(with no cooldown) would be too powerful even if we could not share it with ally, also many people alredy complain about elementalists having too many skills.
I think a good idea but not overpowered could be have the conjured weapon have no charge(but still 1 minute cd for non elite) and not sharable, but there could be a trait in arcane(I don’t see the reason to put it in a specific element trait line when there are conjured weapon for every elements) that allow us to create an additional weapon than can be picked up by everyone(ally) with a limited number of charge, I feel the ability of share conjured weapon is very situational because most of the time when I want to share them there are a lots of enemies around and is very chaotic for someone to run in circle trying to find it(for example make the frost aura under the bow keep on until the weapon is on the ground to let it be more visible for ally).
Another idea about conjured weapon is cancel flame axe because is really useless and make fiery greatsword a non elite skill, and as an elite conjure weapon make some new weapon that do things based on the attunement I’m in.
Another point of having conjured weapon without charge is to make them the sostitute for weapon swap, I mean all our weapon are pretty tunnel visioned, I mean dagger for melee staff for ranged, while conjured weapon can give us the range flexibility we sometime need.

Probably the point is: everyone have his hated profession.
Pick it random from Necro useless condition damage, Engineer useless at all, ranger don’t do enough damage and utility, elementalist is very probable it will suck because is a hard profession to learn use and survive, warrior is a class for poor player, thief are useless and explode at the first sneeze around, mesmer suck and I don’t like it, and I hate guardian because they’re op.
A good player will remain good no matter the profession, a bad player will remain bad.

Probably the truth is that he’s a necro but after years past in orr farming risen(he admit he spend many years in orr) he realize that to be the Marshal of an army his necro skill wouldn’t have been enough, because even if he can summon 6 elite flash golem their AI is still bugged, the proof is that you lose some of them walking by , condition still has a cap and power do less damage than other power oriented professions. Then the Pale Tree hear his request, but just because he’s the main character of the story, and give him a GS with skill from better classes.

Time Glitch.2460:

I’ve seen similar builds. The Flamethrower one is just too limiting, imo. I like to keep my versatility.

I understand the need of versatility because is one of the reason I’m still playing engi, but, elixir gun even after the buff to kits do very poor damage, the bleed are nice but expecially on boss weakness is useless, I mean because of unshackable boss has 50% weakness reduced duration it mean that the weakness form EG last half second; EG#2 is nice to kite things, EG#3 remove condition on others but not on you while cleansing formula 409 remove condition on up to 5 target in the area, EG#4 is nice to make distance and EG#5 scale poorly with healing(1k healing improve from 150/tic to ~250/tic) and targets need to stay in the area for the time, not really possible in many situation. For bombs I just don’t like to stay in melee range(in dungeon/fractal) expecially because elixir infused bomb heal is really low and the range of bombs is still small even with the trait.
With that I don’t mean DON’T USE THAT, but that i feel a little more safe mid range, I wound feel even better far away if we’d have a ranged weapon aside from grenades that need us to invest 30 trait in a line.

MikeT.9428:

You could use an off hand shield to block and/or knock back and also the toolkit has a nice block. That along with your elixir S can keep you alive until their first round of cool downs are spent. Although you may not have time to react without enough toughness.

This and pistol#3 and concussive bomb(bomb kit#3) can destroy thief with a good cond damage from rabid gear, and if he reset going in stealth save your smoke bomb for when he will return to attack, also remember retaliation from elixir B.

I usually use a 30/10/0/30/0 granade:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQJAqalspSXnwSiF17ICoC1noH53jNZfe8WtFEC;TgAg1Cso6y4lwLXXjKmZA
or a might stacking Flamethrower build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQJAqalspSXnwSrF17IBoHAGv3V0jH34J/pAbB;TgAg1Cso6y4lwLXXjKmZA.
In both build I use pow/prec/cond damage armor and celestial jewel, 2+2+2 boon duration rune, and in both case i switch to cleansing formula 409 when needed.

