Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdQQFAUlUUpyq9ZxmKseNSbBFylWRRvxqE7PugAA-TlSBABZpM4MlgXp0ojLAAWKx+b/B80Rgp6PLcgAA4BAAA-w

Been running this the last 2 weeks or so. As a solo roamer it’s really tough to bring down and dishes out some powerful AOE damage + CC. It shines even more in small group play with the huge number of AOE boons. All the blast finishers plus the combo fields also means you can stack up 20+ stacks of might or 12 seconds of stealth as needed.

Mork vom Ork.2598:

For this build MedKit has slightly better synergy than HT (at the cost of the water field and 1 condition removal):

• main heal resets @ 25%
• might stacking without wasting the actual heal
• fury

While I agree with you in theory that the med kit should be better in several cases, in practice, the time lost swapping around and using all the different skills is time that isn’t spent applying pressure to your opponent.

Healing turret packages almost everything up into a tidy little 0.5 second burst. Even just the base heal of med kit takes a full second and heals for less overall, not including the water blast finisher (and without using that, recharges faster as well).

I die a little inside every time I take healing turret on a power build when I would love to have that fury, but healing turret is just that much better, especially in the current condi meta.

I’m rather cheap by nature, so Koi Cakes work out well pretty well for condi builds.

Omnomberry Ghosts are also pretty good for crit damage builds, but they’re kinda pricey. I like them well enough that I keep them around anyway, but fire flank steak is a cheap alternative that I use for PvE.

When I need a defensive boost, I actually run Saffron Bread over Lemongrass Soup. It’s dirt cheap and adds some damage reduction in addition to the 20% condi reduction.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQFAUlIqic3zSTF1LJyoCkWIFS49BShd5XfUIXtFA-jkCBYfBhgAhKAI7sIasFNMastBAKbYKXRW7KpqXAA-w
I run a slightly modified version of the SD build that includes bombs for more AOE, DPS, and CC. It also has a bit more survivability thanks to the extra toughness, CC, and zone control from bombs. The knights armor could easily switch over to zerker for even more burst though.

That said, I find I often don’t need more burst. With the various combos you can string together with all the CC, you have enough damage to down even some of the more tanky builds out there. The big ol’ bomb, magnet pull, pry bar combo especially can instagib a lot of things. The extra toughness also comes in very handy in 1vx situations.

I’m still torn on the citadel runes. With no other source of fury, it’s pretty huge for solo play, but all ruby orbs is pretty good too. Scholar runes can work in a group if you’re hanging back, but when you start diving into the fray with bombs to DPS things, they aren’t the best. You can also go rocket boots over rifle turret. You lose a bit of dps, but gain even more survivability.

Anyway, now on to my true reason for posting. I agree with many of the comments already posted about build templates, GvG, and many other things from GW1 that would be great additions to GW2, and would like to add one that I think would solve a couple problems with the game as it stands today. As someone who started GW1 with Nightfall and probably wouldn’t have gotten into the franchise otherwise, I think the Hero system brought a lot to the game that GW2 could benefit from incorporating.

Sure, it make a bit less sense to have heroes in open world content, although even there I think it would be viable in some cases. In dungeons, though? Give people who hate other people a way to complete late-game content.

At also adds a layer of theory-crafting and build creation to the game, as now you get to not only spec yourself, but try to optimize your team build for the dungeon you’re entering, realizing the handicap of AI.

It would also open up more avenues for story-telling. As a Charr main, I think it would be awesome to be able to build my own warband. Asura could assemble a Krewe, etc. Sure, you sort of do these things already in the personal story to some extent, but then they all just disappear. All the story that you built just goes poof when you join an order. Even that story just gets tossed aside when the pact is formed. The GW2 story just seems to lack direction at this point, especially around character development.

Why not explore and develop those characters further as heroes with their own story quests that you help them with. You already have a potential in in some cases with the groundwork laid by some of the personal stories, or you could just create brand new characters and tell their stories. On top of that, it opens up additional story telling for your own character as he/she assembles his/her group. I feel like the heroes were an integral part of what made the Nightfall and EotN stories so great.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQFAUlIqic3zSTF1LJyoCkWIFS49BShd5XfUIXtFA-jkCBYfBhgAhKAI7sIasFNMastBAKbYKXRW7KpqXAA-w

I typically run this when I get tired of 3-kit condi. It’s a good all around build that’s great for small group play and pretty good for solo 1v1s. With the high CC and AOE, it handles most other power builds with ease, but as with most engy builds, condis are really its achilles heal.

