Showing Posts For Dodosaur.6324:
From the sounds of it, warrior would probably be a better fit for you on the long term because getting better at it is something that you’ll be able to work on and feel progress for, which I think is a good part of making play rewarding.
That said, a couple words on engineer – yes, the class is technically ranged, but it also is most effective at mid-range-to-melee.
Taking the standard power build for example, you’ll be wanting to use rifle 3 and 5 while basically standing on top of the enemy for maximum damage & bleed/vulnerability, use EG acid bomb (which is basically equivalent in damage to a warrior’s 100B if landed on a target who stays in the spot) then cancel it the moment it’s been cast to abort the leap back so you can chain up with a bomb or grenades, that work best at close range to mitigate the fact that as projectiles they move very slowly. That’s when active defenses/dodging becomes a lot more critical, IME.
The versatility of engineer comes up a lot more in dungeons or PvP, where there’s more to adapt to than open world. You definitely have your must-haves (grenades are always nice to keep on your utility bar) but depending on party comp you’ll very likely have to switch something out for extra blasts/projectile blocks/CC/mobility.
Yeah, I got most of Engineer’s combos and stuff down. And I know that they’re more of a close or midrange class. However, unlike Warrior, they don’t have to constantly be within hitting range of the enemy they’re fighting. That’s why I feel like Warrior is a lot more action-y. I’m just worried that Warrior will feel boring too after I learn it and get decent at it. I don’t really ever play a class in the “simple” style (like bearbow ranger or facetank warrior) and usually actively put myself in situations where I have to use better playstyles (like fighting gigantic groups or multiple veterans or something).
I mean, yeah Engineer uses a lot of movement stuff for positioning. Avoiding hits while using certain skills as close as possible requires a lot of positioning. On Engineer I don’t dodgeroll hits most of the time (except for massive ones) because I have other options and save dodging for movement and positioning. I guess it just feels almost second nature now. If I had to pick a class I naturally felt smooth playing (and the most “natural skill” at playing) it’d be Engineer. I’ve tried every class, and I’m certain of this.
But there’s also a thrill in having to dodge with Warrior, especially against multiple enemies, or to use whirlwind attack properly. Warrior also has to position stuff like Bladetrail and Hundred Blades properly, and in some cases Whirling Axe too (I run GS/Axe+Axe). But I can’t fight the same groups or multiple vets with Warrior as easily as with Engineer, or as successfully (I die much more often). I really do think playing a Warrior well is hard in its own way that’s just as “skillful” and “difficult” as playing an Engineer; most players just don’t see it because it usually doesn’t matter if you facetank most content or do something more complicated.
I guess I also favor Warrior for melee because I don’t like a lot of the other melee-focused class’ mechanics like Thief’s stealth or Mesmer’s phantasms or Ranger’s pet and ridiculous number of dodge attacks and Elementalist’s combo fields. And I hate Guardian’s ranged options and really long CDs on some of their skills.
Hello,
Recently I’ve played these two classes quite a bit. I don’t really have time to focus on two characters, so I kind of have to limit myself to one class. I’m also a completionist so I’d feel bad if I had a character that didn’t have highest tiers of armor and world completion. That’s just the kind of MMORPG player I am.
However, I’ve been stuck picking between Warrior and Engineer to play as my main. I plan on PvEing and WvWvW roaming mainly, although I won’t say no to sPvP either. Here are some personal pros and cons of these classes:
Warrior pros:
+ Melee and more action-y
+ I feel the class has a lot of “hidden” depth and a high skill ceiling (i.e. amount of potential)
+ I like the active mobility a lot
+ Active playstyle without button mashing
Warrior cons:
- Little active defense/recovery (just a single skill)
- Worse at taking on groups (although still not bad)
- Most weapon skills are generic and signets are good and popular for PvE but are kind of boring
Engineer pros:
+ I’m good at playing the class. From knowing how to properly heal and how to land long distance grenades, I have a much better sense of what I’m doing with Engineer than with Warrior. As such I’m also better at doing PvE content with this class than with Warrior. WvWvW is still up in the air.
+ A lot of active defense and recovery – I usually run grenade-bomb-flamethrower with a power build, which is 3 blinds, or grenade-bomb-elixir gun with a condition build, which is 2 blinds and an extra heal from elixir gun
+ Variety – whether it’s conditions or sustained power or burst power or support, Engineer has options
+ Amazing AoE – with grenades and bombs, there’s basically no damage dropoff for multiple enemies
+ Aiming grenades can be fun – grenades are definitely my favorite skill set for this class
Engineer cons:
- Lots of keystrokes to do something – some people like this, I don’t
- Lots of skills basically do the same thing and only have different stats/animations (i.e. elixir gun 3 and pistol 2 both spread poison over a cone)
- Relying on fields and kiting isn’t as fast or exciting as Warrior’s playstyle
TLDR: Basically, to me, Warrior has one playstyle, which I’m not very good at, but I like a lot and want to become good at. Engineers have a lot of different playstyles, most of which I’m pretty good at, but none of which I like as much as Warrior’s playstyle.
