Guild Wars 2

Let’s be fair… condition damage was absolute crap for more than 3 years from GW2’s release day till HoT, doing less burst damage, less damage overall and being severly crippled by a global stack-cap that one single player could reach. That’s nothing compared the the state of the game nowadays, where power dps are just slightly worse than condition builds and it will only need a very small amount of tweaking to get the balance right.

Blaeys.3102:

More and more, players are looking for new ways to split the player base – to find rationale and tools, logical or not, to help them decide who they are willing to be friends with in game and who they never want anything to do with.

Yes, please. I would love to have more tools to split the playerbase into one group that lies about simple things like their build, equipment or experience, because they want to get carried without contributing anything, and a second group that is worth playing with.

Let’s be honest for one moment: Nobody would request ridiculous amounts of LI if people wouldn’t lie about their experience. And nobody would even consider requesting api keys, if the same kind of people wouldn’t demonstrate on a regular basis that they spend more time learning to manipulate chatcodes than thinking about their character’s role or reading some boss guide to know at least the basic mechanics.

Unfortunately the main problem in being a viable healer is not who can heal in raids, but who can do so without doing close to 0 dps. It’s a fact, that you don’t need much healing most of the time, so the important thing is to contribute something else while your heals aren’t needed.

And the at moment, the sad answer is:
- Druids can heal while still providing a meaningful contribution to dps through their offensive buffs (spotter, spirits, glyph of empowerment, grace of the land)
- Minstrel Chronomancers can provide additional healing without losing much damage (because their personal dps is already low, they are brought for their offensive group buffs (quickness, alacrity)), while also doubling as a tank

Every other healer is limited to the rare occasion when your group constantly struggles to stay alive… and that’s mostly only an issue in inexperienced groups, before they learn to manage the boss mechanics and to avoid avoidable damage.

That’s a persistant bug not tied to Big Ol’ Bomb, but affecting all non-targeted toolbelt skills.
Targeted skills work fine firing the discharge at your target, but every skill without a target isn’t aimed at the nearest opponent or the one you have selected, but based on your camera-positioning (in the same way most skills fire in the direction you look when you have no target selected).

It has been this way since the pre-hot rework for traits at least and was never really fixed.
After all it’s nothing important but just another engineer issue^^

You forgot the mighty function gyro…

- which was promised additional functions in pve at release.

Even a simple interact at range ability when your function gyro is ready would be more a gimmick than a real mechanic but at least it would do anything…

Shrapnel trait doesn’t work for underwater grenades.

The set you’re looking for is “Rampager” (PRE/cond/pow). Available at lvl60/lvl62 (blue/yellow)…

“Sinister” armor (same combination but with condition damage as main stat instead of precision) is available at lvl80 and not from randomly dropped stuff. (But with lvl80 you should better start to go for “Viper” (4-stat set with condition duration) (HoT required)).

scorekeeper.6524:

I made Minstrels gear trying to support…yeah, bad decision!

At least you can now handkite with your engineer at deimos too… :-D

No, allowed is no big word here… ;-)

“We have no problems with players using a 3rd party tool whose scope is only to collect and visualize combat data gathered directly from the game client. Anything beyond that scope is still considered a violation of the User Agreement.”
[…]
“You are correct. Combat data is defined as any information that is created due to the usage of skills or impact on players due to skill usage (by the player/s or an outside source).
Edit/Update: These statements are particularly targeted at a “DPS Meter” or functionality built around the capture of combat data. Features outside of that most likely fall under “Quality of Life” changes and should be removed from DPS meters if they want to be considered compliant with our rules."
(see here)

So it’s allowed to capture combat data directly from the client. A dps meter only capturing and showing combat data without any other features is officially compliant with anet’s rules.

It’s even worse than that. You can kill the mob and the attack still continues ;-)

When Guild Wars 2 is the most demanding thing you want to do with your PC 1500$ is about 2-3 times the amount of money you need.

GW2 isn’t new and not really demanding at all. And it’s not programmed to really use high end hardware either…

Things to look for:
- a mid class graphics card (you don’t need more as the game’s bottlenecked by cpu most of the time)
- a pentium cpu (while amd gives you more cores and more overall power for the same money intel’s single core performance is better. and GW2 is really bad at using multiple cores, so low number of processor cores with higher single cpu performance is better for playing than a setup with more cores and higher overall performance but lower single core power)
- ram (the more the better; mmorpgs are very demanding when it comes to memory, GW2 is no exception. i would prsonally aim at 16GB at least.)
- ssd’s are fine for speeding up things but if you have enough ram heavy loading only occurs when switching maps. your choice if it’s worth the money for you, if it only makes the difference between waiting for 5 seconds instead of 15 when you change to another map… you will rarely ever see any difference while actually playing

But isn’t it highly uninteresting for this topic which game mode requires more skill to do successfully?
It’s more about: where do i get rewards without any skill at all?

