Guild Wars 2

robertul.3679:

Why do these threads exist? You want to run a good build run meta. You refuse to do that, just run whatever the kitten you want.

Because there are passable non-meta builds, and there are also complete garbage builds.

I run a SD rifle build now, in pretty much all things. with slight varients for spvp, dungeon pve, and solo pve.
Its far far more satisfying to play then grenades.

I used to be heavy into mathing out optimal stats, rotations, etc. I have not done so since coming back. this build is based on play, not theorycrafting. so it might be improved on, and its optimal dps is unknown to me. I can’t give you a figure, other then, “its good enough”.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpkr1UxvLseNCdBN6wMluA6MUhv+pAA-ThRBABXt/o8DPdAL8AAA4CAQp6PmpEkUAjqyC-e

crit from firearms, and ferocity, but little power/cond duration from explosives. (HOT should buff this build nicely.)
DPS rotation is mostly, use skills as they CD. throw wrench, surprise shot at the same time, drop rifle turret after surprise shot, engage autofire. jumpshot. launch ram, Blunderbuss, swap toolkit, prybary, . personal battering ram. blow your rifle turret before the 7s surprise shot CD is up. (lets you get autofire dps, and reset before surprise shot is back up. smack/whack/thwak until blunderbuss is up. (10s cd)
Can blow up healing turrets for damage too.
Full end 10% is more then bomb on dodge. so don’t try to use that to increase damage.

Solo. swap out modified ammo for hair trigger.
2 in alch for invig speed instead of accel packed an option too.
Lots of good/possible options in tools. Prybar is strong damage and part of core, so the 10% damage, and 20% recharge is strong. Also, whack/smack/thwak is higher coeff then hipshot, with both having their 10% rifle, and 10% wrench. whack/smack also giving vul stacks.

SD deals double damage with surprise shot for some reason when auto attack is engaged.
you have 3 targeted toolbelt skills so SD will aim properly with them.
Ram has good damage attached to it. Rifle also does damage itself, and double damage SD on surprise shot, with short CD. Toolkit has prybar, higher dps AUTO, and throw wrench with decent damage if lined up properly.
Utility goggles are not horrible. 10stacks of vul, and targeted SD. Bigger cd then ram. stun break+fury on large cd on the gadget itself. again, ram adding more damage. Gadgeteer is better with goggles though.
Minefield/throw mine. short CD. not targeted SD. but fires 2 SD. one on cast, one on activate iirc. Mine itself is strong damage. throw mine also blast combo, short CD and strong damage.
Rocket boots also deals direct targeted damage on toolbelt with short cd. With blast combo, direct damage, and CC clear on gadget.

buff to everything engi. too early to make judgement.

nah. the grenade kit clearly has 3 grenades hanging on the side, and 2 grenade heads on the back. the large bomb looking jar on top, is simply a gunpowder container. 3 grenade handles next to it.
you need the handles to throw them. thats how you know they are grenades.

the bomb kit is a large gunpowder cask. with round jars for the bombs. could be steel or glass. fuses off to the left.

Quick testing with rifle. hipshot gave me 2296 expected armor. which is pretty close. so I feel I can trust the frag shot coeff. which I was not sure on..

Prelim testing on ascended rifle with tool kit.. 1031ave. result inconclusive. big enough variance that its possible rifle vs pistol matters. small enough, that sample size might have caused it.

Plus im dumb and forgot smack and whack add vul. that will have inflated values 4-6%. this can account for the rifle vs pistol issue.
base theory on scaling is still confirmed though, but estimated weapon strength will have to be adjusted, and margin of error increased there a bit.

need to test with grenades to remove my vul stupidity.

testing on reef riders in southsun.
first frag shot as control to get estimated 2262 armor. this was fast. just need a rough number.

Then ascended smack/whack.
636min-737max over a good amount of hits. vs 2262 armor, and 1919 power.
this suggests about 1012 weapon strength.

Swapped to fine pistol. testing atm, noticeable loss in damage, despite tooltip staying the same.
731 ave fine weapon strength?

867 ave rare weapon strength

974 ave exotic weapon strength

these numbers are “ballpark” from empirical testing. sample size was only 40-50 hits for frag to get armor, and maybe 20-30 for each smack/whack. not precise. +/- error is probably like 5-15.
consider I said, old toolkit weapon strength was 921. and I just did this quick test and came up with 974. which is it? I dont know.

THIS chart from the DnT forum has 1017 in weapon strength. I do not know where they got that value. and it matches no other weapon average or max. So, honestly I would assume that is the correct value for weapon kit strength with ascended weapon equipped.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1weoy2tkW-dIVSWfsuO9VV9-gGNGlrzRZeFKse4cIOys/edit#gid=0

“ascended” is supposed to be 5% more then exotic. well 974x 1.05 is 1022.
So its possible exotic was buffed to 974ish, and ascended is then 1017.

