Guild Wars 2

I see.
Welp, my charr engi is only lvl 58 with no traits whatsoever (except speedy kits), and on my human engi can’t confirm it.

Racial skills are not listed in the accompanying skill-categories to be affected by traits, however, in this case you found a excellent example of a underrated racial skill.

shrapnel mine has a double-sized proximity radius, and a natural 240 explosion radius. Additionally, it scales better with power. In fact, it scales so well with power that it exceeds throw mine’s direct damage even when you trait throw mine with explosive powder. You have to trait throw mine with forceful explosives as well to accomplish the same explosion radius, that shrapnell mine already has.
Still, both skill are pretty unique and offer different belt-abilities.

shrapnel mine does not rip boons, nor is a blast finisher, nor has a hard cc, and is on a 20sec cd, regardless what you trait, but on a condi-build, focused on bleed stacking, you definitively get a better performing utility skill with awesome, long lasting soft-cc.

when it comes to the belt-ability, minefield almost always outperforms booby-trap, since the engis BA-cd reduction only works with engi skills, leaving booby-trap on a constant 45sec cd.

as I said, shrapnell-mine has its niche and can be awesome cc-support for condi-duration builds, but throw mine – even if you have to trait it heavily to perform better – has the potential to perform better and sits on a more comfortable 900 range, than shrapnell mines’ 600 range.

Generally speaking, it is a matter of your preferences what you pick, but keep in mind that boon-ripping is a insanely powerful mechanic.

I set up a demonstration in the build-editor, with most of the throw-mine relevant traits and +80% condi duration. look into it for yourself.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdIQBS0z2usEptQG13PvIAA-TFApAAbZF-w

You could get +20% more condi duration for cripple / bleed or both, but since there are so many more viabel options for condi-builds in terms of sigils, I’ve left that out, and ofc you could get additionally 45% bleed-duration from krait-runes and such alike.

guildabd.6529:

What engi really needs is:

• AoE stunbreak.
• Possibly longer water field.
• Something special that other classes can’t do already. Like an unique boon or condition that only engies can apply to allies/foes.

this is not what engi really needs, this is potentially OP or luxury for later general class-buffs
what engi really needs is stablity, and even that is questionable since we can reduce dmg while stunned by 73% in wvw.
usually engi needs better condi-clean as well but with all the cleans going off around you, condis are a rather minor thread, that you can deal with legmods and defensive condi-food even better.
For wvw, the class is good as it is, and what it makes unique is a backbreaking long-range cc drop (your fault if you drop it into a stability-buffed area), 1k hp regen for allies per sec, heavier blind-Spam than necros (only bested by thieves) and uninterruptable stomps.
I had a whole zerg camping and rage-spamming on me several times while i was sitting in elixir S and stomped their commander regardless.

I think for zerging engi is fine where it is, even tho I’d really like us to be a heavy armor class like intended by the devs in the first place, because one thing is true: if everything is on cd, we are nowhere near as tanky as out guardians or warris around.

DISCLAIMER: this text only consideres frontliner cleric bombhealer-builds. If we speak about backliner or focus builds, engi has so many more viable options.

s/d zerker is your best bet.
It may sounds ridicolous to bring a zerker to a zerg, but if you pick self-regulating defense, you have all the defense you’ll ever need.

Even tho they orbit, backliners tend to bring at least some kind of tanky stats to the raid, and breaking necros can actually be a challenge if they see you coming. But if you run full zerk in a nuke s/d setup, you can effectively breach their survivability regardless and even become bold and take targets in the melee train out.
nothing will safe you from the trains’ wrath, but with self-regulating defense, TK block and rifle #5 you have enough escapes / blocks / invuln to become a uninteresting target for them again and proceed focusing vital parts of their zerg.

I run this build myself:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpkrtdxmKseNSeBN6kclqAyAsAROwcA-T1BFABCcBAQS5HJ7PkmOAAeAAFq+zVKBJFwo6qA-w

welp, in 1v1 p/s performs nicely and offers awesome controll, but in 1vx I preffer toolkit and rifle + nades.
seems illogical at first since rifle #4 is only single target instead of shield #4, but overall I prefer the mobility on it and the ability to kick corpses if their rezzer happens to have stability. and the 3sec block on TK is a real life-saver if they unload their ranged pressure or run stability.

As if that would matter for PvE anyways.
He’s running bombs, so he will tag stuff easily, and if he enjoys making it easier for everybody else, his build fills all requirements you’ll ever need for PvE.

Unless you have a clock ticking next to your desk, telling you that you’re a waste of space if you can’t burst a boss in a certain amount of seconds with your group xD

does firebomb tick vuln?
does gluebomb tick vuln?
do poison nades tick vuln?
no?
bug it is.

Sure, attack those who spread knowledge and try to start an argument, instead of simply pointing out the mistake for correction.
What is wrong with you?