You can be absolutely awful at pvp (or afk most of the time) and still grind all rewards. It just takes longer.

But you will have a very hard time getting any raid reward at all if you contribute nothing. (Unless you pay others of course)

All caused by the simple fact that raids can just replace you while pvp teams have to live with the trash teammates they get.

Voice-communication is highly overrated…
Sure it’s nice to have, for explanations and for people still learning, but you don’t really need it if you know what you’re doing.

I clear the raids every week (with pugs exclusively) and if they use TS, it’s more used for smalltalk than anything else. The full run last week started with the question if someone needs ts and as nobody cared we did it without… It really makes no difference with experienced people 99% of the time.

I also recall one occasion (early december i think) where the last one to join the group told us he was deaf so it wouldn’t make any sense for him to join. He got told that we of course expect him to do his job regardless and will replace him if it doesn’t work out… He played backup for cannons at sabetha (where he had to watch for himself if a throw fails and he is needed ofc) and green circles on VG (here he just asked the commander to mark the 4 regular guys, so he could easier see if they all make it in time) and it was absolutely no problem.

Long story short: If you have a reason for not joining voicecom i’ve rarely seen a group that had a problem with that. But of course it’s your job to make up for it (which is completely doable).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Thief-Raid

You can actually play full support condi chrono. :-D
But in the end it’s just the same group support/low personal damage as the power build, doing condition damage instead. So it’s not really worth building a whole new set of gear for it…

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRArf7encfCFoh9fCmfCEgilejqeUb1X9MFKhWzMAOtMC-TVihABOpE0rJIAsPAf6HYU9HOV+Z2CDS+EAa6kAQKgAnbB-w

Actually daredevil’s a pretty solid raid class.
You still do more damage than tempests (although the gap isn’t as big as it was before ~100% alacrity uptime through double chrono comp) against any boss not static and big, with strong CC and high mobility.

Tempests win vs. gorseval (big/static target and can orb clear on range), sloth (he’s big, mostly static if tanked in the middle) and keep-construct (this is the boss that really favors tempests even giving them additional damage through tempest defense trait).

So you win vs. vale guardian, sabetha (only slightly more dps here), trio (but who cares for trio anyways^^), matthias (tempests can help clear ice patches; you bring more damage, more cc and slightly more survivability/mobility when poisoned) and xera (higher dps and daredevil is very strong at shard clearing. use your mobility to mellee down the shard in seconds (not gaining any relevant amount of stacks)).

Edit: because i forgot some small detail… All these theoretical dps doesn’t include needed dodges of course. Something a daredevil can do with staff #5 without losing out damage.

Doctor.1905:

Isn’t condi damage superior to power for a ranger especially in fractals where toughness scales like crazy? Ranger deals the highest condi damage right now.

Not since September…

Toughness and Health Scaling Rebalance
Until now, as fractal scale has increased, creature toughness has also increased. Default toughness reaches as high as 2,384 at scale 100. This huge increase in toughness has made power builds much less viable than condition builds. Ideally, power builds and condition builds should be fairly equally viable at all scales.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, creatures in low-tier fractals have health and toughness that is disproportionately lower, such that parties can fly through these fractals without even having an opportunity to see many of the mechanics.
The purpose of this rebalance is to make condition and power builds viable and also increase the duration of low-tier encounters without making them any more difficult. Overall, low-tier fractals should progress at a slower, more reasonable pace, and high-tier fractals should progress a bit faster for parties of mixed composition.

Toughness scaling has been removed.
Default toughness has been slightly increased to 1,475.
Health has been slightly increased for all creatures to compensate for lost toughness.
The low end of health scaling has been increased for bosses to ensure that encounters do not progress too quickly at low tiers.
Fixed a bug in which veterans would have too much health for their archetype.

maddoctor.2738:

The main problem with diversity is that we don’t have clear roles. For example, in many other games you can go and make a team and ask for a Tank, a Healer or a DPS, but the specific build that will fit the spot is rather open in most cases. In Guild Wars 2 you are not asking for a tank, you are asking for a Chrono tank, you are not asking for a Healer, you are asking for a Druid healer, you are not asking for Offensive Support, you are asking for a PS Warrior, you are not asking for DPS, you are asking for a DPS Tempest, you are not asking for Condi DPS, you are asking for condi Rangers and so on.
[…]

Problem is, there are no roles in this game by design.