So yeah, I can confirm. tooltips lie. And weapon kits do scale across all rarities.

Checking tooltips now.
Have to actually playtest to check if tooltips are wrong… but..

With 1919 power.
My tool Kit “Smack” lists 545 damage with ascended pistol, exotic, rare, fine and even with no weapon equipped at all.

Tooltips are: Damage= (Average weapon strength)*power*skill coeff/2600 armor.
This means, the tooltip thinks the average weapon kit strength is 923. (which checking back to my old figures I estimated “872-969” with 921 ave as kit weapon strength.

Ascended rifle goes up to 600. (but thats due to my zerker rifle 2112 power.)

so… tooltips seem to think weapon kits are the same abyssmal sub exotic weapon strength.

tooltips often lie. will check in practice in a moment.

Haralin.1473:

Casia.4281:

you are skipping from rare to ascended?

ok as always lets give the speech..
Ascended ARMOR is not worth it 99% of the time.

Priority is,
Ascended weapon #1. it is your biggest source of damage increase. the weapon damage componant is a direct 5-7% damage increase.
Then, Rings. rings are easy to get via fractals.
Then, Trinkets. trinkets are easy to get via guild coms. slightly more expensive via laurels.
Then, Neck. via wvw laurels/badges.

Now, save your cash up and craft an ascended backpack. Mawdrey is highly recommended due to mawdrey 2, and its being tied to Bioulum, achievements and AP.

Now, do you REALLY have nothing better to buy with 600-800g? really? nothing? not another char slot? unlimited harvesting tools? copper salvagamatic? Precurser?
Nothing? ok. Craft your ascended armor. Its going to cost you 500-800g, and provide less then 1% dps increase.

Seriously, just get some exotic armor.

As for stats, Zerkers, and Assassins are near indistinguishable for engineer dps. Zerker should give you more dps, Assassins should stack more vul for the party, and bleeds, etc with those traits.

Does ascended weapon damage really effects kits, i thought kits have a fix weapon damage?

not sure the current mechanics honestly. At release for a time, I was heavy into testing mechanics, and documenting. not so much since returning back in March or so..

In the past, kits had their own weapon damage. this damage was comparable to Rare gear.
920dps iirc. Compared to exotic pistol of 986, and 1050 of rifle iirc.
Toolbelt skills were effected by your equiped weapon. So a throw wrench would scale into that 1050 ave with a rifle, but only the 920 if you had the toolkit or grenades equipped.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage_calculation
Here is the exotic weapon strength of weapons. was mis-remembering them a bit.
pistol was 952.5, rifle 1095.5ave. Weapon kits back then listed 969 as MAX damage. I may be remembering the 920 wrong, but it was around there.
Ascended pistol is 920-1080 for 1000 ave, ascended rifle is 1035-1265 for 1150 ave.

I have heard kits now scale to “ascended”. something about 5%.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weapon_kit
“Kits scale damage based on the rarity of the player’s equipped weapon.”
I have not tested this for accuracy or exactly how much they scale.
That this info is not on the wiki…. Maybe I need to get back to work? haha.

Toolbelt skills do seem stable now. rifle or toolkit equipped, throw wrench seems to do the same damage. It does less with pistol equipped though. so its now based on equipped weapon, and not overwritten by weapon kit, like it used to.

you can level pistols. but they are woefully underpowered at 80. nearly unusable. Marginally viable in spvp, but thats it, and even then barely. And then p/s is generally better. Shield is generally the reason you run pistol mh in spvp.

409 and HGH were super popular, along with Elixirs in general in the early days.
HgH was actually buffed to the 2 on self use.

But Elixirs and both have fallen out of favor. I still love 409, but even that only in pvp builds.
The main issue was everything else being slowly buffed over time. While Elixirs have mostly stayed the same.
Additionally, the introduction for ascended gear, and stats. raw dps has increased. Making Might less favorable. And making utility builds less favorably in the wake of higher dps.
Thinks like Elixir U, which are fantastic, and was even buffed to be more reliable, is very niche now, when you can just go raw dps nades/ft build.

If SD on THROW elixir was more reliable HGH and 409 would probably be way more popular as a combo.
The old SD builds of wrench/Elixir U/Elixir R.

The cast times on Elixirs are painful, and really kill HgH as well.

Grenadier and steel packed were always a REALLY dumb design.
Grenades go from garbage to OP in what was 5 levels, to now instantly at level 80.
Grenadier+Steel packed represents something like a 85% damage increase for grenades.

so yeah, grenades being 3 default makes alot of sense.

Coated bullets is sortof the same. A huge deal for pistols, “almost” single handedly making them viable. So much so they inexplicably nerfed p1 power coeff, a while back, when it already was woefully underpowered. Just to make sure pistols were unusable? who knows…

speedy kits should not be default, but should be reworked. its too good as well. But not in a sense it makes a build viable. its OP in that it removes any player choice, you are making a mistake not taking it will pretty much all builds.

