Guild Wars 2

oOAvengerOo.6714:

Is the HoT spec really intersting or is it just for more survivability ?

And not very important thing but does engineer good for explo ?

If you already have HoT, doesn’t hurt to give it a shot. Scrapper does give Engineer an edge to survivability, they’re also a lot more power based than condition. Hammer has some pretty sweet utility as well and gyros are pretty nifty. Overall it’s an expanded option to help out on your journey.

Any class is good for exploration as long as you have fun using them.

Since you’re not worried about big numbers, could always go Dire (Condi/Toughness/Vitality) or Carrion (Condi/Vitality/Power). If you only just want open world content just about anything is fine as long as you enjoy using it.

lorddarkflare.9186:

I am definitely serious.

MH Pistol and Rifle are both ‘bad’.

With Shield being bad because it HAS to associate with MH Pistol—for now.

The only reason MH Pistol gets more play is because it is the ONLY condi option whereas power has the ridiculously good hammer.

Technically speaking, Rifle is worse off because in any build you would use it, you should use hammer instead, but on a pure ‘what value does this weapon bring to my build’ basis, MH Pistol is much, much worse.

I guarantee you that the minute Engie gets another MH condi option, MH Pistol is going into the trash. Hell, the hybrid sword my actually manage to do it.

Definitely a lot more understandable now. Yeah it stinks to have such limited weapon options to begin with to compensate for kits. Even the new elite spec upcoming is a bit of a stretch for condi. With sword, High Calibur and No Scope could work pretty well with it and also with the overheat bonuses you might be able to pull off with a minimum amount of precision to still easily proc off Bleed and Burn if you pick up Incendiary Powder.

Rifle did get a low key buff with Lock On trait + Overcharged Shot, definitely nothing huge, but still alright. MH Pistol might still be the only condi option for another long while unless it gets reworked. It’s funny as well since MH Pistol has only received buffs since release.

insanemaniac.2456:

mh pistol has 1 must use skill and 1 single target filler skill and the auto should basically never be used. the condis that are worth using arent condis that engi even has traits for. nearly all of condi engis weapon set damage is in pistol 4, which isnt mh pistol. thats not great at all. the reason its meta is because its the only option, not because its actually good. if sword were distinctly condi instead of hybrid, every condi engi looking for dps (which is what you go condi engi for, not control, support, tanking, healing, etc) that unlocks holosmith would use sword. since sword is a hybrid weapon, people will be divided on it, but from how it looks right now imo its really not a worse option than pistol dps wise and it brings extra mobility.

rifle has no useless skills. despite 2 and 4 being bad damage and 3 and 5 taking up so little of your time, there isnt a skill on rifle that you can say just plain hurts you to use like pistol 1. not that rifle is in a good spot compared to hammer when it comes to how well the weapon fills your time and multitasks, but it certainly is better off.

i dont know if you were around for turret engis in pvp. it literally erased skill at all tiers of gameplay. that is why turrets are kittenty today, and deservedly so, but a case can easily be made for skill splits. perhaps there are old youtube vids you can look up.

now why do you think hes joking?

Unfortunately, that’s all in the past now. Sure, Rifle and Turrets were good several years ago, but that’s not gonna change that they’ve been at a weak state. So knocking on how they’re nerf is needed at this moment is unwarranted.

And yes, I’d believe he was serious if he made that statement before HoT. Now it’s just beating on a dead horse.

insanemaniac.2456:

Midontto.5847:

lorddarkflare.9186:

MH Pistol is much worse than Rifle.

Also, turrets needed a nerf. Sure you can argue it may have been too harsh, but it needed to happen.

Must have missed the joke on this one. My apologies. Explain?

I agree with him and think that if he’s joking in that statement then something would be wrong. why do you think he’s joking?

And why do you agree?

Why is Rifle doing so much better than MH Pistol?

Tell me when Rifle/Rocket/Net/Flame/Thumper turrets were viable in the past few days. Perhaps weeks? Months? Years?