I really love this patch, sure it could have be done more but I think stats on kits and base damage on kits itself are a very good start that should improve our damage at least, while probably as a support we are still behind ele and guardian, our boon are RNG dependant, and we don’t have a “burst heal” of ~2k like ele and guardian have, but there’s still feb and march patches.
Btw regen and super elixir gain from bonus healing even before patch just it gain a ridicolous amount, less than 100 heal with the PvP medallion(~1000 heal) per pulse.
Can’t wait to test kits.

I think at this point a clarification on what the “hardcore comunity” want is needed.
If it’s more content, they will come, ANet is releasing a huge patch today and in the next 2 months with enough content to be compared to an expansion, ,and sure more content will come with time; btw I don’t know eq2, never played it, but even in WoW many and many months passed betweed release often 6+ month, while Anet is doing an excellent job proposing some kind of event each month, sure sometimes are just fun event or events related to holidays but it still require hours of work.
As for gear progressing I don’t care, to say the truth one of the few things I hoped when I bought GW2 was that I don’t need to farm equipment, also probably I liked more as it was in GW1 without stats at all on gear, just different set with different appearance, if you wanted to improve your spell you have to use rune and insigna.
And I hope they never add some other “tier” of gear like ascended, but I understand the need to introduce it together with the agony mechanic, because if the gear won’t improve but there will be harder challenge it would be more harcore than is wow where as the raid progression go on, the equipment is always more powerfull making all the challenge less and less hardcore untill is not harder than a 5 man dungeon.
Fractal of the mist to me is a perfect example of hardcore dungeon, the first 9 levels are done so you can undestand the mechanic of the various maps and what’s the best way to go through it, from level 10 you start to face agony and start to stack agony resistance to survive, past level 30-40 AR won’t save you but boss are even harder to fight and the gear is the same so no increased hp, no increased damage, just you(and your team) have to survive the best you can because often if one member become downed it is very likely that other member will die trying to revive him. To me that is much more hardcore and competitive that the need of more gear.
I must say, however, that I’d like if all set become craftable, as it is now many “sets” like soldier, rabid, celestial…etc are not craftable and while are still available on armor through dungeon token, is not the same for jewel, but ANet said they’re working on it.
If they want to add some kind of achievement/title or some other kind of acknowledgment I don’t really care but I can undestand many people do.

At the lauch of GW2 we shared this problem with conjured weapon of elementalist.
They added stat on conjured weapon as a refund for lost weapon stat; we’ve got sigil fixed in the december patch and no weapon stat on kit, that could mean ANet is trying to fix it but may require some time, we have to see if in gen-march patches there are any news.

I just want to remind everyone something:
1) the game is relatively new, there are still bug to fix, but there will be for sure more content released both pve and pvp wise next months.
2) I agree that they could add some content for hardcore player, but then will happen the same things that happen when fractal of the mist was realeased and still happen on the forum “blablabla why can’t I have ascended gear if I don’t want to do fotm? blablabla” and ended adding the token to buy ring before and with ascended gear as “daily reward” soon.
In my opinion the are 3 kind of player: hardcore player, casual player that are aware what casual mean, and casual player or bad player that we can call skritt because they want top end shiny gear with no effort, then if you want to add some hardcore content you will have other player complain about it, that they want it, but its’ too hard to obtain.
Other that that GW2 have a hard to balance feature like WvW. PvP is gear-balanced because everyone can have the same stat on the gear(and is the player’s skill to make the difference) but you can unlock different skins with reward. WvW instead is a PvP using PvE gear, then every pve hardcore gear improvement you add to the game will be a WvW imbalancing issue because many player will not have it and while the differences may be minimal there will always be people complaining that if they want to do WvW they should have the possibility to do it to full capacity without having to do pve and then you have to think a way to add the superior pve gear as a WvW reward.
And after that the skritt player will return complaining he want the shiny and after some times you will give him an easier way to obtain shiny, but then the hardcore player will feel less special and need more hardcore content…etc.
The solution to preserve gear balance could be add achievement something like an achievement/title(even hardcore player love shiny title on their head to show other their skill) for reach lv X in fractal of the mist for example, but I think that may come with time, the game still need many bug fix and balance issue between professions, when the game has reached an equilibrium everyone will have their shiny…probably.
In the meantime we can enjoy the content ANet will release next few months.

