Guild Wars 2

Entering tomes triggers a cast time animation, tome of resolve doesn’t heal, all of the support mantras are unable to hit teammates.

The MM is not balanced in any way, I just had a game last week where 3 of my teammates were in placements with me in Plat and a gold 3 person, up against 5 plats. If it’s equal, it should have spread the placements out equally with 3 Plat players per side.

As I understand it, the system has a specific rating it believes you should be at. If you are winning and go above that rating, instead of adjusting your rating upward it places you into sure loss matchest to bring it back down. Why on earth would it be so difficult to increase rating otherwise?

Multiple little mistakes like not covering my mantras or big casts with stab and not using f2 for effective condi clears. But hey, two days isn’t much time to get more than a feel for what works!

Big cast times, wonky range, and unnecessary gating behind extra CDs are what really hurts FB, i hope they get a chance to really look at them before release and make adjustments. Still a lot of potential with FB and it was a blast to try out!

Build’s at the end

Firebrand build you guys might want to try before giving up on the class. I know, the cast times are all too long etc etc

sages/balth

sword/torch agility/battle
-for bursting outside of f1+JI

scepter/shield courage/energy
-where you’ll stay most of the time, you’ll be in tomes when you’re not here unless you need to burst. reasoning being, keeps you out of melee range and provides group support/damage

heal mantra
-aegis heals for you and your friends!

JI
-for landing burst

Sanctuary!
-for surviving burst, or recharging mantras/tomes, or for helping res teammates

cleanse mantra
-your best option for instant condi removal as f2 is wayyyy too slow

elite mantra
-on demand stab and stunbreak, for protecting your burst and heals

Honor 2/2/2
-revives!
-aegis heals! which with fb are kittening unreal
-larger symbols! synergy with permeating wrath and heals/buffs team.

Virtues 3/1/1
-honestly for permeating wrath and double sanctuary, because boy are you going to need it while you wait for skills to come up. or as a safe place to heal in f2. or to recharge mantras. sanctuary is finally seeing some use with firebrand like it hasn’t in years. having on demand or on need sanctuary is what FB needs to shine when you run out of aegis.

Firebrand 2/3/3
-FB 2?! you don’t ever get good use out of the three extra pages when you don’t have quickness. and a little extra quickness when healing is always nice, because that’s when you’ll need it most
-FB 3?! extra burn stacks when bursting? regen is crap. AEGIS ON EVERY SKILL IN THAT TOME, IN AOE?! waddup heals and damage mitigation!
-FB 3! no downtime on permeating wrath, which is good because it’s all you have for damage

burst rotation-
f1->4+JI->spam 1 with as many targets around as you can. don’t bother with 2, 3, or 5 as they’re too slow for the effects they give. burst is meant to happen fast, and you’ll have quickness for at least the first 3 hits, maybe the 4th if you time it well. wait until everyone is engaged before blowing your load, because you’ll need the cover condies from your friends.

opening at mid-
in f3. group stab, resistance, aegis/healing, and range hate right off the bat gets your team ready to steamroll. i like 3, 5, 4, 3, maybe 2 if i can get it off in a useful way. otherwise cancel the last skill and proceed to scepter 2 or shield 4 as needed

mobility-
f2, 3. i wish f2 were useful, but it’s kittening trash for healing. if you’re in your happy dome and need healing you can pop it for 4, 1, 1, 1, 1. it’s not even worth it for the condi clear usually because they take too long to fire. if you have a huge pile of conditions on you, you don’t want them ticking for 2 seconds before you can clear- that’s half your health bar. use the mantra if you can, f2 if you have to.

the play style is much slower than DH (for now) but the specialization is completely viable

The game feels spammy and everyone has too much damage increase utility CDs across the board, keep their power the same. Now using a utility feels impactful again, while lessening the amount of visual clutter. Some skills and traits that interrupt will need a small nerf to compensate, but if successful will have a greater impact on gameplay and skill ceiling.

MMR needs a new system that doesn’t punish winning players for winning so harshly. Nothing better than winning 5 hard games and then being paired up with 4 people 200 points under you and getting crushed for 8 games. This is the single most important part of league play that needs changed, as it discourages people from playing. Why try in ranked if the system is gamed against you for doing well?

