Guild Wars 2

On top of walls, there is a little railing they cannot be pulled over if they are behind it. If they are on top it will succeed at pulling them, but if they are behind it it simply will not work. Therefore, it’s not going to pull people down off keep walls all the time. On top of that, it has a long cast time and obviously won’t work on invuln, Stability buffed, or evading targets. I’ve honestly never experienced it flat out bug, but then I don’t use it that regularly. Maybe a total of 5 hrs a week total, if that.

It’s really simple and Lowell has it right. In the end Solo Queue would grow the sPvP playerbase and also make streaming more entertaining. Watching a top player with high rating in solo queue is what brings in a lot of initial views. It accomplishes the goal of bringing more people in and making the streaming more popular for the teaching value.

If I notice no one has any pulling abilities, this is something I always disengage and equip for this specific reason. Cleaning the keep out is demoralizing.

Whenever you click a ground targeted skill with the mouse and you have Fast Ground Targeting activated it throws it at your feet. If you are using an XBox controller, couldn’t you just set your mouse in the middle of the screen and it would always target where the mouse is?

As for single targeting the Grenades, this is something I’m adamantly against. It would make them very strong in low skill areas and extremely weak in high skill areas. This would be a bad way to move them, and it would remove many of the uses it has outside of a direct 1v1 fight such as lobbing them up onto keep walls.

Even Grenades don’t suck in Solo PvE while leveling up. Heck, even the value of Dual Pistols seems to be greatly underestimated. With Grenades, Bombs, and Pistols you can pull 5 to 6 mobs that are easily more then 7 levels above you and burn them all down.

Heck, in Solo PvE you are going to have the easiest time experimenting and testing things out. Flamethrower Might stacking, Tool Kit melee fighting, and much more is viable while leveling up. There will be very little differences in speed unless you are intentionally trying to be non-optimal with gear or traits.

There is currently a Dual Pistols and Grenade condi build that is being used to great effect. It’s very similar to the build I used to run, but has Elixir S instead of Bombs. This opened up additional traits and defensive options while maintaining the offensive pressure it previously had. Top players such as Hiba, Powerr, and Teldo have been playing around with this lately. Basically, Dual Pistols perform very well in sPvP right now.

I agree that you shouldn’t focus on one condition. If you end up in a situation where you need to choose though, Burn duration will always win out on the Engineer. The vast majority of our damage comes from Burns.

Honestly I really liked the Dev responses, except in regard to solo queue. Their comments about balancing are exactly what I wanted to hear. The joke dealing with Engineers is recognition that they know the community thinks Engineers are underpowered.

Also, Grenades are fine. There are tweaks they could use, but they are very usable and viable in their current form. Increasing the viability of all the weak gunk is exactly what the Engineer needs.

Honestly I think tickets should be optional. You use tickets to amp up the rewards returned. As an example, in 1v1 you can enter with or without tickets at your choice. If you win with tickets you get a gold chest, but if you lose you get a silver chest. Conversely, if you don’t pay then you get a copper chest for winning and not a thing if you lose.

The lack of solo queue plans was my only disappointment personally. It’s pretty much the key in unlocking a massive sPvP crowd. My time is limited, I have children and a career. I can’t play as much as I used to. I don’t have the ability to run a 5-man team with any reliability, but I do have the time to play a game or two of what would be a solo queue a day. My competitive drive is still here, and I want to be able to release it reliably.

Depends, the damage is okay if you run a direct damage build but it is terrible without those attributes. The CC is fantastic, but oddly just a replica of Guardian #2. I don’t really have issue with that though. I think a lot of the stuff in general should benefit both a direct damage and condi build in cases where it’s something that must be shared. I have this opinion about all the downed states and things like Death Shroud, for example.

I really think if left the way things are, letting an Engineer get a downed #3 off on you should be ill advised due to the effect it can have. That would be thematic enough for me.

Mesmers cannot summon Phantasms or Clones without a target. Sanctuary is a different ability entirely and an active one at that which can be defeated with Stability. Cloaking Device’s usefulness seems to be exaggerated in both directions. It’s not invulnerability by any means, as any targeted AoE or melee attacks can still hit rather easily. However many tools that people have do tend to be targeted, and in the midst of any chaos it can be extra confusing.

