Maguuma’s Pugs have probably been the most consistent since release. The Pugs that are here want to be here for fights knowing that we will consistently “lose” at PPT and be outnumbered a lot of the time.
I would imagine the entire lot of them would melt in a single AC barrage (maybe 2 max). While I think it’d be funny having 25 MM necros running around WvW together in a group… I don’t think it provides anymore use than amusement.
If you get enough MM necros together (think queue vs queue), you will get crippling skill lag making you unable to use any skills. Meanwhile minions are unaffected by skill lag so they will continue to attack with you unable to do anything.
As to the OP’s original question. After some testing using a combination of Ascended Pistol/Ascended Shield, Asc P/White Shield, White P/Asc Sh, and White P/White Shield, it seems like kits scale based on the highest rarity of the weapon you have equiped. I was getting consistent 590-600ish white hits as long as I had one ascended weapon, even if that was the off hand. I only got a damage decrease when both weapons were of the white quality.
These were quick tests however, so someone may want to go into more detailed testing if they feel like it
Kit damage automatically scales to your level, and to the highest rarity available for your actual character level, capping at exotic… I think. Your own weapon rarity has nothing to do with it, only the stats it gives you.
Even just tested this, swapped my dual ascended Rabid pistols for a couple of white zerkers from a weapon vendor. Damage went UP, because of the +power on those pistols, even though my ascended pistols have almost twice the base damage range of the vendor trash.
So no, having two weapons of different rarities won’t affect your kit damage, other than the fact that the higher rarity weapon would have a higher stat bonus than the other one.
That is a really poor method of testing.
What I did was test a white bersker rifle along with bomb kit. My white bomb hits where in the neighborhood of 600-700 damage.
I then tested bomb kit with an ascended weapon, using the same gear minus one ascended trinket to give me the exact same stats as having only a white bersker rifle. If your theory of weapon rarity not mattering is true, I should still see 600-700 damage. Instead I was getting around 1200-1400 white damage. This is consistent with the weapon damage increase of going from white to ascended, ie 2x more damage.
So in conclusion, weapon rarity matters when it comes to kits.
Blunderbuss and Jump Shot is not similar damage, its on the order of 25% and higher damage than a normal bomb. Also the 6 stacks of vuln from jump shot > 3 stacks of might.
Shield
With a pistol grants you a block, reflection, combofinisher and stun. In PvP/WvW while playing condi dmg, use pistol and shield. In PvE in general use Pistol and Shield. The utility this weapon grants you is superior. Sure the rifle bursts but an engi uses grenades and bombs for PvE content damage source. You can fill your mainweapons with utility instead of damage, so Pistol + Shield > Rifle in PvE.
Full Berserker btw: (Power / Precision / Ferocity)
greez!
The added burst from Rifle #3 skill and Rifle #5 outweighs the utility from p/s. You’re at a net dps loss if you’re not using the rifle skills when they’re off cooldown.
An organized zerg doesn’t need many Necro’s to be effective. But Necro’s are also one of the few professions that wouldn’t get worse the more were present. A zerg with mostly Necro’s would be extremely powerful, where as a zerg with mostly Warriors would run out of steam pretty quickly (even if their initial attacks were very powerful.)
Necros are actually one of the classes that need to be guarded the most. You guys lack the stability and escapes to effectively escape if you get caught up from all the cc spam that is thrown around.
If the opposing group makes past your initial burst, necros will be easy picking for the hammer train if you don’t have the effective backup.
Cond damage is currently in a weird spot, very strong in PvP and really bad in PvE.
Agreed, for dungeons it be best to have 1 conditionmancer (necromancer?) so that player can make most use if the condition stacks. More than 2 players spamming condition would do the party no good and direct has no stack cap.
Its actually best to not even have a pure condi class in dungeons as the sheer number of incidental condis farted out by every class along with the cap will ensure the condi class will never reach full damage potential.
The only way condis will even be remotely competitive is when the cap goes away.
