Guild Wars 2

rennlc.7346:

So….

If we continually focus on making systems easier to advance within for the sole sake of feeling good about having advanced rather than focusing more on becoming more skilled not just as players but as people, we will continue to perpetuate a culture which rewards rather than dissuades feelings of entitlement. If unchecked, this cultural attitude will spread and further promote and compel others to be less constructive, innovative, and concerned with individually acting in a way which may promote beneficial changes. With less constructive and innovative action overall, we will increasingly compel ourselves to pursue invention which is more about ease and comfort rather than the more ground-breaking improvements needed to address more significant issues, like preventing nuclear war, starvation, death from disease and famine, murder from increasingly radicalized religious beliefs, overpopulation, etc.

It’s promoting an attitude which will encourage us to be lesser people and could potentially undermine the pursuit of innovation that could save humanity (or at least some small part of it).

(I bring up the most grandiose aspects of this problem not out of a desire to insult you, but because I want this message to have a more lasting impression. Hopefully, I’ve succeeded in the latter and not undermined my credibility to you as a source of information by appearing to be someone who does the former. Have fun!)

On the other hand, mankind has invented many instruments to make social mobility easier and to make losses less catastrophic for people who were willing to take risks to make better things. For example, we invented Limited Companies so that entrepreneurs don’t have to lose everything they personally own just because their investment fails, therefore encouraging people to venture into new businesses. We have also invented various social safety nets to make sure that people who have blundered can recover their lives and not fall deeper and deeper into poverty.

#yesilikeroleplaying

Toeofdoom.6152:

Ran into a game with an esl player recently but apparently it is possible to lose, yet not lose any pips – it was around 200/500 (I don’t get the impression they were trying extremely hard based on the talking and standing still during combat)

I’m not 100% sure but I think I have won 1 pip in a lost game with the score around 480-500. That was my first game in emerald.

I just got it right this moment. What matters is that you must not be downed/dead even once in the entire instance. No need to kill mobs/walls. If you die from gliding to the wrong spot/etc. you must restart the entire instance.

What I did (mesmer):

- At the start, run right through. Invis at the clearing and glide over to where you normally talk to Kasmeer.
- I ran to the left side without waiting for any npc. The path to Zojja opens immediately without having to talk to npc.
- Continue along the path ignoring all mobs until Zojja.
- Free Zojja, wait for story then kill the Logans.
- Continue without killing any mob.
- Invis in front of the cave where the stalkers are, ran inside and up one of the paths.
- Avoid orange circles and jump around the walls.
- Invis past groups of punishers. Wait for CDs at a safe spot then repeat for each group.
- Jump off the ledge to Faolain at the top.
- Received achievement.

I’d say it’s all about killing them first. My zerker air dagger ele does quite fine in defense events and such. Most mobs can’t even hit you properly if you just circle around them while swinging the dagger. Activate all the bursts before you jump into each group. You might be at 20% health after each fight but it’s ok. Wait for CDs and OOC regen before you jump into another.

Smokescales are bs though. Just run away for those.

I actually had a much harder time when I brought my PVT guard. It takes forever to kill anything while they out-dps my healing.

Daralii.8940:

Mizstik.1736:

I think you guys need to step back a bit and get some perspective. This kind of gameplay is just how MMOs are.

Here’s a case study. Take a look at FFXIV’s Heavensward expansion ($40). The feature list is nearly the same:

- 4 new zones (also large and vertical)

HW added 6, not 4.

Well if you go by how Square Enix counts it, they actually advertise for 9 areas, but let’s leave it at that in this thread.

I stopped using the mesmer boon signet because of this problem. And if I forgot to change it to something else before I trigger a story cutscene … ugh.

I think you guys need to step back a bit and get some perspective. This kind of gameplay is just how MMOs are.

Here’s a case study. Take a look at FFXIV’s Heavensward expansion ($40). The feature list is nearly the same:

- 4 new zones (also large and vertical)
- flying mounts
- 1 new raid
- 8 new dungeons, couple new primals
- 3 new jobs
- 1 new race (cosmetic)
- airship (a guild effort)
- new crafting and gathering mechanics
- continuation of the story
- +10 level cap
- content update every quarter or so

Like GW2, these sound nice on paper, but the actual experience is also filled with frustrations all the same. You’ll be repeating only a handful of events for hours on end to get your jobs to 60 with no real alternatives. (only some limited momentary relief like Leves) You must even do them in level-appropriate zones (unlike GW2 where you do any zone).

