Guild Wars 2

I didn’t post as recently as I did the past few times because I have been a little stormed with work this past few weeks. Now that I’ve got time again, bumping because runes still haven’t been updated.

Logged in after the patch today. Still no fix. Not trying to be snarky, but I can’t really help it anymore. Remember when companies actually pushed through changes that are listed in the patch notes? This is getting completely absurd.

Another month, another big patch, another lack of proper updating.

Bumping because another patch has gone by where the runes haven’t been updated. Please don’t flag this as a pointless necro or bump spam (is bumping with every hotfix patch where it remains unaddressed spam?), it’s a real bug that has yet to be addressed.

I’m not really sure anyone actually feels grenades are overpowered in PvP, the only time they prove to be potentially overpowered is when 1500 range abuse is actually applicable (when someone is forced into a spot somehow more narrow than a capture point, and to stay there). And at that range it’s so heavily broadcasted that it’s not even funny, what with the triplicate globes cascading through the air towards their destination. There are a few OP things about engineer, but grenades are definitely not it. If we’re going to call for forecast circles on an engineer’s grenade tossing, I’d like to see a giant orange line when a mesmer casts iZerker, or whatnot – and honestly I’d rather not see any lines at all, else I might as well go play Wildstar where PvP is nothing but watching the ground for lines.

I’m aware of that, but they posted in the patch notes that it would be changed, and it still hasn’t.

This isn’t a pointless necro, it’s just me bumping this thread because the bug still exists, and I’d rather just bring this one back around than create an entirely new thread. Please address the issue, it’s still using the pre-April 15th effects and not the ones listed in the April 15th patch notes.

This trait has been acting like this forever, it’s fine. If a class goes double melee, they shouldn’t complain about the ranger shooting them from a rooftop. Same situation applies here – especially given how squishy turrets can be.

EDIT: I’m basically going to put what the issue is up top and leave the original post at the bottom, since people will misconstrue this report.

The issue at hand is that the patch notes as of April 15th detailing the change to Runes of Altruism never got pushed through to the production servers. That variant is as detailed:

Superior Rune of Altruism

(1):25 Healing
(2):When using a heal skill, grant 3 stacks of might to nearby allies for 8 seconds. (Cooldown: 10 seconds)
(3):50 Healing
(4):10% Boon Duration
(5):100 Healing
(6):When you use a heal skill, grant fury to nearby allies for 8 seconds. (Cooldown: 10 seconds)

The version currently on live servers is:

(1): +25 Healing
(2): When you use a heal skill, grant 3 stacks of Might to nearby allies for 8 seconds. (Cooldown: 10s)
(3): +50 Healing
(4): +10% Boon Duration
(5): +100 Healing
(6): When you use a heal skill , grant Fury to nearby allies for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 10s)

There is a clear discrepancy here (I won’t even go in to the details of the actual cooldowns for the current live servers, as that won’t even be an issue once the correct version of these runes is pushed out), and I’m hoping it’s rectified sooner rather than later.

Original post:

So, I use these on my engineer, and with the recent patch, it shouldn’t be hard to acquire permanent fury simply by using medkit. Nope – still giving a duration far shorter than 8 seconds, and I’m just reporting that this value is different from what is described in the patch notes. Feels like the pre-patch values. The might is also lasting around 15 seconds, which coincides with this theory.

zaragoz.6351:

I think he was referring to the rifle auto-attack coglin.

This, it’s the same thing I suggested in my fat post.

zaragoz.6351:

I see a ton of talk about buffing the pistol auto, and I tend to agree. However how do you guys feel about the rifle autoattack? It also seems a bit sub-par to me to be personally honest.

The only thing I feel needs tweaking about it is that it needs to complement the other abilities more efficiently. I’m thinking something along the lines of the opposite of the Mesmer Greatsword auto – more damage the closer you are.