You can do the same thing you’re trying to accomplish with you’re engi with a plague necro. Except the necro is even more effective at that role and tankier.
Again anything the Engi can do, another class can usually do it better.
Depending on what game mode.
For WvW zerg fighting, Engis still don’t really have much of a role. Sure you can try to make something work, but in general another class usually provides what an engi provides but better.
It breaks my heart to hear you say that. Do other people feel this way also? I’ve mained an bunker/flamer Engi in wvw since launch doing zergs, and I have to say that I literally destroy enemy zergs with the disruption that an engi can bring.
The amount of punishment an engi can take is quite insane. And my favourite thing to do is break away from my own zerg and hit the enemy from the back or side with supply crate, then my flamethrower and watch them scatter like scared rabbits. Our zerg meanwhile is stacked up and buffed and just tears into the scattered enemy and destroys them. The feeling of knowing that you created that chaos just by running among the enemy and sending them fleeing is immense.
Or you could have been an ele and dropped a static field on them. Static field not only has a shorter cooldown than your supply crate, but its not target capped to only 5 like supply crate is.
And if enemy zergs are running from your flamethrower, they must be the trashiesht uplv’d zerg wearing no armor. Flamethrower damage especially on a bunker engi is beyond pathetic. Better off just rifle auto attacking. Not only that, any sources of retal will absolutely destroy you if the enemy zerg had any sort of guardians. Then again sounds like you are fighting some of the trashiest zergs around, so you could have just been a warrior, charged in there and hundred bladed and down’d like 5 ppl. Or even better be an ele, static field them then drop a meteor shower/sharknado and down the entire zerg.
For Spvp, Engi condis have gotten a huge buff thanks to Runes of Balthazar (7 s burning from incendiary powder anyone?). They’re still hard countered by condi necros but nonetheless are still very strong.
Engi knockback bunkers are a little on the opish side.
For WvW roaming, Engi condi is really getting op especially since direct damage builds have gotten a pretty substantial nerf with the crit dmg changes. Perplexity runes are still as strong as ever.
For WvW zerg fighting, Engis still don’t really have much of a role. Sure you can try to make something work, but in general another class usually provides what an engi provides but better.
PVE wise, Condi is still trash even with the crit dmg changes. Full Zerker is still the optimum way to play. Nades/Bombs are still your bread and butter power sets. Overall Engis are on the low side of the spectrum when it comes to maximum damage.
The meteor showers isn’t whats killing you. Its just the 20 backstab thieves that VR runs that is killing the majority of you. The meteor shower is just a cover for them.
With the announcement of Scarlet in our WvW, a new age is dawning on us. One that will be filled with achievement hunters and pvers just waiting to give us their precious loot bags. While some people bemoan the addition of Livings Story to WVW, we in guild [CAMP] embrace it.
So who are we?
We are a cross server guild comprised of the most scummiest, low-life, Tim Tebow loving, basement dwellers this side of the former Soviet Union. Our mission is to make peoples introduction to the new Edge of the Mists map as miserable as possible. Among our ranks are some of the most dedicated hardcore jump puzzle barons. We have pulled entire zergs away from the frontlines in order to chase us down, a futile gesture that only inspires more rage.
Do you have what it takes to become the worst humanity has to offer? Do you wish to make grown men cry? Join us in our glorious crusade for our mistress Scarlet.
With the announcement of Scarlet in our WvW, a new age is dawning on us. One that will be filled with achievement hunters and pvers just waiting to give us their precious loot bags. While some people bemoan the addition of Livings Story to WVW, we in guild [CAMP] embrace it.
So who are we?
We are a cross server guild comprised of the most scummiest, low-life, Tim Tebow loving, basement dwellers this side of the former Soviet Union. Our mission is to make peoples introduction to the new Edge of the Mists map as miserable as possible. Among our ranks are some of the most dedicated hardcore jump puzzle barons. We have pulled entire zergs away from the frontlines in order to chase us down, a futile gesture that only inspires more rage.
