Guild Wars 2

FYI, surprise shot can still be used while stunned, feared, etc, but like you said, doesn’t hit very hard at all. Relying on the condition removal of the med kit was a bit of a problem, as it was too easy to get loaded with a bunch of conditions that just ate away at you. Damage isn’t bad at all, though I must say I missed my elixirs, especially Elixir S. Survivability wasn’t as great as I would have liked, but that could have simply been a l2p issue, due to me not playing builds like this as often. Not a bad build, just not my cup o’ tea I suppose.

Surprise shot used to work when you were incapacitated, not sure if it does, but if it does it might be useful to keep just as a way to screw with people when they think you’re stunned. This build looks interesting, because honestly, who doesn’t want a more offensive version of our beloved Tankcat? Thanks for the writeup! Will definitely be trying this later!

sinican.9250:

“Name one class that burns a Mesmer down without being a 1 shot spec?”

Name a class that doesn’t run a 1 shot spec in pvp?

Engineer, Necromancer, Guardian, Ranger. Will that do?

runaroundclown.9072:

Thanks for all the revealing comments guys. I am just downloading gw2 right now, and was thinking strongly of playing eng., er, I think all look elsewhere now.

It’s all playstyle my friend, and yes, we’re bottom of the barrel now, but such is the way of MMO’s. I would bet dollars to pesos that everyone who has played over 100 hours of PvP time on an engineer has done so with 4+ builds, just trying to roll with the changes to still be able to do something comparable to another professions utility/damage/bunker ability, etc. How many other people that main their class can say that? I’m not saying that being nerfed into oblivion feels great, because it definitely doesn’t, but MMO’s tend to slingshot around classes that are on top, and even though it appears that we’ll never get our day in the sun, chances are that we will, and when that happens, we will be competent in many different builds and able to adapt to nerfs/boosts more than any other class, I assure you. If I draw any positives from my engi being pretty much the only class I play, it’s that a lot of mesmers/warriors/thieves aren’t always sure how to counter us, because let’s be honest, you at most see 1 other engi in hotjoin. We are the chameleons of this game. Adapting to our various nerfs to still breathe some life into our class and surprise some people along the way. The faithful shall be rewarded. God, at least I hope so…. lol

bettadenu.5483:

sorrow.2364:

That isn’t the Warrior who is UP, it is the thief who is still OP.
Just look at what the thief is supposed to be:

Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters.

Fragile? Stealth, this and this
Vulnerable to conditions? this and this

So, they trade nothing to have the highest burst damage in the game. Balanced, uh?

Yes because a huge AoE cone of 2h kitten is totally justified, it’s kids like you that get my profession nerfed because YOU can’t counter them.

Every patch has been a nerf for Thieves and every patch has been a buff to Warriors, saying you are UP in comparison to Thieves means YOU are unable to play your class correctly.

I lol’d. Like. Really hard. Sorrow hit the nail on the head, no two ways about it. Well played sir.

Caino.7130:

I use rifle pvp for spvp and tpvp. Works very well for me. I love facing people knowing they are thinking…thats engi’s using a rifle!? Underdog is the name i think of when i think of engi.
Although you could achieve slightly better results with other classes, an ele/thief springs to mind.
I agree with you, it begs the question : Why use an engineer?

Why use an engineer? Because if you’re still reading/posting in these forums, you’re as stubborn as I am, and refuse to give up on an awesome playstyle no matter how much we may be sucking. Man, if we ever get fixed, everyone is screwed. Us faithful engi’s have been dealing with our sub-par everything for so long if we get the buffs we deserve we’re going to absolutely clean house in PvP lol. Raise your glasses, my fellow engineers. We’re stubborn and we will not go away, OUR DAY MUST COME. Cheers!

I played a war for about a day, so I’m in no way an expert on them, but what you said has a lot of merit. Everyone sees the HB combo and thinks warriors must be OP, but unless it was a group fight and I got charged when I couldn’t see it/prevent it, I can’t remember the last time I lost to a warrior, and this coming from someone who only plays Engi. I feel your pain, but I think you feel it much more than I do. Hope you guys get fixes and I hope someone from development looks at threads like these. Good luck!

Levetty.1279:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Levetty.1279:

Any other classes might stacking build doesn’t require a different trait or playstyle. You choose the one that gives it to you and then you go use it.

