Guild Wars 2

Jerus.4350:

Ging.6485:

Jerus.4350:

Ranael.6423:

Jerus.4350:

Pinpoint Distribution -> Grant 150 condition damage to nearby allies. Make that change and see how it plays out?

I’d prefer 150 expertise now that it is a stat.

But on the other hand I am not a huge fan of profession specific party wide buffs (which clutters our buff bar) or debuff (which have no counterplay in pvp), especially when they are not tide to a support line.
I think generic, non stackable buffs would be better, and them being on a support line or an elite spec line. Even better if they would use the boon system.
I find things like PSEA (25might + banners + empower allies) too powerful to allow diversity.

Yes, these types of buffs are very problematic, but they’re in the game, and it’s pretty much bullkitten that they won’t give Engi’s one because of the problem they cause, but they just gave Rev 2 (ferocity and 50% boon duration). Is it surprising that you have at least 1 of every profession that gives these in raids? Honestly a condi damage or expertise aura probably wouldn’t be enough to get Engi’s a stable spot in raids, but it’d help.

And, yes PS warrior is strait stupid, when it first released my friends and I were convinced it was going to see a nice big nerfstick (1s icd like Guardians version) but, it wasn’t and we’ve been taking PS warriors ever since. 25 might, 170 prec, 170 fero, 170 condi damage, and 320 power, yeah… you’d be stupid not to (to be fair 170 to all those stats is 75% up time without alacrity) all while doing not bad damage, at least on mesmer it makes sense they do no damage but give great support. .

How about adding synergy with other classes.

For example

Make pistol 1 an explosion that hits up to 5 targets within a close range, lets say 180.

Pinpoint Distribution would be changed to :
(2 second cool down ) Pistol attacks cause all conditions on target to be extended by 1 second.

Medical Dispersion Field
A percentage of healing that you receive is applied to nearby allies.
Healing : 33%
Radius : 360

This way instead of spamming grenade 1 as filler, we could mix it up with pistol 1. Pistol 1 would be useful because it would do 1 second worth of damage of all the conditions on the target, which would both encourage you to do a full rotation, but also encourage people to take both an engi and a necro.

Medical Dispersion Field would allow the Engi to be a healing beacon of sort that synergizes well with a Druid or healing Tempest basically either allowing the primary healer to go a bit more damage build or simply providing an extra bit of healing power to the healer.

That’d be nice, and I actually misread the Medical Dispersion Field that way initially and was excited, but like everything that major overhaul did for healing, it ended up being left behind. (Remember heal skills would be blasts that was a possibility, which might have actually made medkit good?)

Yeah. My point is though, Engi has a bunch of talents that could be made extremely useful in a group environment, but for some reason are left as very selfish traits. I think the changes I suggest primarily buff the engi only in a group environment, meaning solo play stayed in the same area.

We could be a very effective condi damage / support class without stealing the Necros spotlight. We could synergize with a necro, instead of how it is now where Necros synergize with each other so well that it’s just a kitten.

Jerus.4350:

Ranael.6423:

Jerus.4350:

Pinpoint Distribution -> Grant 150 condition damage to nearby allies. Make that change and see how it plays out?

I’d prefer 150 expertise now that it is a stat.

But on the other hand I am not a huge fan of profession specific party wide buffs (which clutters our buff bar) or debuff (which have no counterplay in pvp), especially when they are not tide to a support line.
I think generic, non stackable buffs would be better, and them being on a support line or an elite spec line. Even better if they would use the boon system.
I find things like PSEA (25might + banners + empower allies) too powerful to allow diversity.

Yes, these types of buffs are very problematic, but they’re in the game, and it’s pretty much bullkitten that they won’t give Engi’s one because of the problem they cause, but they just gave Rev 2 (ferocity and 50% boon duration). Is it surprising that you have at least 1 of every profession that gives these in raids? Honestly a condi damage or expertise aura probably wouldn’t be enough to get Engi’s a stable spot in raids, but it’d help.

And, yes PS warrior is strait stupid, when it first released my friends and I were convinced it was going to see a nice big nerfstick (1s icd like Guardians version) but, it wasn’t and we’ve been taking PS warriors ever since. 25 might, 170 prec, 170 fero, 170 condi damage, and 320 power, yeah… you’d be stupid not to (to be fair 170 to all those stats is 75% up time without alacrity) all while doing not bad damage, at least on mesmer it makes sense they do no damage but give great support. .