(Continued from last post)

Traits: I have a lot to say about this as well, but this post is already long-winded. Incendiary Ammo was already nerfed once, and I do agree with others that nerfing it again is the wrong decision – instead, the other traits need to be made more appealing. Offensive traits like 5% more damage without full endurance and crippling weaker enemies aren’t overly appealing. I would suggest turning Empowering Adrenaline into a trait that gives stacks of might or fury on dodge, or even better, more might (we’re talking 5-7 stacks that last 20 seconds) on a successful evade. It would reward clever timing, but you’d have to limit it at a 1s internal cooldown to avoid jumping to 25 stacks under something like whirlwind attack. For Exploit Weakness, to coincide with the ‘Make mainhand weapons better’ schema from earlier, perhaps recharge your normal weapons’ cooldowns upon making an enemy hit 25% health, kitten cooldown? I’m really just trying to push for other things being viable than facerolling with grenades / bombs, waiting for an enemy to mess up, then blowing your burst on them and hoping it downed them, as that is how most PvP encounters go when you’re not bunkering.

A few last notes: To bring gadgets and whatnot up to snuff, you need to start merging some traits. You know how warrior has traits such as Greatsword CDR + Might on crit, and Necromancer has Warhorn durations + CDR? I feel that all cooldown traits should be similar to this (albeit not as strong of a buff as Warhorn, given that only affects 2 skills, so going from a 2s daze to 3s is a huge increase, but.. that’s not the point of this topic). Make Rifle/Pistol/Harpoon CDR be merged with range increase! Not only does this ease up specialization, but it gives you more design room for new trait ideas. Make Gadget CDR merge with either a new effect altogether, or static discharge – they’re in the same tier, and it’d give you design room, but I don’t feel those two are similar in all honesty. We have a trait like this for Toolkit already (albeit it’s a bit weird, CDR + cripple, but it isn’t bad – possibly give toolkit more damage as well?), and I’d like to see more interesting trait ideas brought up after several mergers. Explosion CDR + Damage (or, alternately, grenade CDR + damage, and bomb range + CDR, if you feel the two best damage kits being buffed by one trait would be too far… although you still need grenadier, but anyway). And change up the bad skills I mentioned on kits, if Fumigate cleansed yourself, it’d be far better – Flamethrower should do, say, X% more damage per tick for each previous successful hit in the attack chain to reward sticking on a target, and Elixir Gun’s auto.. well honestly I’m fine with it in a condition build, as it’s better than pistol, but I’m done rambling!

If you read this, I sincerely appreciate your time, and hopefully a few of these suggestions will at least impact the direction engineer takes in the future. I look forward to seeing more build options become genuinely viable!

Alright Jon, I’ve been playing engineer since launch, done some dirty things like have the highest hp/s in the game with double super elixirs (back when it was swapped between healing per second and impact heal), and experimented with a ton of builds since then. I feel that I can have some healthy input on all this, given the prime opportunity you’ve presented. I’ll try to keep it compact (I didn’t do the best job at this), as I’m sure you’re busy:

The issue with kits: They’re better than our “real” weapons generally. Pistol tries to be an AoE weapon, but it’s pre-launch functionality of stacking bleeds on multiple enemies for each one impacted when traited for piercing was redacted. Rifle tries to be a burst/control weapon, but it doesn’t have overly solid sustained DPS on its own. The problem this creates is that our “real” weapons are treated as supplementary to kits – grenade and bomb, primarily. Almost every successful build I’ve ran runs one or the other, due to their high damage, crowd control (freeze grenade and smoke bomb are great for everything), and access to either a huge explosion or huge burst (BoB and barrage, respectively). Why am I talking about this? Because other kits pale in comparison, and it creates a very low build diversity. They have their uses, don’t get me wrong – elixir gun has 3 good skills (4, 5, toolbelt), but given that’s only half of its kitten nal, and one of those good skills isn’t the auto attack, it’s often relegated to “I make da heals and break da stuns”. Flamethrower’s 2 is amazing, the change you made to it made me use it in my DPS build for quite some time. All the FT’s other skills are somewhat lackluster, bar a very long burn – bomb kit makes better fire fields more copiously, and the 3’s niche reflect sees rare usage in PvE, and knockback occasionally in sPvP. Lastly, we have Toolkit – probably the most used kit that isn’t bomb/grenade. My only gripe about this is the first two skills – the auto attack, it’s /incredibly/ bad. The third hit has a huge windup for not much bonus damage, it can only hit one target (just like prybar, this needs to be fixed). Box of Nails honestly just needs a much larger radius and a lower cast time, it shouldn’t be making someone crippled and bleeding forever like Caltrops, but if I’m taking 1 second to make a petite cripple field, I’d rather just have it be on a longer cooldown and use a better kit (bomb).