I’ve got lots of expectation for the patches released the next 3 months, but no make or break it.
I agree that GW2 need some work in balancing professions and fixing things, and sometimes i wish devs would stick on fixing duties instead of release new things. but I understand how new content help the longevity of the game.
On that point I found the idea of daily around the world like in GW1 awesome both for reward(and have an alternative way to obtain ascended item for the one who hate fractals) and to add value to the world they created to not let the world be a stage for leveling a hero and forgot it when the level cap is reached, otherwise the the dynamic event concept would be wasted.
In the end, no matter how many bugs there are, I still like this game and i think that time can only improve it and the absence of a subscritption mean only that if one day I got bored I can just stop and return after some times.

Is not that easy compare engi to other professions because others have 5 weapon skill, heal, 3 utility and 1 elite; while we as engineer often replace our utility skill with kits, that should let us be more flexible but probably this mechanic “specialize” us even more because kits, for example, have no condition removal that affect ourself (unless you count the light field of EG#5 while staing close enough to the target) and the toolbelt skill are nice but don’t help our flexibility because do the same things as the kit that give it.
And as the game is now I’m not really sure I want to exchange our so called flexibility for damage, because our heal don’t heal(only direct heal on ourself take full healing stat other take just a low%, with 1000 heal pulse from super elixir and regen gain ~100 per tic) and, in dungeon, boss are nearly immune to cc, weakness and blind.
It’s not that we don’t have skill to be flexible or to remove condition, is that we don’t have enough skill slot/trait to do everything and do some kind of damage, and support in the form of heal is not that performant.
As the game is now we’ve got nerfed’nades and many other way to do things worse than other professions that don’t worth the loss of damage for a flexibility we don’t have.

In PvE like dynamic event or leveling you can use whatever you want.
But in dungeon and WvW turrets die at the first random red circle on the ground or melee swing passing by, even with 30% damage reduction, and have no gain from power/condition damage/weapon damage from gear(even if the damage shown in the tooltip is on heavy armor target).
Most of them are single target while most of dungeon and WvW situation prefer aoe, they have some targeting problems when there are many target and don’t do much damage as a single target except rocket turret, but’s still ~800 damage every 4 seconds on single target, while other are ~300 every 2 secs(rifle), or ~400 every 3 secs (thumper), probably rifle and rocket would need some kind of splash damage like pistol#1, but more than that some serious damage reduction and scaling with gear.
I’d really like to use some turrets-bomb or turrets-toolkit build if ANet will fix turrets, but I still hate the long cd for destruction for damage or toolbelt detonate

Having kit in the toolbelt and have utility skill unrelated to them would be too powerful.
I mean toolbelt is a “weak replacement” for our utility slot being taken by the kit, but have 5 skill(1 heal, 3 utility, 1 elite) +kits would be really really too much.
I’d prefer some refinement of the kit’s skill than have more skill.
Things that I’d like happen to engi:
- kits and turret retain weapon damage and stats.
- turrets, if they would become viable, need some cd reduction when picked up, some more survival to aoe(even pve damage not only player’s damage) and that turret aim at out target, or even the “called target” as it was for henchman in GW1.
- less RNG on throw elixir and elixir H
- decent autoattack for pistol(should be a condition weapon but has weak bleed stak with useless “aoe”) and rifle, and need a non-grenade ranged weapon(our rifle skills benefit more to be in melee than be ranged)
- healing should become a statistic that is worth the investment,I know ANet don’t want the healer role, but invest 1000 in healing to heal ~ 200 more is pityful, even if our super elixir would heal ~ 500 per pulse it would be not totally unbalanced, we sacrifice damage and survival(thou-vit) to have more heal(before december was op because super elixir heal a lot even without the healing stat, but healing that much with an appropriate healing stat is acceptable).