2s & 3s remove duo ques from ranked, it is a huge advantage over solo players to the point where you can’t compete. You’re guaranteed one person on your team at your rank or higher as opposed to 4 strangers who, if you’ve been winning games, will all be much lower ranked. Add 2s and 3s single elimination matches, use the maps we already have. Just create a map that’s a blank grey square, we don’t care. If its an issue of reworking the pvp system to fit elimination make each kill worth 250/200 points in that game mode and remove the point capping mechanism for the map. Give people what they’ve been asking for, stop screwing up every other gameplay mode to try and compromise. Look at your pvp population, clearly compromise hasn’t been working. Try something else?

Loot drop the sigil and crap that needs salvaged. They give nothing and take forever to sort through, which takes away from gameplay. Drop bags of copper and random mats, or easily vendored junk, or slim chances at boxes containing only rare+ equipment.

Things that have been great improvements the AT system, it’s great for groups who want to compete and the prizes are now worthwhile. Minimum games to get on the leaderboard per season, awesome idea and implementation to stop people from placing high and then never playing another game. Decay, same as above, force people to compete!

Thoughts?

Risen Howl, dark DH

I’m running condi guard and having pretty solid success against everything but warriors. Doesn’t even seem to matter what build, because they all run resistance/stab/sig of might.

i can’t pressure them worth kitten, and they chew through my defensive CDs in 10s. They have more mobility, so i can’t run. They have resist, so i can’t blind/immobilize. They have stab so i can’t knockback. And signet of might, because they needed to be unblockable for some reason. So i’m left with no way to mitigate the bullkitten. other than dodge the bursts, is there really anything i can do or should i just swap chars when i see two warriors?

Thank you!

Little backstory, i got kittened by the placement matches and have been wallowing in bronze hell. I usually main thief/engi and was a bit blown away by how much DH have at their disposal, seemed like any time they were even slightly competent they just wrecked me with those sweet burst combos.

So last night i got on my guard for the first time in a year. It’s so kittening broken i don’t know what to do aside from bandwagon away.

http://imgur.com/a/Kzgmw

So here’s my question: Are DH just broken as kitten, or am i l33t as kitten and the placement matches are broken?

And hey! Before i get a ton of ‘LOW LVL MMR DOESN’T MATER AL PEEPS R TRASH IN BRONZE GIT GUD!!1’

Maybe think for a moment about if everyone on the opposing team is trash (which is why they’re getting facerolled) then maybe everyone on my team is also equally trash (which is why you can’t carry out of bronze hell). For every three i win, if i lose two i stay right where i am. Imma say it’s probably both.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBLhFywgGHW4ALHQHxyJg5OWTrrViDQAYBUUCGgfAA-TJRGABAcCAOf/BDeAALVGAA

Pros:
-High self sustain
-High Boon uptime
-High condi removal
-Great team support

Cons:
-Can’t kill a bunker or force them off point

Been tooling with this build a bit, its damage isn’t bad because of the high might uptime combined with a quick swap to air 2/3/5 and overload. wrecks thieves, just utterly destroys them in air.

The condi removal is fantastic, really screws up the condi builds that keep giving tempest all its trouble. ether renewal gives us some great condi removal, blast healing in water 5 can shoot you right back up to full hp like a boss.

against classes with poor condi removal earth and fire, against everyone else air. just keep maintaining the rotations.

The only time i have trouble is against assassin/mal revs.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBLhFywgGHW4ALHQHxyJg5OWTrrViDQAYBUUCGgfAA-TJRGABAcCAOf/BDeAALVGAA

Pros:
-High self sustain
-High Boon uptime
-High condi removal
-Great team support

Cons:
-Can’t kill a bunker or force them off point

Been tooling with this build a bit, its damage isn’t bad because of the high might uptime combined with a quick swap to air 2/3/5 and overload. wrecks thieves, just utterly destroys them in air.

The condi removal is fantastic, really screws up the condi builds that keep giving tempest all its trouble. ether renewal gives us some great condi removal, blast healing in water 5 can shoot you right back up to full hp like a boss.

against classes with poor condi removal earth and fire, against everyone else air. just keep maintaining the rotations.

The only time i have trouble is against assassin/mal revs.

swap slick shoes for egun and inversion enzyme for backpack regen. you don’t have great regen uptime with this build, and you dont have much condi clearing so any burst condi spec will chew you up and spit you out. egun also allows for more might stacking and a better stun break.

swap mass momentum for rapid regeneration. you don’t have the stab uptime in this build to make it worth taking just for the 10% power.

consider power wrench over reactive lenses, or static discharge and slot rifle turret instead of blast gyro for better bursting. as it stands, blast gyro is pretty kittenty even in a 1v1. honestly, go with anything other than blast gyro.