As I was saying, kits outshine our mainhand generally, and this forces most users to use one or two kits, already narrowing their utility options! I’ve never found a successful all-elixirs or all-gadgets build, mostly because your damage output is so subpar from the main weapon that it’s difficult to pull off. I suggest making the traits for pistol / rifle more appealing, such as coated bullets makes the bleed apply to each foe struck, for each foe struck. This was nerfed from pre-launch to actual launch, and I have to ask why? If you see an engineer banging away at you with his pistol at a good range, and you’re clumped up, I feel that he should be rewarded for his timing – given how coated bullets only affects 2 skills (technically it affects the 3, but it requires the random targeting to hit something on the way to another target), it would really open up some crowd control build options. With Rifle, you’ve presented a mixed bag – you want it to be a shotgun-esque weapon based on the 3 and 5, but the 1 is very poor sustain. 2 and 4 are amazing control, and honestly I don’t think they need to be tweaked much – the 4 is a long knockback with justified drawback on a low cooldown, it nets me plenty of kills due to how it can easily be followed up with a net shot or grenade barrage. My suggestion for rifle users is to make the 1 do more damage the closer you are to your target, in exchange making it slightly weaker at longer ranges. It would reinforce the shotgun mentality, and also give engineers a reason to stick closer with rifle – but not too close! I’m thinking 600 range would be the max ‘effective’ distance when traited, possibly 500 without a range-increasing trait.

(Continued in next post)

I did zone 1 and 2 today of world 2. I do have a bit of a living story achievement addiction, and I’d hate to finally miss one, but I might end up throwing the towel in. Why?

These zones are too long. Don’t say ’You’re complaining about more content’, because I’ve played plenty of games with bad, repetitive mechanics, (if you ask for details, you won’t end up happy), and while zones 1 and 2 were initially interesting, they were heavily drawn out. With no method of just calling it quits for the time being, and realizing I’ve put an hour into a given zone already trying to figure out the mechanics, it’s simply irritating. Zone 2 is artifically lengthened by forcing me to look for any cheaply placed dart traps, and then suddenly having to backtrack to a spot I’ve deemed “safe” so I can deal with another pair of not-so-surprising assassins. The same mechanics got recycled (albeit in slightly different ways), such as the octopus-weight trap, and moving blocks to get through the area (I liked the dart trap one, to be fair, but it takes a while on the first run-through, and on repeats I’ll likely be double checking everything to avoid cheap deaths).

I’d also like to propose a possible reason as to why people are complaining about baubles not showing up from digging – I did not select infantile mode. However, I was, as of arriving to zone 3, at 2/33 (or whatever the number is) done for world 2 infantile mode. I believe it is enabled by default from a flag somewhere, despite the distinct absence of happy fluffy clouds making my escapades easier. If you want a screenshot, sure, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow given my real job and all that jazz, so I’ll just sum up my irritations:

Levels too long, need to be blocked out into multiple zones, making players look for too many things sucks any potential fun out (KISS), and pretend there’s a paragraph rant about no method of keeping track of achievement progress on bauble collecting / assassin killing / etcetera. It was a challenge with world 1, given how short (but expansive) the levels were. I’m just giving this world the bird with regards to doing them again, until someone makes a cheater guide so I don’t have to painstakingly scour the levels.

I’m in that same boat, I really want one, but **** paying $400+ for one. I’d gladly shell out $20 to Anet’s pockets, even if it’s put towards Wildstar or something, ’cause this current situation is a great big ripoff.

If you disconnect at any point after completing an event, and before Scarlet is repelled / the waves are finished, you won’t get credit for the zone or for Vorrp’s achievement.

I’m fine with an easy mode, as long as they make it as hilarious as the one for Super Adventure Box. 0 point achievements every time you hit the opponent, etcetera.

