Guild Wars 2

Rezzet.3614:

Holosmith is good in everything Except WvW
it adds nothing to WvW except better roaming potential
as far as big fights go Mortar is still our best bet

I can kinda see it work in zerg too, you have a short cd stability + barrier stacking on 3 and the auto attack is probably the strongest AA cleave in the game with 5 targets and amazing damage.
I’d try something with Elixir U, Elixir S, that holosmith shield and the holo elite, marauder armor and captain trinkets maybe. Build would be either invention/alchemy/holo or something. Drink your elixir U, use your 2 then 3 to engage then 5 and start spamming 1 and 3 when it comes off cd.

Rodzynald.5897:

Majority claims that holo’s damage is too much and it is a fact.

There are classes with better bursts, and they don’t have to go balls deep into melee or can easily escape. Photon Forge attacks are also so telegraphed you can just avoid most of the damage with simple dodges.

Yep, I was about to ask for it as well, it feels really counter intuitive having to press the Photon Forge skill again when you’ve been using the swap weapon key for 5 years.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Holosmith feels very good […] but outside of Photon Forge it feels pretty bland and ineffectual.

Pretty much this, the Photon Forge and its heat mechanic are cool, but once you out of it, you’re just a core engi with a missing traitline and not a ton of interactions with the new one. The sword should have been just that but in its current state it’s not worth using in my opinion, I find the rifle a much better option.

fluidmonolith.3584:

Your character also changes color, from blue at low heat to yellow at medium heat to red near maximum heat (when Photon Forge is activated).

Yes, but that’s not something very noticeable in the middle of combat.

It’s lacking visual feedback, the screen border should slowly go from blue to red, or some art around the skill bar to show how high your heat is, the tiny bar under your toolbelt is hard to see, especially in desert areas.

santenal.1054:

Have you tried hitting an invisible enemy to trigger “Invisible Analysis”? (you yourself don’t have to be invisible)

The old “Lock On” would trigger “Analyze” when you hitted a stealthed enemy so I assume they just wrote an incorrect tooltip like they often do.

This probably still works but I was interested in that new tooltip…

Did anyone try the Lock-on “Striking a foe while you’re stealthed triggers Invisible Analysis”? I toyed with it a bit but it doesn’t seem to trigger if when I hit someone from invisible.

Unknown.3976:

u can’t kit swap while in photon forge mode and kit swapping is a necessity for condi builds.

You can swap, kits are only disabled for a few seconds, and I think photon forge stays active underneath your kit, it just replaces your weapon skills for as long as you keep it active.
Think of the possibilities.

If I mute my HOPE pistol sound on my engineer, the Poison Dart Volley skill sounds like a Warrior rifle Volley skill instead of its original sound.

tigirius.9014:

I’m confused what shield changes are you talking about? Because as far as I can see the shield still does the blast finisher.

Probably talking about the lack of shield changes.
With the upcoming expansion and a new main hand being added, everyone expected some changes to the only non-condi offhand.

Murmur.9746:

I though that using sigil of earth and 1 boots + ring sinister was the way. I read that full viper and malice went over the 100% cap. Don’t tell me I have to change stats again lel

As you said, there were changes, and those affected condi duration food.

I don’t know if it’s optimal, but in the meantime, you can get your more condi duration back by using full viper armor and trinkets + pizza and sigil of malice instead of earth/bursting.

I can confirm the stuttering, just went through the noran puzzle and had my fps go from 60 to 1-2 for 3-4 seconds at least 5 times throughout the puzzle, also happens from time to time on the surface around the area.

Also just asked people on the map and they all said they experienced crazy fps drops around Noran’s Homestead too.

I don’t mind the difficulty, it’s perfect. I agree on the length though, fractals were meant to be small repeatable mini dungeons but the last two take as long to complete as any regular dungeon.

I noticed that while running with swiftness and dropping the turret, sometimes you’re out of the area before you can even detonate in the water field.

It’s a buff for power engi, but is the flame turret on condi good enough now to replace flamethrower kit?

Hi,
One of the Firestone Shards (#26) for the achievement Rock Collector cannot be picked up.

It is the one with the following description in the achievement tab:
Ancient Hollow: Deep in a shallow cave southeast of the Golem Graveyard.

http://imgur.com/O0bHi7u

That’s good to know.
I’ll leave the post in case someone else read the description the wrong way.

The pvp achievements Victory in the Clouds and Cannoner seem to have been mixed up.
Victory in the Clouds requires you to win 25 rated matches on Skyhammer.
Canoneer requires you to win 30 rated matches on Skyhammer on top of capturing the Skyhammer.

