I actually main a build like this. Apothecary armor and such, Runes of water, etc. Can confirm, it’s way more powerful as a healer than Engineer naysayers would like you to believe. Will it work in raids? No, your toughness interferes with the tank and the only party wide buff you can bring is Pinpoint Distribution, which is better off being used by an offensive Engineer.
For fractals and WvW though, it’s sustainable, heals alot, contributes to DPS, and over-achieves on condi cleansing.
I have found that healing turret is still a little better than medkit if you want burst heals, but medkit does have some arguments in its favor even though it’s a terribly designed kit in need of a major rework. On an organized team with many buffs, the heal per second off your auto attack is actually significant.
Other than that, you get permanent uptime on regen for your entire party, big heals, big cleanse and glorious DoT heals that’ll very easily keep your party topped up while you rotate your damage skills without reliance on a non-combat state like druid’s Celestial Avatar form.
Also, whoever said that Elixer gun is the only good healing skill in the engineer’s repertoir is kidding you. Between Heal turret/Medkit, Your traits splashing self-heals to allies, Mortar Kit’s Elixer Shot and your sigils proccing aoe heals every time you kit switch, you have a constant flow of green numbers to put out at any given time.
Scrapper is power but it’s not a DPS. Base engie power builds deal more damage than scrappers by quite a lot.
Holomancer seems to be ultimately a selfish dps class. They have access to easy 100% crit chance with very little investment, hybrid raw damage and condi damage, barrier generation and self sustain. That’s a pretty powerful collection of pros for a DPS no matter how you look at it. So yeah, they might not be bringing anything new to the table but who knows, they may very well end up being a prime pick for dps filler in raids or pvp?
It’s kind of shocking how selfish this class is. I was expecting a dps with some kind of team utility. Barriers, walls and so on. but most of the boons or unique buffs granted here are for the Holo themselves and not their teammates.
Still looks fun to play, but I am a little worried about what their role ultimately ends up being. It’d suck if engineers end up with two elite specs that don’t have a place in endgame pve.
I also wanted a more viable support spec, but right now engie’s strongest role is DPS and they do that without an elite spec. Adding an elite spec that can feel good for endgame (unlike scrapper) is probably more important than making an alternative endgame playstyle viable at this point for engineer.
HOWEVER. I expect them to buff the Scrapper’s team utility and further hone its identity as a support spec/tank that can actually hold value in endgame PVE.
The attack combos ARE fluid, they’re just not brain dead 2-button wonders like most other classes in this game bar eles. I don’t have any problem with fluidity when switching between kits. As opposed to other classes where I have to wait a crippling 9 seconds between switching to one set of skills and another.
It’s easy when you remember the theme of each attunement.
Am I trying to do damage? = fire
do I need to heal? = water
do I need to move faster? = air
do I need to knock someone down or slow a group of enemies? = earth.
If you start out slow and experiment with all of your skills, you’ll eventually memorise which ones mean what, and be able to switch to them on will. It also helps if you practice certain combos. No harder than playing a 2D fighting game.
I’ll give you a practical example of how a healer-specced elementalist would switch attunes tactically.
Say you start out in water mode and you are supporting yourself or the team. In this mode, you really can’t do damage, so you’ll be using 3 to freeze a mob, then perhaps 2 and 5 in that order for a quick healing burst. This puts both 2 and 5 on a fairly long cooldown. You have no reason to stay in water tree because you’ll literally have only one offensive move up. So while you wait for your healing skills to recharge, you’ll attune to something else.
Depending on the situation, you’ll probably want to go with earth or lightning. Earth will give you the option to cripple, bleed, or knock down the enemies you’ve just frozen, and will give you protection if you’ve traited for it, making you tankier for a little while. Your water skills are still on cooldown, so now you can either contribute to DPS by switching to fire, or play it safe and escape from danger by attuning to lightning.
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Actually, this is a source of debate. For some reason, people here say engineer, yet on the engineer forums, you’ll see nothing but people constantly complaining about how weak, inefficient, and unbalanced their class is.
Likewise, you might think warriors seem awesome, but yet whenever you go to the warrior forums, there are at least 3 threads detailing why warriors suck in PvP and why they need buffs.
Pretty much the only class you never seem to hear anything bad about is Mesmers.
I’m pretty sure elementalists don’t have a way to generate poison fields. Unless you’re running around with a shortbow thief or necromancer glued to your hip, it’s probably best to assume that poison will come from sigils.
It’s nice to know that burn = 6 stacks of bleed though.
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Flamethrower has nice synergy with the bomb kit too. You get an extra blast finisher for your fire field for stacking might, and an additional aoe blind. If you have superior runes of altruism and run a more defensive setup you can use the medkit for some crazy might building.