Kit refinement being default I would like, but being forced into combat is an issue. A redesign on a few of the skills that do that, would be nice.

comes up on reddit like once a week. haha.

If you are in rares still, all around exotics should be your priority. Karma, TP, spvp or dungeons.

Assassin’s emblazoned armor is 5-4g a piece costing about 28g total. As a newish player, that might seem like a lot? but in comparison to that 700g of ascended? lol no. and really thats like 3 hours of silverwastes, or 10 dungeon runs.
Zerkers is slightly more, clocking in at 6-5g each.

Karma gear is 42k per in orr.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor
Again, 252,000 total karma. Not alot for long time players… I have about a million after buying pretty much everything I could want to buy with karma..
How much you have likely depends on how much time you spend in wvw, edge of the mists.
Silverwastes is good gold and karma.

Doing LS season 2 for biolum, mawdrey, and then Silverwastes for them both as well, will give you a ton of cash, and karma. Which can be spent on exotic armor. As well as of course getting you closer to mawdrey. Also completing biolum gives you a FREE ascended chest. ( you can pick any slot, and any class. consider you may wish to get the LIGHT armor chestpiece, from this free armor chest. as that is the most expensive ascended item in the game. 136gold, vs medium chest pieces 86g cost. if you have NO intention of ever making the ascended light armor. ok, then simply take the one you have use of. )

Dungeon tokens can of course give good armors. Citidal of flame gives zerker stats. I can’t remember atm if any give assassins. you can either go to it, or do Spvp COF reward track.

An ascended rifle costs about 90g iirc btw. not including actually leveling hunstman.

you are skipping from rare to ascended?

ok as always lets give the speech..
Ascended ARMOR is not worth it 99% of the time.

Priority is,
Ascended weapon #1. it is your biggest source of damage increase. the weapon damage componant is a direct 5-7% damage increase.
Then, Rings. rings are easy to get via fractals.
Then, Trinkets. trinkets are easy to get via guild coms. slightly more expensive via laurels.
Then, Neck. via wvw laurels/badges.

Now, save your cash up and craft an ascended backpack. Mawdrey is highly recommended due to mawdrey 2, and its being tied to Bioulum, achievements and AP.

Now, do you REALLY have nothing better to buy with 600-800g? really? nothing? not another char slot? unlimited harvesting tools? copper salvagamatic? Precurser?
Nothing? ok. Craft your ascended armor. Its going to cost you 500-800g, and provide less then 1% dps increase.

Seriously, just get some exotic armor.

As for stats, Zerkers, and Assassins are near indistinguishable for engineer dps. Zerker should give you more dps, Assassins should stack more vul for the party, and bleeds, etc with those traits.

Underdark.3726:

What’s all? That is not an answer to any of my questions. Was that overgrown wolf once a sylvan hound that Mordremoth corrupted? Or was it born that way and have nothing to do with the sylvan hounds? Or was it first transformed to Nightmare Hound?

well that is clearly a Sylvan hound version of a Mordrem hound.
Mordrem Wolves in Silverwastes however, are BODIES of actual wolves, animated by plants.

Beta gives us new Modrem Humanoids too of course. Which have this same look.
“woody” versions of Char, and Norn/Slyvari/humans. its not entirely clear which. only char are notably visible, as specifically Char.
I think we can assume these “woody” versions are the corrupted humanoids, like Branded, Icebrood, etc.

Those hounds then do show that Sylvari, and Sylvan Hounds can in fact be Mordremed up as well, and become more woody.

I am not entirely sure where the Trolls and Teragriffs stand. I think trolls are the animated corpse variety. While Teragriffs are corrupted Colocal.

Separatists, and while at it Bandits are slightly different. while yes, many are just misguided or true freedom fighters, etc, who ideally should be left to go off themselves… large amounts of others are full on making real trouble, and can only be called terrorists, killing women, children of both sides.

If it makes you feel better, humans have a clear afterlife, when they die. you are just killing their body. Their souls go off to the mists to be at peace there. Except in the case of ghosts. which is a bit of a 50/50. some ghosts are troubled, others pretty clearly are cool with being ghosts and tied to Tyria. Those ghost pirates in Sparkfly fen for example love being ghosts.

Sun god. Cool beetle mounts. If we did nothing, they would convert themselves, and provide a fighting force.

We are clearly on the wrong side of this.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And she is what connects the sylvari to the Dream. She is the Dream’s caretaker. Coincidence?

Or so she says. The Tree lies.

They are protected just like Sylvari yes.

Note how corrupting them into the Nightmare court is almost exactly the same as corrupting Sylvari. Torture, abuse, and hurt them, they fall into Nightmare just like Sylvari.

