Guild Wars 2

ellesee.8297:

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

It’s a thilly thing to call someone a bad Engi for running what they enjoy playing in a game mode where you can literally run the worst build and still succeed! You can run 0 traits and still succeed! The pretentiousness is palpable! Someone actually called Vee Wee an intolerant elitist for disagreeing with “if you run ft u bad engi”! Crazy!

As for PvP, the FT still does pretty terrible damage! It’s also buggy with the camera and terrain and really weak to retaliation! In Vee Wee’s opinion, Juggernaut’s might stacking capability is more useful roaming from place to place and having a few stacks ready for a fight than actually sitting in Flamethrower during a fight! If you were to use Flamethrower, Vee Wee believes the ideal way to use it is to swap to it, maybe blast your fire field, use your knockback and then swap out to something else!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing before the patch. Just checking in to see if the AA buff warrants camping it. It’s not immediately evident how much damage your doing with FF compared to other weapons.

Rozbuska.5263:

FT in PvE is sign of bad engineer:-)

1. I don’t play PvE, this thread is more in regards to PvP where Juggernaut is a very worthwhile trait.
2. FT in it’s current state has it’s uses in all game modes, anybody who says otherwise is a bad engineer:-). Camping flamethrower on the other hand, is another subject entirely which is why I’m trying to discuss it here. If you have something to add to this conversation then please do so, otherwise keep your chide remarks to yourself as it adds absolutely nothing to this conversation it only makes your look like an kitten .

After using flamethrower for so long only for the 2 skill nuke and the utilities I feel really dirty camping flamethrower’s AA for damage now. Especially when I’m so used to switching back to something like grenades where everything is a skill shot.

If you’re using FF you basically NEED to be using Juggernaut right? Otherwise it feels like a waste, and it also feels like a waste if you’re not camping FF when using this trait.

Anybody else have conflicting feelings about the updated FF?

I know a lot of Engies who started out as Thieves. I don’t know why but the crowds that like Thieves naturally seem to like Engies. I think it’s because both classes require you to be active at all times, you’re not really waiting for cooldowns like you would expect to be doing with other classes. Thieves have initiative, and Engineers have a ludicrous amount of skills that they can be using. That’s assuming you’re not playing turret engi, of course.

It’s fine if you are, but please, please make an earnest effort to incorporate at least one kit into your build (grenades/bombs/or even ff is viable now). This applies to HGH builds too. It’s a complete waste to be playing Engineer if you don’t use at least one kit. :P

I’m perfectly fine with rangers keeping their current damage. But loose the stupid passive stability/stealth affect when I initiate with my one and only knockback. At least make it something they need to activate while stunned.

Every class should have access to some potentially high damage bursty builds, but I don’t think encapsulating the entirety of it in one-two skills is the way to go. Make them work for that damage.

As an Engineer main, the only thing that I agree needs a nerf is IP. Increase that C/D to 20+ seconds please, thanks.

Anybody complaining about anything else just needs to get good.

I don’t mean to offend anyone, and let me just put it out there that I main an Engi. Now with that said, I really hate how melodramatic people playing Engineer are. There’s nothing even remotely difficult about being able to juggle kits. You’re not special or skillful because you’re able to do it. Yes, the other classes are comparatively easier, but that doesn’t necessarily make our class difficult to play.

It’s not like you even use all the skits on the various kits. I was running a 4 kit Engi in PvP for the longest time and I probably only used 1/3 of the skills I could of used off c/d. Yes, sometimes juggling kits and toolbelt skills can get a little confusing, sometimes you swap to the wrong kit by accident, and sometimes you can’t find your cursor when you’re lobbing grenades. But all that can be solved by a little bit of practice. Not months of practice, maybe a week, if that.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t by any means a difficult game, there’s just way too much passive, un-counterable bs in this game. Sorry folks.

