Guild Wars 2

Here this may help

Player versus environment

In PvE, a character’s effective level and attributes are automatically reduced based on the enemy levels immediately around the player, and there can be numerous level scalings per area/zone. Skills and equipment are retained, so the area is easier because of this, but should still be challenging to play.

The benefits of this are:

• high level characters are prevented from killing enemies too easily and depriving low level characters of rewards;
• low level content doesn’t become obsolete once a character reaches a higher level.

A scaled down character continues to receive experience and loot that is comparable to what he would receive at his real level, but it is somewhat less efficient for obtaining experience and items than playing level-appropriate content.

This system also works in dungeons. If a character’s level is higher than the effective level of a dungeon, the character will be scaled down to the appropriate effective level of the dungeon. Effective levels of story and explorable modes of dungeons are different.

FXLEACH.9436:

BakBakaa.2453:

As far as speed goes I am pretty sure all swiftness effects are standardized at 33%. There are some abilities like engineer’s tool belt ability for slick shoes that allows you to run twice as fast for a much shorter duration though.

Tom Gore.4035:

You can easily have 100% uptime on swiftness for warriors at least. It beats any passive speed buff.

This is also true for engineers. The “speedy kits” trait is awesome and only requires 10 trait points to get.

SPEEDY KITS ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Speedy_Kits )

Gain swiftness for 5 seconds when ever you equikittent. This effect cannot trigger more then once every 5 seconds.

Ah I see.
That’s quite interesting.

I’d appreciate it heaps if someone could explain how to keep speed buffs up on warr all the time.

Otherwise I may just go with thief, because passive is pretty shweet.

I believe it has to do with a trait that reduces the cool down of war horn skills by 20% . Since one of the war horn skills is charge which gives you swiftness for 10 seconds, you can effectively keep swiftness up at all times.

I do not play warrior though so this is just from research/theory crafting.

As far as speed goes I am pretty sure all swiftness effects are standardized at 33%. There are some abilities like engineer’s tool belt ability for slick shoes that allows you to run twice as fast for a much shorter duration though.

Tom Gore.4035:

You can easily have 100% uptime on swiftness for warriors at least. It beats any passive speed buff.

This is also true for engineers. The “speedy kits” trait is awesome and only requires 10 trait points to get.

SPEEDY KITS ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Speedy_Kits )

Gain swiftness for 5 seconds when ever you equikittent. This effect cannot trigger more then once every 5 seconds.

To elaborate on my above post (as it will not let me edt for some strange reason), here is more information from the wiki:

" Rewards ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_reward )

The PvP reward system has a two-tier reward structure that involves glory and rank.

Glory is a currency that players can spend on reward chests filled with random loot, while rank is a measurement of your total accumulated glory. As your rank increases, you unlock new tiers of reward chests, and thus access to more impressive looking equipment.

_All PvP rewards are account bound, and can be stored in a collection in your PvP Locker. This means that even if you obtain items which your current character cannot equip, you can store it for later use. _

If you follow the link above there is also a table with the ranks and gear sets for each rank.

@Eurosdown: I miss-spoke. The deal with quickness is not that it is not available to engineers so much as it is terrible to use as the downsides are catastrophic and not able to be reliably predicted. That in and of itself is a discussion for another thread though.

Thank you for pointing that out so I could clarify it.

The quality tier of the items you can get and the salvage potential of said items for use in the mystic forge.

This is great. I know issues can be complicated sometimes and thus can take more time. Just the fact that you described that it was a complicated issue and that is what has held this up clears up allot of the hoopla going around that Anet doesnt care and yada yada. A post to this magnitude or status update is appreciated by some of those watching even if the naysayers and trolls are louder in their opinion. Keep up the good work!

I would agree making the counters to quickness stronger could achieve the same thing as nerfing quickness. The decision of which of the two is better comes down to what is better in the grand scheme of all classes and abilities over all gamemodes.

Stu.2841:

Please give us something like a merged Mists. It doesn’t make any sense to split the PvP community into small separate groups like this…

@BakBakaa How am i supposed to find a PvP guild when I can barely form a group? My server seems to have about 70 people sitting in the mists whenever I check (usually during prime time…), most of which seem to be afk.

It may be the server you are on maybe? I know that on JQ where I am currently it is no problem to find a group or conversation during prime-time. Also I find that if you play hotjoin talking with the good reapectable non trolls there between games and asking about their guilds etc. helps allot. Otherwise if say you are on a low pop server, maybe a server transfer is an option?

