Guild Wars 2

Been playing this game almost every day since it came out. Never had this happen.

Wiki lists it as a bug. Where did you hear that?

So, now death nova does direct damage, except when you activate the pet skill like heal pet or bone minion explosions. Is this a bug or working as intended, and if not is there word on a fix?

Which do you think I should boost, toughness or vitality from where I am?

My FT bleeds, burns, vulns, and heals me for 425 every second jet.

Sick of the knock-back at the start of Raving Asura? Pull out your Mortar at the bottom, and pound the harpies from beneath. The top 3 are clustered close enough together to all be hit. Not the greatest damage (except 5 ability!), but you get perma stability, and you can rez team-mates when they fall.

I am curious what your Engineer endgame stats are, specifically toughness.

My end-game stats at this with my build and sigils is:

Power 1794
Precision 1942
Toughness 1354
Vitality 1371
Condition Damage 1266

Incendiary Powder is really not necessary at all. Flame Jet burns once at the end of the cycle. If you follow flame jet with Air Blast, you’ll burn for another 3 seconds. I see too few engineers using Napalm, which is really your burn bread and butter, and even with mobile mobs will probably proc more burns than IP will.

My favorite combo is Big ol Bomb and Acid Bomb. Can you imagine 5 Engineers doing that at once? That would be close to 20k damage in 3 seconds. The Knockback from the blast would be hilarious.

Magic Find is a joke. Total useless garbage stat that takes up the spot of other useful stats. ANet doesn’t want you getting better drops. That screws up the economy. So, even with the max – 367% magic find, you’re going to get maybe 5% better drops than someone with zero.

I have been testing magic find for over a month, and my wife with ZERO made twice as much money farming the exact same events. If anything, magic find works in reverse.

Specterryu Quipter.8412:

PvP, we’re one of the best classes.
PvE, we are so lackluster that it’s hilarious.

As a side note, every trait that Anet “fixes” breaks two others; it’s quite interesting to watch. Makes me wonder when they are just going to torch the class all together.

Its like I said. Engineer abilities all domino off each other. Break one, you break three or four.

Tolmos.8395:

We are the red headed step children of GW2. When daddy Anet is in a bad mood, he comes and slaps us around a little with some nerfs and breaks, then demands that we thank him for it.

And sadly… we do :-P

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamen brother!

I too am a Gingeneer.

Clip.6845:

Too many people are writing whole novels and don’t even mention if they’re talking about pvp or pve :p

I use the same build, different runes and sigils for both PVP and PVE, and it works great for both.

The predator does affect the grenade kit actually. It makes the grenades turn into fireballs… although I think it only does that with grenade barrage and not the other skills.

Good to know.

Zorgog.3908:

Well if you keep it in line with the theme of some legendaries, the grenades could blow up showering the enemy with rainbows, flowers, and cute Asuran babies!

Vector: “PIRANHA GUN! OHHH YEAH!”

With the build I am running now, and having played other classes with powerful builds, I would venture to say that the engineer is the most powerful class, easily.

The nerfs have been infuriating, and I agree that we have been A-net’s punching bag for the last 4 patches -few of us disagree there. The buffs they have handed out have been pretty lame for what we got sheared off, but they show that the engineer concept is what it took me a few months to figure out. The problem with engineer nerfs is that the engineers that are truly excellent are shining a spotlight for the nerf-herders. The engineer that are so-so are wondering what fell on them and why.

The engineer is not like any other class in that it is the absolute “middle of the road, jack of all trades” utility class, which few people like and even fewer are good at. Elixir build is one of the few master builds that puts Engineer on the same footing as the other classes, and while it is great, the learning curve to play can still be very high. Only the elementalist, imo, has a learning curve as high and with an almost equal amount of utility. The other classes do what they do, and do it well. The engineer does a little of everything, and you have to use everything in unison to be truly good.

This is why you have such a disparity in the engineers you meet. You either meet engineers that are amazing and seemingly invincible, or you meet mediocre pistol poppers with a travelling junkyard who fold faster than Superman on laundry day. There are very few in between.