How about adding synergy with other classes.

For example

Make pistol 1 an explosion that hits up to 5 targets within a close range, lets say 180.

Pinpoint Distribution would be changed to :
(2 second cool down ) Pistol attacks cause all conditions on target to be extended by 1 second.

Medical Dispersion Field
A percentage of healing that you receive is applied to nearby allies.
Healing : 33%
Radius : 360

This way instead of spamming grenade 1 as filler, we could mix it up with pistol 1. Pistol 1 would be useful because it would do 1 second worth of damage of all the conditions on the target, which would both encourage you to do a full rotation, but also encourage people to take both an engi and a necro.

Medical Dispersion Field would allow the Engi to be a healing beacon of sort that synergizes well with a Druid or healing Tempest basically either allowing the primary healer to go a bit more damage build or simply providing an extra bit of healing power to the healer.

Best of all this wouldn’t require any new buff icons or animations to be created, it would only require some number manipulation, so it shouldn’t have too much overhead.

Bandrell.4357:

Ging.6485:

It appears holding down the skill button is a significant dps loss over spamming the button.

Is this also true for the auto attack? If so, why? I’ve never noticed a difference in attack speed at all.

Well for thief auto attack, which has no activation time, it seems to be an issue. I am guessing it might not for skills that have a 1/4, 1/2, … second activation time. The truth is though, that it seems to be slightly slower holding down auto attack than spamming it, with thief anyway.

It causes me to lose around 3k dps on the golem on an unrealistic conditions test.

DGraves.3720:

Ging.6485:

Well the chance of all three grenades failing to proc would be 0.85^3. 1 minus that number is the chance that no failure occurs, meaning that at least one succeeds. I did it in excel and am writing from my phone right now, but the chance for a complete failure was 61% and change.

That isn’t true.

Let’s take two six sided dice. We know that the probability of getting two sixes (or two of any number really) is 1/36. We know it’s 1/6 × 1/6 right?

So if that’s the case using your logic 5/6 × 5/6 or 5/6^2 would be the direct opposite, right? Well, let’s do it: 5/6^2 = .69444 or 69.44%. So using your logic if we take 100% and subtract 69.4% there’s a 30.56% of getting two sixes?

We know that is wrong. So why is it wrong?

Actually it is because you can’t replace the odds of something not happening with the odds of something happening when setting up probability matrices. You should always take the odds of the event occurring and find the values you’re looking for, for instance:

1 – .15 = .85. Easy.
1 – (.15 × 2 ) = 1 – .30 = .70. Easy.
1 – (.15 × 3) = 1 – .45 = .55. Easy.

So there is kitten percent chance that none of the grenades in a salvo will produce Shrapnel. It’s that simple. What I want you to note is that the final results of those problems changes but the actual probability of the event does not. It’s still 15% in all three problems but 85% is not the unified odds of failure, and in fact, changes the more iterations you have.

This makes sense if you think about it. Again with six sided dice:

If I roll 1 the odds are 1/6 that I’ll get (number)
If I roll 2 the odds are 1/6 × 1/6 that I’ll get (number combination)
If I roll 3 the odds are 1/6 × 1/6 × 1/6 that I’ll get (number combination)

But note that 1/6th doesn’t change. I guarantee you the result does:

1/6
1/36
1/216

Now if you took 5/6 and tried to apply it to this you would get:

5/6
25/36
125/216

That gap is worsening by the way.

I feel so boring!

The chance for exactly two to proc shrapnel is 0.15*0.15*0.85, the chance of 2 successes and one failure. There are three ways that could happen. 12 23 13. that number comes out to 0.05735 or something close to that.

Alongside the above this is wrong for two distinct reasons; first you never ever double-attribute a behavior. This means that if you need only to find the probability of an event the size of the pool of events doesn’t matter. Let’s say that instead of throwing 3 grenades we throw 4 at the time. Does that mean it becomes .15 × .15 × .85 x .85? If so, how does that look?

Well combining those four numbers produces the value 1.6% but if it were 5 grenades looking for the same thing …

That value becomes 1.4% ( .15 × .15 × .85 x .85 x.85 ).