Other classes basically consists of spamming 1, and any skills that are off cooldown. Engineer just has to manage several skills across several utilities. It’s more work if you wan’t to play optimally, but then again, you could always throw on Condi runes and spam grenades, and you’re basically right where the other classes are in terms of difficulty (unless you consider aiming grenades to be difficult). And lets face it, this is at least 50% of Engineers. At least the ones I see.

I agree with everything that was said here. Strangely enough, point #2 is the one that irks me the most, even more than turret builds. I know those traits combined with grenades are basically the bread and butter for our class, but it’s way to kittening OP for the amount of work required – especially when combined with P/P. I can literally walk up to another engineer, lob a couple of grenades, and go somewhere else knowing that Engi is downed.

I run an HGH engi with 5 sources of condi removal (6 if you count transmute), that’s about as good as condi removal is going to get on an Engi minus Elxir Gun. Versus a full condi engineer I’ll loose every time no matter how much I outplay them. After clearing his initial condi spam he needs 1-2 hits tops and I’m swimming in conditions all over again.

The amount of damage they are dishing out condi-wise needs to be changed so it at least requires some skillful play on their part to get to that level, not spam a few autos and call it a day.

Those are scholar runes? Not runes of strength?

I watched your last video ages ago, I had a really hard time replicating what you did with the first boss. I couldn’t manage to seperate them at all, so I actually had to fight them both at the same time. It was pretty chaotic, and it took me a lot of attempts before I got it – overcharged shot, rocket boots and bunker down was key though.

I really wanted to make an attempt at killing the 2nd boss with bombs and bunker down (kite him around the pillar at the back) but his attacks were just too hard to predict, I think you need to be an evade spamming warrior / thief if you want to do that? While the grenade method that you used is a garunteed way of killing him, I feel like bombs + bunker down would be faster. Bombs alone would be about the same DPS as grenades, but the added damage of bunker down should in theory make the fight at least 20% faster.

I got as far as the orb part but after at least an hour worth of attempts I just couldn’t manage to do it. I even tried opening up with the executioner axe rush + slick shoes toolbelt which goes way further than rocker boots, at best I could get just a bit past the corner right before the last orb drop off point. I also tries placing madkit in the path and dropping a create, it just didn’t seem to help me at all. Does wearing armor with high vitality help for this part at all?

I’ve noticed that issue ever since I created my first asura over 1 year ago. I think it’s when you enter a zone with a large number of players. Spinning the camera around and looking at your characters face usually fixes it for me. It’s a really weird glitch.

I don’t use Supply Crate in 1v1 duels. I feel too guilty as I know it’ll give me a win by not by my own merits. If other people choose to use their elites then that’s their prerogative, that’s just my personal code.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

Ameno.6813:

It is very effective in PvP and WvW. I remember dueling a number of people and having them comment how much my mines hurt!

Certainly not disputing that they hit incredibly hard, especially when paired with throw mine on a zerker sd burst build (this one never ceases to be fun to play as a ganker in WvW). The reason I am surprised that they work as well as they do in a pvp scenario is that I can’t believe more people don’t try to actively avoid them lol. The problem I run into is mostly pve related and even then it’s more so when doing group stuff like in dungeons or in certain open world events where it’s difficult to tell at times your exact distance from a boss because of all the effects on the ground ( not to mention it could move in an entirely different direction than you want it to because the aggro tables are so wonky). If you can get something to chase you in a straight line/can predict it’s movement or can manage to find the sweet spot on stationary targets they are great, otherwise they can be a real pita to use.

Another reason I like bunker down in PvP is for the psychological factor. People see aoes on the ground they generally try to avoid them (at least the good players do). Since bunker down lasts as long as it does and is so easy to proc you’re basically constantly reducing the space that they’re comfortable moving in. With a decent crit rate, you’re basically guaranteed to have at least a couple of mines on the ground at any given moment. If you’re fighting a close ranged fight then it’s really hard for them to avoid the mines, but despite that there’s constantly a bit of hesitation to take that step where they need to go for fear of stepping on one.