They do need to do some downed state work yet, but it’s not nearly as bad as most people proclaim. There are going to be differences in the downed state and some are going to have different advantages and disadvantages. After the latest Ele change for downed state I think they are for the most part fine. The Engi one could use tweaks, but probably only in the damage department (i.e. Bleeds on #2 and Burns on #3). I’ve seen a fantastic idea that the Engi #2 could be like the Harpoon Gun #3, but that would mean the Engi #2 is no longer defeated by Stability. Whether or not they want that would be interesting, but ultimately up to them.

bromi.7809:

Cripple a foe that’s immobilized? Well that seems useless.

This is nice. You 1st cover more important conditons 2nd let the kite begin. More good for solo pve of course but good enough for pvp too.

I personally love the idea of Knee Shot and have used it for a long time trying to see if it’s actually worth it. In comparison to something as simple as a 20% weapon cooldown reduction trait though, it just accomplishes too little. I’d honestly advocate the trait increasing Immobilize and Cripple duration by 25% or 50% in addition to what it already does.

The only effective build that doesn’t utilize Kits in my book is Pistols and Pots, and in exchange it becomes vulnerable to condition removal and is really only truly effective in WvW. Then again, judging the effectiveness of something in WvW is silly because there tends to be gear gaps on opponents, opponents are often built for zerg combat, and our synergy with some food items is absolutely incredible. WvW balance matters still, but it can be much more loose in balance without anyone noticing the difference.

I initially loved the idea of having an automatic kit slot for a weapon, but GW2 has a set of designs that it hasn’t really broken yet and I doubt it will just for the Engineer. We would basically need to have an extra utility slot that would be kit only, or our “weapon-swap” would have no Tool Belt skill if it was incorporated into that. If you’ve ever worked as a designer, messing with something for one class when you’ve spent so much time maintaining the design for all classes is something that doesn’t often get too much consideration.

What I really think needs to be done, is some sort of Kitless trait that only takes 10 points in Firearms. Reducing the cooldowns of all weapons as well as some unikittenfects. Something like making Blunderbuss effective at full range, giving the Rifle auto some Vuln stacking, and/or increasing the bleed duration (even further then the 4s it should probably already be) of Explosive Shot. Then make it so with that trait, Kit’s don’t work. This opens up many more options for builds that don’t focus on kits, and they compensate for some of the balancing that our weapon skills get because we are assumed to have versatility with kits.

I’d suggest raising the Grenade AoE radius to that of the Freeze Grenade as well, but they have plans to nerf AoE in the up and coming patches. The AoE changes that are incoming will likely smooth these things out a fair bit. Grenade inaccuracy is kind of a thing I’ve just accepted. I just wish in this case the Flash Grenades had something like Boon Removal in addition to their Blind, and the Shrapnel Grenades dropped two stacks of 6s bleeds rather then a single 12s bleed in order to compensate for some of that inaccuracy. Poison Grenades are already very strong as is, and Freeze Grenades already have the boosted radius.

You would probably have to tinyurl it for us to see the real link. It thinks there is offensive language in it.

I would switch Ranger and Warrior in that list, in regards to PvP at least. Even then, the have nots are still viable they just aren’t what you could consider tip-top competitive.

All professions need a major clean-up in their gunk sections. Even Eles, which would be widely considered to have the strongest builds right now have some absolute garbage in their trait lines. We need a little more clean-up then most, but it’s still a multi-profession problem. It’s not an unreasonable problem to have either, considering how young the game is. It takes time to fix these things, especially without throwing things too out of whack in the fixing.

We can make suggestions ourselves and provide the reasoning. In the end though, it’s going to take multiple meetings and discussions on ANets side in addition to a massive amount of testing. They may or may not use what we offer, but they do seem to at least read it all. Exaggerating and going overboard however, can often lead to being seen as not credible and overly biased. The Engineer has problems that need to be fixed, but not being viable isn’t one of them.