It seems to me that Engineers, specifically kit-wielding engineers, are excluded from the cool factor of having an epic weapon. I run with a flame-thrower 75% of the time, and med kit 15% of the time. Of that other 10%, about 2% is shield/pistol.

With the back slot hidden by your kit backpack, and your weapon hidden by you kit main-hand, there really is no point in buying an epic weapon unless you are an elixir build with rifle.

What would be truly lovely is if your epic weapon affected the look of your kits. Epic flamethrower, epic Elixir Gun. Bombs that make a mushroom cloud. Ha ha. Someone suggested golden grenades, lol. I dunno. Just something to make us feel less excluded when we do battle with an 1800 gold item in our inventory, other than running around Lions arch in slow mode with your flame rifle, shiny shield, or jester pistol.

Dimes.7281:

Jay.4837:

I experimented with replacing my bomb kit with mines, to remove retaliation. It wasn’t as fun, though it often worked.

I’m not sure how that build qualifies as having good survivability. The only condition removers you have are from the medkit, which I don’t know how you use in SPvP combat mid fight, and from Super Elixer. The only thing “tanky” about that spec is your life leaching sigils, and even then you have 2 proc on chance Sigils which share the same cooldown and override eachother, thus making one of them almost completely irrelevant.

I never disputed the FT’s damage, I disputed it’s survivability.

My video makes the case best http://youtu.be/gQLhD2DCUJ8

You can see the survivability of the build, despite the shortage of condition removal.

I experimented with replacing my bomb kit with mines, to remove retaliation. It wasn’t as fun, though it often worked.

I am honestly glad so many engineers have such a low opinion and/or misconception about the Flamethrower. I see other engineers whip it out every now and then, shoot a few spurts, and then go back to rifle. Lol.

Its my primary PVP weapon, and yet they keep buffing it because Engineers seem to think it is only a PVE weapon. The only massive hole in the FT’s perfection for me is Retaliation, which is why I build the Vampire build, as I regularly take 18-22k damage from retaliation alone at times purely from flame jet.

The misconception comes from the low individual damage and the low overall damage at the end of 2 seconds. Most engineers see that overall 1200 to 1800 damage over 2 seconds and think, “This is lame”. What they don’t take into account, quite often, is the number of targets being hit without the need for targeting, the damage being done by bleed and burn, and the stacks of vulnerability. With bleed and burn, the real end damage of 2 seconds of Flame Jet with, lets say 50% crits in a 10 hit cycle and 2-3 misses is at low end 2200 and at high end 3000 damage. But the real purpose of Flame jet is procs. Flame Jet is a pure proc machine, and it should be exploited as such – keeping in mind that Retaliation is a chicken coming home to roost like the big bad wolf.

After that is Flame Blast. This ability hits like a mac truck with Deadly Mixture trait and combined with Acid Bomb. There’s nothing more entertaining than Napalm, Acid Bomb, Flame Blast for 3 stacks of might and bout 4-5k damage on anyone unlucky enough to be inside your cone.

Not to sound insulting, but I hope the FT remains a sorely underestimated kit.

Heck, just for fun

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3tshid/

Aristio.2784:

Sepahbod.4653:

One has to be careful when asking open questions like this. Most human beings are incapable of self-criticism. Life is much easier if everything else is the reason you fail and not you.

It’s a fact that things on Engineer are just inferior when put up apples to apples of other professions. Examples:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Energy_Conversion_Matrix
vs.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Power

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Low_Health_Response_System
vs.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Full_of_Life

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precise_Strikes
vs.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sharpshooter

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spiked_Armor
vs.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor_Mods

I know this will provoke a lot of hate, but Engineer class requires more skill and L2P than most classes, with Ele being a close 2nd. I’m not saying that other classes require no skill (except thief. I mean, how hard is it to spam 2 repeatedly?). I just mean that the success/failure curve for an Engineer in sPVP is a great deal higher if you’re running anything other than an Elixir build.