I don’t know how many might-stacking builds exist in this game, but for the elementalist, you need specific weapon sets, 2-3 specific traits and 3 utility of a specific type to stack might to high numbers.

One of those traits is in the major grandmaster tier, and it’s about 2/3s as effective at might-stacking than Shattered Strength. SS gives you as much as 9 stacks per shatter, so overtime you easily get up to 18+ with two or three shatters. The ele’s grandmaster trait gives you 1 stack per skill while in fire attunement, which translates to about 4-6 stacks when and only when you’re in one of the four attunements, 8-12 when you come back to that attunement.

So in addition to giving less, you must restrict your playstyle if you want to benefit from it. And it’s a decent 30 points trait.

That is one class. The others?

You are also presuming that Mesmers can just get this massive stack from nowhere and then shatter you to death. They either have to use their F3 or F4 which are both on long cooldowns and are better served for their non might purposes, or use F1 and F2 which are their damage dealing shatters, one is power the other is condition and when they are on cooldown what are you going to use those might stacks for?

On top of this you also have to tailor the rest of your build to get enough clones out for the shatters and then hope they don’t get sneezed on while running to the target. So other classes might stacking being restrictive isn’t a valid complaint because so is Mesmer’s.

Although judging from the sPvP players posts about Rangers and Mesmers it seems the idea of attacking or avoiding pets is too complicated for them to understand.

with my Engineer, I can choose to have the vigor whenever I have quickness and increase it’s regen rate, but I have to actually trait for it. That’s child’s play, 10 in tools and 10 in alchemy, no big deal for almost perma-vigor. Now might, with the new buff to the HGH trait (which I still have to invest 30 points in Alchemy to get), we have to rely on remaining in Flamethrower kit to stack up might (also 30 points into Firearms to get), combined with one of our elixirs. If you want that might to last a while and go over 12 stacks or so, then you need to start using armor runes to increase might duration. And even then, you’re not going to use that might with your Flamethrower, because it’s so broken, so you have to switch to rifle and hope you can pull off some awesome burst, though it sucks that arguably your biggest damage dealer on the rifle has a terribad animation that seems to go on forever lol. So to do arguably the same thing as a shatter mesmer, I need 60 points in 2 separate trees to pick up traits that need to go in hand with 2 utility slot skills (FT and a potion, which you’re prolly already carrying anyway, but I’m trying to exaggerate here because I’m kitten my class is so broken and yours isn’t) and then play a weapon I don’t really care for to do something with all that might, because honestly, what’s the alternative? Pistol/Pistol/Shield, nade kit, tool kit? lolololololol.

TL;DR I am sad that I mained Eng and I take out my anger on Mesmers that act like they’ve been screwed over since day one when they’ve been right at the top the whole time.

You didn’t need fixes. Stop acting like you were at the bottom the whole time, because damn it, I’ve been at the bottom my whole time and we can smell our own.

Except bunker Engi’s, they’re doing all right, though not as good with the Super Elixir fix, but ehhhhhh, I’ve complained enough. Enjoy your day, guys!

Archaon.6245:

To be succesfull in pvp you have to l2p, and this is the only way…if you want to just stomp noobs in hot join just smashing your kb well…you can run an hb warrior, an hs thief, a shatter mesmer, a granade dps engi…thare are lots out there, but be careful…if you meet a just decent player you’re going to feel the real azzpain..

grenade dps engi’s never ‘stomped noobs’ and they sure aren’t going to start now lol

Rozbuska.5263:

CachoDm.4639:

I like to be successful in pvp

Just go back to WoW and log your Paladin/Rogue once again. You are in wrong place here.

The irony being that Pallys/Rogues are currently kitten in PvP in WoW. But hey, way to sound like a kitten and try to make this game’s community just as bad as that one’s. To OP, while there is a lot of merit to ‘whatever playstyle you like the most’, this doesn’t necessarily = success. IMO mesmer is the way to go. Their toolkit allows for a wide variety of counters to just about every class and you do awesome damage and you have one of the most annoying downed states in the game. Have fun!

Recently.1043:

Feels roughly the same except rangers are now better than warriors. In general, every class got slightly buffed and/or bug fixed this patch (rangers probably got the biggest buff based on just this patch relative the others)

I think we got our hopes up when this whole big “dec 14 balance patch” was announced. It ended up being some relatively small things; nothing that changed any core mechanics / builds too much.

