Showing Posts For Drath.4750:
Anyone try to access any of the bugged items since the patch? I’m mostly curious about the two bugged Predator items (Scarlet’s Prototype Mechanism and Decrypted Weapon Research). I tried them as recently as last night and they both still weren’t working.
I was really excited to play around with action camera and while it’s very fun (all around I love it), the thing I was most excited about was how easy it would be to throw grenades behind you while kiting. Turns out the action camera makes you face your target and backpedal to use any skill, even if the skill can normally be aimed behind you. This effects other classes as well but nothing is as hampered as grenades by not being able to aim behind you while running full speed.
I hope they patch this to have the backpedaling only happen on skills that require it (like hip shot, where it’s a nice feature)
As for other things, snap ground targeting to target even with grenadier will overthrow grenades on targets running directly at you unless they are crippled. With shrapnel, it actually works pretty well and makes grenades feel like any ranged weapon. Mortar kit somehow works better for me because the aoe unsnaps from your target when you move the aoe far enough away from your target and I was able to lead my targets better or just more easily launch mortar shots at stationary fights/targets.
This is getting more concerning to me with the incoming raids and new maps. I play with my wife for a few hours every night with her on her iMac and she crashes 2-3 times a night. Usually we are just leveling alts in the open world or doing wvw, which aren’t too bad to have random disconnects. Annoying, but we manage. We’re excited about raids though and if she drops in the heat of the action it will annoy our whole guild. As for new maps, LA is by far the place she crashes the most which doesn’t bode well for the upcoming jungle maps.
From a pvp perspective, in the adept tier in explosives we now have 3 choices:
1. Grenadier (does nothing)
2. Fall damage (does nothing)
3. Glass cannon (does basically nothing)
Shouldn’t glass cannon be 10%? That’s the scholar bonus, and guardians get the full 7% when burning to match flame legion runes.
Has anyone tested if Launch Personal Battering ram actually dazes after the patch? It’s been busted for a long time. A daze icon appears on the target, but skills aren’t interrupted (easy to test on ettins or in pvp against someone ressing), and no skills go on cooldown (easy to test in a custom arena with a friend). I haven’t checked since the patch.
My build (the one that I’ve been running for about the last 4 months or so) hasn’t really changed.
What I miss, is the ability to make minor tweaks as situations permit. I used to run in PvE 2,2,0,4,6 ( a hybrid P/P Cele Static Discharge — I know, I know, don’t laugh….it’s fun as hell). In WvW I would switch to 0,6,0,2,6 – but core was the same.
This build is still viable and in fact even more powerful. But there are some traits that are completely useless to me now (Alchemical Tincitures), which was not the case pre-update.
Ha! I ran celestial p/p SD as well. I love it in pvp for watching all the bouncing around that happens.
I used coated bullets in Silverwastes and it’s shocking how many hits you can put into a crowd with the piercing and exploding that happens. I was looking forward to that actually being worth something with the explosion traits and some on crit condi sigils for aoe condi spam on autoattack. But seems I won’t get to live that dream. At least the burns on pistol offhand are strong enough to justify dropping shield now.
That only works on certain things. The auto-attack does not apply bleeds in it’s AoE, only to targets it directly hits, and most on-crit sigils only apply a condi to a single target on an ICD (torment and the poison one can do AoE though).
Note that more numbers is not always more damage. It’s just like how some necro players think running around using DS4 is causing insane damage just because it pops up a lot of numbers, when it doesn’t always do that great damage.
The main reason I liked coated bullets is that it allowed you to use the pistols much more effectively as an AoE and pressure weapon, relying less on things like the grenade an bomb kits to fill those purposes.
It was still a weaker option overall, which is why it was mostly ignored by people. But it provided a level of versatility that was invaluable in large group combat as well as during fights against mesmers, rangers, or anything with minions and stuff that body block your attacks.
The only way I think things will be ok without coated bullets is if one can do significantly higher single target “condi burst” damage, although I find this will be hard to do without the aid of kits.
Don’t worry- I was never disillusioned about the damage. I had never once even tried coated bullets in two years until they announced it would be baseline so I was just experimenting with the limits. And the thing with AoE torment on crit is that you need a crit. Every pierced target gives you a chance to proc a crit which is what I was excited about. And I assumed if they were explosions, that the aoe WOULD apply vuln and shrapnel in the aoe similar to all other explosions. The base autoattack and even the bleed on it are really underwhelming. I was excited for the synergies to make them not so much.
