Guild Wars 2

I mean, that Rangers thought Traps were a terrible thing to buff because they thought they weren’t going to be any good even with something like unblockable. It turned out they were wrong, so much that there was an entire period of time the sPvP forums wanted the Trap Rangers nerfed hard. I was trying to illustrate that amiable might be caught up in a bit of sensationalism, and he could be incorrect about Turrets still be junk and non-competitive.

I think that you are very much right, that there is a lot of wonderful stuff in the patch.

amiable.4823:

Amadeus.5687:

Amiable the patch notes are great! Stop smoking whatever your smoking, ain’t good for your sight clearly!

Well I’m glad you are happy with them. Have fun with your awesome and competitive turret build.

The Rangers all said that about Traps when they made them unblockable as well.

Yes, but I do think there needs to be additional changes to compensate what are effectively nerfs.

If it launches opponents it will most certainly not be ignored. Even then, removing a boon is useful regardless.

Speedy Kits wasn’t changed, Kit Refinement was. So Speedy Kits still has its own 5s cooldown and Kit Refinement has its own 20s one.

Mif.3471:

“Grenade Kit: Equipping this kit drops a mine at the player’s location that deals damage and removes a boon”

So my 1500 range kit drops a bomb at my feet?
Well that’s “useful”…. /facepalm

Well it used to drop a Grenade Barrage at your feet so I don’t see much difference in that functionality. I’m curious to see if this Mine launches like the Mine does.

Lupanic.6502:

what does this means :

Automated Response trait: Grants immunity to conditions when the inflictor has over 100% duration.

It means they fixed a bug where if someone had over 100% condition duration they could still get conditions on you.

So hopefully Giver’s weapons are working now. Getting +50% condition duration naturally, or +100% with Pizza is feasible again.

The Super Elixir changes might be a mistake, those changes look identical to last patch. We’ll have to test it.

Yeah Bomb Kit with Kit Refinement could be pretty good. Big o’ Bomb, swap to Bomb Kit, then Glue Bomb…

Seems like the Kit Refinement changes towards utility ended up looking pretty good. We’ll have to see what we can make out of it.

Indeed, subtle variations in this are important. Hopefully the patch notes comments dealing with condition duration have fixed the Nightmare runes now and I can return to them.

Geomancy is my preferred loadout as well, but it requires attention. You need to land Geomancy procs, or else Battle would be obviously better.

At the very least, the penalty on Frenzy and the associated Quickness skills should be looked at.

Tons of buffs, fixes, and a rework to Kit Refinement that is much nicer then internal cooldowns on top of internal cooldowns.

I really like this list.

In terms of turrets, I think they are closer to being balanced then is commonly shown on these forums. Rocket is actually pretty threatening damage wise and Net is an extremely strong control option. The real problem is how fragile they are and the long cooldown associated with bringing them back up.

I’ve never had a problem walking up to someone in a Turret build and completely wiping every turret out with Grenades as an example. After that they are an Engineer without utility skills, which is pretty much a dead Engineer. Given, I have AoE skills that pretty much counter the build completely so perhaps I’m a bit biased in that example, but it’s still a state where I completely shut them down.

Maybe we can convince Chaith to showcase the HGH variant then?

Condi-Burst is excellent. It’s not necessarily all from Incendiary Powder though, landing Shrapnel Grenades and Blowtorch is essential for delivering the damage output.

If it’s going to work, it’s going to require an exception in the code and thus dev attention.

If you are actually re-targeting the pet randomly then something in your settings is off. It’s been too long since I’ve messed with that so I’m unsure.

In terms of being projectile blocked by the Pet, it’s going to happen when you use a single target weapon. The auto for a Rifle is piercing though, so you should be able to apply some damage there. Honestly I don’t know what you would be able to do with the current build at hand other then try to position yourself better. I usually beat up on Rangers by just AoE’ing them down.

Goloith.6349:

Bombs do best with direct damage. Grenades do good with both

I disagree with this as well. The two “damage cooldowns” in the Bombs are heavily condition damage based. While the “auto” is basically pure direct damage, it’s perfectly reasonable to use the Bomb Kit for the damage cooldowns in a condition damage build. Heck I wouldn’t actually use Bombs in a direct-dmg build without the heal bomb trait either, since Grenade Kit is extremely close to that damage with just autos and actually has direct dmg cooldowns to boost it over.