It’s going the wrong way. Your odds should increase not decrease so what is happening? You’re not checking to see if two will succeed you are finding the odds of two succeeding and specifically one failing, or defining the odds by specifically searching out the distinct behavior of two unified events.

The point is though, its about a 40% chance that you will get at least one 32 second bleed worth 4100 damage every time you throw a grenade. Each grenade throw is .5 seconds, meaning that in the time it takes you to cast Orbital Strike once, you have about 240 chances to proc shrapnel.

How are you getting 32s? First, the base for Shrapnel is 12s, when you take Firearms trait line you are forced to take a trait that makes your bleeds last 33% longer, so it’s 16s after that trait is forcefully applied not before. So you’ll cap out at 24s.

That said if every grenade throw is .5s and you get three at a time it looks like this:

60 / .5 = 120

120 × 3 = 360

So it’s 360 not 240 presuming continuous attack.

So 15% of 360 would be 54 activations? That’s amazingly high, no doubt, but in the rotation we were using bombs, not grenades, because the answer is completely different when you use grenades over bombs due to more opportunities. Let me think, uh, 360 – 107 (number of bombs in one minute under 100% quickness) = 253 additional chances with grenades?

I feel so old!

Oh, and let me correct one more thing, the cast time of orbital strike would be .87s so you wouldn’t gain 240 opportunities in that time, and in fact, lose a grand total of six, or two salvos altogether, because of the CD itself. That was spun way out of control there.

First of all by my logic the chance for getting two 6’s would be 1/36, but the chance of not getting 2 6’s , meaning the chance to get anything aside from 2 6’s would be, 1 – 1/36, or 35/36.

The chance of getting 2 procs of shrapnel in 4 trials is (4c2) x 0.15^2 × 0.85^2 = 9.75%, the chance of getting 2 procs of shrapnel in 5 trials is (5c2) x 0.15^2 × 0.85^3 = 13.8%. So it does increase.

I got confused though what you were talking about. When you do a grenade throw you throw 3 grenades. Each of them have a 0.15% chance to proc shrapnel, and each have a 0.85% chance to do nothing. The chance that ALL 3, do nothing is 0.85^3 . That is the chance that in a throw you proc none. Meaning that 100% minus that chance as a percent, is the chance that you do NOT get nothing, that you get something, anything.

Now if we are talking about a pure Berserker bomb build. I have had Orbital Strike hit up to 20k on the golem during a perfect non realistic trial. With that build, it would have a 34 second cooldown and a 0.75 cast time. In which case, 20,000/34.75 = 575.54 dps.

In the same build , according to GW2skills.net numbers, Shrapnel would have a bleed with 21.25 seconds duration and 1654 damage or 77.84 dps. 575.54/77.84 = 7.4. That means it would take more than 7.4 procs of shrapnel to outdo the damage done by the extra Orbital strike.

In 34 seconds you can place down 68 bombs. You need at least 8 procs of shrapnel for there to be a DPS increase of shrapnel over Orbital strike. The probability that at least 8 of the 68 bombs you place will proc shrapnel is 82%. I placed an excel snippet to show how I got that number.

For clarity, the reason it only goes up to 24, is because the chance of getting 24 or more procs of Shrapnel out of 68 trials is extremely close to 0. As you can see, even 24 shows up as 0 to 4 decimal places. Obviously it’s not 0, but it’s not really a number of concern either. Pretty much there is a 99.99999% chance that you will get less than 24 procs of shrapnel during 68 trials.

The problem is, that people don’t know how to play matador with Bloomhunger. That’s it.

In every group I have been in, I have never gone down, yet I have seen at least 3 other people constantly down, simply because they don’t step out of the way/ dodge out of the way of Bloomhunger’s very obvious attacks. The only challenging thing about the fight is that if you don’t have a stun break, if Bloomhunger manages to knock you down, it pretty much is able to combo you until you are completely downed.

However, that can be completely avoided, by simply dodging.

I personally think that new Snowblind is more challenging because of how fast the Shaman attacks during the last phase. He focuses on one player and with his rate of attack, unless you have the other 4 constantly picking you up, you really can’t avoid his onslaught.

DGraves.3720:

Ging.6485:

The chance that at least one grenade in a group of 3 will proc shrapnel is 38.5%. The chance that exactly 2 will is 5.74%.

