Guild Wars 2

From my understanding of anatomy… skin tone is largely the result of a single chemical: Melanin. How densely this chemical populates the skin determines how dark skinned they are, and if there are certain genes it forms into blotches AKA freckles. Now, the genes that control melanin are quite prone to mutation, and because of this it is very easy to get a dark skinned offspring from lighter-skinned parents. Or at least that’s what my wife keeps telling me (j/k I’m not married).

A tan or dark norn could easily be the result of a mutation in skin pigmentation.

I noticed a bit of a silence issue in tPVP when I played it last month. We’d talk about who does what and who goes where, only to realize that 2/5 of the people there were not paying attention at all.

Personally, I’ve never played an MMO that had the trinity. Ever. I’ve played action MMOs and a few strategy MMOs, but not a single one that had Tank/Heal/DPS.

The closest to that I have ever played was City of Heroes, which had more of holy quartet: Melee (closest to tanks), Range (closest to DPS), Control, and Support. The classes of the game tended to blend these elements together in order to make some unique things. Things in the game were not all balanced, though, as some classes had more appropriateness in different situations than others. There were many ways to buff players, and they would each buff in different ways. It is for this reason that support was king in City of Heroes, where multiple support builds would multiply each other’s effectiveness.

That said, I do feel like there could be a bit better support in the game. As of right now, healing power scales horribly and is only useful for a handfull of classes. On a statistical level it offers less survivability than toughness or vitality (although it does approach survivability thresholds like toughness does, but that’s quite complicated), and toughness/vitality are always inefficient stats due to how damage is calculated. It is really hard for most classes to give boons to allies for any reliable length of time, with most things ending up scattered and awkward to use.

As far as tanking in the game goes, it is pretty cool how it is done now. It depends largely on active defenses like blocks and dodges, instead of passive defenses like boons and stats. Controls also work their way in, but control effectiveness isn’t as universally applicable, since it depends on what you’re fighting. Either way, this form of defense is fun. It makes things interesting when a missed dodge can make a whole battle go awry.

The problem with necros is that their CC’s are soft. The 1 second fear from doom is the best thing we get, and unfortunately it isn’t that good at all. You can’t line up attacks with it, it doesn’t last very long, and it is difficult to use quickly. The problem with cripple and chill is that they do not stop an attacking enemy from attacking, or a dodging enemy from dodging, or a ranged enemy at all. They are just cleansed out easily and then the fight goes on as if nothing happened. Seriously, I can count on one hand how many times Cripple and Chill has ever allowed me to control someone in PVP as well as been effective at controlling me.

Necros do have a few hard CCs: Immobilize from the dagger is decent if you don’t mind that the only thing you can use it with effectively are wells and the auto attack. The warhorn has a cone daze that can be effective, although it isn’t instant. The flesh golem’s charge is probably the best one, since it can come out of nowhere and is incredibly hard to stop. Spectral Grasp is great for WvW, but in sPVP I find that most people want to close the gap anyway. Mark of fear is alright, since it acts like a second doom that does very little damage.

I do use these things in WvW and in sPVP, but compared to the other classes I’ve played (engineer, mesmer, guardian, thief, elementlaist), it just seems so light. The thief is the only one that arguably has less, and I say arguably because there are some things (cough off-hand pistol cough) that are good at controls. The worst part is, any thief fighting a necromancer instantly gets a 3 second fear to use against them. The engineer throws enemies left and right with meaningful and effective controls almost regardless of what build you run. The guardian has plenty of movement denial, launches, pushes, and blocks. The mesmer is loaded with dazes and stuns, and has the best control in the game with Moa Morph. The elementalist was fast moving and had plenty of knockbacks and knockdowns that gave me defense against my foes.

Another big problem with using the controls a necro has is that they are awkwardly placed, and it feels like a sacrifice to have to use them, and there isn’t much of a payoff when you do. Of course the warhorn has got the daze, but swarm of locusts kind of sucks as a skill. The staff is slow and mediocre damaging, so anything other than an offensive hybrid can’t use reaper’s mark without sacrificing offense. Spectral Grasp is nice, but half the time I’m trying to keep my distance from enemies and not close it. The dagger’s immobilize needs you to be at such a close range that they’ll probably be bashing you with a hammer long before you even finish the lengthy activation time. The best one is the Flesh Golem because you aren’t sacrificing anything: It’s a good skill because the golem does good damage and can be activated at any time to charge through a group of enemies. And after all that, probably the best thing that can happen to that temporarily disabled enemy is… well of suffering.

From the ones I’ve fought, there were a few that really stood out.

#1: Subject Alpha. Before the tactic of just stacking on him and dodging was discovered, Subject Alpha was always an intense and interesting fight. Every moment seemed like it could be your last, with AoEs flying everyone and having to randomly focus on saving one of your comrades. I had to load up on a ton of escape moves just to survive.

He’s still a pretty decent fight, all in all.

#2: Priestess of Grenth. Between the buff to the priest and the most recent nerf, this guy was HARD. Groups of players failed at him far more than they succeeded, and even though the strategy to beating him was simple it was hard to execute. I would run around the map, yelling orders at people and watch them not listen, watching a single player blow it for everyone who was there.

The battle is quite simple itself, but more complicated than most boss fights: First you clear out the adds around the area, then a couple of players get buffs and start killing the shades while a few others actively engage the priest. All the while players will keep an eye on the priest to see who he aggros. At each quarter of his HP taken off, more mobs spawn and then players who do not have the priests aggro run to engage those mobs. Repeat until he is nearly dead, in which all players then immediately converge on the priest to kill him as quickly as possible due to the insane amount of shades spawned. Players who were killed by the fall damage would rez at a waypoint and run back.

But this failed so many times. I’d see a random guy run up, attack the priest, get his butt beat by the priest and mobs, wet himself, then run out into the hallway. This would drag the priest of grenth to deadrun, who would then quickly be killed. I’d see players die and lie there asking for a rez, refusing to waypoint because it is “too far”, and every time someone tries to rez them they get killed by the priests AoE. I myself would die sometimes, and so I would rez at a waypoint and run back, just to see those same players lying dead in that exact same spot. Since soloing the priest was hit or miss, I would sometimes die again, run back again, and again see those same players lying dead on the ground. Still begging for a rez because the waypoint was “too far”. I’d see groups of players swarm the priest, get overloaded with adds, and then ruin it for everyone because now there is a hundred shades in the area.

All in all, for those who are competent it is quite fun.

