Guild Wars 2

hello, engi here.
You are subject to my boots.
Every
time
we
meet.

And yes, that kittenes me off just as much as you.

denied.
- imagine a long fight in the lord-room where you have to re-contest the wp to avoid insta-rezzing defenders.
- on the opposite, your change does not solve the issue. people would simply send 2 guys to do 5 auto-attacks each, or one would do 10.

your gain/cost ratio is way off the charts.

and tbh, I doubt that there is an issue at all.

The reason of the low guard dps in the sheet is that
a) this was their dps in a 30sec time-span and their biggest bursts are on 10 seconds or more cd. if it were not for the strong sword AA to gap these long cd’s, their dps would be even lower.
b) they were tested in a vacuum / with banners / with spotter / both.
That means guards had to rely on their own might-stacking and vulnerability-stacking, both of which are poorly.
In decent groups with 25 might&vuln all their +dmg% modifiers bolster their dps dramatically, making them becoming the dps powerhouse that you observed them as.

If you look into ele, they have much higher average might-stacks, and engi comes with the biggest vuln-uptime. The reason for that is that they bring it themselves, hence their personal dps is higher.

also no, engi can’t maintain (or even burst-stack)25 stacks of might, with builds that still do decent dps. We still can blast often, so we contribute to keeping 25 stacks of might in the group, but when you look at engi on his own, he’s not able to do so.

There are still people trying to run turrets?

>I have not disputed a cmdrs right to exclude.
You did.
In the very next paragraph you ask for this very right to be limited in a way to fit your very own preferences. Whether you like it or not, you did.

>Purchasing a tag does not mean you should engage in exclusionary behavior
It means nothing but that you want to lead a group.
how you design that group is up to you.
Who you invite is up to you.
Who you don’t invite is up to you, too.
On which standards you invide / exclude people is also up to you.

Like in pve raids, certain requirements increase the chance of success.
Excluding people because they decrease this chance is absolutely valid in-game behavior. This is not reality. This is nothing but leisure time. Exclusion in-game does not impact your livelihood, so excluding people with disabilities in general does not actually harm them on any other level as an emotional one. And to that I only can say “Offense is taken, not given”. If these people want to stay competitive by excluding people who are not fit for this competitive environment, they are free to do so in-game. And if you’d respect their right to play the game how they want – like you would ask for yourself, you have to admit that there is nothing to be complained about here.

A raid is not a real company. Deciding to exclude you from it does not put you into any disadvantage in your life. Therefore real-life industry-standards for the inclusion of disabled people do not apply in this scenario.
Deal with it.

There are no pros or cons, since they don’t compete with each other…

Depending on your chosen traits/gear/utilities, you pick rifle for power/hybrid builds, P/P for offensive condi-builds and p/s for defensive condi/hybrid builds.

F.e. if you have toolkit in your bar, you have less reasons to run p/s since you already have a block, and therefore are not forced into shield anymore. Ofc it would still be a defensive advantage to still run p/s but as long as you have Toolkit, p/p will work fine as well.

Rifle is there to bring cc and dps for power-oriented builds, along with the option to effectively harass beyond 600~900 range (where nades and bombs are effectively useless)

So yea, there is no pros or cons to run any of them, unless your original question was how effective various build-types towards each other are…

Answer: They are all effectively useless for you, unless you find a (couple of) spec(s) that are really fun for you to play, so you have the motivation to master them.

So the counter-question is: what builds have you tried so far, and what was the most fun for you?

On the top of the page you go

Do it like me and don’t give a kitten.
I just spam nades, minefield and analyze all day long to stack vuln, and don’t even care about your personal dps. Dungeons are just a daily gold-grind and running the meta for them is
a) counter-productive since you have to invest a lot of gold beforehand.
b) unrewarding since you can cap vulnerability easy with niche-builds as well.
c) unnecessary since Dungeons are too easy to care about “best in slot”.
d) useless, since the meta barely performs in fractals, therefore is a even bigger waste to be set up for it there.

Just tested HgH & adaptive armor out:

I still cap might on 25 stacks (for the entire cd of my elixirs), and 200 less toughness doesn’t do a dent in my armor.

For those who say that adaptive armor was meant for squishies to toughen up: you’re not supposed to take hits as a squishy, you want to do everything to avoid them. Besides, your armor rating would have still been abysmal, so for marauder /sinister / zerker builds I’d take reserve salvo or perfectly weighted naturally anyways.
And for the purpose of heavy armored folks, adaptive armor still does its job, especially the -20% condi-dmg part.

So, Why do I don’t care about the HgH nerf?
Because this trait still reduces elixir cd, increases their duration, and the remaining might duration (with hoelbrak runes or similar picks) is still longer than Elixir H, Throw Elixir H & Throw Elixir B. So 6 stacks still get maintained permanently from these 3 skills allone(funfact, even pre-nerf they weren’t better, they just had an increased bridge-time if you forgot to get them on CD). So, now elixir B has a cd of 32 sec with HgH & just a HgH might duration of 22sec. But it also comes with its own might stack that is on a whoopin 54sec duration, meaning that you can stack it twice in the 2nd cycle, still giving you 2 permanent mightstacks from elixir B
So, by picking Elixir H & Elixir B, you achieve 8 permanent mightstacks, and 10 mightstacks for 22sec on a 32sec cd, per cycle.
Add this on top of the idle mightstacks of mass-momentum & juggernaut and you cap on 24-26 mightstacks. And since the engine drops your shortest duration stacks in favor for new ones, you cap on 25 might to all times… Just as pre-nerf.
So, what is a trait that still performs 100% AFTER it got nerfed?
A trait that performs 100%.