Pistol is still getting pretty buffed thanks to the condi changes and the powerful 50% condi duration trait, but it’s still best to never use it’s autoattack which is a shame.
I used coated bullets in Silverwastes and it’s shocking how many hits you can put into a crowd with the piercing and exploding that happens. I was looking forward to that actually being worth something with the explosion traits and some on crit condi sigils for aoe condi spam on autoattack. But seems I won’t get to live that dream. At least the burns on pistol offhand are strong enough to justify dropping shield now.
Cele condi’s are stronger than they were before. We only had 438 condi damage before. Even with the new formula, 560 condi damage will do more damage than 438 did before. With might stacks or vulnerability it will be much higher damage than it was before.
I see a lot of misinformation about the numbers and whether the condi formulas or a 10% stat nerf to celestial exist.
Misconception 1: Cele amulet got a relative 10% stat nerf
Normal amulets had a 34% increase in stats and celestial had a 28% increase. This makes it sound like cele got nerfed relative to other amulets. The missed fact here is that since amulets are a larger percentage of your total stats now, the benefit celestial provides has an increased impact. Let’s look at the math.
In PvP, you used to get stats from baseline, traits, and amulet. The total amount of stats is staying relatively similar in the new system with minor variance based on your exact build.
For example, in the old system, the meta cele rifle build (60022) had this many total stats:
3704 base + 1000 traits + 3066 amulet = 7770 total stats.
In the new system, you’ll have this many stats with the same build:
4000 base + 3920 amulet = 7920
What about other builds? if we swapped to a 3 stats amulet, like rabid,
old: 3704 base + 1000 traits + 2232 amulet = 6936 total stats.
new: 4000 + 3000 = 7000
Conclusion: from a total stat count point of view, celestial got BUFFED relative to other amulets. This is because amulets becoming a larger part of your total stat pool makes any difference in amulets’ stat totals more pronounced.
Misconception 2: Cele amulet will do less condi damage than it used to
This is based on the idea that they said 700 condi damage is the break even point when you do the same damage as before. If you have less than that, you’d do more in the old formulas. If you have more, you’d do more damage with the new formulas.
People look at this fact and say “cele only has 560 condi damage. Since that’s under 700, you’ll do less damage.” This is wrong because you only had 436 condi damage in the old system on the meta build. 560 in the new system will do MORE condi damage than 436 did in the old system.
Conclusion: while the new amulet will only have a base 560 condi damage, that’s 122 more base than in the old system, which more than makes up for the formula changes and will result in higher condi damage.
Watching the guild hall livestream, the guild halls seem like a much better place to hang out in between matches. I get that there are concerns with queuing from the main world, but could we Queue from guild halls? That way I can at least duel with my teammates while we wait.
This will be more annoying now because SD will be run in a lot more builds just based on the traits it competes against. When running SD burst, you get toolkit and rifle turret for the easy procs, but it’s a lot harder with things like slick shoes, bombs, EGun, all elixirs, FT, and all the elites now.
The nice thing is both those traits are good outside of the combo too. Kinetic charge can be used with other toolbelt skills to great effect (double nade barrage, double slick shoes) and the siege rounds also increases the duration of all the fields and condis that mortar kit puts out by a huge 40%. So I think it’s a valid build even without the combo, but if you get a good opportunity to drop the combo it could be devastating. It will be most powerful against AI since they don’t dodge. I think siege rounds will be very strong in Stronghold. Long blind fields against AI, long chills, poison field for downed bodies, and just generally great range. The double orbital strike will be awesome to burst AI or people trying to channel heroes/supply.
P/S is awesome. Engi shield is one of the best offhands in the game and pistol 2 and 3 are fine skills. The autoattack is dead weight but even that might change with the upgrade to being an explosion and having piercing+range made baseline. The problem is that shield has such long cooldowns that don’t work well with the engi’s attrition playstyle.
The thing is, rifle 4→2 is the strongest tool engi’s have for decapping. It’s a very low cooldown and with the baseline range increase on 4 becomes even easier to hit. The autoattack is better for applying some ranged pressure and jump shot is versatile for chasing, bursting, or disengaging. With nades, the CC on rifle is a godsend for setting up grenade barrage.