I liken playing a utility engineer in PVP to playing a grand piano that controls a robot being used in a fist fight.

There should be a Super Cool Ski Instructor meme:

If you’re not using Keybinds and Quickcast on your Engineer

YOUR GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME

Who’s the squeakiest wheel? QQ-more whiners. After that? The “I dominate your face and am bored with my OP class. Nerf me or my legions and I will quit,” crowd. So, all you can do is hope and pray that HGH falls somewhere between the two.

I felt that the boost to FT and the change in the Med Kit and Bomb Kit’s KR proc were nice. However, the rest of KR, or Kitten Refinement as I am trying to label it, was so Kitten it needed a bag and a river. There was no need to nerf KR once, then nerf it again into oblivion. It was just pure spite.

How many other classes had a core trait completely rewritten into something else? When it happened to Juggernaut it was a good thing, but this was just ridiculous!

This is why my healing looks like during a fight, where commas represent one second:

120, 120, 425+120, 975+120, 700+120+120, 120+120, 1000+120+120, 1000+120+120, 1000+120+120, 425+120, 4790+120, repeat

That’s a 10-second space, with 2 flame jets and other abilities, with 2 kit switches, 3 medpacks and a heal.

The video shows it best

Phineas Poe.3018:

Jay.4837:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Wait, removing one condition every 10 seconds—on top of Drop Antidote and Super Elixir—is a bad thing?

Also, remember that the 10 second CD is global with the Leeching swap, making the CD of Leeching now 20 seconds instead of 12.

Well Leeching/Blood is suited for an entirely different purpose. If you want more healing then obviously they’re the better choice. I just don’t understand how removing one condition every ten seconds is a bad thing.

I’m not saying its bad. I’m saying that getting an effect every 4 seconds for 425 heal is more useful.

There are only two worries with conditions for me: Primary is Immobilize, which I hate with a passion. Then, cripple. For immobilize, you have to use Super Elixir, so there is only one choice. When I get immobilized, I usually Big Ol’ Bomb and Acid bomb hoping to my shrinkie at 25% health to save me, as Super Elixir takes too long.

There should be a trait that makes turrets mobile, but really slow.

Bob the Guilder

I just like tossing “Kitten Refinement” into the mix and running. Kitten Refinement. Lol.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Wait, removing one condition every 10 seconds—on top of Drop Antidote and Super Elixir—is a bad thing?

Also, remember that the 10 second CD is global with the Leeching swap, making the CD of Leeching now 20 seconds instead of 12.

Check out my Vampire Juggernaut build https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Behold-the-Vampire-Juggernaut/first#post1785794

Zenguy.6421:

Prediction: ANet will leave the Eng class alone for the next few patches.

Right now ANet would be better off focussing their efforts on other classes that need attention and putting some distance between themselves and their recent attempts to improve the Eng class.

Those terrorists just flew a plane into one of the twin towers! Don’t worry though, they won’t attack the second one.

nakoda.4213:

Jay, have you considered a superior sigil of purification (60% cond removal on crit every 10 sec)?

i have recently been using this in my FT build and so far it is working wonderfully as an aid to cond removal.

Yes, and I play tested it. To me, 10 seconds may as well be 10 years in PVP, and then it only removes one condition. What I’d like to see changed on the Elixir Gun is either than Fumigate removes conditions on both the Engi as well as his friendly targets, or that Super Elixir removes 2 conditions instead of 1 since they removed it from Kit Refinement. I used to run Kit Refinement, and double pop Super Elixir to get out of Immobilize.

This build is short on Condition Removal, with only Drop Antidote and Super Elixir as your Condition Removers.

The Regen helps combat bleeds and burns, but immobilize is a major pain. Switching to Elixir Gun and dropping Super Elixir takes about 2 seconds, and by then you are bursted down.

This is why you have to have Self-Regulating defenses, to combat Backstab and 100Blades.