Usually when I’m doing group pve content like that I just opt for modified amunition just to be safe.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

Kako.1930:

I actually use bunker down with my build and it works pretty well (for me, at least).

Here’s a link to my build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWr9dx6KseNydBNqmA6DEgML6C+jcA-TxRBABdcBAKT5Hi6AIa/hGVCOq6PA8AACAgAczbGAG6QH6QH6Q7m38mDdoDtMA5bB-e

It works really well with berserker armor, too, and I know flamethrower isn’t the most amazing kit to most players, but I’ve been using this for a while now and have had a lot of fun in wvw, tpvp, and pve with it.

(Although when I go in dungeons I tend to switch out rocket boots for either elixir U, elixir S, or throw mine.)

With the gear I have now the mines hit about 1k damage, and I’m pretty sure that’s on crits, but it’s still pretty nice. ^^

I have had better luck with it in pvp settings than pve surprisingly. It seems that in pve unless you can really get something to chase you the detonation trigger radius makes it incredibly difficult to use in many situations. That’s not to say that it is a worthless trait or anything, it’s just that in most situations I have found, modified ammo is the more reliable trait to take in that slot (at least if you are doing any kind of grouping). I would really like to see some math posted about how many of the bunker down bombs you would need to have land to surpass the damage bonus of modified ammo in a group setting. The problem of course being actually testing it in practical scenarios since it’s easy to test on a training dummy or like what the op’s video showed.

It is very effective in PvP and WvW. I remember dueling a number of people and having them comment how much my mines hurt!

Since I’ve seen a lot of people talking about bunker down I thought I’d just leave this here (it might still be processing, give it a minute):

http://youtu.be/ON_nNPY_zSE

This video demonstrates more or less how I use Bunker Down to it’s most effectiveness in solo PvE, and to give you an idea of what kind of numbers can be achieved relative to all the other damage you’re doing.

If my video editing skills were more up to par I’d crop out all the junk so you only see the combat log.

Keep in mind this is CM P3, a level 45 dungeon so this isn’t supposed to demonstrate massive numbers, also I completely neglected to use food in this so I’m a few crit percentiles off the mark. What you should take out of this is the bunker down damage relative to the bomb damage in the combat log, as it wouldn’t be too far off from what you would see in level 80 combat. If somebody put this in an excel spreadsheet you’d probably see that the damage from bunker down is somewhere between 20-30% of the overall damage that’s being done here.

If there’s enough interest, I can record a similar test in a level 80 dungeon and actually remember to use consumables and share the results back here. The only reason why I picked this particular dungeon and path was because it was honestly the only boss that came to mind where I could easily test this with minimal risk while ensuring each bunker down mine went off.

Here’s the build used, it just happened to be what I was using at the time: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpPrtbxtLseNSbBB6IOiWLqM+5CEgFA-TxRGABA8AAGS5XCXAAQ2fgMdAAq+jUKBBA-e

On paper, doesn’t out pistol aa sound a little OP as well? I really don’t know why it’s an ineffective as it is, is it because the short bleed duration? If two skills apply the same number of conditions with the same duration will they always be guaranteed to hit for the same amount of damage?

It’s always amazing to me the buffs that people ask for Bunker Down. It’s clearly people who haven’t ever tried to use it in a power build. It has it niches, but in the areas where it can be used it’s godly.

I think the same applies for a number of hairstyles. Chances are all the NPCs in the game were made early on and the hair was designed after the fact so they never bothered to implement it.

I wanted to do something against the mold, are there any builds / playstyles that aren’t commonly used but can be somewhat effective in PvP?

Anet is far too lazy to make female armor for non Humans/Norn/Sylvari. As for skimpy… well if you play a heavy there’s a skirt you can wear but that’s about it.

I noticed this in PvP while trying to destroy the doors to the opposing teams base. It was really really hard to get the grenades to hit at all so I just auto-attacked with rifle.

