Guild Wars 2

Ahoy, Nettle. I shot you some in-game mail about trying out for vVv. Please get into contact with me at your convenience and we can discuss possibilities.

Yes to both of these. Detonating your turret is considered an explosion, so it benefits from any of your traits that affect explosions. (Shrapnel, Steel-Packed Powder, Explosive Powder, etc.)
When your turret is destroyed and you have Accelerant Packed Turrets traited, nearby enemies are pushed back in addition to the above effects. This is true whether you detonate the turrets or they are killed.

(Accelerant-Packed Turrets basically just makes them use Detonate X Turret when they’re killed.)

Bump. (Still looking.)

Complimentary? Or complementary? Also, when are you on, K Pop? I never seem to see you around.

And I’m still looking. I *really don’t want to miss out on Mistleague or a chance to go play at PAX, so please don’t forget about me!

Paying, eh? I’m down for that.

I can help you with them Coloxeus. It’s certainly possible to take them down, but it’s a rough fight.

Quilja mysteriously disappeared shortly after putting a group together. Most of the guys on that team drifted away and got less active after that. :/

K Pop, we can sit down and talk. I’m still trying to see if anything pans out, but am getting some responses from other players in a similar position we can take a look at.

Thanks Killchained.

And Ruin, no thank you.

As the week has progressed, I’ve been considering putting something together on my own again, so if you think you’re hot stuff, feel free to contact me for forming up a new team.

Thanks for posting this, Coloxeus, much appreciated!

Steamhawke here, guys. Most of my regular builds are linked on my Twitch.TV stream.
I swapped builds for almost every different opponent in the tournament, but had some very specific criteria in mind for Caed. I ended up running something like this 30/10/10/20 build to specifically deal with the S/D evades and chip away at him while staying alive. By no means do I think it is a particularly optimized build, but it was designed specifically for S/D with a few things in mind.

Rifle is all about control, and has a lot of powerful, slower single hits. Having a Net Shot or Knockback Shot evaded or blinded puts you in a nastier spot than you were previously in vs. S/D thieves.
P/S is fine, but I really wanted the extra burn capability to eat away at the thief’s health pool, so P/P was the weapon set of choice. S/D has (had) a lot of outs for hard CC and many condi cleanses, but not enough to keep up with constant pressure.
The net turret was t keep him around even for a second or two to load him up with conditions.
The rocket turret was for damage, more burning, and the occasional stun to set him up for more conditions.
The grenade kit was for awesome condition dominance and the ability to spam around myself to stay mobile while still putting out pressure.
Medkit was the only reliable heal, since the other two supply you with boons. I could eat Med Packs while he was stealthed to get a bit more health back, and I couldn’t rely on either Elixir H or Healing Turret, as it would be a heck of a lot more difficult to whittle him down if I kept handing him free Regeneration and/or Protection.
The traits are… bad overall. But they were chosen to give me a decent pool of health and some defensive effects without giving him any boons. Again… handing the thief protection is a bad plan.

Many people brought up that he didn’t try to deal with the turrets. I was concerned about what would happen if the thief goes for the turrets, but that was why I positioned them too far apart to be cleaved, and close enough to me that you put yourself at serious risk engaging them. It still takes a few shots to bring down either of the turrets, which gives me free reign to unload an entire bar of conditions on you as you’ll be in a psuedo stationary position to burn through it. Or worse, I could drop the Supply Crate on his head and gib him. With the turrets in such a position, you pay a heavy price for blowing one up.

Another approach would’ve been to constantly spam stealth and daze me with the sword opener, which is annoying but still rough on the thief. He needs quiet a few hits to burn through my health pool, and I can still move while dazed, meaning I can kite around as much as possible while the net and rocket turret lay into him. Additionally, I can still proc Sigil of Geomancy to start racking up bleeds, and if I manage to roll away or an overcharged turret stops him for a few seconds, I can turn and again fill him up with many nasty conditions that he’ll need to reset to clear or eat to continue pressuring me. 1v1 turret builds with conditions are very rough to deal with in a melee situation.

Bas, I recently played with both Red and Blue divisions of the Soac team. Blue I got picked up for as a 5th, though I’m not sure if they were running their ful llineup. (Or even what their full lineup is at the moment.) Red I know was trailing people for the spot that Caed filled previously, so I ran with them for awhile, and have no idea what their thoughts about that were. Hope to hear from them in the near future.

Irene, thank you kindly! My ’nades still pack a pretty darn potent “bang.”

Thank you gentlemen. I’ve gotten a few responses from people, but it’s all still a bit up in the air. Anyone else out there looking for an Engineer?

G’day!

My name is Steamhawke, and I’m searching for a group of cool people to play competitively with and compete in both the MistLeague ladder as well as the tournament (top 5 team, I believe). I have a lot of experience playing Engineer, and enjoying playing with a group of mature, talented individuals who can come together for a strong team dynamic. I’ve spent the past 2 months or so bouncing around between people trying to put together teams and I’ve been getting a lot of “maybe” answers from people and watching as team after team dissolves.