The main gripe I have with Engineer is that, rather than being active and mobile yourself, you excel by taking away the other person’s active and mobile abilities. This is fine for PvP, but I find it quite lackluster in PvE, particularly because Engineer is mostly ranged. I know a lot of people will point out bombs and toolkit being melee for engineer, but bombs are hit-and-go weapons and toolkit is short and bursty, and usually initiated with Magnet (which also ensures the Engineer can pull a melee-range combo off). When I’m using conditions (which I usually do), I usually blind the enemies with grenades, get close while throwing out other conditions, throw out a blinding bomb, throw out bomb conditions, then dodge/jump out (with elixir gun) and use my pistol or elixir gun conditions (depending on the CDs). At no point in this rotation am I in any danger of getting hit. With a power build I usually just kite in circles and lob kitten at the enemies, and slow them if they get close. Just as effective but usually not as fun. When I first played Engineer, I was told you had to have a plan since you had so many options and devices. The problem is, it’s always the SAME plan. I do really like the animations, the smoothness of combat, and watching hordes fall before your explosions. I just wish playing it out were more exciting.
With Warrior, I kind of go in with a semblance of a plan, but it changes rapidly because I have to do stuff like dodge and escape to wait for CDs on major skills. It’s a lot faster paced and action-y. And I kind of suck at it, possibly because I’ve played so much Engineer. Melee combat especially with 2H weapons feels really meaty as well, which I like a lot. I think people think Warrior is really simple, but only because most of the time it doesn’t hurt to play Warrior simply. But I can’t fight the fights I can on Engineer with Warrior, because I make mistakes and get punished greatly for them. It’s frustrating, but it’s also fun.
What class should I stick with?
Leveling an engineer in PvE kind of requires the use of kits unless you want to do it super slowly. You don’t have enough AoE or anything without kits. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an engineer build that doesn’t use kits. Even recent turret builds run a kit.
There’s a reason we have our F1-F4 skills. They pretty much become our utility skills, because our utility slots are taken up by kits. If you want to be able to autoattack your way through something, you probably leveled the wrong class. I think out of every class engineer has the least use for autoattacks; even something as diverse as D/D elementalist relies heavily on Lightning Whip. For engineers, we can change kits at will and have many low CD powerful abilities. I rarely find myself autoattacking except in PvP (where power rifle autoattacks are definitely good enough and don’t need a buff, and elixir gun bleeds are definitely good enough and don’t need a buff).
What mode are we talking about here? I can definitely tell you that changing grenades to a “grenade launcher” that fires grenades that travel super fast would probably be a buff to Engineers in PvP. Anyone not close to the grenades are able to dodge them easily. In zerging and PvE, it’d be nerf.
But honestly saying ranged shouldn’t do as much damage as melee is kind of silly. Just look at Staff Elementalist in Dungeons – does more damage than D/F does since Lava Font is so good at might stacking, and it’s ranged, and it doesn’t even have to ever leave Fire Attunement. And there’s Scepter + LH, but I’m not counting that since LH is melee. In PvP Warrior with Longbow can do more damage than lot of weapons (including Greatsword but that’s because Rush is broken; also assuming the enemy won’t let you land Hundred Blades for more than a hit or two), see the Shoutbow build.
Keep in mind the nature of balance between the modes of play. Any buff to Toolkit, while probably positive and not OP in PvE, is going to be massively OP in PvP. Toolkit’s pull and Pry Bar is a huge source of burst. You can even play an assassin Engineer by stealthing, pulling, Pry Bar, Rifle 5, Blunderbuss, and knockback on a power rifle build; this will down a squishier class right away if they don’t manage to avoid it. It has incredibly strong burst and any buff would just make it ridiculous in PvP.
(edited by Dodosaur.6324)
The thing I find about Warrior is that the better the enemy is, the higher the skill cap for the Warrior is. Warrior doesn’t have as diverse and useful a set of defensive abilities as, say, Elementalist with their Water spells or Thief with their stealth (and benefits stemming from that). In fact, their defensive abilities are usually quite lacking because they have to invest so much in offense just to be decent in it. It’s this lack of active defense that makes their passive defense a necessity. At high levels of play, Warriors can’t actively prevent every big burst that comes their way. They have to pick which ones they can take with their passive defense to still come out on top. So, when playing against good people, every play becomes more and more of a conscious thing.