And tbh, I’ve actually never noticed this, because its one of those pointless bugs that shouldn’t be there, will be fixed some day, and don’t make a real difference for build-considerations anyways.
Unless you are a “teacher” for PvE only, I guess…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpPrdZxyKseNiaBF6ouxAIyQmlPOxDA-TBSBABPp8LWlgAp+TDm/+b/BAeAAxoHIvTAApAuYZE-e

What I’d do with it.

scholar is fine in theory, but you don’t profit from the ferocity with just 4% crit-chance, therefore altruism. higher might / fury uptime for you and your group

you already have a stunbreaker on thumper (that you use as blast-machine) so I changed googles to mines which will increase your dps and offer a additional blast.

switched sigil of bloodlust to sigil of night. A flat 10% dmg increase is better than a slowly up-stacking power increase and since you have already loads of base-damage (given that your group maintains 25 stacks of might) they will deliver almost the same outcome. basically you just got rid of a pointless wind-up time (most dungeons and fractals are set in “night-time” anyways). In doubt, just get a second pistol or shield so you can swap the sigil everytime you need to.

I did not touch your traits since most are reasonable.
Still I’d recommend to pick up forceful explosives since it makes minefield bursts so much easier to land fully.

a “hit” is a damage-dealing action
smokebomb/gluebomb are not considered as “hit” since they don’t deal damage, therefore (with the exception of “sitting duck”) they will never proc traits or sigils. As simple as that. Additionally aegis / blocks do not protect against smokebomb, nor gluebomb, since aegis needs incoming damage in order to proc (and disappear). A enemy may suffer from your blinds and cripple/immob, still his aegis will be up until you deal a damaging action. The same goes for elementalists “arcane shield”.

to rule out some more questions:

Netshot vs aegis / block:
Netshot will be blocked by aegis since it is a projectile, which get handled differently by the engine, in order to count in reflects / projectile-destructions before applying the effect of the projectile on the target. Aegis and blocks (including “arcane shield”) do count as “projectile destruction”. This is also why “piercing” projectiles can’t pass blocking targets and s/d / pistol #3 looses its remaining bounces when hitting them.
WARNING: blocks and reflects do not protect against ballistas. many guardians tried. many guardians died. Many defenders laughed.
Still netshot does not count as “on hit”, therefore netshot will not proc sigils or traits. Only “sitting duck” is triggered by netshot and gluebomb, but not by the hitting projectile/bomb (which deals 0 damage), but by the applied immobilize.

The trait “elixir infused bombs”:
this trait only works on “exploding bombs”
firebomb may have a damaging tick, but only the spawn of the field is counted as “exploding bomb”, Same goes for smokebomb and gluebomb, even tho both don’t trigger “on hit” effects.
“Evasice Powder keg” is covered by “elixir infused bombs” and therefore will heal you. combine these traits with “packpack regenerator”, “infused precision” and “invigorating speed” to gain a impressive amount of HP-regeneration / sec along with great survivability. Superior sigil of Energy will be a worthwhile investment if you go down this route, and “forceful explosives” will make it even easier to land the heal on yourself after each dodge, without the need to backpedal anymore.

The trait “bunker down”
It spawns mines. Mines are not covered by elixir-infused bombs, so they will not heal you, nor will they rip boons like the mines from “throw mine” and “reserve mines” do. But they are able to trigger “on hit” effects like sigils and will proc “steel-packed powder”.

I just gonna throw out my ideas for a mace and hammer.

Mace:
only mainhand (offhand options are still shield and pistol for this set)
The idea behind this set is to have increased soft-cc option while enabling for condi-stacking out of the nade-meta, therefore giving a real alternative for the explosions line, while still maintaining synergy in case you want to combine both

AA: 3 attack chain
hit one: 1/4sec cast time
hits 3 targets
poorly scaling power damage
apply 1 stack of bleed for 3sec
130 range
Animation looks like a strike to the right.
hit two: 1/4sec cast time
hits 3 targets
poorly scaling power damage
apply 1 stack of bleed for 3sec
130 range
animation looks like a strike to the left.
hit three: 1/2sec cast time
hits 3 targets
medium scaling power damage
apply 1 sec of cripple and 3 stacks torment for 1 sec
180 range
animation looks like a wide swing to the knees with yellow mist around.

skill #2: toe crusher
10 sec cd
1/2 sec cast time
hits 1 target
medium scaling power damage
apply 5 stacks of bleeding for 5 sec
apply immobilize for 3sec

skill #3: spin for the win
15sec cd
1.5sec channeled attack
240 range player-centered, moving aoe
hits 5 targets
medium scaling power damage, split over 6 hits
each hit applies 1 stack of confusion for 5sec
each hit applies 1s daze (as far as I know cc-durations don’t stack, but not sure entirely since I never tested it in practice)
movement speed decreased by 50% while channeling