I’m still torn on the citadel runes. With no other source of fury, it’s pretty huge for solo play, but all ruby orbs is pretty good too. Scholar runes can work in a group if you’re hanging back, but when you start diving into the fray with bombs to DPS things, they aren’t the best. You can also go rocket boots over rifle turret. You lose a bit of dps, but gain a ton of survivability.

Dietere.3476:

Proposal Overview
Randomization of Mistlock Instabilities
…
It is currently very difficult to complete certain fractals combined with some of the instabilities (like the bloodlust one on the grawl shaman fight, or the OOC one for Mai Trin, for example). This could be alleviated by not adding certain instabilities to the possible pool for certain fractals.

Or you could make it so those harder combinations only get added to the pool at higher levels. I like this idea.

The other alternative that I thought would also suffice would be to make instabilities like gambits that increase your rewards, but it makes it harder (or at least less straight forward) to ramp up difficulty as level increases.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Proposal overview
Account bound rewards tiered on fractal level.
…
Proposal Functionality
Several different types of items:
“Guaranteed”
Like the Pvp rank vendors add equivalent fractal rank vendors. These can sell a small selection of items, possibly with each fractal tier up selling a more upgraded version.

“Fractal based”
Fractal specific rewards that only start dropping at 40+ since this tier currently has no additional drop compared to 30-39. i.e Mini Anomaly, Mini Evolved grawl shaman etc.

More tiered/ranked rewards is a good idea for progression. It could also pair well with my proposal
You could earn fractal specific tokens, almost like a new set of dungeon tokens, and at each fractal rank tier, additional rewards would be unlocked that you could purchase with those tokens. At the same time, you could add tiered rewards for the already existing account bound tokens/rewards.

I feel like the less you can rework the fundamental mechanics the better. The more drastic the changes, the higher the risk of alienating the few who still do enjoy fractals. Also, if we can come up with solutions that solve multiple problems with a single change, it would leave more time for adding additional content that we all want, like the GW1 missions and other lore-based stories.

Speaking of GW1 missions, another one that might make a good, short, but teamwork based fractal would be the “Grand Court of Sebelkeh” mission from Nightfall, or Dzagonur Bastion, but that one may have been mentioned already. Yeah, in case you couldn’t guess, I want to fight Margonites again…

Proposal Overview: Add Fractal specific, tradeable rewards

Goal of Proposal:
- Provide additional rewards for completing fractals that can be shown off or sold
- Use free market to balance difficulty vs reward of different fractals (i.e. Colossus, Dredge). All rewards being equal, the ones earned from harder fractals should end up being more expensive and therefore more lucrative for Fractal frequenters.
- Give people a reason to not re-roll quite so often, or at least not re-roll for the same fractal every time
- Keep content even more fresh as new fractals are added and give people a reason to learn/explore the new fractals
- Incorporate some of the other great suggestions I’ve seen in this thread into one overarching change

Proposal Functionality
The proposal is to add the chance for a fractal specific reward (or perhaps multiple fractal specific rewards) to the end chest of each individual fractal. For resurrected living world content, this could be rewards from that event. For Guild Wars 1 content, it could be the rewards earned from that content. For fractal exclusive content, it would need to be new rewards. These rewards could be weapon skins, armor skins, minis, tonics, or all of the above. Here are a few examples (including ideas for fractals mentioned in this thread that haven’t been added yet but would make great additions IMO):
Dredge – (new) Sonic Weapons with special audio affects
Aquatic Ruins – Ascended Breather
Uncategorized Fractal – Golem Tonics (Old Tom, Mr Mittens, Professor Mew, etc.)
Molten Boss – Fused Weapons
Molten Furnace – Sentinel recipes and/or Azurite orbs
Tower of Nightmares – Gas Mask Skin
Abaddon – Forgotten weapons
Domain of Anguish areas – Gemstones for Tormented Weapons, localized minis
Aurora Glade – Mini Demagogue

Associated Risks
- May dilute the value of fractal rewards if people can just buy the same rewards. Keeping the generic fractal rewards (fractal relics, fractal weapons, ascended equipment, etc) account bound should combat this to some extent. Also, if re-balancing is done to the fractals to make them more even, this is less necessary, but more account bound rewards in general will only exacerbate the current issues with the fractal reward system.
- This change also places the player somewhat at the mercy of RNG both for the drop rate and for the rolling of fractals if they are hunting for a specific reward. Solutions for this could include one of the previous proposals to let people choose their fractals and/or to add specific tokens to each fractal that are guaranteed to drop from the chest and can then be used to buy the given reward(s).