I’m not the person throwing out the bold statement here, but if you agree with him then enlighten us will ya?

lorddarkflare.9186:

MH Pistol is much worse than Rifle.

Also, turrets needed a nerf. Sure you can argue it may have been too harsh, but it needed to happen.

Must have missed the joke on this one. My apologies. Explain?

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Edit maybe we can circomvent the dps loss, but it’s tricky. In past Shaped charge and explosions trait could be combo’d for 20% boost. Now We get shaped charge as auto include trait. We can choose bombs cd reduction, but that would be status que to past (but require vulnerability on target, wich is a slight downgrade). There’s however a trait now that converts power into vitality and ferocity. Lets hope the ferocity part can somehow compensate most of dps loss.

You’ll need to get a consistent power of 3500 to get over 10% extra critical damage with the new trait. Also, we also gain Blasting Zone, giving Engineer 120 power and more might stacking. Now that it’s even easier to stack might and also easier to stack vulnerability with Lock On’s new changes.

Also with Excessive Energy changes, that’s another 10% extra damage without having to worry about using our endurance. The changes to Reactive Lenses will help out too especially if you slot in Utility Goggles. 2 stun breaks, 5 stacks of might individually, and Analyze + Lock On for an easy 20 stacks of vulnerability. Engineer can also litter the area with mines now with the enhanced Throw Mine + Minesweeper. Lots of boon denial too as well as zoning.

In addition to that, Rocket Boots and Personal Battering Ram have 2 ammunition. With a 2 seconds and 5 seconds cool down between use respectively. Also A.E.D. removes confusion as well and Throw Mine’s damage increased by 20%.

All I can think of now is enhanced Throw Mine + Minesweeper + Bunker (+ Supply Crate maybe), mines for daysssss. Put on a Bomb Kit too and you’ll be booming.

Otherwise it’s a good steer to the right direction and could have more uses. You can now utilize Rocket Boots for hit and run tactics, extreme escaping, or high speed chasing and has more synergies with Scrapper. Personal Battering Ram might hit like a truck now. A.E.D. will definitely be more obnoxious. Personally, I think their Tool Belt correspondences could still use some lovin’.

Engineer will be able to set themselves on fire and self-destruct soon. Final Solution is slowly going to fruition.

When the engineer forum is comprised of dread and positivity. On the bright side, Holosmith makes kitten out of energy. That’s pretty awesome.

Engineer is pretty much in need of a rework at this point. It’d be a miracle if ANet gives us much of a notice past minor adjustments or “purity of purpose”.

EdwinLi.1284:

Those are actually Holoskills most likely their Utility skills. From what it seems the Elite Spec heavily focus on using the new Holo Form and Primary Weapon over the Core Kit of Engineer to build up Heat then use their Utility skills for massive Damage.

The design so far appears to be based on making a Core Kitless Elite SPec that does not need to depend on Kits which Engineer currently depends greatly on but instead Utility skills and their Primary weapons instead.

…which means Holosmith is gonna be relying mostly on their new Utility skills while Gadgets and Turrets will be more useless. Sweet.

Holosmith is definitely a nice elite specialization never the less. It looks like it could potentially be a mix up between both power and condition due to heat system. I could be wrong on this, but it looks like Tool Belt skills might be replaced with Photon Forge skills while in that mode.

For the Photon Forge used, it seemed like they have a rifle for a long range high damage skill, mace that’s a ground slam that knocked down enemies, great sword was the leaping spinning one (looks like it leaves something behind their last location since it showed up twice in different occasions), pistols with some sorta unload that potentially causes burning, and a hammer that’s swung at 360 that could weaken defense.

The Utility seems to have a hexagonal force field around them, one that surrounds them with the wall, one that pulls nearby enemies to the center, and a spinning aoe that sticks with you while moving. Overheating causes constant explosions while continuously using Photon Forge.

Overall looks like a specialization that sacrifices a lot of Engineers defensive utility for an extremely aggressive play style.