I’ll see how they like my new flamethrower while they’re in stealth. >:)

You can use the consumable halo or horns from the LS season 1.

Fizz Kablooey is my 100% insane in the brain engineer obsessed with wreaking havoc and blowing things up including her pet super adventure box monkey (which you can just hardly make out in the left-hand corner behind the flames).

ArrDee.2573:

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Good idea my frand Yamsandjams! Throw Mine has both pros and cons but Vee Wee thinks it could definitely work! Stripping protection or stability is pretty huge for obvious reasons! Vee Wee still likes Personal Battering Ram though! First the skill is too funny! And you can use it to launch people off point in case Overcharged Shot is on cooldown! If Vee Wee could edit the post to add Throw Mine/Gadgeteer to the variations Vee Wee would! But Anet has banned Vee Wee’s account yet again! Vee Wee does not know why Vee Wee keeps getting banned! All Vee Wee ever does is try to help people!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

You should open a support ticket and ask them directly.

Vee Wee, #1 , muted audio Engi NA.

Well since you’ve sent so much time with this build I won’t bother explaining the merits of Flamethrower or Elixir as you obviously already know about those. What elixirs in particular are you using. Out of all the elixirs, Elixir B and Elixir S are probably the only ones worth picking up. Elixir R has it’s uses as well, more evades + aoe rez field is always good and can make it virtually impossible to loose a 1v1 fight. Elixir R also works better with cleaning formula and HGH as you can afford to use it in combat
outside of stomps/escapes for that extra cleansing and might stacking.

Your of course using rifle as well, right? One of my favourite ways to open a fight is by popping Elixir S, getting close to the enemy, pop elixir B stability and suprise them with an overcharge shot > net shot + jump shot + blunderpuss. Since you’re using Flamethrower this is also where you’d want to use your flame blast, since I rock grenade kit this is the point where I start laying down my hard hitting nades.

I run either celestial or zerkers with this build, both seem to be about equally as successful.

Flamethrower is getting a pretty significant buff in the next feature patch.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Ameno.6813:

I used a variant of this build before, and the mine field and bunker down destroys thieves. It’s like a really buffed version of retaliation, and I was also running runes of citadel at the time so it was as if they were in a boxing match with a cactus. With that said though, I had very little in the way of disengaging and I was made quick work of by mesmers and rangers.

Citadel might actually be a great addition if only for the fact that when in WvW it’s nice to have that 13sec swiftness so you don’t have that annoying 1/4th second gap after the swiftness runs out. In PvP though that’s not really a big deal. I assume the bomb is affected by the Explosive traits as well. I’m not going to lie, I feel stupid for forgetting that the rune exists because it’s a perfect fit.

Yeah, traits built around bombs also works on the citadel bomb. Citdadel rune doesn’t grant swiftness up-time though:

(1): +25 Power
(2): +10%Fury Duration
(3): +50 Power
(4): 25% chance when struck to gain Fury for 15s.
(5): +100 Power
(6): 20% Fury duration; 50% chance when struck to summon a bomb. (Cooldown: 15s)

It’s not too useful outside of the power and the summoned bomb (and even that’s on a 15 second C/D). But if you’re taking Utility Goggles then it might not be half-bad.

Another trait that I see used very rarely that might synergize well with this build is Kit Refinement. Swapping to the grenade kit with this trait places a single mine, if instead you swap to bomb kit you drop a magnetic bomb that sucks everybody in an AOE into the center of it (both of these have the damage of a regular mine and bomb respectively and are also affected by-related traits).

I haven’t tested the Kit Refinement magnetic bomb with the bunker down trait yet, it would be interesting to see how it performs.