Do you have what it takes to become the worst humanity has to offer? Do you wish to make grown men cry? Join us in our glorious crusade for our mistress Scarlet.
Did you ever check the PvP vendor or was the amulet removed recently without me noticing?
Celestial in pvp is nowhere near as good as celestial in pve.
That’s … a different issue altogether. On that note, just wait until the crit damage changes are implemented and we’ll see how good the PvE Celestial is
We already know it will be terribad in pve. Currently, Celestial is overbudgeted in regards to crit dmg. With the change to ferocity, the crit dmg will drop by a huge ammount. For example the ascended celestial GS has 11% crit dmg. With the change to ferocity, the GS will now give 83 ferocity. A Berserker GS on the other hand has a current 10% crit dmg which will convert to 134 ferocity.
And yet the WvW meta involves wearing full defensive gear and still steamrolling everything in your path. Buffing defense will just make this dumb meta even more lolworthy.
Pvt gear probably became popular to survive the insane amount of burst damage in pve. If they change zerker in the way I think they will then there would probably be a shift in meta since the disproportionate burst damage will be gone.
But they are surviving this “insane” burst damage and thriving in it. So if you nerf burst down, they will become unkillable now.
This doesn’t really make sense, if all zergs are wearing pvt gear then it will be a pvt zerg vs a pvt zerg. So what will change? Unless you are saying there are zerker zergs running around.
The point is that if you’re going to nerf a stat set because it is so predominant in one game mode, then you should also nerf stat sets and other game modes because they are also the “meta”.
And yet the WvW meta involves wearing full defensive gear and still steamrolling everything in your path. Buffing defense will just make this dumb meta even more lolworthy.
Pvt gear probably became popular to survive the insane amount of burst damage in pve. If they change zerker in the way I think they will then there would probably be a shift in meta since the disproportionate burst damage will be gone.
But they are surviving this “insane” burst damage and thriving in it. So if you nerf burst down, they will become unkillable now.
I’m going to copy and paste a reply I made in a different thread about the zerker issue. In pvp you can see zerker is much different than it is in pve but a stat combo like cleric is relatively the same:
I’m not going to include ascended gear, there is no such thing in spvp and ascended gear just amplifies the stat disparity. Anyhow, if you compare the two stats they are relatively the same. Except crit damage is nearly doubled the amount.
Stats wise again they are similar. Cleric in pvp has 110 less toughness and roughly 30 less healing power. The pvp version actually has slightly more power! But not by much.
So as you can see, characters in pvp are just as tanky as their pve counter parts. In fact its not much different. But there is a gigantic disparity between the max crit damage achieved in pve and pvp.
Damage is over the top because in anet did not scale defense to the level of crit damage that can be achieved. What this means is a disproportional damage output in comparison to defense. This is why there are complaints about getting hit for 8k-14k in a single blow, because defensive stats are not scaling as well.
If I had to guess it would be that zerker stats will be re-allocated to the following: Power, Precision, Crit damage and Vitality. Like the pvp variant. The max crit damage from gear will probably out around 20% (not including rune sets), the other 30% will be achieved via trait lines. So this makes a total of 60% crit damage possible.
And yet the WvW meta involves wearing full defensive gear and still steamrolling everything in your path. Buffing defense will just make this dumb meta even more lolworthy.
Since fractal levels have gone account bound, it only makes sense for dungeon story mode completion to go account bound too. It gets real annoying for players with alts to have to switch around in order to open dungeons.
For absolute troll capability, try sending 10 PU mesmers against a hammer train. The results are absolutly hilarious. The hammer train can literally spend 30 minutes trying to kill you, and inbetween all of your stealths and clone spam, not be able to down a single one of you. Meanwhile you can slowly attrition down their backline until they are forced to retreat.
Scaling all asuras to the max size asura you can make can alleviate some of the problems. The tech for this already exists as it was used in the Super Adventure Box.