You can’t fly until you essentially complete each map. Flying privilege is limited to maps you cleared. (~masteries)

You can’t begin the new story unless you are lv.50. The 3 new jobs start at lv.30. You can’t do the new story with them until you level them up, or you just do the new story with your old jobs. (~elite specializations)

Raid loots are a weekly one drop for all players involved, which can end up being not useful to any of the members who participated. Dungeon loot is mostly weekly tokens. Takes multiple weeks to get even one piece of gear. Almost no meaningful open world loot. (~rewards problem)

These complaints you have against GW2 is essentially what MMOs are about. Complaining about dumb people in meta events is more or less the same as complaining you get dumb teammates in CSGO. (I realize there are crucial differences but you get the idea.) I do believe that with time, the general population will be ever more competent, and events will complete much more smoothly the way SW is now.

Even your most favorite hobby is going to have some ugly aspects at times.

Vargamonth.2047:

Zerker is working perfectly fine for the most part.
You trade survival for damage, which makes you completely reliant on active defenses and increases the punishment for any mistake you could made. As a tradeoff, you kill things and complete dungeons faster for a better gold/time ratio.
Risk vs Reward, plain and simple.

The only issue, and the only fair complaint against DPS setups I can understand, is about insane amount of DPS making all that risk suddenly disappear.

We could take a look at Lupicus speedkills to show this.
There’s an undeniable show of high skill in almost any solo video out there. Just during the first phase players need to be in almost constant move to avoid being hit by locust swarms while evading every grub summon and every subtle kick animation (which is a oneshot for many classes on zerker).
IMHO this kind of gameplay absolutely deserves better results than bringing defensive stats so kicks can be endured and healed or stacking at range where this attack doesn’t even happen.

When you bring in a full DPS group, however, the fight goes in a completely different fashion.
First of all, there’s more than enough cleaving DPS to rip locusts apart before they can do anything; all need for movement is gone. Second, if the DPS is high enough, the phase can be finished so fast that kicks can be easily covered with aegis, which are long lasting enough to be precasted against an obvious pattern without worrying on them being wasted on any other minor damage source.
Players just need to avoid grub casts, which are really slow and obvious, and keep DPSing the boss. After that, a mesmer Feedback is enough to direclty finsih off phase 2, and even the whole fight with a few tricks that have been already shown to us.
There’s some organization and coordination here that should be rewarded, that’s for sure. There’s also tactic development, but that merit would belong only to those that used it for the first time and/or showed it to the world, not to any random player (like me) watching a video on youtube.
The coordination is far from high demanding, the execution is quite simple and the risk … the risk is just gone, completely nonexistant. It’s an obvious case (and there are a lot more) where playing full DPS not only doesn’t involve the risk is supposed to, but allows the execution of a tactic which removes all of it and still receives the full reward of a speedkill.

This shouldn’t be about how to make full DPS setups useless, even unplayable, as many suggestions along this thread try to accomplish.
It shouldn’t be a debate about which playstyle pleases us more and how our preferences aren’t as much rewarding as others, or about ways to bruteforce diversity.
and bring our loved specs into optimal groups.
Actively reacting to enemy animations is harder than facetanking and filling bars. It just involves more player skill over passive play and thereby deserves better rewards (in this case, freeing room for damage stats so faster runs can be achieved), and this comes from someone who has played healer/support for most of his MMO
Damage becoming the best form of defense, that’s what kills the idea of risk vs reward and the real problem we should be discussing about.

There’s only one easy and fair fix for this, and it’s just increasing the time it takes to kill things, be it through a raw increase on NPC HP/armor or demoting (promoting) every gear, from lvl 1 to 80, to double stat combinations, which is pretty much the same but also handles some downscaling issues. Needless to say that I don’t expect most people to like the idea :P
A selective nerf on full offensive combos is not reasonable at all when there’s a whole PvP enviroment that shares gear and doesn’t exactly suffer from this (most likely from the opposite if anything).

Other than that, there’s only the developing of more complex encounters and more polished AIs (LoS stacking should probably disappear); of making PvE more like PvP, where some specs use zerker but others don’t (and almost none zerker + DPS traits) and where every character capability (power burst, sustained damage, conditions, control, support, …) has its place.
Desirable? Absolutely. Likely to happen? I really doubt it.

A good read right here.