The clarification on the class roles was enlightening though. I like how anet admitted that warriors are supposed to be weak to conditions and are supposed to bring someone in their pocket to cleanse conditions for them. Now i won’t waste my time wondering before each balance patch if they will ever address this by buffing our passive condition removal or something, cause it won’t happen.

The clarification on class roles certainly was enlightening.
“The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.”
“We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.”

With these two statements right next to each other, every Engineer player that has mained them for the past few months felt a good kick to the junk. Laughable.

Ehecatl.9172:

Arheundel.6451:

No one fear bunker eles except a bunch of spvp thief zergers…just check each profession thread and see who’s complaininf about “bunker” eles….just thieves or some random necro well spammer, so stop giving reasons to people who can’t see behind the end of their own nose

Gonna point out I never said bunker ele was overpowered. I just pointed out that it was the build most people are complaining about when they bring up elementalists. Which is for the most part true.

The point is they aren’t buffing what are already strong elementalist builds this patch. They are buffing our weakest trait lines so that maybe people who play elementalists will branch out more.

Can Engineers have this? We were pigeonholed into a grenadier spec and instead of just buffing our other builds to make us have options, we just got ‘nade damage nerfed. I understand they hit hard, but c’mon, it’s not like they hit everytime, weren’t easily dodged, etc. We already have a Flamethrower that doesn’t hit anything a large portion of the time with 2 attacks, Pistol/Pistol combo that hits like a wet noodle and an extremely delayed animation for Rifle 5. Grenade kit was all we friggin’ had man, lol

Combat on land is far from balanced between classes, why would we care about balance that only applies to one map some of the time and isn’t even used in tournaments? Priorities…

My flamethrower 1 and 2 skills have repeatedly missed since pre-release. My concern for your naked death dealers is very little.

Waffler.1257:

I’m about to give up on PvP in this game. Already quit PvE because of their WoW grind BS, but everytime I play PvP I end up quitting after 30 mins because it is frustrating as hell when 80% of players are thieves or mesmers and counters are few if any. I see a thief coming, manage to dodge his initial burst, use my stun breakers to escape his poison and binds, almost kill him and he just goes stealth and runs away. I see a mesmer coming, get ready to aoe the clones and put some CC on the mesmer, oh wait, the mesmer used moa on me and I’m dead. There is no way I would be willing to pay a monthly fee for PvP that is this stupid.

This. Thief/Mes zerg in just about every game. I shouldn’t have to take so much satisfaction in killing a class/spec because they can global me. Sadly, I stick around because every once in a while you have those games that have a variety of classes, people actually defend a point instead of zerging (OMG I know!), and it’s a close game. It kind of gives you insight of what the PvP could possibly be if it wasn’t so broken. Of course those games happen about once a week…

I never played GW1, but this sounds freaking amazing.

I have a feeling that if you had to pay a monthly fee for this game PvP would be more of a ghost town than it currently is…

Syeria.4812:

Seriously people, do you not understand the difference between a moderator and a programmer?

Reassigning forum moderators to work on “fixing bugs” is not a legitimate idea, and anyone who even thought about it seriously for even a half a second should feel bad about themselves.

If you don’t like the game, and you’ve deleted it, why do you keep coming back here to post? No one cares if you deleted the game. No one cares about the opinions of people who don’t play the game. You’re not having your posts moderated out of some vindictive attacks on your speech. It’s not a huge conspiracy to cover up negative things about the game. Your posts have literally no value, and are directly in violation of several forum rules.

A better question to ask is are you not able to spot sarcasm when it’s thrown pretty blatantly out there? You should probably feel bad. Or don’t. I don’t care. I haven’t deleted it, still play it occasionally, but there’s quite a few things that keep me from investing more time in it, mainly this loading screen bug that keeps me from playing for more than half an hour at a rip. I bought the game, I would like to continue playing the game as I actually spent real money in the game, so I would like for the game to work. I’m expressing my opinion that less time making new content and more time making sure that the ‘old’ content actually works would probably be more beneficial. I understand that they have limited resources for programmers, but I’m sure programmers were used to make new content, so….. they can’t make it so we don’t get booted out of hotjoin or tournaments because we had the gall to die? I’m sure a lot of people are like me and spend the majority of their time playing PvP instead of leveling, crafting, etc. When a major component of your game is consistently broken it’s not time to add a new zone or make some candy corn mining nodes, it’s time to fix it. If expressing my opinion is against forum policy that’s kind of crappy.

woe be to them that defend, for verily I say unto thee, your patience and temper will be broken against the wall of the ever living zerg

I left the game for a month, came back, and this still isn’t fixed. How?

