Guild Wars 2

How about we all agree that when running around WvW if you come across a battle everyone must stop and try to pantomime to the opposing team what exactly is going on.
/dance – means we are dueling
/dance + /sit – means we are stacking and going to charge you
/dance + /sit + /quityourcryingthatenemyskilledyouduringanunofficialeventyoudecidedtohaveinapublicgamingzone – means you are taking up 30spots in WvW doing things not helping WvW
/waypointbackandtryagaininadifferentareainsteadoffillingtheforumswithtalkabouthowtoproperlyplayagame – means in a game you always have another chance to try again, unless you waste that time complaining.

Something like that and there shouldn’t be anymore confusion.

I have a feeling there is going to be alot of QQ when Thieves start getting murdered trying to use the same ole tricks.
It will be like after the first Rogue nerf.

Leuca.5732:

The only problem is that Magnet can literally only be avoided by a well-timed dodge or invuln. You cannot time blocks/aegis against it, nor can you stealth after it activates and expect to avoid it. The engineer can even lack LoS at the beginning of activation and still hit you at the end if he dips out at the last second. It’s not a huge issue, but it’s there.

Yes but it also works vice-versa, the Engineer can have LoS at the beginning and the enemy can dip out at the last second and put the magnet on CD.
If you dodge as soon as you see the pull you will avoid it.
Stability voids the dodge also.
Even though you will still pull enemies if they stealth you will have no good idea of exactly where they are so landing a barrage+barrage would be pure luck.

I understand that it is very annoying and probally somewhat demoralizing to get yanked around and possibly bursted if you arent ready or quick enough. But that is no reason to call for nerfs or say things are Overpowered.
We have a single target pull that needs LoS to work and any elevation in the terrain can effect how the pull works, as opposed to certain other skills that can grp pull ppl they cant even see up and over ledges.

@OP
PPL missed the point because it seemed like you presenting a control build than complaining that it didnt do enough dmg.
I understood your point only because I completely agree with you and its something that has been on my mind since the game released.
A few more tests would have cleared it up, using different combonations of are vast supply of CC skills.

Like Amadeus said the root of the whole problem stems from our Kits.
We get a damage tax on our Weapons to offset the versatility of being able to switch kits every 1 sec. Meaning if our damage with weapons was comparable to other professions than our ability to switch to kits and back so quickly would give us a great advantage over those professions.
So this sounds fair by itself but it leaves all the Engineers who want to be Gadgeteers, Turreteers or Elixirholics in a much weaker state.
So to run a build without Kits you basically have to take a secondary damage trait like Static Discharge or Pee-filled Elixirs to make up for the great loss of DPS by not having a kit.

So your point that with all of our CC we lack the damage to make the CC worth it is a valid one. Its just the problem stems more from our kits not because we have so much CC.
Which is also why the class is so hard to balance, if they want to make any single thing stronger like our MH weapons, gadgets or turrets they will have to also consider how stong they will be if ran along with Kits.

So every burlap sack kit also has a little red flag on it.
At the very least can these flags be different colors for different kits.
Red = Grenades
Green = EG
Yellow = TK
etc.

Just the tiniest bit of variety maybe!?

Wait till they add the next round of legendaries.
I really don’t see how it could be anything other than a kitten looking shotgun.

A: (heh dont know how to do the answer thing)
Throw Mine
PBR – Personal Battering Ram
Slick Shoes
Rocket Boots
Utility Goggles

Mosharn.8357:

I know how it works. I haz eng in spvp sir. With the pull skill and then to the combo. The pull ends you up right by the engineers feet and thats when the switch to gernades then the gernade barrage pwn yah.

The pull doesnt always put them right at your feet, most times they are either in front of you or way in front of you.
The pull takes like 1 1/2 secs to cast, you can see it and it can be avoided by a dodge or stability or lag or alterations in the terrain or elevation or pulling Mesmers and you end up jerking back just as far as them.
After you manage to pull them the only instant attack is the barrage from KR, so a dodge or stunbreak or block or invulnerable can avoid the TB Barrage which has a cast time.

So our instadown actually takes close to 3 seconds to pull off the way you describe.
A Thief can press one macro key from up 1200 range a do upwards of 20k damage.
You also have to be Full GC for it to be an instadown on non-GC, otherwise its just a hard hitting nuke which our profession fully deserves.

You were hit by a Full GC 100nade Engineer who was more than likely fully traited for damage, so you were the reward for his risk. Just learn from it instead of trying to bring things down so they are easier for you.

waka.9826:

Dirame.8521:

waka.9826:

oh and PBR is absolute trash. It’s basically a smaller ranged ridiculously high cool down overcharged shot.

Oh dude, PBR doesn’t CC you and with the right combo, it’s amazingly fun.

But is it worth the 45 second cool down? Nope.