A small note about increasing mob HP: anet definitely has tried that and the only thing it ever did was making the need for firepower even more severe. However, in fights that didn’t use a direct HP increase to extend the length of the fight (such as Mai Trin shield, or Bookworm ice shield) it was a promising direction.

About the AI: if only ranged mobs/bosses would circle around a stack of players instead of charging at them around a corner, this single change would fix most of the stacking encounters. If melee mobs would learn to stagger their charges and phase in/out it’d fix even more.

JonPeters.5630:

There is some merit here. This skill had such a high risk/reward tradeoff that we knew it was possible that it had a chance to become too strong or not strong enough. I do think it is closer than you all think and I would be wary of increasing it. I think the key question is going to be where do you increase, which is a better discussion. Does it need a better baseline? Does it need a better reward heal? Longer buff duration? Faster cast time? Lower cooldown? Or maybe just gadgets need some good traits to empower it more?

Hopefully that helps direct this discussion a bit. Let’s keep this thread to this particular heal. If you have concerns about the effectiveness (in either direction) of other heals either start an individual thread for those that you are concerned about, or start a general thread but keep in mind that you will have to work hard to keep a general heal balance thread focused and productive.

Jon

I’m from PvE perspective. I would like to see the following changes (reasons below):

Primary Wish:

The cooldown when the big heal does not activate should be shorter, in the realm of 10-15 seconds. It can heal for less than it currently does. When the big heal activates, it can go into the full cooldown.

One of the major issues I have with this heal is that, while other heals are designed to keep up sustained or near full in order to prepare for the major spikes common in PvE, with AED we will spend the majority of the time with depleted health. Either we try to go for the big heal (and intentionally remain in low health), or we use the small heal which is very sub-par AND also deprive us of any chance of big heal for the next 40 seconds.

If we have the option of taking a small cooldown smaller sustain heal with AED (and can have our chance of big heal back in 10-15 seconds) then it will become a lot more viable in more situations.

Additional:

- Cast time should be instant, or very nearly instant. I assure you we will still fail to activate the big heal very frequently even with instant cast. It is very hard in PvE. I planned to write about it but the post is becoming long.

- It should remove all damage-dealing conditions upon successful activation of the big heal. After pulling such a major feat consuming all our concentration (and ending our contribution to the fight for the duration of trying to activate it), it’d be incredibly pointless to wake up with just 75% HP and still have a throng of conditions that threaten to kill you in seconds.

P.S. That toolbelt is pretty darn hard to use anywhere outside of a melee stacking situation. But I’ll settle for an improvement to the main heal for now.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Why would rampager be stronger then carrion? or a mix? or a mix of carrion and sin?

you might be right, but all power / condition combos have a power as minor stat…

Well the exact build that will be the meta might differ but the main point is that it will still be a dps meta. A gear stat that has all three in damage will still be better than a gear that has any of its stat in defense.

Norjena.5172:

Agony.3542:

It is not the stat combination that makes zerker so good. It is the game design that makes support and tank so weak.

This! And nothing else.

Without adding a soft trinity defensive or healinggear can´t be balanced. The problems here will be.

How do u want to make a “support/heal” X, a “tanky/control” Y and a “DPS” Z equal to each other without a soft trinity?

Just take 2/3 Zerk 1/3 Clerics and a few heal/support traits/skills to heal yourself and allies up? This will be completly the same “mindless” game as we have now. Only with less pew pew.

Whats with ranged combat? How do u want to balance melee and ranged combat in this game? Most bosses have only 1-3 attacks, most of them have no “attacking area”.
If u stack Melee u´ll get all attacks, if u stack ranged usually 1 less.

But Bosses will move>melees will lose dps, party dps is already lower cause “ranged dps” sucks in this game (even Staff Ele dps suxx in pure ranged partys).
Usually ranged combat is easier at most bosses, but aswesome boring. Picking up a ranged “DD” is most times bad for all melees. That´s…well rly bad.

I can´t see a way to balance classes/weapons without a trinity.

You do not have build diversity in a trinity system either. A dps-er will use a maximum dps build. A tank will use a maximum survival build. A healer will use a maximum healing build. And that’s it. In my opinion trinity brings nothing to the table in term of build diversity.

Furthermore, as things are in gw2, nobody in their right mind would ever party with a tank or healer.

J Eberle.9312:

EVEN MORE LEGIT PATCH NOTES

…

• To leave a party formed using the LFG tool one must wait approximately 1 hour. This is to ensure that dungeons are completed within an appropriate time as has always been intended. This also ensures that anyone who thinks they can just ‘up and leave’ a party because they think it’s full of ‘bads’ will stop and have a serious think about why they are playing this game.