Keep in mind that these numbers don’t even consider Mortar #5, elixir S / throw elixir S, & Hidden flask.
There is so much might sources still going on, that it is almost impossible to not have 25 stacks of might to all times… And my build doesn’t even slot EG.
Just slot it instead of elixir B, for even more insane might-uptime. I personally prefer the extra stab from B’s TB, but do whatever you like…

One thing is sure, this nerf does not influence our build-options in the slightest. If anything, it removes brain-afk gameplay where the game forgives you way too much for not using your elixirs in opportune moments.

Most minors staple their effects directly on each other, like a pyramid or chain.
Whether or not they are displayed in the traitlines’ description or not, doesn’t change what they do.

Anyways, minors are there to signalize that some of your mechanics are permanently changed when picked. So while one could argue that they don’t improve anything, others would perceive the unlocking of a complete new weapon-set + revamp / addition of the class-mechanic as the most powerful trait possible.

Sure, having a extra minor to improve the elite specs would be awesome, but from what I’ve seen most of them are already decently balanced and don’t really need any extras to work with the other trait-lines…

1. what toolbox said
2. elementalists, as base-class, also don’t have weaponswap. And with their atunements and our kits, we are the only two classes that have consistent access to more than two “weapon”-skill sets in combat.
I think the game design is consistent in this regard, especially since the design idea of engineer always revolved around kits.

Still, the ongoing balancing of our skills have made non-kit builds viable nowadays, so kits shouldn’t be seen as our central class-mechanic anymore. More so with the addition of elite-specializations.

Maybe, at some point in the future, a-net will revisit the class-design-idea of the engineer, and recognize that we have evolved past it. Outside of future elite-specializations, I’d love to see mace being added to our vanilla class,alongside the ability to weaponwap, giving us melee cc and tank capabilities, so power-focused builds could profit from running mace, too.
So far we only have pistol shield as alternative to rifle, and both of these sets are so different that you can’t even run them effectively stat-wise – well outside of celestial / other hybrid stats, ofc.

So for mace, I’d like to see it to be sound-themed, like dredge weapons, f.e.:
AA1:
medium dmg / 130 range / 3 targets / n sec bleed
AA2:
medium dmg /130 range / 3 targets / n sec bleed
AA3:
heavy dmg / double cast time / interrupt / 130 range / 3 targets / n sec confusion

Skill 2:
Blastwave
6s cd / heavy dmg / conic front-AoE / 480 range / n sec weakness / n sec cripple

Skill 3:
Soundshell
15s cd / 2,5s channel / 5 ticks / 480 range AoE / n sec stability to allies / n sec regeneration to allies

Inventions – delete medical dispersion field (it’s a pointless trait anyways)
New trait – Supersonic Amplifier (inventions grandmaster 3):
- Mace skills cd reduction 10%
- Mace AA 3 is now a blast-finisher [Alternative : Soundshell now provides might & fury for n seconds]

Tigirius, last time you said you only do pve…
Did you read the thread title?
Do you know that this lack of balancing you propagate all over this forum is basically non-existent, especially when it comes to pvp and wvw?
Did you know that its only the steep learning curve for the engi that creates the illusion of being subpar?
Not a single time since I play engi, I got killed by something else but my own stupidity. There was not a single situation or enemy I could not take after finding out what to do / how to outsmart them. The engineer is a difficult and skillcap-less class that one can always improve himself in. If you don’t like the trail and error / high apm side if this class then please stop complaining already and roll for something else.

Things that actually need fixes:
The bugs (like for all classes’ traits and skills)
The hobosacks
Thats it. Most engis are perfectly fine with the balancing of their class, what we call out for is more variety in accessible weapons and new skills / traits, since that is what the engi is about: chaos.
The more toys we have to our disposal the deadlier we get, which does not – under no
circumstances – mean that we need a re-balance for our existing traits or skills.

Gw2 =/= other mmo’s, stop comparing them. Open the previous patchnotes, look into the class-specific changes and tell me again that this class’ dev-team is not doing anything. Every single class receives the same attention and if you really want to find out the class that is changed the least, then you end up with guardian. Why? because it was mostly fine from launch and only required minor changes and balance updates from time to time.

Forge was datamined, and I’m pretty sure we’ll end up with that. While there is no 100% guarantee with datamined stuff to become true, Berserker also got datamined as the warriors elite-spec name & look how it turned out…

Kodama.6453:

Arantheal.7396:

Bindaeyen.9613:

Arantheal.7396:

Bindaeyen.9613:

Arantheal.7396:

Calcifire.1864:

as someone who doesn’t PvP or WvW, I’m underwhelmed as hell.

the big profession mechanic is utterly useless in PvE unless there is someone dying nearby, and the elite is purely a PvP ability considering how insanely situational stealth is in PvE for non-thieves.

consider that for the elite mechanic revenants get a new legend, necros get a new death shroud, mesmers get to save-scum, the ability to rez/finish someone at range is so situational outside of PvP that unless HoT adds a LOT of finishable enemies like the toxic alliance, it may as well not exist.

We have no idea on the hammer cd’s & power-scaling so you may want to wait before calling it useless.
Also, do you remember the toxic alliance? I wouldn’t be surprised if you meet a lot of mordrem in the future that need to be stomped

They’re talking about the stealth elite and the function gyro being near useless, not the entire spec. I’m not sure about the elite, but the gyro is certainly near pointless in PvE from what we understand of it. It makes almost zero difference in open world.

