The only classes you listed that actually have real mobility are Engineer, Warrior, and Thief.
Correct me if I’m wrong on these points:
- Chronomancer is still slow. If you had Traveler Runes before, they’re still the same speed. Most classes get +25% run speed or swiftness. They can roam well because of stealth, though (and Blink)
- I haven’t played Revenant but I heard they have basically no out-of-combat mobility. Which means you’re not going to escape. I think they have top in-combat mobility though.
I run the same build, I have the exact precision (rabid) amount for 24%, and the rest of my gear is Dire.
Apothecary is probably not worth it unless you are running Medkit, or MAYBE Healing Turret + Elixir Gun (I didn’t run the numbers)
If your battles are really long and you are constantly recouping health (and not through getting OOC), Apothecary with just Healing Turret could be ok.
Well condi isn’t that great for zergs in the first place, I wouldn’t bother changing your runes just for that. I run the same gear/build, if I want to actual help the zerg more I swap to zerker gear. Usually I’m just lazy and grenades in condi is good enough to tag people.
Even with full toughness gear, undead is pretty weaksauce, 5% is a horrible multiplier. If you have dire go scavenger runes if u want more condi damage, Otherwise I would pick perplex, antitoxin, noble, adventurer. Noble is only good with medkit really though.
Thanks for the feedback folks. Swiftness should be up nearly 100% of the time with the 10 in firearms for infused precision. As far as burns go, unless im missing something, they moved incendiary powder to grandmaster, and id have to drop grenadier for it, doesnt sound worth it. But i would love to add burn into the mix.
You don’t care about out of combat movement speed? Everyone will be able to chase you down easily
- Lower the cooldown of Shield #5 (40s for a 1.5 sec block? geesh)
- Remove the root for Shield #4 Reflect
Shield #5 is possibly the best shield skill in the game, so I’d be wary of lowering the cooldown honestly. I agree that the root on shield #4 is unnecessary. It’s very rare to get to use the skill as anything except a push or a blast finisher, because nobody has time to lock themselves out of skills and movement just for reflection. Removing the root would allow the skill to be more than just a double-tap skill, without actually adding to power creep.
Yeah I don’t think there’s another self reflect skill that roots you except this one. I think they made this change to other similar skills in the past (Mesmer Scepter 2?) I almost never use it for the reflect.
This change would help us a bit against strong keepaway ranged builds
+ #2 Grenade has a cooldown of 5 sec. And if you apply (with full rotation grenades only) 5 (6 with trait) conditions (blind, vulnerability, poisen, bleeding, chill + burning (trait))
The person you fight has to remove up to 6 condtions while EG gives 2 conditions (3 with trait) and nobody removes weakness because of the duration.
I literally have never seen myself die so fast so I’m a bit curious as to what kind of build was being used. This is with 23k HP/2700 armor (almost full Dire)
All I remember was that he used Thieves guild and I don’t think it was Perplexity/Confusion because I literally just watched my health just plummet. Pretty sure it was P/D
I know thats not a lot of information to go on, but anyone have a clue as to what kind of build this guy was using? I have a thief as well, kinda wanna try it out lol
Is there any legitimate reason for us to wait an entire day to make a bolt of damask besides just turning us into obsessive compulsive gamers who have to log in every day FOR A MONTH (Before reset mind you!) just to craft one item so we can have this fancy ascended armor?
I was mildly upset when I found out I would have to spend 6 days to craft spiritwood essence for my staff, but I could live with that, because it was “only” 6 days and once done that was it! But for the armor sets this is just crazy!
I am assuming this thing is for some sort of economics control, to keep the ascended materials at a low quantity on the market. But its pretty obnoxious. If you don’t want the stuff on the market, make it account bound and save us having to set our alarm clocks for an entire month to get the materials we need for the armor we were promised in tuesday!
I’m going to guess a lot of it is for improving their statistics/numbers.
But aint’ that the beauty of every other class except Ele? They can swap weapons with a button press in combat!