…
-Enjoy
<3

Actually this is already the case. Try joining and leaving LFGs rapidly and see.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I would be embarrassed to admit I was in favor of the potential changes, simply because it would reveal to everyone that I was bad at the game and don’t know how to dodge. I guess some people have very little shame.

Also, no matter what happens, there will still be a best way to clear dungeons. And guess what: scrubs won’t be any better at that way either. What does that mean? It means you will still get kicked from group, and your crap builds will still not be looked for on the LFG. I feel like a lot of bad players feel like whatever this change will be is going to usher in a golden age of “anything goes” and every player in the game will be on exactly equal footing. Sorry to tell you: no matter what happens bad will still be bad. There will be a meta. It might be Rabid, it might be Rampager, it might be Zerker still. And regardless, there is no reason to believe if you hate the meta now you’ll like the next one at all.

This is all mostly a balance issue. If condition damage would function unrestricted and do about the same damage as a normally specced ppcrit (armor/runes) / ppt (trinkets) mix or v.v. , it would be viable…
It would open up builds for rampager/carrion (hybrids), rabids, dires, and all other condition related gear and it wouldn’t destroy the original meta. zerks could still do a lot of dmg, but might also buffs condition dmg, fury improves critical chance and therefore chances of placing conditions, banner of strength also buffs condition dmg…
banner of dicipline would add to crit chance… well It could work…

If it’s simply rebalanced such that condition damage does more, then rampager would become the next meta, and nothing changes in at all if you call it “dps meta”.

In my opinion, this problem cannot be fixed in a mechanical way because we want to reward dodges and people who learn encounters. Do we want a game where it’s unnecessary to even learn what the boss attacks are and just facetank? Or do you want a game with a bunch of unavoidable attacks such that learning it is useless and you simply have to bring armor?

But in such a game that rewards expert play, once someone learns it, there is no longer any necessity to bring armor and therefore all top elites use maximum dps builds. If anet actually finds a mechanical way to fix this, I’d worship them, truly.

Instead, I believe a more viable solution can be found in encounter designs and content design. As I mentioned in an earlier reply, there are quite a number of such bosses such as Mai Trin and bounty targets already in the game where glimpses of what the solution might be could be seen.

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

Personally I think I see some glimpses of hope in some of the PvE content that came (a bit) later than the original dungeons. Bosses such as Mai Trin and many guild bounty targets, in my opinion, are good directions, such that going all out on damage does not contribute that much to the fight, while support is needed but does not need to be entirely spec’ed trinity-style.

So I think it has more to do with content design rather than pure mechanics.

Asking the devs to completely redesign existing problematic PvE content might be a tall order, but hey, you have completely revamped whole dungeon paths before.

Personally I find no significant difference between 30 and 49. If you’ve been doing 30+ then you can keep doing the same thing in 49.

I have not personally tried rampager/rabid in high level fotm but I avoided for one theory: if there is even one other condition user in your party then your dps can be cut by perhaps half.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Also, just staying in grenades maintains warrior-level damage on its own. None of the other classes with high DPS stack buffs as well as an engie does either. You can trade some vuln/might for bomb auto or rifle burst but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s grenades pulling most of the weight.

In PvE the class isn’t outrageously broken or anything but it’s definitely one of the strongest. And it is literally due to one weapon that the entire class is balanced around. I don’t think any other class rides on a single weapon set as hard as the engie does on grenades.

Other classes also have this characteristic of having one weapon set that is far above all others in damage output. I’ve mentioned some of them earlier.

But moreover, I do not think this is a problem with skill balance. In the first place, this is a problem with dungeons being dps-centric that’s causing this situation where all classes home in on one maximum dps build instead of diversifying. Unless you fix this fundamental issue, this problem will never go away. People will simply compute another build that has the maximum dps and use that.

You nerf grenades, people switch to bombs. Then engineers rely on bombs as hard as they did grenades. What are you going to do now? Nerf bombs?

P.S. More often than not, engineers are found furiously swapping between their many kits instead of staying on grenades the whole time.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318 has done a great deal to further the engi community especially in the way of dungeons, for all he’s done to get the dungeon forums to recognize the engineer as a viable option in dungeons

And he wants it nerfed. Does not compute.