PBR can be a nice little skill to use.
It is knockback and knockdown, and can be a nice suprise for ppl who think your knockbacks are done after Overcharged shot.
2 problems I have are:

The cooldowns are way too long
and
Gadgets only really work with Power/SD builds which really only work with the Rifle.

If they ever manage to make Pistols a better damage option without requiring HGH than a P/P Gadget build would be a pretty sweet setup and PBR would very nicely fill the knockback void left by ditching Rifle.

Mosharn.8357:

yeah i mean i totaly didnt post this a month ago when it started happening i must be posting super quick to have it nerfed.

I do know about the other class insta killlers but 360 aoe insta kill? Warriors have to use bulls rush then frenzy then HB then a whirl and maybe a evi. Mesmers gotta do their shatters and stuff then the finish combo. Thieves got the backstab. Eles got their thing going, guards got no insta kill, Idk too much on necro dps. But as you can see all these require multiple skills to be used to do the combo except for the thief because they only need to do 3. Eng has the pull and switch to gernade kit and maybe use the F2 gernade barrage and GG.

The swap to the gernade kit does bout 6-7k dmg. Just switchin i mean its not even a real attack its a trait that does 7k dmg like steal with mug for thief.

@Sinanju: This thread wasnt on thieves it was on engineers. Everyone knows about thieves.

As for the rifle there’s many rifle burst builds.

Since you aren’t understanding the only advice I can give you is to actually try and play 100nades and see how effective it is. You talk as if it is harder to pull off other professions instabursts than it is to get a barrage+barrage, which just tells me you don’t fully get how the barrage+barrage works.

It is not a 360 AOE instakill, in fact being AoE is actually a hinderance to the burst because you can get rather unlucky and miss with some of your grenades. The KR Barrage you get from switching to the kit randomly flys out around you, sometimes in a big spread, sometimes in a small grp, that is why you have to actually be inside the enemy player, *not just near them, but actually right ontop of them." The ironic thing is in the Engineers search for a single-target nuke the best option was our long range AoE. Also since the Toolbelt Barrage has a cast time you can be interrupted.

This all makes it much different than other professions bursts which are mostly instacast skills. That is why the Thief burst is actually a bunch of OP BS that needs to be nerfed, all the skills the Thief needs to do 20k dmg are instacast, so I gaurantee you the majority of the ones that gank ppl that way are simply using a macro command. They are no different than Rogues.

I understand your intention wasn’t to be a troll, but calling for nerfs because you got caught by something you don’t understand isn’t going to net you good feedback. Especially when it is against the least played profession of the game.

This shows perfectly the downfall of having kits.
We were given kits to replace our secondary weapons, kits have a 1 sec swap timer giving us an advantage over just 2 weapon sets.
Because of this both our kits and primary weapons are made weaker.
Because of this any build that does not have kits is kitten from the start.
Because of this Engineers are forced to use traits to compensate for lack of damage.
Because of this Engineers have to work much harder and unconventionally to get equal damage output as other professions.
Because of this Engineers are a much more support focused profession, think about all the CC we have, in the OPs example of his 1v1 fights are proof, if those were not 1v1 the enemy would have been burned down by his teammates. That is where the Engineer excells, grabbing enemys, burning their escape CDs, then CC’ing them to be demolished by better damaging professions.
Because of this Anet does not know how to balance the profession because if you give a support heavy class too much damage potential they will eventually figure out how to just support themselves while killing ppl. Once again like the OP’s example, just think if he could do higher damage with Mine, Blunderbuss and OS! He would have caught someone with net shot then bounced them around for 2 seconds before they die with really no option to counter, not even macro theives can do that.

None of the Engineer’s other skills have as much effect on how the profession is shaped than Kits do. Because we have a 1 sec access to a new skill bar every other non-kit skill we have will suffer due to this option.

Bump.

sidenote: Automatic Elixir S will cancel your Tornado for from Elixir X, so if you get the Tornado you can attempt to charge into a zerg to create some chaos before your own zerg hits them and when you get focused with confusion you will just go Tiny and you can run out of the zerg to safety, all the while you prolly tagged every enemy for loot.

Works best with races that are not Asura because of the camera bug

Nades have a cast time and travel time.
For the burst to work you have to be inside the enemy character.
This means they almost have to be CC’d.
Every skill you have that can break CC can avoid this burst.

You are a Troll!

Dev playing his favorite profession gets instadowned by a macro Thief.

Dev. " eh That seemed to be a fair, they are Assassins tht can almost always escape from an encounter, its balanced tht they can have a 20k instaburst. (meaning no casttime)

Dev playing his favorite profession almost downs an Elementist only to have them use their downed ability to run back inside a keep and heal.

Dev “That seems fair, Ele’s DO have all those other near invincible ground covering skills, why not also have one of the most useful downed skills in the game”

Dev playing his favorite profession gets 15 stacks of confusion in 2 seconds from a Mesmer.

