Guild Wars 2

The elite specialization traitline only appears on the last row (from the top) of traits… Drove me crazy for a few moments when HoT came out.

Or you could indeed follow what other, highly experienced people say, like our good friend Wolfineer : http://wolfineer.com/thebuilds/

It just highlights the engineers’ proficiency at noscoping !

Seriously though, getting back the effects from the Predator on kits would be nice.

Being able to lock movement to bipedal by pulling out a kit is very useful when doing jumping puzzles.
I did bind the stow weapon key long ago, as Helasia suggests, but it is indeed a bit fiddly if you want to proc Streamlined Kits every 10s for that sweet perma-swiftness.

Welp, I joined the Predator-wielding engineers club today (took me 3 years)… Indeed I could find no effects whatsoever on anything else than rifle and downed #1.
A tad disappointing, but here’s hoping that some fancy toolbelt/kits effects will be added back in at some point.

I also really enjoy using action camera, so first things first : thank you Joel Helmich for this very neat feature.

Here’s what in my opinion would make it even better:

• make “ground targeting: fast with range indicator” play nice with “left click hold to attack” (= disable range indicator on left click, but not skill #1 button)
• have a new bind to toggle prioritizing allies targeting instead of foes (to alleviate function gyro woes)

Full disclosure : I main engineer.
Also, grenades.

Alkalissa.1706:

Right clicking in action camera still has the issue of prioritizing enemies over allies, so you just end up targeting the thing that was killing someone rather than being able to res them.

Exactly ! I switched to action camera and am pretty happy with it, except when rezzing someone at the feet of an enemy with the gyro. To trigger the rez in this case we have to:

• toggle action cam off
• locate the pointer arrow
• select the downed player
• send the function gyro
• toggle action cam on

We engineers are no strangers to having to push a lot of buttons, but this completely breaks the flow. With action camera, pointing the crosshair at a downed ally should make the contextual function gyro action pop up.

Ooh, that’s nice. I have always enjoyed getting around the maps with perma-swiftness. Nice to know we won’t lose this perk after all.

It is indeed as ShadowPuppet says : there is no “overwriting” fields. OP’s PSA premise is just plain wrong, sorry.
When a finisher is used on overlapping fields, the oldest field is used. So this should only be an issue if the people laying down the water fields are careless.
Furthermore, engineers are hardly the main “offenders” when it comes to light fields : guardians put light fields all over the place (hammer 1 chain end, mace 2, staff 3, greatsword 4…). Do you think Super Elixir in particular is troublesome because it is hard to tell what type of combo it provides ?

Rennoko.5731:

NeryK.5301:

While I agree the 600 range is a bit short, the axe is a ranged weapon. So the lack of an attack chain is not unusual at all. Ranged attack chains are the exception, not the norm (only example I know of is mesmer scepter).

It is indeed a bit underwhelming though, but buffing it would probably hurt the usefulness of the dagger (which still lacks a cleave).

Necro scepter has a chain.

Indeed it does ! So that’s two.
I’ve been playing with power builds for so long it slipped my mind.

While I agree the 600 range is a bit short, the axe is a ranged weapon. So the lack of an attack chain is not unusual at all. Ranged attack chains are the exception, not the norm (only example I know of is mesmer scepter).

It is indeed a bit underwhelming though, but buffing it would probably hurt the usefulness of the dagger (which still lacks a cleave).

I can confirm overlay support works fine indeed with this custom version.

Unfortunately mumble devs have announced this fix won’t make it into the 1.2.4 version (currently in feature freeze before release). We will have to wait for the snapshot versions post-1.2.4 to get this fix in an official build.

On the upside, with fast cast you halve the “grenade 1”-induced strain on your fingers. On the downside, it is hard to keep track of the pointer in fights as it disappears when you press the right mouse button to turn.

I have tested the effects of projectile finishers with light fields and so I can confirm that it is possible to cure condition on self using projectile + light but only at melee range (it bears repeating I think). The cleansing effect only applies to yourself if you are really close to your target.

Not convinced ? See for yourself. A test case can be easily be setup with forest spiders (southwest of harathi hinterlands for example, as they both cripple and poison) using super elixir, rifle turret toobelt, personal battering ram toolbelt (100% chance finishers that do not travel back to self).

I would gladly settle for an attack toggle on grenade skill 1. As in “do no change ground targeting, just keep throwing grenades where my pointer is until I press 1 again”.