It’s not 0.15^2, it’s 3c2*0.15^2*0.85 = 3*0.15^2*0.85.

It should be just 45% since they are independent events for “at least one”.

Basically it runs like any other form of basic dice game; if you have two twenty sided dice the odds are additive for rolling a twenty on either and multiplicative for rolling a twenty on both, I.E.

5% + 5% = 10%

5% x 5% = .25%

In fraction form:

1/20 + 1/20 = 2/20 = 1/10 = 10/100 = 10%

1/20 × 1/20 = 1/400 = .25%

I’d be lying to say I knew where you gathered your numbers from. Combinatorics doesn’t really support the idea as far as I know and we’ve no evidence that isn’t a fair throw though it is possible that you are correct via the algorithmic nature itself and maybe you know something I don’t about the algorithm but that wouldn’t explain multiplying in the failure rate.

Well the chance of all three grenades failing to proc would be 0.85^3. 1 minus that number is the chance that no failure occurs, meaning that at least one succeeds. I did it in excel and am writing from my phone right now, but the chance for a complete failure was 61% and change.

The chance for exactly two to proc shrapnel is 0.15*0.15*0.85, the chance of 2 successes and one failure. There are three ways that could happen. 12 23 13. that number comes out to 0.05735 or something close to that.

The point is though, its about a 40% chance that you will get at least one 32 second bleed worth 4100 damage every time you throw a grenade. Each grenade throw is .5 seconds, meaning that in the time it takes you to cast Orbital Strike once, you have about 240 chances to proc shrapnel.

santenal.1054:

EG is good as it is. #2 just needs a bug fix/change (it doesn’t bounce 3 times in a 1vs1) and a speed buff. A range increase to #1 would also be nice.

2 is so incredibly hard to use, if the target even slightly changes direction it misses. You have to be like right behind them to get it to hit.

DGraves.3720:

Elementalist has the highest DPS in the game right? Or potential highest etc. People used to believe they were utter trash. Then you had people with a little fame coming out with numbers that were impossibly high DPS before ascended ever hit the scene and others believing they did insane DPS. Then you had people believing that they could optimize a super rotation when, in fact, even within the same quarter ( meaning before any quarterly updates were applied ) they were shown to be wrong.

Things noticed in year one like how you don’t have 100% damage uptime and the like were blatantly ignored, mechanics of the game were declared unsound, random spreadsheets were, are, and probably will forever be “the answer” to questions that really require more than a spreadsheet to answer in any given situation and you often have bad metrics to boot.

For instance, Shrapnel, if you throw one volley of grenades what is the probably that two of those grenades will proc Shrapnel? Simple probability:

.15^2 = .0225

All three? .15^3 = .003375.

Basically it’s so rare for it to happen it’s not even worth discussing as a possibility and it is incredibly unpredictable. But people do it. People somehow “roll” this into their calculations. I’ve seen too many times where people take and mix principles that don’t belong or account for things wrong or ignore basic pragmatism for theoretical propositions. They overcomplicate it and make claims that don’t even make sense about their skills and abilities for things they actually can’t calculate or, if they do, don’t come out anywhere near what they say it should using commonality.

But what makes this possible is simply reputation. We will believe anyone not based on the merit of their claim but based on the warmth of their ideas. An easy to read spreadsheet, even if wrong, is the best way to win fans. Show a video of you doing something people consider difficult or some crazy large numbers and you’ve got people hooked. After that you can go the way of L. Pauling (the source Vitamin C myth) and just say whatever the heck you want and people will hang on your every word.

The chance that at least one grenade in a group of 3 will proc shrapnel is 38.5%. The chance that exactly 2 will is 5.74%.

It’s not 0.15^2, it’s 3c2*0.15^2*0.85 = 3*0.15^2*0.85.

After playing both Reaper and Engineer, I gotta tell you, Engi feels like it’s more DPS by far.

That said, Epidemic goes a really long way and Reapers have much more survivability than Engineers. Reaper is probably the only class I have been able to mindlessly solo pretty much everything on.

The thief’s job is basically to make sure that during a PvP match, your team never has to face a fair fight.

The thief has extremely high mobility, so you run to decap points that are left unattended, run to team mates engaged in a battle and out number the enemy ( focusing one down ).