Dev “That seems fair for the single essential WvW profession to also have such easy access to the absurdly hard hitting condition”

Dev playing his favorite profession gets downed while trying to rez his buddy even though he was laying right where an Engineer is tossing his slow moving nades"

Dev “WTF that kitten needs to be NERFED, Nades shouldn’t hit that hard even with a GM Trait, I don’t care if they need to be ground targetted and I was just standing still, drop that kitten by 30%”

Dev playing his favorite profession gets pulled prybarred then punted into an enemy zerg, pops his stunbreak only to getted netted and PBR’d back into the zerg which quickly stomps him.

Dev “Thats it, that was all that stupid Engineers fault, what BS he only did a few 1000 dmg to me but it was HIS fault that I died. Everyone stop working on the Engineer they are annoying, and add in some self-stuns to their skills and nerf the way food works with them and lets also put a ICD on their stupid Kit Refinement skill, who said they can have a burst anyways, and when you are done with that get started on a ICD for the Static Discharge that is also a bunch of bull. We gave them kittenty turrets, broken kits, non-working Traits and stipped their Heavy Armor for a reason, So that I could get some kills with my favorite profession, My Warrior!!!”

Bumping.
ANet you WILL fix this camera bug.
Quit being a bunch of kittens trying to balance kits because a few ppl figured out how to get some wierd unconventional burst combo out of the jumble mess of skills and traits you have given us.
Just fix the kitten camera bug for our most usefull stun breaker, that when compared to other professions escape-stun breakers isnt even that great.

sidenote:
Rocket Boots – 900 range stunbreak escape, also knocks you down allowing for you enemys to “reclose” that 900 range and if you happen to have stability when you hit it nothing will happen. So just hope a Guardian doesnt “help” you right when you need to escape.
Elixir S – last 3 secs, resets your skills so you have to re-equip a kit and with the camera bug limits the distance you can cover.
Both interupt your skills.

Endure Pain – last 5 secs, no need for annoying camera bugs or loss of skills.
Judges Intervention – 1200 range stunbreak escape. No self-stun.
Infiltrator’s Signet – 900 range stunbreak escape. No self-stun.
Shadowstep – 1200 range stunbreak escape. No self-stun.
Lightning Flash – 900 range stunbreak escape. No self-stun or interupt.
Mist Form – without the camera bug we might actually have a 1up on this one, however it does seem like an ele in mist form can cover more ground than tiny engineer.
Blink – up to 1200 range stunbreak escape- No self-stun.
Decoy – Stealth 3s(+drop targetting) create a clone and can even bypass revealed.
Necrotic Traversal – possible 1200 range stunbreak escape. No self-stun.

Yes its all situational but to me it just seems like alot of Engineer skills having an underlying weakness or downside to them.
I guess its there to “balance” against our TB skills?
or because Rocket Boots also has some damage?
or because Elixir S allows you to re-equip your kit and get in a single invulnerable hit?
or maybe because orginally we were supposed to be a Heavy class and most of our skills are balanced around that and almost a year later Anet has yet to figure out how to truly convert us to a proper medium armor close range fighter.

Or maybe everything is fine and I am just complaining while I wait for the godawful WvW queue.
Either way FIX THE kitten kittenING CAMERA BUG!

If I were you I would go about collecting the general stuff you need for Legendaries, save it and wait for them to release new ones.

IF you really just have to have one now, then I would say the Shield, the pages turn so thats kinda kewl.

The Mortar is a Turret so it should act like a Turret.
I would be happy if they changed it so you can place the Mortar and than it just fires on your location for a set period of time in a firing sequence of 1-2,1-3,1-4,1-5.

I think Engineers have enough support options, we need some better personal assistance.

Yup this needs to be changed to a Rocket Launcher or Grenade lobber.
Or a portable backpack mortar kit with stability and movement reduction.

Bump.
Bump.
Bump.

sidenote: When pulling enemies with Magnet you might notice that sometimes enemies will go flying straight up in the air. If you activate a skill like PBR or Overcharged Shot then jump right afterwards you will do the skill in the air. If you can connect with the flying enemy you will send them flopping through the air like a flopping fish. Or if you have Rocket Boots and use the TB Skill you will shoot up and cartwheel kick them in the face. Both are fun.

^ As I understand it swiftness never stacks in speed.
So while you are in combat Power Shoes will give you 25% xtra speed.
If you gain swiftness it will be increased to 33%.
This is all after the In-combat speed decrease.

The only skill that will give you faster speed than swiftness is Super Speed TB skill from Slick Shoes. This will double your original in-combat speed which will be faster than using swiftness in-combat.
Super Speed does not double the speed you have with Power Shoes, so using Power Shoes + Super Speed in-combat will not increase the speed of Super Speed.