I’m not even trying to get a precursor from the MF. It is a waste of time. Something that I have learned from playing many, many MMOs in the past is the following:

The Random Number Generator (RNG) thinks, feels, and hates. Specifically the RNG thinks you’re pathetic, feels you shouldn’t succeed, and hates you and you alone.

Once I learned that, MMOs became quite a bit easier. It’s less work, and less disappointment.

Rabid for a tankier condition necro. Carrion makes for a more fragile but harder hitting necro, though.

A good way to think about protection is the sum of all of the uptimes divided by their respective recharges. This is a very haphazard way of handling boons, but nonetheless provides a decent measure of how effective the boon is.

For instance, Elixir H in that setup would have a 20 second recharge, with a 1/3 chance of granting protection. With +20% duration from the trait ability, 30% from trait points, and another 30% from runes (that calculator is outdated: both grove and earth give 15% duration), that comes to an 80% increase or a 9 second duration. So, factoring that all in:

1/3 × 9 / 20 seconds = 0.15/second

or roughly a 15% upkeep. Do the same thing with Toss Elixir H, and you’ll get 0.1/second, which comes to a 25% upkeep when added to the previous. Now, lets compare this to, say, using 4 runes of earth.

Now, 4 runes of the earth are going to give a 45% increase to protection from the runes themselves, while also giving a 25% chance to get protection for 3 seconds when hit on a 30 second cooldown. The 25% chance to work gets complicated, though, since we have to average out how many attacks it’ll take to work and then combine that with how long it takes to execute those attacks. Those numbers change for each class, so I’ll just hammer out a few assumptions. Feel free to disagree with these assumptions and substitute any value of your choice, for they are merely guesswork. However, I must insist that if anyone disagrees, that they substitute their own numbers and make an argument for using their numbers or formula:

Attack rate is about one hit per 0.75 seconds.
The trait is meaningful only when it has a chance of proccing equal or greater than 90% during any set interval.

Using a very basic method of taking 1-0.75^x > 0.9, we’ll find that it’ll take roughly 8 attacks to have a high chance of activating, which comes to 6 additional seconds, having a total recharge of 36 seconds for the runes to activate. So, going by these numbers again:

Elixir H = 5 × 1.65 × 1/3 / 20 = 0.138
Toss Elixir H = 0.092
Runes of Earth = 4 × 1.45 / 36 = 0.161

Total: 0.391, or 39.1% up time. So, as you can see, using 4 runes of Earth is far superior to using 2 then 2 runes of grove. Note: it is possible for the runes to activate sooner than 8 attacks, but at 8 attacks it has a roughly 90% chance of having activated then or before then. I’d argue to use 6 runes of Earth, since the magnetic aura at 20% health is incredibly useful, for it WILL seal the deal against many classes in 1 vs. 1 fights. It gives more stat points in toughness, too. However I digress:

The really important trait is protection injection. That trait gives protection when you need it, every time you need, and against a particularly control heavy enemy it will nearly always be up.

As for the build itself, for a pure bunker I would personally go with reinforced shield as the major trait instead of cloaking device, and then I would either replace land mine for Elixir C or I would replace potent elixirs with Cleaning Formula 409. As it stands, that bunker build is incredibly weak to conditions, and it is necessary for there to be a way to clean those conditions.

Another strange option would be to replace either land mine or Elixir S with Elixir R. When near death, tossing Elixir R allows you to get right back up again, severely trolling enemies. It’s also a stun breaker that adds 2 more dodges (1.5 seconds worth of evasion time), so it is worth experimenting with.

I’m surprised they have to hammer out a solution. It is obvious what is going to happen with it: Leg specailist is going to get an internal cooldown.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Indignant?

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Just made me scratch my head at that use.

The usage is quite literal: feeling, characterized by, or expressing strong displeasure at something considered unjust, offensive, insulting, or base. In this particular case, “characterized” is the active usage.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’m curious how you would view the Shin Megami Tensei series, especially “Nocturne”.

Me, I find it intriguing because I find “religion” and “faith” are distinct things. I know plenty of people who claim one religion or subdivision of such . . . and willingly act against principles central to it (“Do unto others…” for instance).

When someone writing a fiction wants to pick up the idea of blind devotion being wrong? I’ll stand behind the story on that note, because you should never default to “because I was just following policy” for how you live your life.

Only thing I know about the Shin Megami Tensei series is the Persona 4 TV show. Anyway, religion and faith are different things, much like how cars and fuel emissions are different things, but don’t kid around: they go hand in hand with each other. Unless a distinction is made to say otherwise, commenting on one speaks profoundly about the other. It is unfortunate that I can’t recall ever seeing this distinction, from fictional works to the beliefs held by people I know personally. As forgiving as I am, I won’t inject a divide into a story where there clearly isn’t a divide.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

. . . what sexuality? They’re gender-neutral and have . . . have nothing to . . . suddenly my brain hurts trying to grasp this.

And that is why I said:

…it isn’t explicit or severe, and can be understood readily in other ways.

^Actually the Healing Turret has the most healing. With the AoE Heal + Regen blast finisher, the Healing Turret heals for the most HP out of any single heal. Also the perma regen is nice.

The thing with heals is that you have to look at them on a recharge basis. Elixir H has up to a 20 second recharge, the turret has up to a 16 second recharge, and the med kit has up to a 14 second recharge. This makes them very fast healing skills, especially when compared to others. I’ve heard the elementalist and Mesmer mentioned, so I’ll go over their heals:

Ether Feast: Good heal on a 20 second recharge, and with 3 illusions it can beat out Elixir H if it gets regen or swiftness… but not protection. No available traits.

Mirror: This skill is great for trolling enemies and protection, but it doesn’t heal that much on it’s time slot. Healing turret when picked up has a 16 second recharge (no traits), and it heals for quite a bit more than this. Bandage self also heals for more in a shorter time frame with the right trait points.

Mantra of Recovery: This, I must concede, is an awesome heal if you trait for it. The 3.5 second activation time before usage hurts, but healing 5240 in 14 seconds is pretty good. If you have the traits, you’ll heal 50% more, increases damage, and even has an AoE heal effect. It’s pretty good, but does require a lot of investment to get those bonuses.

Ether Renewal: The short recharge is deceptive, with an activation time of 4 seconds it is quite longer than it looks. It does cure conditions, though.

Glyph of Elemental Harmony: IMO the go-to skill for elementalists. It has a lot in common with Elixir H: Same recharge (both before and after traits), gives up to two boons on use, and so on. The trait choices here change what happens, with whichever one cleaning conditions or giving might. An important thing to note here, however, is that the glyph heals for less than the Elixir.

