Guild Wars 2

Kurow.6973:

I have a necro and a ranger, and I can easily argue with that.

Fixed? Or were you agreeing?

Fighting one non-boss mob at a time in PvE, downing with the thief goes fast with very little risk of dying. Add in another mob or two or make it a boss, the story changes.

Oh my goodness. Never EVER try a necro, engineer, or ranger. In comparison the thief is a beast!

I’m happy. Cross-region guesting wasn’t an issue for me. I’m still hoping some “unofficial PvE” servers pop up so zones aren’t a ghost towns like 80% of them are now, and we can get some good event chains going. I’m also happy that I can finally start participating in my RP group.

I cannot believe how many responses are negative on this. I guess they feel ripped off because some portion of their money spent on the game was allocated toward guesting on servers on the other side of the world. Talk about the vocal minority.

I do rather well with a power build as a necro, running solo, in small groups, and the zerg. People think I’m an easy target, but I’m a tough cookie.

Molch.2078:

And thats the point I dont understand. Thief uses utility slot, elite slot, F1, all his endurance and a bit initiative, enemy uses one stunbreaker, done. Counter’d by pressing one button.

And if your stunbreak is on cd, the previously mentioned GCwarri/BS Thief can kill you even faster.

I think it’s fair. If a thief is built so that it is 100% countered by one ability, is it fair to blame the build, or the ability?

That is freakin awesome!

Amadeus.5687:

@Eviator Well I gotta say, soaking damage up, kiting people and in general create chaos around myself is some of the most fun I have in WvsW! A lot more buttons to click on then a glass cannon Theif, and with the general simply minded player type in WvsW most people (as you see) will target you all the time, making everything a paradise for your buddies! atleast, it’s worth to try out and see if it’s fun to you!

One thing that worries me about trying it is that the thief/ves are likely going to be getting far more loot bag and badge drops than the engineer, simply because the engineer isn’t doing as much damage. And while most of my enjoyment of the game comes from the experience of it, and not the rewards, it would be nice to be appropriately rewarded for the value I would bring.

Be honest now, is this something you noticed?

I’ve got two glass cannon thief buddies. I have wondered for a week or so whether I should run my thief too or a bunker engi in WvW to soak up damage while they do the work. We’re effective as three thieves, but I wonder which I would consider more fun…

The fear/defiance change is fair, but I see your point. Personally I like our chills, our application of weakness, and that we can take a few hits. My other main is an engineer and it’s in the same boat, really. Engi’s can immobilize, cripple, and throw down a few small group heals, but it’s another profession that people will take just to fill a spot. What these professions bring to a dungeon group is simply not valued enough by the community, and it begs the question: whose fault is that?

It may be just my inexperience with the subtlties of battle but I think the engineer was playing much better than the thief. In particular the thief was doing unnecessary and inappropriate dodges in many places.

Tulisin.6945:

I’d go for level 78 exotics over 80 rares. They’re somewhere between in price, but only a couple stat points below 80 exotics instead of a tier below.

Interesting, I couldn’t find lower level exotics with the right stats on the TP, and aside from that they were still quite expensive, >1g a piece. Perhaps I should look again.

As I recently learned from another member of these forums, turrets just might be “crutch” abilities, designed to help give something easy for newcomers to use until they become proficient in more advanced and capable abilities. In other words, perhaps turrets will never be viable in PvP by design.

For a modest investment you can get level 80 rare armor and weapons with major sigils and runes, and masterwork level 80 jewelry. This will make you much more effective in dungeons (and incidentally WvW). That gear will last you until you get your CoF set, and is much preferrable over the greens you acquired in your last few levels.

1. Remove free server transfers (guilds aren’t distributing over servers, they are server hopping so they can get wins)
2. 3-day matches (so that a blowout doesn’t mean 6 days of a bad matchup)
3. The ability to deposit supply acquired from elsewhere on the map (to speed up improvements) (not cross-map) (maybe only 5 supply gets deposited to it doesn’t speed it up too much.

I have played both and my opinion is if you like to hang back in a zerg conditions are better. If you are comfortable being a little more in your face front lines, you would go power. I started off with the former then changed to the latter. Being sub-80 might factor in here too, because your survivability is different. Personally I prefer all the small numbers ticking away, but I didn’t feel like I was tagging enough because I would rarely get bag drops. If you go power you can also lay down wells at a door and hammer away on flame rams. I routinely and I believe perhaps single-handedly scare zergs away from doors. That’s when they bring in the catapults.

I go with 30/30/10/0/0 (or maybe it’s 30/20/20/0/0, I can’t remember right now) with reasonable choices like greater marks and in my case focused rituals. I use staff at range (fear to interrupt revives and stomps, chill to prevent escape) and switch to dagger/warhorn to finish the job.