You’re typically supposed to use flame blast right after air blast in order to get the ‘sweet spot’, which has synergy and seems fine to me. But I think it should have a higher damage for the setup required.
I also think it should inflict an AoE burn on a longer duration than the autoattack, or create some other condition when it hits.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Support-Engi-build-DPS/first#post1066387
I talk about a healing bombs build in this thread. Try it out and see how you like it.
Poison is a rather weak DoT, and it’s primary purpose is to migitate opponent healing. I suppose it could definately work, but it wouldn’t be very reliable
Elementalists do not have a second weapon slot. They get 1 weapon and 4 ‘kits’ (technically 3, since they do not have a default weapon slot that isn’t attuned). They also do not have the luxury of picking and choosing kits based on their playstyle as well as choosing what weapon they want to use. Furthermore, they cannot switch freely between their kits because attunements use a cooldown system.
I designed my charr necromancer to look old and grumpy, so it’s only fair that he uses the ship-in-a-bottle skin.
I really prefer D/Warhorn, if just for the daze which keeps things in your wells and makes it much easier to approach your targets safely. Also, locust swarm boosts your close range dps a bit and makes it easier for you to keep up with your targets.
I obviously meant to say stance. Don’t try to derail this on a technicality like that, it doesn’t actually make my point any less valid. Balanced stance can be used while CC’d, it provides an insanely long amount of stability, and the only, literally only reliable stability skill that outclasses it amongst all professions is the guardian version.
Also, btw, when did I ever bring up Balanced Stance as effecting the team? Hmmm, I’m pretty sure I didn’t even mention that, did I? I wasn’t even talking about teams. I mistakedly called it a shout, but that doesn’t change my argument at all.
As for the might stacking skill, it’s obviously For Great Justice. I know there are several builds out there which allow it to stack a lot of might very fast due to it’s low cooldown. It’s a rather infamous move and non-warriors always bring it up when arguing about how ‘easy’ the warrior class is. I was partying with a warrior at karkas the other day who was keeping 11 stacks of might up easily and doing little more than spamming that skill. I was watching him closely since my engineer build was also focussed on might-building and I wanted to see how many stacks I could give him combined with his own.
You can try to call me out on ignorance as much as you want, but attempting to point fingers at guardians and trying to use that as a claim for having bad stability, when you have the second best stability granting utility in the game is pretty ignorant in itself. And what about Engineers/Ele/Ranger/Thief/Necro and their inferior methods of obtaining stability? For a class that’s supposed to be all about dealing heavy DPS, (fun fact, warrior dps with a rifle is better at range than even a ranger, the supposed masters of ranged combat, and without even sacrificing much at all for it) warriors sure have a lot of excellent defensive utilities. On top of that, they’re a heavy armor class. Even if you guys build flat glass cannon, you STILL have more hp and innate defense and survivability than an elementalist, thief or engineer going hybrid, simply because you get to wear plate. I know warriors will hear that a lot, but it is a factor that most cloth or medium armor classes are left scratching their heads about.
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I honestly find rifle warriors’ Volley to be a lot scarier than hundred blades. It’s a meaty, reliable, hard-hitting ranged attack that’s up often and and almost always forces a dodge, setting up for other skills in a chain. It’s such a solid attack. I love it. Unfortunately my warrior runs with hammer and maces, so I have no room in my build for a rifle.
A shout with 8 seconds of stability that you can use even while CC’d, on a 40 second cooldown is better than anything the elementalist, engineer, and necromancer get, I know that much for certain. Ele get stability on a much longer cooldown, or for a measly 2 seconds when they attune to earth and only if they’re traited into it. Engineers have nothing, and necromancers have to rely on unwieldy ultimates and death shroud for stability, which they have to spec into a generally useless and buggy tree to obtain, again for only a fraction of balanced stance’s duration. The only class I’ve seen that competes with warrior for stability is guardian. I’m pretty sure thieves don’t even GET stability.
40 seconds isn’t even that long compared to the ‘escape’ utilities of most other classes.
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Just saying, bomb kit is amazing in pve as well, since most mobs are stupid enough to just run right up to you and take it all.
And this is why I love the Flame Axe. Surprisingly good DPS at mid range, to cover for Dagger.
You can engage in melee combat if you build for bombs, and you never have to bother about looking behind you while running either, since you can just turn and run while leaving a trail of explosives.
You’re wrong again making sweeping generalisations. I main a stealth-initiative regen thief and a D/D ele next to my engineer and am equally passionate about both classes. I’m very familiar with mobility classes.
The great thing about bunker builds is that they CAN still dodge. They CAN still evade, but they won’t get royally screwed when they’re hit, and they WILL get hit. This game is not designed to allow you to migitate all damage that comes at you, no matter how good you are. There will be gaps in your evasion, always.