Signet of Restoration: Hard to pin this one down. Long recharge with a short heal, but heals on attack.

So overall, the engineer heal skills aren’t inferior to other class heal skills (from what I’ve looked at so far). There are some with different strengths and different weaknesses, but at the end of the day I’ve never had a problem healing with my engineer. On my necromancer, however…

Or if you don’t want condition removal (why?), try and get out of the way more often?

If you’ are going with explorers that uses power/prec/magic, I’d go with either a grenadier or a coated bullets build. That is a build with the grenadier trait or the coated bullets trait, then pretty much whatever you want for the next 40 trait points.

I don’t need to know how good my liver is while my heart is failing me.

The complaints serve a function: it is the attempt by the players to let everyone know what the issues are in hopes that they will be fixed. As for the good things an engineer does, I’ve already posted that up in these forums, like, 2 or 3 times. Just search function to find it.

And people call me indignant for being a creationist. Guess I’ll give perspective from the opposite end of the spectrum.

The metaphysical, spiritual, nth dimensional, astral, or whatever you want to call it, adds a creative outlet for the universe to be expanded upon, and also describes the very world in ways that aren’t plainly stated. From the conviction of faith in the humans to the indignation for defiance of the charr, these elements give the races identity, personality, and culture. It provides a meaningful method to express conformity and rebellion in individual characters. It provides meaning to conflict and war that extends beyond power, wealth, resources, discrimination, and status. It makes rebellion and loyalty much deeper to the story.

Religion in fiction provides a very rich breeding ground for content and creativity in the game. It can make things complex, or it can be overly simplified. It is for this reason that I seldom look deeper into super pretendy fun time to find something to be concerned with. There are only a few exceptions where I take offense to something:

#1: The story is a thinly veiled allegory against Christianity, religion, and/or religious people.
#2: The purpose of the work is designed to inspire detrimental behavior in its audience (note: not exclusive to Christianity, religion, and/or religious people).
#3: Central and/or critical plot points depend on the falsehood of Christianity and/or real world religion specifically.

And GW2 does none of these things. Though it does skirt the line with sylvari sexuality at times, it isn’t explicit or severe, and can be understood readily in other ways. It is fairly neutral in most things, actually. The gods in the game are real to the game, so any statement of something like animal spirits “rarely answering” can’t be extrapolated to further meaning without breaking a barrier in logic: the animal spirits are real to the game. Magic in the game, from what the game explains, is a physical property that is measurable and likely quantifiable, making it an expansion of universal physics than anything occultic. The polytheistic nature of the world has yet to make any statements on monotheism vs. polytheism applicable to the real world, or any statements other than being a given. The secularist race (the charr. I’d call it secular charrism) in the game acts out of rebellion and not presumed falsehood. The presence of this race doesn’t make any statements otherwise, since the gods make quite an impact to the humans and norn. The afterlife plainly exists, but isn’t well defined in any way, so it makes no statements on punishment, justice, or the lack thereof.

So again, with the lack of anything to be sincerely offended by, I must stress this term once again: Super Pretendy Fun Time. GW2 is not trying to grab our attention then hijack our entertainment because one of the writers has an intolerant chip on their shoulder.

Truth be told, I think it would be cool to have an option to left-hand our characters. Just mirror the model.

Though I do wonder what that would do to cutscenes…

IMO, the videogame is something called “super pretendy fun time”, and nothing should ever take precedence over this.

It is for this reason that I am only “elitist” in only one manner: I liberally use the block function. As far a I am concerned, in a game with such a large population, any person in that game only gets one shot. If they do something that really ticks me off and they don’t apologize for it, blocked and forgotten.

I suggest others use this method as well. If someone, or ANYONE is doing stuff you don’t like and doesn’t stop or change, block them and leave it at that. Then maybe when this person finds themselves unable to communicate to half the server, they’ll figure out something is up.

Kicked the necro, eh? Guess they didn’t want

*Fastest recharging AoE rez in the game (Signet of Undeath)
*Spammable AoE blast finishers (Bone Minion)
*Ample Boon Hate (Corrupt Boon, Well of Corruption, Spinal Shivers)
*High vulnerability stacking (Well of Suffering, Axe, Reaper’s Touch, Spectral Wall)
*Protection stacking (Spectral Wall)
*AoE Blinds and Chills (any well + bone minion, Well of Darkness, ChillBlains, Plague Form)
*Mob Pulling (Spectral Grasp)
*Clerics (Well of Power, Plague Signet, Putrid Mark, Well of Blood)
*Disabling conditions like weakness and cripple and chill.
*Head asploding condition application (EPIMOTHERKITTENDEMIC!)

People really have no idea how awesome epidemic is until they’ve run a necro. When I go full condition offense (carrion mixed with rampager), I have 1510 condition damage and 153%/90%/70% condition duration (scepter bleeds, bleeds, other conditions), and this is before using Blood is Power, which gives me 1860 condition damage. I do 135 damage per tick with bleed because of this. Epidemic, as you all know, copies the conditions on one target onto up to 5 additional targets in a 600" radius. So, at its peak, epidemic will be copying 25 bleeds and poison (and chill and cripple and vulnerability and all that jazz) to 5 targets, and lets assume the average duration is 10 seconds of those 25 bleeds. This is average, so some are longer and some are shorter.

So, 25 bleeds x 135 damage / second x 10 seconds x 5 targets + 270 poison damage / second x 10 seconds x 5 targets =

(25 × 135 +270) x 50 =

168,750 +13,500 = 182,250 damage.

So Epidemic can do up to 182,250 damage, 18,250 DPS… every 12 seconds. Epi-mother-kitten-demic! You’ll know you have a good necro on the team when, after concentrating on the first silver mob and killing it, every other silver mob in the room is at 1/3rd health and everything less is already dead. Any epic boss’s or champion’s adds might as well not exist when a conditionmancer is around.

Conditionmancers do not suffer from the condition cap like other classes. They want more condition builds on the team. The reason why is because Necros wait for conditions to build up on a single target, and once they have a substantial amount of bleeds only then do they start using epidemic. When a condition necro is by themselves, it takes awhile to get 15 or so bleeds on a single target. But when paired with other condition damage builds, they use epidemic quicker and more frequently.

For all the problems the Necromancer has, the class does have some pretty cool stuff.