Not to mention that they MENTIONED Toxic Alliance in their post. Assuming there’ll be a bunch of mobs to finish off is wishful thinking at best considering they seem to have ran away from that mechanic in PvE. Was there even any in the beta yet? Maybe that mounted boss from the story…? I don’t recall running into a single one.

It’s a heavily PvP skewed mechanic change, moreso than any other class’ and that’s extremely disappointing.

Opinions.
I for example find it extremely satisfying.

No, not opinions. In half of the game it’s use is minimal.

>Half
>PvE
Welp, in the other 2/3rds it’s extremely awesome.

Extremely awesome. Well, it seems like the functional gyroscope is destroyable. If so and it is dying as fast as our turrets, it won’t be able to deliver just a single stomp. ^^

Jupp, that’s the last concern I have. If they tell me they’re indestructible, but interruptable I’m a happy engi.

Ohoni.6057:

I had some fun with the Scrapper so far, but the Gyros can be pretty troublesome. The Hammer is an active melee skillset, while the gyros have to chase you around to keep up, so they’re better for an stationary artillery build. They’re more mobile than turrets, but not mobile enough.

I would recommend hard locking them to the player’s anchor point, not “AI locking them,” in that they sort of want to be near the player, and vaguely wander over to him as best they can, I mean that they will ALWAYS float at a specific position relative to the player.

Maybe Bulwark at 10 o’clock, Sneak Gyro at 2 o’clock, Purge at 8 o’clock, Medic at 5 o’clock, and every move you make, they move exactly relative to your position, as locked into you as that floating plant backpiece.

Jupp, this is what we’ve seen in the original HoT teaser.
This is what we hoped for, along with them being invulnerable to damage / condis.
I don’t mind if they have a low uptime, but I want to be able to use my utilities in the mids of combat, where all the AoE’s are on the ground & melt squishy targets.

So I would rework them like this:
- all gyros are immune to dmg
- all gyros are immune to cc/condis
-all gyros are locked to orbit your character. That includes direct sticking to us when we jump, leap & teleport.
- all gyros & their blow-up effects are insta-casts

Med-gyro:
10sec uptime, 15sec downtime == 25sec cd
- Heal us periodically for 800 every second
- Heal us & allies for 3k when blown up or timed out / 480 range
toolbelt stays as is

Purge-gyro:
12sec uptime, 13sec downtime == 25sec cd
- Clean 2 condis every 3 seconds
- Stunbreak & AoE transmute 3 condis on us & allies when blown up or timed out / 480 range
toolbelt stays as is

Shredder gyro:
10sec uptime, 20sec downtime == 30sec cd
- whirlfinish fields that we move trough and tick low melee dmg / 180 range
- Explode in a cloud of whirling scrap that deals medium AoE-dmg & dazes when blown up or timed out / 480 range
toolbelt stays as is

Bulwark gyro:
15sec uptime, 25sec downtime == 40sec cd
- AoE-buffs protection for us & allies every 3sec / 480 range
- Stunbreaks & AoE-buff 50% dmg reduction for 3 seconds when blown up or timed out / 480 range
toolbelt stays as is

Blast gyro:
15sec uptime, 15sec downtime == 30sec cd
AoE-buffs 150 power + fury for us & allies every 3 seconds / 480 range
AoE-knockbacks enemies, deals medium dmg & blast-finishes when blown up or timed out / 480 range
toolbelt stays as is

Sneak gyro:
12sec uptime, 48sec downtime == 60sec cd
-AoE buff stealth for 3sec every 3sec for us & allies / 480 range
-Buff stealth for 10sec for us when blown up or timed out / 480 range

Special notes on the sneak gyro:
- It is permanently revealed & still orbiting the player, so constantly giving away the engis position for other players. It will not aggro NPC’s
- It’s meant as group-support, to either allow safe-stomps & rezzes by allies, or get people to places so they can focus their fire, while drawing attention to the only remaining visible target on the field: us
- skillful play can include to activate it from behind walls / other obstruction to confuse enemies
- the last 10sec stealth are the solo elite part, that can be activated in opportune moments to get rid of all the subsequent AoE-hate from enemies, but also serves as replaced functionality if no allies is around & you simply want to get away / break LoS.

Class-mechanic, function gyro (renamed into emergency gyro):
30sec cd
-Automatically spawns a invulnerable gyro that moves to the closest downed ally (also can be ourselves) and starts rezzing. Blows itself up & AoE-heals for 3k in 480 range upon successful revival / if the target dies / after 15sec. Checks for downed allies once per second in a 480 range, only if the engineer is still in combat.

Trait changes:

- [Stabilization core] triggers on all gyros / 10sec ICD
- [Impact savant] influences daze
- [Final salvo] also triggers on gyro-timeouts & applies 1sec of AoE-daze to enemies in a 240 range.

Rifle should be your mainhand, and beyond that any combination of bombkit, FT, rocketboots, slickshoes, elixir B, Healing turret& Elixir H will Serve you well. Elixir X can be fun, but Supply-crate is the only really viable elite we currently have…
Try to run as many power & precision based equip as possible, optimally berserker.

When it comes to traits for leveling, I’d recommend 4/4/0/2/4
Pick forceful explosives, and accelerant-packed turret in explosions, hair-trigger and rifled barrels in firearms, Invigorating speed in Alchemy and Speedy kits + Speedy gadgets in tools.
Ofc you won’t be able to spend all trait points right away, but as long you’ve speedy kits and forceful explosions for Bombkit, you shouldn’t run into any issues. Once you acquire more trait-points, you can buy the rest of these cheap adept-traits from the profession-trainer and complete the build.

