Guild Wars 2

In very general terms, I’d like to see the weapon at time of entering DS to cause a specific form of shroud.

Pestilence (scepter, for conditionmancer): Has an innate might bonus to keep any conditions going strong while in the form, adds conditions with attacks, but weaker attacks. Green aura to weapon and shroud..

Famine (Staff, for boon strippers): Some attacks remove or corrupt boons, Life Transfer does an extra 1% damage for each condition. Piercing fear attack. Dark Purple aura.

War (Axe: bursty, multi-strike, close range control and minion support): Reduced range on LT/LB, LB is bursty with several hits but longer cd, LT has chance of cripple on crit, +13% run speed, stacks with speed of shadows. Red Aura.

Death (Dagger, Damage necro): LB has for 1s after hit a secondary attack to “pull” yourself towards foe, fear has reduced cooldown, LT hits downed foes for 2x damage.

Also, shadowstomp. What part of “hard to get away from” is causing you mental difficulty?

That’s even better advice, Bhawb. Thanks.

There’s certainly going to be a knowledge problem asking guildies, but I don’t think it would be worse than the bias gap between guildies and forumers.

I don’t think that making lifesteal worth taking the traits is an achievable goal.

You can have significant LF absorb
Or you can have significant lifesteal food.
Or you can have significant lifesteal runes/sigils
Or you can have significant lifesteal traits.

But you cannot have all 4. Right now, it’s 4 that’s suffering, and it will continue to suffer until at least one of the above 3 is weakened significantly, and probably not even then.

In fact, I believe the only reason we’re allowed significant LF regen is because it’s a unique class mechanic – we can’t share it with others or use it except in a tightly controlled mode.

So for these traits to ever become powerful enough to be something you’d pick on purpose, they need to do something ELSE other than what you can put on your equipment. Maybe like regen your minions, or something.

I see the incorrect opinion inquisition is in fine form today. You guys probably actually believe “Not perfect” is an honest evaluation of the class.

OP, here’s how to evaluate the truthfulness of the assertions on this thread:

You can get 3 whole seconds of protection, per well, each on a 32-48 cooldown timer (traited). Blind doesn’t function on bosses. How is this described?

“Well Necro: 8/10 … you can keep up protection on allies in 9/10 of the important cases and the aoe blind is a “kitten you” to mobs.”

You might want to consider taking people from the necro forum with a grain of salt. We have a group of people who’re convinced that they’re not getting dev attention because they haven’t silenced enough naysayers. For a more honest answer, ask another class forum if they fear us as an enemy or favor us at their side in a dungeon above other professions.

That’s wonderful that you can do two combustion shots every 5 seconds. What’s your secret?

More buttons CAN mean a superior result, if they’re the RIGHT buttons.

My statement was against fetishizing more buttons for the sake of more buttons.

As you have already quoted, if you get a better result, you point to the better result and you don’t need to boast about how many buttons you hit for that result. It’s only when you’re covering up for the lack of results does one feel the need to mention how many one pushed, and that attitude certainly isn’t confined to the engineer threads, although it does tend to be concentrated among those classes that have more lack of result to explain away.

Almost every class has a bleed on crit trait, the mere presence of bleed on crit doesn’t make it a condition powerhouse. You need more for that, and DS doesn’t have more, unless you count neutering your cond damage by removing BiP as “more”.

Especially since if you do happen to pop 18 very short-lived bleed stacks, you just killed all but 7 of your long-lived ones.

Oops.

No training is needed to know that a BACKWARDS teleport is… shall we say… highly situational as an “escape” mechanism.

So we need to run axe, focus, staff, spectral wall and spectral walk to get escapes. That’s… rather highly specific, wouldn’t you say? We’d pretty much have to learn to spam one ability. Your suggestions only leave us room for one in the build!

I love how “not pressing two buttons” is always the last refuge of the scoundrel. Does pressing five buttons for an inferior result make you a better player, or just inflate the ego? Does pointlessly swapping kits every five seconds suddenly make you more hardcore than a warrior pressing his signet of rage every 48(traited) and getting might/fury with their serving of swiftness?

Does pressing buttons merely for the sake of pressing buttons increase your gold, make you hit harder, make you die less, or just does it just pump the ego because you need it after witnessing some other class contribute more with less effort?

If one actually got a superior result by pushing nine buttons instead of 2, then one could point to the result and not have to mention the buttons, but every time… EVERY time someone breaks out the “push x buttons to win” conceit, they most curiously leave out what they accomplish with their more buttons.

P.S. Being able to “contribute” is an incredibly low bar to meet. Being effective is a whole nother animal.

