It’s the new concept on the map, and we already discuss the conquest part in other threads. It’s true we will have the same set of rules in dealing without the orb running, but that doesn’t change the significance of having balanced flag running. Not that I think it’ll be that terribly unbalanced as is, even if Ride the Lightning and Ele sustain makes them the best at it.
If you die alot, I’d say sigil of earth and sigil of battle.
These don’t work together very well. When any sigil is on a cooldown, any other sigil with a cooldown will not function. That means when you trigger the Sigil of Battle then the Sigil of Earth will not function for 9s. It also means when you trigger Sigil of Earth then the Sigil of Battle will not function for 2s, which could very well be when you swapped.
*Ayestes everyone that play a condition build wants a fix to diminishing returns tho we suffer less than other professions.
Yeah it’s something that needs to be done for everyone, not just us. Which is why I hope it come sooner rather then later. Not to mention, I also hope that clipped condition ticks, .75s of a bleed for example, still do the percentage of damage they need to deal. As that example a .75s bleed should do 75% of your bleed damage on the expiration of the condition. That way we aren’t so obsessed with needing exactly integer intervals and condition duration.
Yes +30% damage output makes quite a difference in terms of the balance. It easily explains why it looks bigger then most Thief burst rotations at first glance.
Indeed, there are alternate ways to run the burst rotations on all the builds. Thieves can use D/P, Warriors can use Sword Flurry Immobilize, and Engis can use Net Shot as well. These things are stuff people need to know about and recognize.
Knowledge in general is a very large part of skill in any MMO, don’t slack on it.
Well you can use two sigils. Use one with a cooldown, and one without a cooldown. You could very well do both. Geomancy though, is so much better in dungeons then Battle for a cooldown sigil on a condi-dmg build. The general idea is as long as you can land Geomancy damage then it’s better then Battle. Not that Battle isn’t awesome, but in most cases extra damage sources are much better then increasing your overall damage slightly.
Condi-dmg builds work very well in WvW. Veggie Pizza, people not taking condi-removal, people in zerg builds, people in weaker gear, and people simply not playing in tip top shape make them very effective in WvW. Not to mention, you are the best player on a Siege weapon due to the Condi-Dmg output.
Scope right now doesn’t work, so don’t take it. A lot of players recommend Static Discharge while leveling up in a direct-dmg build, but I have no personal experience with it.
Why would you rule out Speedy Kits with the Flamethrower though? It doesn’t take much to swap in and out.
Even the extremely talented players make mistakes, I won’t mention names but I had to teach a well known player the other day how Sigil cooldowns work. Definitely something that needs to be confirmed though, but I have a lot of respect for Chaith so I’ll assume it’s 16 for the time being.
I thought it was 14 Grenades, since the Kit Refinement trait doesn’t appear to be affected by Grenadier. Normally it throws out 6 grenades, 2 extra from the Grenadier trait, so it’d be 8 + 6 = 14. I guess this was an assumption based on other threads though, am I wrong?
Well, to put it simply, fixing the class properly by going through our bad skills and traits would take the devs forever. It’s more reasonable that we get buffs to make up for those abilities (looking at flamethrower) while we wait for the class to get fixed. It takes time to figure out every bug (and we’ve had some fixed), but buffs should have been coming from the class balance team workload all along.
When I say buffs I don’t mean damage. I play support so I could care less about damage. I want our healing skills “buffed” by scaling a little better with healing power, I want our random elixirs to have their boon duration buffed so we actually use them (looking at toolbelts). I want turrets to scale with stats.
Things are going to get fixed very slowly in this game (if ever) so at least we need to be competitive with the other classes.
I think we said the same thing. Fixing all the gunk to me is the same as buffing the things that need buffing. I just didn’t want to use the word buff, because people interpret that as damage somehow. It’s obviously going to take time too, I hope everyone realizes this. There are 7 other classes with the same gunk issues.
