Showing Posts For PWNtrooper.8617:
For me it’s not so much that EG does good damage, it’s that it’s three elixirs in one. Three condi cleanses, 6 stacks of might from HGH, and a stunbreak, not to mention the support abilities of middling usefulness, the AoE heal, and the blast finisher. That’s a lot. Acid Bomb also has good mobility if you do a quick turnabout before you use it, which has saved my butt countless times or helped me get to an objective quicker than the other team.
I’m hesitant to give up all of that might and cleansing and utility just for another knockback.
This is silly. While we’re at it, just let Revs pulse Resistance every second baseline. Why cleanse conditions when you can just ignore them forever?
I think you’re underestimating how much Inventions does to keep you moving, though it is different in WvW. Bunker Down alone does work on small points in sPvP, because half of why the meta build is so efficient is that it’s constantly healing you without you even having to try, and the small bits of damage from the mines helps mitigate your opponent’s incidental healing. Picking up BD med kits gives you around 400 health, Regeneration, and bonus Healing Power, which in turn makes your Superspeed/Swiftness healing/sec. higher, makes every subsequent med kit heal more, and makes more room to breathe. Not to mention heals from your turret, Elixir Gun, Mortar 5 (if you run it), and EG’s tool belt, plus Elixir B and its toolbelt, all do a good job of easing up on conditions when combined with traited elixir and inventions cleanses.
The meta right now is all about outlasting the other player on point, since the elite specs have an insane amount of defense. Burst builds don’t do well because Heralds, Chronomancers, Tempests, and Reapers are super common. The Scrapper meta build is arguably a lot like them, but Engineers don’t have as much silly stuff as Mesmers, Elementalists, and Revenants. All of those specs hit like trucks AND have insanely high survivability. If you can only hit really hard but melt under pressure, you’ll just burn through a couple of their defenses before they knock you out.
Slick Shoes is, in my mind, a meta call; if you catch someone without stability or a stun break, their active defenses are down for a good 4-5 seconds while you wail on them, and it can set up a nice chain with hammer 5. Its toolbelt being a second stun break AND on-demand access to Superspeed (which is ~417-450 hp/sec) is usually why I hesitate to give it up. I’ve tried a few other utilities, but I always reaaaally miss that stun break, since the meta builds have a lot of ways to shut you out. They also have a good defensive application if you’re trying to break, since going through a tight space and activating them pretty much blocks the route for a few seconds. It’s also a fun way to give your team time to catch up to a point by drawing a line in the sand, and you can use it in stealth to be a disruptive ghost.
Trading Inventions for firearms works alright, but it’s just more damage that we don’t need quite as much as we need the bulk. You have to give up a lot of regeneration to really abuse MM/Juggernaut. I tried a similar build and could pretty consistently keep up about 20 stacks of might on myself, but I was having to push way harder to keep myself up. Also, Stability isn’t as crucial considering we can get it from Elixir B’s toolbelt and we have two stun breaks. If we really really wanted it we could grab Perfectly Weighted, but I’m always hesitant to give up any defenses with how things stand right now. It works, it just doesn’t seem to work as well with this meta.
Gyros are pretty useful…….
I do like Blast Gyro’s Tool Belt skill, however. It’s a good stun break and, coupled with Rapid Regeneration, I can proc about 1,000 to 1,200 heal as well.
It’s not a bad toolbelt, it’s just unimaginative. It’s the Slick Shoes TB with a shorter Superspeed time, and a cast time for some reason, but grants it to allies (who couldn’t care less most of the time), though the shorter uptime means about 830-some less healing if you’re traited for it. Which is actually quite a bit. If I were going to essentially copy any toolbelt, and if I really wanted a stun breaker for the gyro, I’d take the one from Thumper Turret. Makes so much more sense thematically (y’know, because explosions) and would actually be useful, considering no gyros give a blast finisher and Engineer has to be pretty deliberate to get them (EG 4, Bomb Kit TB, Rocket Boots, shield 4 [lol] and… turrets…). What I’d really like to see is something more interesting altogether, like Unsteady Ground or a “magnetic” gap-closer to complement the knockback, but if we’re in copy-paste mode just give me the Thumper toolbelt[who even uses the Thumper? Would anyone miss it if it were gone? Furreal though. And shield 4 should have a trait that lets it pull all of your turrets within 1200 to you, like ye olde Ritualist skill from EotN. Just saying]
Also, I know I said this in another thread, but I think if Shredder Gyro were redesigned to work like the Jalis hammers it’d be wicked sweet. Pairs up really nicely with what scrapper is trying to do, and if it had a sufficiently short uptime (like 3-5 seconds) and less damage reduction than the actual Jalis skill it’d be a great cooldown to pop right before a Rocket Charge. The toolbelt on it can stick, I guess, but it really needs to do something more than just be a lightning field. Vulnerability, Blind, Swiftness… Whirl finishers are lame, and although I like the idea behind the Shredder Gyro as it stands, it’s too weak. Even if numbers were adjusted it’s really easy to avoid, and whirl finishers are dumb. Besides, imagine charging in with your hammer and a swarm of little gyros swirling around you, knocking noggins, reducing condition damage… Sign me up.