@tigirius: It’s probably even simpler then that. True believers have always wanted to hound the heretics, that instinct never changes. It takes a lot of twisting to explain why supposedly obviously untrue statements threaten the faithful, but someone always manages to find a way to justify breaking out the torches.

Only if it’s a nerf bomb.

Depends on how much you shroud.

Charr necro is maximum evil until it unshrouds. Asura looks like an ink blot when it shrouds. Max size Norn blacks out the sky.

Why Furious instead of Last Chance?

Psst. Auto-target can be turned off.

Some people will like autotarget, some will not. Why not give both groups the option they want?

Oh, I’m joyous. Dancing through the streets, in fact.

It’s a good name. Reminds me of drunken monkey style =)

Ayestes.1273:

We can make suggestions ourselves and provide the reasoning. In the end though, it’s going to take multiple meetings and discussions on ANets side in addition to a massive amount of testing. They may or may not use what we offer, but they do seem to at least read it all.

Here’s another one who wasn’t paying attention when Anet said engineers were just fine and look at all the people who had engineer as one of their classes (he very carefully did not specify if those engineers were actually being used).

The only evidence that they pay attention is found within certain people’s wishful thinking, who completely overreact to any crumb thrown to them as “proof” that wonderful days are just around the corner.

Entropy.4732:

Heh heh… ya gotta love Engineers. All smiles and sunshine. First off, okay. Maybe the name doesn’t fit perfectly. Ya got me there. But I’m never 2 shotted by anyone. In fact, my survival rate is very high. It’s true that you don’t have a stun-breaker, but this is not a sPVP build. It’s a WvW build. Which means it’s intended for fighting mostly in groups.

Well, thanks for the summary of the differences between this and an actual 100nades build.

I notice you’re still keeping the deceptive “100” part, which would still cause any reasonable observer to think this build is similar to 100nades. So be it: at least the comments under your post will make new engineers aware of the differences.

I don’t know about you, but giving a mesmer 2 free seconds to get more clones out seems to me like a BAD idea.

Guardians have a utility skill that’s somewhat similar insofar as it delays the enemy finishing you off, it’s called sanctuary. For a class that has GOOD alternatives, an ability that merely gives your enemy more time is rightfully considered quite marginal.

But for a class like ours where all but a few abilities are marginal, such an ability appears to have ardent defenders.

Have it halve the cooldown on burst skills instead or in addition.

If you please, concentrate more on the proposal, and less on the perfectly-valid comparison to other parries. They’re more for comparison so that no one claims for example that a 8s or 10s cooldown would be OP when in fact other blocks have them and they aren’t considered OP in that context.

I’m not sure I’d go that far. Consider for example what that’d do to rifle volley.

Oglaf.1074:

This isn’t about using Conditions; it is about stacking the Condition Damage stat through equipment.

This.

Thanks for attempting to put the discussion back on track.

Addition to Nakoda’s suggestion: We’d have to put any on-plant abilities and overcharges on a separate internal cooldown to keep that balanced.

Wouldn’t do to plant a rocket turret, launch the knockdown rocket, pick it up and then 10s later do it again =)

I think the profanity filter ate your link, unless “kitten” is actually supposed to be part of it.

I’m not sure it’s right to call this a 100nades anything, since you’re dropping the kit refinement for the extra barrage and the extra grenades from grenadier, AND the extra damage trait.

In short, you can’t slap a grenade kit onto a Discharge/Jugger build and call it a 100nades variant.

Also, why are you putting invig speed on a build that lacks reliable swiftness? Wouldn’t a build that has 2 elixirs have better results from fast acting elixirs or SRD?

I’m not saying it’s a bad build, but you might want to coin your own name for it.

Edit: If incendiary power didn’t have that massive internal cooldown nerf of death, you might have been able to drop SD and convert this build to a burning/bleeding conditioneer build where the barrage applies a long burn, but as is the case with most of our versatility, what would have been your key trait has been neutered.

Lokheit.7943:

If you still want to believe I’m talking about magical rainbows worlds where everything is perfect, ok, keep thinking that, worse for you next time someone specialized on it bleeds you out and you wonder what happened.

Given that I’ve a better chance to meet a unicorn than a warrior who hasn’t outgrown a bleed build by the time they hit 80, I’m not exactly quaking in my pants.

Mikhail.4961:

Sword OH: Instead of the parry (does anyone use this? Anyone?), we get something similar to Whirling Axe – a sphere of damage and reflection of missiles, which we can move with.

Well, someone must because you wouldn’t believe the level of crap I’m receiving for suggesting the CD be lowered. Apparently no one likes the idea of a sword-parrying warrior.