When I say the build does not need to dodge, that doesn’t mean I can’t or don’t. But This build allows me to spend more time healing my team and contributing instead of jumping all over the place trying to keep myself alive.
I will agree that a lack of reliable stability is a problem, though. But I don’t see how speccing into alchemy is ‘prohibitive’, especially since you’ll be wanting to spec into it anyway if you’re building bunker.
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I play Engineer, Thief and Elementalist as my main 3 classes, and have one of every other class except for ranger. I would think that my thief gets more play than my Engineer, so you can’t say I don’t have experiences with other classes.
So long as there are differences in playstyle between classes, none of them will ever truly be equal. It’s a bit naive to think otherwise. There will always be at least one special snowflake that’s more perfect than all the others. What would even be the point in having multiple classes then?
Dodging and kiting in this game isn’t as practical as you think it is. This is not Tera, where classes have a true dodge. GW2 dodge is a status effect and skills tend to home in on their target. You can’t weave and dodge skills uing movement alone, and your evasion move is bound to a stamina guage. Besides, the whole point of builds like this is to build in a way that removes the NEED to kite at all, and reduce the danger when you do get hit like you inevitably will.
I wrote up nearly a full guide on how to play my build. Surely there’s got to be something in those two walls of text that a guardian will not be doing the exact same way. I’ve already said that this build is more about sustained DoT healing whereas guardian is about burst healing. I spend less time using actual healing skills and more time attacking than a support guardian would, since they only get a few forms of regen (traditional regen, mostly, and aoe healing fields, just like me. Problem is, in order to put out those fields they have to take a certain weapon. Everything else is burst heals).
Bunker engineer’s hard crowd control is also better. Guardians have much less in the way of combo field options, and don’t have as many blast finishers. Most of their hard crowd control is is single target (I found this an issue while using my guardian, very few knockdown skills). Guardians also cannot apply poison to discourage opponents from healing while they support. And they certainly can’t stealth the team. Our blinds/confusion are also better. Static shot in combination with smoke bomb/concussion bomb I would take over leap of faith anyday, which means you’re using a greatsword, which means you’re using a less support oriented weapon with very little healing skills built in. If they take sword/greatsword for the blinds, they’re waiting 9 seconds between weapon switch while we can change weapons to kits in the blink of an eye as many times as we want.
Engineers are better than other classes at doing more things, save for elementalist, who does more things -differently-.
And yes, elixer gun’s ‘fix’ was kind of a bummer.
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That’s like saying Warrior is better DPS than a thief, so why bother playing a thief?
It really depends on what you want to do.
Thief has a very distinct role in PvP with his stealth and mobility.
But honestly, how many thieves have you seen in dungeons? If you want to DPS you go warrior. That’s how GW2 works currently.
No two classes can ever be equally good at doing one thing.
That’s a really faulty logic.
GW2 was advertised as a game withou trinity, where every class can do everything as good as any other. It’s clearly not the case.
And anyways. Engineers don’t have any “thing” where they are THE best class. There is always some other profession that can make same things much easier\better.
If that’s not an issue with our clas, I don’t know what is.
Oh, and guardians can do several things simultaneosly – dpsing, healing, tanking, buffing. While engi has to gimp all his other activities to achieve something similar in one aspect.
It’s not faulty logic, it’s fact. Ryu and Ken, two very similar characters, are rarely in the same tier in every street fighter game that’s ever existed. Anet can try to preach their silly ’we’ve abolished the trinity!" game design philosophies as much as they want, but quite frankly you cannot have every class being TRULY equal at any given role. You can certainly attempt to provide different flavors. Guardians CAN DPS…effectively if they want to. But they aren’t the kings of DPS like warriors are. Elementalists CAN go glass cannon nuke, but they’re not as effective as thieves in that regard.
There’s can, and there’s can’t. Mystics in Tera cannot really DPS. Priests in Ragnarok Online cannot really DPS comparatively to any other class. In GW2, your DPS guardian might be pretty scary and actually do his job really well, but he won’t beat a warrior in terms of sheer numbers. And even if the numbers were the same, one of those classes would still be more efficient at landing blows, and have advantages over the other.
Guardians are the best supporters in the game, but other classes can hold a candle to them. No matter how much Anet tries to pitch their unrealistic design philosophy (a casual-trap since day 1) you just aren’t realistically going to get a class that does a job ‘the same’ as any other class, unless they were all just skins of each other.
Still, I do think you have a point about engineers not having a ‘defined’ role. I feel it’s intentional though. They aren’t meant to have a defined role. They are the putty class, which you’re supposed to mould to fit however you want to play them. That was the original idea. Of course, players are always going to try and find the niche for them. And that’s why this whole idea is flawed. People actually want guidelines, even if they might think they don’t.