You don’t have a tank that stacks additional armor, higher chance to block/parry/whatever, damagereduction and additional aggro-generating skills to be the designated guy to take the hits. We got bad scaling defensive stats and active defense (endurance/dodge) instead… and no real aggro system either.
All it takes to tank in raids is a more thoughness than the others and if it weren’t for that minor +400 thoughness while rezzing trait every ps warrior has to take, you would tank with a single piece of equipment with only a few points of thoughness.

You don’t have a real healer either, who’s job it is to keep everybody alive (and rezz dead people), because every class has a selfheal and can help get up downed players instead (and most classes have additional traits/skills to heal, themselves or others too).

This game is just not designed that way. Unavoidable damage is low (even in raids), everyone can keep himself alive and there’s no aggro system to manage.
It’s all about damage, either the damage you do or more importantly the damage buffs you give your group/subgroup while doing reasonable amounts of damage yourself.

And while human’s are creatures of habit and you can really find “lfg chronotank or heal druid” posts, they are not needed at all…

You don’t need a “chronotank”. You need some random guy to tank the boss (read: have some thoughness equipment to change to). I have tanked all (tankable) raidbosses with my daredevil (and most of them with a couple of other classes too^^).
What you need is a chrono for the damage groupbuffs unique to the class (quickness/alacrity)

You don’t need a “healdruid”. Druids are just the class that can do the job while bringing superior group buffs (spotter, frost/sun spirit, glyph of empowerment, grace of the land). You don’t bring a second druid, because you need more healing but because you want to buff the other half of the raid too. And in an optimized group these druids play full berserker (or condi) anyway.
And all pugs really looking for a druidhealer (or 2 of them^^), because they fail to avoid avoidable damage and need someone who covers their mistakes, should better bring a healtempest (which is by far the better healer). Why aren’t they doing it? Because druid brings the offensive buffs and even with 0 healing output they would still be needed to optimize damage.

Then you mentioned PS Warriors. Guess what… Before the introduction of phalanx strength groups found other ways to stack group might. Was the warrior not useful then? Sure it was. 1 in each group to bring their unique offensive buffs (banners). Remove phalanx strength from the game and groups will adapt, use other builds to stack might and still play 1 warrior per group of 5.

The meta isn’t about the chrono being the superior tank or the druid being the best healer.
Because there are no roles (in a classical mmorpg sense), it’s about stacking as much offensive buffs (and some needed utility) as possible and most of them are unique to a class.
Warrior/druid/chrono have fixed slots in a group because they provide that. If they can do some additional job, like tanking or providing some groupheal that’s even better, but completely secondary.

Which leaves other 2 out of 5 slots to be just randomly filled with some people doing damage (or -rarely- bringing some encounter-specific utility). Yes, that’s 4 slots in a whole raid for 6 remaining classes… And even tempest aren’t anything special here. What keeps them in the meta is their ridiculous overpowered damage against big static targets. Without that you wouldn’t see more “lfg tempest” posts then as you see “lfg daredevil” posts now.

tldr: You may think that clearly defined roles would be better for the game. Maybe most of the players agree. But it’s just not designed that way. And realisticly (and keeping with your “roles”) every raid lfg should read “lfg 2×5 (unique) offensive supporters/dps”.

As for traits/trait line selection, let’s take a look at the possible traitline combinations and some key traits (basically choosing 2 lines out of Domination/Illusions/Inspiration):

While tanking your main job (beside staying alive^^) is to keep your group buffed with quickness and alacrity (even more so because your personal damage is even lower than the damage of a full zerker chrono). With that in mind, let’s take a look at possible trait combinations and go from there…

Start with Domination/Inspiration:

You have ~100% boon duration (after each weapon swap) and more than 1400 thoughness to keep the aggro even when a PS warrior starts to rezz someone (+400 thoughness while rezzing is a minor trait they have to live with when playing Phalanx Strength^^).