PU Staff Mesmer can keep something like Sword Pistol or Scepter Pistol in the wings; iDuelist will knock that Ele’s health down to size. Or better yet, GS — one of the best long range weapons in the game which has fantastic range to snipe the Ele, and summon iZerker to deal the pain.
PU mesmer builds for condis, so sword/pistol would be a wasted slot most of the time. Also, you are used to iZerker and iDuelist hitting so hard because they are used by mesmers in zerker gear. In rabid/dire gear, they won’t hit any harder than your water heals/regen won’t be able to counteract.
Also, they aren’t going to change their gear b/c one fight ends up in a draw (where they eventually leave or someone else comes and taps the ele down to 80%).
Yes, no weapon swap can be terrible in some situations, but if you really need range with d/d, take flame axe (a great kiting tool). If you want to 1v1 with staff, learn to use lightning hammer, or just learn to run (you should be able to get away, esp. with buffed fiery GS).
This game is so incredibly dumbed down that playing anything other than the ele for an extended amount of time makes me want to smash my head into my desk.
If you cant pick I would choose based on the weapons you prefer to play with. I mean if you want to stick at range you would probably want to use GS rather than a torch.
I have 4 level 80’s with full exotics, Warrior, Guardian, Elementalist, and Mesmer. I have one last free character slot left so I’ve decided to level a Necro to 80.
Out of the mages, in pve, it seems to me that the necro, at least in pve, is the strongest solo mage class right now.
I’m only level 22 at the moment, but it seems that, comparing my Elementalist and Mesmer at that time, the Necro is able to defeat enemies quicker than they did at that level.
I’m not much of a pvp’er and I haven’t really spent enough time in WvW because I like to pve so much, so I’m only speaking from a pve point of view.
Pretty much any class other than those 2 (mesmer, ele) kill enemies quicker at that level. Those 2 classes are the most annoying classes to level in the game
Have a necro/engi/ele, not actually done the power necro thing yet tho
I highly prefer the AoE of Engi as you can do it from far away and on the move. In my matchups I usually do not have problems with retal but I can definitely see why it would cause problems on higher tier servers or organized matches.
Ele AoE Damage is strong but I hate the fact that the range is 1200/900 and you are effectively rooted channeling meteor storm. I find it a lot riskier than lobbing grenades at 1500 and on the move.
The only reason everyone took IP is because our DPS is kitten without the burning. We can get burning from other ways, but most of them are NOT viable at all.
Couldn’t be less true. Most of our access to burning is extremely viable. Rocket Kick, Fire bomb, Blowtorch, flamethrower skills, flame turret, and IP are pretty much all of our ways of applying burning, and other then turrets limitation, they are all extremely viable.
Looking at the list, you would be hard pressed to convince players that MOST of them are NOT viable as you suggest.
Only 1 is viable from range. Its a PvP thing
I can agree with the ranged aspect, although it was not mentioned previously. I play a fair bit of PvP, and I am unclear how this is a “PvP thing”, as I use both rocket boots and bomb kit at the same time, and I occasionally play a turret bunker build. I see P/P in PvP often, and I doubt most take off hand pistol over shields simply for glue shot.
I’m saying its a PvP thing because you usually dont have as much a problem getting close to mobs as opposed to other players who may be kiting you. Sometimes you may not even want to get close.
The only reason everyone took IP is because our DPS is kitten without the burning. We can get burning from other ways, but most of them are NOT viable at all.
Couldn’t be less true. Most of our access to burning is extremely viable. Rocket Kick, Fire bomb, Blowtorch, flamethrower skills, flame turret, and IP are pretty much all of our ways of applying burning, and other then turrets limitation, they are all extremely viable.
Looking at the list, you would be hard pressed to convince players that MOST of them are NOT viable as you suggest.
I was messing around with the build calc, i don’t know if anyone’s mentioned but it seems you can flat out get better stats all around if you use mostly celestial gear combined with some zerker.