Well we all know against a different matchup, perhaps the next one, things won’t be so easy an a bunch of them will go back to PvE, and we’ll get rolled. It’s the problem with week-long matchups. And AN originally wanted 2-week matchups WOW!

May I ask when this was changed? I have a video of me putting 15 seconds of stealth on my engineer 2 months ago, by using smoke bomb and 5 blast finishers. Did it in the mists. Prior to that apparently you could get much longer, but they changed something. It’s 3 seconds per combo. One combo lasted at least 10 seconds in BWE2 in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jnp1Pgj8GcM

Someone else posted this screenshot of longer stealth a month ago:

http://imgur.com/6Vxjd

So I tried it out and have learned some things. First it’s a very specialized build. It’s good for picking off unwary stragglers, but that’s about it. Outside of that I found myself stealthing away for safety often, and I certainly died more than I usually do in WvW if I over-extended.

It got me thinking “So what?” It’s definitely a troll build designed to enrage a handful of individuals, but it’s not really enough to turn the tide of a battle unless you get a bunch of thieves doing it, which is true of any profession. So other than the perma-stealth culling, you can’t cap my supply camp issue, I don’t see what the hubbub is all about, at least in WvW. The build is good at what it’s desgined for, and no other profession can pull it off in similar style, but I don’t see it as game-breaking in the grand scheme of things. Is it game-breaking in sPvP, tPvP?

SneakyErvin.3056:

Snare = cripple and chill in this game, anything that hinders movement speed. Nets are immobilizing abilities. Usually refered to as roots.

And yeah, test your rifle net and skills with cripple on some defiant bosses and see the wonders of engi CCs.

Ah, okay, thanks for the info.

SneakyErvin, you have helped me. Based upon your post I have taken it upon myself to learn about Defiant, and am now on board with engi’s awesome CC. Thanks!

You mentioned “snare”. This is not the right name for whatever it is you are referring to. Are you talking about the Net Turret?

New toons and more involvement in WvW. My engineer is parked at a rich resource node waiting to see what happens next.

Everyone here is right, except the OP. Elixirs are not support, except elixir R. Another one applys a regen sometimes. Super elixir heals best, but not enough to keep anyone alive. No one player can keep other players alive…that’s a team effort. Full support is simply not possible.

Turrets die easy and do not retain aggro. And even if they did you couldn’t keep it alive because turret repair is vastly insufficient.

Now as an engineer I feel I do enough damage in explorable dungeons with bombs or grenades, enough support with Elixir Gun, and enough control (when it works, which it usually doesn’t as noted by Anymras) with my primary weapons. I do not play high level fractals nor do I usually PUG dungeons, so I haven’t encountered the “no engineers” scenario. I don’t feel like I’m being carried, though I know I’m not the top performer on any run, either.

Heck, we as engineers can do it all! Unfortunately we only do it half-kittened.

I stopped using mantras for this exact reason, so I agree.

Kouta.4159:

Eviator.9746:

Edit: 5. I forgot about shroudstomping and shroud rezzing

How do you do those? I’ve seen them in videos, and know how to start (pressing the 2 buttons in the same time). But whenever I manage to get in shroud and get the finishing animation, done it, and nothing happens, my enemy simply doesn’t get finished….
(Would cry tbh but I agree, sounds funny)

Maybe I need to pay more attention and see if I’m actually stomping. I was amazed the first few times I did it, then I stopped paying as much attention under the assumption it was working. Perhaps this was fixed in one of the last couple patches.

I actually don’t use the stability trait for it, because I WvW and only get a chance to stomp maybe 1 out of 5. I tend to use it just to keep from getting downed myself.

I’d say here is how I use it, from most to least often:

1. DS#2 in WvW to prevent someone from escaping
2. DS#1 in dungeons to do relatively massive single target damage
3. DS’s extra life bar to save my bacon in WvW or dungeons
4. DS#4 in dungeons and when I press forward in WvW

I’m no death shroud master, and I want to get better. Thanks for the others who responded.

Edit: 5. I forgot about shroudstomping and shroud rezzing

Are your other guild mates glass cannon eles? Because 20 badges a night sounds good to me and I WvW with my engi, necro, and thief.

Fighting small groups probably won’t get you there because I found such encounters too few and far between. Fighting in zergs means competing with everyone else for damage. Heck I tend to average 1 bag of loot per 3 kills, and 1 badge per 3 bags. Of my over 300 badges in 3 months, 70% of them have probably come from the borderlands jumping puzzle.

I think we are at an impass. Everyone here is pretty much saying that the scenario as you described it is impossible within legitimate gameplay. Either your perception of the events is incomplete, or the thief is cheating. I never jump to the assumption of the latter without evidence, so I must assume the former.

I guess I’m really talking about the “downedbeforeIcouldseehim” burst build with basalisk venom. The one where the thief burns through all his initiative trying to down you before culling zones him in, and one or two dodges is enough to negate the entire attack, but only if you know it’s coming.