In general I really don’t think an Engineer should be auto-attacking, because our auto-attacks are incredibly weak.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Moddo.7105:

As I said there is a boon counter called Conditions.

Do conditions really “counter” boons? Or do they just “counter” Toughness?

I wouldn’t say they counter all boons, but I would agree they counter Protection and Toughness.

Well if you look at every class forum they all very loudly complain they are the least paid attention to and require tons of fixes and changes. I can easily see where he’s coming from for that. I even hear it in terms of guild discussion, where in many cases I hear “The Engineer got the most love in State of the Game” and then I turn around on these forums and hear the exact opposite. Perception is a funny thing.

In terms of what he can deliver for specific information, when are people going to realize he can’t? If he says they are planning on doing X for turrets and they decide they can’t do that and instead do Y, these forums would be lit on fire with flames. Or perhaps we don’t like X, they would be lit on fire regardless of whether they decided to get rid of it on their own. There wouldn’t be any productive discussion on here for weeks, and many people could feel betrayed or some nonsense. It’s been pretty well established that MMO devs in most situations cannot release details about stuff that isn’t literally set for certain into the patch release.

Ok so here is my opinion on this.

The last State of the Game mentioned the possible introduction of the Boon Hate mechanic. We have no idea on the details beyond increased damage based on how many boons an opponent has. It could just diminish the advantage boons have, or it could be strong enough to punish. It’s likely just to diminish the advantage, but another key point was that the Boon Hate mechanic was to go in place on builds that aren’t already strong. I see it as highly likely we get some of the more obscure builds to end up having access to Boon Hate, like Sword/Dagger Thief and some non Hundred Blades variants of Warriors. Even then, I don’t necessarily think it’ll be strong enough to punish Boons unless it’s a short duration mechanic. As it stands, I think having boons will still be better then not having boons, but without the details I can’t really be certain of that.

Our HGH builds are very strong. I see nothing wrong with them being slightly toned down in terms of opponent’s increased damage against us. Especially when you add in the comment about how they want to buff condition damage on the Engineer. (I can hope that means Explosive Shot.)

This will affect us negatively in some form in a comparative fashion. I however do not think it’ll make Boons a net disadvantage. I also think this only affects our strongest builds, which really can take a hit and still be fine. It also leaves plenty of room for the rest of these buffs they were talking about. Sometimes in order to balance a class you have to tone down the strong points so that the rest of it can be brought up. I don’t think this is necessarily the case here, because frankly I don’t think Boon Hate is that big a deal for us, but it’s something important to note.

We could use tinyurl or something to help alleviate it, but that can create security issues. The GW2 forums doesn’t like links that are too long, which is why it says bad link. I’m not entirely sure why it’s coded this way intentionally or unintentionally.

No, Conquest should be the primary game type. Adding additional game types in due time is something that needs to be done, but Conquest should always be the primary game type.

As long as your camera isn’t automatically self-righting itself, you can throw grenades behind yourself pretty easily with Fast Cast on. Unless I’m getting confused as to what issue you are getting at penatbater.

It all depends on whichever you feel more comfortable with. If your accuracy with Fast Cast is the same as it is without then by all means you should use Fast Cast. Accuracy on the other hand is a huge, huge issue with grenades. Not having Fast Cast on will vastly improve accuracy if your accuracy issues involve you not targeting where you thought you were. Just make sure you aren’t slowing down the rate in which you are throwing the grenades by that much, but above all don’t miss.

Since I tend to use my Grenades at least in the opening of a fight in melee, Fast Cast works great for me. I’ve also played with them since nearly the release of the game and if I miss it’s not because of the lack of a targeting circle. It’s because they, my targets, did something I didn’t expect. So in my situation, I love Fast Cast.

But what about Ride The Lightning and Updraft? That’s air, and you have dodge it. (Just giving you crap.)

I’ve seen their 5-man Engineer tPvP team before, and we have been told Tyler plays an Engineer at the very least.