Defensive stats are much higher (toughness AND vit) crit damage is higher by 20%, condition damage is higher by 50, power is higher by 20. Loss of 80 precision, however
If you don’t care about getting overwhelmed at times vs the likes for 1v3+ you can technically roam with any class. Or you can just hug the guards at keep/tower all day.
This has been rehashed time and time again, but normally when you talk about a good roamer you talk about a class that can pick its fights. I don’t know much about Eles and Guards, but I know Necros are not strong roamers simply because they have next to no mobility tools. Necros are extremely strong in fights, but when you get outnumbered you are almost guaranteed to die and start from spawn again. Also with no mobility tools, it means everyone can simply run away from you.
From what I’ve seen Guardians don’t have great mobility either.
Was it intentional to make the mesmer skill decoy (and trait desperate decoy) ignore the reveal debuff? This seems unfair to me and I would like to see it changed in the December 10th patch.
Its probably because Decoy doesn’t give you the Stealth buff it gives you the Decoy buff which does the same thing… but isn’t the Stealth buff
As they are today, kits dmg are not influenced by your equiped weapons or stat, but have a flat dmg by your lvl.
This is not true.
Kits have their own Weapon Strength, which is why Ascended weapons aren’t an important factor for us. Unless you truly value +4 Power upgrading your pistol that much.
They absolutely scale by the rest of the stats of the weapon you wield and the armor you wear. Kits absolutely scale by Power. Why else would Juggernaut stack Might?
I carry with me multiple sets of armor: Celestial, Berserker, Rabid, and Soldier, depending on the build I’m running and whether I’m in WvW or PvE. The output of my kits absolutely change depending on what gear I’m wearing.
As for the “only scaling by condition damage,” I think you’re confusing kits for turrets.
Yes, it was a missexplaination from myself, it was inaccurate. I wanted to spoke about weapons strengh value of course. So ascended and legendary weapons do not transfert their weapons strengh to kits, resulting them being near useless for engi. That why a lot of engi ask for a kit rework.
Completely ridiculous oversight, although I HIGHLY doubt it was an oversight to begin considering the buff then nerf that occurred. It’s like Elementalists only get their weapon strength applied to one of their elements.
I have a hard time believing that making the kits properly scale to your weapon being that difficult.
“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”
How do you arrive at this instead of :
“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”
This is hopeless.
If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.
I would say this is not what you are accomplishing
I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.
If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.
IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.
Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.
Agreed 100% you are taking the best adept trait in the explosives line where there aren’t any other great traits and moving it up to master tier where there are great traits, and justifying it by moving down accelerant packed turrets which is useless as turrets are basically in a really bad place right now. And as ostricheggs has already said you are only hurting fringe builds by doing this such as hybrid users who have limited access to burning. Bomb builds will just grab forceful explosives and IP in the master trait and lose nothing for it, further making people want to run it. So please do tell how this helps build diversity which was your reasoning for moving it in the first place?
For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…
Ok well about those adept tier traits… I would say that when I pick my traits they change aspects of my character in impactful ways (especially ones that you can clearly see when you play). For example if I get Speedy Kits, I’m always running a lot faster, if I get Protection Injection I can clearly see I’m not being demolished by that Stun Warrior, Invigorating Speed, I regen my endurance twice as fast. These are adept traits.
Empowering Adrenaline – 5% damage, its arguable if thats a significant damage increase. You probably wouldn’t feel the impact in battle, in fact some may not even notice this at all. Now add to the fact that my endurance needs to be not full. So if I using this trait I’m basically saying: “Let’s dodge so I can increase my damage by an amount that I’ll barely even notice”
Exploit Weakness – You could say this has a more impactful effect compared to the previous trait but honestly I find this useless because you can usually use other engineer skills most of the time to accomplish that same thing.
“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”
How do you arrive at this instead of :
“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”
This is hopeless.
If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.
I would say this is not what you are accomplishing
I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.
If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.
IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.
Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. I don’t see any sort of compensation to balance this change. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.
Actually, that Power Shoes change is huge. 25% Movement Speed bonus all the time will be a huge change to how I construct my build in WvW. Instead of running 30/0/10/20/10 I’ll be able to go a full 20 into Inventions, increasing my survivability even further.