On an unrelated note, I would love to see if more people used Kit Refinement, it adds a whole other level to the utility we can bring to the table, albeit some of the triggers can be especially gimmicky (toolkit 2 second x2 speed and flamethrower flame shield comes to mind). There’s nothing as awesome as reflecting a rangers/mesmer/thieves spam back at them, or laying down that extra CC during a mid fight. Even if you’re not actively trying to use them, having them just passively go off during your usual kit rotations has always helped me in more cases than not. KR doesn’t randomly trigger as some people seem to think from looking at the tooltip, each kit swap has a very specific effect attached to it. For instance, if you’re running nothing but medkit that effectively gives you an on demand 2 second reflect every 20 seconds (which actually makes medkit bandage heal pretty darn appealing in PvP / WvW).

It won’t win you any tournies surely, but if you’re ever looking to have a fun time in hot join or play something that isn’t mindlessly spamming conditions then it’s a pretty cool trait.

I used a variant of this build before, and the mine field and bunker down destroys thieves. It’s like a really buffed version of retaliation, and I was also running runes of citadel at the time so it was as if they were in a boxing match with a cactus. With that said though, I had very little in the way of disengaging and I was made quick work of by mesmers and rangers.

I do recall seeing a lot “Immune” appear frequently against other engineers, but mostly when I use my net shot on rifle which shares a pretty close C/D with that trait so it stands to reason.

I’ve seen a lot of engies run two kits and Elixir S in tourney’s actually. I highly doubt Engineers aren’t viable in high level pvp, condi specs are pretty OP and Engineers excel at it more than most, I mean you can literally take 1 trait to deal like what, 6k+ burning damage on crit with almost 0 effort, on a low C/D? How could that not be viable on top of all the other condis you’re spewing out?

My pet monkey nibbling on some party appetizers in one of the new living story instances.

As an Engineer that usually rocks Shield offhand and Toolkit I feel you. I only recently learned of the existence of this signet when I finally noticed a warrior was completely negating my blocks. Maybe it’s not commonly used, but without a doubt this buff will make it a lot more appealing to players.

I’ve been playing a Power / Node Fighting engi for about a year now and never really bothered with condition builds. I handled myself pretty well against most classes/builds, but at least 70% of the time that I die, it’s usually because of something crazy like 20k-50k burning damage (I’m not even lying when I say I’ve seen conditions tick for 50k+ in the death breakdown screen). For instance, I can build for as much condition mitigation as possible, even sacrificing physical damage mitigation and my own ability to dish out damage but I’ll still see those burning ticks completely trump any physical attacks in most cases.

I tried a P/P burning build with Sigils of Intelligence, Sigil of Doom, and runes of balthazar today for the first time and I was amazed at how fast everything melted with very minimal effort on my part. At first this was just in hot join so I thought that maybe it was to be expected, so I then joined a team arena queue and met very similar results.

It’s extremely easy to proc a few stacks of bleeding or 5k+ burning tick compared to how easy it is to mitigate that damage, at least for us it is.

What is your opinions on condition damage in general? Is it in a pretty good place? Do you think classes should have easier access to condition mitigation? I don’t think given every class more ways to deal with conditions in such a way that they would actually be required to build into it would necessarily be a bad thing. It’s pretty easy to build into a something that can tank as much physical damage as possible, but we can’t seem to do the same with conditions. I personally don’t mind hard counters, but those hard counters should require me to give an arm and a leg in order to get to that point possibly opening me up to a plethora of other things that could easily counter me.

I made the suggestion about rocket boots being made into an evade on this forum the other week ago and was immediately shot down. I think it’s lame how Memsers, Thieves, and Warriors are the only classes with access to evades while rooted.

I wouldn’t mind if they increased the cooldown to 25-30 seconds in return for an evade. Or maybe make it situational and make hitting the rocket boots utility bring up an aoe target prompt a la jump shot, and depending on the distance you either get the regular rocket boots functionality or a vertical jump that acts as an evade and increases the cooldown.

Woooooo page 20!