Fun fact: If this fight weren’t so rough, people would be QQing about it being too easy. Sure, there’s few technical things that could be remedied – rings not showing up very well, cosmic orbs being obstructed (part of me thinks this is intentional, so you can’t rally off it reliably), and rarely spawns from the prior fight showing up again. However, I’m glad there’s an actual challenge. Twice before Anet has balked, and the first time it was unmerited (Protect all the dolyaks in the Wintersday Defense game), the second time it was Adnul because he enjoyed being the Simon Cowell of belching. This time, it would be unmerited with regards to toning her down. Fix technical issues, sure, that’s fine, but don’t ask for cosmic orbs to stop spawning or for her attacks to slow down. It’s meant to be hard, s’crazy I know. If you’re not good enough, just live and let die. I’m glad for this game to finally have a challenge in it that’s actually tough, everything else thusfar has been either grind or a short term jump puzzle trivialized by some mesmers giving several bad players an easy out.

Engies only have trouble in 1v1 with a few things, one being burst, another being mesmers (although mesmers can be beaten by clever kiting of their illusions / phantasms so they waste time running around obstacles and clustering up), and the primary third being rangers abusing dogs fear/pouncing chains. Warriors are the least of their troubles in sPvP, maybe WvW where a lucky killshot can catch someone off guard I suppose.

I’ve cleared every cheeto on the living story this time around, so I can offer some input. I used a 30/10/0/0/30 grenadier zerker build for everything up to and including Liadri the first time around. Rubies, static discharge with rifle turret, ’nade kit, tool kit with power wrench.

For the dog/owner situation, I advise nuking the dog asap, possibly swapping one of your skills out for portable battering ram to keep him pinned down. Freeze grenade will completely neutralize his ability to eat meat, so take advantage of that and eat some yourself (the damage increase is fairly significant). Also use overcharged shot when you can. Pistol/shield isn’t as great as people think for actually just killing the bosses, it’s more for doing the harder challenges / gambits.

Liadri is incredibly easy once you figure out the pattern, at least the normal mode cheeto. If you want some extra defense, bring along elixir S instead of rifle turret, and pistol/shield, but at that point I had so many blocks that I was occasionally forgetting to use some. I’d start the match, nuke the first cosmic orb, stand by the pit, chuck the orb fairly quickly after the shadow entered it, and this part is important – move as quickly as you can to the next pit, and use magnet on a shadow. If you take too long, you’ll lose a good bit of potential time, because the trick here is that you’ll get one orb instantly, and the next shadow will spawn on the opposite side of the next well, and save you a bit of time in trying to maneuver it! If you just want the normal mode kill, boom you’ve got 2.5 minutes to do it now. If you want hard mode, there’s better guides than I can provide that I used (I respecced for 10/0/30/30/0 as the guide on reddit stated, albeit I used berserker gear, took me a good ~30 tries to get, would’ve taken 15 if I hadn’t botched it one time with her at 1%!). I actually swapped out elixir S for elixir C, because one time I got 8 orbs on her and timed out – I had almost 1 minute of weakness on me, and it explained everything.

For 5 gambits, I won’t lie – I swapped to warrior. If I could use tremors, I’d just use everything but weakness and crowd favorite on sub7 and obliterate him. Sadly your choices are pretty rough until they bring tremors back, because being crippled, unable to dodge, and having a gigantic quaggan eating your face is impossible to do as an engineer, and doing low damage is harder since you’ll just have to walk around the edge of the arena pewpewing s7 and hoping for the best! Rough with the way the camera works, b’chea. Also, I cheated to do weakness / moar damage, I brought an ogre pet whistle for Deadeye and used the bear it spawned to bodyblock his shots while I wailed on him.

Pic for proof, edited for profanity.

Tremors Gambit isn’t showing up for me, kind of annoying. Already beaten Liadri.

I’m having difficulty cranking out the 5 gambits achievement, figured I’d take tremors instead of more damage, then realized it’s not here. I’ve already got the ‘All Gambits Unlocked’ achievement, so I’m not sure that’s it, as well as beaten Liadri.

Dad-batman uses guns, I see no problem here.

Durzlla.6295:

20s CD would make me a VERY VERY happy asura!! “SURPRISE BOOKAH!!”

