Guild Wars 2

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Ayestes.1273:

Not to take away from the issue at hand because I do think it’s a valid issue to be talked about, but you can solo queue free tournaments and get into 5v5 fights as well without spending tickets. You should of course, be able to do hotjoin 5v5 if you so wish without this much hassle though.

Yea perhaps I could do that. But hotjoin is hotjoin. There’s no queue or waiting time there. It’s just continuous matches. I worry about my tickets but the queues worry me more, come to think of it and should have stated it in my post. XD

Yeah I don’t meant to take away the significance of what point out, but there is a mediocre work around for some of it. Hotjoin’s complete lack of a queue system and wait times is something I appreciate and enjoy as well.

Not to take away from the issue at hand because I do think it’s a valid issue to be talked about, but you can solo queue free tournaments and get into 5v5 fights as well without spending tickets. You should of course, be able to do hotjoin 5v5 if you so wish without this much hassle though.

Killing the pet is an option, but it isn’t necessarily the most sound advice. You need to be able to survive quite awhile in order to do that, and have the damage to kill pets before the pet swap cooldowns come back up.

I completely realize that the Ranger is a lot weaker without pet access, but during the time frame of killing both pets the Ranger is capable of putting a lot of pressure on you. Not many professions/builds have access to high levels of sustain, creating a lot of situations where they are likely to die before they finish the job. That can also be time consuming to allow reinforcements, which would mean they’d fulfill the role of a Node Defender anyway.

The better advice to counter the current Empathic Bond in my opinion is to time your “condi-burst” right after Empathic Bond triggers, and hopefully cleaving some of that at the pet to apply pressure there. I think it still needs to be changed and/or fixed in some way, but for the most part the rest of the Ranger stuff is fine to me and within the realm of being handled. Double traps may be strong, but I’m not convinced it’s too strong.

I believe it was coglin who mentioned getting called out for popping like an old car or something a long those lines. It’s true it looks and sounds hilarious to watch another Engi do it.

It does seem odd from a design standpoint that the Med Kits Kit Refinement is a mini-bomb of sorts. You’d think it’d be a free Med Pack on a cooldown or something defensive in nature.

Not a problem, if you want to stick to some extra Chilling though you could probably run Sigil of Hydromancy and Runes of Grenth. I used to do that and it worked decently well for Chill uptime, but I don’t think I’d do it without Freeze Nades.

There is no need to follow the zerg in hotjoin, I tend to avoid it personally. It gets you more points by free capping, objective taking, and the small fights you get out in the wild lands. It also tests you on 1v2 and 1v3 fights, which at least in my experience is often very winnable in hotjoin.

I’d think you would learn the build a lot faster in a non-zerg hotjoin playstyle as well. You get plenty of the right kind of fights and it teaches you how you can disengage with what you have.

Sigil of Energy usually keeps you alive longer. Runes of the Forge would give you even better Protection uptime and has plenty of synergy with what you offer. I’d personally drop Potent Elixirs for Invigorating Speed as well, to apply as much Vigor as you can.

You could run damage as well with things like Sigils of Geomancy and Runes of Adventurer or Nightmare. You can be plenty threatening even in a bunker build as an Engi.

I find you can usually tab target them even if their model hasn’t loaded yet. This of course assumes a simple one on one duel though.

When I played the Warrior in beta Restorative Strength functioned first, then Mending took effect. It’s been a long time since then though.

Mesmers drive me nuts in WvW. Incredibly slippery and loaded with potential disengages. Most at least do not carry much in the way of condi-removal though, which is helpful to me.

Thieves always seem to be glass cannon. Probably the squishiest target in most situations period.

Chaos Storm, Blurred Frenzy, and Shatters tend to be what threatens me away from reviving an ally with a Mesmer trying to stop me. Pistol #5 and Greatsword #5 have also interrupted me. If you can beat them to the revive then Invuln stomping is a priority as well.

If you’ve ever played a condi build against a Trap Ranger then you’d know Empathic Bond matters significantly. You have to time your decent conditions right after a wipe which is fine, but the fact that it applies no pressure on the pet once the conditions have been supposedly taken makes it so the Ranger has control over when to pet swap instead of being able to force an early pet swap and possibly a pet death the second time around.

It seems highly unlikely that it was intended that taken meant wiped. To me taken means transferred and not wiped, but the biggest indicator of this is how no other class gets a full wipe every ten seconds without any downsides. Combine it with Healing Spring and it’s incredibly difficult to do any condi-dmg to a Ranger for quite awhile. The trait is incredibly strong and in it’s current form overpowered. It might even need more changes after the trait is fixed so that it transfers instead of wipes, but I think a one step at a time approach is best here.