I say fix the issues with ranking and class balance in spvp before implementing the quality of life enhancements to team finding. as of now you can join multiple guilds (one for pvp if you wish) and communicate with players in game to find groups.

I agree quickness needs looking at. I play engineer so I am in the category of no options for reliable quickness but lots of cc options. I can tell you right now that even if you can get past an enemies might and your endurance isnt gone already from avoiding it is only a matter of time for them to get you with one or the other. It isnt so much that it isnt a good mechanic cause it can be made to be balanced AND useful. The issue is it’s status as an I win button (as described above) that makes it tip over the edge. The fact that a bad player will have nothing to do after a quickness combo when attacking or that a bad defender wont be able to react in time isnt so much the issue as it is about two evenly skilled players coming out on top relatively evenly. As of right now it ia in favor of the player with burst, quickness, and or spammable skills. That is where the imbalance liea.

Yeah, I noticed this too. It appears they work more like they do on land now and not so much the “throw three exploding darts together at the same target and all three hit” like it was before. I don’t so much mind the change (though it is a nerf intentional or not) just so long as they nerf that stupid I am invulnerable invulnerable hurp – durp water spinning attack thieves spam.

It is due to the idea that engineer’s “rifle” is actually a shotgun. They just didn’t split it to it’s own weapon in development for some reason. Hip shooting a shotgun is easier than hip shooting a rifle and it makes more sense with the other shotgun like abilities our “rifle” has.

troptop.9781:

I have tried to provide structured and detailed information concerning engineer-related abilities/features that are ‘generally accepted as being issues’ by the masses on this forum when in fact those players just had no idea how such abilities/features are meant to be used. All of that to get replies with unfounded/unproved theories along with a very nice ‘go f yourself’. This might be a reason my comments are now not as friendly as they could be if the general IQ here was over 38. As far as I know, my first reply was in no way a personal attack but I did not think you needed details to understand what I meant. My apologies. May your thread prosper.

Apology accepted, please know that I am not one of those people who would tell you that. So I hope in the future we can constructively work towards solutions and answer questions.

Anyways. I think the engineer class is great (as I said above) and I enjoy it allot. The diversity of it and how unique it is from other cookie cutter professions is both what excites me about the class as well as confused me in this particular issue I brought up. I was simply over-thinking it and never meant what was said above to come off that I was unappreciative of what the profession was. Something bugged me and I wanted a forum sample of people who also play the class I enjoy to chime in on what they thought about the topic.

My mind is sane again, back to number crunching, power down the nukes, no need to start WWIII, the end.

troptop.9781:

Every comment said was deserved and adjusted to the poster’s mental ability. With that said, the engineer is a very versatile class and has the most interesting options available. My position remains, engineering covers a very large field of development and you should be happy that Arenanet took this into consideration when giving you all these options.

I am glad that you brought something to the table and actually contributed to the post!

That being said… personal attacks based on a topic being brought up that you don’t agree with is childish and can be seen very negatively even if they are not meant that way. There is really no reason for it. Please keep on the constructive side and do not flame unjustly.

Thank you

RoughJaco.3148:

The engineer is a lab chemical engineer, which needs alchemy for the contents of things that go boom, and mechanical knowledge for such things to be lobbed in the enemy’s general direction.

Since all classes in the game have healing, support and control rolled into them, they expanded on those a bit with the self buffing and so on through the alchemic traits.

It’s no more stretched than the warrior also being a proficient archer/sniper (more so than we are), The guardian being both a paladin and a cleric, the mesmer being both an illusionist and a psyonic, the elementalist being both a classic mage and a more priesty one in the water parts and so on.

The duality to a lot of the professions (only the thief feels really cohesive and unequivocal to me) comes from the fact they didn’t want pure support or pure healing classes, so a lot of things normally only support-y or dps-y had to be stretched more than a bit to cover things the stereotype would normally place outside that specific domain.

I think you are spending too much time in the lab
The engineer is simply the gimmicky class of the game, much like shamans were in wow, and as such must have been hard to balance and features some rather unique mechanics more frequently than other professions, and that shows through in the bugs and all.

I don’t think or feel it was a hasty merge of two classes, it’s just a naturally very difficult idea to design by the same standards of some other professions.

It’s a fun class, but one has to accept that it will always be gimmicky and somewhat confused because of it. The upside, or to some the downside, is that it tends to have multiple wildly different playstyles and specs that are sort of viable, with no clear king of the hill spec for any given task.