If it prevents a thief from 2-shotting you, it will be nerfed. If the thief can still 2-shot you, it will stay.

Wuffles.5319:

What’s so Vampire about it?

The Vampire portion of this build is Sigil of Leeching, Sigil of Blood, 2 x Rune of Vampirism.

The Juggernaut portion comes from building 7-8 stacks of might with +200 toughness from Flamethrower.

Combined with Backpack Regenerator, Healing Mist, Super Elixir, and Medpacks, its some serious regen. With 10 points in Tools, your Bandage Self is lowered from 20 seconds to 18 and Healing mist from 40 seconds to 36.

And before you ask, kit switching and weapon swapping are the same. In the video, you’ll see a green skull buff when I switch kits. That gives me a 975 heal on attack, and I suck out 425 when I proc.

With a 60% non-Rage and 80% Rage crit chance and combined with hitting 5 times a second with flame jet, I proc Blood every 2nd or 3rd spray, or once every 4 to 6 seconds.

The cooldown of Blood and Leeching are global, however, blood only has a 2 second cooldown, and I kit switch so much that it really only means that Leeching has a 12 second cooldown instead of ten. Watch the video, and see how much I regen in a fight.

I burn with Napalm, Fire bomb, Incendiary Ammo, Blowtorch, and Air Blast (for extension of pre-existing burns), +10%, Energy Conversion Matrix, +2 – 4%, Sharpshooter + Target the Maimed + 5%, Deadly Mixture +15%,

This means I do 32-34% added damage with Flame Jet with +13% crit damage for Runes of Ogre and 10 points in Tools.

I proc Bleeding, Burning and Vulnerability with a 60-80% total Crit chance (depending on Rage) for opponents above 50% health, and 70-90% Crit for below opponents below 50% health thanks to Target the Weak. It hits hard, even when you miss a few hits, though the main purpose of Flame Jet is to proc Bleed, Burn, Vuln, and Heal.

You run in Rage about 70% of the time during fights if you drop Stimulant, and Hidden Flask procs at 75% health (Which is your average health after the first burst).

The real beauty of this build is the blind combo for 1v1. Smoke Vent their face, Air Blast, Acid Bomb, Static Shot, Smoke Bomb, Tranquilizer dart through the smoke field for 3 shots then drop Super Elixir and Healing mist and fight on. You’ll get 1 blind at least off the field, and their hits will non-crit for half damage with Tranq Dart’s weaken. This is a good Opener for rangers.

For Node assaulting, run into the zerg, Napalm, Big Ol’ Bomb, Acid bomb outta there, Flame Blast (the distance of Acid Bomb leapback and Flame Blast auto destruct is the same) You’ll get three hits of Acid Bomb for about 1k, Knockback for about 2k, and the Flame ball will hit for about 400 then 1500, and you’re only in the meatgrinder for about 2 seconds and you’ll give 3 to 6 stacks of might to any allies inside.

For Rezzing, Drop Big Ol’ Bomn then smoke bomb on your friend. If you don’t have 3 seconds for Big Ol’ Bomb, Acid bomb off the smoke field (or even drop Supply Crate), then rez. For a quick getaway, try smoke bomb, then acid bomb. You leap back in stealth.

Blast combos for this build are Might, Retaliation, and Stealth

The whole idea behind this build is Flamethrower for procs, followed by blinds. For node holding, Big Ol’ Bomb, Acid Bomb, Fire Blast. For Solo, CC Chain with Flame Jet, Smoke Vent, Static Charge, Smoke Bomb, Tranquilizer Dart x 3, Super Elixir, Healing Mist, Air Blast.

Good survivability with all the regen. Watch the video.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqal0p6Zn1yuF17IxoCdG0DAX37K6RlbslB;TsAg1CooQygkAJrTOkkONw4EyMEA

Gameplay Video: http://youtu.be/gQLhD2DCUJ8

Vampire Juggernaut

(Copy and paste link to work)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqal0p6Zn1yuF17IxoCdG0DAX37K6RlbslB;TsAg1CooQygkAJrTOkkONw4EyMEA

Gameplay Video: http://youtu.be/gQLhD2DCUJ8

I’m not saying it should do no damage, I just think that 21k damage from Retaliation is a little ridiculous.