Necros are a bit light on controls in general. I wouldn’t mind a fear buff on necros. Warriors and thieves can keep their fear. I just want necros to be able to use it, too.

There’s something I say a lot, and I’d like it to be a catchphrase:

“Only bad groups skip Kholer”

It is a reference to how in AC explore, many people will skip Kholer claiming him to be too hard and take too long and not have any rewards and stuff. The ironic part being that the fastest runs I’ve ever done in AC explore never skipped Kholer. Instead, we all ran up and bowled Kholer right over like he was nothing then marched on, reward chest in hand and waypoint at our backs.

It is this path of least resistance mindset that annoys me. Every time a group tries to do something like that it fails miserably or takes so long it would’ve been better to just straight up fight. After the group spends time skipping “trash mobs” when someone inevitably dies they become unable to run past the enemies by themselves, and we have to wait 10 minutes while the same player dies again and again to get to where everyone is. Every time we go to use a safe spot against a boss the boss just takes half the group out and then the safe spot doesn’t even work most of the time. Every time we go to take a short cut, 4 out of 5 players die from fall damage or the enemies at the end of that fall. Every time some group finds a shortcut which skips half the map they don’t bother telling me, so when I read story mode or fall behind because I’ve been killed by one of the 12 enemies we’re running past, they end up half way through the map and complain every time they gotta show someone how they got there.

It gets kind of sickening after awhile. It is rare to see any two groups do the same thing twice, so with each group everyone is a n00b to whatever random strategy the group leader and his friend employ. So I spend time trying to find a safespot I’ve never heard of which is “over there” (literally all the direction I was given), don’t stand in the exact spot causing the boss to reset or wipe the tightly clustered team with an AoE. Somehow, things became more complicated and yet less effective than just running up, killing the troublesome pests, then moving on.

It is a really unfortunate thing that people want things to be easy to get, yet rewarding and “valuable”, and they want things to be challenging and yet shy away from any difficulty that presents itself.

For any number cruncher like me, the animation time is very important when determining the DPS of any skill or chain of skills, let alone the auto attack. It is also important since being locked into a skill’s animation means that other skills can’t be used as effectively, hence why it is on my thief the weapon/utility dodge skills are erratic. That or it is just random lag causing such an issue… pretty certain it is the auto attack though, since it tends to line up more and doesn’t affect regular dodge.

So I do fear that this issue extends beyond auto attack. It is just a lot more apparent in auto attacks, though, since those are used more than once every 30 seconds.

There’s always a bright side: maybe ANet will mess up other classes as much as the Engi, and then we’ll all be on even ground again.

It does more than double hit at the precise range. If the bullet hits any object deemed impassable by game design, it explodes and does double damage there, too. So when you are shooting something that is standing against the wall, or shooting something from high above, you’ll get that double hit.

I’m just glad that I won’t over-level and miss content because I am too high level to enjoy it properly. That is one thing that ’ve found to be really annoying in games with a level system. Heck, when I played FFX by the time I got to the final boss I was effortlessly killing everything in one hit.

In sPVP I’ve never had a problem with a guardian doing damage. I haven’t played it in awhile, but I used soldier’s ammy and Jewel along with a 30/20//0/0/20 build or something like that. I used a combination of spirit weapons for offense and consecrations for support, and used the greatsword as the main weapon. It was quite the powerhouse, and in melee range it could win the auto attack war against pretty much anything. It was fun to use in sPVP, since many fights devolved into me chasing around some fleeing enemy while using just the auto attack.

It made for great practice with enemy tracing on the trackpad.

In WvW, condition engies are pretty good. With the pistols, bomb kit, and tool kit they can inflict plenty of confusion and when built up with long durations, it makes them very deadly in 1v1 fights. Grenadier engineers are also quite lethal, and can hold enemies at choke points just by spamming grenades in front of themselves. It is also very effective to either defend or attack a keep with grenades, due to their AoE and long range. Through a few simple traits they get perma-swiftness, can stack might pretty well, and also have some cool tricks in their bag, like the ability to pull defenders off the wall of a tower or keep, or place elite mortars on a wall to let other players get high damage and range in an AoE as well.

In PVE, the engineer has great AoE and also nice support tools. The Healing Turret alone will give a team nearly permanent regen, and it comes with an AoE Heal and cleanse, too. They can cleric fairly well, removing conditions for the group with the elixir gun and elixirs, also healing and granting boons as well. Engineers have many blocking abilities and projectile reflecting abilities, can be traited to have permanent vigor, and have decent heals so they can tank quite the well. Engineers also have a lot of controls, and have arguably the best immobilize in the game thanks to the rifle + net turret. The big thing is that engineers can do a whole lot of things, so in PVE I would recommend getting every single utility skill, and switching out utilities based on what the group needs or the situation demands.

EDIT: As far as builds go, the engineer clashes a bit there. In WvW, condition engineers are the peak, but condition engineers are only mediocre in PVE. Rather, direct damage builds and support builds seem to have the most worth in PVE. But, if you will be doing a lot of WvW, I would recommend a condition heavy grenadier build, or any of the HGH condition builds floating around these forums.

None of these suggestions sound like they would work. They would just make zergs slower, but in the end the mass amount of players running around is superior to anything else.

Best idea I’ve heard so far is to remove the AoE limit on attacks, but keep it on boons and heals and stuff.

I rarely ever get trash talk in the game. Usually it comes from my own team when I’m manning the trebuchet and can’t attack everywhere at once. I’ve actually complemented people I’ve fought against before. I once fought a thief who, despite being surrounded by my turrets, managed to use their evasion skills so perfectly timed that they manage to avoid nearly all of the control effects. I still downed them, but I just had to say what a nice job they did.

But this is a well documented phenomena in games. Among the people who play PVP just for fun and entertainment are those who play PVP for.. .something else. Sometimes it is to get their frustrations out by lashing out. Sometimes it is to massage their over-inflated ego. Either way, you end up with someone who doesn’t play nice. Their intention in the game is to hurt other people, and are more concerned that they are beating someone else than they are with having fun or achieving the goal of the game. Their playstyle is usually awkward, and will do strange things like focus on only a single player throughout the whole match, much like bullying and harassment IRL. This is because at the end, they are concerned only with someone else losing. Unfortunately most stereotypes about them are false: No, they are not all bad players or no lifes or little kids. They range the gambit from 8 year old kids to middle-aged mothers.