And then presumably “weaker” hounds can be corrupted by Mord as well.

We need some Sylvan cats.

Fomivee.3065:

I don’t think it’s Livia.

IF it is someone we know from GW1… my guess would be Shadow. She’s the only Shining Blade female mesmer we know. (To be precise – her secondary profession is mesmer) That, and Jennah’s cat is called Shadow. This cat could be Carlotta on which Shadow used her (possibly) chronomancer’s magic. (IMO it’s very possible that Anise is a chronomancer)

Didn’t play GW1, but reading that wiki, the personality is spot on, for Shadow it seems.
The Shadow name drop was already theorized.
With the introduction to Chronomancer, you really might be on to something.

Kasmeer being one never made sense to me. But Anise being revealed as one, and having it explain her mysteries makes alot of sense imho.

Some Engineer is ’splode. Some Engineer is shooty wit sparks.

insanemaniac.2456:

Arioso.8519:

I will admit it’s presumptuous of me to assume those proposed trait changes are going to be what makes the final cut, but what you say about anything being on the table only furthers the main point I was trying to make by bringing up the trait changes in regards to this topic in the first place: “It’s not wise to invest heavily into gear for builds that are strongly reliant on a specific trait until the revamped traits are finalized and revealed”

yep, tru dat,

a full exotic set would prolly run around 50-100g, heavily depending on runes. and what you get out of it will heavily depend on runes. 50g is if you just get gear and cheap out on runes, though in a power setup for example flame legion runes are ok and wont cost what strength runes will if youre willing to sacrifice party support to some extent. unfortunately for OP, perplexity are on the expensive side. balth are a cheap alternative that get about as much mileage. and healing runes are pretty much free. aristocracy are interesting too and “free”, but running CM in tank gear … well just be careful about what lfgs you join if you do it. or do pvp.

so the question is, is 50g a lot?

to me, thats somewhere between a bit and an annoyance. but i dont really feel the need to get a 3rd set for my condi engi. rabid+dire/perplex and sinister/aristocracy will do.

Settlers is less then 1g per armor piece. 80-60s each atm.
Not sure what would be ideal runes for such a thing.

Still don’t recommend it. but yeah, if you wanted a set…. certainly not expensive.

Malkavian.4516:

Actually, I was gonna use elixir infused bombs, a wrench and rocket boots/elixir s

ok. Elixir infused bombs, does at least get used more often.. One of the few examples where the healing skill is spam-able.
But consider.
bomb 1 is 411 damage 1.250 power coeff.
.84 s attack.

Elixir infused is 145 heal .15 healing coeff.

So 300 power is increasing the damage 375 damage.
300 healing is increasing the healing 45.
healing power does not scale the IFB’s healing nearly as much as power does your bombs damage.

Is there any scenario you can think of 45 hp every .83s out of your 17000-25000 hp life bar is relevant?

+healing is just awful.

Let me try and articulate.

Super elixir, which I would assume you intend to use. With Elixir gun.

20s CD default. 16s cd with 20% trait.
Impact heal .4 skill coeff.
Pulse heal .1skill coeff. (11 pulses)
Healing turret. .5 skill coeff. 20s cd.
Cleansing burst .5 15 cd.

So, you have a stat dedicated to 3 skills, which each have a 15-20s cd. and each also has a poor skill coeff on top of that.

Meanwhile damage stats get used by 14 skills over that same 15-20 sec duration, and have coeffs ranging from .6-1.5.

And of course the classic. Dead npcs don’t fight back. An actual dps zerker group in TA for example will kill those silver vines in 3seconds, each. the tree at the end in 60seconds. You kill them way faster then they can kill you.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Personally, given the hammer incoming, I would think shouts are coming to us.

Signets sure won’t. The are one of the things engineers dislike, specifically. As the are magically imbued.

Anet gives us a hammer. We don’t actually hit things with it, we use it to summon drones like a mesmer phantasm.
Hammer is a long range weapon for engineers.
Rifle is a melee one.

SD zerker rifle. I used to mathcraft all this stuff. but have not since returning, so am partially relying on wiki info. info that itself was not always entirely accurate in the past.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpkr1UxxLseNifBN6m8jID6CEgl+p1B-TBCEABqphggHAQiq/slSQmU+lz+DtpDAgLAApAMTYE-e

Engi rifle is one of the highest innate dps weapons in the game. not saying this is as good as your meta grenade rotation. but its better then average, and much more enjoyable imho.

So you can autoattack a bit. but, yeah you do still want to use the full package.
Rifle 3 is huge dps, as well as rifle 5. Rifle 4 is a dps loss usually unless its also CC breaking, or you run with a stunbreak. (Im not going to recommend doing so in a sec.)