I think Detonating or Destroying an overcharged turret should cause various effects. Make Overcharge manually triggered again while Detonate Turret will be the flip for it. Turrets overall should also have a faster rate of fire and Overcharge should reset the fire rate which will make it automatically fire again once used.

Depending on which turret explodes:

-Rifle Turret will riddle nearby enemies with bullets which will cripple them for a duration.
-Rocket Turret will blast out a couple of homing rockets that will randomly target nearby enemies.
-Flame Turret will cause a fiery explosion giving stacks of burning.
-Net Turret will cause an electrical explosion causing a brief stun.
-Thumper Turret will just do massive explosive damage.
-Healing Turret will….not to sure. Extended water field sounds nice though.

Experimental Turrets should also do additional effects to nearby turrets depending on which turret is used:

-Rifle Turret increases rate of fire of nearby turrets.
-Rocket Turret increases power of nearby turrets.
-Flame Turret will give nearby turrets some sort of retaliation.
-Net Turret will give turrets a very brief cripple effect.
-Thumper Turret will give turrets some decrease damage taken.
-Healing Turret will give turrets regeneration.

Advanced Turrets should enhance the functions of Overcharge such as significantly increasing the damage, rate of fire etc. It could also decrease the recharge or extend the duration of Overcharge.

This would give Turrets an option of being a decent turret or could be treated similar to a claymore mine.

Confirming on this one. It seems Mechanized Deployment only decreases cooldown by 13%. The combination of Mechanized Deployment and HGH decreases the cooldown at around 30.5%. HGH is working properly as far as I know.

The bug fix on that was intended to help display the stats on our character menu properly, so the 15% on the toolbelt recharge rate wasn’t being displayed properly etc.

Might of messed with the actual recharge rate of tool belt skills.

But that’s such an exaggerated situation in the end. If someone is that willing to upkeep over 10 seconds of retaliation, persistently put up light fields and also continuously use projectile/whirling finishers to clear all the burns they just set themselves up by putting majority of their skills on recharge. It’s a little more plausible if it’s a group that’s somehow all standing there but I don’t really know why you want to fight against a group by yourself. You’ll usual end up having allies to back you up or vice versa.

To be honest, Flamethrower is my favorite kit in Engineer all in all, I’ve always constantly ran it in WvW and sometimes in PvP. In WvW I don’t mind being part of groups or just roaming, groups whenever you encounter a battle I always just try to sneak past the front liners and just burn down the back. Always have some utility and options open so you can disengage and you’d only end up slightly damaged. Roaming is so much fun with Flamethrower though, especially if you’re just built tanky with Scrapper traits. But all in all my overall encounters with retaliation hasn’t been that much of a big deal. Sometimes it creeps up on you and you suddenly blow up, but a lot of times usually not. If you guys have been having like constantly every 10 minutes you encounter people with high retaliation upkeep, I feel like that’s just unfortunate.

I just wanted to say is that you should just give it a chance. If playing with Flamethrower that way doesn’t work, you should try it another way.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retaliation

Nada. Only Guardian can distribute retaliation to allies. Mesmer and Engineer could too, but that’s quite random compared to Guardian’s straight forwardness.

And if you’ve noticed, a lot of the other classes only has one-two skills/traits that offer retaliation. A lot of they’re recharge are pretty decent to prevent them from just spamming retaliation.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_field

Over half of the light fields that offered are from Guardian. Their Hammer and Staff each offer 2 light fields, Hammer’s can produce light fields with just their auto attack. And we’re also talking about PvP and WvW wise right?

PvP wise, it’s usually a rare chance finding a support Engineer and Centaur Revenant, Mesmer do tend to pick up Well of Eternity…but they only have like 1 blast finisher. Even if others notice the light field, they usually don’t.

WvW zergs are the ones who would frequently use light field, but usually they’re in a coordinated zerg for a lot of the retaliation sharing to happen. Maybe some random people will notice, but again, usually don’t.