“But its clearly different, um… um… because it’s clearly clearly different!” needs just a LITTLE more support then a solemn assurance that its “clearly” different.

Even the mace block can be traited to go down to 8s cooldown. That’s nearly twice the blocks as OH sword. But I suppose that’s clearly different too. Everything’s different from everything! No valid comparisons can be made, because everything is different! Lets all go celebrate the clear differences!

I think that it stays but that it’s also a bug, so don’t rely on it because they’ll probably remove it eventually.

waka.9826:

I wonder what they were thinking for the kit refinement on med kit.

Interesting. That’d be a GREAT place to take an unimaginative skill out and put a stun break in. Obviously it’d need more of a cooldown, but imagine a “stim” that cures one condition and breaks stun. That’d free up a utility slot right there for anyone using refinement and med kit.

EDIT: That’s true, waka. Why did you have to dash my dreams with cold hard reality, you monster?

Sylosi.6503:

But anyway back to the OP, yes they do need to do something, as engi fails miserably in being versatile, so making more traits kit-wide would be a start, though I think putting the elixirs in a kit would be OP.

Given that they are unlikely to have a complete makeover so soon after launch, I think the easiest solution would be to give engies an extra utlity slot.

Agree on both these counts. No kit has a stun break, so all engineers are required to dedicate one of their three slots (and the corresponding toolbelt slot) to that function. That all by itself cuts the possible builds by a lot, and it hurts us more than other professions because again, you’re dedicating BOTH the utility slot AND the toolbelt slot to a utility you otherwise wouldn’t take. I’m pretty sure when devs discuss among their-selves how “versatile” we are, they’re counting both those slots towards that versatility.

If we had a good selection of stun breaks to choose from to complement our build, that’d be less of a problem. If most kits had a stunbreak in either the main or the toolbelt ability, it’d be less of a problem. Heck, if we had a useful stunbreaking TRAIT to alleviate the problem, we’d have some versatility back. Any of these would free up a slot so that we wouldn’t need another utility slot to be “versatile”.

Kit refinement is an example of how to do multi-kit traits right, although even it is weak with some kits… especially bomb kit. Many of the other traits are just prereqs for the kit to be useful at all, and don’t function as actual choices.

coglin.1496:

I feel the engineers biggest weakness is the players, and there inability to think or act, outside the box.

Yes. we know. All other engineers are hopelessly locked into bad attitudes and none of them know how to play except people who use Elixir gun, bomb kit and toolkit with slick shoes and rocket boots in WvW.

Wreckdum.8367:

Why do people insist on using WvW footage to show the viability of their build? The only way to demonstrate it is a good build is to use sPvP.

We understand that you most likely got best in slot everything for this build. But we also know at least 50% of your opponents (probably more) do not have equal gear.

Fact is, Spvp is a different animal than WvW, with different conditions. Some builds might do well in one but not the other. He can’t ensure he’s going up against people with equal equipment, and not even a sPvP video can guarantee he’s fighting a player of equal skill level, so he’s doing what he can, which is not filming upscaled opponents to the extent that that’s possible.

That’s the most we can reasonably ask of him.

It’s a little difficult to apply weakness using mace 1 (3rd strike) against a human opponent, so unless you have another plan to apply weakness (like warhorn), you might not see the 15% damage boost as often as you like. Mobs of course don’t dodge.

As for the cooldown reduction, you’re reducing the parry to about 8s and the daze to 12s, so if you find yourself depending on those skills, sure.

But the OH mace has some pretty nice abilities that shine with the CD reduction.

So the answer is definitely maybe.

Qid.1937:

If you think sword offhand is ‘universally’ the worst, you aren’t doing it right. It’s fine as it is simply for the fact that it is great when used properly.

As I clearly said, compared to the other offhand weapons… except maybe axe offhand.

I’m not sure how you’re making the leap from a single melee parry every 15 seconds to greatness, but I’m sure you’re finding a way. Maybe you’re fighting opponents that only attack every 15 seconds?

Um, no. Back in the real world, it might be “not that hard to reapply them if someone removes them”… if you’re only looking to get a few stacks, which is still well below the limit where condition damage is better for bleed than for burn.

You’re trying to have it both ways. Yes, you can have a lot of stacks OR yes, you can get some going again after a cleanse, but you can’t have both because of the time it takes to reapply them in a situation that doesn’t involve the PvP golem not dodging, cleansing or hitting back.

This is part of a series of suggestions to make condition warrior more viable than it currently is. This thread will take it for granted that condition warrior is significantly underpowered compared to both other classes’ condition builds and to warrior’s other available builds. Disagree with this premise in your own thread, this thread is for discussing ways to make condition warrior better.