With Tides of Time, Well of Action and Signet of Inspiration used 2 times with Continuum Split, then again once when they are off cooldown and additional Signet of Inspiration procs through Illusionary Inspiration (both signet and proc traited for lower CD through Blurred Inscriptions) you can easily keep 100% quickness uptime on your group.
Well of Recall, All’s Well That Ends Well and keeping up 2 shield phantasms ensure 100% alacrity uptime.
(Bonus: Combining Blurred Inscriptions and Inspiring Distortion can safe your group in a lot of situations if used correctly…)

=> The go-to build with the biggest margin for (smaller) errors in your rotation.

You can switch out Domination for Illusion (see here)

Things you get:
- personal dps increase through Compounding Power
- phantasms attack more often (Phantasmal Haste), which means a) more damage from your sword phantasm and b) more alacrity from shield phantasms, so you can replace one of the 2 with an additional “dps phantasm” for short durations without losing alacrity uptime
- lower Illusion-skill cooldown, which doesn’t do much for your damage but can help you block more often

Things you lose:
- phantasm dps (Empowered Illusions)
- reduced Signet of Inspiration cooldown (cast and inspiration proc)
- ability to distort your group through signet use (see above)

=> Inspiration/Illusions has slightly higher damage, but without the cd reduction for Signet of Inspiration the rotation most be spot-on or you lose your 100% quickness uptime. It may be worth it for less demanding bosses (and the not-tanking chrono especially) but makes it more difficult to properly buff your group while having to look for other stuff (like tanking^^) at the same time.

Or you could play Domination/Illusions (klick)

Things you get:
- dps increases from Phantasmal Haste, Empowered Illusions and Compounding Power, making this one the highest dps build

Things you lose:
- no group distortion at all without Inspiring Distortion
- no Restorative Illusions… it’s not much but can really help you while tanking
- to keep 100% quickness uptime without Illusionary Inspiration procs you need to replace Well of Recall with Mimic, which in turn reduces your alacrity uptime

=> Only use Domination/Illusions with a group that doesn’t benefit much from alacrity (daredevils are the best example) and focus on dps phantasms over shield phantasms for even more damage (something that gets more difficult if you tank and actually use your shield to block attacks^^).

Long story short: Domination/Inspiration/Chrono really is the easiest build to play.

nagr.1593:

To recap, u don’t have to read up but what I’m asking for assistance with:

• confirmation abt traits again. Is one significantly better than the other, than I absolutely would have to change to Dom in pugs? My reasoning is that Illusions seems like it would better help my survivability, shatter traits and all
• Rotations to use at all times, and rotations to use in a pinch when ur worried about surviving as tank or not getting downed. Again, not sure that metabattle is that accurate anymore
• I will post my build info later if needed, but right now it’s all comm trinkets, one asc comm backpiece and assassins armor with water runes. I’m at ~1620 toughness with food using this setup

I joined for vg training a few days ago to learn how to tank.. not sure if was my group or not like not getting much heals, but I downed a lot that whole fight too. I’d like to avoid this if possible in future cases. I was kinda getting used to my build as well and I didn’t use any dodges most of the time, perhaps I can fix this

First things first… if tanking is your job, then focus on that (especially if you’re still learning).
For example Well of Eternity may be the most useful heal (giving alacrity and removing conditions while healing you), but Signet of Ether can safe your life by resetting your shield block’s cooldown. So take it if you’re not sure about how much damage/healing you get. You will learn from experience when you need it and when not…

Vale Guardian actually is one of the most difficult bosses in terms of damage you get. Most other bosses are much more about positioning and avoiding key abilities, while their normal “autoattack” damage is lower. Only at Vale Guardian you need to avoid most of the basic attacks too, while your healer may be away caring for the guys running green circles.
But you have enough skills to do it, once you get used to rotating through all of them.

Let’s take a normal VG pull for example:
You pull him, position yourself near the edge of the battlefield and wait for him to come to you. The first attack you evade with Blurred Frenzy, the second one you just take (as your healer has nothing to do at the moment). Now the wall has come up behind you, so you just press your dodge to roll backward on the spot for the next hit. You can block the next one with Echo of Memory, then use Deja Vu for the blue circles (and another VG hit). Now switch to offhand Sword for Illusionary Riposte. You’re endurance is full again, so you can dodge the next hit (or use Blurred Frenzy again), then switch back to shield and so on… and on…

Basically just learn to react to the boss: Vale Guardian stands very still if you keep him stationary. He only moves when trying to hit you, or when turning away from you to cast blue circles. Just rotate through your blocks and dodges, always keeping one skill (or one endurance bar) for the blues to not get teleported. Don’t be afraid to just take a hit once in a while, even you getting downed costs your team less damage than running after Vale Guardian because he follows you to the other side of the platform.