Or at least that is the idea. However, with the amount of stability and invulnerability in the game, that becomes extremely difficult since a Guardian for example can pretty much stay alive for 20-30 seconds based on pure mechanics of the class alone. Warriors can be even worse. With Mesmers and Necros, you get eaten alive by their condies just by being in their general vicinity. It’s like trying to fight a tank with a toothpick.

Not sure if this applies to other classes. But while testing thief dps against the golem I came to a weird discovery…

Holding down the autoattack (1), the new feature they put in, is actually about a 4k dps loss (non realistic) as opposed to just bashing the key over and over again.

This probably only really applies to thief, since there is no activation time on the auto attack, but it’s a weird thing I noticed.

I was wondering why I couldn’t reach the dps in the bench mark… and the moment I started bashing the key instead of holding it down, I got a 3-4k dps boost in numbers.

Playing around with thief. I have to tell you, getting high staff DPS is a pain compared to Dagger Dagger DPS. The staff rotation requires like fighting game timing and positioning to squeeze out that extra damage. Dagger Dagger is pretty mindless in comparison.

Never mind, I found out what the problem is. It appears holding down the skill button is a significant dps loss over spamming the button.

The main strengths of the rifle meta build.

That is to say : Explosions(3,2,2),Firearms(3,1,2),Tools(1,3,2), Rifle -Healing Turret, Nades/Bomb, Battering Ram, Rifleturret, Mortar Kit.

The main strengths of this build are
1) Decent dps, right under Ele and Thief.
2) Super high breakbar power. (Rifle 4, Big Bomb, Battering Ram, Destroy Healing Turret, Destroy Rifle Turret, Launch Battering Ram).
3) Mobility, Rifle and enhanced endurance regen allow you to travel really quickly.
4) Group Healing from HT, Mortar 5, + 2-3 blast finishers.

The problem is though, PS Warrior and Rev bring something unique to the table and together can adequately do BB Damage. (Reason #2 becomes obsolete)
(Reason 3 is only good on VG, at which point you might as well fill the spot with a condi engi)
(Reason 4, a druid healer usually suffices making this obsolete)
(Reason 1, it’s better to take a thief/ele seeing as they are higher DPS)

For every reason there is to take an Engi, there is a reason to take something else.

Our biggest hope, at all, to get a perma raid spot, is that Anet makes every raid encounter require condi to some degree, and that Anet ends up nerfing epidemic on Necros. If that happens, then we out condi necros by a good 6k damage and can take over the condi spots.

After PvPing lower end with Scrapper. It doesn’t seem too bad. Necros are still a hard counter. I have a bit more trouble with Mesmers and Revs than I did before. Thieves are still a joke. Warriors and Guards are kind of even. Druid isn’t too difficult to beat. Ele’s are easy.

My over all thoughts are that
1) I really can’t effectively use Medic Gyro. Healing Turret is much easier now.

2) I find it hard to pressure someone unless I can get them to stand in my Acid Bomb. Lower end, people often do.

So over all, Medic Gyro nerf did nothing but make the Medic Gyro worthless in comparison to Healing Turret. And I think the damage nerf was unnecessary. Maybe a slight buff to the auto-attack or something would be enough compensation.

On another note, I avoid Necros completely. Don’t even bother fighting them. I may be doing it wrong, but it’s not just an uphill battle like it is with Revs, I see no victory in sight with a Necro around.

Allie.4925:

bearshaman.3421:

Ging.6485:

bearshaman.3421:

Can someone who can logically and rationally and objectively do this, PM me and explain what the problem is for engineers? I will say I’m a PVE only player (maybe WvW I am becoming more interested in that too), so if it’s only pvp issues, don’t bother. But I want to understand why this is such a bad patch for us. Aside from a few nerfs (shock shield, some hammer skills, etc) I thought this was a good patch for us. And hammer was incredibly strong anyway.

This patch in a nutshell : We had our arm broken and were given a lollipop.

This is an example of a completely useless response. Thanks for demonstrating what I am not looking for.

So far, the issue in my opinion is in terms of PvE. In a game where it’s all about the uniqueness of your class, and what your class can bring to your group (whether it be PvE, PvP or WvW really), the engineer brings nothing of note to anything.