Rifle 1: 254 base. .650 coeff. .75a/s.
Rifle 3: 625 base. 1.6 coeff 10s base cd. at 200. + 4stacks of bleed.
Rifle 5. 352base .9coeff, + 703 base 1.8 coef. 20s CD. +3x2 vul. 1s channel.

Heal slot.
H or turret both are good. pick which you like. turret can be popped for might stacks of allies fire fields. aoe cleansing. water fields with rifle 5. H has bigger direct heals.
Neither is great for SD.

Slot 1. Toolkit.
TK 3. Prybar. 658 base. 2 coeff. 15CD. +5s confuse. this is part of your rotation.
(not sure on tk1. its raw stats are higher then hipshot I believe, but kit weapon damage is lower then rifle, so should be weaker dps. )
Slot 2. Rifle turret.
Autofire. 476 damage. +vul 10s duration. Rifle turret is “mostly” for Surprise shot. But, using autofire, and detonate when surprise is on CD is extra damage. so use surprise, then drop the turret, engage Autofire. and blow it before it gets destroyed, or Surprise is back up.
Slot 3. Battering ram.
308 damage. (coeff not listed.) 25s cd. (is more then a traited hipshot.)
Ult. supply drop of course.

Toolbelt skills. (wiki lists damages as without weapons. so actual damage is higher. as toolbelt skills ARE effected by your equiped weapon.)
Throw wrench.
246×2 base damage 1×2 coeff. 20s cd. +vul, cripple. .5s cast.
Surprise shot.
246 base, 1 coeff. instant fire.(can be fired when stunned, prone, etc.) 10s cd.

Launch battering ram.
369 base damage, 1.5coeff. 15s cd. +cripple and daze. .25s cast.

SD can toolbelt skills.
There is a bug. And of course a second issue with ground targeted skills.
both heals are ground or untargeted. so AIMING the SD will be difficult/impossible. if face tanking it might land. If not, forget it.
Targeted skills. throw wrench, surprise shot, and launch personal battering ram, will have SD be targeted properly.

SD lists on wiki as 135 base damage. .5 coeff. 2 bounces. (this value should be effected by weapon. using rifle damage when rifle is equiped, and kit damage when kit is equiped. Meaning you WANT to have rifle up when using SD.)
Activates on all toolbelt use. detonate turret, and surprise shot both for example.
Detonate is not targeted though. gl aiming it.
The bug is related to toolbelt skills, and their cast times. under normal use, with auto attack active, skills with cast times will do “normal” damage SD. while Instant skills, such as surprise shot, will appear to do double or damage SD.
Meaning in practice my hip shot hits for about 650-700. A SD should hit for about 350-400.
But, surprise shot SD hits for 650-800.
Bizarrely, if you ctrl+2 off auto attack, the damage flips. SD on skills with cast times, now do the double damage, and instant the normal. this is just a note, not something to try and make use of really..

Firearms. adept and master are pretty clear. GM. bunker down, vs mod amm, vs hair trigger. Tough choice. not really sure which really.
explosives. accel packed for rifle/healing turret damage on death is good. or emp adren. dodge rolling in and back out, to drop bombs, and keep 5% up.
Tools. SD of course, speedy kits of course,
Gadgeteer if you run goggles, throw mine, or rocket boots instead of turret/wrench. all 3 are viable options too.
scope is ok. but you will be melee most of the time.
Power wrench is ok for prybar.., kit refinement, as you will be swapping in and out.. .but its “box of nails” for toolkit. which is also meh.
Speedy gadgets will give faster rams, gadgeteer fury on ram..

High crit/ferocity. I run “of air”, and “bloodlust” to help make up for the lack of explosives trait +power.

Dpsing you run everything. notice, all those skills do more damage then your auto. use everything. Toolbelt skills on CD. Ram itself. detonates. rifle turret autofire.
And of course you have some CC there too… ram kb, ram daze, blunderbuss kb, toolkit pull, and block..

chain damage has always tallied up like that.

Sindre.6928:

I think, when the new trait systems comes along, a pistol build will properly be usable.

many of the things mentioned so far are direct and indirect buffs to pistols. so cross your fingers.

pistols are woefully underpowered.
Mainhand pistol 1 is very weak. Even fully traited.
Pistol2 is pretty decent actually. can maintain 100% poison uptime. Its targeting can be messy, but with experience you can land most of its hits, at range, while on the move.
Pistol3 is also pretty good. (static shot.)bouncing, confuse/blind. decent damage outright. Whats not to like?

Offhand. Pistol 4. blowtorch.
Mediocre direct damage for the CD, and range requirements. ok burn damage. cleanse-able. not stackable. just not good enough skill.
pistol 5 glue gun. targeted aoe cripple/immoblize. no damage. no combo field. its ok. not as reliable a net shot.

Few will choose offhand pistol over a shield. Since only blowtorch is damage. and its damage is not good enough to justify.
While offhand shield gives you reflect+aoe knockback with shield 4.
And block/stun with shield 5 +damage/daze throw.