Ultimately they are destructive to the game they play. Their aggression drives away people who play for fun because it isn’t fun anymore. Their aggression causes other players to sink to their level, perpetuating the cycle of angst. These two combined form the inevitable life cycle of PVP in games, and I have seen it happen in several games. Some MMOs, some merely online:

#1: A new game comes out with PVP in it, and people play it a lot.
#2: These angry players build up in number and drive away regular players.
#3: Eventually the PVP becomes only these angry players, and becomes very small.
#4: The lack of a diversified PVP audience causes the angry players to leave and head to a new game.
#5: Repeat 1-4 ad infinitum.

Frankly I think any game with PVP should have serious punishments for this kind of behavior, since it is bad on a business level. Even if any single player doesn’t mind the idiocy, the other people that unnamed player plays with do, and once they’re gone it isn’t fun anymore. People shouldn’t ever be encouraged behave this way, since it bleeds into real life and you end up with something like ocean marketing.

^While it is possible, it also creates a ridiculous amount of balance issues. Many classes will want more AoE to compete with other classes, and many players will want one weapon skill to have more AoE than another weapon skill and so on. In the end, the AoE caps put on individual skills ends up discriminating against classes that don’t have higher caps.

This is the course of history the game will likely take, though. If the AoE limit is removed, then the devs are going to end up having to continually balance things based on how exploitable they are. I imagine it’ll be a week before Life Transfer gets hit.

Vayne.8563:

Maybe the devs are actually balancing on damage per second rather than time per event. We don’t really know how they’re balancing.

It may be difficult for us to figure out the best damage, but I’m pretty sure the devs would use specific tools that would mitigate the need for them to realize this. I mean it makes sense.

I suspect the devs have a bevy of tools to measure stuff that aren’t available to us.

But it’s an interesting thing to consider from a player vantage.

I would not assume the devs have some mysterious device that allows them to compensate for flaws in methodology. I would assume the opposite.

Because “best damage” is a really simple formula. It’s damage/ time, AKA DPS. The damage is fairly easy to adjust, but the time requires the 3 things I mentioned above to be taken into account. And to get those, there really isn’t anything much better than the average stop watch.

I run a power necro in sPVP and also have power gear in PVE, and for the power necro I usually go with the following setup:

D/W, A/F

The locust swarm with the dagger is pretty nice. It compliments the Lifeforce regaining abilities quite well with it’s AoE nature, as well as disabling anything that tries to run away while giving a speed boost. Wail of Doom gets the spotlight, though. I find it to be more effective defensively than weakness or blind. The daze is a hard control, which lets you stop enemy attacks for anywhere from 2 to 6 seconds, and you can combine this with dagger #3 + 2 then locust swarm to have an enemy under quite a bit of control. All of that aggro → control → aggro playstyle also lets minions rack up extra damage. It’s what I use in sPVP, actually. Locust swarm + auto attack + well of suffering + putrid explosion + flesh golem means that any player that enters into melee range will find themselves kissing dirt quicker than they can type “What the kitten?” However I digress.

If the weakness and bleed are important, there is a far better way to get it. The curses line has an adept trait called Weakening Shroud, which casts Enfeebling Blood at the necro’s location whenever they enter into Death Shroud. It’s on a 15 second recharge, which is faster than the off-hand dagger, and it is really easy to get as far as traits go. It also doesn’t have an activation or cast time, so the skill is used immediately without delay. IMO it’s nearly a staple for any necro build. You’ll lose out on the anti-condition power of Deathly Swarm, but I have always found Deathly Swarm unreliable as far as condition transferring goes, and as condition curing goes even less so due to it needing to bounce multiple times to cure conditions.

If you don’t have other skills to stack vulnerability, the focus is also a good choice. It also has nice boon removal and the chill, but I’ve never found the focus to get me out of a bad situation as well as the warhorn does.

Elixir Gun doesn’t have the AoE that most engineer attacks have, but it is still pretty useful. I find it is useful in support roles, where it needs little to no traits to function effectively.

#1: The auto attack has twice the bleed duration of the pistol auto attack, higher base damage, weakness tacked on at the end as well. It doesn’t hit in an AoE, but engineers have so many AoE tools that it isn’t too much of a problem.

#2: Elixir F does a surprising amount of damage. Those bounces hit a single enemy up to 3 times.

#3: Fumigate is useful mostly as a condition cleanse. It does a weak cone of poison and vulnerability, but there are many things that do it better.

#4: Acid Bomb saved me from path 3 subject alpha in CoE single handed before the “pile” trick was discovered. It does decent damage, and when you need to get the hell out of Dodge it is your go to utility.

#5: Super Elixir is a good heal. A little slow and delayed, but it last for a long time and also makes a persistent light field for retaliation and more condition cleansing.

Toolbelt skill: Gives AoE regen. It’s pretty good.

For leveling in PVE, you’ll probably want to use something else as the go-to weapon, due to most other weapons having high AoE and sometimes higher damage, period. However, the Elixir Gun is so useful that I recommend it to any engineer who has a spare utility slot, regardless of build. The cool thing is that because it is just one slot, you can use the other two for many different things. If you’re ever walking into a situation where you don’t know what is going to happen, keep the Elixir Gun on utility, because it can and will save lives.

Considering that single hit skills have a big weakness from single-use blocks and blinds, there has to be something out there to punish multi hitting attacks. Our Flamethrowers go right through blinds and arcane shield.

Hm… so you’re saying that the devs took it for granted? I’m used to CoH (rest in peace) where the animation time was the activation time, and the biggest obstacle to calculating DPS was the baked in game refresh rate to processing actions.

But if the attack delay on skills is applied prior to animation time, and animation time is just tacked on, then this does lead to a very big problem in balancing. This throws the effectiveness of many classes into the air, and also explains why scepter mesmers are still quite horrible.

I did notice something while playing a thief. In PVE I like to use s/d and d/d dual skills to evade enemy attacks and fight at the same time, so I spend half the fight auto attacking and the other half using the dual skill to evade. This works… only about half the time. The other half of the time, the delay between button press and move execution is so wide that the dodges in those skills become unreliable. Death Blossom has a quarter second dodge, and there are times when I press the button and the enemy attack lands long before the attack even executes. Then, on the next use, I’ll press the button and the attack will execute so quickly that the dodge period occur before the enemy attack even lands.

Ideally, there should be 3 factors that are accounted for when balancing skills:

#1: Delay in processing input due to the game’s refresh rate. These are usually a fraction of a second, but in long term it adds up, and also it factors in more with quickly used skills.

#2: Delay in skill activation baked into the skill.