Hoelbrek is better than scrapper runes in almost every situation. as is -condi duration food, especially with hoelbreak and adaptive armor to help deal with conditions.

consider swapping purity (it’s just overall a poor sigil) for energy to make better use of kit swapping and +endurance regen. Fire’s eh, hydromancy can help you stay on target better and deals only slightly less dps.

edit:
if you’re dead set on blast gyro, a good combo is magnet→blast gyro→ham5. you can lock someone down for a crazy long time like that pretty reliably

Scrapper is blatantly OP when you’re using it right. Here’s some great tips!

Gyros not following you? give them swiftness via ham5 and blast finishers. voila, problem solved!

Function gyro not to your tastes? play something else. This is hands down the BEST elite skill for pvp when you trait for it. you can instantly stomp someone from range and there isnt jack they can do to stop you. you can target teammates in the party window (spvp/dungeons =/) in order to res them from a range. added bonus: you can even stealth gyro AND res them yourself to get anyone up almost instantly. It’s the best skill in the game for ressing, bar none. stealth gyro is even instant kitten so you can stop someone stomping a teammate perfectly every time.

They nerfed AA and HGH because they were just too good. This was entirely fair and has almost no impact on how awesome scrapper is.

Super speed not stacking. because it’s fun to play against someone with 1k/s regen, all the time, with minimal healing power investment.

Valid things to moan about:
Total lack of condi damage/skills/traits with the scrapper line and hammer.

Blast and shredder gyro being trash in every game mode. Blast is only good if you’re running final salvo and using it in wvw, otherwise it has serious pathing issues. shredder has potential with almost every combo field, but it has no staying power/stability so it’s useless.

Perfectly weighted should be 5s of 2 stability on dodge without an ICD. that way you can run it with mass momentum and not be forced into firearms for juggernaut.

we have a melee bruiser and all i see is ‘wah, i can’t make it work’ ugh.

What i’d really like to see is final salvo granting swiftness to gyros on creation for 15s. then it’d be worth taking so heal/bulwark/stealth gyro can keep up with you without you having to pop ham5 and blast finishers on the run to give them swiftness

So, added bonus. you apparently don’t need any movement speed stuff with alchemy, ham 5, and any two blast finishers or elixir b for out of combat 100% swiftness too =D

The Scrapper trait “Rapid Regeneration” isn’t scaling with healing power at all.

Experience boosters aren’t granting any additional pvp reward track points, though they’re supposed to give +50%

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASnUUBtbhVXB2aBEqil7iiO1b9ZHsBjwAQ8g+hcA-T5wHwAa2fAwDAoYZAA

The only thing the editor doesn’t have is sigil of speed, 5s swiftness and 1s quickness after a weapon swap. use that kitten.

Pros:
100% uptime swiftness, fury, 15 might, regen, and stability
100% uptime 500 hp/s

the triple leap finisher on hammer allows for 100% uptime of light aura with egun 5 (363 dps with retal, and vuln to boot!), or a 10k heal from using it in healing turret’s water field, depending on what you need at any point in a fight. i like to save ham 5 for when someone’s at 30% and drop it with ham 2 to finish em. ham 4 should be saved for when you need a block.

firearms with elixir b gives you 100% uptime on fury, sigil and elixir b gives you 100% uptime on swiftness. healing turret and healing mist gives 100% uptime on regen. juggernaut and hgh gives 100% uptime on 15 stacks of might. total this nets you 500 hp/s (more once they make the scrapper trait scale with healing power!).

use egun 4 and/or ft 2 whenever you set up the water field for additional heals if ham 3 is down.

i don’t take the protection trait because having a garunteed stomp/res (target teammates with the party window on the left, not with your mouse. duh.) is crazy powerful. like you’re an idiot if you aren’t abusing it. teammate’s going down, stealth gyro and function gyro res with your own res. they’re back up in 3-5s, in stealth, with you and the gyro both having stab.

Have fun!

nearlight.3064:

You couldn’t be more wrong.

Celestial offers higher effective health power because it gives you both vitality and toughness, having only one of those stats, even in a higher amount is nowhere near enough to be considered tanky.