It’s just the buggiest in the game right now, at least of those I tried, and it’s not evident until you play another to sufficient extent and then go back how seriously it is, and how frustrating that can be (amazing what kind of pain and glitchyness we players can get used to if we tunnel on the same profession for too long ).

Very well said. Thank you for explaining that in detail. I think you are right. I never thought of the class using the chemicals he needs for engineering as potions!

I still very much enjoy the class and think it is a blast (hehe) to play. I think when you start analyzing every facet of a given thing sometimes you can morph it to something else. Or start noticing things that are not there :P I actually wholeheartedly enjoy being able to be an alchemist/scientist/robotics expert/tinkerer at any given moment. It is what made me put down my necro main and other alts at ~lvl 38 and never look back

troptop.9781:

If I was you, I would just be happy to have that many options available on the engineer instead of wasting your time with useless theories.

As heartfelt as that reads, I in fact am devoting time to enjoying my class (please see above mentioned thread “engineering the engineer”). As I explained, while being happy with my class I couldn’t help but notice a pattern and was curious if others noticed the same.

Advice about my personal time and efforts is noted. The discussion can now move on to on topic debate.

Thank you,

edit: Oh my bad… from looking at ALL of your other posts I see that you are just a career troll and have not added a single amount of constructive thought to a post you have made. Move along now… the adults are talking here further comments by trolls will be ignored.

This is not a QQ thread.

I have been doing allot of testing for my other thread Engineering the Engineer in this forum and have come across a question I just cannot seem to shake.

Was the engineer suppose to be two different classes?

As I have been using the abilities and seeing their effects I have come across more and more supporting evidence that shows the engineer was two separate but not fully developed classes that got meshed into one class instead and I would like to know how many of my fellow engi brethren are seeing what I have been seeing (or think I am out of my kitten mind).

Here are my observations so far:

• The engineer has many overlapping skills that do the same thing (how many ways to get swiftness do we have?) but then suffers from lack of some effects (stability is a good example). If the engineer was indeed suppose to be two classes I would venture to guess that both of them were incomplete in the same ways and one full class they are now redundant and incomplete in the same ways.

• The engineer is in and of itself sort of lost in it’s own idea of what it is suppose to be. Are we engineers who use robotics and guns and gadgets and gizmos? OR are we mad scientists who concoct potions of dastardly design to alter the ability and performance of ourselves and our allies?

• It seems we have allot of combo fields and finishers spread throughout different abilities. We have bomb kit, elixir gun, grenades, turrets, pistol (1), rifle (2) and more.

The main idea in our profession can be split into two professions in my opinion.

The Alchemist and The Engineer . . .

am I spending too much time in the lab or is there something to this ?

Discuss

Well it sounds like you want to do everything all at once. HAHA!

That can be achieved but you are going to be a true jack of all trades type build. I would balance your stats out pretty evenly and use rifle for cc and elixir for conditions and some extra heals/cleanses. Otherwise you can go pistol/shield and have the best of both worlds then use grenades as your main damage and use the tool-belt on grenades for your burst. That will give you plenty of condition damage with pistol + grenades and the added utility slots of shield giving you a reflect and knock-back as well as a damage and block. This also frees up a few more utility slots to customize to your liking over something like rifle/elixir gun/grenades or the like.

I have gone both ways (full power cc and full condition and cc) and found it best to settle in the middle where I had some protection but was able to easily kite and throw down hurt as needed.

Everyone will find their own balance though that is why I leave allot of my build suggestions open ended instead of linking the almighty god mode build or something :P

In my honest and most humble of opinions it is going to depend on what you are missing the most in your build as a whole. Are grenades going to be your main weapon? are you using them to keep up and apply conditions? Are you simply using them as added soft cc and damage?

If you need more condition appliers go pistol/pistol
If you need more crowd control/snares/etc. go rifle
If you need a bit of both go pistol/shield.

It is hard to tell you that there is a particular one thing you should do to be good. It all depends on your play style with the engineer as this profession can be good in many different builds. Think about what you like to play most and fill in the skills and abilities with selections that fill in the weak spots. You will always be better off going for a balanced build built from trial and error than you will just pulling one off some website and trying to adapt to fit it’s purpose in my opinion.

Good luck and have fun.

I just wanted to pop in and say that I enjoyed the story and positive outlook you have towards the engineer. This mindset is what will make you a better player over time especially with a class that requires a high level of adaptation on the fly.
Kudos

Just to give a frame of reference… i did not have any windows updates to do and this still happens to me a few times a night. I updated today and have yet to see if I am still getting the issue (will be later tonight before I can play).