Yeah it’d be a more powrful version of the old Evasive Arcane. We’d have too many blast finishers at this point. I’d argue many of our skills could use a look over and have Blast/Projectile finishers added to them where it seems they should have it, but you shouldn’t have access to that many Blast finishers or else you can easily stack those combos.

On a side note, some of this Might stacking with Fire Fields is why Ele’s can get pretty nasty in damage even without a Berserker’s Amulet.

Do let us know how it feels in dungeons, I’d be interested in that.

20/20/0/0/30 with the Shatter traits. Effectively turns your Mirror Image + Mind Wrack into high damage combos that strip boons and even without going into condition damage the Confusion is powerful. It’s a glass cannon in attributes but has a lot of innate survival built in via Distortion, Blurred Frenzy, and the Staff in general. The utilities can either be selfish in nature for survival or team oriented.

It’s usually pretty close to this build:
http://teampz.com/threads/kirmoras-backpoint-shatter-mesmer.32/

Mask’s build has condition removal via Elixir C (thrown as well), which allows him to pickup the +20% Elixir Duration trait instead. In most cases, it seems like this is plenty since it’s a full wipe rather then one condi at a time. It’s also free extra boons.

Elixir U doesn’t seem like it’d do that great. You are restricted by your Pistol cooldowns for damage regardless, since all you will get left with is time for extra Explosive Shot autos. Quickness can make your initial dump of conditions faster, but it isn’t going to improve your overall damage by much at all considering Explosive Shot’s damage isn’t that high to begin with.

Might stacking with Burning and Confusion does a lot more damage then most people realize. Especially with food like Pizza.

Fantastic gameplay Maskaganda. I enjoyed watching it very much.

As far as I know, the most common 4 key finisher would be using the Healing Turret, overcharging it, detonating it, and then using the Shield for a double Water finisher. A lot of the Blast Finishers beyond that (which are brought commonly) won’t be quick enough to use on that Healing Turret water field.

Not necessarily all of our bleeds, in the case of Shrapnel Grenades and the Shrapnel Trait I actually think they are simply just too long. In general though, our bleeds need a look over, agreed.

Regarding Thief AoE damage, the Shortbow is surprisingly strong. I’d be curious to see how it actually measured up against our potential AoE combos with a direct damage setup. I honestly would suspect it be pretty close. In terms of AoE conditions though, we win hands down due to cooldowns.

Technically it also comes with an entire weapon set and tool belt skill. Admittedly though, the duration of 4s feels crazy low.

It can get pretty vicious. I’ve for example seen over 20k Retaliation damage in what felt like a short time simply using Grenades on a point.

As someone who runs a Carrion attribute layout, I disagree that crit is essential to damage output.

Yeah we’d be arguing definitions. Ride the Lightning and the Ranger Sword Leaps would be disengage to me. Swiftness walking away while invuln just is too slow for me to classify as disengage. My main reasons for not really classifying it as disengage revolves around chasing and the minimum combat exit distance, but as I said before it’s all in the definition of what we know as disengage in terms of GW2. Elixir S definitely works in dealing with disengaging from pressure for a few moments though.

You are right Elixir Gun, Slick Shoes, and Rocket Boots is disengage. I’m completely in the wrong there. I had my mind stuck on 100 Nades and my own build in particular.

I would disagree that Elixir S is disengage though, but then it comes to whatever our definitions of disengage would be. I see it as getting quickly away from a fight to both get out of combat and reach another node quickly. Elixir S to me is simply an invuln and downed state tool, which is incredibly useful just not what I’d categorize as disengage.

coglin.1496:

It really would make sense, if at least the tool belt skills worked AoE off of us similar to shouts. The tool tip could just say that you smash a elixir at your feet, granting such and such to those in range. I can see why either the tool belt skills or the utility slotted skills of elixirs need to be self only, but being able to do elixir b both slotted skill and tool belt similar to shouts ins over powered.

Oh I love this idea. I pretty much only throw them at my feet now anyway.

As long as the target isn’t getting Burned, Poisoned, or Bleed capped by other players then Might Stacking Condi builds are viable. I’d argue that Bombs and/or Grenades supplementing it is probably better for absolute highest sustained DPS, however. It only takes Elixir H and B with HGH and a Sigil of Battle to get 15 to 20 stacks of Might sustained, and the cooldowns in Bombs and/or Grenades can output a lot more damage then Explosive Shot autos.