That would be a QoL improvement for everyone using fastcast (aka anyone serious about using grenades at all), and not diminish the skill element of predicting your target movement.

In my experience, Kamahl, gkaare and cottage are right : since the last few betas, antidote has cured a single condition. That is the way it is, plus quite logical from a balance point of of view.

LaronX.8079:

You use spectral walk befor you hit the ground two times in a row( about 3sec befor if you never done it). That way you will get ported to the place you have been a second ago resseting you fall hight counter

Well I can confirm it currently also works with Death Shroud, I just jumped to the bottom of Rata Sum with 10% LF and ended up surviving with full health and 0 LF simply by entering DS just before reaching the ground.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Now, try jumping all the way down to the bottom of Rata Sum with full life force. You will be 100% dead.

Try jumping down with Spectral Walk. Timed properly, you will land at 100% life.

Which is better for cliff-diving? Keep in mind Spectral Walk also is one of the best skills in the game for actual utility (stun break, long duration swiftness, teleport-juking, and life force gain when hit)

Oh. Then I would be curious to know what is the tipping point between landing with full health like the guy on the video and landing dead on arrival. Besides, I already use spectral walk regardless of the base jumping “feature”.

Issues I would like to be prioritized:

1. Grenades vanish in destructible walls in WvW, thus doing no damage to anyone on top

2. Cone attacks miss a lot when the camera is not pointing to target (not engineer-specific)

3. Skills like Overcharged Shot are put on cooldown with no effect when used while not facing target

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Spectral Walk, actually. Necros are the only class that can jump into the canyon in Rata Sum and live (I have screenshots from down there to prove it). It’s actually fully detailed down there, which I found surprising.

Cliffs are a great escape route for necros with spectral walk, provided they know how to use it.

OK, you made me doubt but here is a video showcasing this point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8u3fC25VCM

I have both a necro and ele in their 40s and have a hard time deciding which one to level first. I must say the temptation to jump on the d/d ele bandwagon is great, in a WvW perspective.

KirinDave.6451:

…

Please stop making sense ! This could set a dangerous precedent

About point 3 : necros do have the jumping from cliff with DS escape plan right ? Alright it’s situational (unlike ele’s freaking RTL), but still counts in my book.

SpreadCheeks.3801:

Nerf doesn’t apply in WvW.

Yes it does, to all game types. Grenades behave the same everywhere since the last large update (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-December-14-2012)

I often join the zerg in WvW, then proceed to magnet pull people victims into its maw and keep them there while they are being chewed on. I used to like lobbing grenades on forts but nowadays it seems everyone have figured out the destructible walls bug (plus there was -that- nerf of course).

It also helps that I have a guardian to fall back on when I get my kitten handed back to me one time too many.

tigirius.9014:

To make things worse they have made the condi damage between classes actually tick at different amounts. My friends guards burns for example in condi build with the same type of armor had the initial hit and did 20-24 more damage per tick then my engis grenade/FT ticks do. My thief’s bleeds do about 13-15 more damage then my bleeds on my engi and my poison attacks on my ranger do more damage per tick then my engi’s EG attacks.

So there’s definitely something wrong here.

Um, what ? This sounds highly dubious (honestly, my first reaction was “nonsense !”). Did you check the overall condition damage stat for each character before doing your tests ?

JRo.9415:

Do all the “On Crit” sigils have ICDs? For instance, Superior Earth, Superior Strength? There is no ICD listed on the tooltip.

All on-crit sigils have a CD, as do all on-swap sigils. Furthermore, on-crit and on-swap CDs are shared ! So when dual-wielding, the following setups have a consistent outcome :
- on-crit/passive
- on-swap/passive
- passive/passive
- on-crit/same on-crit

Oxstar.7643:

But one thing can’t be denied. For the love of god, FIX the bugs with the skills. PLEASE. Backpack generator does NOTHING, and turrets STILL fire at whatever they feel like.

You might want to pick other examples. Backpack regenerator does work, and it always did. It grants you passive health regeneration (NOT the regeneration boon, so it stacks with it for even greater healing), you just do not see the regeneration ticking until you take damage.

As for turrets… Pet AI in general is perfectible (ask rangers and necros), but turrets have serious design issues regarding use outside of sPvP, but I would not call these bugs.