Hammer skills:
The idea behind the hammer is to have a heavy, power-based weapon-set that combines great utility with survivability.
AA: 3 hit chain
hit one: 1/2sec cast time
hits 3 targets
Medium scaling power damage
looks like a swing to the right
hot two: 1/2 sec cast time
hits 3 targets
medium scaling power damage
looks like a swing to the left
hit three: 3/4 sec cast time
high scaling power damage
hits 5 targets
sends out 3 bouncing projectiles, that bounce 3 times
each projectile deals poorly scaling power-damage and 1 sec of vulnerability on impact
one projectile always aims for the target (or chooses randomly if no target is active)
the other two choose the nearest targets in a 360° angle
Animation looks like a swing over the players head on the ground, with lightning bolts moving along the shaft of the hammer before it hits the ground and a similar noise to the elementalist going into air atonement.

skill 2: static impact
6sec
ground-targeted aoe
600 targeting range
240 aoe size
hits 5 targets
1sec daze
blast finisher
deal highly scaling power damage
sends out 5 bouncing projectiles, that bounce 3 times
each projectile deals poorly scaling power-damage and 1 sec of vulnerability on impact
one projectile always aims for the target (or chooses randomly if no target is active)
the other 4 choose the nearest targets in a 360° angle

skill 3: Polarized ground
14sec cd
1/2sec cast-time
340 range pbaoe
lasts for 4 seconds
pulses for 4 times
deals medium scaling power damage
inflicts 2 stacks of vulnerability for 5 sec per pulse
inflicts 2 seconds of cripple per pulse
animation looks like hit 3 of the AA

skill 4: Personal shield
16sec cd
1/4sec cast-time
puts up a bubble that reflects projectiles on impact
double the size of fortified turrets bubble
moves with the player
lasts 4 seconds

Skill 5: Overdrive
20sec cd
1sec cast-time
340 range pbaoe
buffs 10sec of swiftness for 5 allies (including the player)
buffs 10sec of fury for 5 allies (including the player)
buffs 3 stacks of might for 10 sec for 5 allies (including the player)
deals high scaling power-damage
stuns up to 5 enemies for 3sec
animation looks like the player rises his arm and points with the hammer to the sky, gets struck by a lightning, followed by a rapidly expanding sphere of electricity.

Even tho skill 5 is pretty powerful, the 1sec cast-time (and the fact that engis lack stability in general) should be enough opportunity to counter it.

I could have included a stability buff somewhere in this weapon-sets, but I’d rather improve what the engi excels in, instead of changing its general class-traits

Simple:
I forgot that rifle has a 3/4 (0.84)sec attack pattern, not a 1/2 sec one.
but ofc it depends on the type of your rifle as well.
ascended ones ( or legendaries) have a slightly increased dmg modifier and runes of night and force do the rest to actually get up to ~4.281k per crit in this build ( http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpEr9ZxtLseNSbBNqwA6TMi2+5CEgjC-T1RBABXp8jm9HwTHQeXAAAeAAUq+jZKBDAcAc+5BgzP/8zP/8O/8zP/8zLFQEDrA-w ), ending in ~5k/s for the rifle AA alone.

I like the delay.
It bates a double dodge out of most people, setting them up for a quick TK#5 / #3 Rifle #3 #4 / #5 chain, or the burst your current build supports outside of s/d.

You will hit with around 6k per fully channeled AA, and another 6k with #2, which takes as long as #1 to be executed, but offers a blast-finisher, not that you’d need it since HGH + runes/sigil of strength + juggernaut is already perma 25 stacks easily.

so, your current dps while camping the FT is around 3k/s
Your rifle AA will hit for around 3.5k per shot on this build, given that you just swap into FT to proc #4 and #2 mightblasts.
that are 7k/s just for the rifle AA.
now consider that adding #3 and #5 on the rifle to your rota increases the damage drastically again.
And still you are below the current zerker warri meta-build.
Which is a shame.

Don’t get me wrong, I run almost the same build for TA (mod-ammo instead of bunker down), since popping flowers with it is convenient, but considering that you could easily quadrupple the dps from this build by going for the nades/bombs/rifle-turret s/d meta, you really under-perform in every dungeon else.

This build of yours is rather tanky for a zerker, so sacrificing Elixir H for HT gives you the option to be the medium-damage condi-cleanser in your fractal group. You can also keep it that way, because it already allows for boss-encounters to survive that went horribly wrong for everybody else.

Personally, I don’t care that much.
Dungeons are still your daily, repetitive gold-farm, so simply run what you have fun with there. I like to clear them rather fast so I mostly stick to the meta, but for certain dungeons, alternative builds have proven to be more convenient for me.
And about fractals:
TK/BK/Nades Knight/Zerker Hybrid. It is nowhere near meta, but given that lvl 49 fractals can be a pain in the kitten , I love my extra-survivability.