The problem I have with only getting one celestial set is that I’m still stuck with a single rune set unless I want to go re-buying entire rune sets every time I want to re-spec. I haven’t crafted my armor either. I’m waiting for the patch and accumulating mats until then so there’s less I have to buy.

Assuming I’m going to limit myself to one set on my Engy, I’m leaning toward having one ascended armor set specifically suited to one of my preferred builds, and just go exotics for other builds as needed so I can keep my runes. The Celestial nerf was only further encouragement for me. If I were to go for a single celestial, I’d probably go for some sort of boon duration or condi reduction runes for their general utility, but I hate limiting my own build options.

The power shoes was intended as a substitute for the loss of speedy kits, however if you feel you don’t need it because of your other swiftness from elixir b’s, you could keep those 5 points in firearms for target the maimed and still grab AMR for more survivability and to combo with either HGH or SRD.

Also, you still do have too much crit chance…

I’m with StillShade on this one. Having HGH doesn’t mean you have to hit off every elixir on CD. Sure you can pre-cast B and Toss H for 4 stacks (and maybe toss B for a quick overcharged shot). After that though, you can just build up might throughout the fight as you need your other elixirs.

Should more than make up for the lost damage from dropping modified ammo, which really buys you very little as the conditions you’re applying have low durations and you have no condi duration to bolster at all. What you do with those 10 trait points is up to you. Personally I would drop the 10 in tools as well and go 20 in inventions for power shoes and automated medical response (which gives you even more might if you do go HGH), but you could go 10 more in tools for more crit damage and power wrench or explosives for more power and exploit weakness/empowering adrenaline.

The other issue I have with the build is that while I like the concept of assassins over berserkers, with your implementation, you’re ending up with too much crit chance. With maxed out perception and fury, you’re landing at 107 crit chance, and 117 on targets below 50%. Don’t get me wrong, if you do the math (or use the chart here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit#Average_damage_increase), high crit chance gives you a huge bang for your buck, but you also don’t want to be wasting any of your attribute points.

With elixir b, hidden flask, and the boon duration from alchemy, you’re pretty much going to be maintaining fury throughout a fight, which means between perception, fury, and target the weak, you should probably be targeting ~60-70% crit damage from precision. Reinvesting some of those firearms points into some other line would help. Beyond that, maybe consider converting some of that assassin’s back to berserker.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree that the squirt gun damage output is the core issue with the flamethrower that keeps people from using it really at all. That said, some measure of stability would give the kit a way to stand out among the other options while not exacerbating the 3-kit tendency-dependency of the class. If you go juggernaut flamethrower, you’re doing it to stay in it, not swap around kits every 5 seconds.

Once you set that precendence (however you go about it), you can look at ways to bump up the damage, and in that sense, it would need to be a buff to the #1 skill. Otherwise you’re back to encouraging utility use and kit swapping without juggernaut.

But Engies already have perma-stability. It’s called Mortar! Har har, I’m so funny.

On a more semi-serious note, what about giving Juggernaut Unshakable ? While it is sort of perma-stability, enough CC can wear it down, and since foes with unshakable don’t start with defiant stacks (they gain them after the first CC usually), you can’t just switch into your flamethrower to get an easy stomp.

It also makes balancing pretty easy, as you can just vary the number of defiant stacks that get applied each time. Maybe start with 2 or 3 and see how it affects balance.

Joe.4178:

I forgot to add elixir gun #4 acid bomb you can do it forward. Just like how I phase retreat dash forward all the time, you can acid bomb forward like rocket boots.

---

TRICK TO ACID BOMBING FORWARD*** (Similar to phase retreat dashing forward)
1. Go to options tab f11
2. Under movements tab, go to the about face option.
3. Bind a key to the about face.
4. Auto run
5. Left mouse click once while youre auto running and have the elixir kit out.
6. Press your about face button, then press acid bomb and right click after that to keep the running forward.
There you go, you can acid bomb forward every 15 seconds now with the same range as rocket boots.