As such, I’d love to settle in with a group of people who can have fun playing the game and playing together, but are focused and dedicated to growing and playing well. I’ve consistently played with top tier players, and have fluctuated wildly about the leaderboards ranging from top 20 when playing with a solid group regularly down to the dark depths of percentiles when solo queue’ing. I am currently rank 46, and pride myself on strong positioning, map awareness, class playstyle, and communication. Hopefully some crowd favorites will pop by this thread and give me their stamp of approval.

I stream regularly, and save all of my gameplay videos, so a sample of my work can be found on my twitch channel.

My GW2 ladder stats can be tracked using the fantastic site GW2Shack, found here.

Please feel free to contact me in game (Drudic.3146) or via the forums if you have any interest in putting something together, or could make use of a solid (cough cough #1 Engi NA wheeze) Engineer and player as a whole. Thanks!

-Steamhawke

Coltz.5617:

don’t forget Analyze is nerfed with maximum 5 stacks on weakness instead of 10

Errr… Analyze (Utility Goggles Toolbelt skill) applies Vulnerability, not Weakness. Vulnerability stacks in intensity up to 25 stacks, so Analyze only got buffed with the cooldown reduction.

Static Discharge has been and still is quite potent. It’s great for sPvP scenarios, but tends to be mediocre for tPvP due to the lack of team presence. I’ve been running two variations lately with a great deal of success against top-tier players, but you’d be better off running an alternative build when running with a coordinated team.

Static Discharge Burst:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0picnpy2F1LJxoHkuziGki86XRFy/nCsF-ToAA2CnIQShkDJDSSksINoY6B

Might Stacking Variation:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0picnpy2F1LJyoHkWnJagKkXiKkffUwWPIA-ToAA2CnICSpjTHTQycs5MoY6B

Static Discharge bounces and is fantastic for small encounters or roaming around in hotjoin, but in larger 3v3, or 4v4, or even 5v5 fights, you don’t put out as much pressure as you should for your team, with most of your damage being directed at a single target. Berserker amulet is fine and adds in quite a bit more damage, but it’s a lot riskier, as you can be annihilated by thieves in their opener, or a single shatter combo from a mesmer. The might stacking build tends to give a bit higher damage output, but requires maintenance to keep your might stacks up, and has to break 9 or so stacks in order to outdo the previous one. (Not too bad, since you can regularly run with 12 or 15 and spike up to 18 or 21). Good luck!

Edit: I’ve got a fair few tournaments and some duels recorded using these builds if you’d like to see their play style. Feel free to check it out on my stream.

As of today, the Fused Gauntlets are still obtainable through Match Win Chests rewarded to the winning team of tournament matches.

Interesting idea, but nearly impossible to balance. Too many possibilities and too much number tweaking will cause it to fluctuate wildly from useless to wildly overpowered.

Elixir Gun – Exceptionally strong. Small chance would be a nice bonus if you’re already using the kit, but probably not worth the trait.

Grenade Kit – 1s cripple that could be procced by any of 3 grenades? Again… you’ll either see no appreciable cripple duration, or 60s of it stacked quickly.

Med Kit – None of these deal damage. So… I have a % chance of a healing AoE when using utilities? Odd. And not particularly useful.

Tool Kit – These are short cooldowns already, and it’s rare to sit in Toolkit for most Engineers. 5% would be unnoticeable in most cases even if it was proccing on every skill use.

Flamethrower Kit – The auto-attack hits something like 8-12 times. We’d see either no blinds or perma-blind. Hard to hit a happy medium.

Bomb Kit – CRAZY powerful. Small chance would be nice on this one, and might even be worth taking the trait for. But that’s an incredibly powerful effect for RNG.

I’d love to see Kit Refinement turned into something useful or interesting, and certainly geared toward multiple-kit play. Its current incarnation is pretty depressing. the effects aren’t of particular use or merit, and the internal cooldown defeats the purpose of grabbing it for many players. You have some neat ideas, but it’d be a lot of work to implement them and would benefit relatively few people.

Had a good time with all of you today, and was pleased to see a comeback in the consolation match against Necros. I enjoyed it, and hope I was able to give you guys something to take away for future PvP play. As far as Saturday goes, I’ll gladly let Walorx or Ostrich or anyone else who’s interested step forward to coach it. Good luck on round 2!

Bas,

I was speaking with Supcutie about this and it seems that you would prefer higher ranked players to coach, and lower ranked players to play. Since I am relatively highly ranked (~20th on boards) would you prefer me to withdraw from playing and act as a coach/guide instead? It looks like we’ve had some additional signups, and I’d rather not deprive anyone a slot who is interested in playing. Thoughts?