I’ll change my topic title accordingly.

gkaare I experienced the condition duration/elixir gun weakness bug again in another CoF run. It’s happening rather consistently for me. I understand how it may be difficult to reproduce (I think it may just be happening in dungeons), so I’m going to FRAPS and edit a video for youtube to help.

I’d say ANet seems to be normalizing all of our builds. That is to say, it’s bringing up our sucky builds and bringing down our good builds. That makes more builds viable relative to engineers, but all of them are below par compared to most other professions. Right now I feel rather aimless with how I want to play my engineer, so I’m waiting it out to see how it goes with bug fixes and future balance. I took the advice of another engineer and parked him at a rich resource node.

Edit: I do feel rather good with my engi in dungeons…not so much in WvW. I don’t currently PvP.

This is the first week I’ve seen my server (GoM) with a zerg somewhere in WvW every time I log on. 100-man zerg is obviously an eyeroll over-exaggeration, but the basis of the 24/7 zerg claim is present. Numbers are up because it’s sunny outside.

For what it’s worth, the engineer is in at least as bad a shape as the necro. Despite what others have posted here, no the grass is not greener over there. At least with the necro you have a general idea what it is you are supposed to do with your profession. Jonathan Sharp’s characterizations of the good points about the engineer are provably incorrect, as a quick review of the engi forums would show. And the engineer has few escapes. It’s survivability comes from control not defense or heals, which means those skills are usually on cooldown when they are needed and are usually useless when facing multiple foes or bosses with defiance.

Now that’s a whole paragraph about the engineer, so I should at least mention my thoughts on the necro. I WvW and PvE, and in both cases I feel pretty good with my necro, knowing I can survive quite a bit, and long enough to outlast my enemy. I could certainly kick my engi’s butt in a war of attrition, and my engi is my main. This is with a power build using dagger/warhorn & staff. Heh, just thinking about it all 10 weapon skills are useful in that build, but with my engi with a kit I get utility out of maybe 6 or 7.

I think the parts about winning a war of attrition and being able to prevent enemies from escaping are, for the most part, accurate. Necro does need lots of work, but don’t look at engineers as an example of a profession that works.

How about those with the commander triangle on not commanding. So we get random people giving orders and nobody knows if there is real leadership, or someone unknowingly walking others into a trap.

If the real answer hasn’t already been given, I know it! A base glass cannon thief has around 10k health. Hide in shadows heals for about 5k. So if he uses that, he goes into stealth and emerges full health. Granted that can only happen once every 30 seconds, so perhaps the OP’s sense of time is a bit off.

I have a second theory if that one doesn’t work…he was working with 2-3 other similarly specced and geared thieves, making use of near perma-stealth and culling. My guild mates do that from time to time.

I’d like to know so I can learn first hand how it works and thus how to counter it. Often utilizes mug, cloak and dagger, and backstabs, finishing off with heartseekers. I’m guessing berserker’s gear, D/D, hide in shadows, and basalisk venom. What are the runes, sigils, the other utility, traits, and the other weapon set?

I run Elixir R, Elixir Gun, and Grenades. As time goes by my guild needs fewer and fewer revives, so I occassionally swap it out on some fights for something else. There, justified.

When I was on a couple hours ago GoM (my server) was taking EB by sheer numbers alone. HoD and SF were putting up great fights using superior tactics, but it just wasn’t enough. Bummer, I was hoping we’d get another week like last week

Having played the glass cannon thief in WvW with a group of guildies, I can say that I’ve come up against a good number of players that use defensive abilities at the right time to save themselves. That being said, that doesn’t mean you will probably win the fight. I have plenty of escapes, which means I can go about my business of trying to select my next victim…maybe you if the situation allows. Neither side wins unless the thief over-extends, which is something thieves learn not to do over time.

Matchup #2. Last week was great, let’s do that again! Hopefully all our servers are starting to raise some interest from our otherwise PvE-dedicated population.

I know what skill point you’re talking about and that one is a pain. I’ve gotten it on my engi and necro too, but only with help. The problem is the respawn rate of the ghosts. It’s not really a thief issue here. There are just some completion-related things in this game that require some help…nothing to be worried about.

Last I tested, a month or two ago, you’ll continue to get ticks of 5. For example, put down the turret and get 30 seconds of regen. Then pick it up and it starts ticking 5. Then get regen any other way. It will tick 5 for the 30 seconds, then start ticking bigger again. It seems to work a little like a queue.

Also turrets don’t scale with stats so as I recall you’ll always get the base regen heal no matter what your “healing” stat is.