I’ll be honest though, the rest of the issues with a Trap Ranger aren’t a big deal to me. I do hear the traps are likely going to have their cooldown triggered when they are sprung though, so no more double traps on defense. I’m not sure what to think about this, but then I have plenty of condi-removal in the Engi variants I play so maybe I have less issues with then others.

I personally am running Rabid and Rampager’s gear in PvE / WvW, and a Rabid Amulet with Rampager Jewel in sPvP. I also have a Berserker’s and Soldier mix set I’m working on for direct-dmg if there is another condi-dmg user in dungeons, but it isn’t quite finished yet.

You take condition duration primarily for the Burn duration. Most of our Burns come in 2 second chunks, and increasing that to 3 seconds is a lot of damage gained. Not to mention, condition removal against an Engineer’s conditions is overvalued. A lot of your conditions will stay on the target even after they use their condition removal, especially since full condition wipes are pretty rare now with the exception of the Necro.

On swap sigils are very good for Engineer’s with kits, often better then on-crit variants. However saying Battle is superior to the rest is silly. It’s great, but it’s not true in the slightest. Geomancy for example is the highest amount of damage you can get, assuming you can land most of your Geomancy procs. Might is good and increases damage fantastically, but it won’t make up for the raw increased damage in a condition build that Geomancy offers. Not to mention I’m sure there are other combinations that apply better damage as well. Fire / Air for direct-dmg builds are a great example of how you can just get more damage by simply adding another damage source rather then increasing all your damage sources slightly.

It’s very easy to dodge grenades if you are actually throwing them at a decent range, but this build prefers to play just outside melee range. You are pretty much throwing them at your feet, negating the slow projectile speed. I’m not really in favor one way or another of grenades needing an accuracy boost, but in this specific situation it’s not really needed. The main combo revolves around closing in with Pistol attacks into a Blowtorch, Geomancy proc, and Shrapnel Grenades chucked at your opponents feet.

If you can avoid Glue and Freeze Nades though and play a kiting game the Grenade and Geomancy damage is negated. In most cases though kiting damage is low enough to be beaten by pure Pistols with Incendiary Powder procs. This is however one of the core weaknesses, that and it’s easy to disengage from as long as you do it before you will die to delayed damage.

As to the what you discussed, what suggested variations would you make to make it better in a dueling situation?

kodesh.2851:

Ayestes.1273:

You can practice by joining empty 5v5 rooms together. Once in awhile you get other people in the game with you, but it’s not really that frequent.

This is a hassle. Right click -> duel is what the people want.

I never said it wasn’t a hassle. I’m saying there is a work around in the meantime. It’s been said before by the devs that this is on their agenda. It’s only a matter of time.

silvershadez.8421:

No. I have a necromancer with 150%+ bleeding duration and it works. The 100% cap is a lie (atleast for bleeding).

The 100% cap is not a lie. The Necromancer trait that gives +33% scepter condi-durations though breaks the cap. The rest of us cannot go past +100% condi-duration.

Thieves do run out of initiative, as long as you time your attacks after the Shadow Assault eventually you will hit them. As someone said earlier though, they won’t ever hit you unless you stand in front of them.

The only problem is it takes a really long time to actually kill them.

Chaith.8256:

Sigils: You need to make sure you get 3 ticks of burning on your ‘incendiary powder’ trait. You can achieve this either by 4 nightmare, 2 lyssa, or 6 nightmare, and sigil of smouldering (burn incr).

Nightmare actually gives +20% total duration, the tool tip lies. Regardless, the advice here is solid. Hiba / Massacre Mode / leashmaygoose has a lot of refinements to it that work very, very well. In particular, Geomancy is borderline overpowered given you have a single kit and can intentionally proc it with little practice.

A mere two globals (Blowtorch, Grenade Kit Swap – Geomancy, Shrapnel Grenade) average 2.5k direct-dmg accompanied by 1.5k condi-dmg per second pressure followed up. If it was all uncleansed that’d end up being over 20k damage by the time the conditions expired. It’s a literal condi-burst build, and that doesn’t count the rest of the what the Engi has to apply on top of that. Incendiary Powder’s burn applies constant pressure no matter what you are doing. Our condis are very well protected due to the sheer variety of condis we push out and the vast majority our damage happens to be AoE. It’s only real weakness is being weak to pressure, but it does have Elixir S.