Here’s my mathematic proof, assuming pvp stats and Soul Reaping with full Deathshroud
EHP Carrrion: 95,530.912
EHP: Rabid: 96,006.116
EHP: Celestial: 108,938.448

But there is more. You fail to appropriately comprehend the significance of the life force generation difference between the meta cele build and condi builds that you describe. Every way you look it at it, you can’t deny that dagger/warhorn provides much higher life force generation than scepter/dagger, with soul marks on staff being similar between the two. Feast of corruption is horrible life force generation compared to dagger autos and locust swarm. Additionally cele builds usually have spectral armor as a utility (and from the minor trait as your build would have) while condi builds typically bring flesh wurm or spectral walk instead, but regardless spectral armor brings more life force generation over time (SA has a lower CD than Swalk) and gives protection to help the necro survive more. The condi builds you survive don’t have any source of protection aside from the traited last gasp. Additionally where your build will probably want to take signet of spite or corrupt boon, the cele build takes signet of the locus which is a 1.5K per target heal (that can heal you up to 7.5K HP if used against 5 targets).

Now onto damage. The main reason that cele necro has much better sustained damage is because of death perception. Because celestial brings ferocity and power, death perception ensures that your life blasts hit very hard, in fact the damage isn’t much lower than a comparative trait set up with a marauder amulet, due to the ease of mightstacking. Cele necro has much better might stacking than a condi necro traited into spite, since cele necro will actually be able to deal good damage from life blast to proc reaper’s might, and it takes strength runes while condi builds have no might duration and condi damage rune. Additionally the extra sustain and ehp you have on cele lets you use traited dark path (arguably the base necromancer’s best skill) much more often and freely since it won’t be fragile enough to get destroyed by using it in a teamfight.

So I’ve proven that your arguments are completely and entirely wrong. Please know that I don’t think that condi necro is completely unviable, I just think that its suboptimal compared to celestial necromancer in the current metagame for these reasons, and the reasons I’ve listed above. Who knows? Condi reaper could be a thing that could very well save the concept since its sustained condi damage potential looks like it will be stronger with the right trait setup while having more survivability from certain reaper traits, but we’ll have to test it and see.

There’s zero math there? you’re just throwing out numbers lol.

Base Rabid: 19k DS, 19.5k hp pool=38.5k
Base Cele: 19k DS, 25.1k hp pool=44.1k

assuming anything past that point is null and void, you cannot predict every scenario. they dodge your dagger 2, EHP drop. you’re fighting one target, no big locust heal, EHP drop. also, i said that you’re running the same build as condi terror signets as cele signets. the only changes are PoC for Terror and the fear trait in soul reaping for decreased CD. Scepter for dagger, maintaining the WH offhand for all the reasons you’ve listed above. The only utility difference is swapping out SA for SG because you can run FitG over DP and don’t need the stunbreak. SA is great when you get jumped with no LF, nightmare runes provide the same function in an immediate peel and set up for a SG.

The sole difference between the builds in LF generation is dagger AA, which is highly unreliable. No one runs a build that requires them to stay in 180 range because it’s completely unfeasible to keep someone that close. scepter AA is ranged and deals comparable damage to cele dagger even in the ideal scenario where you can sit on top of someone and AA away.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBLhZ6kGRoyGs1GwzGg/GcgLUwrOAWg4WPBfANNKjvA-TJhHwAB3fAwpAAZZgxPBAA

It’s the same build, based on the same principles. only better.

nearlight.3064:

Condi Necro=high Burst Damage, poor sustained damage, low survivability
Cele Necro= Good Sustained Damage, poor burst damage, high survivability

So in my mind cele outperforms condi just because its good at 2 out of 3 things I’m using to grade it, while condi is only good at 1 out of those 3 things.

I wrote an extremely long post 2 weeks ago or so about why condi necro isn’t optimal right now. I dig it up so here’s my indepth analysis in the post below (had to double post because it was so long.

In what way is cele gaining higher survivability over rabid? dagger 2 and 560 healing power is the only difference, and since you’re not running any of the traits that benefit from healing power…? dagger 2 generates 1.7k hp with a cele build and locks you into a predictable skill, that’s not worth enough to cripple your range. the only difference in LF generation is dagger AA, which again, you have to be on top of the opponent to benefit from. Do you allow a dagger necro to sit on top of you the whole game, because i sure don’t. The extra vitality you gain isn’t beneficial, toughness benefits necros far more than vitality because of DS already doubling our ehp pool.