Basically, having innately decent survivability is the Warrior class mechanic, just like stealth is for Thief. You have to rely on it and know how to use it to do well.
It seems like it has to be a tradeoff of having the damage vs having the mobility it does now. Even with Rush hitting Greatsword doesn’t seem like a great weapon to be PvPing with anyway; it’s basically only used for Movement and for GS2 when you get a Bull’s Charge off, since Axe has so much of a better autoattack and Burst skill and allows for a shield.
(edited by Dodosaur.6324)
Every class has survivability options in this game. Elementalists are often the hardest to kill despite their passive squishiness, because they have many active survivability options. If you want to be straight up “tanky” in the traditional sense of the word, Warrior or Guardian (probably the latter) is your best bet. Not only that, Guardian is also really tanky in PvP. You won’t get many kills because people can run away from you and Guardian doesn’t have the hard CC to stop that most of the time. But his area control and sustainability make him great for holding points and not dying.
Read the Wind is the new grandmaster trait… and it seems worthless. I’m not so sure about the poison one. However, more condition removal is always good, and the automatic blocking of ranged attacks is definitely a benefit to melee Rangers. I’m not so sure about the Beast Mastery heal though…
I’m just going to echo people and say that map spam is just ignored nowadays except for people who are new to MMOs completely. I would never join a guild because someone in /m told me to, but I totally would if we just did something fun together.
I think it really depends on the times you play on, and how occupied your server is. Every server usually has more people in the higher levels, simply because of how fast early content goes by. Also, there are always guilds in every server, so try finding an active one that you fit into.
Engineers aren’t only a ranged class! Grab pistol and shield as weapons and the toolkit and bomb kit skills for some great melee options. I love using toolkit with my engi, best pure damage output I’ve got, and the toolkit/bombkit combo is perfect for underwater battles. Add compatible traits and armor with +power stats and you can wade right in with the rest.
Also, the engi “rifle” is actually a more short to mid-ranged weapon. We don’t have nearly the range with it that a warrior does.
Tell me more! I actually really like the concept of an Engineer, but as I’ve stated many times previously, I prefer melee (in my opinion the semi-action system in Guild Wars 2 is great, but then they had to go and make ranged targeted). Which kits do you use? What combos?
If you really only want to play the class that’s most needed, I’m going to have to echo everyone else and say Guardian. However, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, Guardians, while a good support class, have some really good damage options like Greatsword and Hammer. They also have utility skills that improve different sources of damage. It’s entirely possible to build an offense-focused Guardian.
At the same time, there are quite a few Guardians in the game already – they’re not an unpopular class, just the one that is needed in pretty much every group. I’d say it’s smarter to play what you want to play, and worry about grouping later. This isn’t a game where you need X, Y, and Z amount of tanks, healers, and DPSers.
You can equip and disequip bags at will as long as the bag is empty. It’d be a nightmare if it was any other way.
Nobody should be relying on a Guardian to carry the team for survivability. Everyone should be ready to avoid attacks if you miss a defensive skill, for instance. Unless you’re in really hardcore speedclears and can’t afford to have everyone heal up after such an attack (because it takes too much time), I don’t think it’ll be much of a problem.
Play what you think is fun, and trust that you’ll contribute to the group well, because if you play Guardian and learn the class, you’ll be fine.
Of course, I realize I can’t melee myself through all the content no matter what class I am. Even Warriors need to use their ranged options. However that doesn’t mean most Warriors won’t or shouldn’t mainly use melee weapons. I’m only speaking about the “fun” factor when I say I prefer melee.
It’s pretty subjective whether Thief or Ranger has the more interesting attacks. Ranger attacks are definitely more flashy, and they do have a few attacks that really stand out, but I think Thief skills are more interesting because each skill does more than one thing – for instance, Death Blossom is for evasion, mobility, bleeding, and AoE. Once again, this is personal opinion, and you should not use this to determine what you play unless you think we share the same preferences.
As for Engineer, they’re pretty great, but they’re a bit different than other classes. To achieve optimal damage or condition stacking it’s often better to switch between kits quickly, rather than sticking to a single bar of weapon skills. It’s sort of like Elementalist switching attunements constantly, except you’re pulling out random gadgets from somewhere in your breeches.
Thank you Hayashi, I think you understood what I was trying to ask the best. I think I will stick with Elementalist – even though I don’t really like the “general” description of it (more so because I dislike range than anything), I still don’t think anything can come quite as close for me to playing D/D in terms of how fun it is.
Don’t pick a class based on the metagame at the moment. ANet rebalances everything pretty much all the time, and they’ve been promising Ranger changes for a while (so it’s bound to happen soon). If you think you’ll like Ranger, then play Ranger.