When I leveled my engi(s), I was running this build, together with healing turret, supply-crate, bombkit, rocketboots and slickshoes. It served me well, and solo’ing champs with it is fairly possible as well, especially if they are melee-oriented and you can kite them for ages…

Then buy HoT and start giving this feedback, instead of contributing nothing and further criticizing others for contributing. You claim to be so experienced in giving feedback. Welp, what do you’d call the type of feedback you’re currently contributing?

Plot?
Is this a TV series?
This is a frekkin MMOrpg, and its only purpose is to play together with / against other people.
And from what I see, there was no mmo-related development in the past few months.
I don’t speak about balancing little things here and there, I speak about developing and implementing content that can be played together with people.
So, what have we:
Eotm, almost a year ago since implementation, and its just a queue-overflow map with no impact on wvw whatsoever
Courtyard: 3/4 year ago and its just available for private arenas, with no impact on team or solo queue whatsoever
and thats it.

Have we got actual content (new maps / objectives) for WvW?
nope
Have we got actual content (new maps / gamemodes) for PvP?
nope
Have we got new skills or traits?
Yes, on march 20 (3/4 year ago, again) all classes got 5 new, mostly useless grandmaster-traits. And almost exactly 1 year ago, we got 1 new healing skill for each class, whom most are useless again.
Did the bug-lists for classes got shorter?
Kinda. Some bugs got fixed, a good load of new ones got introduced.

So here we are, 7 chapters deep into the current living world, with 2 new farmfests, 3 hours worth of dialogues, and a couple of new skins.
#Slowclap

You know, some studios actually go into a long break, then silently start to work on the next expansion, push the release-date a bit further to have time for polish and then amaze their player-base.
Read it from my lips, a-net:
You don’t have to be special snowflakes, just follow the path to success, laid down clearly by all the good MMO-predecessors out there, including GW1.

all of the above, plus I’d recommend you to use celestial gear

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqalUUptr9dxELseNSaBNyzkGQuhQ85GEgnC-TlSAAB7p+jeKNo4EAklyg80DolSM8M/BwDAIWlg9s/AhAesGA-w

You will stack bleeding like crazy, have 2 stunbreakers, and even kept your leap (EG #4). This build also allows for quick vulnerability and poison-stacking while maintaining all the condi-cleanse you need.

For convenience at using nades on high range, you have increased capabilities of crippling your enemy whenever you wish via multiple skills, and pistol #5 also got enhanced by the trait sitting duck.
Mobility, soft-cc, and condi-spamming, while still maintaining 195% crit dmg and moderate power / crit-chance. Not much to wish more for.

However, celestial gear is kinda hard to obtain (visit the wiki for the recipes), therefore I’ve made a alternative, purely condi-focused gear-mix, that still provides you need to run this utility / trait setup.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqalUUptrtbxELseRSaBNq0AyNECRFyP3gA8UA-T1RAwAz0DgRJIgHAgQ1focCAzf92fIqyPCB8YNA-w

1. don’t use the FT. it was designed as a perma stability/low dmg option to continiously pressure enemies. Since juggernaut got ridiculed this kit is broken. exceptions are pvp-decap for its 3 and 5
2. “immune” can only happen if you try to burn a destroyer mob or when you try to cc an enemy while they run with stability. pop your minefield and try again and/or pay attention to their frekkin buff-display. in case of warri or guardian: they can have a passive that triggers stability on the first cc they get. try a minor one (like throw shield) and look what happens.
3. more attack power is always wanted. You can have the same runes / sigils / equip like every other class, while also having many trait options to transmute your stats. running “toughness > power” is an option in wvw. It can be a wasted trait slot or your savior. depends on what you face.
4. trying to overcome a condimancer with condis is futile… for EVERY class. Guess why I play power/cc engi in wvw. And in pvp the balancing is just fine. Try purity sigils there.
5. thiefs have no stability. Engis have a metric kittenton of cc options (even worse than hammer warris if timed right). You do the math.
6. Every lost fight should be a learning experience for you, not a reason to cry for more buffs here.

just call them “backpacks of the engineer weapon-kits” or any according short forms. we just refer to them as engi-backpacks, if we somehow do not call them hobosacks straight away (and I guess the devs are well aware what we call them),

Anyways, what we wish for is a simple option in the game-menu that allows us to disable the display of hobosacks completely, to all instances of in- or out-combat, at will.
Many good suggestions were made how to balance this for opponents to be able to still recognize which kits we run, but
#1: Three of them hold unique weapons in their hands for the respective kits anyways.
and
#2: Since we have standard-character-models now, there is no need anymore to balance this, as long as engi kits keep getting displayed for opponents, when they activate this feature.

Please, for the love of god, we just want this neat little box in our game menu being there to tick, so we will never see these ugly hobosacks ever again on ourselves and can appreciate our reward for the LS farm-fests instead.

If they could also keep legendary auras and footprints being active, while we swap into a kit, our ocean of tears will dry out forever, and this thread can finally come to a well-deserved rest.

Please Gaile, make it happen.

Vrita.7846:

Sylvari master race.

HOW DARE YOU, HERETIC.
I shall never witness these words again, for I will call the EXTERMINATUS upon ye otherwise.

Dirame.8521:

Penguin.5197:

My favorite is going from sharpshooter to sharpershooter

I wonder what must have happened to make such progress possible

We had iron sights now we have scopes!