If we’re super sold on Purge being a defensive/support gyro, (1) it should be a mobile, slower pulsing Well of Power, because just cleansing a condition every two seconds is WEAK, OR (2) it should pulse Resistance. Honestly, ANet did a poor job of spreading out Slow, Resistance, and Taunt to existing classes, and I’d love to see Engineer get Resistance from the Purge Gyro. Better yet, I dunno, replace its lame poison field toolbelt with something that gives a few seconds of Resistance. I’d really like to see Purge just be a slow boon strip/converter, like a mobile Well of Corruption, since even though Engineers aren’t great at removing conditions from themselves, we have no ability to remove boons. And right now, boons are the name of the game in PvP, and some PvE creatures almost require some boon stripping. It’d be a really sweet utility if the gyro itself were a slow-pulsing Well of Corruption and its toolbelt gave 3 seconds of Resistance on a 15-second cooldown.
Really now. Come on ANet. I know if we give Engineer too much it’ll be too strong, but part of the appeal of the class should be that it can do just about anything you want it to, albeit in a weaker or more roundabout way than a class dedicated to it. We can’t boon strip, we can’t apply resistance, we can’t Taunt (could be cool on Net Turret, jus’sayin’), we can’t slow (pistol 5 would love this, because glue is sticky yo), but we have a handful of utilities/toolbelt skills that are never used that would love some of this stuff, and our gyros especially lack a lot of the new stuff that HoT came out with. Or some updates at least. But really: why doesn’t Purge Gyro give resistance somehow?! Who thought a stationary whirl finisher that deals no damage on its own with a toolbelt that’s JUST A LIGHTNING FIELD was a radical concept, in the same expansion that gave out frikkin’ time-warp junk to Mesmers?! What am I expected to do with a shield when hammer can REFLECT AND BLOCK with SHORTER COOLDOWNS, WHILE DOING DAMAGE!? And why do half of the Scrapper traits do jack-nothing?! Superspeed isn’t that cool. It really isn’t, and it isn’t something to base most of a traitline off of. A fair chunk of Scrapper is giving you bonuses for reviving an ally or stomping an enemy—something you ideally never do, and something that never happens in PvE, respectively—and it just makes me sad.
Nnnnngggggggg……
(edited by PWNtrooper.8617)
It should be redone to work like the Jalis hammers Revenant gets; have a bunch of little gyros whirling around you. That’d be sweet, and actually complement how a scrapper plays really well. That, and its toolbelt should inflict some slow pulsing vulnerability or something, or act like the lightning field that Glyph of Storms puts out in air attunement.
Shield isn’t bad, it just doesn’t have a place…. Ok. Yeah, it’s pretty bad.
For PvP hammer has better defenses largely because the skills have shorter cooldowns and do damage at the same time. It does what the shield wants to do faster and better. The only reason I can see to take a shield is because you want an extra blast finisher and a tiny bit of defense, but overall it doesn’t have anything to do in any popular builds at the moment. For PvE the skills just don’t do much of anything that you need.
I think your assessment is correct: you can still use it, but I don’t think you’d be as effective in a role as if you took p/p (condi), rifle (ranged power and control), or hammer (melee power and sustain). Our shield skills either need much, much shorter cooldowns or completely new abilities that complement a playstyle better than an alternative.
P.S. If English isn’t your first language, “witch” is a noun for an evil woman that hexes people (“Burn the witch!”). I think you’re going for “with,” which is a preposition.
Engineers are actually super focused on melee, despite the fact that they have pistols and rifles. Most of the abilities on those weapons work best right in someone’s face (rifle 3, 4, and 5, pistol 2 and 4)
If you’re more asking about what the hammer is good for, it’s a sustain weapon that does solid damage while helping keep the engineer running. 2, 3, 4 are a reflect, triple-evade, and block respectively, and the stun on 5 is good for closing or breaking away. Currently for PvE hammer’s good, but p/p and rifle give more flexibility for encounters. Hammer is really good for PvP, though, where the control aspect of it actually makes scrappers one of the more balanced meta participants. I like the hammer a lot though.
I wouldn’t use a hammer for a real attempt at a condi build, since most of our strongest or most easily applied conditions come from pistols, particularly pistol offhand, and grenades (mortar too, to an extent). It just isn’t built for it unless you’re really pushing conditions on your utilities as hard as possible.