With bombs, I prefer pistol/shield. With nades, I prefer rifle.
For an easy in between option, carry 2 sets of amulet/rings/accessories in zerker and celestial. It only takes 5 inventory slots and accounts for 50% of your stats from gear. I run the following:
With banner of discipline and spotter, you have 76% crit chance. That’s 96% with fury, and 100% when target is under 50% health. With just one or the other, you’ll be between 85-95% crit chance.
It’s not optimal for dungeons, but I use it for open world and WvW too and like not having to carry multiple sets of gear for different activities. And in dungeons, I’m still able to carry my DPS weight while having more passive defense. I can solo mai trin in the 10-19 levels using this build with celestial trinkets and a few trait changes to get vigor and backpack regenerator only thanks to the sustain (I also swap flamethrower for Elixir R for more dodges and the self revives). I’m not a hardcore skilled player, so without the celestial there’s no way I could sustain the damage.
“Soon”
“When it’s ready”
There will probably be a trait for each of the virtues. They already mentioned the wings of resolve can be traited to do damage. It would be cool if the spear could be traited to do something like pulse weakness as well as burning. Along with the trait that recharges virtue of courage on a kill, any trait added to spear of courage will be pretty strong. And for the shield of courage, the obvious trait would be to add projectile reflection on it.
Sounds powerful… which is just what gadgets need. It’s not as nice on the rocket boots/throw mine since they already are a blast finisher.
An idea I thought of is take the minor adrenal pump (toolbelt skills restore 15 endurance) and include that in adrenal implant. With adrenal implant competing with speedy kits, it really needs the buff. Then move static discharge to the minor trait slot so all tools users get static discharge, toolbelt cooldown reduction, and cooldowns reset at 25%. Then for grand master, you could have gadgeteer reduce cooldowns and make gadgets unleash a static discharge as well on use.
Add another GM trait that makes static discharge apply confusion on hit for condition users who take tools and now tools is an awesome trait line where you can get power wrench, speedy kits, static discharge, and a GM of choice for condi or power gadget builds.
I mentioned Incendiary ammo, which is great but is a 45 second cooldown. I didn’t mention napalm because it’s a long cooldown that in good cases gives 2 seconds of burning but more often gives 0 or 1 second because no one stands in the line of fire. Air blast is used for CC, not burning uptime and even with all of that you don’t come close to perma burning. IP is one of our strongest traits right now and even using all the flamethrower burns you still don’t hit perma burning which means you’re getting the full effect of IP. The only reason you wouldn’t take it is if you were doing perma burn without it, making it redundant. But you don’t come anywhere near it.
And the thing is, I’m talking about a theory crafted ideal scenario for FT. The more average scenario is you don’t spend much time using flamethrower even with juggernaut. You are often swapping to rifle or other kits just using the high damaging skills on cooldown.
But this keeps getting beside the point of the future world where burning stacks intensity and flamethrower applies burning which means you’ll want both IP (+ burning duration and extra burns on crit) and juggernaut (might,stability, toughness) for flamethrower builds but can’t have them both. It’s possibly the right way to balance since FT might have been overpowered then, but it’s just unfortunate you can’t have both.
The tough part with mortar kit will be keeping track of the ICD on the runes. AoE fear and poison on a 45 second cooldown is very powerful, but if you are switching to mortar kit far away from enemies when the effect comes off cooldown, you might waste the fear on nothing. It would be nice if the runes had a status marker when they’re ready like sigil of intelligence, opening strike, spotter, etc. so you know not to waste it.
It’s the same reason I think kit refinement is difficult to use in its current state, even if you only have one kit. You don’t really know when it’s off cooldown and you swap so much that it’s more of a surprise bonus than a skillful tool.
I love this build, and even did the initial draft of it on metabattle… http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Celestial_Juggernaut. I’ve changed it from what I prefer based on community feedback, but it is almost identical to your celestial build, just trading power wrench for juggernaut, and vampirism for strength runes.
Mind if I upload your celestial video to the metabattle guide as a gameplay sample? I’ll add a comment to highlight the difference between juggernaut and toolkit.