In a world like tyria, melee combat is still the most common combat form and usually the most dangerous threat to engineers.
While the scope allowed us to be more precise on range, we’ve come to learn that the narrow visual field is not providing the advantages we need, when we need them, so we reverse-engineered our targeting method to enhance our performance when the enemy is close, to gain overall better combat-performance…

Sometimes “more technically advanced” doesn’t mean “more effective”.
Sounds like a reasonable chain of optimization for me.

Non-interested in ranked matches here.

I almost always play s/d engi in unranked, and killing turreteers goes as follows:
- full s/d volley on the rocket-turret (bouncing s/d projectiles prepare the turreteer for the coming burst)
- wait and kite for 7 seconds (gearshield once he runs in and tries a netshot/OS combo)
- blunderbus, OS, surprise-shot, rifle-jump on the engi.
I win.

Less
than
10
seconds

I’m not even listed on the LB, so do I get granted grandmastership in pvp for doing nothing but a basic, 10sec rota? xD

2 guildies just got kicked from a AC run by path-sellers.

They opened the dungeon, but since the dungeon-owner does not close the instance anymore if he leaves / gets kicked, path-sellers started to abuse that.

Sure, path-sellers could open their own instances as well and kick people later on from it, but making the owner of a dungeon non-kickable would increase the defensive options regular players have against it by just opening all paths themselves.

I don’t mind people 4- or 3-manning a dungeon to sell the slots, but the abuse of the current party-system increased heavily over the past weeks.

The only other option would be to only run dungeons with guildies to be safe, but that would make it just worse for pugs and everybody else affected by such disgusting methods.

Could you please one-up the priority of that problem and fix it with the next build by actually making online instance-owners non-kickable? I know that would also kitten up cases where the dungeon-owner has a permanent dc (or has to go), but that could be negated by actually allowing a dungeon-owner to leave the party without closing the instance if he does so himself, or allow kicking him by the group if he remains offline for longer than x minutes.
Ty.

+1 to this, but the lack of UI customization options was always a problem in Gw2.
Please allow plugins for custom UI’s. This is what makes other MMO’s so much more convenient.

Player-created, eye-ergonomic UI’s, with varying transparency. You realized that FOV customization is important for a game, now please go the next step and allow customization of UI elements.

Is it just me or did you not do any dmg while people around you decided your fights for you? Most grenades were missing, and the few that hit were not even slightly stacking up the condi-pressure you’d need…

I mean, no offense, it looks like a nice supporter build for the backline in zergs, but I guess you’d get eaten up in solo-roaming…

The one occasion where you were fighting 2 enemies on your own, welp they’d never got down without them being stupid enough to stay at your dropped supply-crate. Basically all you depend on is to keep your enemy ranged to you, but without having at least one other player distracting them, this builds seems not being able to work with you.

My recommendation would be to take bombkit / toolkit or – better – both with you to have the survivability and pbaoe pressure you need in order to make this build viable.

[Edit] Just checked the clip again, and actually you seem to have the toolkit with you. Sadly you make rarely use of it, which would explain why you have that much problems with people closing in to you. You seem to have a solid base build-wise, but you should really improve on situational awareness and your own cooldowns.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpPrdZx6KseNSbBFylWRQnhR06PugAA-T1BEABMp8Ll9HiTHBAPIgGV/5hLIwWKBJFgFjBA-w

there you go.
I have the predator, so I switch often between knights and berserker stats, depending on what I need the most. Almost always I run with the bombkit and mines, but it happens that I switch one of them for toolkit and/or the other for elixir S, depending on me needing more cc or defense. For trolling I run elixir R (self-rezz) and if the place is crowded with necros I sometimes even run with elixir C.

Also the traits can vary…
Bunker down is my default, but from time to time I trade it for healing bombs or automated bomb dispenser. Since I almost always run with mines or BK I have no reason to switch the explosion-tree. The transmute trait (toughness > power) is my default, but also a placeholder for the case that I need protection or stun-dmg reduction.

About the rifle:
It does decent dps. Don’t hesitate to use its auto rather than the BK auto. The dmg might be lower, but you can mitigate it more stable and therefore keep your dps up.
In case of thieves: stand still, drop your mine AND minefield and wait for him to pop up. they like to insta cc you, but you can manually explode all your mines even while being stunned. If he gets knocked back by detonate, then you have the time to leave the cc, turn and further control him with elixir B belt + rifle 4 + netshot + rifle 5 + rifle 3. that usually downs them. then you simply drop BoB on his corpse and dps him with the rifle while he tries to teleport around…

So yea, l2adapt to the situation and you should do fine.

Yes: don’t oneshot them.
If you want to feed kills to others, do so instead of spamming #1 all the time. Your character won’t attack unless you do. So lean back and interfere only if they “need” help.

Why would you need a feature for something you can control very easily yourself?

Justin, maybe it would actually BE a good idea to make MMR visible for each player in their statistics.
reduces the QQ on the forums and allows them to figure out why what matchup occurs that often for them.

KlausKNT.9302:

Arantheal:
So we have a deal??
Do you remember the rules ??

Tbh, I usually just skip over your posts, since all the emotes make them un-readable, so I have no idea what you’re talking about. A fellow member just informed me that you could have information regarding hackers on RoS.

Now I was forced to dig up that info from your posts, just so I could understand what you’re talking about, and what exactly you’re talking about is this: mesmer portals.

I don’t arrange deals with trolls, so send your info per pm or move back to insignificance. Either works for me.

Whatever.
The video has a stop-function. Use it to see each step individually. The article also explained many combos directly. Step by step, word by word.
What do you expect from this board?