Oh yeah and about that strange encounter for Napalm. I think that’s just hilarious. “Hey guys! Let’s just all gather on that fiery ground and I’ll use retaliation!” But you should know well enough that applies to any AoE skills from just about any class. It’s much worse for a Ranger to use Barrage on a bunch of people under retaliation, that’s 60 hits back to them!

Speaking of Guardian, Guardian is the only class that can give allies retaliation like candy. Other classes retaliation are usually limited to only 1 skill or trait or a couple of light fields with a decent recharge so they can’t abuse it as much as Guardians can. So is retaliation really the problem or just fighting Guardians with Flamethrower in general? There’s also a good reason why Guardian is just overall popular in PvP and WvW, why every commander is typically Guardian.

The other issue I see in this topic is that a lot of you are not considering the rest of Flamethrower skill set, just only focused on AA. Flame Burst does potentially the same amount of damage as an AA and only hits the target twice, it’s also a blast finisher, has longer range and just has a 6 second recharge. Air Blast simply knocks enemies away from you, you won’t be affected by it if it reflects back to you, and it also reflects projectiles too when timed right. Napalm is a 10 second long Fire Field so you could easily get another 6 stacks of might with Flame Burst.

The only bugger right now is that you have an extremely outdated skill Smoke Vent. This skill has not been touched since release. Smoke Vent did receive one nerf and that was when they added stability to Juggernaut. FT AA is far from needing help compared to the other skills Engineer has.

Across 3 throws it’s 15k-18k in total onto that group. Sure you did 2k-3k damage individually to a target but you used it on a group intending to harm them as a group.
The problem about comparing CoR to a grenade auto is the fact that CoR actually has a recharge and also has a cost.

There’s a massive difference between Greatsword and Flamethrower and it’s the fact that Flamethrower as stated is a RANGED AoE Auto Attack. Why should a Greatsword be punished as hard for fighting up front when Flamethrower can do that fighting mid ranged?

You’ve also ignored the fact that they had to use a weapon/utility skill to deal with your auto attack. And also the fact that there’s ways to deal with it.

So you’re basically telling me you just want to abuse AoE Auto Attacks.

Well…Engineer is one of the classes that have access to ranged AoE Auto Attacks. That video just pointed out why retaliation was there. They just pelted 5k-6k damage in total to a group while being in a safe distance. If you’re gonna abuse it, you should expect no one should just stand there and take it. They had to use a weapon/utility skill only to deal with just your auto attack. How is that fair?

Even then Engineer also has counter measures like Throw Mine. Both Throw Mine and Mine Field remove boons from enemies. You also can use Superior Rune of Nullification. Or you can just CC them off of you to buy time so retaliation will wear off. There’s so much counter measures to deal with it but you’re so fixated on this one Auto Attack.

Well…you do have to consider the rest of FTs kit, AA isn’t the only option. Flame Blast is pretty powerful when played right, you also get a 10 second long fire field and you have plenty of blast finishers as Engi to stack more might,

I do think Smoke Vent needs some tweaking since it’s main niche was to use it while knocked, stun, dazed etc. Now it’s just a quick blind with a 20 second long cool down and meh radius. I’d say completely change it to a new skill.

FT AA is a pretty powerful attack. Can trigger a lot of on-hit critical effects plus the Firearm trait line and the fact you will be fighting rather close ranged will potentially get you a 40% critical rate without having to invest heavily on precision. Or if you do have high precision then you can potentially get unlimited swiftness and stacks of vulnerability on enemies. FT AA is like a double edged sword, it severely punishes you if you recklessly attack enemies, or it severely punishes them if they’re not prepared.

WvW scenario FT AA is also a cleave- a long range one at that. If enemies decide to ram the door down your flamethrower could just go right through and break their rams without having to harm yourself too much and the fact you can’t be knocked down. For PvP you just need to be…less obvious. You should capitalize on using AA when they’re stunned/launch/knocked down/back and you got plenty of tools to apply them. Also with Scrapper you can be a lot more sturdier with a chance to get quickness since it’s pretty easy to get 10 stacks of might constantly with Juggernaut.