This merely shows that the community feels that Warriors, Necromancers, and Engineers are at the lowest end of the balance totem poll. Considering the Engineer is already getting more attention then most other classes, it seems things are going well. The only class that really needs to be concerned I think is the Warrior, because they are at the effective bottom and from my point of view is getting the absolute least attention.

No, unless you count the 409 removal of one of them.

This depends on what you mean as area denial. The biggest point of contention may be the difference between damage and control in dealing with it. Differing thresholds of control and damage may even be a factor in one’s personal definition of what area denial is.

Control that knocks people back, abilities that make it so you don’t want to be in a location, AoE damage that is extremely threatening, and things you just want to stay away from all contribute to area denial for me. In terms of what a Condi-Burst build offers for area denial it’s just Glue Shot, Supply Crate, and a rather high amount of AoE damage when you are close up with the Engineer. That really means you don’t want a team to have a high concentration on a control point when fighting this build, which to me is a form of area denial. Combined with another area denial build that focuses on pushing that “Bunker” off the point you can neut it much easier.

CriSPeH.8512:

Bump.

@Ayestes

I don’t assume that I can develop a game better than anyone.
There is absolutly no reason why Devs can’t give an equal amount of time to all the professions in the game. Whether it is the actual developers playing them or whether they are delegating other ppl to play the professions and give feedback. I’ll do it Anet can Hire me for fairly cheap and I will do nothing but play all the professions an equal amount of time.
You say that by playing all the professions they wont have time to do their job.
I am saying that playing all of the professions is and should be a very important part of their job.

I am not even saying that the way the Devs have gone about bug fixing is wrong so far.
There is no subscription for this game and I don’t buy gems, so I paid my $50 and I already feel like I have gotten my moneys worth when compared to other games I have bought.
So any bug fixing or improvements/unimprovements are just bonuses to me.

I am simply suggesting that by giving an equal devotion to playtesting every profession and having the results public for players to see will drastically cut back on all the QQ everytime something is changed.
It will also give better public insight to the Devs thought process about how the invision their game.

Instead right now everyone is wondering how the hell the Devs decided to devote more time to creating new and self-proclaimed OP skills for the Mesmer.

It certainly seemed like it, and I may have overreacted in my post. I see what appears to be people acting like they know how to manage a compnay or program whatever type of game they are talking about on gaming forums all the time and most of the time it’s a little ridiculous.

Who is to say they aren’t devoting nearly equal amounts of time on each profession? That’s almost the entirely the point of what I was getting at. There are seven other professions out there and we have been looked at every patch at least equally if not greater then what the average changes would be for the other professions.

Them playing the game I’m sure is what happens. It’s unlikely they all play each profession though. That’s just unrealistic. Through delegation and communication though I imagine they achieve nearly the same result while leaving them plenty of time to do the actual work.

It really comes down to evidence. We have very little knowledge about how much time they devote to each profession, and that’s not unusual for any company. The only evidence we have is the discussions we get from them directly and the patch notes we receive monthly. Via that evidence it actually looks like Engineers get more attention then many of the other classes.

As for the Mesmer, I honestly see nothing wrong with this. I used to play a Mesmer before I switched to an Engineer so perhaps I’m a little biased in this, but the beam spells doing AoE hardly effects sPvP. The Scepter will still suck, and the Greatsword will be more AoE centric. Seeing as how the Greatsword as actually underutilized in tPvP right now, I don’t see this as a problem. If they are going to become more fragile by dropping the Staff for the Greatsword, as my Engineer I’ll be happy with that. Really the biggest area I find this change making Memsers better is in WvW zerg battles and tagging mobs in Orr. Not to mention, beam changes as a whole are not necessarily Mesmer specific! They discussed these beam changes and not much else for the Mesmer, and yet the Engineer has a lot of upcoming changes that were discussed in even more detail. As for the Mesmer vs. Engineer in what looks to be more focused on, I honestly think it’s the Engineer.