Jana.6831:

Arantheal.7396:

Ofc you can still blobb around with this class in zerker gear, and I guess, unless you bump into a ranger or engi, roaming is fine for thief as well.

The only useful thing a thief provides (and to justify its presence in a organized zerg) is venoms, blindspam and poison spam.

Rangers are the easiest class to kill for me, in general.
Zerg thieves: Shortbow 2 – Blastfinisher. Can blast an ele waterfield twice or thrice, a ranger’s waterfield 5 times, healing for ~2k each time. and it’s not just waterfields, also fire: stacking might, static: stacking swiftness and so on. Rather useful stuff for a zerg.

And what holds a rabid / dire venom sharing thief back from equipping the shortbow, along with P/P or D/P?
Same blasts as the zerker version, but not a rally-bot and useful for their zerg.

Also thieves are not the only medium armor class with loads of blasts.
If I have to decide between a venom-sharing thief in dire or a healing bomb engi with thumper in clerics, then I’d have a tough decision, since both are easy prey to cc, coming from their lack of self-sustaining stability, even tho they both bring great support and utility. But if you ask to decide between cleric engi and zerker thief, the decision is obvious.

QQ-disclaimer: If you don’t play WvW, the following post is not for your eyes.

Welp, you play venom or bring another class to a zerg.
Ofc you can still blobb around with this class in zerker gear, and I guess, unless you bump into a ranger or engi, roaming is fine for thief as well.

The only useful thing a thief provides (and to justify its presence in a organized zerg) is venoms, blindspam and poison spam. For all of this dire gear works perfectly fine. It does not matter how low the number on thiefs’ screens get, as long as they provide a nice condi-umpf for the warris/guardians around them and disrupt the enemies zergs’ dps and healing. For doing so, they don’t really need stealth and can stay somewhere close to the melee-train, orbiting it, but not staying inside it.

Sure, you now can start to argue “I do high burst damage, and can stealth, so I shall jump onto merely downed melee’s and finish them.” / “I can attack their backline” / “I can go into daggerstorm and throw a bunch of animations which 90% of does not do any damage, while reflecting projectiles and dying in aoe’s”, but on the long run all this banter does not matter since a) you’re squishy as kitten and only have so much cd’s (initiative) before you serve opponents as rally-bot and b) a warrior / guardian / ele or necro would have filled your spot way more effective.

The only thing that offers thieves a place – for exactly 1 thief – are thief’s unique buffs (venoms). If it were not for them this class would have become insignificant 2 nerfs ago.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate this class, but you should consider that the buff you got there for venoms’ cd is one of the few things left that saves you from a insta-kick from each zerg-comp you can think of.

High risk, high reward.
Surprisingly, some of us like this concept

Main: Condition damage
Secondary: Power
Secondary: Precision

Is this the gear we will solo dungeons in the future with?
Less procs than with rampager, but drastically increased condi-dps.
We could just use the meta-nade spammer builds and directly run them with these stats without changing much else.
Maybe runes of Balthazar instead of strength / hoelbrak and sigil of explosion / smoldering for dungeons.
Yes, condi in dungeons are subpar, but for soloing, this is just awesome.

So far sinister stats are only available in PvE (and therefore in WvW as well), so some funzy condi-burst roaming builds come to mind as I type.

Gonna wait until the build-planner have implemented these stats, and then start to theory-craft some builds, while farming for the gear ingame. Even if it turns out as a theoretical let-down, I want to try these stats myself anyways.

Ignorance I guess.
Never played necro myself.
The point stays the same, I’d pick a experienced necro over a rude warri any day.

Engi / Guardian / Warri here, and I refuse to give a ranking.
why?
because it would be unfair to rank classes just by judging the individuals who happen to play these classes.
You can spend 20min in lfg to set up your perfect class-comp, just to end up with a bunch of rally bots that have more gold than their IQ is high, therefore locking you in your “meta” group for another 40min to slowly crawl from one boss to another while failing every single encounter, or you simply put “p1 / p2 /p3” in your lfg, take the first people to show up and post a honest “gg” after clearing the path in 10-20min tops.
Both happened to me and when guildys ask me what they should bring to some dungeon runs, I’ll always tell them the same: whatever you want.

If I see randoms in my group with low AP (like below 1.5k, kinda my persona magical border of being a newby or not), I always ask them if it’s their first time / if they need a short explanation for encounters. Having patience with people who did not searched the wiki for the path they want to run costs me maybe 2min more than a speedrun would take, but provides the same satisfaction (and possible new recruits for the guild).

Seriously, this thread is the core of not understanding how the game works and unless you try to break speed-run world-records there is nothing to consider a kick for but “is this person rude or not?”.