The trait lasts for 3 seconds and recasts every 3 seconds, you could switch off between an interval and you’ll get some stability.

coro.3176:

ukuni.8745:

also with an unblockable on overcharged shot and evade would be amazing, just think hey thats a nice reflect wall it would be a shame if someone knocked you out of it.

Unblockable Overcharged Shot would be too good. It needs some counterplay. it’s an instant knockdown. People need to expect that their defenses will work. If I pop Gear Shield (RIP. 2s nerf..), I want it to block things. I get sad about the direction the game is going when I’m running from a zerg and I’m close to safety and use the only defense skill I have on my build… aaaaand then a DH just uses spear of justice right through it – too fast to dodge, unblockable and perfect cc. Same thing with Basilisk Venom.

Those things aren’t fair at all. If they made Overcharged Shot unblockable, it’d just be more of the same power creep. As much as I want it to be, it shouldn’t be unblockable and neither should basi venom and spear. There needs to be counterplay.

Hmm…you have a point. Since it does remove movement impairing effects and if you’re good at positioning you can put yourself in a better advantage whether you land it or not and also the easy access to stability provided by traits and utilities. If it wasn’t a knock back but possibly a dodge roll with like 1/2 of a second evasion, it could bring back Rifle. A little more defensive tools for using rifle would be nice since you have to jump in to get some juicy damage off.

With only 2 classes that can use Rifle and only 1 class (Warrior) can actually use it effectively…in some situations more than effectively. Maybe increase the velocity of AA or give Blunderbuss vulnerability instead of bleeding, closer they use the more stacks etc.

I’d say switch skill slots for Blunderbuss and Net Shot and lower Blunderbuss’ recharge to 8 seconds. Also make Overcharge shot unblockable or ignore reflect with a backward roll/jump instead of knocking yourself back. A hero of Tyria and still being knocked down by your own skill. The little evade could be extra.

But if you really do want to commit to Thief there are generally more friendly builds for casual players. Trapper and Scout are two that come off the top of my head. Venom sharing and Condi D/D builds are pretty friendly too with some learning curve. As long as you understand that skill spamming will just put you in bad scenarios you should be fine.

TwistedSister.8190:

I’m a new player (just started leveling), I really like dual daggers… just kinda cool. However, this thread doesn’t even mention it – is it completely useless in sPVP and WvW (roaming/ambushing in WvW stragglers)? I want to level with the spec that I’ll play in PVP at 80.

Separate stupid question, having a dual dagger – does that increase the auto attack of the main hand dagger? I’m guessing not.

Both Condi and Power D/D work pretty well in sPvP. WvW might be a little struggle since you’ll lose some advantage that D/P offers. Condi you’ll usually be better with a couple of people while roaming or a zerg, sharing Venom makes you kill things faster. Power just go D/P, thing about it is that OH Pistol has an interrupt and a smoke field that you can utilize to stealth with Heartseeker. Nevertheless you’ll probably still get your kitten handed by a DH.

Main Hand and Off Hand equipment are their own separate entity. Main Hand affects skills 1-3 while Off Hand affect 4 and 5.

Would be cool if they added another MH or OH weapon for the thief in the next spec. More dual wield options would be nice. TBH Tempest are kinda like Bards/Spellsingers with their shouts and warhorn. Also Herald as well with their constant area boons.

With their innate ability to shadow step and dance around enemies, Rifle and Long Bow would be pretty strong for constant kiting and harassment. And with that it would also have to change their main mechanic steal. Fighting ranged would defeat the purpose if you have a gap closer as your main niche.

Now for what I think for a pretty cool specialization would be Duelist/Vigilante or something. Instead of dual wielding, for their OH, they can equip a sigil instead which will give new MH skills for 3, 4 and 5. One-Handed Pistol, Dagger and Sword would each get 3 new skills as well as the bonus effects from the off hand sigil equipped. For a new weapon I would say OH sword so dual wielding still has significance and would offer 5 more weapon skills. That’s 14 new weapon skills in total.