MH and OH swords are the major condition slingers for warrior. They’re a mix of power with condition damage. Strength buffs… power and condition damage.

Unfortunately, one of warrior’s best strength builders is plastered on a weapon that only appreciates one half of strength’s bonuses.

1h Sword has only ONE rapid attack… the autoattack. Surely, might-stacking would have to be far less OP on 1h sword than on GS.

My suggestion is for Forceful GS to apply to all swords, making it easier for 1h swords to buff their condition damage.

Remember that Retal scales by power, and burning scales with condition damage, so you’re already trying something a bit tricky.

Consider mighty defenses if you’re going with a block-reliant build, so that the str you gain is applied to retaliation and burn damage. It’s a shame that it’s so little STR per block and the burn is so brief.

You’re right that stacking more bleeds and assuming no one clears them ever, that condi bleed damage effectiveness might start to approach condi burn damage effectiveness.

Problem is, aside from the burst skill warrior stacks bleeds slowly, so outside of theorycraftingland, bleed scaling still sucks for warriors.

You’re much better off strength stacking, so you can take advantage of both sides of the boon.

I’m sorry, but you’re just wrong.

You’re probably wikitheorycrafting and forgot that 0.25 is MORE than 0.05. Pay better attention to the decimal point next time before presuming to lecture others.

Mesmer focus: Iwarden blocks projectiles and can be traited to reflect projectiles, along with phantasmal wall on the same weapon.

Great idea if you can drop both bombs without interruption. I wouldn’t rely on that working in a zerg.

I’m glad to be of service to your WvW teammates who are out there doing constructive things that might actually help them win.

And plant them in 1/3 of the time. And increase the radius, which was set way back when bombs hit everyone in their radius instead of max 5.

Suggestion? Don’t.

Bombs are great against mindless PvE opponents, but anyone dumb enough to not simply walk or dodge out of your radius before it goes off would have died to any other kit you could name.

If someone blows all their condition cleansing, you might be able to drop a glue bomb and magnet them in and somehow keep them there while dropping other bombs.

Zenguy.6421:

There are two very different stories about Engineers that get posted on these forums.

• On one hand we have videos and posts from people confirming how their Engineer can chew up and spit out pretty every other class, up to and including 1v3 fights.
• On the other hand we have lots of complaints about Engineers being underpowered compared with other classes.

Underlying that first group of posts is the message:
Engineers are awesome if you just learn how to play them properly.

So why isn’t that message working?

Because it’s untrue, and blatantly obviously so to anyone who isn’t a groupie.

The “if you just learn how to play them properly” is a mechanism for delivering maximum belittling to people who disagree, because obviously anyone who disagrees with you is a noob.

That’s great that you’ve lowered your expectations to “annoying” people and therefore found engineer’s niche in wvw.

Maybe if more people took your build, we could chain-aggravate other players into dropping out of the game and playing canasta instead.

There’s nothing wrong with engineer that can’t be fixed by lowering your expectations enough.

Better yet, have mace apply weak on 2 AND 3 so you get some nice duration.

I’d like swords to combo better with Distracting Strikes in order to inch a condition build closer to viable. Bleed-only is not even close to viable. That means giving one of the sword skills some type of interrupt that’s usable on some kind of reasonable cooldown.

coglin.1496:

I have to disagree when you suggest we have issues disengaging. I use the box of nails alot. I use the EG#4+Rocket boots 5 times a day in WvW. Letely I have been using elixit infused bombs, using slick shoes to run into a zerg knocking down as I go, spam a line of bombs causing internal confusion. When I feel things are getting hairy, I doge twice (basically invincible for 3s+) hit super speed, and drop bombs as I run away from the zerg to safety. If I feel I need to dodge I can tap 9 on my keyboard for elixir R and have full endurance and dodge twice again if I need.

Elixir gun, bomb kit and toolkit with slick shoes and rocket boots.

In WvW.

“dropping bombs” and “creating confusion”.

That’s a great build for being carried. But you do have a point that we can run away if we specifically build our character for it.

And if we have 5 utility slots.

Well to be fair if you were feeling suicidal you could pop Balanced stance, Signet of fury, Endure pain, rush into the zerg and use flurry while a staff mage blows up the area that you’ve got them immobilized in.

Arms Grandmaster(25): Attack of Opportunity: Increases damage to bleeding foes by 10%.
But you can’t get that without Arms Adept: Precise Strikes 33% chance to cause bleeding on critical hits, so really any fast-hitting weapon will do.