Whomever said the Grenade Kit in a condi build isn’t for 1v1 fights is silly since Shrapnel Grenade – Geomancy swaps are the secret ingredient to supplementing the Burn damage. It has the obvious 1vMany advantages as well, which this build is absolutely amazing at. It’s not a rare thing to win 1v3 fights against people in hotjoin for example. You wont’ do that in tPvP by any means, but in tPvP it specializes in ripping apart many of the common meta builds such as D/D Valk Ele’s.

Personally I’m running Explosives (V, X, VI), Firearms (VI), and Alchemy (II, X, XI) with a Rabid Amulet and Rampager Jewel. It’s not as much damage as Rampager’s (due to the direct-dmg loss and small chunk of crit lost, but it makes up a bunch with the extra condi-dmg), but it has a lot more survival with a decent base health pool and 2.5k armor.

You can practice by joining empty 5v5 rooms together. Once in awhile you get other people in the game with you, but it’s not really that frequent.

I’ve seen plenty of videos on it already, I’m sure you could find one. It’s the 100 Nades build, (which would be under Five Gauge’s thread on here) and works with a crowd control by walking into the opponent using Grenade Barrage and swapping to the Grenade Kit to trigger the Kit Refinement. Has a myriad of advantages and disadvantages and is competitive, but it’s the opinion of some that the build falls a bit short of what the Thief is capable of overall.

I’ll be honest, I think the big bursts in the game (Arcane Magic, 100 Nades, Backstab, Shatter, 100 Blades, Bird F2, etc.) should be toned down slightly. That is a decision left to the devs though, the game is playable as is without such a change.

They have never mentioned scrapping the idea entirely, merely that certain other things would take priority over the feature implementation. That was awhile ago.

Empathic Bond can be worked around because they can’t control the condi removal. In this case we’d simply time Blowtorch to land after it’s wiped. I’m not exactly in the same boat as Hiba though with it though, I still have great trouble against a select few Rangers that carry it. The advantage is in their favor, but not all hope is lost. Once the bug is fixed so that it’s an actual transfer though, the fight I imagine would be far in our favor since the pet’s would have to managed very carefully to even stay alive.

AoE condi removal isn’t that big of a deal in my experience. It mitigates the damage but again most AoE condi removal only removes one or two condis. Engineer’s lay a pretty thick layer of them and can reapply multiple types very quickly. This form of condi removal is a big problem when playing as a build that primarily focuses on bleeds though.

While I’m not surprised, it’s honestly disheartening that positive dev interaction gets turned into such a negative and pessimistic response. It’s no wonder most game devs decide they can’t talk about anything. Silence often gives a better reaction no matter how bad that noise gets as well.

Personally, I really liked the recent State of the Game. I have a lot of faith in ANet after that. The responses were exactly what I wanted to hear. I’ll admit I wanted more, but I know anymore they gave would simply be jumped on with negativity regardless.

Harpoon Gun 2, 3, 4, and 5 are all fantastic. You should use the Harpoon Gun regardless of build. Grenades in particular are very strong underwater if you have them. Bombs as well, actually. I’ll admit I haven’t experimented with the other kits underwater.

As for Thieves, just keep your distance. They will run themselves out of initiative eventually. It is however the most second most annoying thing you will ever deal with underwater.

I’ll be honest, the only thing I ever lose to is the actual most annoying thing underwater. That being downed rangers healing like mad regardless of their pet being dead.

They talked about the Elementalist the longest, and the discussion was pretty much over when they said they were looking at them. Their discussion on class balance to me was very enlightening and in my opinion a fantastic direction for them to take. Remember the topics weren’t chosen by them, nor is the length of discussion on a topic a fair way to gauge anything about how they are ideologically balancing the game.

They pointed out in this State of the Game that the eSport features are lower in priority then the vast majority of their other features for sPvP. Things like spectator mode and the like are quite a bit lower then matchmaking was, for example. Basically I got the opposite impression, their eSports agenda is for it appear with years in the timeline and not something that they are pushing for immediately. As they said it, it takes time for a game to be an eSport and while they do plan to eventually introduce these features it isn’t going to work unless the game itself is fun.

My only real problem is, I like the way kits and my tool belt work as is. The only problem I have with the Engineer is that some weapon skills, traits, and utilities are gunk and need to be fixed and/or boosted. Basically, I want there to be more viable stuff. This is an issue most professions have, even it the Engi may have it a little worse then most.