I came up against this just last night. It took about 5 minutes of making all the perfect moves to barely kill a theif who was spamming this ability. He sat in the middle of the node and was able to kill all the sharks and dodge every attack i tried to hit him with. He evaded my cc and my turrets couldnt hit him either. Luckily he was a troll glass cannon kid with a bad attitude and got bored and started talking in chat and ran away as soon as my cooldowns came up. I dunno if it is classified as an exploit but I will chalk it up to just one more theif broken ability that works to their advantage where as other classes broken abilities work against them…. (i main necro and engi sooooo……).

meh… not to undermine the arguments made here but I prefer fighting a long endless battle where I have opportunities to catch a player off guard with an ability or outplay them rather than the spam shank die glass cannon builds that kill in one second then run away. To me pvp is about the battle not the kill. If we remove the length a battle takes to makw them all spamm fests then you rwmove the strategy from the actual gameplay. This is speakijng strictly about 1v1 encounters though. In a full team enviroment with one or more bunker builds acting as part of the zerg or in conjunction with spam dmg builds there really isnt the chance for that scenario. It seems like there really isnt anything in this gamw that lends itself to really focusing on skill of a player in battle instead of who found the classes gimmick and exploited it best…. :/

RustyEyeballs.8927:

I think I’m gunna resort to posting on this forum every time I get this load screen. Getting this screen is a minimum of 20 seconds lost time in a pvp match. For tPvP this pretty close to an autolose and in tPvP a loss is a full TOURNEY loss. I’m getting this screen about every other game on average.

I am doing the same thing except with the bug report system in game. I figure they MAY see it posted on the forums and submit the report through the proper channels, or I can use the bug report in game and make them lok at each of my reports indivdually with all the proper information they collect to fix the issue.

I have played both and ended up loving my charr. Asura have great animations but their armor is small and weapons barely show. I have had issues with the camera on asura as well (good luck seeing anything in downed state). It all depends on your preference and how you envision your character. I love the charr lore and characters but cant say I don’t miss my little mad scientist asura from time to time. Go with what makes you happy.

Just adding one more agree to the list. My charr looks terrible in gangland colors.

This is something I would like as well. The same thing could be accomplished at a simpler scale without rewards by a duel feature or arena of some sort. Anything along the lines of one on one pvp would be awesome IMO. The capture tpvp is already stale and is lackluster to begin with. Our pvp choices now are zerg or bigger zerg :/

I agree that scoring is pretty illogical at the moment. It does not reward in a way that makes sense but instead feels more like a call of duty match where kills and zerging the enemy is where the points are. For a game that professes tactical gameplay and strategy within team and builds it sure does seem like a homogeneous WvW on a smaller scale. Don’t get me wrong I play the way I think it’s ment to be played (just as the OP states he does) but it does get disheartening when the match ends and the winning rewards are shown. I have gotten to the point where I immediately close the window so I try not to notice it as much.

yes, twice last night and once this morning. It is extremely annoying :’(

Bobudo.7943:

Jeez.

My only point was that they look stupid bent over. Sure “it’s their physiology”, but since they’re fiction, they’re physiology can be anything the designers want, including “not stupid”.

Since they’re constantly hunched over, gear looks stupid on them (as an aesthetic preference, you can’t argue that – you might like that they look stupid (you’d probably say “unique” or “realistic” – bah!) but that doesn’t make me wrong). It impossible for anything to look good on a bunch of slack-jawed, mouth-breathing, feral imbeciles.

It didn’t bother me at first, but having spent a couple hundred hours looking at the hunchback of the black citadel, I’m over it. That was the entire point of this post.

I agree. I would feel like much more of a BA if I was standing up straight instead of hunched over like an old man. I understand the hunch from a anatomy point of view but it is something I think would be served better as a transitional state and not their natural stance. Especially being militaristic in their society.
That being said though, I am okay with just saying some will like it some won’t and chalking it up to just an artistic tastes debate.

Reminded me of this: http://www.giantbomb.com/precis-f-neumann/94-2515/all-images/52-294488/precis/51-269553/

Anyone remember her from StarOcean : The Second Story?

That alone lends you my support

Optics.3289:

BakBakaa.2453:

I am still trying to get the fine points of elixir “R” down though.

Do you focus more on condition damage or go for more of a power build?