Even considered in your frame of thinking, I’m not sure what you’re trying to accomplish here. If you want build diversity inside of PvE dungeon speed runs (which is pretty much the only place where grenades dominate), the only thing that makes that possible is increasing the raw firepower of other kits to match warrior axe. Just buffing traits here and there will not make that happen. Nerfing grenade damage will also NOT make this happen. Engineers will simply be kicked on sight and you will have 0 build diversity.

Outside of dungeon speed runs, you can probably see that there is a healthy ecosystem of many different builds in WvW and PvP and most do not even touch nades.

Also, you might have forgotten but anet already nerfed grenades by a massive 30% precisely for this supposed issue of build diversity. Additionally, we actually have a few traits that are on-par with warriors: precise strike – sharpshooter, stick and move – empowering adrenaline, empowered – energy conversion matrix. The other things that warriors have better are simply anet loving warriors in general and probably less to do with engineers or grenades.

Let me see people LFG for “need zerk engies” first THEN we discuss a nerf.

In my humble opinion, I think it should be noted that the points of “the class is good, we are still fine without ###” and “this is unfairly biased against us” are separate issues. Everyone who still plays engineer of course agree with the former point, but this thread is about the latter point.

Everything else about every class was the same before ascended, and still the same after ascended, except that engineer kits are now 5% behind. What is the justification for this? We are still fine, yes, but why is anet putting engineers behind and behind with every little change?

It’s the same with the legendary and hobosack issue. Every engineer still playing the class has found ways to make it work, but what is the justification for making engineers the only class that have to deal with this? This is an unnecessary bias. Even a simple style/cosmetic change is all that it takes to fix this, for example making kits a small belt instead of huge backpacks larger than the character.

When the fractal got updated and they added a brand new set of runes … it was a signet rune. Does anet want everyone to quit engineers eventually or what?

For the past several months I’ve been playing PvE exclusively. Under certain conditions I actually agree with the OP but I do not agree with nerfing.

When going into dungeons with a party that knows the path very well (public or not), performs well, and its members are looking to clear with the fastest possible speed, the only measure of worth/success is DPS. In this limited-scope area of play, but probably comprises perhaps 80% of all dungeon LFGs, very little matters outside of DPS.

In this regard, the grenade kit by far offers the most value because many of engineer’s offensive traits proc with crit or attack especially vulnerability stacks (highly valued) and bleeds, and the grenades throw out 3 attacks. Moreover, skill 2, 4 and toolbelt are all bursts that can be used freely and quickly.

With the bomb kit, the effectiveness of these traits is reduced by two-thirds. None of the skills 2-5 offer any burst and the toolbelt bomb is undesirable in far too many situations mainly because of the popularity of melee stacking and the bomb would push the mobs away from the stack. No other kits come close.

Even so, I do not agree with nerfing grenades, because the situation is similar with other classes. A warrior only outputs his best damage with the axe combination (and its relevant traits) and the performance drops considerably when using other weapons/traits. A mesmer would almost always trait celerity/blades with small variation in domination/duelist allocation. And so on.

Most importantly, if grenades is nerfed, the engineer would lose its de-facto last and only on-par weapon in pve dungeon speed runs. We have other kits that do just fine, true, but not if you want a dps that is not embarrassing when compared to warrior axe. Heck, even as it is, the pve public dungeon-goers at large do not believe that grenades are on par and generally regard engineers as a burden to be carried.

Finally, before you ask for any engineer nerf for PvE, try making a party of three engineers and then put yourself on the LFG specifying speed run (or perhaps fotm 49). See how long it takes for you to get two more.

It did not give me any error message. The game simply shut down and back off to the login when I double click a character to play, and afterward did not update so it’d shut down again when I login and double click a character. My location is southeast asia.

Fixed after using the VPN.

It worked for me as well. Thanks a lot.

I still have this issue at this moment. The client refuses to update after a restart so I could not log in.

Conan.8046:

I can’t believe people are comparing Engineer 3 with Warrior…which can be traited to 100% chance to rally if you kill someone in vengeance. If you have a close fight and you both go down…engineer loses.

Terrahero.9358:

Conan.8046:

If you have a close fight and you both go down…engineer loses.

This applies to Engineer vs Anything.

Aswell as Anything vs Warrior.

One of a bunch of pretty clear examples of how unbalanced Downed State is. When 1 profession in a Downed fight is guarenteed to win 100% of the time.

Amazingly we still got people even in this thread saying warrior is the worst together with engineer. Anyway I did not intend to compare engineer with warrior. I’m just arguing in favor of the supposedly two worst. Too many people are considering downed skills from just the # of interrupts.