I messed around with a flamescrapper build for sPvP solo queues, but I also really just wanted to make turrets work because they never get used. It worked alright (not nearly as well as the more common scrapper builds) but if you really want to use a flamethrower it’s the best I’ve been able to come up with:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhatYNVw2Kw6FL3FF9qH7zO4CGhBQ4E2ZZGA-TJBGABeXGQhLAAAPAA03fAA
You sit on flamethrower 24/7 as your “main” weapon and treat the hammer as a kit. You get around 11-12 stacks of might just from Juggernaut and Mass Momentum and your runes. In sPvP at least I built it to just camp on an objective. Since your turrets all give you periodic boons in 600 radius your Fury uptime is great; not sold on Rocket over Flame Turret (maybe next time I feel like messing around), but they help keep pressure up if your opponent ignores them. It’s also been fun making people waste evades and blocks on the flamethrower and then get nailed by the hammer (hah!) abilities.
No stunbreak is definitely the weakest part, but you could certainly swap the Inventions route for the Elixir HGH stuff, take Elixir Gun and maybe Elixir B. Probably even swap Supply Crate for Elixir X to Moa people or take Mortar to crank out those fields. It’d be stronger going that way, honestly, but I like Bunker Down and wanted so desperately to find a way to make turrets work…
For WvW though this would definitely not work. I think flamethrower just doesn’t vibe well with what you want to do in WvW, or at least not as well as more aggressive or mobile options.
In what mode? Viper engineer is currently the top on-paper dps in the game for PvE.
Gyro’s toolbelts are pretty useful.
fix’d
For the most part I agree with you, yeah, but part of the usefulness of any skill is that half of it is a toolbelt skill. Some skills aren’t useful at all (couple elixirs I could name, turrets…), but Bulwark, Medic, Stealth are solid all around. Bulwark and Medic in particular because they can be activated even when you’re getting beat on or using another skill.
ANet seems like they phoned it in on the effects of a couple gyros, but I have to honestly say that at this point nothing drastic is going to change about them; they won’t get a new mechanic, they won’t become a kit, they won’t suddenly start attacking things…. They’re set how they are. I’m not too optimistic about anything but some numbers changing.
I’m not sure if I’d say hammer is always better than rifle for sPvP, but it’s certainly better in my experience at hanging with all of the tankier builds that are being played right now. Rarely when I fight someone while I have a rifle do I want to be farther than practically melee range, and hammer has a lot of responses that I’m hesitant to give up in favor of those rare situations where I really really need to chase someone down. Even then, between super speed and Rocket Charge (and the stun on Thunderclap) I can usually catch up to people, not to mention the cripple on EG’s 2 if you’re playing the marauder build.
The cleaves and defenses on hammer make it great for what engineers are best at: holding the fort. Thunderclap is a monster, Rocket Charge can save your skin if you un-target, and in hectic teamfights being able to briefly reflect a pile of ranged attacks is super useful. Not to mention that the auto-attack hits like a truck and stacks might, and a damaging block is great.
I think the most important thing, though, is that the hammer is better at supporting a team than the rifle. Ranged builds in sPvP aren’t much in favor right now, so you’ll tend to be in the thick of things with the hammer side by side with the usual builds your allies are using. Sure your rifle can net someone—rarely—or do some knockback, but at least right now people are wary of scrappers when they see the hammer. They know what Thunderclap does, they know they have to be careful to unload ranged attacks, and they know that they have to hold back their big hits to get around the triple-evade and damaging block. If they ignore you to fight your teammate, you’ve got solid healing and support in your healing turret, bunker down, dazes, and sneak gyro (or mortar). If they go for you, you can turtle up for a while and let your teammate do work.
I’m not sure how much EXACTLY it comes down between hammer and rifle, since engineer is in a pretty good spot right now in general, but it’s my impression that the meta build and the way sPvP fights tend to go have a lot more synergy with the hammer. And if you’re taking scrapper why not use the hammer? Particularly because you can hold up defenses while critting, proccing bunker down for healing kits (and regeneration and more healing power…) and mines, while running circles around enemies that are probably incidentally hitting you because melee is messy, proccing more toughness which in turns gives you more power, while retaliation from your elixir procs more often……
Gyros are pretty useful. Bulwark is great for the reflects on the toolbelt, and Blast’s is decent for messing around with. Med gyro is actually a great healing skill, it just is outclassed by the healing turret (like every other healing skill…). Sneak is phenomenal, even if it has trouble keeping up with you sometimes, and the function gyro is awesome. On top of that, too, the daze on their secondary use is really strong in PvP if you deploy it right. We aren’t going to get a fundamental change to how gyros work, but we can adjust numbers or small things about them. And hopefully make them follow more closely, but that’s a bigger change than I think we can expect right now.
The biggest issues I see are that (1) purge is borderline useless with how slowly it cleanses, and (2) shredder making whirl finishers is terrible, because whirl finishers are really weak. They also both have pretty terrible toolbelt skills (Blast does too, to be fair, since it’s just a copy-paste of Slick Shoes’), that could definitely be cranked up.