The only time cele has more sustained damage over rabid is if you sit on the opponent, which isn’t practical against anyone other than a warrior. Meanwhile, all your major damage sources (DS, corrupts, condi xfers) are dealing half the damage of a rabid build.

the difference in sustained damage and sustainability is negligible between the two builds, while condi offers much higher burst. the only place where cele signets beats out rabid terror signets is LF generation, and even then it’s only situational.

everything good about cele signets, rabid signets can do as well and to greater effect.

i tried out cele signets earlier and had significantly lower dps. higher healing and that’s about it. kitten near anyone can straight up kite you too. you can’t play condi like you do power or hybrid, DS isn’t for soaking damage unless you really need it to- it’s for dps.

if you’re using scepter 1 to deal damage you aren’t playing condi necro right, it’s not the AA that deals the damage with this build. it’s spectral grasp into 2.5s fears and dark path that deal the burst. plague, locust, and vamp signet are dealing the damage on anyone with stab or high stacks of might. That amounts to all the popular builds right now. play smart and boon eles and guards drop like you wouldn’t believe, i love fighting burn guards when they pop CDs for that 10 stacks of burn only to have them plagued back.

it’s hilarious when people use the long lasting condi skills on a power build, they’re just asking to have it returned with staff 4 or generosity sigils.

I don’t understand all the ‘condi necro doesnt work’ threads. it’s working just peachy, just not like it used to. It’s no longer a “press 1 and stack conditions, then epidemic them all over” build.

try out signets with terror traits and a rabid amulet. spite, curses, soul reaping. take the traits that make sense and use your signets to crack boon builds.

seriously, it’s crazy strong. been running it all day, just take the cele signets build and adapt for terror. rampage? kitten off, dead warrior. juggernaut? don’t make me kittening laugh. shatterupt? use DS stab correctly, then counterburst; they have no condi clearing and you can corrupt the kitten out of their shatter/sig of inspiration builds.

So i think we can all agree that the best way to win in any spvp map is to hold a point. Necros are crazy good at sustain even in this bursty as kitten meta. You can hold a point against 2-3 bad players, and 2 glass cannons right now long enough for your team to support, which leaves your other 4 players to zerg.

Pros:
-Un-killable 1v1. You can faceroll any 1v1 and be just fine
-Stupid team heals/support
-Great condition resistance
-Stun break/3k heal on a 7s CD. Good luck to anyone that wants to decap you.

Cons:
-Crap damage =/

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBHRhG2IDN0Uj91gXNwejDqhSGADwwObgWeColQNcCA-TJxGwAAOJAMLDsa/BFPBAA

Transfusion, sig of water, leeching, and life from death give your minions solid sustain. They in turn give you great cleansing and healing.

the best way to run it that i’ve seen is to pop DS as soon as you get stunned, transfuse/fear, pop out. Keep the minions off CD, rotate between axe 2&3 using 4 and 5 when needed to counter burst. Warhorn 5 and dagger 1 to generate LF, dagger 2 when needed for dem heals.

Help your team secure kills with dagger 3 and warhorn 4. Stomp in DS and deny enemy stomps using xfusion. If you get ganked by 3-4 people, just pop your wurm and run away to heal back up and resummon before headed back.

I’m using both firearms and inventions o.O? what do you mean?

also, slick shoes and mortar kit are great. swap out shrapnel for the mortar trait. running sigil of torment too for more burn protection now

Supskies, i done found a broken strong build! =D

p/p, rabid, balth runes, energy and geomancy sigils (haven’t decided on something better for the second rune yet)

aed, egun, tool kit, bombs, supply crate (optional?)

explosives- glass cannon (no other options), short fuse, shrapnel?
firearms- condi pistol, increased condi damage, incendiary powder
inventions- amr, mecha legs, bunker down (more for the heals than anything else)

some cool facts:
Burning is totally broken. 15k damage from blowtorch, 15k from firebomb. pull someone in and torch em, then glue shot, glue bomb, fire bomb. then wait, because they’re dead as it gets.

AED is broken as kitten with amr and balth runes. even if you’re getting focused hard you can get off a quickened aed. and if they drop you again, aed again. and again. and again. if you do it wrong and blow the cd without being low enough on hp you can still tank/kite between bombs and gear shield and acid bomb. Seriously, once you get it down you just never die unless you get really, really ganked.

still debating on egun for maybe slick shoes or elixir s, but i love the acid bomb and healing elixir when you’re running from their whole team.

still debating on geomancy, but i can’t think of anything else aside from maybe hydromancy to keep em close while you ruin their day.

still debating on supply crate vs elixir x for the moas or mortar for group play.

give it a shot, it’s pretty sick.

keep this bumped until we get an answer =D

math wise (for hybrids): if you have IP traited and less than 25% condi duration, napalm specialist is a better trait IF it gets you over 50% total for an extra 2 ticks.

when roaming with others, or when able to maintain 4+ conditions, MA deals more damage. sitting duck is also worth looking at if you’re pvping, it’s a small dps loss for a big control gain.

also! the more burning application your build has, the less valuable napalm specialist becomes due to burn stacking in duration. there’s no difference between stacking kitten burn every 5s and a 15s burn every 10s. you’ll still have 1 burn tick/sec.