To me necro is not bad and not good, is halfway as it is halfway the concept of necro be an attrition class.
We should be an attrition class then I can understand the lack of fast escape mechanism but don’t undestand the absence of block or invulnerability(spectral armor could become something like elementalist’s mist form, because 90 sec cd for 6 sec protection is pretty laughable); the access to stability only with a grandmaster trait; why our vampiric trait heal us 25-50 hp while enemies hit us for more than 1k of autoattack? Sure we’ve got lots of hp, yes 2 hp bar, but no armor, why can’t we have a decent self-sustaining heal with vampiric be part of our tankyness to actually live enough to do our low damage.
Why there’s a bleed cap on target shared with all player attacking the same target(instead of a personal stack like in many other mmo, I mean every player may have X bleed stack on the target) reducing the attrition strategy, also why don’t we have confusion, I agree burn is not much necro-like, we’re not warlock summoning hell beast we flirt with death itself, in this scenario confusion is acceptable even in a role-play point of view, some mind-numbing skill that kill enemy’s brain cell(and we had some “punishing skill” in gw1).
And also PvE wise we are not that bad…on trash, epidemic can do lot’s of damage in aoe, well are useful and can give 3 sec of protection to ally if traited, but on boss weakness and vulnerability has their duration halved, blind is a 10% chance and most of bosses are immune to fear, it let a condionmancer with just his bleed/poison stack and the poor damage of scepter#1.
It would be nice something that allow condition player to feel less useless at destroy object, you forgot that staff’s marks won’t activate on object.
Minion need a serious fix/rework, reanimator trait included.

In short if we have to fight war by attrition (low/slow damage) without escape tool, we need more survival tool.

I agree that the current situation is a little confusing, I mean, profession like necromancer and engineer have lower damage than let’s say a warrior or a guardian or a mesmer for what? War, guard and mesmer still have very good way to provide boon to ally via shout, banner, projectile reflection, haste… while necro and engi are still worse at boon, worse at damage and boss are immune to cc(50% weakness and vulnerability duration, 10% blind, immune to fear, unstrippable stability) and many build still hit the wall of 25 bleeding stack.
Why would someone pick up a necro or engi in an optimal party? To control trash?
Oh and while in PvP cc are still good in WvW now we have the 5 target cap for aoe, maybe nerfed even more in the next patch to limit cc usefulness.

Next patch is not a flat AoE nerf, but a balancing of SOME aoe skill to be more balanced single target, while at the same time power up some single target spell. In this situation I think necro will probably remain unharmed, I mean our main source of aoe are bleed+epidemic that won’t change in single target because most of the boss fight we’re taking out epidemic, and wells that are good but not that overpowered single target.

To tell in short my problems with engineer:
- Kit AND Turret need to acquire weapon stat AND weapon damage, only then we will start to do some damage comparable to other classes(sigil alone are not enough).
-Need healing to be a useful stat, as it is now 1000 healing give someting less than 200 healing, I’d like it affect some more super elixir(EG5) and the trait elixir-infused bomb(invention XI)
- we need a ranged and a melee weapon outside kit if we want a build not involving kit but something else like elixir or a viable turrets, pistol #1 do ~300 damage and apply a 2 sec bleed, rise the scaling with power or rise the duration of bleed, right now is in a pitiful state, P2 need to hit sometimes, P3 is ok; rifle is a mid-range suicide…things.

I love engineer and I will continue play that because is the profession which I enjoy the most but right now our flexibility just make us be a subpar profession that do nothing expecial in many ways.