This is precisely the reason I replaced rocket boots with elixir gun on all non-SD builds (although I do sometimes miss the immob/chill/cripple cleanse). However my experience with the about-face is that the animation does take a measurable (albeit small) amount of time and when I am trying to efficiently hit off combos like this, I tend to hit the combo too fast trying to gain as much ground as possible and end up shooting off sideways rather than straight ahead. As such, I’ve taken to just turning myself. A well muscle-memoried flick is just as fast and precise as about-face, but is easier to coordinate when to hit acid-bomb.

Not sure where all this thief paranoia is coming from. As Ukuni said, it really comes down to the build. Thieves usually don’t want any part of any engy build that runs bombs, whether it’s power or condi based, and they certainly aren’t going to shortbow you to death.

As far as the boon stripping goes, if you do run into an S/D thief and he manages to steal your might, I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of a backstab. Depending on your build, losing that might may straight up end the fight or just make things a little more fair. Thieves are squishy enough that any sort of AOE to keep them off you even half the time usually means you win straight up.

I wouldn’t assume speedy kits unless you saw swiftness. Lately, I’ve been opting for 20 deep in inventions to get you powershoes for speed and AMR you mentioned for a free HT recharge. It’s also an unstrippable buff.

I agree on the armor – probably a mixture of zerker/knights.

Obviously the exact stats are a bit tough to determine based on mere description. But based on your description, it sounds an awful lot like a WvW build I’ve been running for the last week (got tired of 3-kit condi ). Just a few modifications (honestly, it looks good – I might consider switching), and you have:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V;4cPFw0c-gSFx0;9;4JJJ-942-18-47;21;05;9;2b-kr0;5VTVY0c1hYn3t4230CN2s;5F2-V-XDo;9;9;9-kkkkkk;9;36A

“constant knockbacks/CC” – 5 turrets+apt, rifle net shot+overcharged, toolkit pull, big ol bomb – CHECK
“He had toolkit” – CHECK
“standard H. Turret” – CHECK
“he could be running some kind of Staric Discharge.” CHECK
“Yet he was quite surviveable” little hard to quantify, but compared to standard SD, CHECK
“had nice AoE” – bombs and SD – CHECK
“Automatic Medical Response” CHECK
“that pushback on turret explosion trait” CHECK
“Rifle Engi type” CHECK

Obviously anything else you can remember would help. Since you’re a power build, you probably didn’t notice how good his condi-clear was, but that is one of the main weaknesses of the build I linked. It also lacks any sort of endurance regen unless you use runes or sigils – was he dodging alot?

tattoohead.3217:

…What you gain! …
-Speedy Kits (mostly for roaming/keeping up in wvw but also invig speed)

Not to nitpick, but in my experience, one generally needs to have a kit in order for speedy kits to work.

Also, in general I agree with the power concept for gadget-based builds, but if you’re going to go that route, there’s no reason not to throw the static discharge in there for the added damage, even if you don’t base your entire build around it.

Mek.2947:

Frosch.7809:

Gahzirra.8639:

Funny how perceptions coincide with reality…Yak’s and Ebay separated, and Yaks is losing to SBI as well. Did learn in the Yaks/Ebay realtionship who the pitcher and catcher was, Ebay always 2nd.

Still sour about that defeat you got in League week 6? I think you can be glad that YB dislikes Maggs even more than your server and vice versa. The outcome of this week doesn’t change the League result, no matter how hard you try. Cheers!

Dude your server has been kicked in the face enough times this match-up. Just stay down until EB can come help you back up.

Let me get this straight, you lost to not one, but two servers that you were supposed to beat, and YB is supposed to feel bad about losing to two servers that are supposed to win in a week that doesn’t count for anything? Darn, you showed us…

Yeah, sorry, not feeling the shame. Go back to crying in the corner about something that happened in a video game 2 weeks ago.

We won’t even get into the “our players are taking the week off for x/y reasons” like you did when you lost. Sorry, just isn’t that important. Have a pleasant week.

Either a new master level trait (“Antiseptic”?) or add it to packaged stimulants, but I think a trait that allowed bandages to remove a single condition each would both give a general buff in the form of the occasional supply crate and help kits by buffing the med kit condi removal.