Michael.8562:

Red Jay, that would be a hoot if the gods were sneaking back to help out the humans on the sly. And Lyssa is actually twins: Ilya and Lyss, Anise and Jennah – hmmm. There is another instance of one of the gods actively helping Tyrian denizens – in the player story the Avatar of Grenth (one of the seven reapers) comes at the bidding of a priestess of Grenth.

Anise is written very familiarly (she has a specific personality) though – not arch and grand and mysterious the way the avatar of a god might seem. It’s a fun idea.

the Lyssa lore also writes Lyssa as being very close to humans.
“For a while she lived, veiled and hidden, in the village of Wren. When the building of Arah was completed Lyssa was commanded to join the other gods, though her tears fell like rain among the western road.”

I was playing an alt, and made note of a odd thing stated during human personal story.
Jennah is noted to be the last of the Salmaic dynasty.

“Scholar Josir: We can’t allow anything to happen to Queen Jennah. She’s the last of the royal line!
Agent Ihan: Perhaps not the last… but you’re right. Without Queen Jennah, we’d lose our treaty with the charr.”
The Order of Whispers seems to think Jennah is not the only member of the Royal line alive.

checking the “strong attack”, “weak attack” thing now.
it is odd… I run throw wrench, surprise shot, and battering ram all at once.

running with rifle and auto autoattack. Surprise shot IS consistently doing double the damage with static discharge then throw wrench or battering ram.
With auto attack disabled, inconsistent.

Static discharge is supposed to be 135 base .5 coeff.
hip shot is 254 skill base .65 coeff.

when my discharge does 605 vs a mordem wolf, and hipshot does 731.
I can tell you right away, the “strong” SD is dealing twice as much damage as it supposed to.
The “Weak” SD is the correct value.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Astralporing.1957:

I guess they prefer to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Maybe if they ignore it long enough, it will go away?

But yeah, making the watchwork pick be superior to other infinite mining tools was an extremely bad decision.

Draknar.5748:

Do you want cool animation or do you want the chance of sprockets. Everyone has the same decision to make.

Not true. I bought my molten picks (more than one) before watchwork one was created. I did it, because i believed Anet’s assurances that there will never be a better one that will make molten obsolete.
Those assurances turned out to be a lie.

Totally agree with you Astralporing. I invested a lot of real life money when Molten gathering tools first came out with the reassurance from Anet they’d be the best tools now and forever. Call me crazy if u want, but i enjoy the convenience and i bought 9 full sets, 1 for each of my characters. You’d have to agree that’s a lot of doe. But now i’m stuck with 9 inferior sets. Imagine if i had waited and bought 9 watchwork picks? I would be one rich player by now.

So yea, i second the disappointment and betrayal i feel. With Revenant coming up, I would have bought another set, but as is, I will never buy another, ever! I don’t care how inconvenient it is. Not unless they bring all other tools sets to par with watchwork.

yeah, wish I could trade. I bought some of the first tools that came out, not expecting newer/better/cooler ones in the future. and now regret the older cosmetics I don’t really like all that much.

SD did always do less damage when using kits. yes its follows the normal damage formula with weapon damage.
Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Kits averaged 920 weapon damage iirc, back then. this was LESS then an exotic pistol at 950 average, and rifle at 1096 average.
SD always did very noticeably more damage with rifle equipped then kits.

wasn’t aware of the 5% buff with ascended/legendary.
Were they buffed for both exotic and ascended?

if you are worried about the price, you can’t afford it. Theres probably 100 other things better to spend the cash on.

Ascended armor is not remotely cost effective. Weapon? yes. Trinkets? yes.
Armor. no.

Then on top of that, how good cond will be is a crapshoot.

Celestial is ok in spvp and wvw. It is definitely not ideal in pve.

Stat, trait, and skill changes of HoT might change this up. but no one is particualarly expect i

or you could not be so mysterious?
I’ll admit, I just came back to the game a few months ago now. and have not done anywhere near the level of playtesting, and number crunching I used to…

But the only SD bug I’ve noticed is the classic, “untargeted skills fire SD off into the ground”. so it sucks with “throw elixer” and the like.
Targeted skills like goggles, surprise shot, throw wrench, rocket kick, battering ram, etc it works perfectly fine for, it DOES target and track properly. (even out ranges rifle at 1200)

Xyonon.3987:

I really hope they fix SD with the new traits. Right now it’s just too bugged to be used properly.

huh?

its fixed. just not in patch notes. Log in.

the only games which “representation” does matter in the slightest is RPGs. the role player nature of the game does tend to actually at a bit of player interaction with the characters.
This can go both ways of course. A chance to play as something and someone else. The entire point of roleplaying…
A paladin one day, a “kitten” thief the next..