And anyway I did say warriors rallied the most.

If it’s only vigor you want then yes it’s more costly. But for the cost you also get swiftness on crit (which sometimes means you don’t need to use up that endurance) and also the option to get vigor without crit which is useful in some places, such as vs. bloom tree bosses which are immune to crit.

The engineer downed skill is not visually impressive like a thief/mes/ele but it is actually quite dangerous. If you’ve ever tried to down an engineer when it’s not perfectly safe to stomp then you’d notice. If you don’t finish it in 20 secs (which happens a lot in crowded fights) be prepared to see something drastic happen, such as everyone on your team flying off from ground zero. Doesn’t happen often but you can see this sometimes on capture points. Your team members that are low on health might even go straight down.

Similarly if you don’t down a warrior in 20 secs he’s gonna get up and hit you some more, no question asked. The warrior is probably the most rallied class I see around, even more in PvE.

Comparatively, thief/ele/mes can be annoying to kill/stomp but their downed skills generally pose no threat to you or your team whatsoever. Even if you suck at finding them, as long as you still find them in the end and keep up the shooting they’ll never rally.

I think the main advantage of PBR is you don’t have to switch in/out of FT kit to use it, so it’s less mental overhead and perhaps faster.

In some places FT 3 just doesn’t cut it, like Skyhammer (and using rifle 4 there is a bit risky).

pixfan.2407:

I don’t see engineers in PvE or Dungeons very often, and when I do I just can’t understand what they could offer to the team that other classes couldn’t.

As far as dungeons are concerned, you could probably ask this same question to rangers/necros or any class that isn’t zerker war/guard/mes (the latter mostly only requested for their portal).

Personally the only thing I’ve found wanting to provide and can’t provide in dungeons (or guild missions) as an engineer is a portal.

One thing you might want to look at is that engineers deliver the things other classes do differently. For example, a warrior does his full damage at close range, but the engineer does his maximum damage with a 1500-range nade. Guardians heal mostly at close range, but engineers can heal from a good distance away, which opens up non-tanky options when you want to provide heals.

This can open up some new, possibly more efficient ways to do things. For example, in cof p1 acolyte, most people make a full circle around the altar and clear acolytes as they go before they retreat into the cave. However, an engineer can camp the acolytes on the far side with 1500 range nades without aggro and kill them before the warrior even runs out of the cave, so the warriors can make only half a circle on the other acolytes and therefore faster and safer.

Unfortunately most people don’t really open up to new ways of playing so this kind of stuff is alien to most people. They kick us out of dungeon parties without asking too, and that’s why they all never realize what engineers can do.

I bet most people don’t know engineers can solo defend against bomb golems in coe p1. They know axe wars do it and never bothered to consider anything else.

Just barely finished T4 today with this build:

30/10/0/0/30 (5s cripple on immobilize)
rifle + sigil of fire
elixir U, elixir C, slick shoes

The main trick is, whenever mobs spawn near the exit side (at least halfway between the treasures and the exit), immediately stop attacking anything and run, even if it’s plunderer with gold. It’s very important that the just-spawn mobs do not attack you, then they will run all the way to the treasures and stop being a threat. Use super speed for this.

If you aggro them even a little (by continuing to attack plunderers as the new mobs spawn), they will hang around the middle instead and will return to attack you whenever you try to attack the plunderers. Eventually it becomes unmanageable at the end. It’s better to just lose the treasure while they spawn. But if you’re lucky, the timing will be good and you won’t lose any treasure.

Still, at around 1:30 this becomes impossible so just dodge/heal/elixir C while sniping the plunderers. Use elixir U on the plunderer that goes to the near exit. Slick shoes when things get messy.

All valid points. I agree that traits such as sharpshooter that’d normally go into such a build also need to be considered. I’d like to note about one thing though. Condition damage is weaker against high-vit, low armor targets and that’s where zerker shines. But obviously condition damage is ideal against high armor, low-vit target.

Also zerker does not need condition duration food/rune. :P

I think I spent most of my early engineer time with flamethrower just because I thought it was cool. Turned out it’s one of the better weapons in all of gw2 for tagging mobs in events and also good against swarms in personal story. For underwater use grenades in case you didn’t know.

The other slots are mostly used for anything that increases speed (med kit 5, elixir B, slick shoes) because there’s a lot of distance to cover. At skill point challenges I used turrets mostly. The low level stuff don’t really do anything nasty so you can skip out on condition clearing and stun breakers.