Won’t help much on the PvE side of things, though I’ve already burned the gold buying 7 Runes of the Traveler in anticipation for this nerf regardless.
As for Blunderbuss: meh. I don’t really use the Rifle anymore outside of Jumping Puzzles. Magnetic Inversion is just too good of a Blast finisher, and Leap finishers are selfish heals when used in Water fields. Overcharged Shot is a nice snare remover, but I already run Rocket Boots.
I’m sure if you even sat down and calculated the damage of Blunderbuss versus staying in the Bomb Kit and auto-attacking, it’d either cancel out or go in favor of bombs.
You are still losing a trait for Infused Precision though, no? Probably replacing Stabilized Armor/Cloaking Device/Whatever.
The only way I would even consider Power Shoes is if the Infused Precision trait was changed to a vigor proc, otherwise I’m spending 10 points on a useless trait that just so happens to work with Invigorating Speed.
Besides, Speedy Kits is still strictly better than Power Shoes, no? I mean unless the player has an aversion to kit swapping mid battle
Agreed.. Ditching Engineer, I guess.. Maybe that is what they want? To have us all reroll.. I loved the Engineer as it was. I also play many professions, and can say that the Engineer was already balanced.. Not sure what will happen to it now. Back to my Necromancer I go.
Noooo I mean Grenadier is Grandmaster tier and IP was moved to Master tier.
I don’t care much about the permanent vigor, that is an agreeable change. But why change Incendiary Powder to Master Tier? This will severely diminish the usefulness of grenade kit forcing us to choose between Incendiary Powder or further range and an extra grenade. Will any one be running grenade kit at all with this changes? I just spent all my laurels on condition ascended gear for my Engineer and soon my build will be useless?
Just no. HgH never relied on perma vigor and while I do not find it game-breakingly OP it really is joke to complain about its minor nerf. It is not core and has never been core. No joke.
S/D got a nerf as well so CC will be hitting that build much harder so in the right way a nerf got through strong enough to hurt the now one boon stealing build.
Instead of qqing over the vigor (which was nerfed for traits not pertaining to on crit cross class) perhaps we should address the Incendiary Powder issue.
Re-read the patch notes for each class. Balancing is going to be a hell of a lot more than “My class got hit with a nerf not fair”.
Can you explain how a 40-50% reduction is a minor nerf?
So about the vigor nerfs, particularly Engineer… I’m assuming this means that you can have vigor up 5 out of 10 seconds (well more like 5-6 seconds). You guys don’t consider a 40-50% nerf a bit… extreme?
Was reading some of Chaith’s posts about his rifle/nade/toolkit build and the magnet combos he uses, and it got me to start thinking about what sort of combos I should use on my build.
I’m using P/P/Nade/toolkit right now, what do you think would be the optimal combo for this build? Obviously it wouldn’t be spike damage like a power build but it would apply powerful conditions
If you want to do everything (dungeons, fotm, wvw, pvp) I would most certainly avoid ranger. Particularly for the pve aspects.
Not because they are necessarily bad for pve, its just that they are definitely looked down upon by other players in that respect, if you care about that sort of thing.
Hey guys, aftering watch some vids of kit Engineers such as Yishi, I’ve decided to main my Engineer (after getting ascended weapons for my necro and mesmer…. sigh) The kit builds seem like so much fun in WvW (I previously had my Engineer as HGH and HATED maintaining might stacks)
I’m using a mix of Dire and Rabid right now with Perplexity. I have ~25% just so I can proc Incendiary Powder (otherwise I would do more Dire, anyone with less crit have trouble procing it? I may try using more Dire) Thinking about trying Noble runes but seems like it has the same annoyance factor as HGH.
I was curious for your thoughts on kit choice. I am particularly interested in Bomb Kit, Toolkit, and Elixir Gun.
More specifically… I need to pick between Bomb Kit and Toolkit, Elixir Gun and Rocket Boots