If everything else fails, use Distortion or stay with the shield after 2 blocks and reset the cd with Signet of Ether.
You can even use Distortion inside Continuum Split; for example if blue circles appear while you cast your quickness rotation. Yes, it will cost you some phantasm uptime. But as i said before, focus on tanking properly first. You can optimize your rotations later, when you have more experience.

After the first split phase the real “tanking” part actually gets easier, because you spend half your time running away from him (while not getting hit) and can keep all your blocks and dodges for the few seconds in melee range before running again.

Full ascended berserker equipment in a raid setup gives you about 50% critchance +40% for fury (with Roiling Mists) + banner of discipline/spotter buff (~7% each)…

So yeah, while banner is up you are slightly overcapped. With banner on cd you are still slightly below 100%.

So theoretically you could get away with about 70 more thoughness or vitality instead of precision most of the time.

But what good will that really do for you? 70 thoughness does not change much, neither will ~600 HP more.

Raid builds are about optimization, more precisely optimizing your damage output (and/or offensive group buffs), because damage just isn’t an issue in the end.

It’s all about knowing positioning and how/what to dodge. You will never find a moment, where you die because you’re missing a few HP or armor. If you do it’s 100% because you/your team failed… either some mechanic or a dodge. (Situations you reduce by killing the boss faster btw…)

As for “only 1k toughness which is slightly low to survive”:
Most people beside you will be more squishier than you because they have lower base armor and/or lower base HP. If other classes can survive, you can as well ;-)

It just takes practice (and a bit of experience with the specific encounter).

PS: Power engineer does about the same damage as condition engineer nowadays, on par with dagger/warhorn tempests or scepter guardians vs. big hit box bosses. Sadly, that doesn’t change their missing “unique feature” problem…

Edit: that should not have been a seperate post sigh

Engineers are by no way weak or useless to a raid, they just don’t bring something unique to a group at the moment.
You take warriors for there ability to cap a groups mights and unique damage buffs (empower allies and banners), druids for unique damage buffs (glyph of empowerment, grace of the land, sun/frost spirit) and off- or fullhealing, mesmers for quickness and alacrity (and reflects when needed), daredevils for having the highest single target dps, tempests for highest damage against big hitboxes (and their ability to easily clear things on range with lava font (orbs at gorseval, shard at xera)), necros for their add clearing ability thorugh epedemic, revenants for boon duration buff. Guardians aren’t that much looked for too, but they still do high damage (at about the same level of an engineer) while bringing either reflects (wall of reflection), near permanent protection (hammer) or additional damage vs big hit boxes (scepter).

Which leaves engineer as a solid damage dealer, but without some unique feature other than being the highest condition based dps. And that’s something you only need for a small part of vale guardian fight.

Long story short: There’s nothing wrong with bringing an engineer to a raid. It’s a solid class with high damage (and fun to play).
But you will rarely find a group looking explicitly for an engineer (and when you do it will be for vg exclusively).

Zenith.7301:

In fact, if DPS is all that matters in a group setting, condi engineer completely eclipses the other condi builds by a large margin.

vs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obwRyaBw2TY

This “large margin” you’re talking about isn’t really there. It’s just that rangers can do better in raids than playing a selfish personal dps build…

FrownyClown.8402:

My two cents would be to try a shout build for support.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW8YnUqA1Ci9CC+rActglOBDelGTzpO/tAwK7pFEqOclMtHA-TJRJABAcBAEqMg2PAAa2fAA

Unfortunately Runes of the Soldier still don’t work correctly with ranger shouts.

They work with warrior, reaper, guardian or tempest shouts (most of them affecting allies by design, but even offensive ones (on my mark! or the reaper ones for example) remove conditions on allies).

But but they don’t work with ranger shouts. (I’m not sure they ever did…)

Ranger’s shouts -caused by some weird implemetation i guess- don’t affect allies (even when traited with resounding timbre btw…^^) in a way that triggers the runes. You will remove a condition on yourself and only that.