But this is also where the “what games have you been playing?” comes in. the VAST majority of RPGs do let you build your own character, as I just noted, right from DnD.
You would be harder pressed to find an RPG that DOESN’T.

I won’t lie. The Witcher 3 coming up. not a fan of Geralt. and not looking forward to spending hours playing as him. I don’t feel an open world experience is a good place to have a singular main character like that. Wasn’t a super fan of Dishonored. but as a tighter story, it works.
But in a large open world game, going around doing things. I simply will not have the same emotional ties as “my Shepard”, or “my Revan”, or “my warden” or “my dragonborn”, etc. “my Geralt” will always just be Geralt.

“representation” doesn’t mean a thing in FPS, Platformers, etc though.
Mario, Freeman, doomguy, are complete non-characters.

cocowoushi.7150:

Casia.4281:

I did find it funny Braham is the only male member of Destiny’s edge 2.0
Whats Frostbite?

its even more noticeable if your are a female pc. Quotas are dumb. but when you line up and its 5 to 1 it looks funny.

Welcome to the world that female gamers have been living in for decades.

I can just imagine how frustrating it must be for Non-binary players, who get next to zero representation.

I have never in my life felt the need to play a trans character in game to represent myself.
That is not how or why people play games. They don’t need to be represented at all.

Also there has been ample female player choice for decades, in the vast majority of games. nevermind games like this with create your own character.

I did find it funny Braham is the only male member of Destiny’s edge 2.0
Whats Frostbite?

its even more noticeable if your are a female pc. Quotas are dumb. but when you line up and its 5 to 1 it looks funny.

I’m kindof hoping cond engineers will be viable. I do hope HoT opens the doors on it.

I loved playing p/p while leveling.
I havn’t REALLY been doing it. but I suppose I should start prepping a set of Sinister gear.

its too early to tell.

Right now, you probably want zerker, rabid or celestial.
As silly as it sounds, cond and p/p is kindof weak and STILL scales better with power/crit. blowtorch, static shot, explosive shot.. the split is like 60% direct damage, 40% condition.
That would be highest dps for p/p. Especially in dungeons/fractals/world bosses.

Obviously WAY less dps then a power rifle/grenade/etc build.
so, thats where RABID comes in.
Rabid trades out power, for toughness. It concedes max dps, for some defense. To help ensure your conditions have time to burn.

Celestial is even more well rounded.

robotosis.4872:

You guys really think it’ll be fixed Tuesday?

I do honestly.

Sins.4782:

Static Discharge will actually be in a better place after these changes. It goes from 2/6/0/0/6 or similar to 0/6/0/6/6, with the only thing it loses being bomb on dodge, but it gains vigor (speedy kit refinement + invigorating speed), backpack regenerator, and the HGH + Fast Acting Elixirs combo, which lowers your elixir s recharge and gives some extra might. If I’m not mistaken, Potent Elixirs may be included in that combo, giving us extra time invulnerable and longer stealth as well. In tools you would take SD-Speedy Kit Refinement-409 (If potent elixirs isn’t in the HGH+FAE combo it’ll be here, and the extra condi remove on elixir s can’t hurt) unless the TBD is any good.

Not being able to take Power Wrench does suck, but you get the survivability from backpack regenerator and all the fun stuff in alchemy to make up for it. Not entirely sure what they’ve done with some of the damage modifiers, but unless they’ve scrapped most of them the damage should be similar or higher to what we have now.

yeah. I run 0/6/0/4/4 largely. my spvp and my pve builds are slightly different.

Main buff will be the stat change. 0 explosives means I am missing that 300 power currently.

409 being tools GM confuses me. I don’t really like this. as its now higher teir. and honestly, kills most of my reason for even going alch at all.
Alch line was at times over crowded. now Tools seems over crowded.

I’ll probably end up 6/6/0/0/6 or something.

Static discharge is obvious. (powerwrench is honestly not that great.)
Speedykits.
And 409 grandmaster. (weird for an elixir defensive trait here..)

Modified ammo is pretty good. surprised no love for it mentioned.
Granted, not sure post HoT. where is my sitting duck?
Vul, immobililze, and bleed are 3 easy/automatic conditions with rifle.
Nevermind, party conditions, or gadget, or bundle conditions, or zomg, pistol SD?! inHoT.

Tried to love HGH. but elixir cast times are just too long. They need to be faster. too much dps loss drinking them all the time.

Guys, they already basically said its fixed and scheduled for the next patch roleout.
Relax on “meeting the asura”.

yeah.
This is a huge buff for Alch builds, pistol builds, turret builds, etc as well.

Moving stats off traits gives alot of options you didnt have before.
Like, Alch with +300 vit. who cares? or inventions with +300 healing power.