That said we have a lot more viable stuff then the general community seems to realize. We need work of course, but a lot of stuff is overstated as horrible when it’s not. I don’t want core mechanic changes, I like it how it plays already.

The plan from the devs is eventually to have private servers and a dueling feature introduced. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

Double trapping is strong but can be dealt with. I’d honestly care less if it’s removed. The only real problem I have with Trap Rangers is the Empathetic Bond bug. Right now it just flat out clears all conditions on the Ranger every ten seconds. It needs to be fixed to transfer them, which is simply a bug fix. Fix that and then we can see where these trap builds are.

Rampager’s, Carrion, and Rabid are all possible combos. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, and there is no wrong answer to this question.

Power is useful because a lot of our condi-dmg abilities have decent direct-dmg ratios. Pistol 2, 3, 4 and Nade 2 for example. Damage diversification is also incredibly helpful and it can boost Retaliation if you have it.

Precision is useful to proc on-crit skills for condi-dmg builds. Incendiary Powder is the biggest one, but honestly you don’t need that much crit to make it proc regularly. Sharpshooter and possibly Sigil of Earth make good use of it as well. Once you have enough to proc the abilities enough the value of Precision drops dramatically.

Condi-Dmg is obviously important, since it’s where the vast majority of the damage comes from. The only place you lose maximum Condi-Dmg is in a Rampager’s gear set.

Rampager’s gear honestly has the highest damage output period, but is clearly glass cannon and likely over saturates yourself with Precision. Carrion is incredibly useful if you don’t take Incendiary Powder or Sigil of Earth. Rabid simply lacks any Power in it, which as stated before is useful.

Honestly, if you are doing PvE/WvW my personal recommendation is a mix of Rabid and Carrion attribute sets to balance out Precision, Power, Toughness, and Vitality. If it’s sPvP it really depends on your goals and build, but I like Rabid Amulet with a Carrion Jewel currently. I used to love pure Carrion, but after experimenting with Rampager’s I realized that Incendiary Powder is an extremely strong trait and some Precision is needed to fuel that. Not to mention, having Toughness after not having it for so long feels so nice.

If we are talking about typical situations in a mid to short range open field against a single target then you will never use the Grenade auto-attack. It’s all about Shrapnel Grenade cooldowns for both direct-dmg and condi-dmg builds. The Poison and Chill grenades are also extremely useful in a lot of situations. Freeze Grenaes have a huge direct-dmg ratio, and the Poison Grenades are fantastic AoE condi-dmg. Not to mention the side effects of the conditions are useful.

There are times though where you literally just want the AoE damage though. Even if in the case of a Pistols and Pots build sprinkling in just Shrapnel Grenade will increase your damage output (at the cost of an Elixir). It also enables you to use on-swap kits, in which case Geomancy in particular for a condi-dmg build can increase damage output substantially.

Basically the point of the Grenade Kit is not the #1 skill. It’s in the cooldowns. Mind you though, if you want to farm Orr it’s even better to add the Bomb Kit as well and just burn a bunch of them down in an AoE while they are all blinded.

I don’t think it’s right or wrong to want to hide your own build. It’s a personal choice. No one should be angry if someone else wants to release or hide their build. There are reasons for both whether they be making things a mystery, keeping your competitive edge, or bringing up the skill level of the community.

Those that think the typical condition removal stops an offensive condi Engineer’s damage hasn’t really seen it in action. Empathetic Bond (however buggy in favor of the Ranger it is) can be worked around with smart cooldown usage. The only condi removal that really works are full wipes, which are amusingly rather rare in the current meta.

Don’t speak for others. Vast majority I know love the downed state. You have no way of knowing how many like it.

If this is going to be a thread on Slick Shoes, I’m going to Super Speed away.

Yeah I had Carrion before. I switched to Rabid because by dropping Bombs I had room for Incendiary Powder (which needs that crit) and lacked the Burning from the Bombs themselves. I’m unsure as to whether I’d miss it in PvE/WvW, as I still have Carrion there. I intend to find myself some Rabid gear though and try it out though. Rampager’s would even be more damage, but I wanted some better survival in it.

Condi Grenades are awesome. Dropping the Bombs though is not fully my idea, it came from some of the streams which I think the initial build came from someone named Hiba. Honestly by dropping them, I’m coming to realize that Bombs really aren’t that great in their current shape for sPvP as I don’t really miss them.

Edit: Build discussion link on PZ forums – http://teampz.com/threads/offensive-condi-engineer.1121/

I’ve tested it in PvP, it is 20%. The tooltip is incorrect. I haven’t tested it outside of PvP however. Specifically, it’s 4% / 16%.