#3: Animation time.

You miss any one of them, and it leaves a glaring hole in game design that makes balancing impossible.

The Necro’s problem is, and always will be, a lack of active defense. No blocking skills, no evading skills, no reflecting skills, very light on hard control, mediocre on soft control, no vigor, very little stability, and bad stun breakers. Death Shroud doesn’t stop attacks insomuch as it puts those attacks into a different HP bar that starts out empty and slowly fills depending on what skills you use and how many kills you get.

Unfortunately, the devs have stated that they want it like this. So, the necromancer’s selling point will forever be “this class is meant to take 100B to the face”.

I imagine the OP isn’t talking about applied evolution, which is really survival of the lucky, but something else. I’ve heard it talked about in various places that Arenanet monitors how many of each class are made, in order to keep track of which classes may be overpowered and underpowered. For example, if they take a sample and find that 90% of tPVP is made up of Guardians and Mesmers, then that says that either those two are overpowered or the other six are underpowered.

I don’t know if what they’re doing works, though. The only thing I’ve heard about is A-net monitoring how many classes are made, and most players make a ton of alts anyway, so this doesn’t accurately gauge how much the players like or hate any particular class. Even then, there are a lot of die hards that would stay dedicated to a class as it delves further and further into inferiority, as well as players who mindlessly hop onto the FotM train, so I doubt it could ever be an accurate representation.

Not to rain on your parade, but when fighting an enemy with 25 stacks of vulnerability while having 25 stacks of might, any DPS heavy build can hit that hard, regardless of class.

Grenades are only useful as a utility without the grenadier trait applied. Blind, Chills, and poison field are still useful, albeit the latter two are 50% less effective.

For that particular build or set up, I would recommend against using grenades. I would also recommend using giver’s weapons, and maybe runes of the nightmare for more condition duration. You’ll lose some raw damage, but that’ll give a total of a 40% boost in condition duration, which is far more useful. Use super or rare veggie pizzas to get 80% condition duration with everything, and then you can do some really nasty stuff with confusion and burning.

Although other classes can do a single task better, I find that most classes can’t do as many tasks as the engineer can.

Need a healer? Engineer with healing turret + elixir gun gives perma regen and frequent AoE heals, and elixir R is a slightly delayed AoE res.

Need AoE stealth? Engineer’s have smoke fields and a ton of blast finishers, letting them stealth a whole group for longer than shadow refuge.

Need condition cleaning? Engineer’s get cleaning either with the elixir traits, elixir C + R, the healing turret, or the elixir gun.

Need a tank or need to reflect projectiles? Engineer’s get elixir U for reflection or destruction, Magnetic Shield and Kit Refinement for reflection, Gear Shield and Static Shield block things, Elixir S straight up avoids things, and they also have plenty of AoE blinds in the pistol, grenade kit, bomb kit, and flame turret.

Need a ton of control? Engineer again, who can stack immobilize incredibly well with the net turret, as well as knockdown with the rocket turret, pull with the tool kit, knock back with the bomb kit and mine kit and rifle and nearly every turret with the right traits, stun and daze and knockback with the shield, chill for long duration with grenades, and stun with the supply crate, as well as anything I have forgotten to mention.

Need a lot of AoE damage? Well, the engineer is your man again, since coated bullets can hit up to 25 times with the pistol’s auto attack, grenades hit 15 times, the bomb kit hits 5 times but for high direct damage, the rifle pierces and also has high damage from jump shot and blunderbuss, the flamethrower procs conditions and stacks might like there’s no tomorrow, and the rocket + flame + thumper turrets all attack in an AoE.

Need conditions? Engineer is your man again, being the only class that has access to all 4 damaging conditions (confusion, poison, bleed, burn) as well as good vulnerability stacking and consistent weakness stacking with the elixir gun.

Need boons? The engineer again gives permanent regen to any party he’s on with the healing turret, gives might to the group with the right traits, and also randomly gives stability, stealth, fury, swiftness, protection, vigor, and retaliation to the group they travel with.

And all this, healing and blocking and reflecting and tanking and buffing and cleansing and controlling, is all done so easily on one class. Arguably the engineer is the best at one thing: control. Whenever I am playing my engineer, I never have any worries about group composition lacking a certain role or utility because as an engineer, I have that role or utility already. There is seldom a problem that cannot be solved with the large bag of gimmicks that an engineer possesses. IMHO if engineers had high single target damage, then there wouldn’t be much of a reason to play a class other than an engineer.

My best piece of advice to all aspiring engineers out there is to use your head, and change utilities and equipment according to what is needed. Any engineer that cookie-cutter’s themselves is severely limiting their strength.

I do find engineers and necros to be the rarest classes in PVE and sPVP. In WvW, I can’t really check, but they appear to be quite rare there as well.

Which is… unfortunate. Necros are boss in WvW, and I love my engineer for PVE and sPVP.

In WvW, Marks are the most awesome thing in the world. AoE landmines + area denial + long range makes them be a force to be reckoned with when both attacking a keep and defending it. Targeted wells make seiging incredibly dangerous, and epidemic melts faces. Signet of the locust provides a cheap and readily available speed boost for traveling quickly as well. One of my favorite things to do is, while attacking a tower or keep is lay down all my marks at my position, then use spectral grasp to yank someone off the wall into the marks. If the group I’m with isn’t incompetent, they’ll focus on the now disabled enemy and we all get a free kill.

Although I hear Engi’s have a pretty boss setup in WvW that involves stacking might and confusion, I don’t have the equipment for that, so I use the engi mainly for PVE. And in PVE, the engi is incredibly useful. First and foremost, their AoE damage is incredibly high. Whether using the bomb kit or the grenade kit or the pistol with coated bullets or the rifle, every press of a button fills the screen with numbers. But the main thing that gets me about the engineer is all of the tools and tricks they have. Anyone with enough sense to buy all of the utilities will find that, regardless of build, there is always a setup somewhere that can get through any situation. They have blocking skills, evading skills, perma vigor, perma swiftness, boons, condition cleansing, projectile reflecting, combo fields AND combo finishers out the wazoo, every damaging condition, vulnerability stacking, plenty of heals, a ton of controls, AoE targeted rez, the best immobilizes in the game, and when specced right incredibly high crit rate. When I ran rampagers for awhile, adjusted for fury and target the weak I had a 90% crit rate. The scary thing is how much of all the above an engineer can do with a single utility set up, let alone a single build. There is not a single problem in PVE that an engineer can’t solve with all of their tools. Well… there is one problem: they don’t have any boon removal.

