Guild Wars 2

Terrahero.9358:

25pts Alchemy: Minor trait.
Gives 1% more damage for every boon.

25pt Water: Minor trait (Elementalist)
Give 2% more damage for every boon.

Straigth up compareable traits, yet Elementalist’s is twice as strong.

That’s kind of subjective. I am not well versed in ele skills. I would ask can the ele apply as many different TYPES of boons as the engineer? Engineers can gain almost every boon in the game. Several of them can easily become perma. Does the ele have the same ability or access to as wide of a range?

Granted it would take us 6 boons to make up for 3 ele boons which is a pretty big disparity.

Question 2: Does 2 stacks of Might (or any boon) count as two boons or as one boon concerning that trait.

Food for thought.

Kit Refinement
Speedy Kits
Coated Bullets

Great vid, thanks for sharing. Groovy music!

Illusions are bound to their target and ONLY their target. They only have 1 attack and you only have one of four commands you can give them (shatters).

Necro minions can attack different targets at will. It’s nearly impossible for you to direct individual ones to separate targets if you wanted to. Which is why I think they need a pet bar with your summoned minions listed and a few basic commands: attack, stay, passive, and un-summon.

Remember you can pick up turrets to reduce their CD by 25%. They’re still a lengthy CD though aside from healing turret.

One of the best OP posts I’ve seen in weeks. Thank you!

Swiftness isn’t the point of spectral walk (it’s the gravy..99% of all WvW’ers are going to have swiftness anyway. ). The point is refilling your DS bar while you run (and take damage) allowing you to maintain your DS bar which is allowing you to live longer once your hp is low. At least for escape purposes.

I strongly suggest getting Decoy early on for 1 skill point. It can get you out of some tough scrapes.

People have a tough time with mesmers until level 40. Because up until that point you don’t have access to your master level traits. Regardless of which skill tree you invest all of them have solid master level traits.

The staff is a superb weapon and works really well with a more defensive playstyle.

1. Karma is used for a lot of stuff. You can use it to buy crafting mats (cooking mostly), crafting recipes, get components to craft a legendary weapon, and buy exotic armor at the high levels. Most players tend to hoard their karma for use at level 80. It can be a easy way to upgrade your weapons or armor on the path to 80. Some heart vendors sell some unique graphics.

2. I built my engineer with power / vitality / toughness. It really comes down to play-style though. You can aim for a tank-like built or a high damage build or anything in between.

3. Leather working is definitely useful for the engineer as you wear leather armor. Cooking is excellent for all professions. You can learn every single crafting profession in the game and max them all without losing any progress. You can only have two active crafting professions active though and it does cost money to switch between active professions (depending on level). Maxing any crafting profession from 1-400 is a guaranteed 10 levels (you gain xp based on a %).

4.
Turn on auto loot. (will deposit all items into your bags with a single keystroke)
Purchase harvesting tools asap (mining pick, axe, and sickle) to harvest all resource nodes.
You can deposit all collectables / resources directly into your bank using the small cog in your inventory’s upper right corner.

The engineer is a tough but rewarding class. Your toolbelt (F1-F4) skills will change depending on what you use in the 6-9 slots. Be sure to learn about combo fields and finishers with the gw2wiki. The engineer has access to a ton of useful combos and really will maximize your skills. The engineer requires a lot of key pressing to be at it’s best. Good luck!

AmateurGod.5403:

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Phantasmal Haste (trait): Phantasms recharge 20% faster | Trait X (needs 25 points in the Illusions tree)
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I believe that trait increases the Attack Speed of the phantasms. Not the skill cooldown for the mesmer. If you want improved casting time you’ll need 5pts only into the Illusions tree for Illusionists Celerity (20% for ALL illusion skills).

Snow Owl: My Jokes Are a Hoot
Polar Bear: Crazed Coke Fiend
Jellyfish: Raspberry
Shark: WTB Lasers

One of the best ways to learn to kill a class is to play that class. There was a pretty good youtube vid awhile back explaining all of the thief stealth options and strats if you need a decent shortcut.

Your life force pool is directly = to your hp is it not? (that’s disregarding the 30% increase through traits) If that is true, would it then be correct to say that lifeblasts damage increases with more hp?

I would be happy with the option for legendary skins for kits. Turrets would be pretty cool with legendary effects too. Right now there is almost 0 reason to aim for a legendary on an engineer as it will be hidden 90% of the time with majority of engy builds.

Keep in mind the racial heals also give you different F1 effects off of your toolbelt. The human Dwayna heal F1 is a party wide straight up heal. Pretty nice. I’m not sure about the sylvari one. In fact i’ve never even seen a Sylvari engineer.

I strongly suggest the Emberglow scepter for maximum fun. Pretty much all of the previous posts in this thread sum up my use of the scepter.