Now for utility…I was thinking of Stance as an option but it would feel pretty awkward for continually taking Warrior’s skill types. So I would say something completely new that I don’t know yet.

Norn Mesmer here. Jar Robber is the name.
Took this pic a year ago while leveling him, thought it was amusing lol

First character since release date. My main for years now.

Some more Sylvari thief rep.
Ro Ao is the name. Thought he looked pretty nifty to share.

Deployable Turrets was the bombdiggity and also Rifled Barrel Turrets. For what their damage is the pea shooters was at least slightly threatening when it can attack at a safe range. I think if they’re just gonna be made fragile, turrets should be a lot more easier to deploy, like make turret cooldown start right after you deploy them, similar to Throw Mine. If turrets were more spammable it could be pretty cool.

I also think overcharging the turret could be more effective. Like 50% increase of rate of fire on all turrets and make Rifle Turrets 75% firing rate. Or possibly a trait that could effect overcharge, that’d be nice too.

For Gadgeteer I think the recharge reduction should be permanent. Instead of having to take a beating it should be usable after using your skills 5 times with another recharge reduction on top of it. So basically after using your skills 5 times, your next gadget will be overcharged with a 50% recharge reduction.

Now I also believe there could be a better interesting thing you do for tanking hits, as long as you take hits for the next 5 seconds all of your gadgets will be overcharged with a 50% recharge reduction and also a boost of 200 or so toughness. The effect will trigger once you reach 5 stacks, duration will refresh if you keep on taking hits afterwords.

With the discussion about Rifle and Flamethrowers going on, let’s talk about the other underwhelming things: Turrets and Gadgets.

After the Specialization changes, Turrets have been thrown into the void losing some other nice traits like deployable turrets, self-repairing turrets, explode on kill, Rifled Turret Barrels etc. It also doesn’t help that ANet hasn’t even touched any of the turrets for over 2 years now. The only one people use now a days is the healing turret. Even then it’s just treated as a Boon and Boom. One of the huge downfalls for turrets is that they simply don’t scale with your stats. They’re just fragile auto-marshmallow shooters at this point.

Gadgets have received some buffs every now and then, but they’re just underwhelming compared to the utility you get from kits and Scrapper. Gadgeteer doesn’t make this any better as all it does is just encourage Engineers to get beaten up for a recharge reduction. That’s also a Grandmaster tier trait as well.

What I think would be pretty cool is if turrets had some scaling. Even a minuscule scaling would be a huge buff for them. Also some way to bring back some old traits and possibly interpret them into the turrets.

Some Gadgets just need some tweaking to be pretty solid again. There was some discussion about Rocket Boots having evade which would be pretty nice.

Utility Goggles is just overshadowed as it’s easy to get Fury, Elixers can easily remove blindness , and as a Stun Breaker it’s beaten by lot of the better ones like Healing Mist, Bypass Coating and Elixers. Analyze is nothing compared to Detection Pulse, which is AoE and has a shorter recharge. The Vulnerability can easily be covered.

Slick Shoes and Superspeed is shadowed by Blast Gyro and Bypass Coating. Blast Gyro also has shorter recharge, does damage, pretty good blast radius, travels pretty far and also grants stability, lightning field and superspeed as long as you’re near it. Bypass Coating does the same thing Superspeed does, except it’s AoE.

Personal Battering Ram is never used today nor is it ever used in the past. It’s just a joke skill to blow people away with a pelvic thrust. Launch Personal Battering Ram is pretty good though.

Don’t really have many qualms with Throw Mine and Mine Field. They’re both pretty good for what they do and with a short recharge while at it.

What do you guys think could help out these skills to be up to par to what we have now?

TL;DR Gadgets and Turrets suck these days. Edit: For years not days.