While it’s a nifty idea, the problem is a lot of us like the Engineer for how it plays right now. A rework isn’t really what I’m after at least, personally. I love the Engineer, it’s just the numbers need tweaking and certain things need to be enhanced. The concepts as they are currently are fun and engaging.

Grenadier, Sigil of Hydromancy, and Runes of Grenth are what you need to maximize Chill. The only issue here is how Sigil of Ice interacts with the Hydromancy Sigil because once any Sigil is on cooldown other Sigils with a cooldown cannot be proc’d. That and Sigil of Ice is pretty crappy to begin with, given it’s short duration, low proc chance, and long cooldown.

I’d really advocate stretching out to get Grenadier if you use Grenades. There is way too much difference with it and without. It’s a 9 second chill if you land all of them at that point. Not sure what you’d drop though defensively. Even with just Power and no condi-dmg or crit Grenades with Grenadier do plenty of damage.

What we lack in terms of survival is disengage mechanics. Unless you animation cancel the Rifle #5, we have nothing and even that isn’t that great. We have access to perma-swiftness, but without a disengage you can’t get out of combat quickly enough.

Honestly I don’t know where it’d even be possible to put disengage into an Engineer though. So I’m looking at more brute force survival, such as possible sustain mechanics or the ability to actually support my allies with boons via Elixirs.

Royce.6835:

i find it vastly humorous when people act like the only problem with fighting a mesmer is finding the real one among their clones. lol. as if people above rank 20, or even rank 2 still have that problem.

It’s not the only reason. It is the primary topic of the original post however. Beyond the clones though, they really only have displacement and distortion to keep them alive. Unless it’s in hotjoin, then they usually also bring stealth because they never bring Illusion of Life nor Portal in that case. Mesmers are entirely still beatable, less so as a pure melee as usual.

As it stands though, it’s clear you don’t want any actual discussion on the topic. You simply want to restate your opinion without any details repeatedly. This kind of supposed discussion on a forum doesn’t accomplish anything productive at all, unless you see provoking negative forum reactions as something productive. Especially in the case where you assume too much about other posters. With that kind of discussion, I’m simply going to move onto other threads.

I’m so confused as to whether this is all satire or not now. Regardless, Mesmers aren’t nearly as much as an issue to me personally as they used to be. It’s possible because they blow two elite slots on Illusion of Life and Portal now coupled with all of the nerfs, or it’s possible it’s because I’ve got better at tracking the real Mesmer without hesitation. The clone mechanic is extremely interesting to me, even if frustrating at first when dealing with it. Also to make it clear, I only really play an Engineer.

The only underrepresented professions right now to me appear to be Engineer and Warrior. This is primarily because their only viably competitive builds (100 Nades and 100 Blades) are overshadowed by what the Thief can currently do. The rest of their builds are slightly overshadowed by what others can offer.

There are a lot of professions remaining though that only have one competitive build. All professions need five to six competitive builds, and that’s still a long road ahead. One of the primary issues a lot of the lack luster builds have is a lack of disengage and/or mobility. Which is one of the defining traits of the best builds out there right now.

Royce.6835:

Well, essentially, they should be deleted from the game.

If you are going to start a post with this it’s unlikely you are going to get anything you intended once people are laughing and no longer taking your post seriously. I understand your frustration and the like, but to even consider deleting a profession or mechanic from the game as a valid response is just silly.

MatyrGustav.6210:

any Suggestions?

The Mesmer in this case is a Shatter Memser, not really a melee mesmer. It’s unlikely they will stay in melee the entire time. The reason being, they are incredibly squishy when they aren’t pulling off their burst and when they are in their Sword set. This changes a bit when they are with the Staff, but in general there are fantastic set of tips when dealing with them. Keep in mind though that if you are pure melee then the odds aren’t in your favor, but that doesn’t mean you auto-lose.

• Dodge roll into the clones when they shatter. This triggers their explosions. A Shatter mesmer’s damage is mostly in these shatters. Mitigate them and you mitigate the vast majority of what they can do.