No one can make you win since no-one can know what opponents you face, so the “openings” that you request could actually bring you in trouble in certain situations since you wasted key-cd’s, that you’d not have needed elsewhere.

If you want to become better, play other classes, learn to read them so you know what’s going on on their side. Then you can lean back, understand the situation and react to it appropriately.
That’s literally how engineers works. Reading your opponents and exploiting their weaknesses, because brute-forcing your rotas and set-in-stone combos will just bring you into downstate.

If you don’t like that, you may as well re-roll now, so you don’t regret playing engineer later. If you ask me, this class is awesome, but I’m well aware that it’s not everyones taste, and the learning-curve is steep and brutal. No way around that.

Play both, equip both, master both, have access to max utility / dps / support for every game-mode.

Engi and Ele are the most fun classes to play if you enjoy fast-paced, competitive combat and don’t mind a high skill-floor, at least in my opinion. Thief/ mesmer would be included here as well, if it were not for their poor aoe or single-target focus and lack in general sustain.

Ever played it in WvW or PvP?
Do you know why they are a solid part of GWEN in zergs?
And about PvE:
When leveling up my necro I had a easy time with axe/dagger. Rofl-killing any mob / veteran like every other class as well.
In dungeons / fractals you just equip rabid (or the new sinister stuff) or berserker and will be golden in terms of dmg and survivability for pug-groups.
World-bosses are a breeze, like on any other class as well, and farming events with staff is just too easy.

Really, it only becomes a issue if you’re a try-hard speed-runner.
That in itself is obviously not a bad thing to be, but re-desinging a whole class, just because a minority that is not even playing it to its fullest extend, wants it?
nope.

There are several bugs that need to be fixed (some even since lauch) and some small tweaks here and there are always welcome, but redesigning its mere core? For PvE?
Why?

I mean, PvE in gw2 only consists of 5-man content and appart from high-level fractals every single encounter is pure face-rolling, given that you don’t put a clock next to your PC so that you can judge people for spend seconds more on a boss, lol.

It’s all about timing.
It can happen that you spam the combo so fast that the turret blows up before doing anything. Lag can cause that as well.
On the other hand you need to be fast enough to que the overcharge before the turret’s first AA. If you are too slow, it will fire just the usual regeneration stack & que the overcharge after that animation, obviously delaying the waterfield, which can result in it not going off at all, if you then continue the combo & blow the HT off before it can trigger the queued overcharge.

So yea, get the timing right.
… and check your ping. If you have a Ausie connection, you may as well use A.E.D. or elixir H.

Armor Mods → Kinetic charge / gadgeteer.

Instead of using kinetic impact force to charge our Shield-generators for a short Duration, we’ve come to the conclusion that this energy can be used much more effectively to recharge / overcharge our devices, to support retaliative responses rather than defensive ones.
This has also lead to the exchange of additional batteries for our gadgets, in favor of kinetic inertial converters, that allow much higher Power output for our gadgets, but in turn can not hold their charge beyond 1 application, nor can be pre-charged before combat. These inertial converters are still in the testing phase, and we have to test how useful this modification in practice actually will be, especially since the effects of overcharged gadgets are generally unknow (and void their guarantee).

Xyonon.3987:

It’s just so disappointing … they made a GREAT decision… and then they poop all over it again… T_T

You do realize that this is a improvement, right?

After the first fix, when their cd’s were changed to start on summon, you’d need to wait 35seconds to summon f.e. bullwark again, and only get down to around 20sec downtime IF he survived the full duration. If he died right after summon, you’d have needed to wait 35 seconds until you could summon it again…

Now you only have to wait 20sec to summon it again, regardless when it dies, and if it lives for the full duration, you STILL just have the 20sec downtime…
CD-wise this is a great buff for all gyros, even the sneak gyro. It was on a 45sec cd, meaning that it had a potential downtime of 45sec if it died right after summon, now it’s on a 20sec cd, regardless how later or soon it dies.

For all gyros, this is a great deal of added reliability.
Thx Irenio

It’s called safe-stomping
Various classes can perform it with various skills.
On high level PvP safe-stomping & safe-rezzing become extremely important.

If your allies go down they should get covered by stealth & if the enmy goes down you should either cleave hm to death with aoe’s or initiate the stomp & pop your safe-stomp mechanic.

Mesmers can utilize portals, thiefs can utilize stealth (not that safe) or shadowstep (tricky to use but much safer), warriors their stances, eles in mystform, & pretty much the rest with a combination of stability & at least protection. If you don’t have anything but stability, cleave the target or let your more stomp-capable allies take over the job.

Stomping or rezzing roots you and leaves you highly vulnerable, so you turn yourself into a huge target for the enemy team.

Elixir S is actually one of the stronger stomp abilities since it renders us invulnerable to all forms of dmg & cc. Only already applied condis keep ticking on us. This is one of the reasons why engis are good supporters. With the stealth on the toolbelt, we can perform both safe-stomps & safe-rezzes with a single utility-slot.

Just one tipp aside, experienced PvP’ers will try to stealth downed allies when they can, so don’t use your downed AA unless you are
a) alone on the point
or
b) are sure that you can down your target
or
c) can interrupt important channels in temple of the storm or spirit watch

Same problem here, but with lionsarch.
Happened right after loading the release patch.

I can enter the character-selecion screen, and loading planes of ashfurt (which a low-lvl toon was standing on) worked, but as soon as I try to load lionsarch, I’m stuck in a infinite loading screen, making it practical impossible to play my lvl 80 engi, warri and guardian, which were all parked there pre-patch.