Lordryux.9785:

yea the only condition that actually kills in spvp is bleeding so the confusion stacks and everything else is really bad thier it does about half the damage it would do in WvW.. sadly idk why that is but yea. Actually now that i think about it confusion in WvW from wat ive seen can hit like 1k+. in spvp i can barely get over 500 even with full condition spec + runes x.x

A decent (7+) stack of confusion in WvW hits well over 1k. It’s more in the 3-5k range with a condition setup. Combo that with Feedback and a shortbow ranger will die so fast… The hard part is actually getting your clones/phants to the ranger(or whomever) for Cry of Frustration along with Scepter #3.

I find it handy for skipping a group past mobs in dungeons in certain situations. Namely Arah. It also gives the Mesmer a potential of 4 stealth abilities: Torch #4, Veil, Mass Invis, Decoy. Pretty handy for hiding in a Wv3 keep too.

I kinda miss the beta functionality of it though. Just a curtain of invis and nothing can see you standing behind it.

Sajuuk has it spot on. As pointed out earlier too, killing something (anything) removes the debuff, killing blow is not required either so a group can burn down a mob and as long as you helped you should be “cured” of the impending death.

Mesmer can solo almost all the PvE content. (obviously dungeons and large group events excluded) Mesmer was my first of four 80s. Mesmer did take the longest of all though. Mostly because the game was new.

EDIT: 40 is the turning point for the mesmer because you unlock your Master traits most of which are very useful.

The Prestige just needs a alternate use button once activated. Push again to cancel stealth and activate the blast. That way you don’t have to sit around for 3-4 seconds to get your blast finisher. Would be great for added utility without destroying the “balance” for the skill.

Similar to the way Temporal Curtain/Into the Void works with the Focus #4.

Pretty much every explore path for all the dungeons in the game takes around 30 minutes with a decent team. Arah being the exception.

For TA specifically it’s going to come down to how well you manage the mobs. There are quite a few high powered ones and good CC goes a long way.

The mesmer’s Blink utility also works amazingly well for avoiding/getting out of the bubble.

I thought this was going to be a vote for “Bad Romance” as our official theme song.

I agree. Our class does have some of the best animations/effects in the game.

I keep a weapon of every type I can wield on every character I make. Never know when those might come in handy. Even multiple sets of armor. Combined with hot-swapping traits you can really alter your build to plan for an encounter. Especially tedious ones like Lupi.

For attacking forts/keeps watch for the NPCs on the walls too. Players might be smart enough to step back but NPCs aren’t. Load em up with conditions and use epidemic on them. Having a small team of necros covering the walls in marks works amazingly well too. Remember you can Fear enemies off of the siege too.

Keep in mind the offhand Dagger #4 is not exactly an aoe blind. The locusts are a bounce attack. And they will transfer one condition per bounce. So the first target receives one of your conditions and the second target receives your 2nd condition..etc. I believe there is a 3 target maximum.

Ruien.9506:

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4)Put in Armor Trophies that people can see that you have done a truly challenging dungeon. These have absolutely 0 stats. They are there for others to see. They arent titles they are instantly recognized by all when you have done something not many other people can but has 0 power. The tokens for armor system of now would have worked better if they had had 0 and I mean 0 stats on them.

These are just some ideas.

I would love to see some town clothes rewards from dungeons. Devs always said cash shop items would be attainable through in-game activities. And no I don’t consider converting gold —> gems a viable method (especially with the exchange rate….)

Stobor.8041:

water > smoke > ethereal > dark > ice > fire > lightning > poison > light

This

Also: This order should be for “blast” combos. I would rearrange the order for other finishers.

Disconnected.9253:

KlebThell.6257:

An 80 Ele only has 10k hp??? How does that happen? My necro, with the only +Vit from Blood traits, has 22k.

necro has the highest base hp pool of any profession in game

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Warriors and *Necros have a base hp of 18k at level 80
Mesmers, Engineers, Rangers have a base hp of 15k hp at level 80
Thieves, Ele, and Guardian have a base hp of 13k at level 80.

*necros Death Shroud has equal hp to their effective hp, but does decay while in use.

As for combo’s I believe it was a first come first serve basis. In my opinion I believe the field with the shortest duration of time left should trigger the combo. Or maybe for whirl combos have every “spin” trigger a different combo if multiple fields are laid down.

Disregarding the fact that this topic doesn’t belong in the engy sub-forum (general…)…

I have both an 80 necro and an 80 engy (as well as mesmer + ranger) I can easily say that necro pet builds are garbage in terms of pvp. Don’t discount necros so easily. Their ability to cover an enemy team (or zerg) in conditions (not just dps conditions either) also paired with their ability to do it nonstop makes them dangerous. Sure you can cleanse a few, even all of them, but they will get reapplied without the necro missing a beat.

As for engys their options for long range solid dps are pretty limited. That doesn’t mean they’re an easy kill especially in a toe to toe fight. Both the necro and especially the engy are deep classes and require a fair amount of skill to play well. Just check out some of the youtube videos.