• Move away from the Mesmer if possible. Mesmers need you to be close to deal their real damage. Unless they have a Greatsword they have no real way to deal damage in this long range case, and without the Staff they are incredibly weak defensively beyond the trickery. AoE slows in particular can make it very easy to pick off Mesmer stuff.

• Move all the bloody time and learn to recognize the leaping clone. This leaping clone is the very beginning of the burst combo that you are going to be hit with. If you can keep away from it and/or dodge the follow-up then you have fully mitigated the combo. The other way to start the combo is with the Magic Bullet stun, so dodge roll that projectile if possible as well and stun break it if you get caught while having that cooldown up.

• AoE is pretty key in dealing with clones in general. This won’t stop the primary combo of clones if you get caught in the burst cycle, but beyond a Mirror Images burst while you are Immobilized it’s completely feasible to cleave them down. If you do get immobilized, make sure you use whatever invuln options you may or may not have.

• Recognize Distortion. They are invulnerable during Blurred Frenzy and their Distortion Shatter. Don’t waste valuable cooldowns during this period. I’ve seen far too many people try to burst a Mesmer I have targeted with Quickness for example. They are literally invulnerable during their burst combo, keep that in mind.

Best advice in general though, is to go play one. Start with a Phantasm build for a few hours to ease into the profession and then pickup the premier Shatter build once you have adjusted to the profession. Easiest way to learn how to beat something is to play it, and in GW2 it is incredibly easy to do that. If you are too stubborn to learn how to do that, then just watch Mesmer some streams on twitch.tv. Experience and knowledge of what a profession can do and usually does is the vast majority of skill in any MMO. Targeting nightmare is accurate though, they can be pretty frustrating without tons and tons of practice.

I’m pretty sure I’ve had Static Shot reflected back at me before as well. Or at least I’ve ended up being Blinded and Confused upon using it. My memory isn’t good enough to remember exactly what things caused the reflection, I’ve just assumed it’s been reflectable.

Please guys, try not to get heated here. I think discussion is good, but remember you are discussion opinions and it’s not likely you are going to change anyone’s mind via forums. So simply explain your opinion and be done with it if you disagree with other people’s feedback/suggestions.

For example, I don’t think the Rifle really needs any conditions either. MH Pistol for condition damage and Rifle for direct damage is an extremely easy split to deal with when a profession only has two mainhand choices. What the Rifle needs, is the ability to use the weakened damage value of #3 at full Rifle range and the self-crowd control sections of #4 and #5 removed. If the Rifle were to pickup a condition damage focus, then the direct damage focus would have to dialed back. Direct damage builds need a weapon to fall back on.

Yeah coglin has it right. The damage numbers were taken from my build, which would have a x3 3s burns which would add over 6k damage and about a 1k direct damage hit from the Blowtorch.

The reason we can’t stack Bleeding as well as other profession is because we have such good access to the Burning. That being said, our ability to stack bleeds is probably a little too low because of that, especially in our Explosive Shot and Shrapnel concepts. The theory still holds though, that we won’t ever be able to Bleed as well as a Necro.

The ability to 1v3 in GW2 has no direct link on the competitiveness of the profession. Anyone can do it, especially in WvW when gear gets involved. Skill is mostly composed of knowledge and experience as well, so when dealing most opponents they have no idea how to play against the Engineer profession making it incredibly easy to outplay a lot of opponents.

We aren’t in tip top shape though. We have a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed, some of which are interfering with our competitiveness. This is a common thing among all professions in general, but with us we really only have maybe one completely tested and true competitive build while others often have one or two that are certainly competitive. That build, 100 Nades, is also overshadowed by the existence of the Backstab variants a Thief has.

That being said though, we aren’t nearly as underpowered as most people think. This is in part though due to how GW2 is designed where skill plays a whole lot more into who wins fights then anything else. Not to mention our interaction with Pizza in WvW for Condi-Dmg builds is something few people utilize. We can trash things in WvW and do plenty well enough in PvE to not be hindrance. In sPvP we do okay, but there are certain limits once people understand the Engineer in return.