Then take Speedy Gadgets. PBR is mostly fine, my only gripe with it is aiming it and the petite range, make it 130 or 180 or something. One of its best uses in sPvP is blowing downed players off the point, which air blast can’t do (big ol’ bomb can, however, but that’s a different debate).

If you don’t want to blow 2 of your traits on permavigor, you can instead blow 1 trait on semi-perma-vigor while also benefitting from 10% more damage with full endurance.

Bows and hammers have been discussed to death – maces can be tied in alongside hammer skills essentially (albeit 3 instead of 5). I’m more interested in non-typical engineer weapons. Staff could easily be viewed as a lightning conduit – possibly using the rarely-utilized charging mechanic (hold it down for greater effect). Wand could also be viewed similarly. Greatsword could possibly be viewed as a gigantic multi-tool, various attachments whipping out of the large blade for different effects. Sword/axe/dagger/etc are a little harder for me to think of, at least from a tech-oriented perspective.

Lord Kuru.3685:

In my experience, if you have an ability that activates while you’re harvesting, then you get ruined. For example, Necros have a trait that gives regeneration when you hit 90% health; with this trait, if a mob hits you to 90% health while you’re chopping, you get ruined.

This. Engineers swapping kits while harvesting also ruins gathering attempts.

Fact: Infinite Light uses Charged Lodestones.

Fact 2: Charged Lodestones just took a hit in value after the Aetherblade Retreat dungeon.

I’ve made and sold 4 infinite lights so far, I’m getting out. Why? From 2 supply to 4 + this one, and it was already a finnicky market. I won’t lie – and please understand when you look at it yourself – only an idiot would buy an infinite light off the TP. I was literally making 1.5 – 2 gold per skill point invested into this, and one sell was 4 gold per skill point of pure profit. You literally just need 250 charged lodes, 750 orichalcum ingots, a weaponsmith (which we’ll high ball and say costs 10 gold to get to rank 400, or you could just buy the blades raw for a little more), 100 mystic coins (less than 3 gold), and 50 skill points. I’m not doing it anymore because it’s clearly catching on, it costs roughly roughly 700 gold to make (if you play it smart off buy orders) and there’s not a single thing aside from skill points that you can’t get off the TP. None of the currently listed ones are going to sell until charged lodes shoot back up, and that won’t be for a while.

Attrition build won’t beat a burst build in 1v1 if you don’t have sort of disable (which you don’t, aside from crate). Run Slick Shoes and Grenade Kit. He tries to burst, pop shoes, use grenade barrage on his face, then maybe add a jump shot or something. Gg.

2 things:

1 is to burst them down. Seems daunting, but if they go on the defense because you can interrupt their fear chain, gg. I like using Slick Shoes for this purpose. Super Speed into them after their first fear, knock them down with shoes, burst.

2 is to cleanse the conditions you end up taking somehow. Rocket Boots away to get rid of the chill/cripple/etc, or elixir C, or something, the torment and bleeding will seal the deal if you can’t get out of their casting range for a bit, but if you can do one or the other, you’ll have a better chance.

There are no craftable back pieces, mystic forge != crafting. This is the same reason you cannot salvage back pieces (yet, at least last I checked).

That’s nice, but you know you can cancel the leap on acid bomb by using weapon swap, right?

I use super speed. Because it’s an AMAZING way to kill people in sPvP (turn it on, run into them, hit grenade barrage, huehuehuehue), especially when you use slick shoes to make sure they stay put.

Because this is how the guardian and warrior traits behave. Buff one, buff all 3. Or potentially diversify them.

tovadaun.6304:

Did you seriously earn a Legendary for the Achv Points?
Really?
I know if I earned a Legendary I couldn’t care less if it came with 5AP or 500AP. I just earned an awesome kick-kitten weapon- not to mention all the Slayer, Weapon Master, Dungeoning etc AP completion deeds I did while getting said Legendary…

No, I actually don’t have a legendary because engineer kits don’t show them, I’d rather just keep accumulating gold until this is remedied. I was simply pointing out the immense disparity in real achievements versus Super Adventure Box’s Baby Mode achievements (You went up a hill! GOOD JERB – and fyi those were worth 0 points, but they were still completely hilarious when you get an achievement for every 5 steps you take).