I actually prefer how pistol skills work but while out in the world exploring I use the jump shot to go across gaps/cliffs quite often and it’s a pain to switch them all the time so eventually I just used the rifle.

The thing with fast cast is if you use that and then you want to use jump shot and forget to disable it … you’ll end up at the bottom of the cliff. >_> I just double-press the skill key instead and it also throws where my mouse is.

Jigain.8231:

I respect your opinion, but I don’t agree. In my opinion, most conditions (especially burning, as in the FT#1) benefit much more from condition damage and duration than from power and precision. Also, not agreeing with "not having massive condition stacking", as I can keep an enemy (without condition cleansing effects) under permanent burning, poisoning, 20+ bleeding, and/or 20+ vulnerability with my build.

But, to each his own. This discussion merely highlights one of the prime features of the profession. The engineer has so many viable builds and playstyles that there’s a special build ("lol ahmagerd use my build u lvl 3 fracts scrublord") for everybody.

I understand. I simply said what I thought was best based on my experiences.

Still, I don’t think FT#1 is a particularly good example. A typical hit with FT#1 probably does something like 1500 direct damage + 350 burn. If you spec condition damage it’d probably do something like 600 burn and it wouldn’t tick another 600 unless you get a whole 1s extra (+100% duration). Even if it did, that’s 1500 + 1200. However, a zerk spec FT#1 would do perhaps 2500 + 350 and could reach 3000-plus(+burn) depending on target armor. It’s similar for other skills like nade 2. Also I think 20+ bleed is pretty tough to get for engineers. Permaburn and vulnerability are easy though.

I also didn’t recommend zerker just because of the high damage. I recommend against using toughness (in pve) due to how mobs calculate aggro, as I described earlier. That leaves using vitality for survival, but there is no power/prec/vit set while power/vit/cond is undesirable for engineers because there are many traits (as well as sigils) that proc on crit and therefore are dependent on prec. Therefore by elimination
that leaves only zerker and rampager. If you need survival then use traits.

Additionally the OP wants a single armor set with the most options available in terms of builds and accessible content. Zerker sounds cliched and unfashionable but I believe it’s the most appropriate for engineers and if he doesn’t like that then I would recommend Rampager. Other sets would corral him into particular builds or certain content. (Rabid would be very nice in wvw but you’d feel wanting more if you run dungeon with that, especially if there’s another condition user in your party.)

But certainly it’s more than possible/viable to use any other armor set (even the healing set) with engineers and be successful and enjoyable in any content. If I recommend the same thing as Jigain did that would be boring right?

What I was saying is that an engineer depends more on power than on condition damage. Most of engineer’s skills deal dual power/condition damage with more emphasis on the power side. For example, FT-1, nade-2, pistol-2, rifle-3. Many of the skills don’t even have a condition component. Furthermore, engineers don’t have massive condition stacking the way some other classes do.

It’s just my opinion of course, but for rabid vs. knight I think knight would be the one with better damage. And we haven’t even touched on the limitations of condition damage here. I’m not saying it would not work (never said so) but I personally believe the alternative to be better.

But I was anyway advocating zerker for him so a condition build alternative would be rampager instead of rabid.

I suppose if you weren’t satisfied with the damage output of static discharge on the rampager gear then you probably want the zerker gear at this point.

Bombs have a fuse because it’s designed to explode at that moment when you have moved a bit further and the opponents that are pursuing you have moved up to your previous position where your bomb is. This is a different use-case from plain melee fighting and it is particularly useful when running away.

If the fighting area is stationary then the bomb should still hit somebody (perhaps not the one you aimed for). If you still have problem, that explosion radius trait makes it pretty darn large.

Outside of the above two, it’s probably not a good scenario to use bombs. Switch to rifle/pistol momentarily or use glue.

Since your first mention was dungeon, I recommend you to get zerker. When you start doing dungeons a lot, you’ll eventually wish you had zerker. Also engineers usually aren’t expected to go up front or draw aggro (and perhaps even denied by your party if you offer), you won’t be needing much survival. If you need it you can always trait something.

If you want to keep the option to explore condition damage builds then perhaps rampager gears (power/PREC/cond). I’d advise against rabid or shaman because engineers are dependent on power. In my opinion, though, this is more for experimentation rather than effectiveness.

I also advise against knight because mobs love aggroing high-armor players so they will ignore melee fighters and run straight to you while you’re nading them even at maximum distance, which ruins the situation for everybody.