Honestly, i really hope they don’t nerf crit damage on celestial only to add something useless like condi/boon duration. especially if it’ll just end up being 1-2% per piece.

we lose something like 17% of our current dps when celestial gets nerfed, how exactly does anyone think 20% boon or condi duration will even come close to helping with that?

the only really viable ways they have to fix this for celestial are to increase the base stats all around by 10%, or have more ferocity than the other stats.

otherwise you take an already sub-par stat combination and you kitten all over it =/. No one even uses celestial outside of a might stacking build with access to multiple damaging conditions as it is, why make it completely nonviable?

Happens all the time, regardless of what setup i’m using. especially noticeable when you drop a turret, watch all the mobs drop what they’re doing to go kill it.

i don’t think it’s nades either, happens even when i’m running bombs and we’re on a single target. it’s always me that gets focused lol

Engineer pistol AA. 2s bleed on a condi weapon with next to no power scaling? kitten that

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Egorum.9506:

Have it remove conditions when it triggers: Engineers have very, very poor condition removal, and no access to the full condition clear that almost every other class has access to.

Elixir C?

2k hours on my engineer and i forgot we had a full condi cleanse. fail

honestly, i don’t think i’ve ever even put it on my bar though. how does a clear every 40s compete with any kit? XD

Only three solutions i’m really seeing for AED are:

Have it remove conditions when it triggers: Engineers have very, very poor condition removal, and no access to the full condition clear that almost every other class has access to. Even just removing the damaging conditions would be a huge step in the right direction.

Have it heal according to how much hp you currently have: at tiers of 25%. 75%+ hp rewards the current amount (possibly even removes a condition? as it’s still hella weak), 50-75% heals 30% more, 25-50% heals 60% more, 1-25% heals 100% more, 1% still heals the same amount. This makes you pay attention to how much hp you currently have before using it, and it makes the risk of using it at <50% actually worthwhile without having to reduce the CD.

Create gadget traits: We have 1, and it’s not very impressive. Other than rocket boots and mine field in a SD/burst build, every single gadget is incredibly weak baseline and we have nothing we can do to change that. Our utility slots are very valuable as they’re our only access to kits and therefore damage.

Also, buff pistol AA. It’s pathetic.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIqqbH5ynF17ISIFS49B6Re5X41HFyFbB-jECBYfBhEJIZnEZsJqQVQFRjVVjIqWlEzgrIa1SBskuK-w

Swap napalm specialist for MA if you’re running with other people. Swap out the oil if you’re cheap like me =D

Alrighty, so i was digging the eg/ft celestial roamer bit for awhile, but i didn’t feel like it was really utilizing everything celestial had to offer.

Things celestial gear excels at on an engi:
-Crit and Crit damage
-Extra defenses and healing
-Enough condi damage and power damage to make it equally good at both of them.
-Compliments the engineer’s kits and weapons, most of which are split evenly between conditions and power.

Things celestial gear is poor at on an engi:
-Not enough power or condition damage to really threaten anyone, or to really take advantage of the crit and crit damage.

Now… to take advantage of all that goodness you need to be able to maintain offensive stats through might stacking and runes. I found that the sigil of battle with hoelbrek runes and good use of the fire bomb on the bomb kit gives you a 100% uptime on 10+ stacks of might, providing a much needed power boost and 56% condition damage mitigation with the soup.

The key to making use of all that damage is to know how to abuse your combo fields. you can get off a fire bomb/net shot/jump shot/acid bomb combo every time once you’re used to doing it, for some serious damage. Fire shield gives you might and does a 1s burn for each enemy that triggers it with an individual 1s CD per target. that means that if you’re fighting a pet class, popping it gives you a huge stack of might very quickly, while spreading damage passively.

Make strong use of your extra healing power by blasting water fields. HT is a 7k heal every 20s. add another 1400 healing for each blast or leap you do while it’s up. You can use it’s toolbelt skill with jump shot or acid bomb for a quick heal while getting out of a sticky situation. The regeneration given ticks for 190/s, giving you some very strong sustain.