Tynan.6279:

Considering you quit after 4 weeks of playing the answer is no and always will be no. WOW is the place for you, now for the rest of us willing to continue to put the time in and offering constructive feedback based on gameplay experience longer than 2 weeks the answer is yes.

See, this is the kind of crap attitude in the community I was talking about. Because I considered the PvP sub par (not the combat, just class balance, map variety, etc) and took a break in hopes it would be fixed, I’m no longer part of some elitist club. I played GW2 since pre-purchase up until the Halloween event. I’ve had gameplay experience longer than 2 weeks. kitten
For everyone else, thank you for your input and responses. As always, useful and well thought out responses are appreciated

Raytek.6193:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvXDv70-6Gg

Great video that goes into detail about the problems competitive play is facing.

Somebody needs to spam this video repeatedly in the forums for Anet to take notice, because this pretty much summed up my and a few other friends’ thoughts on PvP currently.

Well, I logged on for a few to see how it was. First game I got frozen on the loading screen after a respawn. Good to see progress has been made since the last time I played it, lol

No one’s capable of answering how they enjoy PvP these days?

I stopped playing a month ago due to imbalance being ridiculous and the in game pvp community having crap attitudes. So just curious, how is everyone enjoying PvP these days? Worth coming back?

So when I read the tooltip and it says ‘supply a burst of healing that cures all conditions’ does it not really mean all conditions? I use it. Still have conditions on me.

I’m rank 28, and I’m not really sure why.

I lol’d at the guy that said balance is fine.

The downed state, IMO, is a double edged sword. Like Dorregaray said, without it what’s the incentive to not play a completely burst team? On the other hand, I see the OP’s point. My first few engineer builds were condition builds with some defensive skills. In 2v1 situations I could drop 1 person but was hardly ever able to finish them off, due to the remaining person still attacking me, interrupting me, etc. If the player I downed was a thief, then gg, due to them hitting me pretty hard, even in their downed state. Had that downed player just been dead, my chances of beating the second person would have greatly increased. I guess it’s one of those game mechanics I enjoy until it doesn’t work, lol

Though it is undoubtedly frustrating as hell when it happens (even worse if you put all that time into soloing it down), it’s a legitimate strategy. Curse the person’s name that stole that kill? Absolutely. Remove the ability to do it from the game? God, no.

Aether McLoud.1975:

I once got into a match of 6 guardians and 2 mesmers against 7 thieves and a warrior. :/

This sounds like my personal version of hell.

If you end up in a game with less than 5 thieves in it, go buy a lottery ticket. Obviously I was exaggerating, but c’mon, the majority of hotjoin games I usually get are loaded with thieves, mesmers, 100 blades warriors and unkillable guardians. Usually 4 of the people in a match are not one of the above, and there’s a pretty apparent reason for that.

Every game it’s the same thing, thieves, mesmers, 100 blades warriors and spirit weapon guardians. Occasionally I see other classes. We wave at each other and do our best not to die when our stun breakers are on CD. Every day is an endurance test to see how long I can stick with a class because I like it’s playstyle instead of being anywhere near as useful as these other 4. Feel free to leave me your awesome comments about tournaments being way more balanced, how I need to stack toughness (lolz) or start packing utilities of nothing but stun breakers.

It would be nice to have more rewards for actually winning a game, as I’m completely tired of and frustrated by people that won’t help cap/defend or whatever because as someone put it to me today ‘I get way more glory fighting in the middle of nowhere than holding points.’ It’s beyond frustrating when you’re trying to win games and have to deal with half the team fighting on the road, helping nothing because they would rather get a tiny bit more glory. Am I the only one that’s had this happen?

Bleed damage. Something as small as a few stacks of bleed have sometimes been enough to bring a thief down to half health, have him use his his stealth heal, wait til he pops out again and re-apply bleeds.

Good point Zunhar, not all thieves are D/D spec, but in my experience, 95% of them are, and those are the ones that I feel are unfair. Sure I can beat them, but carrying 2 stun breakers just in case of running into 1 spec of a class just seems a tad bit unbalanced.

Or maybe every hotjoin game you go into has 8 thieves just because they’re really difficult to play and evenly balanced? Not sure, need to do more research.