Depends on where you’re running it, as you can make changes as necessary depending on if you’re going for sPvP, WvW, or PvE content. For high-tier tPvP, I run 10/20/0/10/30 to try and pump damage while still packing enough bulk to not get gibbed by thieves.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0picnpy2F1LJxoHkuziGki86XRFy/nCsF-ToAA2CnIQShkDJDSSksINoY6B

I have mixed feelings on the changes to Incendiary Powder, but it’s still a very strong trait for Engineers and should be picked up in almost every build. Rifle Mod and Hair Trigger are kind of no-brainers, as our skillset on rifle is very solid in terms of utility and damage. Invigorating Speed + Speedy Kits is just too darn good to give up. Then I personally run Power Wrench, as the extra cripple on Throw Wrench is nice, and the cool-down reduction of Gear Shield is crazy useful against bursty specs.

IGN: Steamhawke / Lady Steamhawke
Day Available: Thursday (preferable) or Saturday (plausible)
Record Capability: Stream Regualrly on Twitch.tv (twitch.tv/pandacache)
NA or EU: NA

Been busy with school, so dunno if I missed the signup period. If you’ve been editing your post, attendance looks a bit bleak at this point. >_>

There were no awards given out for leaderboard rank. The Custom Arena access was awarded to the top-rated players in terms of Qualifying Points, which was a system that was deprecated a few months ago. At present, there’s no reward for doing well other than having a “better” number assigned to your account. We currently have no ladder system in Guild Wars 2, so we don’t really have anything to reset. If one gets implemented we’ll probably see “seasons” or periods between MMR resets, but as it stands we get about one update a month, and it’s generally not too sweeping of changes.

The opening can lead to a very one-sided start depending on how the mid fight pans out. It is very common to send 4 people to mid and 1 to home point then on to Raven or to assist the mid battle. This usually results in one team killing 2-4 of the enemy players and then picking up the orb and moving towards a point. Capping Raven isn’t generally a necessity, nor is it particularly wise to do at the beginning of the match as you want to be on somewhat even-footing (or have a number advantage) for the first mid fight. After the first minute or so strategies vary considerably, but you certainly don’t want to get crushed on the opener, or you can easily get pushed 50-100 points behind the opposing team.

Spirit Watch is a little wonky in that you cannot really ignore the orb and play a 2-point holding strategy, so you need to rotate points frequently. Classes who can reliably travel through the map’s Z-axis (Thief/Mesmer/Ele) make excellent additions to teams as they are able to easily pop up to Raven and neutralize it or capture it. If you’re getting crushed in the mid fight reliably, try to sit down with your teammates and consider a different strategy to keep the enemy team split up and unable to get the 30 points from orb running.

I cannot confirm or deny that Paid Tournament Tokens are no longer being salvaged from items, but your sample size seems pretty small. 30 items is maybe 6 chests, and it’s perfectly natural to not get one in that many chests, since Arcane Dust, Orbs, Slivers, and the related item token are in the loot table as well. I’d recommend just winning a few more and going through it. I’m willing to wager you’ll start seeing them in you open a few chests at a time, and you just had a bad luck streak on this last batch.

As far as we currently know, Custom Arenas will be available only via Gem purchases, so you’ll have to either use real-world currency to purchase gems, or use the Black Lion Trading Post to convert in-game gold into gems to buy time tokens. At present, there have been no announcements that winning tournament matches will award time tokens, and it’s incredibly unlikely that you’ll be able to make them via the Mystic Forge.

<Player looking for team>

In-Game Name: Steamhawke / Lady Steamhawke
Main Class: Engineer
Potential Classes: I have some experience with Warrior and Ranger though I fully intend on sticking with Engineer, and would be inclined to learn Thief if I were to pick up another class.
Region: NA (GMT – 7:00 [also known as MST] )
Practice Times: Flexible in evenings/nights. I tend to be up late, but have class every morning, so a little bit of sleep is always nice.
Experience: Currently rank 42. Been all over the place on the leaderboards, with my peak at rank 41, and my average somewhere around 75-150 (I solo queue a lot… >_< )
I’m currently at just shy of 1000 tournament matches, with the vast majority of them played on the Engineer. I’ve played with a few solid teams, but many of the players have stopped playing since then.

Other: I would really love to find a solid group of players and start climbing the leaderboards (and eventual ladder.) I think the game has a great engine and combat system, but PvP could use a little more developer love. I’m a lot more interested in finding a group of respectful, level-headed people driven to succeed then playing with fantastic players who trash talk or sacrifice ethical behavior to reach the top. Feel free to message or mail me in game if you’d like to talk. If I hear from multiple savvy people without teams, I may try to put one together instead.
I stream regularly on twitch.tv/pandacache if you’d like to see some of my game play.

Kimbald.2697:

Throw wrench while pulling works too, a very underestimated combo. Also because it changes the animation to a throw, and you cripple them while they run from your pull already (if traited Power wrench).

Are you sure about this? I’ve been testing it in the Mists and Throw Wrench and Magnet seem to only ever work one after the other, and not during. I’ve tried many times and have been unable to use the tool belt skill Throw Wrench while channeling the Magnet skill, or vice versa. how are you using the two concurrently?