Also, not using kits auto-attack ? Grenadier and Flamethrower builds would like a word with you I think. Hell, since you seem to like providing support and use elixir gun, you could spam Tranquilizer Dart for perma-weakness on hard-hitting targets (also our best single-target bleed application).

Amadeus.5687:

So after watching a 100% glass cannon one trick pony warrior attack people from safe place’s most of the time, hitting people running a way, and is showcaseing nothing else but “Hey if my enemies is stupid or don’t notice what I’m doing I can pew pew them”, and afterwards watch a quite well made video with a Engineer doing a way better job in harder fight’s you want to reroll? Goes for the rest of you guy’s in the thread that compare, you really think big number’s is what make a class good or not? <.< (Not that the Engineer movie is much more then huge number’s to, but at least some of the footage is actually a good fight vs a skilled player, and not just random shooting at fleeing enemies)

Well, both videos showcase glass cannon one-trick pony builds (static discharge vs kill shot). Except one of them is really a glass BFG9000 build. And well, at the end of the day, yes bigger numbers do determine who the victor is. Sure, WvW is not all about killing a single target, but hey, it sure cannot hurt your team when you run around one-shotting the other guys.

Even though I’ve been enjoying this engineering gig since BWE2, I just might take the hint too :/

FourTwenty.4268:

NeryK.5301:

My 2 cents : I find thieves extremely frustrating to fight because stealth has no hard counter

and THIS is why people think they’re so OP lolol

they honestly feel there’s no way to counter the class/mechanic. it makes me laugh so hard when people say this.

pssst, you know you can kite people in the game right? you know you cant facetank everyone and mash 1, 2, 3, 4 in order to win right?

there’s dozens and dozens of tips on how to counter each and every class in the game. it’s not my fault, or the developers fault that you refuse to learn how to counter the mechanic

You misunderstand my point, in your haste to go “lol l2p noob”.

My problem is not getting killed by a stealthy thief. If I do not counter his burst and get killed, OK fair enough, that is my fault. My problem is that once the surprise is over, and my counter-attack ongoing, he can choose to leave at his own leisure (and come back later for another shot of course). I don’t think it is fair, and so find the class frustrating to fight against.

Note : this is for a WvW type situation.

My 2 cents : I find thieves extremely frustrating to fight because stealth has no hard counter. Thieves that build for stealth pull out from engagement with disheartening ease, or even harass an entire group with relative impunity.

In other games with stealth mechanism, there are usually counters. For example the stealth class also has a detect stealth skill (on a significant cooldown). Or stealth is temporarily disrupted by damage. Or conditions show their visual effect when applied on a stealthed target. Or stealth is not perfect invisibility, rather a not quite transparency effect.

In short : whatever helps reduce cheesy behaviour and promote skillful use of stealth.

akamon.2769:

when i do that with my male Guard, most of my allies inevitably move away from me in a circular radius. i wonder why. : (((

and i’m all, “noo, stay close!!”

“Aaaaaany second now…”

Galen.9042

That depends on your definition of “penalty” and “necessary”. You’re still losing dps. Pre-nerf, I ran around with grenadier/rifle, both traited for reduced CD, and would bunderbuss on CD (when it was safe).

Entirely agreed. I would be interested to know what you replaced grenadier/rifle with. I am currently struggling to find a new build to my liking. Pistol/shield/flamethrower still does not cut it for me, even with life stealing food buffs. What do you think is our best option for sustained dps now ?

Renewed Focus all the way. It does not have a very “elite” feel but that’s all right because those trying to burst you down do not see it coming either (gotta love seeing those sweet little ‘Invulnerable’ popping up). It also works well with altruistic healing.

The others are good too but so much harder & situational to use…

I would say the engineer population finally getting access to sigils on kits might explain it. On-crit sigils work nicely with the flamethrower, and on-swap are a good match for kits in general. The popular power/grenade builds main damage source have been nerfed hard, so it makes sense that might stacking sigils are in high demand right now.

Disclaimer : I got myself a sigil of battle for my engineer a few days ago.

Edit : oops, Crows beat me to it.

Drop Bear.5839:

Would you guys do it even if you didn’t get an extra tool belt slot for that thing?

No, not without the toolbelt component. Otherwise yes, most certainly in a lot of situations. Supply crate is not bad, but turret tend to be wiped out fast in AoE heavy environments.