That bug is know for an eternity and brought up here and in the bug forum every few months (last time here on page 1 of the ranger forum)

Anet just doesn’t seem to care…

The biggest problem are indeed pugs that require you to be full ascended while still expecting you to constantly change your gear to accommodate any individual tanks thoughness…

It’s in fact not needed at all because your biggest contribution to a group’s/raid’s dps are your buffs. (That’s the reason too, every damage rotation should include casting astral #4 on cooldown and many builds suggest a sigil of water on one of your weapons for higher astral force generation. Those 15% more damage for 8 seconds shared with 4 people are worth more than any personal damage skill ever could.)
And guess what… these buffs don’t scale with your equipment at all^^

Just a bit of napkin math to give you a rough idea of your effective dps through buffs:
Every glyph is one stack of grace of the land (3% damage for 8 seconds), casting rejuvenating tides is 5 stacks.
Just using your glyphs on cd (with the usual rejuvenation, allignment, empowerment, unity setup) means you do 2x 3% * 0.5 (8s duration/16s cd) + 3% * 0.33 + 3% * 0.4 through grace of the land.
Empowerment does another 10% * (6s duration/16s cd).
Your frost spirit adds 7% damage increase (70% chance for a hit to do 10% more damage) with an uptime of 75%.
And lets assume you get to cast astral #4 every 24 seconds (24 just because you get a round number^^) for another 5 * 3% * (8s/24s).
Add in your spotter buff (for sake of simplicity i assume a dps increase of ~2% here).

You now raised the direct damage of 4 guys by 20%.
So you already contributed 80% of an average guy’s dps without doing a single hit yourself.
Do you think you can do more than the missing 20% in personal damage to make yourself superior to every other class that could be in your spot? ;-)

And that neither includes the fact that you can line up the buffs with burn phases to be even more effective nor the healing output or the blinds through glyphs which really helps against all trash mobs.

Long story short… druids are quite overpowered at the moment. It’s just that nobody complains, because a) they can only achieve effective dps in group setups and b) one per group of 5 is enough, so they don’t threaten to replace other people :-D

You mentioned you already have one ascended armor set (i assume berserker stats), so just keep that. Think about replacing on sigil with sigil of water (or get a replacement weapon with that sigil).
For average pugs (who mostly want you for pure healing and are sometimes really bad at avoiding damage^^) add:
- a staff with some healing power and sigils of transference/water (you really don’t use a staff unless healing is your only priority). My personal preference are zealot stats here but ymmv…
- another armor set for healing (exotics really are fine here). I prefer zealots again with runes of the druid, but other +healing power combinations or runes of the monk work well too. (zealot just makes it easier for you in pugs because you don’t have to think about your thoughness and how much the tank has…)
- get some spare cleric trinkets

Combine zealot staff and armor with a few cleric trinkets (just so many that you stay below the tank’s thoughness) and you have more than enough healing power to keep even the slowest reacting monkey alive.

I promise you, with getting better at playing druid in raids and better raid groups you will use that +healing stuff less and less.

And if you think about making another ascended set some far day in the future i recommend taking a look at viper condition builds (you can get most ascended viper trinkets only from raids anyway^^). It combines nearly the same buffing/healing capabilites of the power build with more personal damage, all the while being able to stay mobile/mid ranged.

But to be honest: While many raids i know run a condition druid (or play a double druid setup) it may take ages until that thought reaches most pugs. Half the time i still get looked at funny (or kicked instantly^^) for playing a condition build and a second druid is considered some useless idiot… So solely planning to be the healer in a pug is the safer start.

But hey, that clueless guys really help to seperate good pugs from bad ones in a very short time. And playing the same condition build in high level fractals is fun too… :-D

Edit: Just an additional thought…
When starting raids as a healer don’t be afraid to spend time with bad pugs. You really learn much more about your ability to keep people alive, when those people are bad at avoiding unnecessary damage.
And i’ve seen more than one person used to a regular solid raid group struggle in critical situations while someone used to people screwing up just adapts quickly. :-)

Basically there are ~4 useable condi specs right now.

Engineer has the highest dps against single targets with a stupidly complicated rotation (that most people are not able to do perfectly while standing still, much less when they are in a real fight).

Necromancer does about 80% of an engineer’s dps against single targets (but with an easy rotation). These numbers increase with adds (condition transfering through epedemic and more pets from dying adds), even more so in a raid setup, where you’re pets get healed from time to time. Two necromancers in a fight with adds (one transfering conditions from boss to adds, the other transfering them back to the boss) can inflate these numbers even more.

Warrior was heavily hit by nerfs to their condition damage (~60% of engineer’s dps) but has the option to use phalanx strength while playing condition. Given there’s never a lack in power ps zerkers that’s a niche use mostly (but i have seen raid setups with tank, 1 power ps, 1 condi ps, 1 condi, 1 supporter, 5 power dps work really well…)

Druid does about the same damage as a condition warrior, but brings all the buffing and healing capabilities a power druid (who does even less damage) is normally taken for. So that’s still a very solid choice, even when it’s mostly played more for the druid specific buffs than the pure condition damage.