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I don’t really agree with that. We have more tools, so when we mess up, we actually have multiple ways to get out of a bad situation as opposed to other classes who have one or two speciallised escape mechanics. If my first combo starter fails, I have plenty of other combos and rotations I can go into just by swapping out to a different toolkit. Didn’t land my BoB? I’ll drop a smoke bomb and acid bomb away to fight from range. Didn’t work? I can still drop a glue bomb and try to run while they’re crippled. Did I just get crippled? I can drink elixer B to cure my conditions, OR I can switch to elixer gun and pop super elixer. OR I can throw elixer B at myself, OR I can equip medkit and use drop antidote. OR I can turn around and try to stun my opponent with Throw Shield and then equip elixer gun and Acid bomb away. And I’m not even using Slick Shoes, which would be ideal for this situation if I did run them. Or if I was using rocket boots, I could put down a smoke field and then invisi-blast myself to safety.
And that’s just with one build set for one situation. Compare that to a warrior, who when being chased, has a few options either in greatsword, or warhorn for swiftness, and maybe Endure Pain.
Glass cannon builds might not forgive any mistake, but the same can be said about Elementalists. I’d go as far as to say they have it worse. They have one or two strong escape skills and perma-swiftness. (which we engineers can also obtain very easily, I might add). I guess they also do have a teleport which is a cantrip that they probably blew while teleporting in to land that churning earth, and static shield, but still their main method of escape relies on their speed and Ride the Lightning.
if you mess up as an ele you kind of don’t have much of a buffer either. wasting churning earth or earthquake or even fire grab (oh boy) can really put a damper on any D/D ele’s plans.
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My conditions thief does around 700 damage per autoattack with a dagger. Yes he attacks much faster, but the damage bombs offer is nothing to sneeze at.
And how much are you healing for, since you’re at about 1/3 the direct dps of a condi thief?
And then there’s also the retalliation I’m almost constantly under thanks to elixer B and light fields.
Retaliation scales with your power.
I’m healing about 277(bombs) + 140 (kit regen) + 299(regen) + 280 (super elixer) per bomb/tick and I haven’t even gotten full cleric’s gear yet. I’m still missing exotic jewellery and some pieces of armor, so I’m going to estimate that I’d be healing for well over 1k per second. And that’s just bombs, super elixer and regen. healing turret deploy self heals for over 6k, plus 2-3k aoe heals from a detonate (I can trigger that multiple times through careful use of blast finishers and careful timing, thanks to BoB and detonate turret being toolkit skills)
the healing is not spike-y like a guardians or elementalists, but as far as sustained healing goes, it’s very good.
And yes, retalliation does scale with power. Clerics gives power. I might not be specced into 30 in explosives, but it’s enough to give an extra 500-600 damage per hit against me while my bombs do a bit more than 1k per explosion.
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Dont tell that me, I did tenthousends of kills in wvw and I am sure about 6-7k were with engineer. But it is still fact that u have to outplay your enemie to win. And it is also fact, that support on engineer sucks. Running around with bombs for healing dealing maximum dmg of 1k… Other classes have same healing but are not useless doing this like engineer is.
Ofc I like my engineer, but I also play other classes. Full geared. And they are stronger (excluding ranger maybe) – in every perspective. True and sad fact. I don’t want to bad-mouth the engineer – u told u play dungons – that’s fine. PvE doesn’t need balancing like competive PvP needs.
Winning in any competitive situation should ALWAYS be about outplaying your opponent, regardless of how easy your class is. Yes, you have to outplay your opponent, that much is a given. Winning is all about utilizing all the tools given to you as efficiently as possible and at the right places in the right time.
If I must make a reference to another game, the Berzerker class in Tera is one of the most simplistic classes mechanically, but one of the most difficult to master and win with in competitive pvp. They are all about knowing your opponent, what they can do, and how to exploit their movement, but in exchange they punish openings better than pretty much any other class.
Engineers in this game are like that, only much more technical. They have a myriad of tools they can use, each with a specific purpose in mind. There are no cover-alls, you know your opponent, and you use the right tool for the job at the right time. The same principle applies to every other class in the game. Warriors have simpler, less speciallised toolsets, but they still have to outplay their opponents. A hammer/axe/mace build with a warrior requires careful timing of combos to get maximum effectiveness out of your crowd control, and even then you’re pinning down a single opponent and paying close attention as you wait for them to pop the inevitable stun breaker so you can checkmate them. Elementalists are Engineers on crack, and yet people still complain about them being hard and weak when they literally have a tool for every situation built into their kit (unless they’re playing with a staff).
I really don’t understand this argument of having to do more work than other classes to succeed. Options are options, and engineers have a lot of them.