Do I have prejudices towards classes?
Hell yes, especially when it comes to Warris. Often enough these rally-bots are trying to kick random people and dare to insult others for themself ending up in downstate. Still I’ve met so many nice people who happen to play a decent warri that I give a chance to everybody.
Yes, necros dps is the lowest in PvE, but considering how kittening easy dungeons in gw2 are, I don’t care about that fact and just hope to have a decent player that knows the dungeon behind this necro, so we have a nice and relatively (compared to queue for ages in lfg (yes, that IS included in the time it takes for your group to clear the dungeon)) fast run.

and still we bump it…
and bump it…
and Bump it…
and BUMP IT…
AND FREKKIN BUMP IT!!!!1!one!

see it as bonus:
since you know how it behaves, you have up to 4 stacks of defiance that you can get rid off without knocking other mobs around at all.

sounds like one of the win/win engi-bugs to me, if treated right.

in wvw: yes.
other game-modes: nope.
reasons: a-net / bugwars / aliens

you can run the same setup in celestial gear, with only slightly less efficiency.
But since most condi-roaming builds on the engi would take celestial / rabid or rampager anyways, you would have the gear ready to run both healing bombs and the condi-roamer of your choice.
Still I’d get a zerker equip as well, since you never know when you will feel like spaming s/d

I disagree, The toolbelt on FT is awesome.
3 guaranteed 4sec procs of burning that do not require to crit?
together with IP and FT #1 & 4 this is so much burn uptime that you can ignore condi-cleanses all together and simply re-apply it whenever you want to.
thief trying to reset combat?
trigger IA and send him into downstate with a couple of AA’s.
guardian bunkering on a point, constantly cleansing?
re-apply burn constantly until he sits there with everything on cd and goes down.
turret bunker on your most favorated point?
bate his healing turret and watch him melt while also cleaning his turrets with FT #1 (yes, it scales poorly with power, but the base-dmg is more than enough to pressure the turret bunker AND his turrets on the same time)

run FT together with bombkit and EG and you have all the utility and condi-pressure you’ll ever need.
yes, the cd on IA is quite long, but considering the insane condi-pressure it provides, it’s more than justiefied, and in case you want the extra aegis down in the tools line, you bring IA’s cd down by 30% anyways.

“there is a set pattern for what you should do in a certain case”
“Learn the skills and rotate through them properly depending on the situation.”

Can you tell me what the difference between these two sentences is?
Because for me it really does sound that you disagree with yourself instantly in the next sentence…

I’d like these for my engi.

Rune of the mad bomber.
1) +25 Power
2) +5% boon duration
3) +50 Power
4) +10% boon duration ; 25% chance to gain fury for 4 seconds when being struck (10s cd)
5) +100 Power
6) + 15% boon duration. 25% chance to place a mine when being struck (20s cd)

Runes of Pain.
1) +25 condition damage
2) +5% condition duration
3) +50 condition damage
4) +10% condition duration; 25% chance to inflict 3 stacks of torment for 5sec when being struck (15sec cd)
5) +100 condition damage
6) + 15% condition duration; inflict 3 stacks of torment for 5 seconds when using a healing skill (15sec cd)

Rune of the Pioneer.
1) +25 toughness
2) +35 power
3) +50 toughness
4) +65 power; 25% chance to gain protection for 3 sec when being struck (10sec cd)
5) +100 toughness
6) 25% chance to place a minefield when being struck (30s cd)

I guess their cd’s need adjustment, but in general I’d like to see more stuff like runes of the citadel.

nope.
speak after me: “let it goooooo….”

Wir trampeln durchs Getreide,
Wir trampeln duch die Saat.
Hurra, wir verblöden.
Für uns bezahlt der Staat.

also bump.

tl;dr: yes.
/15schars

In the actual movies or in FanFic?
You know, one is canon, the other is FanFic.

Only took a month for a mod to do this^^
Ty anyways, finally we can send all FAQ to this thread and handbook specifically.

pros:
- easier to blast napalm with it
- less likely to disappear into the ground if the target uses heavy loads of stealth
- easier to predict where it will go off, for opponents

cons:
- impossible to bomb on walls with it now
- easier to predict where it will go off, for opponents
- QQ from everybody that did not understand the skill in the first place

Your proposal is as good as any other FT fix as well.

boba would wear 2 pistols, flamethrower (one of his gadgets in the movies), toolkit (replacing the magnet for the pull-string he uses) and rocketboots.
therefore you will not have a stunbreaker, so your build will even end like boba:
shot down and tortured repeatedly for the next 1000 years.
enjoy, its canon.