The engineer is a very typical, Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none class. As was its intention when it was created. However, it being so creates a problem. Why bring something that is sub-par to anything else, unless you’re required to? And furthermore, why bring something that has a very high skill-cap, for little to no reward, when you can bring something that is relatively easy and risk-free, for more reward?

This was our main concern before this patch, and our dream was that they would do something, ANYTHING to fix it. Instead we get the standard: “We’re still evaluating it”, which basically means, “We’re not sure what to do, so here’s some random, yet sort of pointless changes to make it seem like we’re doing something”.

Edit: Like the change to A.E.D. Yes, it was crap before the patch. If they presented a change that made it viable, that would be great, but it’s still garbage, so the change they presented was in-short, pointless.

The broken arm was the medic gyro, as Chaith says, we still have one good one. The lollipop was the pointless PvE buffs. We got ~3% sustained damage buff to condition damage… which does nothing. The game isn’t any different with or without the buff. It actually makes me angry that they even gave us the buff, because it’s almost like they are trying to pointlessly cover the fact that they really only wanted to nerf the Scrapper. Kind of makes me miss the days of Soldier Rifle to tell you the truth.

bearshaman.3421:

Can someone who can logically and rationally and objectively do this, PM me and explain what the problem is for engineers? I will say I’m a PVE only player (maybe WvW I am becoming more interested in that too), so if it’s only pvp issues, don’t bother. But I want to understand why this is such a bad patch for us. Aside from a few nerfs (shock shield, some hammer skills, etc) I thought this was a good patch for us. And hammer was incredibly strong anyway.

This patch in a nutshell : We had our arm broken and were given a lollipop.

Fay.2357:

Ging.6485:

Fay.2357:

Yeah, OP, you’ve got a pretty loose definition of the words ‘nerfed’ and ‘buffed’ that you’re operating on here.

It’s pretty obvious he meant relatively, which is really what matters in this game.

As far as PVE goes, he’s right. Relatively nothing changed.

Well this is obviously wrong. If we want to actually discuss how things work, PvE is the part of the game where absolute damage matters the most due to the fact that mob hp is a standard benchmark for comparison. Ele got objectively nerfed and nobody else got objectively buffed because the total damage output of a party will be lower.

Yes, but regardless of whether you are in first place with a huge lead or a narrow one, you are still in first place. That was my point. Basically the Ele’s job got harder, but at least he didn’t lose his job.

Engi and Thief have been standing around at the unemployment office for the last 8 months. As far as raiding is concerned anyway. Fractals and Overworld are negligible.

Fay.2357:

Yeah, OP, you’ve got a pretty loose definition of the words ‘nerfed’ and ‘buffed’ that you’re operating on here.

It’s pretty obvious he meant relatively, which is really what matters in this game.

As far as PVE goes, he’s right. Relatively nothing changed.

PvP though showed some classes switching places on the food chain. So in this sense he is wrong. There were nerfs relatively.

Dahkeus.8243:

Would be interesting to see what the “meta” engi condi build does for DPS now. I don’t expect anything huge, but it does seem like a net positive for that build at least.

It’s negligible. If I could get a perfect rotation down, I wouldn’t expect it to be more than like a 200 or 300 dps boost, if that.

Lalainnia.3598:

Everything in the patch makes sense except for the medic gyro cast time nerf personally was the main thing that sepreated it from healing turret for me to be able to use it while cc’ed. Everything else is fine if ppl are crying about pve specifically raids i don’t see how this will make them more or less of a choice then they already are.

Problem is, we have been complaining that we have nothing to offer to raids for a long time… And they gave us even more of nothing to offer to raids.

The PvP balances are fine, except as you say the medic gyro, the only reason to take medic gyro over healing turret was because of the insta-cast. Now that that is gone, it’s simply back to the turret we go.

From what I see they significantly nerfed Ele damage and healing in PVE. So it looks like we really didn’t get that bad of a nerf.

There is a simple Engi build.
Full Berserker’s
Rifle, Bomb Kit, Battering Ram, Rifle Turret, Mortar

Explosives (1 or 3), 2, 1
Firearms (2 or 3), 1, 2
Tools 1, (1 or 3), 2

Spam Bomb Kit 1 and use your toolbelt skills when they are off cooldown. It’s the Highest DPS the Engi can put out against the DPS test robot. (Around 35k)

Painbow.6059:

Ging.6485:

Kind of hard to say. For example Uncategorized as long as you have a mesmer, the other 4 can be anything and it will go just as smoothly. Maybe Mesmer, PS, and 3 Necros.