Compare them the the Battle of Khylo achievements:
Hero of Khylo -> 25 rated wins on Khylo
Saboteur -> Destroy a siege weapon and win 15 rated Khylo

Yeah, it feels like a big kitten you to the people who spent 20 hours in there in the first weeks, hoping they’d never have to do that again.
Tell you what, there wasn’t even a second reward, all you get for doing it legit all over again is a kittenty title, it sure showed those exploiters.

Bish.8627:

Should I take the plunge and go full viper open PVE? How does this work? Rotate the burns each mob like the raid rotation?

Yes, it works exactly the same except you kite mobs around while they melt from condis.
Your chills, blinds and immobs are also very useful.

Legit Prep In.5893:

Could you point me to where “power build” got a buff ?

Blunderbuss: This skill has been unsplit from PvP and will now deal the higher (10%) damage values in all areas of the game. Increased bleeding stacks from 1 – 4 to 2 – 5, based on range. Increased bleeding duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
Glass Cannon: The threshold for damage increase has been reduced from 90% to 75%.
Shaped Charge The damage of this skill has been increased from 7% to 10%.
Static Discharge: The damage dealt by this trait has been increased by 20%.
Shrapnel: The chance for this trait to activate has been increased from 15% to 33%.

Speculation time, which traitline will get the buff?

Liked the challenge a lot but I’m just sad it doesn’t feel like you’re ascending the Tower of Nightmare like the original one, the view from the top of the final spire was too good not to have it in this fractal.

When you summon a bulwark Gyro, there’s a 1 second cooldown before you can destroy it, unlike the other gyros.
It makes it pretty bad for giving yourself super speed with Final Salvo since by the time the skill is available, the gyro is already out of range.

Joxer.6024:

Krag.6210:

I play condi in open world, I’m really used to it now and it’s fun just throwing a couple skills on a mob then running to the next one while the previous one dies from tics

Yea, been playing Condi like forever but am keen to try something else for a change. I like my Engi and I fight hard for raid spots and am curious about the power builds being on par dps wise. If not I can always roll Condi again cuz yea, it owned for sure!

Power engi is better for most of the raid stuff, condi raid only really became a thing because of early VG kills that spammed condi engis even though it’s not even an optimal fight for them with all the movement and downtime.

I play condi in open world, I’m really used to it now and it’s fun just throwing a couple skills on a mob then running to the next one while the previous one dies from tics

Right now, Static Discharge only really works when used with targeted toolbelt skills with Suprise Shot or Throw Wrench, and these skills are mostly used with Static Discharge because it’s a decent trait. With non targeted skills, SD is fired in the direction your character is looking at (often the ground when your camera is angled in a grenade throwing position) making the trait objectively useless unless your standing right on top of the mob or if you manually free aim with your camera after every toolbelt skill.

This has never been addressed in 4 years so is it intended behavior? I don’t know of any other skill that have to be free aimed without any indicator, a trait that should work with all our skills but in reality doesn’t.

The easiest suggestion would be having SD go at your target regardless of the type of targeting the toolbelt skill uses.

While the idea of tanking is interesting, the problem with GW2 is that you don’t necessarily need an actual tank build and gear, just enough toughness to hold the aggro and everything else should be your usual dps stuff. The damage isn’t enough to force you into a super defensive setup, which is kind of a shame.

Hesacon.8735:

It doesn’t negatively affect condi builds in any way. It just makes them not the only meta available.

There’s a huge drawback that comes with playing a condi build, it’s the time it takes for damage to ramp up compared to a power builds where all the damage is frontloaded.

People were still playing mostly power builds in T4 fracs until someone came up with the necro stacking meme and high toughness was rarely brought up as an issue.

Changing things so much just for the sake of killing the stupid necro cheese will cause condi builds in general to fall out of meta since high toughness was the only reason they were even considered as most classes have a better power alternative.

Sarahfull.4930:

What?! Calm down, it doesn’t kill your condi build. It means you do more damage as some of your skills do direct damage as well.

As I see it, it makes power engi more effective than condi in fractals since you fight a lot of mobs that die before your condis ticks can stack. The advantage of toughness ignoring damage has been greatly reduced, only the drawbacks of playing condi remain.
And power engi is already the way to go for most of the end-game content.

Is this the death of condi builds in PvE?

Not much point playing condi engi in fractals anymore, is there?
Condi builds in general were already pretty niche in PvE but I think that effectively kills them.

How much damage is Takedown Round even?
It seems to do more than bomb 1 but how much dps is it really, how often does it proc in your calculations?