So if you can keep swiftness up in-combat easily than Power Shoes will be a waste. If you have no reliable way to stack swiftness than Power Shoes can help while you are fighting.

note: All the rules change when out-of-combat and you can only gain 33% speed increase, so Swiftness and Super Speed will be the same speed.

nakoda.4213:

what about a 1 sec cripple within 100 range? (ie, the panic of being coated in liquid sin forgiveness)

I have always thought FT needed something like this.
Not so much more dmg but more intimidation, we need something that says “Don’t Stand in my Fire.”
I think applying a 1sec cripple each tick would be perfect, given the shorter range of FT and skills revolving around close to melee range we should be able to lock down enemies with the FT.
FT was originally supposed to be a chase down weapon but they ruined it, this would give it some of its old flavor back.

Since you have self-regulating defenses I would actually suggest Elixir X.
If you are going to be diving into a attacking zerg you will no doubt be right in the thick of their AOE so your Turrets will immediatily downed and at the same time so anyone that can avoid the knowback will avoid all the knockbacks.

So I think dropping APT for another dmg increase Trait and picking up Elixir X could add alot of fun to the build.

Basically after you jump down and land your barrages and BEFORE Automated Elixir S kicks in drink your Elixir X:
-If you get Tornado just try and dodge around and hope you don’t get CC’d with Confusion. Even if you do though Automated Elixir S will kick in and cancel your Tornado and you can escape in Tiny form and/or drop some bombs.
-If you get Brute form you should actually rejoice in you luck that you got a very underrated form at the perfect time. Brute form gives you crazy survivabilty, Ive been able to Repair Gates while 20+ ppl attack it and they still only get me down half way while in Brute. You can also Stomp and Res with Brute very easily so you can get a spike or rez someone who maybe didnt quite get in the door.

The way I usually run is when I am ikittenerg and attacking/defending a keep or higher I have Elixir X slotted. Its great for when zergs rush in because they are more concerned with following the leader you can harass them pretty well.
If I am roaming or running imbetween to points solo or small group then I slot Supply Crate.

note to Engies: being able to so easily switch skills out-of-combat is more a benefit to us than it is to most other professions.

^ I think most ppl will be satisfied with an auto-attack in the sense that you press the key once and it auto-attacks on your ground target untill you cancel it.

This shouldn’t come with any damage reduction at all since it doesnt really require more skill to hit a key once or to constantly mash a key over and over.

Now if ppl want to be able to target an enemy and have the grenades automatically fly at them, then I have to say Nah.
And in that case Orion the Cursed is absolutly right, that would almost certainly come with a damage reduction. Because it would also have to come with an increase to Grenade travel speed of Skill #1 otherwise you would always miss moving targets. Thats why right now you don’t aim right ontop of a strafing enemy you aim infront of them.

I wish I could apply Dye to my kits.
Then they wouldn’t bother me at all.
Even looking at the pack its seems it is perfectly set up to to have a 2-3 spot color scheme, 2 bleh brown tones and the red flag thing.

But I guess if they did tht the Mesmers would want to dye their clones and Rangers their pets.

Which somes pretty good too though.

No more damage is really needed. It is not really a damage kit, it is a support/utility kit.
At least not enough to make it equal to grenade kit.

How bout a Trait that has a chance to cause Flame Jet to apply a 1 sec cripple on each hit.
That would be nice and fitting.
Now by burning ppl you are also forcing them to use dodges or cleanses.
And it would make it less appealing for ppl to just stand in your fire.

Bump.
Fix it and I will stop bumping.

sidenote: I have noticed that my Overcharge Shot has being receiving the 3 sec “facing wrong direction” CD even when I am looking right at my target. It only seems to happen when I try to do my pull+dodge roll past and OS punt back into my zerg, Instead I pull them dodge past them then stare at them blankly for a second wondering WTF.

I don’t have a Sylvari character but this sounds like a very nice build specifically centered around them which I think is awesome.

You seem to have a very good handle of your playstyle so I can’t really think of any suggestions.
You could try switching deployable turrets and maybe coated bullets for Accelerant-Packed Turrets, which is really nice when paired with Healing Turret+Detonate Healing.
But since you also have the Seed Turrets I don’t know if it would be worth it to lose the other 2 Traits.

Nice Build.

Sporadicus.1028:

I agree that Gadgets could be morphed into the Engineer version of signets. But I think devs didn’t want Engineers to have anything relating to signets (the reason is . . . I dunno).

I like the ideas you folks are suggesting. Keep it up!

I think the problem with having signets is we would have a tiny edge over the enemy in that we would have two activation skills and a passive skill related to the utility skill.

Developers would probably nerf either the toolbelt skill or the activation skill of the gadget in order to put a permanent bonus on that skill. That’s probably going to be the way the devs will think about this idea.