Well we are going to have to agree on disagreeing there, because I think YOU are doing it wrong. In fact, apart from the elementalist part, I disagree with pretty much everything you said.

The incentive to switch kits is the fact that there a negligible cooldown penalty on doing so, thus being able to always use the best tool for the job. Since the engineer was my first character, I had to wait until I rerolled another profession to realize how much utility kit switching brings, compared to normal weapon swap.

Also, rotations on a single kit ? All right, when you are PvE’ing by spamming grenades like a turret and don’t have aggro you can use a “rotation”. In other situations, when you have to do dps and survive at the same time (aka “the hard part”), you really gimp yourself by using skills as soon as they are off cooldown. Some skills should be kept for when they are needed, these include : net shot, overcharged shot, magnetic shield, static shield, flash grenade, gear shield, magnet, smoke bomb, glue bomb… Thus, when playing with kits, switching should be used early and often to maximize their usefulness.

Sezrar.8915:

*If you are suggesting sigil of battle I’m going to lose respect in your math and bring up opportunity cost.

Please do bring up opportunity cost. Are you implying that in a fight you do not switch kits on a regular basis, say at least once every 10 seconds (thus maintaining those 6 might stacks at no additional cost) ? I’d say that would be quite missing the point of engineer kits.

However I find OP’s claims misleading. It is of course a straight nerf compared to other kits. So shrapnel is better now, and we have to take it to approach our previous damage ? Well gee thanks. There is nothing special about grenades regarding sigils. They were just way ahead other kits, and the sigils introduction simply presented an opportunity to bring them in line while sugar-coating it a bit.

I’d like to say that we got what we wanted and are no longer pidgeon-holed into using grenades, but somehow I doubt it. For example I still feel charging with a mild annoyance-thrower is suboptimal, on-crit sigils or not.

Isslair.4908:

And how many damage you gain from 210 power? Just wonderin’

Well… it depends !
I am going to make a few assumptions here, and round up some numbers, taking the rifle hip shot as a reference :
exotic rifle average damage = 1100
engineer character power = 2000
hip shot skill coefficient = 0.65
target armor (heavy golem) = 2600
(Feel free to correct these numbers if they are inacurrate)

Normal damage = 1100 * 2000 * 0.65 / 2600 = 550
Damage with sigil of force (best case scenario + 5% total) = 1100 * 2000 * 0.65 / 2600 * 1.05 = 577.5
Damage with sigil of battle (6 stacks of might, 210 power) = 1100 * (2000 + 210 ) * 0.65 / 2600 = 607.75

There you go.

AlietteFaye.7316:

I can’t believe that everybody still thinks that the 5% damage sigils are the best way to go. If you’re not using Sigil of Fire, you’re hurting yourself.

I got myself a sigil of battle, those 6 stacks of might come in handy, giving you 210 power and 210 condition damage for little to no effort.

Does anyone know how the +5% damage is factored in the damage formula ? Is it applied to the base weapon damage (meh) or to the final result (not bad). ?

Chickenshoes.6250:

grenades still work for zerg spam and wall defense, even if not as much as before.

True. And those are situations where your individual damage output is not as critical as the pressure put on enemies by sustained damage and application of conditions.

They can try and pry my grenades from my cold, dead claws.

I would like a rocket boots-like escape move : “Oh so you downed me ? But I can still flyyy-oh kitten the cliff !”

Dispari.3980:

One thing at a time, man. If grenade is the only one that’s above the others, it makes sense to bring it down. Then deal with other things systematically.

Well, I’d rather have the others brought up to former grenade level.

I am mainly disgruntled about this change in PvE : the only times I would sit in grenade kit spamming 1 would be PvE solo or group encounters, where enemy movements are easily predicted. It’s a straightforward loss to sustained damage there.

As far as WvW goes, in my experience it does not matter as much since I rely more on the rifle to hit consistently and grenade barrage to burst down targets. Oh well, I used try and carpet bomb every shadow refuge in sight but I don’t know if it is worth bothering anymore.

Yeah it was good while it lasted, but we all knew a fix would be coming eventually. Except maybe those who first tried their hand at engineering after this bug was introduced. To those, this fix may indeed feel like a harsh nerf.

Seems to me that certain on-swap sigils (Hydromancy, Energy) have an “initial cooldown”. Once the fight is engaged, you have to wait for the duration of the sigil cooldown before it procs for the first time.