Hey wolfrar, I’d like you to test this build in sPvP. I guess you’ll like it
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWr9Zx+KseRCbBNqwAyJcBRuxq8xGEAA-TJBBwAVeAAAuAA42fAcZAA
It’s nothing I’d propose as meta, but definitively the most fun build I was running recently. the runes you can easily to swap to hoelbrak or balthazar, depending on what fits your preferences the most.

the idea is to spam burning on all ranges, ignoring condi-clears since you can re-apply it so frequently and reliably. triggering IA with rifle AA is awesome for downing people that try to rest f.e., along with all the blast / leap-finishers you can stack might for your group easily as well, or provide stealth to prevent / execute stomps.
bombkit brings awesome aerial denial and BoB, overcharged shot, Air Blast, gluebomb and netshot bring all the cc you need to decap a point against multiple defenders.

Even tho you have some bursts, for me it feels that you lack the condi-spam from nades or the high-yield burst-chains provided by other builds, but the above-average sustained dmg on this build clears points fast and effectively.

nades almost always
TK for #5 + #3 combos or #4 for running away.
EG for combo-blasting / healing / condi-reset on allies

and pistols/shield for #2 + #3 spamming, stomp-prevention and further combo blasts.
also #5 works nicely to interrupt 100 blades and other chained skills. Most hilarious when used on a blinking guardian that tries to GS burst you. Say hello to my nades.

dereck.8354:

I am using rifle with bombs, nades, EG and celestial amulet, so I don’t have block or stealth.

smokefield + [Acid Bomb OR Jumpshot OR Big old Bomb] == ???

VitalSuit.1980:

Xae Isareth.1364:

In PvE, the FT mightstack combo is pretty bread and butter for an engi to stack might with, and since asura are both the smallest and shortest race in the game, with the way Flame Blast is designed currently, that combo is easiest to do on them.

Charrs are on the opposite spectrum for being tall and wide, so its a nightmare mightstacking with a flamethrower on them.

Size of your character doesn’t make any difference at all.

Incorrect.

Napalm, as a fire-field, is a really low wall that many projectiles will over-shoot if they come from a high angle (norn / char / elevated terrain). Napalm is as high as a Line of warding and under certain terrain-conditions (like stairs or downhill) you can easily jump over it as well.
And that is why might-stacking on FT is such a pain in the kitten for big races. Not only do we have to blow #2 perfectly timed inside this narrow strip, if our target is slightly above us, we will miss the blast completely.
Norn and Charr already have a high spawn-position for FT #2 and projectiles in general, therefore it is even worse on them to blast napalm. Sylvari and Humans are affected by this inconvenience as well, but not as heavily as the first 2.
Asura on the other hand are small and their projectile spawn is relatively close to the ground, which widens the angle, in which FT #2 would pass napalm, by a wide margin.

Therefore yes, for combo-finishing a wall with projectile-finishers, size matters a lot. And since might-stacking is something that is in theory very easy to accomplish with FT, it’s a shame that only Asura are able to pull it off reliably, or at least in a forgiving manner.
I don’t say Charr or Norn are unable to pull it off, they just have a really hard time doing so.

And that is why people want to have the hight of napalm being increased as high as a Wall of Reflection or changing it into a spherical field.

So you can’t handle a squishy setup?
Okay.

Ofc you don’t run a zerker IN a blobb, but running a s/d zerker while ORBITING a blobb is the most hilarious thing ever, especially if you have scouted their commander. This is why organized guilds have a hunting party.

Solo roaming?
Never experienced any real issues when facing 1v2 or 1v3. You can kite them around for ages, due to high movability/leaps/stealth and decide yourself where and when to unload your s/d volley to drop 2 in one inning. exploiting stealth and gank groups is also something I like to pull off.

And in regards to rangers:
the only good ones I’ve encountered so far were not even running any bow. axe/horn + greatsword or axe-torch + sword-dagger builds are where rangers really shine, and depending on the build, they usually run celestial, knights, rampager or rabid/dire.
The only zerker rangers I’ve encountered so far do my work for me by killing themselves with their constant pew pew due to reflects.

Sorry, but your comment shows nothing but biased hostility towards a class that is awesome for condi or power-spec roaming if handled right, so I guess it actually is a l2p issue. On your side.

Welp, I only posses one legendary, my trusty predator.
Yes, it looks more tan a sniper-rifle than a Blunderbus, but then again, since I enjoy s/d builds I find it fitting for these.
Yes, its a legendary in a sea of legendaries, but imho the best looking one of them all.
Yes, kits make it invisible, but some skills are replaced by special animations in exchange (grenade-barrage, s/d projectiles).

And the biggest plus:
stat-swapping.
Celestial roaming-builds, PVT zerg-frontliner or PvE Zerker, I have a ascended-tier weapon with expensive infusions and sigils for all modes combined in one item.
For me it’s a matter of convenience, but whether or not that is enough for you, is something you have to decide on your own.
Also, even tho it may be the most unimportant thing ever: you also get one of the gold-medals in your character selection screen for equipping a random legendary. Dunno about your feelings towards it, but not having this empty space to irk me, surely bolstered my ego^^

Depths.4051:

Arantheal.7396:

take this
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWr9ZxvLseRCbBNqxAyJcBRuxh8xGEAA-ThRDgAMXAgkHAoEsX537+j6Pg6AAM/RIgRLAA-e
faceroll through every map while lighting stuff up, YAY.