Bringing it back around though, we still could use a couple tweaks upward. When it comes down to it, other professions can do similar things to what we can, except do it either better or bring other strong attributes along side it. The engineer is extremely fun though, and I don’t think I’ll ever switch out. Regardless of whether I do better as other professions or not, I’m in it for the long haul now.

Most Thieves don’t move when they stealth stomp, but I do know a couple that do. That is nearly impossible to catch with the spear. That said, I think it’s fine that our downed #2 can be mitigated by stealth.

I just think the Pull needs a good chunk of Bleeds attached to it and the Explosion needs to have a good Burning effect on it as well. They just need to be a bit more threatening damage wise.

My opinion on it is pretty simple. I think we are a lot better then most people realize, but I still think we are a little short of where we should be. This is especially true with a good look at all the bad skills and traits we have, and that we lack 5-6 viable builds. That’s something that kind of goes for every profession, but with ours our top builds fall a little bit short of the other top builds.

The example is how everyone complains that our Condi builds suck becuase we can’t stack bleeds like a Necro. That’s a horrible answer. We stack Confuion and Burning, which are a significant portion of our condition damage and we both have perfect Poison uptime. This should theoretically make up for the lack of bleeding stacks we can put up, but it does fall a bit short. Primarily because our Explosive Shot is a mere 2 seconds of a bleed at its base, and because the Shrapnel effects are for some reason are based around a 12s bleed instead of x2 stacks of a 6s bleed (or 33% chance on the trait instead of 15%). Those long duration Shrapnel effectgs just get destroyed by a light sprinkling of condition removal. That’s the only reason our condi-damage falls short, our auto-attack does nothing with a Pistol and our Shrapnel effects are way too long.

It is however, close enough to be viable. The reason being if we can avoid using Explosive Shot as much as possible it makes up for the most of it. We also lack a lot of survival and support with our condition builds, unlike what a lot of other condi damage builds bring. Played to our strengths and ignoring our weaknesses we become viable, but not necessarily competitive.

I tend to frequent the following:

http://www.twitch.tv/teldoo
http://www.twitch.tv/matchlesspowerr
http://www.twitch.tv/gasmaskftw

They all keep their videos up and are all on teamspeak. Their video categories have stuff going back almost daily for the last month. Bsgapollo’s link will show you the rest, and zone’s link is a specific video of gasmask’s that is worth the watch.

Meh I’d agree I hardly ever encounter other Engineers in sPvP. WvW on the other hand, I see tons of 100 Nades variants doing things. Possibly due to the much larger population exposure though, and selective memory.

The intelligent ones that burst you and skirmish with the Shortbow afterwards can be particularly difficult to beat. I personally haven’t figured out a way that even reliably deals with these ones. Even if you get the advantage they simply reset the fight. I admit though, much of the time they underestimate you and that can be their downfall as well.

Rocket Turret would actually be good (with the condition damage scaling) if it was on a 20s cooldown right now. Of course, they need to look at the entirety of scaling when it comes to turrets in addition to their survivability in PvP and cooldowns.

A catchy name can convince other people to play the build. It also can be fun to create a build name a long with your build. People also like to be known about in some fashion or another and by naming something that sticks this can be accomplished in some form.

If they haven’t loaded the by the time they kill you, there isn’t much you can do to make it any different. You could load up on Vitality and Toughness Gear, but that probably is going to make you worse in many other situations.

If they have loaded by the time they start to have their burst, the burst alone won’t necessarily kill you. You then have to avoid the Heartseeker spam, which is predictable albeit still not a cakewalk to deal with. Use your blinds, invulns, and heals to stay alive. These glass cannon Thieves are probably the glassiest thing in the game, it doesn’t take much to kill it at this point.

Oh I’ll be trying your build too, it’s been too long since I’ve had Elixir S. Different advantages and disadvantages. Especially in the case of Elixir S vs. Bomb Kit, as Bomb Kit does very little against a Ranged Skirmisher opponent that avoids the Chill Nades and Glue.

The hardest Thieves are the ones that use their dagger burst to start a fight, but then skrimish you the rest of the way with the Shortbow. If you can land just a few attacks on a Thief though, he’s pretty much already dead. It’s a very twitchy fight.