Donari.5237:

-scratches head- How is this a competition, again? How does one person lose if another has shiny pixels faster than them? I feel like I’ll “win” if I get to see more varied detail in the game. On other characters? Fine by me.

Because it’s more than cosmetics, we’re also being rewarded with gold, gems, and magic find / XP / etc bonuses. Chaot has an excellent point – if dailies are counted towards this progression, players will simply work towards those rather than the game’s non-daily achievements, and it will go much faster. Rather than spend an hour working towards weapon master or champion <X> or somesuch, you’ll be getting twice as many points as you’d get from actually getting that achievement (read: 5 for a given rank typically, versus 10 bonus achievement points up and beyond the daily). I’m chiming in to say I agree with Chaot, I’d rather be doing non-daily things and hammering towards new content, it makes each point more valuable and harder to earn than the last, and that’d be great! Not just “I logged in and rattled off this list of chores, I love getting home from work and doing work for the sake of efficiency”.

Here’s what will happen:
Dailies count? In a given period of time, nobody will give a care about these achievement point rewards.

Dailies don’t count? It’ll breathe life into sPvP and WvW (at least for a little bit on WvW’s part, achievements take forever there), and other rarely touched areas of the game – Keg Brawl is gonna freakin’ explode.. assuming dailies don’t count, obviously.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

That wouldn’t be fair. Of course players who have been playing since the headstart have more AP than players who start today. This game is not about who has the most achievement points, why should newer players be able to keep up with players who have been playing for a long time.

Veterans will already have it via living story and holiday achievements, to add dailies on top of that (which are exponentially more points) is salt in the wound.

Iason Evan.3806:

Limiting the daily stuff like some people are suggesting here is troublesome. We are supposed to play how we want. Some people like doing dailies. Just because you don’t like doing dailies doesn’t mean you need to try and take away from what someone else likes to do. Achievements that take longer grant more points. Dailies grant a few points because they are done every day.

Except they don’t, you can get up to 15 points a day off dailies, whereas earning a legendary weapon gives you 5. Do you see the problem here? Playing the game like a chore will get you more rewards than actually going for interesting and unique goals.

I’m pretty excited for this system, but I really hope they take out all the daily points, and let our achievement point score reflect our actual achievements and not logging in to pointlessly badger off several things each day. The laurel, coin, and jug are more than enough reward for that – I’m not sure it’s fair to be getting more points each day for chores than getting a legendary. I’ve got a somewhat depressing individual in my guild who does every pvp and pve daily every day, and has taken to farming giants for giant slayer, just to try and get his score up, and he’s not even #1, but lord is he trying.

My advice as of the latest patch:

Run Rocket Boots and Slick Shoes, alongside 30 in tools and gadget CDR. Rocket Boots makes it incredibly hard for them to escape with double teleports via bow, as well as you keep them in your ‘aggro range’ so their health doesn’t start recovering. The Slick Shoes serves a dual purpose – first is to chase them down once they’re still in aggro range and running, it makes it laughably easy to land net shot when you’re running twice their speed. Second is a stunbreaker, as they are thieves – they will probably try to stun you somehow.

The biggest deal with thieves is to be cautious while they’re stealthed – try to bait them out, make them botch their backstab attempt, either use flashbangs or dodge at an opportune moment or somesuch. Your biggest deal will be to catch them in their shadow refuge – the moment you see them use it, either try to grenade where you hope they’ll be standing (freeze grenade does a great job of this), or use Supply Crate at it’s center for a stun – and then play the guessing game. You’ll hopefully go in the same direction they do with your rocket boots, as I guarantee you they’re bow’ing away from you if you were doing good.

Find a series of binds that works well for you, your mice makes almost no impact whatsoever in a game like GW2 (unless you’re hurting for more keybinds you can access with your mouse-wielding hand). Mice are more critical for the FPS genre where DPI makes a notable impact, for GW2 it’s more about binds and reaction times. I personally have heal bound to left shift, utility 1 to Z, utility 2 to left alt, and utility 3 to c… the only keybind I’m not proud of his elite skill to capslock. I ran out of buttons, sue me.