Incendiary powder is pretty important to maintaining perma burn which gives a 10% damage boost to flamethrower autoattack. I usually run celestial with flamethrower but even with berserker, you have some ok condi damage from the firearms line and might stacks so IP adds some nice condi pressure as well as keeping up your 10% damage bonus. Not to mention, if you go power flamethrower, you’ll want the power from explosives anyways and there isn’t a better trait to take in that master slot.
I’m sad for flamethrower. It seems pretty weird that the best burning builds on engi won’t use flamethrower since IP does better burning than FT on it’s own and FT is a lot weaker without juggernaut, especially once it stacks stability.
You really do not need IP for condi pressure on an FT build.
Flamethrower on its own can’t provide perma burning. Incendiary ammo is too long a cooldown and flame jet gives less than 50% uptime on its own even if spammed, and it can’t be spammed because number 2 needs to be used as often as possible. Without IP you don’t get close to perma burning and miss out on a lot of damage from both the burn and the 10% damage modifier. And in the current state of things, it’s too important to go into explosives for the power and condi duration and IP gives much better damage than the extra might from performance enhancement. Just test it on the dummies in HotM. With IP you maintain a constant stack of burning while spamming #2 on cooldown and even switching to rifle for jumpshot+blunderbluss. And you don’t overstack. Without IP you can’t maintain constant burning.
Since we’re talking about the new world of traits though, IP is even more important for burning uptime since the durations don’t stack. But being mutually exclusive with juggernaut, flamethrowers will always prefer the stability and might, and the best burning build will be p/p+bombs with short fuse and IP which is ironic for a class that has a freaking flamethrower.
It’s not in the notes but in the stream they pretty clearly state that power shoes is part of robo legs.
The minimum range and slow projectile speeds should give it good counterplay in PvP and make terrain and positioning just as important.
My favorite part of it being a kit is that it can proc the “on elite” runes. Krait for a condi bomb every 30s, Lyssa for 5 conditions converted to boons ever 45 seconds, Mad King for ravens every 45 seconds, and possibly the best, Sunless for an instant cast AoE fear and poison every 45 seconds. That fear especially has nice synergy with the minimum range of mortar kit. Hopefully there’s a good visual indicator of when the runes are off cooldown so you don’t accidentally blow them while far from danger.
I would love to see more gadget synergy. The way I would go is make gadgeteer stay grandmaster and do 20% cooldown reduction, give a few seconds of resistance, and give another boon based on gadget (same as current gadgeteer boons). Then add a master trait that does something like blast finishers reduce the cooldown on your gadgets by 5%.
Another idea would be to make static discharge apply to gadgets and toolbelt skills.
A.E.D. could also use some serious work. Even when used perfectly, assuming you take fatal damage every 40 seconds and have all 4 conditions cleansed, you still get more healing and condi removal by just overcharging healing turret on cooldown. Then the fact that if you mistime the A.E.D. you are screwed. It’s horrible in any sustain situation since it’s a liability to use early and has such a long cooldown. I think the reward for timing it right should be bigger, such as giving stacks of stability, fury, and might if you take fatal damage, or maybe refreshing all toolbelt skills. This way burst builds can use it when they get pinned down and turn a fight, but sustain builds would still want the turret and hopefully support/bunker builds will want the med kit.
(edited by Drath.4750)
Incendiary powder is pretty important to maintaining perma burn which gives a 10% damage boost to flamethrower autoattack. I usually run celestial with flamethrower but even with berserker, you have some ok condi damage from the firearms line and might stacks so IP adds some nice condi pressure as well as keeping up your 10% damage bonus. Not to mention, if you go power flamethrower, you’ll want the power from explosives anyways and there isn’t a better trait to take in that master slot.
I’m sad for flamethrower. It seems pretty weird that the best burning builds on engi won’t use flamethrower since IP does better burning than FT on it’s own and FT is a lot weaker without juggernaut, especially once it stacks stability.
When it had stability, it also came with 50% move speed when in flamethrower. So the question is, would you take that trade off? In some scenarios the stability would be way more useful, especially in PvE where might is easier to come by and CC attacks have clear tells. But I think in PvP I’d rather have the full movement speed honestly.