A pistol build having to decide if to spend points in explosives for power and condition duration, at the cost of traits that do very little for you.
We don’t know how traits will be effected yet. But, moving STATS off them, already means alch builds, and pistol builds WILL have more stats towards key stats like power/prec etc, that they did not have before.

My SD rifle build for example right now is 06044. I ought to be getting a significant power increase in HoT. to match my zerker gear.

Casia.4281:

An in-progress. I’ll end up with more Sylvari racials, or Nightmare dungeon likely.
We’ll see. Started with Hot Pink and Grape for a nice combo. but recent came across this Summer Breeze yellow/green. I think I like it better. REALLY stand out.
Sylvari gear is actually pretty awesome. It has bio-luminance, like Sylvari themselves do. Cant see it here, however the nodules on the sleeves glow, as do the gourds on the belt.

The ever rare. Sylvari Engineer.

Lets bring back a page one update.

Cassandra-Sylvari Gunner.

Retro Flashback Caithe stole my look. Hair, t1/t2 mix almost entirely. Save my way better color scheme.
she does use t2 boots, I use Nightmare court boots.

SoPP.7034:

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245:

it’s difficult with the thread merges

Sorry I chuckled at this.

A number of us had been concerned that the information on these problems would be diluted by getting merged into this thread.

In any event thanks for the feedback.

haha yeah. merging was definitely not helpful.
Same problem now for asking for more info.

to repeat,
the March 16th bug for "unforgiving infiltration "aka Meeting the Asura challenge mote, was identified, and should be fixed "soon"tm.

its the OLDER original bug of missing motes randomly, that they still need info on.

style.6173:

Some of the people in this thread scare me. They want buffs to NPCs or new guard abilities? You have PvE for that.

The issue with the game mode is that it is TOO much about the NPCs. The player aspect is almost secondary. I want to see player kills/death count for a lot more than they do today.

NPCS should be a resource players fight over.

I swear some people have never played multiplayer games before..

NitroApe.9104:

Now that’s my build! However, since it’s a fun build i would go full troll mode and play the gadgeteer: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlsTpkrNexzLseNSeBN6rMljAyBEARGwdA-TJBFwACuAA62foaZAAPAAA

yeah, this build would make more sense imho.

I mean, I play the standard sb/rifle builds in spvp and pve..
And I swap to wrench as it is to amusement from time to time. or, anyone/thing that reflects projectiles.

Magnet is not super effective in closing a gap, its no dash/shadowstep etc. this is were a superspeed, rifle net, jump is going to be needed. pistol glue won’t do it. ram kb/etc maybe. Personally I might even go rocketboots or net turret.

I’d want speedy kits in there though. speedy gadgets is pretty meh. esp if you take rifle or net turret. but even with boots, shoes, and/or ram, most of the power is in the toolbelt skill, not the gadget.

Might drop the firearms for power shoes in inventions, as well.
Energized armor would be just over 70 power with that spvp zerker ammy, and vamp runes. eh. not sure on best at that tier.

Gilgalas.7860:

Hello,

After taking part to stronghold test for several hours overnight, here comes my feedback.

I first attended it as solo queue and experimented around, then once I made my mind on a strategy, I joined a “premade” made of random players that set their mind up on the same strategy. I must add that we all were on TS (although we would have done as well without TS given how our strategy was straightforward) and tried to optimize our build composition, which may have had an effect on the results of this test.

The first thing that struck me is that guards are really weak. As a hammer+bow warrior, using PVT PvP amulet, I was able to take on at once and kill all alone by myself all the 6 guards between the two doors, leaving the room free for skritts.
In other words, without active defense from players, both doors can be destroyed by a single player and 4 skritts in 2 minutes from game start.

This is largely my experience as well. I see post after post of people WAY over thinking it. I felt major Alterac Valley boss race vibes right away as well.

Supply is a noob trap. it needs to be removed, and reworked entirely. there is almost ZERO reason to get supply. A good team with proper coordination can get 4 bombs, and take down both doors within 2minutes of the start of the game. Even when defended in equal numbers, offense should win this. Dueling in the center of the map is a giant trap.

As you say, 1 player can kill all the guards at the start. archers are near pointless. Nevermind 2-4 on escort/offense.

the game among any competent team atm ought to be a dps race. 1 maybe 2 on defense at most for nuisance.

Heroes are largely good. but again, totally OFFENSIVELY fixated. making defense again, much harder, and hardly worthwhile.

I think supply needs to be reworked entirely. As well as guards.
I think perhaps towers, akin to heroes of the storm would work better, for static defense.. no crit, high armor. a “seige” npc can damage them.
And with “ammo” that can run out. and replenishes over time. Powerful at first, and then weakens over prolonged siege due to ammo.
Npc spawning I think should be just on a timer.

Player spawn location heavily favors offense as well. The distance defense has to run, and positioning does not provide any advantage, often just makes engaging to your death. Particularly if the offense is already in the lords room.