So really, that’s why I’m astonished at this kind of reaction. I don’t think every dev needs to know everything about the Engineer. From my point of view, it actually appears the Engineer is actually getting more attention then it should. I’m not really going to complain about that, but it’s the reason I can’t fully understand this entirely pessimistic reaction by a good chunk of the Engineer community.

I agree there are general problems with the implementation of it. I would disagree that the Engineer is the only one that feels unfinished though, as most classes feel that way. This is mostly due to the game being less then a year old, but it’s still a problem that needs to be addressed. I don’t think that the inherent design is flawed though. I think that they can take this system and make it work. Make all our utility slot choices powerful, give us some form of a Kitless trait/option, and a general gunk cleaning and we would be fine.

Zinwrath.2049:

You missed my point. Profession specifc abilities are your f1-f4. Not utilitys.

Engineer toolbelt.
Necromancer deathshroud
Pet/Petabilities Ranger.
Warrior Adrenaline
Elementalist attunement
Gaurdian virtues.
Theif – initiative/steal
Mesmer Illusions shattering

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Profession
notice what all those have in common? your profession MUST use them no matter what weapon/utility combo you use….they’re always there to be used and often play a big part in any play style.

Kits are a utility, they are nothing different than turrets..elixers..gadgets. They fall into the catagory of OPTIONAL. Profession defining abilities (as exampled above) are the only reason to limit a professions basic ability of weapon swapping.

Utilitys CANNOT be, they are optional. thats like saying, (gaurdians have access to a teleport utility, so gaurdians always move slower all the time….even if they dont grab that utility to keep them balanced incase they do) Kits having anything to do with the balance of weapon swap, is no different than that….you are saying that there is a couple utilitys that they MAY grab, so any build that doesnt use them is punished making kits mandatory…..in which case, they shouldnt allow you to NOT choose a kit.

Just because every other class is designed with the F1-F4 keys in mind doesn’t mean that they all are. Is it poorly implemented the way it is currently? Yes, but just because everything else appears to be designed over those things that does not mean the Engineer is. We are very clearly designed with Kits in mind for a maximum potential. I think there are some important changes that would balance things out in regard to the weak points of this implementation, but it is extremely clear to me that Kits are the reason we cannot weapon swap.

To be blunt, we are designed against something that is optional, yes. You may disagree with the design behind it, but dev discussion in the past and the way things are setup now make it very obvious that Kits were the driving reason for only a single weapon swap and not the Tool Belt. The Tool Belt’s origin is less clear, and would only be speculation at this point, but it seems likely that it came from Kits being in place due to them taking up the Utility Slots and leaving us with less options.

You can argue that it’s implemented wrong or that the entire design of which it’s based around isn’t efficient, but to say that Kits have nothing to do with how the Engineer was designed is absurd. I mean I agree with the vast majority of how this needs further balancing, but it’s extremely clear that Kits were the driving unique functionality of the Engineer in the design.

We are nerfed because of our potential, which I agree with in theory but as I said above and as you have pointed out there are flaws in the execution of this. It basically comes down to many of our Utilities being too weak, because I’m not sure if the devs realized that they need to make all of our Utility slots strong instead of balancing them against the other options in other class utilities. The Tool Belt options help somewhat there, but not enough as is evident in many cases.

You and I agree there are problems now, but I think this is a problem that can be solved while maintaining the same design doctrine. Weapon Swaps are always an advantage yes, but so are kits. Kits are theoretically better because they lack a cooldown.

There are serious problems on the extreme ends. Our kits lack some things that survival utilties give us so we can’t fully fill up with slots as effectively, and when we don’t take kits we are effectively balanced as if we had to. Those are problems, and I agree there.

Our profession specific abilty is both Kits and the Tool Belt. You can argue you don’t have to use Kits, which is true, but that still doesn’t mean we have to be balanced in regard to what would be our strongest state. It creates a bit of a troublesome situation, but I believe it can be solved by at the very last starting us with a Kitless 10 pt trait in Firearms that prevents you from using Kits and gives you compensation in some manner.

The reason the Ranger has their trait in that position can easily be attributed to them being more of an evasion survival mechanic. That’s fine and makes sense. Adrenal Implant obviously needs work though.