Simple solution: Increase the points you get for holding points and make everything else like kills give zero points. So if people refuse to play the game as intended they loose.
Even better would be to remove cap points and make pvp about player vs player and not player vs point.
If we’re going to talk about best power scaling attacks, GK still is the best kit.
Grenade Barrage scales at .375 of your power x7 which brings its total power scaling to 2.625, which is the best power scaling attack the Engi has. This is provided that all the grenades hit which granted is hard to do.
For the absolute maximum burst damage an Engi can do, it involves Bomb Kit and Elixer X. What you want to do is drop Big Ol’ Bomb and then immediately use Elixer X This will massively boost your power which should take effect as soon as your BOB goes off. The damage you get is very ridiculous, reaching up to 20k damage. Of course this combo is pretty impracticable, but very lulzworthy if you get it to work.
Ok hear me out bros and girls.
When an engineer wants to use a bursty build, we generally choose 30/30 in the first 2 traitlines. for grenadier and modified ammunition.
That being said, the Critical damage line is all the way down in tools.
So an engineer has to either give up grenade kit (Best kit that scales with power) or give up modified ammunition just to be able to get more crit damage out of the tools tree.
I honestly wouldnt be complaining about this if it were the same for other classes, but its not. Guardian, Warrior, Thief, and Elementalist (the only classes I play other then engi) all have crit damage in the same traitlines used to make bursty builds. Seriously, I’ve yet to see a serious build that goes 30 into tools. Im not sure if this has been mentioned before, but it is a serious drawback to engineers using any kind of bursty power builds.
And the bomb kit and flamethrower both scale with power a lot better than the grenade kit does.
Bomb kit (only the #1) definantly scales better than GK. I would not say the same with FT. Sure the FT #1 scales at 1.5 of your power, however that is over a 2.5 s channel. GK #1 (#2 and 4 scale even better) scales at .33. However since you toss three grenades (bc who seriously used grenades w/o grenadier), if you get all of them to hit you get the full benefit of power out of each toss. Take into account you can toss a little more than 2 grenade volleys per FT 1 channel, and you only really need to hit 4/6 grenades to outdo FT.
Both work, but I would dare say that the total damage of a good condition build will out do a pure damage build 8 of 10 times assuming there is enough time for the conditions to build. Power builds apply more damage over a shorter condensed timeframe.
That simply is not true. Full glass power will always outdps condi (provided you use the right weapons and rotations and not just sticking in say flamethrower).
More likely most people have met FT engis and therefore got disgusted by our class^^
Just open your own groups and search specifically for what you need…
SE p1 f.e. profits much from having missile reflection /destruction, so I ask for this directly. I don’t care what classes join, as long as they can do the job.
Whats wrong with FT engis?
The damage is garbo. And since the dungeon meta revolves around stacking as much damage as you can and just faceroll through content, subpar dps is looked down upon. This is also why condis are looked down upon too.
SBI reaping what they sow from tanking into Silver League thinking they would get easy wins. Showed your true colors there as a server full of bandwagons and fairweathers.
Working as intended does not change the fact that we are comparatively weaker when using our kits than other classes due to this fact.
Really? My Bomb Kit has no issues outdamaging my Sword/Focus Guardian. In full ascended. And though I can’t say which is ultimately better, the Bomb Kit definitely does nearly identical damage to my Warrior’s axe (which is also ascended).
You might see bigger hits per single bomb, but overall, Guard sword and Warr axe will outdamage bomb kit throughout their respective attack chains overall, with Guard sword roughly equal to Warr axe. This is all assuming you’re speeced into full dps with all three classes in zerker gear.
One thing to keep in mind is that although Bomb kit does more personal dps, you might see an increase to overall team dps if you just camp nades for the extra vuln stacks.
I feel like the tool kit attack chain should be sped up a little. The damage from it is fairly good, but the fact that it takes so long to cycle means you’re better off spamming bomb 1 or nades for more dps. A melee attack after all should be stronger than the other options.