^ I agree.
Thats why I think the best way to go is a Trait.
Then the balance is based of the Trait point requirement rather than the actual skills.

But then again you so right about the way devs think that it reminds me that they seem to have tried to balance certain kits based on certain Kit Refinement skills without really taking into account the Trait cost.
So…..darn I guess

I think alot of our taxes and counterbalancing was based around wearing Heavy Armor.
I think that is why most of our skills have interuptable cast times instead of instant cast.
I think that is why alot of our skills self-CC.
And of course the lower damage on most our skills.

Alot of our traits seemed to be centered around tanking and being in the middle of battle but because of our lesser armor they are more used for escaping and keeping distance.

Maybe one day the will hit us the right way with the balance hammer.
I won’t care that much in an hour though since Simcity will be my new home.

Well that is a pretty kitten good observation.
I think you hit it on the head.

It seems the Engineer is lacking most because it never had clear defined goal of what they wanted the profession to be. It was more of a add something, test a bit and adjust and some of the skills seem like they were just tacked on right at the last minute.

I love the Engineer and it is my favorite profession to play with because I have the most fun. But I am still hoping that one day the Dev’s Luv Scope will focus in on the profession and give it a much need revision.

The button mashing is very annoying.
I personally wouldn’t want a normal auto-attack for #1.
I would rather the skill be a channeled skill that just throws out nades while you hold it down.

Or if I could change the game anyway that I wanted I would make it so equipping kits changes your #2-5 skills normally but the number one skill is a combination of your kit and weapon. Like a Weapon attachment.

In the case of Grenade kit with Rifle/Pistol the #1 skill would be more like a gun mounted grenade launcher attack that shot out a single more dmging grenade at the target.

But ya…..Anet did okay too I guess.

Seetoo.9316:

Seetoo

I clipped all of your little BS responses. If you are just gonna to take single lines from ppls posts to counter them out of context then I wont waste as much time typing.
Politician.

You have proven nothing more than on paper Nades have higher damage than FT.
Then you disregard every comment someone makes about how they like and use the FT very effectivly.

You do nothing to back up your claim, because your claim is that the FT isn’t worth taking ever. You cant back this up because you are just utterly wrong. It is just your opinion, most likely built of being frustrated with something in the game that you don’t like.

I give examples to show how broad the statements you make are and you seem to get confused that I am changing the subject.

My claim is that the FT is perfectly viable and useful kit to use in PvE and some WvW situations. I know this is true for myself because like I said I have actually played with it for a long time.

If you want play D&D GW2 on a piece of paper and a calculator that is fine. But don’t try to claim skills are useless because you still play like its World of Warcraft.

That is it, reply and try and prove the FT is the utter garbage you claim it is, I wont check because I know you don’t have anything.

I would also changed the name of this Topic to
“The complaints about FT are still not worth a Forum Thread”

I think Gadget Refinment trait in Inventions or Tools would fit perfect.
The trait would just add passive effects to Gadgets while equipped.

The way Anet seems to balance things, if they were to give gadgets “free” passives I think they would suck royally, so I would rather have effects equal to Kit Refinement at the cost of a Trait.

Seetoo.9316:

Er, no. By my logic everyone defending FT should stop so anet doesn’t get the justification to leave the crappy stuff at their crappy levels.

I’ve already shown how nades do more hits per sec and more damage per hits. How exacly does FT out tag nades with its lower damage lower hits per sec and lower cleave?

Because it hits faster and more ppl more frequently.
Thats untraited meaning you can run any build you want and than whip out your FT when you are gonna run through a zerg. Nades need to be GM traited to be as effective as you keep claiming.

You haven’t shown anything besides you like to do more math than you do playing the game. You haven’t shown that in all situations Grenades can out DPS FT, I see no video of you taking down different grps of mobs with both kits and showing the times.
You are theorycrafting with damage numbers in a game that has multiple factors that can alter those numbers.

You could make the same arguement that the Rifle is better damage than P/S so then again by your logic P/S is useless.

You are just another person who doesn’t like the way something is so you complain about it on the forums in hopes that a Dev will read it and change it to your liking. Then you lash out and argue with anyone who disagrees or simply has a different opinion because you are afraid that a Dev will see their post and decide not to change things.

But hey I am all for Anet making the FT do more damage I don’t think anyone would complain about that.

I would just warn ppl to not listen to the overexaggerated complaints that alot of ppl have towards the FT and say try it out for yourself, it is Fun.

Seetoo.9316:

But I’m not writing it off as “useless” because it is “not fun”. I’m writing it off as “useless” because it is “mathematically inferior” to everything else we have. That’s pretty much why I’ve been using math.

I’ll quote JohnDied for something he said that shared my sentiments.

The reason why engineers bash the flamethrower is because we can’t depend on it to do anything better than another weapon, we consider it a waste of development time.