And one minor thing you might (or might not) be already aware of…

Axe #2 spreads out to hit multiple targets. A single target on max range will only get hit by one axe while a target right in front of you gets hit by all 5.
So try to use that skill in melee range only.

While bleeds are nice, burning does more for your dps.
Also as condition duration is a direct increase to every condition you do, try to max it (runes with condition duration, viper equip, black diamonds for the accessory slots and a sigil of malice).
For more stationary fights, forget about the shortbow and use a mainhand axe (without an offhand) in one weapon slot and a torch (without mainhand weapon) in the other. This way you can constantly swap weapons while staying with axe/torch. With Quickdraw you can use bonfire (torch #5) after every weapon swap, greatly increasing your burning damage.

Aim for something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNMQJA3fjUqQ7K2sCGsAVLGKEq+DG2TgHgS/B+EIaDgLe2UK-ThiHAB8r8TCNEBt8gz7Aws5vafAAsr+D36EA4gAopSQSBsoyK-e

If grouped, change Hidden Barbs to Spotter (the precision boost for 5 people is worth more than the higher bleeding duration for yourself). And change Empathic Bond to Poison Mastery when you don’t need the condition removal.

Ellie.5913:

OR make a new account that has never played pvp before, then you’ll have good mmr which means you get put on the best teams in ranked( if you’re lucky) cuz of the new match making system. Then with a little luck you’ll be farming nooby teams with 1 or 2 vets on them in no time! (ranked atm is all about luck unless they change it before next season) happy hunting

All the bickering aside…

I have two accounts. One did it’s first ranked game at the start of season 2, the other i play pvp with since forever. So with the same player playing the same builds it took me less than 6 evenings to reach legend on one account, while being stuck with with afks and brainless pve zerkers in sapphire on the other.

You may not like it but this post is absolutely accurate.
Or perhaps that’s just my personal fault for not being good enough to carry teams with 1 afk at start while the others manage to lose a 3vs1 fight, then ragequit. Who knows :-)

1) You don’t need that ranged weapon in most fractals (depending on level, team comp etc.) so get used to play sword mh and two offhands and only switch to GS when you need it. Sword, focus and pistol are all solid weapons because of their high dmg phantasms. Which brings me to…

2) Shatter is secondary against everything not the easiest low hp mob. Focus on upkeeping 3 phantasms, then use chronophatasm to weave in shatters while keeping them up

Xyonon.3987:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs+dncfC9fitfCmfCUrhFVjiMAKgirOZn2qFtLSjsD-TBCBABjq+zZKBxS5BAnEg80LUmSs+3fIgHAApACcMA-e

This is you endgoal you want to aim for for raids. If you got questions, go ahead, I’ll check this thread to answer you

With the way GW2 rounds cooldowns and durations there really should be no reason for 100% boon duration… Math says Bountiful Sharpening Stone, 5 Runes of Surging and a Platin Dubloon (99% boon duration buffed) is the stronger and cheaper setup for that build.

It’s definitely supposed to clip. On Charrs it even defies gravity to do so… :-D

Ok… an old one, freshly tested:
Throw Elixir skills’ target priority is still bugged.
Find a couple of people stacked in a spot (shatterer for example), be without a group and throw one on yourself. You rarely ever get the effect.
If you are in a party, it correctly prioritizes you and party members first (party members don’t have to be there or even online for it to work correctly^^)

Edit: You list hammer #3 reflect when it should be hammer #2

…because a big long-duration projectile-destroying dome really is enough?

You can activate facets while another skill is channeling. So if you feel you’re too slow and it interrupts you from doing damage just start with sword #3 after switching to glint. You don’t have control over your character for the next second anyway, so use this time to click through your facets.

Although Bomb Healing was fun to play i could really live with it’s removal if they left us some other way to build for healing and Med Kit wasn’t a piece of utterly useless garbage…

Out of combat perma stealth is even easier…
You can switch out stealth gyro for another elite a few seconds before it expires, then switch back and throw out another stealth gyro without cd.

Throw elixir skills prioritisation is still (again?) bugged…
If alone without a group and there are multiple allies in range (as in most open world boss events^^) 5 random people get the effect, myself not included.
If in a group even with one offline person it’s back to normal hitting me + 4 random allies.