There is a flaw in the general concept of doing trait by trait comparisons though. There are also a ton of garbage traits in every classes trait-lines. The Ranger also appears to be a dodge-centric survival mechanic, while the Engineer’s is kinda unclear. The Engineer can also attain perma Vigor, which is better then both these traits anyway. So there is a lot of silliness involved in comparing this to the Ranger trait, but it’s true Adrenal Implant needs to be changed.

I still would suggest something along the lines of making it compatible with Vigor, in which case it would be worth a Grandmaster trait. I honestly wish our survival mechanics were pushed more towards a moderate level of sustain. Nothing as high as a Guardian or Ele, but all of our healing skills could use alternate healing boosts. Thigs like Thrown Elixir H having a splash heal, Healing Turret actually pulsing some real direct healing alongside it’s Tool Belt skill being more easily used as a water Field, and Med Kit having the kit pickups splash their affect. Those kind of things could go a long way, but then again I have no idea what we’d do with the Adrenal Implant trait in this case.

While I wish the devs had the time to spend equal time with all 8 classes, I don’t really think that is reasonable for anyone working in a company unless you plan on giving them some serious overtime. I mean, even an hour seems like a ridiculously low amount of time to spend on a single character, and that times eight is a entire workday. In which case these devs you would probably hope be fixing these bugs would instead be playing the game the entire day.

What is instead appropriate is the exact process that is likely already being done. All the devs play their own characters and use a priority ticket system with the bugs. The Asura Elixir S bug is then given priority concerning it’s age, complexity, and importance. Now keep in mind this bug could be complex to fix. We value it as important, but there isn’t a significant portion of the population that necessarily uses Elixir S as an Asura Engineer.

Some simple logic can be used in here. You can’t ask all the devs to play every bloody class or they’d have less time to actually do their job. Is it a good idea for them to spend some time playing the game? I’m sure they do! I’m sure the bug testers have every class unlocked in a test realm at level 80 as well. They do their job. Does it feel too slow on our end? Sure does, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing their job.

It’s good to keep reminding them to fix this issue, but it’s a little silly to think you could manage a Game Design Studio better then the ones that are already present. The amount of people here who think they can program better then the ones that do so are also silly. I see this kind of junk all the time on game forums. To presume that you can do so better then someone else is silly, especially since you have no idea what is going on at the other end.

Irregardless of any speculation to the contrary, it’s because of Kits. The Tool Belt also supplements it.

Why it is this way makes sense to me, because access to kits does give us a lot of potential swaps. Especially if you are running with 2 or 3 kits then you effectively have more swapping power then anyone else, and without a cooldown. The problem I think though, is that the balance of no kit builds is affected because we are expected to have kits. The other extreme suffers as well, as a full multi-kit build lacks any of the survival utilities that we feel the need to take in PvP situations.

We are effectively balanced as if our Utility Slots are extremely powerful in comparison to other classes. This kind of thing can work, but I think our Utility slots need a good gunk cleaning and a kit could be given a better survival skill. We could also use a kitless trait, that allows you to beef up your single weapon significantly to make up for the lack of a kit. This kind of thing can work, but it needs some balancing around the edges.

Interesting variant. I played around with a lot of subtle changes, but I haven’t gravitated away from Flamethrower completely yet. I spent about 6 hours giving it a try and I actually found that the Flamethrower #2 is a lot of damage now that we can reliably hit with it. Rifle Blunderbuss I could say the opposite about though, as I wasn’t impressed at all. Maybe I wasn’t hitting it right though, because even when I was point blank the damage didn’t feel that great.

Maybe damage could be less of a focus though. Static Discharge I’ll admit didn’t feel like it did much. I gave targeted Net Turret a try and that works a little better for getting Net Turret to hit what you want at least, but I think that slot could be better used. Kit Refinement for example can burn off a condi once in awhile.

The build actually felt like it was amazing at dueling just about anything, but it felt plenty fragile when I couldn’t control something which happened frequently in 1v2 fights. Switching back to condi-burst felt like I turned on my overpowered button. That’s also when I noticed I never added the correct Sigils to the DD FT/Rifle Control build, so I need to give it another shot.