What would really unpunish multi-hit skills like Flame Jet and the like would be a either a 0.5 or 1 second cooldown on Retaliation damage. This would make retaliation hit 2 or 4 times per flame jet instead of 10 times. It would also keep pace with the normal DPS of other classes without nerfing Retaliation.

Either way, it just seems nonsensical to have Retaliation punish multi-hit skills.

Bah! Good to know though. Yet another fail description.

Kitten Refinement

The description on Air Blast says it does Burn damage for 2 seconds. Tested this thoroughly in the Mists. Nada.

RaynStargaze.6510:

edit: actually no

they should just restore kit refinement as it was pre patch…

the new kit refinement skills are all a huge pile of kitten (exception being the bomb one but bombs are kitten anyway unless you fight only on small nodes vs ppl who stay on the small nodes all day)

I agree that it should be restored pre patch. I don’t mind the 10 second global CD. I didn’t like it, but I thought it wasn’t too much of a nerf. However, when they patched it again immediately into as you said, a huge pile of kitten, I was honestly flabbergasted.

Just want to get some feedback on the kit refinement changes, and post my 2 cents about the new procs.

First off, I like the changes to Med Kit and Bomb Kit: Magnetic Aura and Magnetic Bomb. They are useful, and can be incorporated with combos. The KR proc for Med Kit up to this point was just an annoying BANG that let you know you’d switched to Med Kit. I find the changes to both Flamethrower and especially Elixir gun to be….well, both stupid and useless.

In my opinion, there was nothing wrong with an AOE burn proc for flame thrower. It complemented the skillset and wasn’t OP. But the addition of a Slick-Shoes esque glue trail to the Elixir gun was just an outright slap in the face. Engineers got the message about how much you hated double Super Elixir, A-net. You nerfed it over and over until finally you just stomped it out of existence, but glue trail just seems like a tacked-on “We got yer double super-elixir right here, bozo!”

Nerfing 100nades was an inevitability. We all saw it coming. We know that it is heresy for any class to be allowed to 2-shot you by spamming one button…. except thief. But now we get….a mine. Yippee. Tool kit? Man, were those caltrops OP. Now we get….!!!! ….Swiftness. Man. I’m sure glad there’s not a Tools trait that already gives me swiftness, because that nifty Super Speed fills a vacuum that the engineer class sorely needed!

I know that these procs will never be un-nerfed. Devs never listen to people who actually play that class. They listen to the people who don’t play the class but QQ about it till the cows come home. Still, here are some ideas that seem, to me, to be more in line with kit procs.

First off, Global CD of 10 secs was fine the way it was, for Pete’s sake

Elixir Gun – OK, OK! We get it! You don’t want us to be able to AOE heal. What about an AOE Fumigate that removes conditions on the Engineer as well. Or is an AOE Poison/Vulnerability Cond removal that hits for maybe 400 damage too OP?

Flamethrower – I really don’t see why AOE burn was so terrible. Thoughts?

Grenade kit – AOE flash grenade for blind proc and minor damage

Tool Kit – Seems to me like the glue trail would be better here, and make more sense for this kit than for Elixir Gun. Or make it a caltrop trail.

Either way, I think it is the general opinion of the Engineer community that enough is enough. There were two nerfs to Kit Refinement back to back, and we both know there won’t be anymore because it is now officially pushing up daisies. You trampled what was a useful and fun engineer ability simply because of Super Elixir and 100nades. I humbly submit that it was a bad decision, and would like to see some kind of restoration that makes more sense.

First they “fixed” super elixir. Then they “fixed” Kit Refinement with a global cooldown. Now they’ve “fixed” Kit Refinement permanently. Have fun with your kitten A-net. Meow.