MagoBuono.6548:

10-15k? But… how? o_O

Incendiary Ammo + Napalm + Fire Bomb + Blowtorch + Incendiary Powder Proc
with ~ 2000 condition damage…
Now add might stacks and vulnerability :-D

And condition grenadeer now does more dps than zerker in all fight lasting at least ~14secs (which in most pugs means every fight^^). But don’t try to tell that the players still stuck in 2012’s meta (again nearly all of them^^) :-D

robertul.3679:

Your highest damaging skills are rifle 3 and 5, grenade toolbelt+2 and 4, elixir gun 4, flamethrower 2.

Add grenade 5 to that list. Since the last patch poison grenade does the same direct damage as freeze grenade (and additional condition damage ofc…).

And it’s never to early to start using your numerous blasts and fields. Blasting your bomb 2 or flamethrower 4 with flamethrower 2 / elixirgun 4 for example produces might stacks while using your heavy hitting attacks.

Drop kit / weapon switch is bound to my 3rd mouse button anyway, so i never use the kit button to switch out of a kit…
Btw… there’s a 1sec CD when you switch to a kit, but no CD to drop kit. So you can either press a kit button, wait 1sec, then press the kit again or use kit button + weapon switch to switch to a kit and back in less than 0.2 secs (useful when triggering streamlined kits for example).

Soon.5240:

Next up: Change kittenawful skin for Mortar Bombs.

Fixed it for you ;-D

Some lfgs from yesterday. Nice to see multiple warriors and guardians is still the way to go…

You should really try something like this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNBjODbkQl2V7WxcFqWDIIUrCg21Qy2CsTgMYDOZDVaF-TVCFABop+TAHBAs3fAgHAQZmgsS5nnKBTT3QCXEAA-w

Melanie.1240:

Eros.6801:

Both thief and engi are on welcome in dungeon i don’t know why don’t ask me cuz ppl made it that way and they more like pvp class.

Otherwise just go with Ranger they are king of soloing in open world pve content they have more than what you want except dungeon like thief and engi BUT dungeon problem can be solved if you run with friend or guildie.

Thief, engi and ranger are all fine in dungeons. Why do you think they’re not?

Perhaps reading the ~1k “no engis/rangers” “ele/war/guard only” lfg posts each day written by guys still thinking 3+ warriors are good for speedruns? :-D

I really don’t think the race changes anything. Played an asura engineer and a human one, it’s exactly the same…

And having perma aggro as an engineer without really doing something to earn it seems to be very common.
My favorite for this is the coe golem and i remember at least half a dozen players in pugs comment on it before even starting the boss (most of them elementalists who seem to have the same problem here, only to a lesser extent)

AdaephonDelat.3890:

Aramey.3841:

2. If so will I have access to all guild features? (Excluding WvW of course)

Yes

Well… i would think the ability to see, what my guildmates are doing is a feature, isn’kitten
I can perfectly well see, which 5 from my guild are in the same dungeon, if they are on my home server. Otherwise only their server is shown but no location…

Edit: lol… " i s n ’ t i t" blocked by filter

There are many builds to choose from :-D
Just some examples…

PvE Dungeons? 66002 (shrapnel, exp.powder,grenadier,precise sights, rifle mod, mod. ammo, static discharge) berserker with 3 kits (elixirgun, grenades, flamer) is the obvious build here but bombs might work too…

PvP? 60044 or 60062 (shrapnel, incendiary powder, grenadier, invigorating speed, [protection injection],backpack regenerator, speedy kits, [power wrench or leg mods]) celestial 3-kit (e-gun, grenades, tools)
OR
42044 or 62042 (see above… 6 explosives for grenades, 4 for bombs) rabid or rabid/dire with pistol/shield and slick shoes/elixir s, bombs/grenades, toolkit

WvW? look at the PvP builds then modify it to your liking… 60044 rifle, berserk weapon, knight armor, celestial accessories is my favorite still…

Or you can do some really strange things: a flamethrower build for open world pve (who cares for damage, when everything gets zerged anyway? tag everything in sight and enjoy the loot^^) or my favorite “strange build that everybody laughs about”: Healing Bombs in full cleric equipment used for running with the wvw melee train (1k+ heal per second for you and the guys around you can really help in thight situations), also nice to claim and defend a silverwastes fort completely on your own :-D

Long story short… while not played by many, engineer is an interesting and nice class with a build (or a couple ones^^) for every situation. You really should give more details about what your interests are :-)