Really the main things I noticed were Rifle was a bad point for trying to eek out extra damage and staying in Flamethrower for damage was actually a great idea. I’m half thinking about trying out an HGH Power Flamethrower build because I might be more comfortable using Elixirs then Net Turret. Net Turret though, was brutally effective. Two stuns? Heck yeah.

I do think the Flamethrower has a lot more PvP potential then I suspected before though. Basically it actually brought the damage that the Rifle lacked, except for Rifle #5 on an Immobilized target. It’s seriously fragile though, far too fragile in 1v2 fights compared to what I was used to. I’m used to actually winning those fights in hotjoin, I couldn’t do that at all in concepts around this build.

Well, we did get a Kit Refinement nerf (ended up being half bugged but still a nerf) and Kit Refinement is again looking at some form of nerf. That is kinda outweighed by a large portion of buffs and tweaks though, so while sensation of “The Engineer always gets nerfed” will remain true it’s still a little silly.

There are crappy traits among all the classes. This is one of them for the Engi, especially considering it’s position. I’d rather it give you an additional dodge by raising the maximum or something, although that kind of change would require UI work.

Well Healing Turret, Flame Turret, and Net Turret aren’t necessarily getting buffed. Maybe Flame Turret, but I’d rather see that suckers cooldown reduced to something like 10 seconds which wouldn’t help Supply Crate at all. I mean it’s more likely now then ever, but don’t assume something that wasn’t explicitly said since it only sets yourself up for some negativity.

Good question, I’ve debated it myself but the Pistol cooldowns do provide a lot of the damage. It’s worth a try though, it’s straight up utility for damage but just like you said a question of how much damage.

Yeah it’s a weakness of most HGH builds that you can’t afford to pickup Speedy Kits. Elixir B somewhat helps.

If Rampage is getting some buffs, Elixir X could be a lot more interesting as well.

Yeah I agree range is our friend, I just liked the extra damage output especially for team fight situations. I’ve never had a problem with ducking in and out for the proc, especially since Grenades are so much easier to land point-blank. You can definitely see how our opinions differ here, ha.

Honestly I think personal preference is severely underrated when we talk about builds. I think a lot of subtle adjustments are perfectly viable, and it doesn’t negate the viability of the other subtle variants. Geomancy to me is incredibly easy to use with just one kit swap, and the extra damage cooldown every ~10s is nifty. There is a point where I think just stacking extra Might isn’t as good as adding in extra damage sources. There are obviously times though in ranged situations where I want to swap and either waste the cooldown or simply not swap.

I’ve tried it and I simply disagree. I think the Geomancy Sigil is the key to the burst in the first place. Rampager’s I agree with and I personally like Rabid as well. I should’ve mentioned that I actually use that myself. Nightmare runes are bugged, but I did point out that Rune and Amulet choices should be changed due to withstanding personal preferences and bugs. I’m honestly using Undead right now, because I’ve tried Might stacking variants and I honestly felt like it was weaker. This is purely anecdotal experience though, and if there is math/evidence out there that suggests otherwise I’d be glad to switch. I went Undead simply as a short-sighted temporary thing over Nightmare, in which case it doesn’t seem so temporary anymore. I personally don’t feel Short Fuse is needed, but I won’t take away from it’s usefulness. The Might is more bursty I’d agree, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t necessarily pop the elixirs on cooldown, I save them for the situation at hand.

Ostricheggs does play more then me in terms of high level things though, so perhaps my opinion in this matter is a little less valuable. Isn’t Lyssa bugged alongside Nightmare though?

zaragoz.6351:

@ Ayestes Potentially being the key word, not to mention grenades are hard to hit with and I have not tried flamethrower since the most recent patch, but I still doubt it comes close to HGH conditions, and there in lies my gripe it is hands down our best build at the moment, great damage, great condition removal, can trait for speedy kits and have great mobility..

Potentially is indeed the key word. To me it means we don’t publicly try new things enough, and even when we do we put up all these artificial restraints that aren’t necessarily true.