The tool belt ability for Elixir R is a pulsing AOE revive that pulses every 2.5 seconds to give a downed player a portion of health. I don’t know whether it is meant to happen but as I was playing around with the Elixir R I realized that if you throw it down right before you go down, and you go down in the radius, it will revive you too. It’s awesome :p

I focus on condition damage with this particular build. I could go power but I think condition damage is more reliable, as it gives me more time to kite and allows more room for movement in my opinion.

Oh, I see. Whenever I use elixir R I seem to either always miss the timing and stay alive longer than I thought I would or get stomped before I can get revived by it. I will keep trying it out and see if I can master it :P

I too enjoyed the condition damage. Seems like allot of people hate it but with a bit of practice you can blind, chill, bleed, poison, a target in a few seconds. With close to 1500 condition damage this eats their health pretty quickly plus provides aoe for pesky invisibility and Mesmer clones.

I noticed that you run with slick shoes on your bar. Do you find that knock down the most useful? Over something with a strong offensive skill like ram? Any time I run condition builds on my Engi I miss the rifle cc and feel like I need a knock back to compensate.

I think thieves need to be balanced. It is as if they have no risk to their reward. The main issue I have is that there should be something that limits the need/want to just spam a skill and get wins. It is the very reason I am against an Engi grenade auto-cast. That being said, the ones who are not rolling the top one or two builds and still are succeeding seem to have some real skill. Makes me wonder if they are nerfed how much easier they will truly be.

Mesmer I am undecided on. I think there are definitely some things (lke MOA) that need to be rethought when it comes to sPVP. I do not run into allot of Mesmer who use it though. I feel like they have at least some trade off to their skills and can still be hit while they are doing most of them. That seems fair to me.

It does get extremely annoying going into every game with the same lineup of mostly thieves and Mesmer, one guardian, and nothing else though.

Nice video! I enjoyed it allot. The play-style you use with kiting and tossing at a close to medium range is very similar to what I do as well. I am still trying to get the fine points of elixir “R” down though.

Do you focus more on condition damage or go for more of a power build?

There are long range rifles in the game. The charr from the order of whispers uses one. There is also a rifle with the words “sniper” actually in it’s name. Don’t believe me? Go to the Heart of Mists and look at the second to last rifle in the locker.

That being said:

Wow this got out of hand quickly. . . IT was a suggestion. Leave it at that and please get back to the original point of the thread. If you want to debate classes differences there is a thread for that (if not make one :P .

candiedyams.1570:

TyrantV.4076:

Vargs.6234:

corpsekin.4601:

same problem for leather, everything is a bandana over the mouth intill pirate, which instead of being a musketeer hat, like it is for everyone else, is a tiny cowboyish hat that just looks comical.

You did not just diss the ascalonian hat
http://i.imgur.com/8aHae.jpg

Please make a “Haters gonna hate” version of that.

Here ya go

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3qvico/

Best …

Thing….

EVER!

Magic Night.1308:

^^

As long as Anet scale our kits based on the dmg of the weapon equipped then there’s no need to add rarity IMO, I mean weapon dmg is basically based upon the rarity of the kit.

THIS! that is exactly what I was trying to say above. Apparently I am terrible at explaining things past my bed time :P

Magic Night.1308:

BakBakaa.2453:

Magic Night.1308:

BakBakaa.2453:

So rarity of the legendary rifle (as in your example) would not effect its stats but the increased stats of the legendary would.

I dun understand what do you really mean by this, when you say the rarity of the legendary rifle would not affect it’s stats, do you mean by damage stats? Can you give me an example which stats your refering to

Basically what I meant to get at is the fact itis rare or legendary or common would make no difference. Just its dmg value and +attribute stats.

Are you saying the dmg value of the weapon will also scale the attack damage of the kits?

Yes, that is what I am saying it should act like if ArenaNet were to confirm it is a bug that they do not work that way they work now.

Magic Night.1308:

BakBakaa.2453:

So rarity of the legendary rifle (as in your example) would not effect its stats but the increased stats of the legendary would.

I dun understand what do you really mean by this, when you say the rarity of the legendary rifle would not affect it’s stats, do you mean by damage stats? Can you give me an example which stats your refering to

Basically what I meant to get at is the fact itis rare or legendary or common would make no difference. Just its dmg value and +attribute stats.

IF it was fixed it would be influenced by the stats of the weapon equipped. So rarity of the legendary rifle (as in your example) would not effect its stats but the increased stats of the legendary would. I however have not seen anything saying that they plan to do this yet or aknowledging itas a bug or intended kit design.