In terms of leveling, I did it with dual Pistols, Bombs, and Grenades. Even at level ~20 it’s a whole lot of fun. The Blinds on every one of those sets keeps you alive against even the hardiest of opponents. Go down Firearms for damage, Tools for Speedy Kits (if you want it), Explosions for pure damage, or down Alchemy for a little more health and the ability to use elixirs better.
Pull 4 to 5 enemies (or many more!), Smoke Bomb, Fire Bomb, Concussive Bomb, Shrapnel Grenades, Freeze Grenades, Static Shot, Blowtorch, Shrapnel Grenades, and then move onto whatever you want because it’s likely everything has been dead for awhile. People really underestimate condis for leveling up. It often doesn’t even matter if the zone outlevels significantly, because condis still do the same damage and you still take nearly nothing due to the AoE blind output.
Well, most of all they shouldn’t break the Ele. Even if I want the two strong Ele builds right now nerfed slightly it doesn’t mean I don’t want them to have 5 to 6 viable builds. The upper half of their trait tree needs major work.
All I really want for nerfs are to have Ride the Lightning be affected by Chill/Cripple like other leaps, and their sustain to be slightly taken down. Given compensation with a plethora of cleaning up the terrible traits and skills, I think this would be an excellent path to take.
I’d really like to see them do something with free tournaments.
When i dont have a team on it sucks to wait 30 mins for a Q pop.
I’ve been in the same boat for months. I lack a team, because I lack the ability to set a schedule. I have children and a career, but I love the PvP in this game.
I think the eventual plan is to have Frees be a 1v1 with matchmaking incorporated (that will push solo queuers in with other solo queuers most of the time), which would be an excellent shorthand thing to have. Eventually though, I still want a full ranked solo/duo queue.
Yes, it’s been said they have a short term solution for solo queue coming sometime. Then after that, assuming we still want a full fledged solo queue ranking system that would be something they work on. Basically, this is quite a bit away.
Stream viewers likely won’t be around until a solo queue system is implemented, which will likely be awhile. Tournaments while enjoyable to watch for some (like me), are a little too slow and repetitive. That and the sPvP scene seems to be very small, which probably won’t be boosted until a solo queue system is implemented as well.
It is true though, that this is unlikely to be a dream patch for anyone. So if you simply don’t enjoy playing the game right now… don’t. It has no subscription, you can come back anytime and enjoy the changes then. I enjoy the game right now, but that doesn’t mean everyone else does and I acknowledge that.
This is something I agree with, but it’s something that needs to be addressed among multiple classes at the same time. Thieves, Engis, Warriors, Eles, and Mesmers all to my knowledge have fantastic burst combos that can one shot someone in certain builds. Some of those builds are much more viable then others on the grand scale, but I don’t think anyone should be completely one shot.
I agree that 100 Nades is too much, but only if multiple other burst builds are too strong as well. If the devs decide that the other burst builds are fine, then since in my opinion the Engi one is inferior with all factors combined I’d consider it fine as well.
We don’t need an across the board damage buff, nor do we need an overhaul of the mechanics on everything. We simply need our gunk made useful. The bad traits, bad weapon skills, the bad utility skills need to be made as useful as all our other useful stuff. Turrets and Elixirs are probably the only things that need somewhat of a mechanics overhaul in terms of Turrets need to scale and Elixirs need their RNG reduced and/or removed when possible.
In terms of PvE, the only change I desire is making damage conditions stack per player and per target, rather then just per target. Meaning other player’s burns won’t mess with my burns. Mathematically, we do phenomenal damage with a condi build, but of course the damage is delayed and due to the stacking methods often just completely missing.
These seem like WvW numbers against a glass cannon, if it really was 3200 Armor something is out of whack. I’m pretty sure we’ve checked and Thief burst is still higher. That said, it’s the 100 Nades build as mentioned above. No idea if the Kit Refinement – Grenade Kit part is intended or not.