A key in this discussion is that the OP wanted to run explorable mode. They never said explorable mode could be done by anyone of the appropriate level. In fact they said the difficulty is designed to be a challenge for a coordinated group. My guild mates would run me throught an explorable mode dungeon to help me out, but everyone knows that I’d just be coming along for the ride, and that practically being down a man would make it more difficult for all.

Hsinimod.5784:

When you can faceroll on your alts and do better than your main, something is off.

This is my experience also, and one of those alts is a necro, which is also littered with bugs and lackluster traits and synergies.

(faceroll might be an overstatement in my case, but I’m better with those alts, at least)

My other 80s are thief and necro, and those two are rather pigeon-holed in what they can do.

You had me hooked on this topic until you said “is viable in PvP”. I find the engineer to be very versitile in terms of what it can do. But I cannot see a way for it to be able to do anything well, thus viability is in question.

KirinDave.6451:

There is little that is engineering-ish about current engineer gameplay.

I hate picking out one or two sentences from a long post and commenting only on that, but I’m doing it here. I’m NOT a irl engineer, but I believe the profession does have an engineer feel, with its kits, gadgets, turrets, and elixirs (okay this one is more alchemist, but it still kinda fits). Using a hodge-podge set of tools to accomplish a goal feels engineerish to me.

I think I’m disenfranchised with the profession because I don’t feel I can specialize in a role and excel at it, due to lack of synergy between the utilities and traits. It’s like the philosophy is to give engineers a bag of random capabilities and let him see if he can make something useful out of it. That feels engineerish to me, but practically speaking in the current implementation it turns out to be weak compared to other professions. And if I want to go the other way and build myself very versitile, something ANet seems to think is great, I end up being good at nothing at all.

The fact is ANet expected the meta to reach a point where the public is coming up with effective ways to play. And so far the public thinks the engineer sucks (except a few people who are at either end of the skill curve). Yet ANet does not appear to be stepping in to nudge us in the right direction, and that makes me a bit miffed.

Maskaganda.2043:

@op I play an elixir spec and I have 4+ boons on me all the time during a fight. these greatly increase damage, survivability and mobility. Elixir B is a must and with 5 points in alchemy you drink another one at 75% hp (1 min cooldown afaik). Considering that you can trait for longer durations and shorter cooldowns and also toss elixirs at your feet, you pretty much guarantee permanent boons. The tossed elixirs might be random but they will help you keep boons up as well, especially in longer fights.
In any fight I have fury and retaliation on demand, permanent might stacks of 5+, reliable swiftness and regeneration and the ocasional protection/stability/vigor.
As for keeping your allies buffed, that is simply not the case, not in wvw anyway. It’s just not practical. The only toss with a decent radius is H (240), everything else is 180 afaik, it’s too impractical to toss an elixir and hiting both you and a ally at the same time, although there are some exceptions. It works in pve/spvp, just not in wvw.

I believe it was your video which prompted me to make this topic. I was impressed by your video, but it made me wonder how much of your success was build, and how much was skill. I’m inclined to think it was 95% skill, 5% build, and that you’d probably do rather well with any intelligent build. As for me, I need my build/profession mechanics to be something of a crutch (say 50/50 skill/build), and I’d bet the vast majority of other players are the same.

So if I understand correctly your idea is that all boons in general add to survivability in one way or another, and in aggregate that has significant impact. I suppose I could buy that, but it’s not the full story. In order to keep those boons up you need to have all of your utilities be elixirs and you need to spam all your elixirs when they’re off cooldown. That makes it a VERY specialized build, not something I would consider versitile. And it still doesn’t really help teammates, which you also said.

Zergs are good for entry-level players who need to learn how things work. Zergs are specifically required to counter heavily fortified keeps and towers. Irrespective of the method for eliminating zergs, the only way to do it while retaining dynamism would be to overturn the entire defense mechanic of WvW. In other words, it’s not a small tweak.

Not a chance this is normal. Smoke bomb does 0 damage, so something else must have happened and it showed up incorrectly in the combat log.

220! Dang! I have 280 after having played hours and hours on 3 different toons. Man I suck!

Darn, I was hoping I was missing something and would get responses that supported Jonathan Sharp’s claims. Could he be referring to our many comboing possibilities?

About retaliation…the wiki says it does not reduce incoming damage. But even if it did it would have to be much less than 33% or it would be far superior to protection. Anyway this puts retaliation in the offense category, not defense.

To Bargaw: I have played many hours in WvW and know the many roles that can be played. Frankly I don’t want to follow the zerg as much as either a) defend points, or b) roam with my guildies. With my necro and thief I have a pretty good idea what type of WvW gameplay is best for the various builds, and even though I’m not a skilled player, I know I’m contributing in that role. But for my engineer the best role I can come up with is loading up on vitality and toughness and being a meat shield while everyone else does something. Frankly I know there is also a skill curve here, and I’m near the bottom of it, but I really don’t think I should feel practically useless.