Here goes my general-purpose PvE build, tried and tested in all open world PvE areas. It features:
– good (but not stellar) damage through grenades, jump shot, blunderbuss, acid leap
– control through net shot, overcharge shot, elixir F, freeze grenade, flash grenade
– survivability though super elixir (x2), elixir R, medkit, backpack regenerator trait and perma-swiftness with runes of the centaur

I typically engage groups of mobs with drop stimulant/grenade barrage/jump shot/blunderbuss/acid leap/freeze grenade and then spam grenades.

Stats-wise it has less vitality than displayed on the build tool, and more precision. I also like to repurpose on the fly it when running dungeons, depending on the situation at hand (e.g. switch to bombs, elixirs, switch more defensive traits).

It translates fairly well to large groups WvW where grenades are quite good, and the group healing of the elixir gun is used to its full extend.

For solo/small party skirmishes, not so much. In that case I switch Elixir Gun for Tool Kit, mainly for the gear shield and magnet (also a “prybar in the face” © every now and then), replace Elixir R by Elixir S and change traits away from grenades as I struggle to hit consistently with them when target is not immobilized or at melee range.

digitalfodder.5086:

This is literally the most useless skill in the game and has not been thought through at all.

Overreacting much ?

NickDollahZ.5348:

I had alot of teammates rage at me when i try to heal them and lay that light field over their water field and they try to blast… kittenolol

Well they should not ! When two combo fields overlap, a finisher combines with the oldest one.

Erm, didn’t you just ask the same question right here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Alt-a-Holic-has-it-down-to-two/ ?

I have both an engineer (main) and guardian at 80 (exotics included, save some trinkets).

I picked the guardian for my alt specifically because the gameplay seemed completely different from the engineer (one is range focused, the other melee ; one has a lot of active gameplay with kits, the other offer a more paced experience with lots of passive bonuses). That turned out to be quite accurate.

I play a power/rifle/grenade/kits sustained dps engineer and a hammer/staff/altruistic healing tanky guardian. Both are quite capable of taking on whatever the game throws at them, in Orr and elsewhere.
Performance-wise (probably due to build choices) I kill stuff faster with the engineer, and kite enemies a lot (plenty of tools to do so). With the guardian I am able to jump in the fray, stay there and live to tell the tale.

So you will have to ask yourself whether you would rather :
* fight mostly from a distance OR mostly up close ?
* have a lot different skills to react to situation (kits) OR pick the right time to unleash your powerful boons (virtues, shouts, consecration) ?
* blow things up (grenades, bombs), jump around wildly (jump shot, acid leap, rocket boots) OR stay put and laugh as you soak up damage and spread buffs around ?

For solo play my preferred choice is the engineer, I love the variety and whacky style of the profession.

PS : of course you can also build a tanky engineer and a glass cannon guardian (I think) but IMHO this would be suboptimal for PvE at least.

MikeT.9428:

For those that like the engineer it’s a fun class but if you are looking to kill things as fast as a warrior, you should play a warrior.

^QFT

However OP should keep in mind that all builds are not created equal. If you cannot make your flamethrower build work for you (as much as I like the style of the FT, I never could), try something else.

I started as a turret-lovin’ (thumper, rocket) pistol condition engineer. Then around level 40 I found I was struggling so I went back to the drawing board and tried other things. I dumped the turrets, switched to a power-based rifle/grenades/elixir gun build and found that I wrecked havoc once again.
The price of green gear on the AH is so low respecc’ing costs next to nothing. Experiment with things before you hit 80 !

Also, charrzooka does not fit at all with kits-based gameplay (need to switch kits a lot). If it behaved like a kit during its 60 seconds or 15 shots duration I would consider using it, but not as it is right now.

NevirSayDie.6235:

In addition to the +20% swiftness duration, the sixth centaur rune gives area swiftness for 10 seconds when you use a heal skill. So, using six centaur runes and the med kit would be perma-swiftness, even without any other traits or + boon duration.

Unfortunately the cooldown is wrong on the tooltip. It is actually 15 seconds, not 10. Investing 30 points in alchemy is the way to go to achieve true perma-swiftness with runes of the Centaur. I usually run with 20, so I get a 1 second downtime for 14 seconds of swiftness. Medkit 5 skill can be used to bridge the gap when playing solo, but is inadequate when you are boosting a group.