If purge pulsed like a slower Well of Power that would actually be pretty solid; even better would be if it pulsed like a Well of Corruption, because our boon stripping is so lackluster. If it were a slower pulsing, moving Well of Corruption on top of a moving poison cloud, that’d be halfway decent. Shredder should just follow you instead of have ground targeting, and the lightning field should do damage and maybe even apply vulnerability (with a smaller field) instead of just… Exist.
I’d also like to see Blast get an entirely new toolbelt, SINCE WE ALREADY HAVE THAT TOOLBELT ON ANOTHER SKILL, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. A fire field would be great, but we already have two and ANet doesn’t like handing those out. I can only dream of an Earthquake effect for another blast finisher…
I think the Engineer is in a great place, if a little wonky at times. We really have a lot going for us, but it’s gated behind a higher skill curve relative to other classes. I think more than anything Engineer just wants you to tinker around and turn every utility and tool belt skill into a puzzle piece; the issue is that a lot of those pieces are demonstrably better than others.
I’ve always enjoyed playing classes that are Swiss army knives, though they tend to get thrown aside for classes with more focus or they just end up sucking because they can do everything alright but nothing great. Engineer’s great and in sort of a sweet spot where it (1) has the highest [potential] DPS in the game if you can channel your inner pianist; (2) has access to pretty much everything but condition immunity and boon ripping; and (3) can perform well in every aspect of the game in multiple roles.
Biggest thing for me and it seems like a few other people is that some of the utilities are too good and a good portion of the traits are never used. The same thing can be said for every other class though. It’s not that I wouldn’t love a reason to take Inventions over Explosives, but there really isn’t much of a reason to go with that trait line. There are also a couple elixirs that never get used because their cooldowns are enormous, their tool belt skills are the same thing (with the same huge cooldowns), and I could take a kit instead. Same thing could be said of a lot of gadgets. I don’t think I’ve ever had Battering Ram on my bar for more than a few seconds at a time…
TL;DR: Engineer is in a great spot, but it’s in a great spot because of a few powerful options, not because of the class design as a whole. A lot of traits and utilities need buffs or overhauls to make them more attractive choices over the dominant options.
Edit: Oh yeah, and turrets need a major overhaul. Ritualist spirits in GW1 were fine, if not terribly competitive, but they had the nice bonus of actually doing a fair job of area denial if you really specced into them. Turrets right now (except Healing Turret, which is great) just don’t cut it. They need their cooldowns reduced and more in the Inventions line that makes them a threat. Rifle Turret needs to inflict bleeding, pierce, or have a higher rate of fire; Rocket’s tool belt skill needs to be a blast finisher; Flame turret and Thumper need bigger ranges. Net’s alright, though its belt skill is boring.
We need some traits from Inventions that make them really stand out, like a big (see: 99%) cooldown reduction if you pick them up and possibly a trait for an extra effect on each when they hit.
(edited by PWNtrooper.8617)
I’d also dislike a weapon swap. I like having to swap between kits and keep track of cooldowns, and once you get the muscle memory down it’s pretty straightfoward. Even the big scary dps rotation isn’t that bad once you put some practice into it. If getting a weapon swap means I’d miss out on what makes Engineer play differently from all of the classes, even Elementalist, I’d pass.
That said, if there were any kind of weapon swap I’d prefer it just be taking Tool Kit and making it the “secondary weapon” for every Engineer. Makes sense thematically to always carry around your tools, means every Engineer can always repair their turrets (because anyone even does that?), and it’s a super defensive kit. You’d have to replace the utility with something else, most likely, and it’d give Engineers a huge advantage in the defense department.
I honestly know that if I could rock a rifle AND a hammer AND grenades AND two more utilities + elite, things would melt (particularly breakbars: rifle + hammer Engineer could single-handedly nuke every inch of blue). Engineers are in a good place at the moment, even if we’re wonky and take some practice. Our traits can use some work, and I’d really like to see every trait line be a tough decision. I think most classes can say the same thing, and they don’t have the added benefit of having as much utility as we do in just about every mode.
Probably not in the Alchemy line, since it’s pretty locked in at this point, but I was thinking something similar for an Elite Spec. down the road. Instead of pets, though—which Engineers already have too many of (and they both need to be buffed up in a big way)—I’d rather see something along the lines of “mutagens” that act like Elementalist Conjured Weapons but transform players that drink them into beasts/monsters .
Since Engineer’s class mechanic is essentially kits, sharing kits seems like a natural progression. Alchemy is sort of overlooked thematically in the Engineer’s kitten nal, I think, so it would be a great line to play up a bit more. It would be a helluva lot more skills, but since that’s not going away for the Engineer any time soon we might as well play it up.