-Perfect for mass-extinct of mobs with FT.
-Perfect for kiting champs with bombkit.
-Cheap and easy to build.
-Lots of satisfying explosions and flames.

Map completion is more about ignoring mobs than killing them o-o

Unreasonable argument:
Doesn’t matter, I like to blow stuff up.

Reasonable argument:
it might be slower but killing everything on your way from one point to another gives you low-level loot which converts to low-level crafting-materials which directly converts to nice profit. Sure, you can skip it, but why not fill a lobotomized map-completion-run with entertainment AND cash.

take this
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWr9ZxvLseRCbBNqxAyJcBRuxh8xGEAA-ThRDgAMXAgkHAoEsX537+j6Pg6AAM/RIgRLAA-e
faceroll through every map while lighting stuff up, YAY.

-Perfect for mass-extinct of mobs with FT.
-Perfect for kiting champs with bombkit.
-Cheap and easy to build.
-Lots of satisfying explosions and flames.

I have no idea what happened, but this increase, happing parallel to the remove of the graph-display ingame, smells fishy.
I’d like to get a official response to why this spike occurred just now and in such intensity.

Dungeons/Fractals: engineer > mesmer. almost always.
15sec group-stealth + vuln. stacking will outcompede a mesmer any day.
the only exception is lupicus where a well timed bubble can nuke him.

PvP:
A nullfield on a point can be awesome, and the mesmer definitively brings great utility to a team. Also portal-play (fast travel between mid/home/far) can be a match-deciding factor for your team.
But the engi is simply more versatile. securing or preventing stomps is much easier for us than for mesmers, we are extremely mobile on our own, we can condi-suppress whole points, disable stealth-rezz and decap a point against multiple defenders in seconds, due to the high amount of hard/soft cc’s we can spam.
Since stealth is kinda easily accessible for us as well we even can setup and execute ambushes, stealth-rezz and stealth-stomp as well.
last but not least we bring many blast-finishers and fire/water/smoke fields for buffing/healing/stealthing the whole team on a point (the later is only recommended for a fast disengage).
We buff, we heal and we kill almost anything and the most awesome part is that we can accomplish huge chunks of the above described features in one and the same build, depending on where we spend our traits, what kits/utilities we choose.

The engi may be out-competed by other classes on most stuff he tries to do, but none of the other classes can combine so much different utility in one single build. Our strength is the fact that we come prepared to almost any possible match-up.

fluidmonolith.3584:

-Where is healing turret used now? (it sounds like “almost everywhere / every build”)?
-Where do you think healing turret should be used?
-If you are currently using healing turret where you think you shouldn’t be using it, what changes would have to be made (either to healing turret, or to other skills/traits) to get you to change heals?

-almost all builds with the exception of HGH. Even tho some engis preffer medkit instead, making use of the better control over rune-procs on healing skills.
-everywhere. Why? because it supports the players around you and therefore enhances the dps-uptime of the group (PvE) and provides direly needed water-fields for group-healing (WvW) while having the option to interrupt stomps and skills in general (PvP).
-Where shouldn’t I use it: on HGH builds / what changes need to be made to use other healing skills in general: remove cast-time on AED / remove rng factor on elixir H / increase BA self-heal-amount on Medkit. the Healing turret is fine as it is (fix the zero-healing-power-scaling, tho). Our other healing skills aren’t.

The balancing problem with #NoHobosacks is already solved. Funnily enough, a-net did this without even noticing it.
You see the new standard-model option in s/tPvP?
How about you ALWAYS make hobosacks visible with these models (as it is currently anyways), and leave the decision to show it with skins -or not- to the engi per graphical / gameplay option.
For WvW zerging it certainly does not matter what a single engi in a blobb is running as his kit, and since WvW is imbalanced PvP per definition, the balancing-reasons argument is simply not valid there, nor does it matter for PvE.
And if people in wvw actually start to moan; give them a standard-model option for WvW as well.

The balancing solution is already implemented – People can decide to see an engis standard model instead of his race/skins, including the kit he equips, so finally give in and give as a proper-hide option for hobosacks, Anet.