Another fun favorite is the smoke bomb. BoB in a smoke field when you’re ressing someone. gets everyone off the res target, and stealths you both to boot. generally allows you to res pretty easily. Jump shot in a smoke field gives you great damage and triggers on the land, giving you 3s of stealth for a surprise pry bar or a little breathing room.

What i’m really loving about the setup is how strong the burning and confusion is without sacrificing all your power burst. You can LoS and kite people only to then drop a 12-15k combo on them and finish it up by controlling them while they bleed and burn out. Between net shot, overcharged shot, BoB, Magnet, and your kitten nal of cripples you can completely deny someone positioning privileges. Making good use of your gear shield negates burst and allows you to walk right into the thick of things to drop your bombs and rifle skills effectively. Try to use your combo finishers as such every time you can, don’t waste any finishers by using them without a field down.

The biggest problems i’ve faced are heavy condition classes. If they time their dodges to avoid your CC and you can’t burst them down effectively they’re going to hurt. the double HT cleanses and super elixir help, but they only help for so long. Try denying them condition burst through gear shield and stealth

Glass builds aren’t much of a threat between smoke field/gear shield and CC. Stay offensive, don’t let them control you and they go down really quickly.

Any suggestions? Sorry i don’t have any videos, i’ll have to download a program eventually :s

It’s a pretty cookie cutter build that’s used commonly in wvw. watch out for hammer trains and stuns in general, and get used to being frustrated with nades targetting. have fun!

You’re not crazy, i’m having issues with getting ectos out of exotics with a blsk as well. usually i end up with 1-2 per, out of 30 today i picked up 12 ecto. fail =/

I’m running an almost identical build right now. i was using the p/s with it, but i recently changed to rifle with rifle mod instead of rifled barrels. i’m running HT, TK, EG, BK instead of your utilities. and i run napalm specialist if i’m roaming solo.

oh, and rock a sigil of battle and hoelbrek runes to make up for celestial’s low power. it gives you great crit and crit damage, but you need to find other ways to make up for the power loss to take advantage of it.

Holy kitten can this build burst. it’s got some solid defenses to boot!

You don’t need to run traveler’s rune on this for the move speed, you actually get perma swiftness from elixir h+elixir b+toss elixir b.

What that means is you can run noble runes and roll HGH. I can see where MA might seem like the better choice but the 30 in alchemy gives you an extra 10% boon dur and 100 vitality in addition to the extra raw power and condition damage. Power beats precision 1:1 unless you have greater than 50% crit damage and rabid provides enough precision to reliably proc all your on crit abilities without having to invest heavily into firearms.

you can also swap 10 more points away from firearms into explosives to adjust for the 10% condi dur loss. the noble runes provide the condition damage to replace what you lost.

The extra 200 range on your weapons isn’t as noticeable as the 20% cd redux on pistol will be. Running the above variation with sigil of battle over earth is an additional +315 pow/condi over 2 stacks of low damage (<150) bleed.

The real issue with 100% condi dur builds though is you sacrifice everything to gain very little in terms of damage, survivability, and mobility. Anyone roaming w/ zerkers will steamroll you before you can load them up, and anyone who’s in bad shape can just run away and you can’t chase them.

just what i’ve noticed trying something similar before

If you’re zerg diving, you’re running heavy defensive traits and either a bomb kit, tool kit, or ft. the bombs have a delay and make it difficult to effectively tag, and the wrench has a very short range. the ft will kill you if you’re zerg diving with it, even with regen and backpack regen up.

the other reasons why we don’t zerg dive effectively are our lack of a stunbreak with stability. we can run elixir b’s toolbelt all day, but you don’t know when or if a stun is coming and it has a long cast time/throw animation. our stun break options in a zerg diver’s build are speed shoes, regenerating mist, rumble, utility goggles, or elixir s. all of which have CDs above 40s, and aren’t particularly useful as you just get stunned again. except elixir s, where you make yourself no use to your group for 3s (4s?).

and running defensively enough to tank in a zerg dive on an engi really screws up your damage output. to the point where you’re better off rerolling to a guard to see what it feels like to actually zerg dive and be a help =/

You can perform any role… poorly. retal kitten s you both at range and melee, and if you go for a zerg diving role you won’t have any skills that deal enough damage to tag you bags effectively.

Go roam or scout =D

bursty nade engies are easy, just dodge the blue colored ones and then try to stay behind them so they can’t throw at you. other than that, light em up.

you can also try using a sb and just plinking away. most nades builds are pretty squishy with poor access to gap closers. sb4->sb2 and plink plink plink til they go down. avoiding nades is easy at anything greater than 400 range.

perplexity bomber engies however, you should run from.

same here, little laggy in LA and completely unplayable in wvw and spvp

Having some serious issues with skills not queing up properly. it feels like they just get stuck and nothing casts while you get wrecked.