Bard Bohi used to play some music when you stood near but I can’t hear it anymore.

MultiShifting.4905:

So engineer, if its played to the fullest, is better then Necro? I understand that Condi Engi has the highest condition damage possible in the game, but I thought people loved the survivability. Anyways, if i stay engineer, does my build stay the same or do I change out abilities for certain bosses. I saw someone run slick shoes for Gors, but, because of the nerf, I’m assuming its not worth it anymore. Any other abilities I need other than Healing Turret, Grenade Kit, Bomb Kit, Flamethrower, and Mortar Kit?

To play engi to its full potential in raids, you’re going to need a condi set and a zerker set with a rifle and a hammer.

The builds are here http://qtfy.enjin.com/engineer

Engi in a raid team is going to be the quality of life class, there are a lot of ways to make fights easier to handle with an engi but most people won’t ever acknowledge it as utility can only be determined by DPS or amount of boons shared in their eyes.

I’ll throw a few examples since you’ve fought VG and Gorse.
On VG, you can swap your tools traitline for Scrapper with Final Salvo and use your medic gyro detonation to grant everyone super speed when a green circle appears, you can also slow/immobilize the red seekers with your nade/mortar chills or your bomb/pistol goop.
In the event that follows VG with the portals that have to be closed, grab a second gyro and spam super speed every time you have to move.
On Gorse, you can hold two spirits in place all by yourself during the phasing thanks to all your chill/cripple immob, you can also blind the ghosts that he summons.
On the next fight, Sabetha, you’ll be able to blind mobs during the flamethrower wall attack, so that no one gets kicked into the flames.

It’s all little things but they add up, and trust me, people will notice when you’re not around.

I’ll quote this post by Xyonon.3987 because it’s full of good info regarding what you asked for.

Xyonon.3987:

Heya!

Engi is great for raids, no doubt, but requires some extra work to be worth the pick. Pugs normally don’t really like them because of the average player will not be doing this additional work.

Or simply because they think Engi is bad. :P

---

Today’s full clear with my guild, I’ve been playing Engi on every single encounter and had a specific reason to be at each one of ‘em. This said, our guild want’s an elite standard and we do not want to use “useless dps loss professions” anywhere.

Everywhere add the general Engi abilities like:

• dps
• cc
• water fields + blasts
• condi cleanse

but being more specific:

Vale Guardian (Condi Scrapper)

• condi dmg for Red Guardian
• seeker control
• aoe swiftness & superspeed and greenfields (less travel time = more dps)
• protection & engi sustain to tank Red Guardian
• emergency Function Gyro (not a real reason for speedclear, but definitly for pugs)

Gorseval (Condi Engineer)
We split the whole team in 2 groups for the adds, NW and NE, then they move to SW and SE. This way we safe time by only having to move once and have more dps time than travel time. Meanwhile I keep both south spirits in place with Shrapnel and glue … lot’s of glue >:3

• blinding adds, prevent kicks

Sabetha (Condi Engineer)
A stationary easy target like Sabby grants us to deal high dps, on par with Ele / Thief, but also …

• blind Thugs (during flamewall or for the connon guys to prevent deadly kicks)
• bursting Karde (recieves bonus damage from conditions, only true threat in the whole fight)
• range for last phase (double druid in melee)

Slothasor (Power Engineer)
The Engi should do a Shroom since he’s not as high dps as an Ele, but still not bad at all, not least thanks to the frostbows.

• wide 5 target cleave
• blind unblockable Slublings
• Elixier Gun as emergency anti-fear

Trio (Power Engi)
Bosses have small hitboxes, so our dps is higher than Ele without Alacrity or let’s say at least on par with Ele, especially thanks to all those adds permanently proccing Takedown Round. Thief would be as good but lacks …

• wide 5 target cleave
• blind
• aoe sustain
• 1500 range to pull mobs from cage to Zane
• best mokittenuty EVER!

Matthias (Power Scrapper)

• Bulwark Gyro & protection & emergency water fields + blasts -> scholar bonus
• backup reflect
• aoe swiftness & superspeed (less travel time = more dps and less deaths)
• emergency Function Gyro
• ego block & stability

Escort (Condi Engi)

• no Warg will ever reach the first building … >:3
  after 2-3 Wargs help the team:
• blind

Keep Construct (Power Engi)

• great burst damage (after ego burst there’s also the Frost Bow ;D)
• Magnet Pull and Overcharged Shot + Chrono Pull will move the Orb directly from 3 to 4 and to 5. Saves more time than more dps form another Ele would.
• block for jump
• sustain for orb catch phase
• mobility for split

Xera (Power Engi)
Instead of Necros, we pick an Engi to blind the adds before or after they got pulled to render them completly useless. There won’t be any condi cleanse required but for Xeras blurred frenzy for the tank, and even for that the healing turret is good.