Aristio.2784:

BoB and Mines are no longer Blast finishers. A bit silly if you ask me.

Big Ole Bomb, Detonate Mines, and Flame Blast all feel like they should be finishers to me.

The only Blast finishers we have as of right now are Supply Drop, Rocket Boots, Shockwave, Magnetic Inversion, and the line of Detonate X-Turret abilities.

The single mine detonation(utility skill slot) is in fact a blast finisher (last I tested it 5 minutes ago anyway). I believe it is only the tool-belt mine skill that they removed the blast finisher from.

Experiment 4 Elixir-gun kit Weapon Abilities:
Naked Character (no armor no traits)
/ Power 916 / precision 916 / Toughness 916 / Vitality 916 / Attack 916 /
CHC 4%, +0 critical dmg/ Armor 916 / Hp 15,082 /

Weapon: none equipped (Elixer-gun kit only)

Tranquilizer dart skill results after 100 shots a Heavy Training Golem:

hit: 124 – 139
crit: 190 -206
condition: 1 sec weakness & 4 secs bleeding (42 dmg per tick and 4 ticks over 4 secs till 5 stacks when it hits for 43 dmg per tick for one second then drops to 4 stacks and again 42 dmg per tick and 10 ticks over 4 seconds)

Results:
What I noticed about this ability was that the majority of damage was coming from the bleed stacking. While you hit for 124 – 139 (without crit) you can keep a 4 – 5 stack bleed on the opponent just with the auto-attack. At this stack amount the golem bled for three ticks of 42-43 dmg every second. That is ~129 dmg a second plus the 124 – 139 per hit. A fairly strong auto-attack even without factoring in it also keeps up a weakness dmg reduction on the enemy. This attack is a single target effect. If something moves between you and your target it will get hit instead.

Elixir F skill results after 100 shots at a Heavy Training Golem:

Hit: 234 – 256
Crit: 361-379
Effect: Hits four targets (you can count as one of them) applying cripple to enemies and swiftness to ally.

Results:
This ability is very interesting and complex. It seems to roll dmg only once hitting all targets with the same dmg unless a crit happens. When two crits happened in a single fire, the crit dmg was the same for both crits as well. The swiftness is relatively pointless since firing the weapon at an enemy puts you in combat rendering the swiftness gain greatly reduced and barely noticeable. The cripple on the other hand is very nice. I would venture to say using this ability at ranges of 300+ is best (until its pathing can be deduced). If it hits yourself (or an ally) you miss both damage and an additional target for it to effect (as yourself or an ally will occupy a target). The 3 sec swiftness duration rules out using on your party out of combat as a swiftness buff as an alternative as well. This ability will make the most difference when no allies are hit with it and four enemies are groups and hit. It does not effect a single enemy multiple times (it will bounce to you from them then dissipate) but sometimes would effect the same enemy twice if bounced back to from another enemy and yourself.

Fumigate skill results after 100 shots at a Heavy Training Golem:
Hit: 5 ticks of 25 -27 dmg
Crit: 39 – 41
Condition: 3 ticks for 84 dmg poison & Vulnerability & Cures conditions if allies are hit.

Results:
The ability effects enemies in a cone pattern and ticks 5 times over the course of its animation. If all five hit the target a cumulative dmg of ~125 – 135 will be done to the target. Each tick also applies vulnerability and poison to the target. In practice, the vulnerability did not increase the actual dmg taken till the last tick (at 5 stacks) but lasted long enough that another ability could be used to take advantage of it. The poison ticked 5 times for 84 dmg consistently over the course of 5 seconds (1 second per tick). This skill seems to not be able to effect more than 5 targets regardless of how many are in the effect of the cone.

Acid Bomb skill results after 100 shots at a Heavy Training Golem:
Hit: 266 – 290 * 6 total applications (1 on use and 5 more over 5 seconds)
Crit: 402 – 435

Results:
Acid bomb decides dmg on the first tick but rolls for crit on each hit. So if you have 4 enemies being effected and standing in the area, they will be hit for the same dmg every tick but will each have a chance to crit every tick. The ability itself hits upon application then ticks the area for an additional 5 ticks. As stated previously, all dmg from the initial hit to the last tick will be the same number but each enemy has a chance to crit for every tick/pulse they are affected by.