I don’t think any particular class mechanic needs a rework. A buff or adjustment on the other hand for some classes is needed though. The devs have done a mostly solid job of not going on hamfisted nerf sprees (Though thieves may disagree).

Some classes are easier and some are harder but the amount of player skill is too large a variable to solidly declare 1 class better or above the rest.You can easily find a youtube video of any class being played to it’s very best.

The mesmer staff WILL bounce back to the mesmer if the mesmer is the closest target. Much the same way their GS 2 attack works. The bounce range for the mesmers staff + gs throw are relatively short as well.

A full pet build also takes ALL of our utility slots. That is a pretty steep cost. It is true that mesmers have Phantasm utility skills but they are widely ignored, especially in regards to pvp situations.

I would rather jagged horrors just flat out not decay. 9/10 they’ve decayed and died before I even get to the next fight.

I loaded my necro up with a full set of carrion and it’s working pretty well. The spec is 0/30/20/20/0. I primarily use s/d // staff. I’d imagine a mix of rampager/knights would work pretty well too.

I saw the scepter the other day. Looks pretty awesome with the whole globe/cloud thing. Either Sunrise or Twlight look good, but most of the GS abilities sheath the sword in the traditional mesmer pink/purple so a bit of the effect is lost.

Mimic absorbs 1 projectile. If it’s a salvo attack like the rangers #2 longbow, you absorb ONE arrow. It might be useful if it soaked the whole attack, or did decent damage. At this point in time there is almost no reason to ever take this ability over the insanely better support options the mesmer can take (eg Feedback).

Mortar would be a lot more viable in Wv3 if the Elite Supplies trait actually increased Mortar’s range as advertised. It is useful in keep defense as it gives the warriors something to do.

I’m finding Elixir X is also somewhat handy in the uncatagorized fractal map as it gives stability which is pretty handy against those Harpy aoe knockbacks. Just be careful you don’t bullrush off the edge.

I still use Supply Crate 95%+ of the time though.

Every class has the ability to bring massive amounts of group support. You’ll find people excelling at each and every class. Those are probably the people who are swapping around utility skills, traits, and even weapons/armor. Build to adapt = built to win.

This is an interesting subject from the standpoint of the Engineer. Especially with weapons starting to appear (soon) as our kits receive no benefit from an equipped weapon. And Kits are our most viable dps option in fractals since aoe is so good in the dungeons.

Then again this ties back to the whole legendary issues and the other “after thought” style upgrade stuff the game is providing the Engineers with.

Breezed through the first 4 difficulty levels with my guildies. Then again we’re all fully exotic lvl 80s. It certainly wasn’t hard.

To answer the other half of your question: concerning armor. If you’re using a GS they scale best with Power. I tend to have 2-3 sets of armor on my mesmer at all times depending on build/traits etc. Vitality never hurts. I find toughness to be lacking unless you’re going for a full on tanky build as it’s really only useful in larger amounts. A lot of GS mesmers go for zerker gear and go full glass cannon with power/pre/cond.

As for running in SE (or any other dungeon) you need to swap out your utility skills more. And DODGE. Decoy, Null Field (or similar mantra), Mass Invis are all going to help you run a lot better than Portal, or Mirror Images.

We can trait/skill swap on the fly, and so many people don’t take advantage of it. Most groups don’t mind waiting 5 seconds for you to switch out a trait or two.

I never really paid attention to them, but now that you mention it I’ve never noticed any of them detonating.

The flamethrower can be traited to build stacking might with Juggernaut from the Pre line. It usually maintains 7-8 stacks on it’s own. You can also using the healing turret’s “detonate turret” to combo with bombs for some additional boons.

Show me another MMO where I can play a clothie that uses a greatsword with lasers and I might consider it. Now I’m waiting for my Mesmer to get a 2h Axe.

Always nice to see a Mesmer being played to it’s fullest extent. I really like your Blink/Phase Retreat combination. Great way to build up the chaos in a fight. I think maybe your best moves came from your Focus though. Using Into the Void to rip people off of you is definitely a pro move.

Good Vid! Thanks for sharing.

Gorilla or some lesser primate. Also: Manticore.

I used TU for my ranger all the way from low level to 80. Works great. Stacked with the regen signet it can become pretty powerful for your pet. Healing Spring is the better choice for some situations and is certainly more party friendly.

I have both an 80 engy and 80 ranger. I can easily say that the ranger is by far the easier class to play well. Also consider they’re getting a bit of an update at some point this month.

I had initially tried the engineer as my first alt and rerolled. I find the class goes down a lot easier once you have a better understanding of general game mechanics (especially combos).

For the OP, if this is your first MMO, go ranger.

Mass Invis can let you (& party) sneak past a huge amount of the trash in most dungeons. My Mesmer is a Sylvari so I really can’t speak to the effectiveness of the HoB.

I love using them with the bomb kit. Smoke bomb + rocket boots = You’re a good distance away and in stealth while you get back up.