I would compare fumigate to drake’s breath. Much easier to hit than flamethrower by far, and easier to hit than flame grab. Elementalists certainly get their fair share of wierd too.
And yes, healing bombs is an awkward method of healing, but with 10 specced into explosions for the increased radius, I do about 800-1k damage a pop per autoattack bomb, while healing and ticking from conditions. That’s really not bad at all for a full tank build. My conditions thief does around 700 damage per autoattack with a dagger. Yes he attacks much faster, but the damage bombs offer is nothing to sneeze at. And then there’s also the retalliation I’m almost constantly under thanks to elixer B and light fields.
Then you could also be running apothecary’s gear and rely on the conditions to do the work for you. You get a lot of confusion and a nice burn AOE as well as (admittedly crappy) bleeds. You would think this build kills things a lot slower than it actually does. The damage to toughness/healing ratio is actually very nice.
Thanks for the guide, Lifelike. I’ve been trying to figure out good combinations. That ought to help a ton.
I think Forestnator has a good point though. However I still find the play style to be a lot of fun.
So you sort of have to weigh the fun factor on one hand and the disappointment at the idea that you’re not nearly as effective as other classes for the amount of work it takes on the other hand.
Well you can think what you want. I’m part of the largest guild on my server and everyone loves my build and always wants me along on dungeon runs and WvW, even if there’s guardians who could take up that spot. Maybe I’m not as effective a healer at a meta level, but I’m pulling my weight as an engineer and it’s certainly doable.
The ‘amount of work it takes’ should not be a factor for any serious player.
The fact u need 2 big walls of text to explain how to heal – and at all it’s still no better heal then shout-warri, elementarist or guardian – shows the hole engineer problem: 30 key piano piece to kill an enemie. Sad but true story.
If you actually payed attention, I did not write 2 big walls of text about how to heal. I wrote 2 big walls of text about how to play my build, which includes healing, DPSing, Combos, Support, Traits, Techniques, Movement, spacing, as well as differences in build between using healing turret and medkit, etc.
I could simply have summed that up by saying "just stand around near your party and spam 1, 2, 3 when it’s up, 4 in emergency situations, and switch to elixer gun now and again to use super elixer. Whueee. Don’t forget to do a might combo now and again.
Also, a class being technical does not necessarily mean there is a problem. If anything, it’s the other classes that are overly simplistic compared to Engineers and Elementalists. A skilled player really shouldn’t care about execution. Just look at competitive fighting games. Versatile characters are always the hardest to play, and yet high level players accept this fact and man up and learn those combos, staggers and frame traps if they feel that said character brings something interesting to the table.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the engineer’s execution. Not every class in this game needs to be as easy to play as the thief or warrior.
So… you’re saying that guardian is a better support, than engi, but still tell us to go support on engi?
Where is the logic?
That’s like saying Warrior is better DPS than a thief, so why bother playing a thief?
Engineer and guardian can both support well but different flavors, relying more on distributing boons and pumping out big heals in burst. Engineer is more of a sustained healing that migitates damage through blind and confusion and deals consistant aoe damage while healing. Guardians will still be better support in most situations because that’s just the way they’ve been built. No two classes can ever be equally good at doing one thing. As long as there are differences in skillset, one skillset will be better than the other. I’ve been in dungeon groups where the guardian supported better than me, but did less DPS. I’ve been in groups where I supported better, but did less DPS than the guardian.
Actually you’re wrong there. Elementalist cone attacks suffer from the same problem as engineers, particularly lightning whip and fire grab. As far as cone attacks go, Fumigate is one of the more well-behaved ones. I never have any problem landing it compared to flamethrower 1 or Fire grab. Make sure the camera is pointed directly at whatever you’re trying to shoot, since that’s what steers the direction your character is facing.
Inventions has several traits worth getting for a bunker build. +toughness with shields and shield cooldowns is a necessary skill for the healer bomb build, since you will be using the shield’s blast finisher and projectile reflect a lot. Toughness into power is not bad either since you’re already building toughness if you’re going with +healing power anyway (clerics/apothecary armor, etc)
That and Healing bombs…hmm, seems like all traits that directly benefit my build. And no, I am not giving up everything for it either. My build supports, and it does respectable damage for a supposed ‘full-tank’ build while still being very durable.
I dislike getting 10 points in tools because I’m constantly switching to my elixer gun and back as necessary, which means that a lot of the time I’m forced to waste the super elixer proc due to it’s cooldown.
Actually you’re wrong there. Elementalist cone attacks suffer from the same problem as engineers, particularly lightning whip and fire grab. As far as cone attacks go, Fumigate is one of the more well-behaved ones. I never have any problem landing it compared to flamethrower 1 or Fire grab. Make sure the camera is pointed directly at whatever you’re trying to shoot, since that’s what steers the direction your character is facing.