Ty in advance for showing common sense.

nope, wvw.
FT is a good way to kill yourself in zergs pretty fast(retal), but in 1vx it actually works quite decently.
As I said, the goal is to have a low-risk mid-reward build for times when you can’t be asked to play the piano.

keep in mind that the scaling of healing turret with healing power is mediocre, especially compared to other classes’ low cd healing skills.
Yes, the turret is the only 15sec aoe heal in the game, but that makes it unique.
Balancing should not happen to unify skills to other classes, but to level the capabilities of each class to another.
the healing turret does not destroy this concept at all currently, since all classes have access to highly effective low-cd heals. engi just happens to have a aoe-version of it that only heals 50% of its total amount for the area.
This fact does not impact 1v1’s, but encourages multiple engis to use their healing turrets together for enhanced group-play.

no nerf needed if you ask me.

johnsonade.9547:

I welcome the change to shield 4 and I wonder how this simple change will affect the meta for stomps, point defense and cc pressure. Will other classes be demanding a nerf on the forums like they do for ranger rapid fire? I wonder… And the slick shoes change makes it a little more interesting. It was my goto on Spirit Watch and it actually handles toolkit engineers pretty well because of the unblockable nature and if you have high, non-cc spike with say grenades or bombs. The combo of super speed and moving shield 4 makes escapes and harassment more plausible, but I don’t want us becoming decap or nike warriors anytime soon. That is kind of irritating to fight on certain maps.

What I think would add really cool counterplay to engineers and reinvigorate the meta for other classes is one simple change: Allow turrets to be knocked back.

Now I’m not trolling, honestly. I’m an engineer main and have been for almost 2 years. I’m dragon rank (not that that’s anything special), have the champion genius title like most of you and under the right circumstances I do pretty well in team q. What I think will happen if turrets can be knocked back is that point defense will require better strategy (i.e. placing them against walls) and you won’t get embedded turret engineers that destroy midlevel players in solo q that just don’t have TeamSpeak and practiced rotation or communication. Crate becomes less of an issue since you could push or pull the most damaging turrets off of a point or away from LoS. Imagine a thief stealthing up and scorpion wiring rocket turret out of line of sight and then approaching the point. Imagine ranger knockback on thumper in a coordinated gank to dislodge a camped engineer on mid in Forest. I say that and I play with thumper. Imagine two turret engineers fighting each other and trying to counter each others’ turrets with all their knockbacks and APT trait. Maybe cooldown could be reduced on pickup of certain turrets (i.e. not healing turret) to compensate, or there could be a turret stability trait that forces engineers to build properly for turret and sacrifice a bit more damage or range. (edit: just came up with the idea of having a turret reposition trait that would allow us to use knockbacks or maybe toolkit to push them back in place. Dunno, I think that would be kind of fun) I don’t know. All I know is the minute I even put out healing turret, I’m called cancer or some other fatal disease and I have to wonder if a simple change like that might get us more respect as a true skill class.

nope
why?
Because turrets are not rendered in gw2’s physics engine. They can’t fall, nor be relocated. if you trigger them they will spawn at a specific coordiante-set (x,y,z) and stay on this position until their script orders self-destruct, they get destroyed or you pick them up. deployable turrets only works because you throw a separate projectile (this crate) to the position where you command a turret to spawn.
Try it out: place a turret on a disappearing tile in skyhammer and watch it hovering. This is also one of the reasons why turrets are a viable option in certain pve-encounters (thaumanova-anomaly f.e.).

Do I like you idea in general?
Kinda. spawning a turret in a area happens because you expect a certain skill to fulfill a certain job in a certain position. Messing with this basic mechanic would be similar to make guardians’ sanctum cc-able. or pushing away necro-marks. or knocking war-banners away.
Turrets are damageable. If a thief wants to clear them, he can focus them. In order to balance your change, many things would need to happen to turrets, including implementing a pick-up mechanic that allows replacement without cd, and the implementation of a new engi-elite skill since supply-crate is not only pretty powerful currently, but actually our only effective elite skill.

Welp, automated response is intended as the engineers way to deal with condis, and its supposed to mess with condi-duration on a threshold…

How about you decrease the condi-duration gradually with our healthbar?
100% health == +/- 0% condi duration
90% == -5%
80% == -10%
70% == -15%
60% == -20%
50% == -25%
40% == -30%
30% == -35%
20% == -40%
10% == -45%
0% (and downstate) == -50%

That would gradually increase our resistance against condis with the damage we take, not be considered as OP, since we still have roughly the same resistance at the current threshold, but make the trait more attractive in total (f.e. -78% immob duration with leg-mods on 10%… that could indeed be a lifesaver that also is accessible in spvp without using buff-food)

Another idea would be this:
transmute one !stack! of conditions / one condition every 10 sec into 5 seconds of stability
We already have a minor trait that transmutes incoming conditions, and a utility (elixir C) that already cleans all our conditions instantly, so I guess this trait would be a fair and not imbalanced niche-filler for the engineer, dealing with our lack of stability as a appropriate gm-trait.

my last idea would be to proc elixir C every 20 seconds whenever one condition reaches 10 stacks or a duration above 10sec. Simple and effective, and rises the skillfloor for knowing necros / condi-classes against engis. You know, punishing mindless spamming is always a good thing when it comes to competitive content.
“should I overload him with condi-spam right now or will that trigger his boon-transmute?”