I don’t think lack of stability is too too important. The only thing it’s going to help you with really is to prevent cc when you’re reviving a teammate. I’ve got a large number of games in as a bunker Engi and don’t think I’ve ever been stunlocked, save for those stupidly OP fear spamming necros. Warriors, Mesmers, and just about everything else are really easy to predict. I have no trouble whatsoever with securing kills however, often times I run flamethrower with bunker and usually it’s all I need. I also have my bomb kit to keep eles in place with an additional blind aoe should I need it.

The one thing that absolutely destroys bunker Engis is conditions. Automated Response used to take care of that and make us extremely hard to kill, but it’s been nerfed and is pretty useless now. I was running an Elixir bunker bomb build for a while that allowed me to keep up with most conditions, but the very prevalent fear spamming necro always made short work of me no matter how much condi removal I had.

Penguin.5197:

Don’t forget it also used to knock you down for a second, making it almost completely pointless

Hell, it basically does that now randomly anyways. I couldn’t begin to count how many times I’ve tried to escape with rocket boot only for the landing bounce to bounce me in the opposite direction of where I was trying to escape to.

And I’m reminded of just how awesome it is to have rockets attached to your boots. Now if only it was a stun break…

@Andrasta Ethereal That’s awesome, I love pun names like that! 10/10

@Malkavian Is it supposed to sound like abacus? If so, 9/10!

My Engi’s named Fizz Kablooey.

We can dish our so pretty crazzy zerg CC. For instance, a good slick shoes followed by rocket boots can cut the enemy zerg in half. If you manage to get into the heart of the battle and you have a bomb kit + the kit refinement trait active, switching to the bomb kit will drop a magnetic bomb pull enemies in a decent sized aoe to the center of it, more zerg CC. The inverse of this would be to also drop a Big Ol’ Bomb. Of course you’d wanted to pick up forceful explosives for the bomb AOE boost which applies to BoB and the magnet bomb as well.

Kind of gimmicky, but useful things we can bring to zerg fights.

If you’re crazy enough to use something with high precision like knights, the new Bunker Down trait can probably works wonders in a Zerg vs. Zerg fight. Put on your combat log and watch the numbers roll in.

I didn’t do it…

Honsetly, I have so many kits I don’t have any particular rotation, sometimes I get so confused playing the piano that I just hit random keys and hope for the best.

Sometimes you just gotta go be like water and go with the flow.

You will regret not being Asura master race

SeasThyDay.7398:

Here’s a youtube video for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_r3-241W_g

Awww, I was hoping it would turn you into a little monkey.

Thanks you,

I have a bad gambling problem and bought between 150-200 keys. I understand that the drop rate is very rare and 200 keys is probably nowhere near enough, but if I’m going to keep going for it I wanna at least see what it actually looks like.

Oh and no I won’t be buying more keys (I couldn’t even if I wanted to). I’m just going to farm keys the good old fashion way.

I’d be happy if it proc’d with Elixir Infused Bombs. That’s the only buff I could really ask for. Then I might actually be able to use magi amulet in PvP… (which I accidentally purchased…)

I tried running a condi bunker build which the elxir trait that removes coniditions. I used exlir gun, elixir r, and elixir c. Also I went 4 intro explosives to get IA which procced easily with sigil of intelligence. I was able to go toe to toe with everything except this one necro who just spammed fear on me and instantly got 10k fear damage in on me while his condis ticked for an additional 5-8k.

So if you trait for it you can handle everything except condi necro, they’re a hard counter to our class no matter what you do, unless they’re really bad. Automated Response used to deal with them but not anymore.

Here’s my personal favorite.

I don’t know about that, I mean, I can easily keep at least 18 stacks of might on my self just by way of blast finishers, sigil of battle and sigil of strength. Is scholars really worth all that extra might? What I like about strength runes is the buff is basically on at all times because might is so prevalent. Whereas the scholars rune buff is generally only up for the start of a fight.

Talking strictly from a solo standpoint even…