If you enjoy discussing and testing class mechanics and love this profession as much as I do, please feel free to correct any discrepancies and add your own test results to compare. The more data we get the better we can understand the mechanics and get past the rumors, QQ, and kitten stroking in order to really understand and utilize the engineer to it’s full potential.

Casia.4281:

ok, yes. power increases the “attack” stat 1 to 1.
The “attack” stat has no effect on anything. it is not used in any equation.

Attack does not effect your attacks.

Agreed. Interestingly enough the wiki does state:
“Power attribute directly increases Attack (statistic) which affects all damage done by attacks. "
Though it does not have any bearing on anything currently used in the game I can see. Attack is simply an unused variable for storing the result of weapon damage + power. It seems a little strange to me that attack is this way and is not something more along the lines of (damage * power) to coincide with the actual math being used for dmg.

Casia.4281:

Attack stat as listed in the hero panel, and wiki seems to be useless and wrong.

Damage is factored as:
skill coeff*weapon damage*power/2600

Skill coeff is hidden, but easy to figure out with the other stats as constants. Most of these have been tested and listed. Weapon damage is your weapons max damage. Kits have a weapon damage of 969 at level 80.

That is correct. A real test I just did to illustrate this is as follows: If it was as simple as power + weapon damage and attack exactly equaled our non-crit damage we would do a base of 1041 dmg with steady weapons using an ability such as hip-shot in the heart of mists. Currently we do about 28.

Here is more information on damage from the wiki itself:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

Casia.4281:

Power most certainly does NOT increase attack 1 to 1.
Power increases damage by a % of your weapon damage.
Meaning 1000 power is like + sixty damage when using a 1000 damage weapon.
But 1000 power is only +30 damage when using a 500 damage weapon.

Not sure if this is a typo or not but Power + weapon dmg DOES in fact = attack. Attack =/= DMG however. Just throwing that out there. The above test I mentioned would be much higher dmg if attack = dmg on a 1:1 ratio (and we would rival backstab with our auto-attack alone.. oh to dream).

To clarify, the only reason I included dmg numbers in all the above tests is to show differences and similarities in behavior of skills. For example, I could not have known for sure grenade damage rolled the way it did without a proper control variable. It seemed the easiest way for an initial test. We have however moved forward a bit into stat weights (which is great!). Thank you for the additional information!

I believe what ebola is referring to is this:
" Bleeding can stack in intensity up to 25 times and each stack does one pulse of damage per second. The damage dealt by bleeding is determined by the following formula:
2.5 + 0.5 * Level + 0.05 * Condition Damage= per stack per second "

Which basically means (with bleeding) the more you have the more dmg you do a second (up to 25 stacks). This is not the case with all buffs/conditions (but is the case with bleed and poison) as some stack duration (like burning)

GummiBear.2756:

Venoma.7052:

Ok so Ebola’s answer is wrong then? All conditions tick every 1 second and to get an extra tick you must get the duration increased by 1 second?

Also, thanks for the build Killyox I will definitely try it out!

now i don’t know who is right and wrong, but even if it only ticks once per second, keep in mind that some conditions (ex. burning) stack duration so if you have say a 1½ second burning and you apply it twice you would get 3 seconds total, gaining a total of 3 seconds

Yeah, that is what I was trying to say in the first post (probably unsuccessfully). Your example is correct if you can get the first and second attacks to land at the same time. Typically in practice it ends up being a second or two of duration (with no cool-down) before the next one hits though.

This is what I have found form my experience and study into the matter. If I am wrong I would love to know with supporting evidence if anyone has any. I just want to be right even if I have to be wrong first :P

From: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Effect_stacking
“Effects stack in one of two ways: in intensity or in duration. For example, multiple stacks of bleeding, which stacks in intensity, increase the damage dealt over time, and multiple stacks of regeneration, which stacks in duration, increase the duration that the healing over time lasts”

and near the very bottom under notes:

“It is currently unknown if or how duration is rounded when stacked (or otherwise modified), neither if the remainder value is used as a prorata on the intensity for the last split second”

For the second part of your question please see: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Expertise then try the following:

1. Go to the heart of mists
2. Go to Hero Panel >Skills/Traits > Traits > Unlearn Traits
3. Check condition duration on an ability (like shrapnel grenade for instance 12s base)
4. Go back to your traits and put two points in Explosives which will also give 2% condition duration.
5. Check Skill tool-tip again you will see 12 1/4 duration now. (As 12 seconds * 0.02 = 0.24 and 12 + 0.24 = 12.24 or roughly 12 1/4 seconds)
6. Profit
   Skills are not rounded to a whole second

There are two stats: condition duration and condition damage. If you are simply looking to up the amount of time the base skill shows it lasts for you want more condition duration (effected by traits, runes, and food). The amount it raises it does not round at all from my experience. It is exactly the number it works out to be. That is why you can have 2.5 seconds burn durations on skills and so on.