Healing turret explosion isn’t unreliable if you time it right. I can nail it 100% of the time after some practice, it’s really not hard at all. Drop, delay a bit, then detonate. It works every time so long as someone doesn’t put a field on it right after the water field deploys.
As for healing bombs, if you’re specced for healing, you SHOULD be using the bomb kit and you SHOULD be taking 30 in inventions. I just can’t see any other healing builds for engineer working without the bombs. They bring so much to the table. I use 30 in both alchemy and inventions, but if I had to drop 10 points in one tree I’d probably choose alchemy (because kit refinement with elixer gun can sort of cover for the lack of condition removal if you don’t get cleaning formula.)
As for the elixer gun skills, 1 is still in most cases more useful than your pistol shot and 3 is an additional form of condition removal on top of super elixer. Combined with that and cleansing elixers, you get plenty of ways to remove conditions. Fumigate really isn’t all that hard to use either. Aim, spray, turn the camera in the general direction of whatever you’re spraying. At least one of those ticks is going to hit.
I would admit that super elixer would be better as a water field, but I kind of like it being a light field. I just wish that the duration of the retalliation proc was a bit longer, but an aoe heal would be more useful overall.
Why are you just leaving your healing turret out and not immediately detonating it within it’s own water field for a stronger Aoe heal?
Why aren’t you using healing bombs?
Elixer Gun is not a sacrifice of a precious utility at all…it’s a single utility that gives you 5 more utilities, each of them extremily useful. You will be keeping regen on your teammates too with the elixer gun’s toolkit skill.
With a bomb kit and healing turret, you can stack plenty of might, as well as grant retailliation through light combo fields and blast finishers. Super Elixer removes conditions when it pulses, Fumigate removes conditions, toss elixer removes conditions if you trait for it, which you should be doing anyway.
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@Lifelike
Until they learn to dodge. Then everything is solved. Also, That’s a haste problem not a Warrior problem.
The warrior is a noob measuring stick. So I love when someone complains about one.
So wait, you can dodge a skill that gives 11 stacks of might on a very low cooldown and heals? You can dodge a shout that grants stability for a ridiculously long duration in comparison to stability of other classes, also on a fairly short cooldown? It’s not things like hundred blades or kill shot that make warriors strong in my eyes, it’s that they have many skills that other classes would simply kill for. I’ve played just about every class there is with the exception of Ranger at a mid-basic level, and while I understand that warrior does have it’s (major) weaknesses in practical play, there are still parts of the moveset that make me just think “this is much too good to be true”. It’s silly the way other classes complain about warriors, but calling warriors weak when you guys have so many powerful skills and utilities seems a bit harsh.
You can also use your blast finishers on your other combo fields. Healing turret creates a water field when deployed, and you can self-explode it for a quick AoE heal. You can get off multiple heals if you’re fast, because the duration of the field is very small. Blasting on a light field from Super Elixer does aoe retalliation, and blasting on a smoke field from Smoke Bomb aoe stealths. Remember to communicate with your team and tell them to gather round when you’re preparing to do a combo. Timing and spacing is important, but it’s easy once you’ve had some practice.
Switching between pistol shield and your kits is mandatory. In P/S you have the ability to stun at range, reflect projectiles, and confuse/blind opponents with static shot, which can be a lifesaver. The brunt of your DPS comes from bombs and elixer gun though.
Elixer gun has an interesting DPS combo that goes as such: In bomb kit >> Glue bomb >> switch to elixer gun (freeze opponent) >> Acid Bomb >> switch to pistol/shield. This pins melee opponents in place and forces them to take the majority of Acid bomb’s damage, which is quite a lot. Thanks to chill and cripple, they will have a hard time moving out of it’s radius. This is a great way to punish enemies who get up in your face. You have to do the switch quickly though. If you do it right, the bomb should go off right as you jump back.
It might seem like this build is easy to kite, but reflecting projectiles with the shield and stunning/blinding at range is key to discouraging ranged opponents. This build is passive, meaning that you have very few ways to pin/chase opponents in order to finish them off in PVP. However, if they don’t get in your face you’re free to run away and heal up, so it creates an interesting situation where the opponent has to be agressive. If you must approach, there’s a few ways to do it. turning the camera around and using acid bomb to jump at someone can work, as can hitting them with the elixer gun’s ranged cripple and then dropping a glue bomb at their feet.
When it comes to resurrecting a fallen comrade, drop smoke bomb right on top of them, then BoB and start to res. You’ll go invisible and the explosion will clear opponents trying to pack in on you, and the blinds will prevent aoe damage from close-range targets.
This is a really fun build that requires a lot of activity. I definately recommend you give it a try.