That’s fine if you want someone else’s advice, but I’m still going to offer it. I’ll be honest, I have very little QP and could come up with a number of excuses why but I don’t see any point in doing so.
In particular though, the only trouble we (condi Engis anyway) have with Ranger’s is Empathic Bond. Staying mobile keeps the pet damage minimal and cleansing trap conditions prevents that kind of damage. With Mesmers, unless they are actually running Null Field which few do in competitive PvP, they melt to the conditions as they can’t get rid of them. Simple anti-Shatter tactics like dodge rolling into the Shatters and kiting away from the Mesmer can bring you up too. I played a Mesmer in particular for a long time before switching to the Engi. Know their threats.
Seriously the best advice anyone could give you though, is to go play those builds. At the very least watch streams that feature those builds (such as Gasmask, Xeph, Helseth), or the builds similar to the ones we have (Teldo, Powerr). It’ll be harder for Ostricheggs and everyone else here to give you advice until you give us which build you are using as well, because having condi-removal, invulns, and certain attacks change the advice substantially.
Immobilize claims it stacks in duration in the tool tip, but it simply overwrites the previous Immobilize regardless of what the duration was previously.
The community tends to think Necros are on the low side of balance, meaning they feel they are underpowered.
I should point out though, that community beliefs aren’t necessarily correct. I have no experience as a Necro, so I’m not in the right position to analyze it. I’ve seen good Necros though.
It’s usually best to ignore the trash talk and laugh silently to yourself at the opponent’s rage. If you play with any frequency you will be called a hacker, cheater, OP Engi, and many variations of swears quite often. My favorite overall was being called an overpowered fotm noob Ele… when I was on my Engi.
The burst in general does need to be toned down a bit, but in most cases it isn’t nearly as bad as people claim. Downed state and dodge rolls mitigate a lot of the potential direct dmg burst builds have. Not to mention having nearly any bulk in either your profession or attribute set let’s you survive burst rotations.
The only thing beyond that is a little too strong is Ele sustain. Then every class, including the ones that get nerfed need to have all their gunk fixed so they have 5 to 6 viable builds. The balance in this game is a lot closer then most people seem to think though. There are ways to beat nearly everything as long as you have the knowledge, reflexes, and decision making to deal with it.
Swap sigils were changed a few patches ago to work with kit swapping. On swap sigils are often better then on crit sigils even in our builds that have decent amounts of Precision. We can simply activate them when we need them, in which weapon swaps can’t necessarily always do that.
Sigil of Battle and Sigil of Geomancy are incredible on Engineers now. Battle because with constant swapping it’s an easy 9 or so stacks, and Geomancy because we can intentionally trigger it on our opponents rather easily. Geomancy is also a near 5k damage AoE if it finishes all the damage, including the healthy direct-dmg portion. In fact, I personally think Geomancy is a key part of our condi-burst.
As to fighting opponents that stick to range there are a number of ways to deal with it. You can force them off point, which can be essential but isn’t always useful. Simply using Pistol cooldowns and line of sighting them beyond that can work as well. Glue Shot and Freeze Nades can help you catch an opponent to use (accurate) grenades and enable the use of Bombs (although, you will still have troubles with Bomb accuracy on a target that isn’t melee or staying on point).
The bottom of that page should clear up a lot of questions. Basically, your offhand Sigils work just fine. Just never stack any two sigils with cooldowns together.
My personal recommendation for a Pistol Offhand is pretty much always Corruption though.
Incendiary Powder, Blowtorch, and Fire Bomb all have a 2s base burn duration applications. +50% duration gives them that extra tick, and even on opponents with a lot of condition removal the an extra second is going to make a lot of difference. It’s imperative after a condi-removal use that you get that Burn up as quick as possible.