• wide 5 target cleave
• knockback for orbs into rifts
• emergency burst multiple shards with wide aoe and bomb aa

---

Maybe I forgot some stuff but in general, there are plenty of things you can do for every single encounter. You just have to do those things and you’ll be a solid pick for your team.

Just makes sure you really know your rotation, so you won’t mess up and have noticable less dps than the alternatives.

We don’t have an easy life, but I doubt any of us Engineers ever picked this profession to have an easy life to begin with, aye? ;3

Greez!
- Ziggy

DGraves.3720:

I don’t think you’re wrong about a new element and don’t even disagree it could be damage based but I’m having a hard time trying to put it together. Do you use marks and tag an enemy? If so how does it work and does it require a gimmick?

Lots to it. Very complicated.

I was thinking about something very simple, a trait similar to Applied Force like “Apply Cracked Armor for every stack of Vulnerability above the threshold”, numbers are up to you, it’s just a proof of concept.

DGraves.3720:

Engineers gain 32% more damage at full stacks. A new layer won’t do much though perhaps maybe some form of defensive debuff overall that could effect others would.

Yeah that’s what I meant, vuln stacking used to be our way to boost the overall dps of a group, but since it’s gone from raids, we need something else. Anet said some time ago that they didn’t want to introduce new boons or condis yet every class has its own class specific shared buff now, so why not have a class specific debuff now, some sort of extra vulnerability?

Engis were the masters of vuln stacking before HoT, I’d like a way to push that concept further in raids.
Just like there’s a trait in Scrapper that gives quickness when you stack too much might, there should be a trait that adds another layer of vuln-like debuff when the vuln stack is past a certain threshold.

There are PvP rewards just like there are PvE rewards (a lot more) and WvW ones, they are meant to reward your dedication.

Should divisions start awarding legendary weapons?
Just because you can’t be bothered playing a game mode doesn’t mean the rewards should be handed to you, you simply don’t deserve them.

The only thing that bothers me with DH is how disgustingly easy they are to play. The skill ceiling is extremely low, it’s all reward with no risk, rolling your head on the keyboard does both damage and survivability and CDs are short.

Raids don’t discriminate classes, people do. You can clear any boss with one player of each class.
Pug raids will always choose the easy way over the fair one so get yourself a dedicated raid who will let you play whatever you like. I’ve been playing nothing but engi since the very first week of Wing 1 and we have a dedicated necro player as well.

PierPiero.9142:

You could try playing the scrapper variant which addresses some of the condi and general survability issues with the scrapper traitline.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqanUUB1ah1XBmcBEqiF2iSsjminAMELxAgO4H+kH-TJhMAB0UGg5HAAA7Pw6JAAA

Joxer.6024:

“Hehe yea, I normally go with 312 as Condi Scrapper at VG”
Wait…what!? Condi Scrapper?? What did I miss? Do share please, I am intrigued as I am always keen for something not of the “norm”!
And thanks heaps Xyonon!

It’s just a condi engi with Scrapper instead of Tools, you trade a little dps for the utility of gyros.

Do you use your medic gyro’s detonation as a source of super speed on VG?

Etaoin.4362:

bearshaman.3421:

Etaoin.4362:

For general PvE, the motto has always been play what you enjoy. Barring dealing with elitists about raids, you should be able to make the engineer work in any of that content. If you like it, play it

You forgot high-level fractals and speedrun dungeons.

Do folks have issues with engineers in high-level fractals? I haven’t encountered that, but if it’s an issue then, yes, that is a fair point.

I did forget about speed running dungeons, though, thanks

Condi builds are extremely viable in high level frogs due the amount of armor mobs have.

Power Scrapper definitely got its damage nerfed.
-50% damage on Shock Shield is huge
Thunderclap damage being delayed is really bad against moving targets.

So, with Shock Shield being turned to kitten and Thunderclap getting a huge nerf against moving target, is Power Rifle the best power build for PvE?

You’re right, there are a lot of issues with engi skills due to input timing and the game engine.
Major issues for me being inconsistent starting animation for Acid Bomb, Flamethrower skills aiming into the ground unless you move your camera right behind your character at almost ground level, some sounds like kit switching being skipped when there’s too much happening which can throw off your timing if you use sounds cues a lot and general skills cancelling each other unless you’re pin point accurate on your timings.

Nothing worse than swapping kits only to realize your previous skill didn’t fire off.