The reason why engineers defend the flamethrower is because it “looks cool” (my edit “feels fun”)…

Great

By your logic everyone should just play the profession and build that is mathematically superior to all the others? And all the others are useless!?

This isn’t WoW your math doesn’t mean as much here and FT isn’t always inferior to nades and bombs. If you are running in a good zerg in WvW facepalming other zergs you can tag way more enemies than you could with nades because of the throw+travel time along with skill lag. Now that they lowered the amount you need to dmg ppl to tag them for loot and the fact that you are taking ppl down as a large grp most likely with might stacks means the FT lower dmg doesn’t really matter, But its faster hit rate and ability to tag multiple targets while strafing does and its done without spamming, PLUS having a blind and knockback is pretty useful to interupt casters along with our nice new Flame Blast.

So my “mathematically inferior” Kit nets me alot more loot bags than the Nade spammers and the bomb divers can have fun trying to stay close enough to ppl to hit them with their explosions.

I agree if you want to say that the FT damage just isn’t enough to satisfy bursty players.
But calling the Kit useless is just an injustice to new players trying to learn and get excited about the profession.
It is also just completely false.
And Misinformation!

Seetoo.9316:

It is also misleading to omit saying that hitting more than 3 will lower your “per target” dps. On average you will hit 3 targets for 10 hits each, 5 targets for 6 hits each, 6 targets for 5 hits each, 10 targets for 3 hits each. You will never hit on average 5 targets for 10 hits each.

It’s not really misleading because I am not making arguement for damage. I know and said that the FT will do less damage than Nades and Bombs I was just making the point that its misleading to say the FT skill #1 can only hit 3mobs.
See once again you are just doing math to prove a point.
I’ve played with the FT for months, all through the miss miss miss obstructed obstructed obstructed up till now when I still use it in PvE.
Now the missing is semi-corrected I almost never get obstructed unless I am actually obstructed and Flame Blast can detonate. (and hit 5 targets btw)
If you are trying to claim that if you stayed in Grenade or Bomb kit and attacked a group of golems with auto-attack you would kill them faster then if you did it with FT, then I totally agree with you.
But there is alot more to the game than just seeing the highest numbers all the time.

Seetoo.9316:

That is a QoL issue that has its work around. Nader can spend 10pts for kit refinement for a 20sec cd burst cycle (2, 4, tool belt, KR) instead of mindlessly spamming 1. Bombers can still strafe quite easily with mobs behind them, or simply lay down a pulsing blind (still helps even after the nerf). With the FT you’ll be fighting longer (about at most 2x as long as you have too).

Yes that is true if you are using nades for the 100nade burst than you spamming wont be a problem. But back to what you were actually saying in the Topic about how much Nades out DPS FT, yeah as long as you spam them.
This is just a matter of playstyle whats easy/fun for some ppl isnt easy/fun for others. I personally think Bombkit is the most boring kit we have, useful yes, but just boring and stupid looking.

I also never really stay in a single kit long enough to notice a huge difference in how long it takes me to take down mob groups. Its not really about how much damage the kit can do on its own its about how well you can use it with your other skills.
And I personally love the way FT synergizes with my weapons and its one of the funnest kits I’ve played with and they have recently made it even better.

If its not fun for you then fine but don’t try and write it off as useless, because it is far from it.

Daily bump.

I miss that very short period after the Halloween patch where the max camera distance was extended, sigh that made nade throwing sooooo much easier.

sidenote: there are certain places on walls where you can actually throw nades without having to jump on the ledge. It is about the same distance from the wall as the veteran archers stand and you can rly only throw within a certain distance. But it will end up looking like you are just chucking nades right through the top of the wall.

If it is a single target the target is still dead so any extra hits arent really lost either way.

I get what you are saying and you are absolutly right when it comes to nades outdamaging FT. I don’t think anyone is trying to argue against that.
But you could also say Nades out damage Toolkit or Elixir Gun but that doesn’t mean those kits aren’t usefull.

The OP Topic is Flamethrower isn’t worth a slot.
Meaning the arguement is that FT is SO bad that its never worth taking over Nades or Bombs or I guess anything else. There is alot of ppl who disagree with that. Can you honostly say that the FT is SO bad that its never worth taking?
Alot of ppl say the Engineer is so bad its not worth playing.
But there are alot of us Engineers who would beg to differ.

Yes ppl seem to have a hard time grasping that the FT only hits 3 targets compared to 5 like Nades and Bombs. But it is also misleading to say that FT only hits 3 targets because it can hit 3 per pulse for 10 pulses. So if you have a grp of 5 mobs and you strafe them you will damage all 5 multilble times during a single Flame Jet. I am guessing that is the reason its only 3 per, if it were 5 you could tag a large amount of ppl very easily.