As for the direct-dmg side of P/P, there is a very healthy chunk of it contained within. Poison Volley in particular, but Static Shot and Blowtorch are decent at is as well. It’s not uncommon when you fight a Ranger with Empathic Bond for example to have Poison Volley’s direct-dmg be one of the top 4 contributions to your damage. I personally wouldn’t focus on it though, because when you do the Rifle seems much more appealing. Getting Power alongside the Condi-Dmg though is incredibly smart.
Also Confusion is probably overpowered in WvW, so you can use that if you’d like. As mentioned above, Bomb Kit + Tool Kit can give you some incredible Confusion stacks. It’s not required by any means though, as Burning and Bleed stacks can kill just the same.
Condi’s in WvW are devastating, there is no doubt about that. I personally think Mask is extremely talented and very good with his build, but I do there are improvements that can be made. Burn uptime is the main one.
I think our only concern is Ride the Lightning now if it isn’t reduced in distance traveled. While they may be slowed after it, that’s a huge distance no other class is capable of assuming the other leaps are treated like they are when Crippled or Chilled.
I’m curious about leaps such as Ride the Lightning and the Warrior Sword #2 Leap. Will those function fully, as if you were crippled, or would it drop the orb?
If you analyze everything in a vacuum then I could see it be argued that we having that can’t be done better then another class. There are many strengths and weaknesses in a build however, you have to analyze entire builds to other entire builds. I can’t even see this argument though, because I frankly consider us the best at applying conditions in the game. We have the strongest on-crit feature as well in Incendiary Powder. The 100 Nades variant also has a few features that give it advantages over other burst builds, even if the majority of other features overshadow it. Not to mention we are better at using on-swap Sigils better then even Eles, since it’s entirely released from the cooldown. We have a lot of unique and awesome stuff.
That’s not to take away from all the fixes that an Engineer needs. There are maybe 2 sPvP competitively viable builds out there for the Engi, and there needs to be more. Like I’ve said in other threads though, other classes have this same issue. It’s something ANet has said they wanted addressed, but specifically it’s not an Engi only thing. We aren’t alone here.
In WvW we do plenty fine due to food options, and in Dungeon PvE we may not output maximum damage but we aren’t far off from that either. We rock in Solo PvE extremely hard and can level up in tons of viable leveling builds. We have a lot of gunk you need to avoid, but there is still a lot of good stuff. Most of all we are the most fun class in the game.
If you are in a 1v2, you definitely need to plan your way through a downed fight. It’s difficult, but it’s a whole lot easier then the community seems to believe.
Even a dodged downed #2 delays you. While I agree that most people should be able to do this, it still slows things down which can be pretty important. Discouraging proper play isn’t something I think we should be doing.
Necros hardly ever take the Plague Signet anymore. Without condi-removal of your own though, I could see this being a very harsh counter. They of course always seem to have the offhand dagger transfer and heal that wipes their conditions.
Ranger’s Empathic Bond is extremely strong, but you can still do damage through it by timing Blowtorch/Geomancy/Shrapnel Nades after it passively cleanses things.
In both those situations the advantage is not in our favor, but it’s not completely bleak. We have a good chance and it’d take someone of similar or higher skill (skill being a compilation of reflexes, knowledge, and decision making) to beat us. With a single kit and dual pistols we can apply an incredible plethora of conditions and most of them are on very short cooldowns. After condition removal we can reapply our most deadly conditions quickly.
You can copy and paste the link in order to go to it. The GW2 forums can’t handle links that are too long for some reason.
As to the purpose of the build I to catch and control opponents I’m not quite sure Glue is capable of doing that reliably enough. You’d have better luck with the Flamethrower CC, Rifle CC, and even Freeze Grenades. If however, the opponents simply need to be controlled and not caught then Bombs should work out alright.
Swiftness is often not enough to catch people though, because in WvW almost everyone has Swiftness up all the time. It’s more then enough in a surprise situation though, especially if you proc stealth.
I used to run something like that. It’s true that condi Nades, Bombs, and pistols wreck the lords in WvW. Even in the build I run, I often swap in Bombs / Mortar depending on the situation.