Though it may be worth it to point out that some conditions stack duration on their reapplication and some stack intensity.

• A condition that stacks duration on its application will take what time is left and add the new condition time to that on reapplication.
• A condition that stacks intensity will increase the interval at which the dmg ticks happen (but not the damage itself as that is governed by condition damage).

You can find a table of the condition types and their stacking type on the wiki at this link (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition#List_of_conditions).

Experiment 3 Grenade kit Weapon Abilities:
Note: though the tool-tip says throw ‘A’ grenade in fact two are thrown when using any skill in the grenade kit (without traits). It would seem the grenade itself caps at 10 enemies effected whether it is in range of more or not though.

Naked Character (no armor no traits)
/ Power 916 / precision 916 / Toughness 916 / Vitality 916 / Attack 916 /
CHC 4%, +0 critical dmg/ Armor 916 / Hp 15,082 /

Weapon: none equipped (grenade kit only)

Grenade skill results after 100 throws at groups of 5-6 Heavy Training Golem:
Hit: 154 – 170 dmg
Crit: 242 – 249 dmg

Results:
This skill is a direct damage multiple grenade toss where each grenade goes off in a small aoe. Everything hit by each grenade explosion has a separate chance to crit but interestingly enough if it is not a crit the same damage is applied to all targets in the all the grenades blast radii. It would seem grenades do not calculate the ‘white dmg’ (or non crit hit) with individual rolls. I would guess that conceptually three rolls are happening (one for crit chance, one for crit damage, and one for white damage) but the roll determining if the ability crits or not is in fact rolled individually (as you can have more than one crit in the bunch), then damage for the crit is the same on all crits that happened in that toss.

Shrapnel Grenade skill results after 100 throws at groups of 5-6 Heavy Training Golem:
Hit: 169 – 182
Crit: 259-270
Condition: 12 seconds of bleed (43 dmg per tick * 12 ticks)
Results:
The behavior of this grenade skill was exactly the same as the previous grenade skill. Outside of the instance of a crit, the damage for both grenades is the same and effects all enemies in the target area. The bleed is consistent with other tested bleeds and ticks in the same manner described in those tests as well. Consistently hitting 24 ticks in 12 seconds of 43 damage in all 100 throws.

Flash Grenade skill results after 100 throws at groups of 5-6 Heavy Training Golem:
Condition: 10 sec (5 sec per grenade explosion * 2 grenades thrown) of blind
Results:
Works as described. Throws two grenades that effect all enemies in the explosion radius with the blind condition. Each grenade hit gives five seconds of blind on the target (as blind stacks duration not intensity). So this ability will consistently stack a 10 second blind on all enemies it effects (without traits).

Freeze Grenade skill results after 100 throws at groups of 7-10 Heavy Training Golem:
Hit: 154 – 169 dmg
Crit: 240 – 254 dmg
Condition: 4 sec (2 sec per grenade explosion * 2 grenades thrown) of chilled

Result:
This grenade ability had a much larger radius and applies the freeze condition to all targets it hits. The behavior of the grenade itself is the same as the others described as far as white damage and critical hits go.

Poison Grenade skill results after 100 throws at groups of 7-10 Heavy Training Golem:
Condition: 10 sec (5 sec per grenade explosion * 2 grenades thrown) of poison + 2 poison clouds that reapply (and add thereby add to the duration of) the condition every second for 5 seconds ( as long as enemy stays within one of the clouds).

Result:
This is my favorite grenade. While there is no blast damage to the grenade itself, there is a blast cloud effect. Unlike the other grenades, only one of the two will typically hit where you target. The other grenade of the two as far as I can tell places itself overlapping and at random at an area close to the original impact. The damage ticks and stacks duration much like the bleed on shrapnel grenade does but with one added bonus. The cloud that is left will continue to add a 5 second duration poison to the subject as long as they are in the cloud once every second. This typically resulted in a poison duration of around twice the blast duration ( ~ 15-20 seconds) with an enemy in the cloud the whole time during my tests.

That concludes my testing for today as that much has already taken a significant amount of time to test and compose.