Lets not forget that Nades need to be button mashed to keep up sustained damage.
That is one of the main reasons I run with FT for mob grinding, I get sick of having to strafe+aim+button mash and imo bombkit requires you to be a little too close for aa.

Elixir S and 25% is a great way to bait enemies into your turret trap because they think they have you beat, then you invulnerable and they are right in the middle of your Tin buddies.

Mesmers are a good profession to drop you supply crate right ontop of because thier clones will shatter and kill the turrets causing the detonates, so if you time it right they will just help kill themselves.
Thieves like your turrets because they can free stealth off of them so they are another good target for Supply Crate.

Thumper Turret and Flame Turret are the only two I would suggest putting close together because you can use the blast finisher from thumper to combo the Flame Turret Smoke Field.
Really any combo of Turret can work its just all about placement and trying to force your enemy to second guess about which to take down, you or the turrets. The most damage you will get from Turrets will be from the detonate so trying to wittle down opponants to 30% or so then getting a mulitple detonate on them is a good chance to actually burn them down.

The Toolkit is a tricky kit to use and some advice if you want to give it another go would be to only switch to it for its specific utility skills.
So if a ranged enemy is just hitting your turrets from far away pull them in and use box of nails to CC them within turret range.
If they try to run away pull them back.
If they are attacking your Turrets instead of you pull them away and smack them.
Not sure why the Gear Shield isn’t working for you but I think you have to be careful not to cancel the animation because the block effect wont continue like static shield.
And a tip on pulling, since it is so noticable I would suggest trying a “headfake” pull, start the pull animation and if you see them dodge hit esc really quick and you can cancel the pull and just receive the 3 sec activation penalty.

The funnest thing I found to do with Turrets is use the TB skills and your weapon for the opening of the fight untill they burn a dodge or two and maybe even a stunbreaker, place the Flame/Net, Healing and Thumper close together then try to pull of this combo:
Pull
Prybar
Overcharged Shot or Shield Knock back into your Turret Clump, OS works better because you can aim and it knocks them down as well otherwise you might need to net them.
Detonate Turrets

That should finish them and leave them wondering WTF happened.
Remember an advantage of the Engineer is you never really know what they are gonna do untill they do it, unlike when you see the glowing D/D ele you know exactly what is coming. Even if you don’t run nades CC someone and then run right at then and most likely they will blow a stunbreaker to avoid the 100nade burst you had no intention of doing.

Seetoo.9316:

And misinformation man’s sidekick takes his 1st victim.

Nades calc hit or miss when they explode, not when they are thrown. Let’s assume nades can only hit 3. In a cluster of 30, you only hit 3 per explosion (3/30). When 1 dies while a grenade is already in flight, there are only 29 targets before said grenade explodes. When said grenade does explode it takes 3 targets out of 29 left alive in the blast radius. No loss of dps due to a target dying.

Where do these people even get these?

I don’t think you considered exactly the point he was trying to make. Either way you can try to be less condescending to ppl.

I don’t really get how ppl are comparing FT to nades or bombs in the sense that FT can only hit 3 targets and nades/bombs can hit 5.

The difference is that when you throw a cluster of nades it will spread out between 5 targets and the damage is done. if a mob had 1HP and you hit them for 1k than 999dmg goes into nothingness. Because nades are a burst attack.

If a mob dies in the middle of a Flame Jet the rest of the attack carries over to the next mob. Because FT is a pulse attack, so each pulse of the FT can hit up to 3 mobs, so if you were to strafe a group of 9 mobs you could techinically hit all of them with one Flame Jet rotation.

I constantly kite groups of mobs when I am grinding and I have done it with every possible combination since beta. Yes the FT is lower damage kit than Nades or Bombs but Nades/Bombs also require you to spend 30 points in explosions for them to really be as usefull as everyone claims they are. I can pick up the FT with ANY build I am running and it helps put consistant damage on grps of mobs while giving me some escape utilities and a combo field.
It is not a PvP burst weapon.
It is no longer a great defensive bunker weapon.
It is an AoE utility kit that has been slowly improved over the last few patches.
It also works very well with all weapon combinations ( all 3 of them )

MOST of all FT is FUN.
It reminds me of playing the old Top down double-joysick shooters like Smash TV where you corral a blob of mobs and burn them all down.
If it is not fun for you than don’t use it.
If you are somehow gonna complain that not all of our kits are equally as damaging when compared to eachother and every other skill in the game than I feel you are in for nothing more than dissapointment.

Supply crate does not make your other Turrets vanish.
I don’t have a Sylvari so I can’t say how useful that tactic would be.
But I will say that Turrets as an Off-tank or alternate form of DPS won’t really work to well with the state they are in now.
Turrets are much more about the utility you can get from the Overcharges and the Knockback from the Trait Accelerant Packed Turrets.