Excuse me? When did I say ‘best support class’? I didn’t. That spot goes to guardians or healer Ele. And yes, I own a guardian. The only class I haven’t played and don’t have a fair understanding of so far is Ranger. Do try to actually post intelligently instead of making base, wild assumptions in an attempt to appear condescending. It’s droll.
@Kuruptz — Well it’s hardly a godmode, but it is extremily effective. your group burst heal is not as strong as an elementalist’s, since you are relying on super elixer, regen, and healing turret to do most of your team healing. However, your dps is higher than a heal specced Ele and you’ve got more in the way of damage migitation through blinds. Here’s my build currently.
10/0/30/30/0.
Explosives: III
Inventions: V, VII, XI
Alchemy: II, IX, X
Weapons: Pistol and Shield. The pistol you take can either be Apothecary’s, Carrion, or even a pure damage pistol such as a rampagers. You won’t really be using this for stats, because this build is heavily reliant on kits, which don’t carry your weapon’s stats. Still, I recommend getting something with high condition damage so that you can strategically switch out in order to maximise the power of your condition ticks.
I have a superior sigil of Hydromancy (aoe freeze) in the pistol. This activates every time you swap to a kit, which is great for helping you migitate melee damage and escape from pursuing enemies. It also allows you to do some interesting combos with the elixer gun, which I’ll go into later. The sigil you put in the shield is up to you, so long as it’s not an ‘active’ sigil. I use sigil of life for leveling purposes, but you could have anything you want in here, really.
For the armor, I am currently experimenting with a mixture of clerics, apothecary’s, and knights. Apothecary’s seems to make my dps a little more solid, but I think going with full clerics and knights jewellery might be more beneficial in the long run. I’ll have to test it once I have all the parts.
Runes are 3 runes of the Monk and 3 runes of Altruism. The runes of Altruism allow me to gain 3 might every time I use a healing skill (or swap to med kit) and the runes of monk help keep boons up.
For utilities, I take healing turret/med kit, elixer gun, elixer B(this can be replaced with your favorite elixer. probably safer to go with a defensive one), bomb kit and supply crate.
Bomb kit is your bread and butter in this build. Every time you drop a bomb, you’ll heal for near 300 HP, plus another 170 or so from kit regeneration, another 200ish from regular regen, and 300ish from super elixer if you have it up (rough numbers). That is a lot of DoT healing, and the best part is that a majority of it goes over to your teammates. With cleric’s, your bombs will be doing close to 1000 damage on pve mobs per pop, plus condition damge from fire bomb and concussion bomb, along with any retalliation you might have from elixer B or combo fields.
The aim of this build is to keep constant dot healing on your teammates while supplying helpfull boons like Might, and the best part is that you can do all of this while DPSing. Alternate between bomb kit and elixer gun, keeping super elixer fields up as much as possible, and using your toolkit regen to keep the party refreshed. whether you use healing turret or medkit is up to you. Medkit helps keep you alive and provides more utility, but healing turret provides an extra blast finisher and can combo into it’s own water field for a quick aoe heal to your whole party (your only true burst heal other than super elixer). You will be using elixer gun and toss elixer B to cure conditions on teammates and yourself as necessary. Smoke bomb is extremily important, as it can migitate damage from a whole group of enemies at once. Keep it off cooldown for emergency situations and don’t be tempted to waste it on managable mobs.
When Fire Bomb is up, it’s time to give your whole party might. The correct combo sequence is: Big Ol’ Bomb>> Healing Turret >> Fire Bomb >> Drop kit (switch to pistol/shield) >> Magnetic Inversion >> explode healing turret.
This should drop 3 blast finishers on your fire Aoe, stacking 9 might without runes of Altruism and 12 with runes of Altruism. Using med kit with runes of Altruism is easier on the timing and will give a solid 9 stacks of might, but the upkeep is easier due to medkit being a kit with no cooldown.
cont…
(edited by Lifelike.5862)
I hate to break it to you, but a majority of other class players see warriors as skill-less walking win buttons who can do everything better than they can with half the effort.
Can’t step into the Engineer, Necro or Elementalist forums without someone complaining about warriors and how awesome they are. It’s actually pretty funny because it really does seem like the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. “Warriors only have to press 1 button to do X while we need to press at least 5!”
(edited by Lifelike.5862)
Amen. I run a support build and I’ve never looked back. Carrying a whole team with guardian-rivalling sustain and utility is oh so satisfying. Just the other day I was farming Karka and partied up with a few randoms who were actually impressed by my build enough to stop and compliment me for running it.
And I haven’t even optimised it yet.
Also using a giver’s weapon may not be a good idea, since it won’t effect you if you’re using a kit. I would rather use giver’s armor.
I play a bunker engineer and so far have had many people complimenting me for the support my healing bombs build offers both in dungeons and in WoE. Are you one of those people who just looks at damage numbers first and foremost?