The thing I don’t like about it is it has anti-synergy with the might stacking which encourages you to stay in FT while roaming to keep might high. Maybe they could move the might stacking to some other trait (like the weak GM trait Napalm specialist) so you could take one or the other or both in the combination you want. I would be a fan of the below change:
Juggernaut
1 stability for 3 seconds every 3 seconds while in flamethrower
50% move speed while in flamethrower
200 toughness while in flamethrower
Napalm Specialist
1 might for 15 seconds every 3 seconds while in flamethrower
Burns you apply last 33% longer
I’ve played a lot of celestial flamethrower and use 44060, elixir gun instead of toolkit, and leave third utility for elixir c against heavy condi teams, goggles against thieves (revealed trolls them so much), and elixir x, slick shoes, and rocket boots interchangeably in wvw.
Traits are
Accelerant turrets, incendiary ammo
Fire forged trigger, juggernaut
Protection injection, deadly mixture, backpack regenerator
I use runes of traveler for speed, boon duration, burn/bleed duration and celestial stats. I mix sigils around between battle, doom, leeching, energy, and intelligence.
Juggernaut with celestial stats and the heavy amount of damage modifiers and might puts out huge pressure in team fights with enormous sustain. I only swap to elixir for 1 skill when needed then right back.
It’s a very powerful build that I believe competes with the meta grenades build but serves as more of a bunker, with less burst.
I have noticed that with static discharge as well. I played a lot with static discharge using battering ram after the last buff and love the ram more than I thought I would (it’s more like overcharged shot without the self cc than it is like air blast which is just a knock back). After a while of never interrupting people with the launch pbr I realized and others have confirmed the daze doesn’t actually happen. It doesn’t interrupt or put a global cool down. That’s a pretty bad bug considering it was a nice buff that didn’t do anything but change the tooltip.
Because of the merge, I typed up a post and it got lost, but the short story is this
With combined queue, if I just want to play stronghold I’ll end up leaving once a night when conquest is rolled, making my team mad, the games worse, and my dishonor go up.
This is the only competitive game I’ve ever played with multiple gametypes that only had the random queue available for matchmaking. I was so hyped for Stronghold but a shared queue is totally killing the hype for me.
Also, without a shared queue, you don’t have to be a slave to the 15 minute time limit. If that’s what seems best for stronghold, then great! But if it’s not what’s best for the gametype, I don’t want you to force it into that time limit just to make it match conquest.
Perhaps the druid will be more in tune with their pets and the mechanic is they move and attack as one.
The way this works is that the pet doesn’t passively attack and use AI. Each of the weapon skills is both a weapon skill and a command to the pet. This means if you’re not attacking your pet is always running at your side. Skills 2-5 will trigger pet specific skills and cooldowns on current weapons will be adjusted accordingly. Dodging causes both you and your pet to dodge. Autoattack is a one to one. If you aren’t using number 1, your pet is not attacking but staying at your side.
Then replace the f keys with 3 pets to swap between on f1-f3, with f4 as stow pet.
To balance with the current ranger, remove the longbow and possibly shortbow as options and rebalance some weapon skills to longer cooldowns. This would give druid more active options and more survivability to the pet, but less range and less passive damage from pet.
Quests could kill two birds with one stone. Make dailies more interesting by getting rid of the current trait quests and adding those as the new daily quests. Improve the traits by reverting to the old model or having them unlock with skill points only so players can choose between traits and skills as they level.
This is a great idea.
I like the skill shot aspect of grenades and it does allow them to have higher relative damage. If you buff them in ease of use, you’d have to nerf them in effectiveness. My suggestion to please both sides is to add a grandmaster trait in explosives called “Heat Seeking Grenades.”
Heat Seeking Grenades
Requires 30 points in Explosives
You only throw one grenade at a time, but your grenades travel very fast in direct lines and home on your target, exploding when they make contact.
This would make the grenade kit very spammable as it’s almost guaranteed to not miss unless blocked or dodged. For this trait you’d have to sacrifice some damage for some great utility. This would make chasing with grenades much easier since you don’t have to predict the path and deal with the long slow lob gesture.
Also, making it a grandmaster trait would mean you couldn’t have both this trait and the grenadier trait. People who like ground targeting can choose grenadier and be aoe beasts. People who want the utility of grenades in a simple to use package can choose heat seeking grenades.