The original armor is rampager? I think that’s actually one of the better stats for an engineer, an alternative to berserker. I would keep it. Engineers still rely heavily on normal attacks but have a strong condition component and many traits proc on crit. Rampager has all the ingredients.

Engineers don’t stack bleeds to 25 by themselves but they steadily deal out a wide assortment of conditions.

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

Guys just hold pull back a sec , and read his post again..theres a few vitals that tip you off that he’s more than likely a victim of Deployable Turrets than an Engineer himself..

It’s kinda mind blowing to see anyone being a “victim” of deployable turrets really …

I honestly don’t think the mortar would be unbalanced even with 3000 range, especially if it keeps this projectile speed. And good luck firing out more than 2 rounds before some random AOE land on top of you quickly destroying the mortar.

Penguin.5197:

While were making demands make sure to equalize energy conversion matrix and the eles bountiful power. Both at grandmaster minor traits yet one is better than the other. ele and engie equality right?

But eles don’t have easy access to boons like guards and engies. Nothing like elixir B anyway. That’s why they have the trait at 2% while guards and engies have 1%.

Moddo.7105:

Can anyone explain why Natural Vigor is 5 pt talent and Adrenal Implant is a 30pt?

Sorry to revive an old thread but I have an alternative explanation. The reasoning is that Natural Vigor is on a survival-centric trait line, but Adrenal Implant is on an offensive trait line. When you spec into a defensive trait line, you’re sacrificing offensive power. However, an engineer speccing into Adrenal Implant is actually increasing in firepower.

This matters especially for zerker builds. Engineers need to spec 30 in explosives to get the power (and nade), and then need to split the remaining 40 between firearms and inventions. If you spec perma vigor then you lose 10 of that into a trait line that doesn’t help with your firepower very much. But if you spec Adrenal Implant, you get an effect that’s nearly as good (only 1.6 sec slower per dodge), doesn’t require swiftness to be first activated which may end up being just as fast, and doesn’t sacrifice firepower.

Considering that most advanced players rely much more dps+dodge than anything else, this trait justifies its place on the grandmaster tier since it is on an offensive trait line. In the end all traits take 1 slot of 3, grandmaster or not.

Lafiel.9372:

When two guilds have the same rush, guild members can CHOOSE to do get credit for the rush or not, a command prompt will pop up asking if you want to take credit for doing this etc. I think if everyone selects no, you can start your own guild rush. Having said that, unless it’s a majoity rule thing, i feel getting every single member to click yes is unlikely.

Hmm I’m not aware of this prompt since it wasn’t there by the time I got to the site. If this prompt can only be triggered by an officer this would solve a lot of problems.

Still, the timer of our rush in the mission tab remained at 5h throughout. There was no indication that a rush had been initiated.

Today our guild initiated the rush mission. Upon entering the site, we found that another guild was already in the process of doing the same course with 5 minutes left on the timer.

When the 5 minutes timer was up for the other guild, our own guild rush mission also immediately resulted in a success (with merits awarded) and disappeared from our mission tab. However, this means our guild had only 5 minutes to do the rush and most of our members did not manage to earn commendation.

This behavior, whether it is a bug or not, is highly undesirable as there are only a few possible courses and each rush is half an hour long, so the risk of clashing with another guild is substantial. Guilds could arrive on the scene with only a few minutes left on the timer and see their rush mission wasted.

P.S. Throughout the 5 minutes, our guild could not initiate our own rush at the site, and the timer on our mission remained at 5h. However, the mission disappeared as soon as the 5 minutes was up regardless.

replicacloned.2809:

Turning off auto-target is always a good idea. No matter the class.

I personally think auto-target isn’t that bad. Only FT has any real trouble with it. Engineers tend to be button-heavy with all the kit swapping and instant-pickup healing turret and everything else, so not having to tap target-nearest after something goes out of range is a big help.

I find that FT works a lot better if you turn the auto-targeting off and just fire without having a target.

You can get stuck inside that ice wall, similar to how you can get stuck inside a fort wall in wvw. However, there is a chance to get out at halfway when the boss starts summoning more ice walls and teleporting everyone around. Keep running and jumping and you’ll get out.

Well, even if invisibility works, you could still be seen running around. I was even added to a party while invisible. The concept kinda doesn’t work that well in a game like this.

And often they don’t think you’re trying to be invisible or anything. They just think the friend list/guild functions bugged out, as they often are.

He has been down for many days now.