Well, Shouts on Warrior heal about the same amount over time and you are not completly useless standing in there with tanky hammer build which still deals more dmg then glascanone engi will ever deal.
The shout hammer warrior cannot, however, confuse multiple targets easily (outside of one trait that relies on an opponent being interrupted), create a smoke field for an AoE blind, have access to multiple blast finishers and combo fields (sans using a shortbow, which is arguably a bad idea anyway for a shout warrior), stack AoE retailliation, inflict poison to keep enemy healing down, and just about anything else he can do, I can do too with just as much efficiency if not better. AoE might? easily achieved with a simple 3-blast combo that can be worked into a DPS routine and heals my party members for just as much as For Great Justice. Reflect projectiles with a shield? I don’t need to put into a trait to get that effect. AOE cripple? Elixer gun. AoE Launch? He needs to take Stomp, a utility with a really long cooldown to do that, I only have to drop B.O.B and Glue Bomb at the same time, AND I can make it a blast finisher for any of my combo fields (light, water, fire, smoke). I could go on. I play a tank hammer warrior and he excells at controlling single targetsn with stun lock combos. My engineer does a better job of supporting the party, doesn’t have to blow any cooldowns to heal continuously either, which is a lifesaver. The only class that makes me feel ousted from my role is a guardian, and even then I can do some things that guardians can’t do. I have better escapes too.
Engineer is not for the lazy player. Yes, you do have to press more buttons, but it’s hardly difficult if you devote a bit of time into learning your patterns and combos. Warrior hits one button and gives might to the group and heals a bit. I hit 4 buttons, give more might, plus aoe crowd control, burning, healing, regen, retalliation, confusion, damage migitation and damage in one shot, and then I don’t have to wait for my shout to come back off cooldown, I can whip out the elixer gun and continue to support. An engineer played well never sits around twiddling their thumbs or mashing on 1 while waiting for cooldowns to come off. There’s always something you can be doing to maximise your productivity. As a warrior, I tend to fall into much simpler patterns and while it’s certainly a lot ~easier~, I never feel like I have the amount of control that my engineer has over a situation. The hammer warrior feels kitten until I pick out a target and land a stun on them, then it gets satisfying when I pull off a proper stun combo…and then all my skills are on cooldown for the next 10 seconds or so and I have to wait even longer for the full rotation to be available again. Better hit For Great Justice and hope they don’t notice me being a deadweight until I can pin someone down again.
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I play a bunker engineer and so far have had many people complimenting me for the support my healing bombs build offers both in dungeons and in WoE. Are you one of those people who just looks at damage numbers first and foremost?
Even with condition removal, you should be buffering your conditions, to protect the valuable bleeds/burns, and engies have plenty of ways to do that or re-apply them once they’re cleansed.
I’m running a supporty bunker bomb build, and I’m thinking of going full clerics with knight’s jewellery, or mixed cleric and shamans with knight’s or carrion jewellery.
Survivability is key, but damage is important too. I want to know if it’d be better to focus purely on raw power or go for a mix of power and condition damage. In general, which is better for bombs/elixergun/pistolshield ?
If you’ve already played an Ele you should be at home with how Engineers work. Rather than being super mobile and squishy though, you’re more of a stationary fighter with a lot of self-sustain. I recommend leveling with a pistol or rifle alchemy build. Put points into explosions, alchemy and firearms and it should carry you easily through most of the game’s pve content. Once you get enough trait points to start experimenting, you have a loooot of freedom in what you build.
I DISAGREE !!
FAR from stationary
Alchemy – Invigorating speed 10pts
Tools – speedy kits
Whenever you equip a kit you gain Swiftness AND vigor for 5 seconds With no cooldown on kits means you have perma swiftness and vigor (1 skill used and 20 points spent- well worth it)
This combo is far more effective than the 30 points spent on the grandmaster trait Adrenal implant
The only thing that should be stationary about engi’s are their turrets
mobility is the key
Well, you’re talking about movement through movespeed enhancing moves such as swiftness. I’m talking about mobility through mobility skills. Ele’s are all over the place, they have gap closers, teleports, multiple movespeed enhancers, and their DPS is woven into movement. Engineers typically either stand in one spot and shoot, kite while shooting via movement enhancement, or get up close and personal to melee with bombs or toolkit.
Engie movement is more defensive, focussed on kiting and making it hard for opponents to follow. Ele is more agressive, with a focus on pushing forward towards the opponent or escaping in a flash.
Permaswiftness isn’t that great really. Lots of classes can achieve it, including necromancers and warriors.
It’s hard to test right now because Giver’s armor/weapons are all broken and don’t apply the duration bonuses.
Also you are losing a lot of direct power for using giver’s gear. So it’s a fair tradeoff.