I’d say 4, 3, 1, 2. Legendaries are a pretty important deal with regards to Anet’s current ‘end game goal’, and Engineers get completely shafted. Why do elementalists get to have unique effects for all their attunements from each legendary (some less so than others, earth element with incinerator is a little lack-luster), but engineers get a few pitiful effects and then their super prestigious efforts are tossed out the window the moment they swap to a kit? Backpacks covering our prestigious, achieved backs is also a major irritation – and I put turrets at the end, because right now turrets aren’t too big of a deal, the most usage they see is from supply crate, healing turret being dropped / oc’d / detonated, and then surprise shot.

Knox.8962:

Or necro dagger, or guardian sword if you count the burning that procs.

That doesn’t even factor in the traited versions of many classes skills, which can drive things like warrior axes ahead of the bombs.

But in a vacuum, the bomb AA is very close to the top.

Necromancer dagger is single target, and it’s attached to this somewhat useless class called Necromancer (this is with regards to PvE). Their AoE damage output is nearly nonexistant bar in short spurts every 30-35 seconds (Death Shroud 4/5, Wells, Staff 4 as the other marks are terrible damage), and only at those times is it even close to being on par with engineer. However, you are right, it does do more damage per second pre-traiting, post-traiting it is less unless they are at high condition count, which is entirely feasible and I’m not discounting it – but in realistic scenarios, I’d much rather have a bomb engineer.

I’d take your word on guardian sword if I didn’t have one – it’s less damage than bomb kit. Scepter can put out more single target damage than sword actually, but that’s a different bag of rocks involving multiple skills.

Warrior Axe was strong before, and it’s still on par with bomb kit now (as in one or the other may be doing 4-5% more damage than the other), however that’s only due to how many traits that increase damage warrior has access to, and engineer has almost as many.

Bomb Kit does what it does very well – raw damage output. You’re not supposed to be using fire bomb for damage in a raw build, you’ll get more damage out of 1 raw bomb than the burning (in a power build), you just need the fire field. Concussion is admittedly worthless in a power build, but it’s a nice thing to drop in an sPvP / WvW, as confusion is always irritating. Smoke Bomb and Glue Bomb work well regardless of the player’s build – especially smoke bomb. Bomb Kit is an incredibly hard hitting DPS-wise option that can hit in a wide area, and with traits like 10% more explosion damage, 10% more damage with full endurance, and 10% more crit chance while foes are < 50% health, there is a solid damage output option that has it’s own niche, and it does it incredibly well.

Bombs are the hardest hitting auto attack in the game (except maybe life blast or a transform), it’s fine.

I’m gonna agree with this issue, it’s hard to see critical boss tells like the new AR dungeon – when Mai’s aiming her pistol, I can’t really tell sometimes when I’m hammering her with grenades.

Seems like a pretty awful thing to ask given the plethora of buffs we just got – especially since most of them were based on feedback produced in the engineer forum. ‘Hey, our kits have no stunbreakers’ BLAM STUNBREAKER ‘We have a lot of trash traits’ BANG TRAIT REWORK ‘Other classes do X, Y, and Z better’ BOOM, WARRIOR NERF

Exaggeration obviously, but it’s a decent summation of what happened with the recent patch.

I’ve heard of an exploit where they can be used in the jump puzzle to instantly kill players, but I’m not entirely certain.

For leveling, in general it’s pretty hard to beat bombs. They take some getting used to, but the smoke bomb keeps you safe for several seconds , and the auto attack hits INCREDIBLY hard. Flamethrower is more visually interesting, but most of the time while levelling with it you’ll be backing up. Just make sure you trait for larger bomb AoE, else it isn’t too widespread.

For 80, there’s plenty of debate for it – I prefer a raw power build. If I don’t need a block for the dungeon, I’ve been running elixir gun / grenade kit / rifle turret alongside static discharge in a 30/10/0/0/30 build. If I do need a block, swap out rifle turret for tool kit. The new Scope really adds to the damage potential of this setup.

“Smelling Salts”

Title says it all. Elixir Gun (as in kit builds) now has a stun breaker. Patch of the year all years.