In WvW, seeing a warrior is incredibly rare, and they are also uncommon in sPVP, too. So it isn’t just the engineer and necromancer that aren’t getting love.

If you’re talking " suicidal zerg balls", I would be more worried about the necromancer than the elementalist. Necromancer marks already do good AoE damage, Wells can do even more, but there is one thing that would be absolutely disasterous when unchecked:

Life Transfer. It has a radius of 600, deals damage while healing the necromancer, and since it happens in Death Shroud the necromancer isn’t truly at risk. It is very easy to trait for: 10 points in Soul Reaping increases the recharge, 10 points in spite to grant retaliation, and should they be so dedicated 30 points in Soul Reaping to grant stability.

To recap, stability + retaliation + heal + recharge reduction + very large AoE. It has a base damage of 684, which isn’t too much, but that climbs very quickly if the necro is built as a glass cannon. The “fear” is that about 10 of these necros would gather together in full zerker gear, and just speedily run around with the locust signet. Should an enemy group appear, they pop in DeathShroud to get stability and retaliation, and then all use life transfer. Then they heal themselves for massive amounts of health while doing massive amounts of unavoidable damage to everyone within range. After that is done, they wipe up the remains with marks and wells, while most likely having the trait where marks regain life force.

The biggest limit to this would be the long recharge on Life Transfer, hitting 34 seconds with the recharge bonus. It is here that it would become suicidal: After life transfer is done with, if the enemy zerg isn’t taken out then it is very possible to retaliate and kill the necro squad. While distance may seem like a good idea at first, it is easy to forget that marks have a range of 1200+ their radius, and the necro is perfectly capable of fighting at arm’s length. Should they run away, the necros can all just spam wells behind themselves so it is nigh impossible to chase.

Again, to be fair this does take a lot more organization than the current mindless zerg mentality we have now.

I do wish someone would explain a bit more about the brightwizard from Warhammer.

Anyway, I was always a bit undecided on the issue of AoE limits. I can kind of see their use, but I can also see where they are redundant. If AoEs were too potent for farming enemies in PVE, for example, you would have to blame the designers for making it so easily exploitable. But anyway, there are a couple of things mentioned that I don’t feel are properly covered.

Everyone keeps talking about Elementalists with this discussion. I find there are a few more classes that need special attention, more so than the elementalist:

#1: Necromancer. Wells cannot be “dodged out of” because they are instantaneous and give no warning to their activation. Unless you can spot the activation time, epidemic is also a very nasty AoE that is up every 12 seconds. Wells can be dodged out of without sustaining too much damage, to be fair. LIfe Transfer with infinite targets is also incredibly epic. Scepter/Dagger skills also don’t make circles.

#2: The Thief. If you can get together 5 thieves with Shadow Refuge and its recharge reduction, then a “zerg” of any size can be under permanent stealth, rendering the entire “countering zergs” thing moot. The only counters I can think of are… necromancer wells.

#3: The Guardian. Particularly, ones that spec into shouts. With shout recharges and 30% boon duration along with Vengeful, 4 guardians can easily give a group permanent retaliation with their shouts alone.

I find that these 3 are the real game changers. And sure, other classes get some perks, like staff eles and grenade engineers, and some classes get shafted royally, like warriors, but at the end of the day it is these 3 that make or break how WvW is run in the future, and sadly it is run a lot like how it is run now.

The argument against mindless zergs is only scraping the surface with these changes. What will happen with these changes is one party of the following classes will assemble, and this will be the commanding class. The commanding class will say when it is that everyone needs to huddle in order to get stealth or retaliation, and then the zerg will continue to march forward with nearly the same mindlessness that it did before. To be fair, having a commanding party that orders and mildly organizes the zerg is more thoughtful than the current swarm of locusts tactic that is used, but only just so.

Instead, a new problem emerges: with entire zerg getting boons from everyone else in the zerg, the safety in numbers effect compounds greatly. Any group that does not have substantial numbers will have less boons and less heals and less ways to defend themselves. As much as we’d like to think that a few elementalists can stand utop a hill and use meteor shower to wipe out untold masses, the fact is that it’ll never scratch them.

This problem is magnified by permanent mass stealth. With a squad of 20 people possibly around every corner, the only way to safely travel is with another squad of 20 people. Otherwise, any small group will be insta-gibbed by a larger one that happens to be stealthed. This also makes countering a large zerg impossible because you never know when one is around. The smaller the group, the less protection that retaliation provides, so massive numbers become much safer since the retaliation boon will kill off any would-be attackers.

So mindless zerg would be exchanged for a slightly less mindless zerg, and the outcome of the zerg vs. zerg battle will be determined by who keeps retaliation up better. Would this be a better game than the way it is now? I’m not to sure, really.

I would rather make a case for unlimiting only damage AoEs. Boons allow a mindless group of people to become mindlessly too powerful without a check. My concern with letting damage AoEs run amok is Necromancers, where only a few are needed to unload epidemic onto a target to cause a massive zerg to melt away. Epidemic has a 1200 casting range and a radius of 600 with no red circle and no obvious activation, and since multiple epidemics multiply conditions, a VERY large area will suddenly be poisoned and have 25 bleed stacks, ticking away 3000 damage per second.

But all that said, I am willing to give unlimited AoEs a shot. Just maybe, people aren’t competent enough to get 5 thieves together in a group. Just maybe…

Been playing since launch, and the only abyss dye I have is the one I bought.

I don’t even open unidentified dyes anymore, since I never get anything worth more than the dye itself.

ArcticRed.3068:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

If you’re running carrion equipment, then you are already running a hybid.. A pure conditionmancer would be running either rabid or shaman, which gives greater survivability but less offensive power.

You didnt read what i wrote properly, i wear Carrion for PvE and Rabbid for PvP.

I have just bought a full knights set with Valkyri trinkets, i havent ran it in WvW yet untill i get either the berseker or knights weapons so im still running Rabbid for now.

I guess I should elaborate more then. Wear carrion in WvW. I do it and it works great.

If you’re running carrion equipment, then you are already running a hybid.. A pure conditionmancer would be running either rabid or shaman, which gives greater survivability but less offensive power.

All this sounds like retaliation is working as intended. Yes, retaliation is a boon that can be nasty against AoE heavy and multi-hitting classes, and it can also be useless against classes that attack slowly but hit higher amounts. For anyone using retaliation it is really a gamble as to whether it will do anything or not.