Requesting at least a moderator answer that this issue is being worked on, and will be fixed asap.

Tobias.8632:

Yes, and in GW1 the most prestigious armor was gated behind grinding on a scale that would not believe, because that was what there was to do in the game other then pvp.

GW1 also had you creating different party comps of support, healers, and damage dealers to meet the challenging content.

The core of guild wars pve has always been that instead of increasing the level cap to 90 and adding new level 90 gear to grind for, they add horizontal progression by increasing the number of skills available to classes and new challenges that require you to use and combine these skills in new ways.

Any steps GW2 takes towards GW1 is for the better, because GW1 is a better game in every way.

Except its way of story-telling / class-design / combat-mechanics / character progression are so fundamentally different that you can’t even compare them anymore.

Please make sure to mark your personal opinion as such, else people might think you try to sell us apples as bananas.

>smart pulls
>don’t miss
>no need to kite
>glitch trough walls

I’m not sure that you know what you’re speaking about.

Not kiting means to stand still…
“Smart pulls” has no meaning at all since you want to pull & stack the whole camp as fast as possible, and that is accomplished automatically by attacking any NPC in a camp, while running around the next corner to break LoS… just like in PvE.
FT does not glitch trough walls, it has a 450 cleave range. if your wall is not thicker than 450 it naturally fires trough. No exploit or bug involved.
& if you run FT / RT / GK “don’t miss” is impossible since you have exactly 2 blinds of your own, and therefore get blinded the rest of the time by the scouts in a camp.

And yea, camps are easy, but your build + tactic (since you essentially run into it like a chicken with its head cut off, funny that you’ve mentioned it) is a unnecessary hard-mode, artificially increasing the time you need to flip it, especially for t3 camps, and therefore the worst advice you could give a beginner…

It really doesn’t matter how trivial any content might appear to you, you’ll always find people who are new to it, and actually get presented a challenge by it. And if they ask for help, be happy about the fact that there is someone willing to learn & improve himself.

Is a rework for Eternal Battlegrounds planned?
Will there be masteries for the new Shield-Generator siege?
Will Golems be able to stealth in earth-keep s3 bonus?
Will Golems gain fire/lava-immunity by firekeeps s3 bonus?
Will Golems be able to use jumping platforms and gain falling-dmg immunity from air-keeps s1/3 bonus?
Will shrine-bonus be deactivated immediately if enemies capture a shrine, or do they have a deactivation-period of several seconds?
Will the Oasis event just damage gates or completely break them?
Will Shield Generators be able to block incoming shots from the Oasis event?
Will you be able to stealth / gain immunity while wielding power-cells from the Oasis event?
Will moving power-cells still be shown on the map if the carrying player is stealthed (implied they can stealth)?
Is there a change to the old upgrade-System to towers/keeps on this map, or can players still order upgrades for walls/gates/siege/guards/services via the known supply-merchant?

Can’t wait until this post is not just a joke anymore.

It is comming to the game in form of guild-halls.
One of their features is a upgrade that unlocks a arena, complete with customizable environment (walls/traps/turrets or just decoration) and easy faction-swapping, so you can create whatever scenario you might like.

You have a fast-travel button for your guild-hall that you can use from any point in tyria. Group-members can fast-travel to your guild-hall as well.

I don’t know what you could ask more for.

choovanski.5462:

i cant understand how all these people dont like running lots of kits. I actually don’t like to play builds with less than two kits.

weapon swap would be nice, but not worth the nerfs. id rather not have to have a 10sec weapon swap cd & be nerfed.

Depends on how they introduce the changes.
True, just putting a 10sec cd on kit swapping would be a pretty heavy nerf, and asides from bombs & nades, there is no kit that allows you to camp in it without a pretty heavy dmg-loss.
Now if they would not only put a 10sec cd on each kit, but also buff their skills, including the AA, to make the time you have to spend in them viable, it suddenly doesn’t sound like a nerf, but a proper redesign.
And then we could also get a serious look into the rest of our utilities, and maybe even in the possibility of a weapon-swap mechanic, because they’re not constantly overshadowed anymore by the fact that we can have up to 40 skills available if we slot all kits.

The only thing that holds us back from getting some decently performing utilities and better AA’s is the fact that it is a nightmare to balance us, since the slightest touch on our kits or weapon-skills gets multiplied.
Nade-skills, that throw 3 grenades at the same time & therefore ridicule the explosives tree for any other explosives skill are really just the nutshell example of what kits, with zero swap-cd’s, do to the rest of the class.
The situation is actually so bad that we -rightfully- regard kits as our class-mechanic, rather than the toolbelt. We can’t come up with viable & meta-contesting builds without them, and if the solution simply were to nerf them into the ground to promote other skills more, we’d end up with extremely underpowered utilities all together. Our class is weak outside of kits, and the sad thing is:
It has to be weak.
Because of our readily-available skill-spam.
We can not have good burst skills on kits, because that would just end up in use doing nothing but cycling trough them. And the medium hitting ones we have are actually borderline OP already, because of their combined spamability.
This is why people argue that our hammer NEEDS to hit like a wet noodle. Any decent dmg buff to it would be a balancing-nightmare in kit-builds.

A-net already was going the easy way once when they were taking turrets out of our build-options, instead of reworking them properly.
So I rather advertise how a decent balance update to kits could look like, so the devs can finally balance our skills around their viability & not about how hard they would blow the class out of proportion if they were ever combined by kits.