Just to assist in ehtom’s point, I googled ‘gw2 thief backstab pvp’, got the build, watched a youtube video, and check it out, dropping n00bs in 2 seconds. When my burst sequence was on CD, I could just run away/ranged shortbow damage to my heart’s content. sPvP and tPvP. Topping points in both, all within an hour of picking up the class. And hey, even if they survive that opening burst, that’s what the ‘2’ key is for anyways, right?

Compare the thief are OP posts versus any other spec/class combo. Coincidence? Everyone needs to learn to play? Orrrrrrrr is your main a thief and that drop in your 12k backstabs would really rustle your jimmies? Hmm…

“First, if you find the game unbalanced, once, just once, search for a tanky build for your class, or figure it out yourself…
Then setup this build and go spvp … Now go tank the wannabe burst builds and /laugh.
Oh you will still die to good ones, but I guess it will open your eyes as you will win 80% of your 1v1 with ease.
And you can do it with any class, no need to be uber bunker or whatever.”

That’s right, if you want to enjoy PvP, kitten your class’s damage and spend your time winning battles by attrition. Instafix!

Zachariel.5463:

psyt.9415:

Okay but the hierarchy of importance in capping a point doesn’t really address the fact that those two classes have an easier time getting up from downed than others do. Having people beating on me and being a sitting duck also doesn’t really address the fact that these two are still harder to stomp. Its not balanced that is my point.

You do realize that when someone says “Its too hard”, I (and many people on the forums) picture a little child whining to his mother that “Its too hard”. Sorry come up with a better argument. That is an instant gratification excuse, and frankly…is just whiney.

From what you and many people want (from reading the posts) is for everyone to have the same skills no matter what. Sorry but that doens’t make an interesting game. Thats like telling someone to walk across the yard and calling it fun. Now if you put a moat with alligators in and tell them to get to the other side…now THAT is entertainment.

OOO or brain eating Amoebas…we can take bets on when he drops dead.

This is the most kitten argument ever. What people want is to be able to down a thief like they can down anyone else. The whole ‘well thief doesn’t have an interrupt’ crap doesn’t fly either. Who needs an interrupt when you made someone run through the whole downing animation, just to have them teleport somewhere else? Now, with mesmers this is where your trouble ends, just down the newly spawned mes. However, with thieves I have to go through the whole downing animation all over again just to have a smoke bomb pop and miss, again. I’m sure everyone attacking me will wait patiently while I give the whole ‘third time’s the charm’ adage a go. I main an engineer, I technically have 2 interrupts, but after using my first one, if you hop up and go to down me again, game over. Thieves are the only class that make it so it takes a good 10+ seconds to down them. We don’t want all classes to be the same, we want all classes to be on a somewhat even playing field, especially when it comes to the downed state. We finally caught the kittens, let us finish them lol

I’ve been using the P/P elixir build with my utilities set to Elixirs H, B, S, and R and have been having a lot of fun. I was using grenade/condition builds for a while, but find this a lot easier to navigate with my elixirs being far more useful. 2 stun breakers means a lot loss frustration with BS thieves and the like, and when you use your elixirs situationally, I’ve found the survivability is pretty good as well

I would just be pleased if I could join a game with less than 5 thieves in it…

I completely agree with this. I’m missing precious uptime in battles because I’m waiting for someone to come around and finish the job. I can count on 1 finger the amount of times someone forgot about me and I was able to get back up.

thank you very much

Ackinbal, can you link your build? I ran his build, and was pleased with how it played, just lacked survivability like you said.

I’m really regretting adding an authenticator to my account, due to the fact that it’s annoying as hell to pull it up on my phone every 15 minutes due to this bug. PvP is pretty much all I do in this game, and when the whole thing is broken, well, I don’t have very much incentive to play, now do I?

I apologize, didn’t check. But thanks for responding sarcastically. It was a great help.

…why my fear is 1 second, but a thief steals a 3 second fear from me? Or for that matter, why warriors also have a 3 second fear? Stealing implies that I own something and it’s taken. I don’t own that glorious fear, so….

I shelved my mes, war and necro because of the engineer. I love the the different roles it affords me, I love that I can change how my class plays by just switching kits, and most of all I love my self rez, lol. I’m able to stack conditions with the best of them, while being able to res teammates quickly, or being able to perform various types of cc, all in one build. I suppose it could be a playstyle issue, but unless you’re just looking for a 2 button win class, I don’t see how the Engineer can’t satisfy everyone.