That’s a pretty big generalization with no real data. I’m personally pretty happy with the game and have certainly not lost faith. I really want solo-queue, but it doesn’t mean I’ve lost faith nor do I think they are lying. The dev interaction is something that is an extremely positive thing, and we’ve been turning into something extremely negative. It’s fine to discuss opinions obviously, but the negative tone is only something that serves to discourage them from communicating at all.

Yeah the sPvP player-base is notoriously small at the moment. There does however seem to be strong precedent though that introducing a solo-queue system grows the player-base significantly. I’m not sure I like the splitting of the player-base argument, and instead prefer the development, testing time, and prioritization argument. There are solid reasons to stay on the current path temporarily, but I’m not convinced that the size of the player-base is a concern.

As to their discussion in general, I really liked it. Insight is better then silence to me, even if we may disagree with (a small portion of) it. Rational discussion on it is awesome. I honestly have a lot of faith in ANet and love what they have accomplished.

The whole solo-queue system to me is more personal then most perhaps, because I get very little competitive action with children and a career in the way. I live vicariously through the streams at the moment. I’d love to play a fair solo-queue every night rather then hotjoin, free tournaments, and the occasional paid I scrape together. It makes sense not to have it “right-now”, but I’d like there to be clear plans for it.

I think the current ANet solution is fine as a temporary thing as long as the completely separation of the queues later is planned. Hopefully sooner rather then later, as fighting for what could be considered solo-queue ranking would be a phenomenal boost to the sPvP player-base. It takes time to develop new systems, but I do think they need to prioritize the eventuality of a solo-queue system a bit higher then they seem to have it right now. Then again, we have no real idea where any of these things are prioritized (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

If it was an option, I suppose that could work. I’m not entirely sure how high priority designing an entire UI/control system for a single kit on a single profession would be though.

nakoda.4213:

messies have 3 phantasms that can be summomed from utility slots without targets. they also have clones on dodgw traits thats only need combat, no targets.

I will definitely test this, especially since I played a Mesmer for a month before Engi and never even noticed. It’s certainly very interesting. I am curious about the 3 utility skills you reference in particular though, since as far as I’m aware there are only 2 explicit Phantasm skills. I imagine you are mixing it with the Clone skills in language?

Condi engineers have to worry about condition removal the least of any condi user. That said, it obviously affects us. Generally though, Condition Duration is so much stronger then Condition Damage where you can get access to it so don’t worry about it. I mean I personally have a base of ~1200 Condi-Dmg in sPvP with the build I run and can add up to 700-800 condition damage at times to it from Might and Corruption. With +50% duration (which without Pizza is all you should aim for), that provides plenty of damage.

In WvW go for the +100% duration if you can. In sPvP go for the +50% duration. The Condi-Dmg will fill in from there.

The 5 engi thing is true. They have run that team and Gasmask said it himself that they had encountered it before. It also seemed to reference the issue that the community feels they aren’t that strong, and they know what is going on due to the comments of “that must be why we are losing”. Especially since they did say they were looking at the engineer in terms of boosting rather then anything else.

30 Explosives (30%), Nightmare 4/6 (20%), Lyssa (10%), and Pizza (40%) works as well.

The key to unlocking +100% condi duration is the Pizza.

There are many viable builds out there for the Engineer. There may be a lot more gunk in our profession then in most others, but we have many viable builds. Viable may not be fully competitive though, keep that in mind. We do fine in solo PvE, dungeon PvE, WvW, hotjoin sPvP, free tPvP, and paid tPvP right now though. We aren’t anywhere near the flavor of the month or anything, but we aren’t completely missing from any of those scenes.

Above all though, play something you like. Patches will change the game all the time, but the playstyle will mostly stay the same. Do what you like.

I completely understand it’d take a lot of development time and resources for a switch like this to happen. I think the point though, is this a key idea in bringing out the maturity of the game. It’s the key in unlocking all the things you guys talked about wanting for sPvP in regards to getting people to play sPvP more and stream viewership up.

I think we would all be okay with the concept that the current path of a solo queue system you are taking is fine at the moment. But eventually we want more, and we think the priority of such a system should be higher then a lot of the other things that get talked about.

I have been definitely mistaken for an Ele before. Now it makes more sense why. Literally been called a noob op fotm ele. Made no sense at all until now. Still doesn’t make full sense, but given most people can’t differentiate between a bleed Thief and a heartseeker spam Thief according to some of my buddies it’s at least a little closer in logic.