Kits.
Our best utility, but also our worst enemy on the long-term development of this class.

what do you want a ballista targeting at?
You, or this gyro?
Same for most other target skills without AoE.

Even if this thing follows me everywhere & gives away my general position, it’s devastating for mesmers or rangers attack pattern.

Engi here.
I rarely if ever play the meta, and then only 2kit with bombs. I simply don’t like nades.

Zerker on the other hand – high risk/reward – is something I love so it’s only natural that I avoid bruiser-builds and rather go for zerker s/d.

We’re talking condition damage?
in PvE?
then go nades.
why?
perma-vulnerability on 25 stacks + regular chill & blend
and this is just your group support.

dps wise, you perma-stack bleeding up to 25 completely on your own
together with incendiary powder you even got your beloved burning, that you can hold perma as well with P/P #4 and rocketboots’ belt-ability (if you need them this bad… better go with googles).
you even hold poison on perma with a Pistol dart-volley and nades #5
heck, you also get confusion on your target.

wanna still be kind and hold weakness on the boss while healing / cleaning your pals?
good, take the EG with you, but please, for the sake of our class’ reputation, don’t mix the words condition-dps (or dps in any way) with Flamethrower.

Yes, the FT is fun as cat, but unless you’re facerolling in cof p1, there is no reason ever to take it with you.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Arantheal.7396:

-snip-

-snip-

False. Compared to the current borderland, where towers are attackable from multiple sides, keeps have several gates / walls, and supply-routes coming from multiple directions, there is already enough incentive to split up in multiple groups and try to take objectives parallel.
Why do people not do it currently?
Because a blobb of players is so much stronger and has higher success chances, due to the high supply-count they bring to chew trough a single gate/wall. Small groups suffer from 1-chance symptoms, being forced to retreat much faster once their supply is depleted. Small groups suffer from higher incomming dmg from defenders, due to their lower numbers, and therefore less protection from the Aoe-cap. Sieged up and decently defended places are almost impossible to break for a small group, unless they can suprise the defenders with omegas or elevated ballistats to snipe their eige, and even then they only buy a time-window until defenders got up the next defensive siege from the supplies inside a tower.
Blobs don’t care. Blobs rezz downed allies much faster, blobs can keep pressure on a object much longer due to the high supply-count, blobbs can chew trough defenders extremely quick when the walls/gates go down and kill/cap the lord in seconds.

So even if the current borderlands would reward a smart approach in theory, in practice a blobb outperforms small havoc groups by a great margin.

So, what will the new Borderland change?
- All keeps are harder to approach. This affects both blobbs and hacov groups, but specifically the sandstorm can be a deathtrap to havoc groups, given the shrine got flipped after they moved in there. A blobb just stampedes trough that, in case it happens.
- All keeps will have elevated safe-zones for defenders (lava in case for the fire-keep). A havoc group may gets picked up one by one from the pressure from above, while trying to defend their attack point & siege. Blobs will just set up offensive AC’s and bring a abundance of rangers/elementalists/necros to keep deadly pressure on these -in fact very exposed – locations.
- All lords have engaging defensive mechanics, helping out the defenders in the lordroom. While a blob -again – just chews trough the lords health bar (unless he has invulnerability-cycles, like the earth-lord suggests), a havok group may fail here, even if they out-man the defenders 2v1. Practice will show that, but it will indeed be harder for smaler groups to kill a lord, including the tower-lords (stealth-teleporting ogre, isn’t that fun!?).
- The oasis event will dmg enemy gates every 3h. Again, a blobb will just temporarely split up, flood the center to decide the even for it, and then jump the next keep, while a havoc group is not even guaranteed to make this event, and due to the fact that gates all together have now elevated platforms around them, will not have the abundance of supplies to set up offensive AC’s, and the needed abundance of elementalists, rangers & necros to chew trough these damaged structures.
- shrines allow for powerful defensive mechanics. There is not a single server out there that ONLY has zone-blobs, so while the blob is aproaching the keep, they flip all 3 shrines for the stat-boosts, leave their roamers back, and then storm the keep, calling in their roamers just in time to get the cap as well. And defenders will simply not be able to deal with defending 4! spots at the same time, unless they call in a defensive blobb of their own, first clearing the attackers, and then pushing off the roamers.

Permanently splitting off into small groups is a dumb move, unless you need to defend. And these new borderlands don’t change anything about that.
My source: Playing WvW since 2 years, and knowing exactly what a blob & havoc group is capable off or not.

While lower tiers will enjoy the new maps in the way they are meant to be played (due to low WvW population), the common and most effective tactic on higher tiers will be blobing. It makes small groups even less viable, due to the great buff for defenders, coming from the PvE on the map, the towers/keeps layout, and the coming – borderline OP – guild-upgrades for towers. Especially the later will be the only real anti-blob-mechanic they have introduced IF it is powerful enough. Else it will just promote blobing more, since havoc groups certainly can’t deal with that on top of everything else.

- Switching kits gets a 15sec cd
- mines do not rip boons anymore
- dmg from s/d gets halved
- BK dmg gets halved
- all turrets attack-speed gets doubled
- shield #5 can not be thrown anymore
- shield #4 is not a blastfinisher anymore
- blowing up turrets are no blastfinishers anymore
- pistol #3 does not bounce anymore
- pistol #2 scatters in a 180° angle now
- Shrapnel becomes a master trait and only procs on crits
- Hobosack clipping will be fixed: no backpacks whatsoever for the engi anymore.
- Stability on elixir B gets removed
- Elixir S instantly kills yourself.

Because kitten you, thats why.