Also having a ton of issues with rubberbanding using any movement skills, and getting stuck in place even after immobilize wears off. half the time, if i get hit by a s/p thief with infiltrator’s strike and pistol whip, my toon freezes and remains there for 10-15s or until i die with everything locked up.

kitten’s getting real old. Anyone else having issues? i keep seeing things in the individual class forums but its seems like it’s a pretty universal issue.

sigils work on a global CD, if you run with both of those it won’t work. i’d drop the geomancy for any of the condition damage stacking ones.

though you can get a high enough damage off of egun alone, providing you use your 2 and 4 skills appropriately, you might want to swap out the elixirs for ft w/ juggernaut and rocket boots for extra burning and damage.

also, in wvw it’d be a mistake to run without power shoes or speedy kits. movement is key to survival

I think you’re right coglin, it doesn’t outdamage it but it does keep pace.

I’ll take another look at it, but my AA on bombs hits for 100-120 and my guard hits with the hammer for 60-70 and the third skill adds a symbol that hits for another 90-120 total.

so in a 3s cycle i hit for 300-360 on the engi and 270-330 on the guard with half the power. does that make any sense to you?

if you’re using a power build in a frontline zerg, i’d try out pistol with coated bullets. you can get 1k+ crits pretty easily and stay a bunker. give it a shot, when the enemy is bunched up hit em with just the AA and watch peeps take 4-5k damage a shot (shot, plus explosions off the shot piercing, as each additional pierce also explodes). you can stop several people from ressing someone and kill them all if they keep trying.

Can anyone explain to me why my lv56 guardian in blues deals more damage to non player objects (gates, siege, etc) than my lv80 engineer with twice the power, regardless of what weapons/kits i’m using?

Honestly, we suck in a zerg. the only reason to run with one is for the loot and wxp, so what you’re really looking for is a survivable build that can tag targets well.

you can run ft, you can run p/s with coated bullets, or you can run SD. that’s about it for group tagging.

you’re going to have to run healing turret and several blast finishers if you want to be of any use other than pitiful damage and little to no CC.

sorry man =/

coglin.1867:

I do not grasp the reasoning for you to go out of your way to insult the community as a whole here. how do you suppose this will aid your goal?

Secondly, I do not understand why you would make a new thread for this topic, when we clearly have a thread on this very subject, mad very recently by a dev. So you know it has the devs eye.

So you know there is another dev created thread on this subject. You know they are paying attention to it. Yet you make another thread on the exact same topic for god only knows what reason. Then insult the engineer community with your comment because the do not pile on your thread instead of the devs. i don’t get it.

Insulting the community? o.O i was referring to the devs not looking until 100 engis have responded lol. My ego isn’t THAT big!

The other thread is for the dec 10 patch trait adjustments, i wanted something a little more specific than that. If we don’t look at all the traits individually we won’t be able to form a collaborative opinion and solution for them to implement.

I don’t know about acidic elixirs, i don’t run HGH very often so i don’t know what you would do with the trait to make elixirs more offense capable. i could see elixir’s splash radius being increased to 280, and i could see the trait just becoming a ‘remove one boon from that guy who’s standing on top of you while you’re buffing’ kinda deal, but that’s about it really.

Autodefense bomb dispenser is actually pretty great. it’s a 4s blind field on a 30s CD, and it’s saved me i don’t know how many times. You can’t get ganked by anyone (barring berserker stance) if you have it. Glass classes that open on you in melee (eles, thieves, warriors, and guards) have their whole opening sequence shut out without you taking any damage. It works on mesmers too, stopping a significant amount of damage from izerker and some of the damage from the blurred frenzy/mind wrack combo. Added bonus, popping your shield’s blast finisher or rocket boots lets you get away from a group that tried to gank you in wvw.

Try running it as a roamer, it’s one of our best and most underutilized traits.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Engineer-Traits-discussion/first#post3151778

Take a look at the state of our traits right now. Most of them are in a good place or have a use in specific builds, but a few are pretty UP.

Yes, the southeast seal with the cannon.

Gotta get other engineers to read it first, i doubt they’ll take a look at anything with less than 100 responses =/

Even 20 players, and if the npcs go down the event might as well fail. you’ll be flailing at it for a hour until you just give up