Oh I didn’t think you were asking for more dodge. Was more a general comment on the topic. I agree that Rangers and Thieves would be more dodge-centric in their survival then an Engi.
You can also spam condis on the corpse and if someone comes to bring it back up you can use Epidemic. You can also spam Marks over the target while they are being revived.
I really like the Carrion Amulet. That said, you need to be able to apply long durations of Burning as an Engineer in order to deal a healthy amount of condition damage. At bare minimum this usually requires two sources of Burning or some healthy condition duration increases. Ideally it’d be both.
I’m not sure what to do without dramatically changing the build though. Your only other sources of Burning are Precision tied with Incendiary Powder, or Incendiary Bomb. I love the Carrion Amulet, but Rampager’s is another possible route as well. If you always have Pizza on, then you only need +10% duration to clip +50% duration so that’s a possible source to look for as well.
When it’s all said and done though, Mask does very well without seemingly any of this stuff.
I’ll be honest, every profession has these problems. There is a lot of absolute garbage traits scattered throughout the entire game. This isn’t just an Engineer issue.
As to the evasiveness issue in a Ranger and Engineer comparison, I really can’t come up with a clear opinion. I don’t think we need more evasiveness though. I for example would prefer we be more capable at supporting our allies with elixirs.
There are builds out there that people still play even in competitive environments that lack bulk. If they can’t click their invulns quick enough then it’s simply over. The general goal anyway is to put a big dent into the opponent and finish them off with either the Shortbow or Heartseekers. The advice to finish people off rather then start on them is excellent though.
I do not think you’ve played TPvP before if you think a good solution to something is to send two players to kill one.
I’m assuming this is a generalization, and even if so it’s not very accurate. Offensive mobile comps often rely on double teaming someone down to put them on death cooldown. Even without a comp based on the concept, it’s still something that needs to be done often.
It’s true some of the time of course, but there are a lot of factors that go into where someone should be on the map. If you can survive 3v4 defending a node while your 2v1 kills and captures another node then obviously it’s the right choice. Especially if that is now a 3v3 due to someone being immobile and/or dead.
The easiest example is the style of one of the comps PZ uses. Which when you play against it feels like you are constantly double teamed everywhere you are.
As to all of the Ranger comments, I tend to agree that it’s only Empathic Bond that needs to be addressed however.
Please go read the skill descriptions and stop making your self look like an idiot.
What skills do ranger posses that remove ALL conditions every 10 seconds ? You mean Signet of renewal ??? It removes just one. Which is hardly overpowered or gamebreaking . And by the way, elementalists have the same : Signet of Water
I love the tears about rangers in sPVP forum these days. Rangers only have one viable build and that’s the trapper. Until now none ever bothered complaining about ranger and now all of sudden ranger is op ?? Only major buff the ranger received was on the elite Entangle skill which not everyone uses.
I believe he is talking about the trait Empathic Bond which currently removes all conditions on yourself every ten seconds assuming the pet is alive.
Rangers could use a few extra condition removal options possibly without it, but frankly a lot of professions tend to be in the same boat when it comes to condition removal. It’s lacking in most builds. Empathic Bond mixed with Healing Spring as it is currently is extremely good at dealing with conditions. If we are comparing condition removal to the likes of the Ele or Guardian then everyone else is horrible, except of course in this current case where the Ranger has the strongest condition removal in the game tied with the Cantrip Bunker Ele.
Rangers have more then a single viable build. Viable does not necessarily mean competitive in the meta though, and if you were to say they have only a single competitive build I’d be likely to agree with you. Most classes have this exact same problem though, and it’s something ANet has pointed out they want to fix. They want all classes to have 5 to 6 competitive builds. There are also a lot of competitive builds that are likely yet to be discovered. The easiest example is the trapper build that we are talking about right now, as only recently do people even think it is viable and how has risen through the ranks of perception to be what a lot of people would say is overpowered.