I don’t want HGH Conditions to be the only build either, but in my opinion there are very likely viable builds out there that deal with direct damage output. I’m honestly going to try one for a little bit here involving control.

sunnypsyop.3025:

Who in the history of Engis has killed anyone in PvP with Bomb Kit? (Okay, there was that one really genius warrior that I bomb-kited to death in WvW that one time, but I am talking about players with a brain).

I’ve killed plenty of competent people with the Bomb Kit. There is a lot of footage of at the very least Teldo doing the same. I’m sure there are many more cases out there too. I can see some value in complaining about the accuracy of the Bomb Kit in comparison to what it can output, but speaking in exaggerated absolutes gets this discussion no where.

Yes runes and Giver’s needs to give condition duration, that bug gives me a headache. I do agree we are awesome at ripping apart camps solo, but you don’t necessarily need 100% condi-duration to do that. I loved your build though when it could actually function, and hopefully it will again soon.

I just don’t think they need to make radical changes, but perhaps that depends on how we each define radical.

TinyURL Build Link
http://www.intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V70;0B-sPVv0L6cQFx0;9;5T-JJ;1578;106-15-L;2N0-G3G3G3G35Bz

It’s probably bad. I don’t care. I want to try it, and I want some input on things to change. It’s been churning around in my head for awhile now and I want to give it a serious thinking job before I go and test it in hotjoin and perhaps later tPvP.

The biggest areas I’m iffy at are the trait choices in the Tools line and the Rune choice. Maybe even some of the trait choices in Firearms too. I’ll explain why I picked some things for right now.

The entire point of the build is to just control lock the heck out of something. Overcharge Shot, Air Blast, Overcharged Net Turret, Net Shot, Net Attack, and Supply Crate is a ton of Stuns, Knockdowns, and Immobilizes. I want the cooldowns as quick as possible, especially the two shortest ones. So I need 20% reduced cooldown on Rifle and Flamethrower. That alone is a pair of 12s cooldowns that Knockdown my target on top of the likely Net Turret I can put out immediately overcharge and hit with stun/immobilizes.

I need to of course deal damage, so hopefully beyond Rifle autos Flamethrower #2 and Rifle #3 can help make up some of that. Perhaps Jump Shot too, since my opponent shouldn’t be able to move much. I’m iffy on the damage output, but the short cooldowns on those two could make them available pretty often. +10% Rifle damage and +15% Flamethrower damage should help in this aspect. Static Discharge perhaps as well, but I don’t have any short cooldown Toolbelt skills. Then again, who says I need that to take the trait? I’ll use Toolbelt skills regardless.

Survival could be problematic, because I’m a glass cannon. So Elixir S, perma-swiftness, perma-vigor, tool belt reset, Jump Shot animation cancel, and Med Kit in general should help out here. One one one, unless they have Stability up I imagine their damage output is going to be very limited, especially if you can take advantage of positioning while they are Immobilized. Smoke Vent is possible to negate an attack, or stomp an opponent who can be Blinded. On that topic, stomping a solo target looks ridiculously easy.

Really the main things I want to look at are if I can eek out some more damage somehow without sacrificing too much. The control is there, and it’s abundant. The survival against burst or multiple targets could be a problem, but the whole goal in the end of this would be to provide assist damage. Assist damage while locking down a target to finish them off, or to turn a 2v2 into a 2v1 by locking down that one. Should I switch up the Tools line? Not taking Juggernaut with 30 Firearms because I wouldn’t stay in Flamethrower to auto-attack… am I nuts? Take some on-vuln-proc traits? Pick some different Firearms choices? Take ground targeted turrets for Net Turret accuracy? The blind looks nice in a way, but I’ve never tried it enough to notice it. Should I get 25 in Tools for the extra damage? Scholar runes feel bad, any better choices like Ogre? Really, I’m reaching out here and rather curious. I don’t want to hear that this build won’t work at all, because I don’t care. I want to try and make it work regardless. I’ll make my own decision after extensive testing as to whether it can work.

The information was in the latest State of the Game.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Engi-March-State-of-the-Game

I disagree that 100 Nades is the only viable power build. I think HGH Power Nades is potentially there as well. I also think it’s likely there are undiscovered things, such as a possible control-based Flamethrower direct-dmg build.