However, I also want to point out that other classes might also fit your playstyle. Warriors are pretty decent at long ranges, and Thieves, while lacking the longer range weapons, still does well with Shortbows and Pistols, while having traps to boot. The concept of “playing at range then moving into melee” is pretty prevalent among many classes – it’s how you want to play this style that should determine what class you choose.
I’m sure as you already know, Ranger is pretty cut and dry for this style. They have more mobility than others, and have the traps you like.
Warrior is also pretty cut and dry, but they’re less mobile and have more straightforward utilities. Adrenaline skills can really pack a punch for ranged weapons.
Thieves have to fight much closer than rangers, and have lots of skills and traits to keep them mobile and avoiding attacks. They also play a bit differently because of their Initiative class mechanic, and have the traps you like, although these are more for CC than for conditions like Ranger traps are.
From your description, it sounds like you didn’t like Ranger very much. I’d give Thief a try – their playstyle certainly is faster because weapon skills have no cooldown.
(edited by Dodosaur.6324)
I’m still unsure. In the edit to my second post, I asked if I should be picking a class for the concept, or for a specific weapon set that I found fun. I still don’t know – in terms of concept, I think I’d rather play Thief more than anything. But talking about specific weapons only, I think I’d still prefer Elementalist.
It sounds like the Elementalist is a perfect pick for you. What level is it?
Oh, and you never have to wield anything except D/D. But perhaps you’d be better off with a staff on >some< FotM Bosses (but just the bosses, and just a few of those).
I definitely didn’t level it very high because of how ridiculously weak it was at first. It was only level 20 or so when I made a new character (so I never got to any of the high-level traits). I had the same-level Masterwork armor and daggers at the time as well.
Thank you both for your suggestions. I didn’t know that Cantrips didn’t interrupt channeling – that’s a good tip.
Can I ask one more thing – what big trait should I go for first? Lots of guides give you what traits to take, but very few are focused on the best way to level, and the best things to take first.
EDIT: And for something more “meta,” I always find it hard in games like these to go around picking a class. How does everyone else do it? In the original Guild Wars and in many other games, classes are based around roles and playstyle – e.g. Warrior is damage soaker and melee muscle. However, in Guild Wars 2, this is clearly not the case. With things like Necromancer and Elementalist having strong melee options, it all gets pretty confusing. Classes are only tied together loosely by a single class mechanic. Many people can like a single weapon set for a class and nothing else. Are players supposed to pick by the concept of the class? Or by their enjoyment of a single weapon set? Even worse, the concept of the class doesn’t seem to actually determine much about what they end up being good at, or what roles they play. How’re players supposed to find a class that “fits” them, if classes are designed to be so confusing?
(edited by Dodosaur.6324)
Hello,
I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 for a few months now, but I have a lot of problems picking a class. I like melee, so initially I rolled a Guardian and got it to level 50-some before deleting it in order to transfer servers. Part of what encouraged this move was that Guardian seemed incredibly dull to play to me at the time. Similarly, Warrior had the same effect when I tried it after the move.
From what I heard, Elementalists are very fun and challenging, and their D/D weapon set was basically melee, so I tried that out. However, while leveling it, I found that my survivability was terrible and I could not take down veteran monsters even if I evaded attacks perfectly. They just didn’t do enough damage, especially their autoattack, which I heard got nerfed a few patches ago. The suggestions in world chat were to use a scepter to level – however, this made Elementalist significantly less fun to play, and I ended up deciding not to stick with it.
From that point, I went on to try every single class. Thief first, then Necromancer, then Mesmer. I avoided Engineer because I don’t really enjoy ranged at all, and Ranger because their melee options are pretty underpowered (their weapon skills are almost all variants of Warrior weapon skills so I doubt I would’ve enjoyed them much anyway).
So, I don’t know what class to play. As of right now, I’m leaning a bit towards Thief, because of their high damage output and mobility. However, as my post mentions, I really liked D/D Elementalist – in terms of fun, nothing else really compared, but it really irked me that I had a ridiculous amount of trouble even leveling in starter areas because of their poor survivability and low base values. From what I heard, higher levels aren’t a whole lot better either, since traits necessary for survivability have much higher point requirements now – D/D Elementalist is basically out of the metagame at the moment, and from what people say, it seems like it’s going to be that way for a while. To be honest, playing Thief would just be an emulation of playing D/D Elementalist, except I can actually do stuff without dying all the time – their playstyles are somewhat similar, favoring high mobility (however I’ll miss out on element switching).
So, I’m confused as to what to play, and could use some advice. I really like this game, but I don’t have the time or attention span to level more than one character, so I want to make sure the class I choose is reasonably good and fun for me.