So in short laying downing your turrets then using “Take Root” will most likely just net you a nice view of your turrets getting burned down in a few seconds.
It could be a fun tactic to use on certain mobs when farming though.

The Engineer isn’t exactly broken its just all about thinking outside the box.

bump

I will keep bumping this till it is fixed.
Don’t test me.
I will bump it raw if I have to.

sidenote: I’ve noticed sometimes it seems like I die before Tiny mode has ended and also sometimes the Trait Elixir S @ 25% seems to kick in but only last a second before I go down. Has anyone else noticed this or could it just be a lag issue?

Sporadicus.1028:

If you have the tools trait line maxed out, then it reduces the tool belt skill for slick shoes considerably. However, there have been reports that people haven’t seen the actual 200% speed buff isn’t any faster than swiftness.

If that gets fixed, then you could use this for quicker travel in addition to speedy kits!

Yeah I do wish that was the case but with Slick Shoes TB skill Super Speed its actually just a badly worded Tooltip.
Super Speed gives you double speed while you are in combat, which is faster than swiftness in combat.

out of combat nothing makes your run speed faster than what swiftness does.

waka.9826:

Or just make FT 5 as good as thieves smoke field.

Nah between the two I would rather have the blind+stunbreaker.
That would be better than the thieves smoke field.

^ Yes I’ve always thought there should be a Kit Refinement Flavored skill for Gadgets and even Turrets.

I think it would be a very easy way to improve on areas where Gadgets and Turrets are lacking without having to completetly change them around. It just makes it so that if you invest in Gadgets or Turrets you will get more out of them the same way Kit Refinement does for Kits.

Your suggestions look good, I personally would rather have only the Utility skills affected and no the TB ones so that maybe the effects would be better rather than 2 watered down ones.
Maybe using PBR grants Stability – that seems to fit.
Slick Shoes- could be immune to soft CC like cripple/frost etc.
Rocket Boots- how bout not falling on your face.
Goggles- mark target for yourself only, mark can see through stealth and is not removed from cloning. I wish
Mine- Thowing mine will also produce 2 dummy mines.

note- I dont mean these as passive effects but on activate ones.

FT is the Kit that needs the Stunbreaker.

FT skill #5 should have Stunbreaker added.
imo 3 birds with 1 stone.
A kit gets a Stunbreaker.
The lame placeholder FT skill is now very useful.
The FT’s utility now better makes up for its lesser damage.

Smoke Bomb, Acid Bomb – /laugh
Smoke Bomb, Acid Bomb – /laugh
Smoke Bomb, Acid Bomb – /laugh
Smoke Bomb, Acid Bomb – /laugh

Nice Turret Build.
Also nice to see someone commenting on how they made something work for them rather than just complaining about how bad it is.

I would suggest dropping Coated bullets, either for another Firearms Trait or drop 5-10 points and put it into Alchemy instead for Elixir B at 75% and/or Elixir S at 25%.

I know you are going for an all Turrets type build but maybe dropping one for Toolkit could be helpful.
Even un-traited the TK does decent healing to Turrets so you could undo some splash damage they might recieve or at least keep them alive long enough to land a detonate.
The TK also has another block and like Aristio pointed out if they do focus your Turrets you can use Box of Nails and Pull+Prybar to yank them towards you and away from them.

If you are mostly looking to Duel 1v1 then unless you are fighting single ppl right after another it is safe to say that your Elite will be used in every fight. So with the Turrets from you Elite, which are also Accelerant-Packed I someone could easily drop a Turret for TK if you wanted a little bit of a wild card incase your Turrets get bursted down.

Otherwise you have the right idea on how to use Turrets, keep them alive long enough to use the overcharge all the while harassing the enemy. Then bait them to the Turrets so you can land the detonates. Keep Healing Turret close to the others to increase your chances of hitting the Combo Field.

Overcharge Shot to everyone that gets near me.
Again and again and again and again.

This is just for new players or maybe those few who haven’t realized this yet.

When out of combat you can use your TB skills then switch your utility skills since the TB skills don’t put the utilities on CD and TB skills also do not share a CD.

So if you are running somewhere and know you are about to fight you can switch your utility skills really quick and activate the TB skills then switch back before you actually engage in the fight.

So if you are HgH you could switch to the Elixirs you don’t use, Toss for the stack of might then switch back.
FT you can switch to and activate IA then switch back because IA last like 45 secs.
You can switch to Slick Shoes while running around if you don’t have permaswiftness build and use Super Speed.
If you are getting to a battle and see downed friendlies but like Elixir S instead of R you can switch to R and toss the res field than switch back.

I know its not really anything super useful or exciting but kinda a nice trick for prebattle planning.

note: Be carefull not to get pulled into combat with skills that you don’t like though. I only ever use this trick in PvE but if you are quick enough in WvW you can stack yourself up a little while the zerg stacks might.