I think the counter balance was supposed to be that multi hitting attacks allow procs to go off more often, but the change that added internal cooldowns to all of them really ruined that. Grenade Engineers get Shrapnel, which is the closest thing to how a proc should work IMO. But with something like Sigil of Superior Earth, that 2 second cooldown is… what, 45 attacks from a grenade engineer against a zerg in WvW? Out of those 45 attacks, one of them gets a 5 second bleed… not really worth it, is it?

IMO, they should either change how the sigil procs work, or add new sigils that work differently. Something that has a low chance to occur for each attack, but doesn’t have an internal cooldown. That way rapid AoE attacks get something to call their own that makes rapid AoEs dangerous, while players who only have slower single target attacks can get a sigil with a proc effect as well.

I don’t play Eles anymore, but I haven’t had any problems with them in sPVP or WvW on any of the classes I fight them with. Something I have noticed is that their current HP is no indicator of how long the fight will be, but otherwise they don’t really “stand out” from the crowd.

To be fair, I’ve only fought them with two classes in WvW: Engineer and the Necro. While yes, Ele’s are strong in WvW thanks to high boon duration and all that, the fact is that many other classes are stronger, too. The Necro, for example, goes from sub-par in sPVP to a monster WvW.

Anyway, in WvW I still run the turret Engineer a lot, coupled with grenades because of their awesomeness in WvW, and while it isn’t nearly as useful it lets me 1 vs. 1 any other class, Elementalist included. Like most, the elementalist spends most of its time rooted or knocked down, usually alternating between the two depending on if their stability is up or not. Both conditions and regular damage come quickly, and the elementalist has to spam their heals in order to deal with them. Once that happens, they become overwhelmed and succumb to the grenades.

On the necromancer their movement skills and evasion means little to nothing to Wells, which with the proper traits will hit the ele reliably. From there the conditions layer up very quickly, and the ele will exhaust their condition removal only to discover that, with a 4.5 second recharge on Mark of Blood, they just come right back. In this fight, distance is the enemy, since d/d ele’s need close range to lay down the hurt, whereas the necro is comfortable hitting like a truck at 1200 range. Eventually, most elementalists flee the fight, while others die.

Then again, maybe I just haven’t fought any “good” elementalists yet.

You might have set it to run on auto.

The lack of condition removal and a stun breaker is a bit of a problem.

I say a “bit” because it is really easy to trait out of it. Personally on my s/tPVP turret build I run 20/20/20/10/0. It seems a little unfocused until you realize that all of those traits add together to get one mean setup. The big stars in the defensive lineup there is Protection Injection and Automated Medical Response. Projection Injection is an outright awesome defensive trait, turning any engineer into an instant defensive wall whenever the opponent disables them. Automated Medical Response instantly charges up healing turret again, which of course makes it a second AoE Heal + Regen + Interrupt. The healing turret in general will keep regen stacked on the engineer almost permanently.

The big thing about the turret engineer is that their defenses are all active defense. The enemies will be stunned, immobilized, knocked back, and knocked down a whole lot. And during that time-frame, other players aren’t free to use conditions or their own stuns, or even attack the turret engineer. So while it looks like using only turrets leaves a big hole with condition curing and stuns, the fact is the opponent is never free to use them.

I, myself, have always contemplated using pistol+shield and going for more condition damage with a turret build. But, I can never pry myself away from the rifle’s high damage and very available controls in #2 and #4. I guess my turrets just “take the hit” in that department and do less damage from their conditions.

sunnypsyop.3025:

- turrets are immobile, and therefore turret builds lack mobility
- turrets cannot be ordered to prioritize targets
turrets are easily AoE’d to death / focused down and therefore cause the Engineer to become extremely vulnerable with nothing else to back them up once they go down
turrets draw craaaazy aggro

The two bolded ones are incorrect Turrets cannot be easily AoE’d to death because they have great range even without the rifled barrels trait. An opponents AoE, no matter how large, can’t hit all of the turrets when they are placed far outside of the capture points. Even when they are placed near each other in the heat of combat, putting enough space between them is incredibly easy and takes no time to do, even without the deployable turrets trait. The shortest range turret, the thumper, has high health which allows it to last for a long time, and the second shortest range turret bellows out a smoke field for protection if need be. The trait for armored turrets is quite cheap to get as well.

If an enemy wants to “focus down” turrets, that is a win in my book. This means they have to run to each individual turret laying outside of the waypoint and DPS it down, all the while being hit by all of the effects of the turrets themselves. The net turret will keep immobilizing and stunning them, the rocket turret will keep burning them and knocking them down while doing high damage, the rifle turret will keep stacking bleeds , the flame turret will keep them nearly permanently on fire, and the thumper turret still kind of sucks which is why I don’t use it. All the while the enemy has their back to the engineer and all of their offensive and controlling skills. It is a lot to blow all of their skills getting rid of the turrets, because if they just auto attack then they’ll never DPS them fast enough. The rocket and lolthumper are the only two that have high recharges, so should all of the turrets be killed somehow then the engineer just gets access to all of their toolbelt skills for a little while before the turrets come right back again.

The idea of “drawing aggro” in PV kitten imply bunk. Pehiople act on higher reasoning than such. In PVE turrets can draw aggro if you place them into the wrong locations and leave them there, ignoring the attack range of the turret completely. This is only a problem in dungeons, however. Most of the time in PVE you place turrets where you need them, then pick them back up immediately when you don’t need them.

And this leads to my next contention with turret builds being immobile. While turrets themselves are immobile, the turret engineer really isn’t. If they aren’t holding a waypoint or a certain location, a turret engineer will plop turrets as they need them, and then once they are done with them pick up the turrets to get a good recharge bonus and head to the next point to capture or defend. For this, the engineer is only “rooted” for as long as they wish to be, and then they lose turrets only for a short duration. Most of that duration is spent getting to another capture point. If the complaint is that a turret engineer doesn’t have swiftness or anything like that, then this is also not true. The engineer can easily swap to the med kit over the healing turret then swap back as soon as they drop the swiftness + fury buff, and do so without any cooldown or losing their healing turret. The inventions line also comes with the legs mod trait, which gives a 25% speed boost while in combat.

If an engineer ever sets up an area with turrets to defend it, then they can 1vs1 any other class. To this date, in all my sPVP and tPVP I have only lost once in a 1vs1 fight, and it was against a shatter based mesmer. While I have beaten other shatter based mesmers before, that one just happened to be skilled enough to beat average ole’ me.