For 100 Mai Trin, 4 Necros and a Druid.

For Solid Ocean, literally anything is the same.

Thaumanova probably 5 Necros.

Each fractal has a different comp that would be optimal. 5 Necros cover the most bases though.

While it can be easy, stacking generally more than 2 necros is not the fastest option. You want classes like warrior to provide offensive buffs, along with chrono for quickness/alacrity. Also classes like engineer for stealth/blinds. That being said, having a necromancer in a group in high level fractals is a staple, as it has very good consistent damage, epidemic and boon stripping. But you should usually avoid taking more than two unless you want to start losing out on DPS

Thaumanova though, unless you want to become a super coordinated team, pretty much benefits from people being far away from each other. The only part that could benefit from balls to the wall DPS is the green slime. The Anomaly however is more about not falling through the floor, the easiest way to do that is to stay far apart. Now if you play with a static group and coordinate well, sure there is probably a way to keep 25 stacks of might up on everyone. If you want an easy mindless win though, just rolling 5 necros provides that.

Kind of hard to say. For example Uncategorized as long as you have a mesmer, the other 4 can be anything and it will go just as smoothly. Maybe Mesmer, PS, and 3 Necros.

For 100 Mai Trin, 4 Necros and a Druid.

For Solid Ocean, literally anything is the same.

Thaumanova probably 5 Necros.

Each fractal has a different comp that would be optimal. 5 Necros cover the most bases though.

OriOri.8724:

Ging.6485:

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Ok, this has gotten very far off of my original point, partly by my own wingeing.

One of my original points, and the most valid issue from a design perspective, concerns the Collider room and the safety shields. We can debate whether you should or should not use the shields, but it is a major design flaw that, if you should have trouble, you lose the option to use them because they are lost inside the maze. That does mean that effectively the room becomes harder if you don’t succeed at it on your first try for whatever reason.

The entire fractal can be soloed depending on your class, here is a necro doing it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWe_zKDcx7U

The laser room can be successfully done similarly with 2 people even if you have no way of warping around like that.

I don’t understand your point. BoogiePopVoid never said it was impossible to do the fractal. In the comment you quoted all he said was that its bad design to not have the shields reset to the beginning of the room if you wipe. Obviously if you are wiping with shields then you are having trouble with the room, why then take away the shields by having them stay where you were when you died? Your video is completely unrelated to this fairly good point he brings up.

My point was that there are a few simple tricks to beating the room that with a little practice should not have you wiping, especially when one person can solo it at the highest level.

Simply put, take the right path at the beginning. Go north. You can hit switch one through the wall. Have someone waiting by switch two, and it’s done.

Puke room you can find tutorials on YouTube how to solo it for a number of classes.

Door room is straight forward, just kill everything and hit the switch.

Slime boss is simple, break bar often, stop attacking in shield form, cc oozes.

Anomaly, equip reliable healing, equip a ranged weapon, and try to stay away from your friends. In fact less people make this boss easier. In fact if you set ground targeting snap to target on a staff ele, you can just safely spam 3 2 1 in fire for an easy kill.

Its one of the easier fractals in fact because one player can carry the group if need be.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Ok, this has gotten very far off of my original point, partly by my own wingeing.

One of my original points, and the most valid issue from a design perspective, concerns the Collider room and the safety shields. We can debate whether you should or should not use the shields, but it is a major design flaw that, if you should have trouble, you lose the option to use them because they are lost inside the maze. That does mean that effectively the room becomes harder if you don’t succeed at it on your first try for whatever reason.

The entire fractal can be soloed depending on your class, here is a necro doing it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWe_zKDcx7U

The laser room can be successfully done similarly with 2 people even if you have no way of warping around like that.

I actually don’t see the problem with just following Fractal philosophy.

When there is a daily for Molten Boss, people willingly do Fractal 90 or 99. When there isn’t they farm Fractal 40. I hear no complaints about that.

Have a hard mode and easy mode for Raids. Hard modes have incentive to do hard modes at least once a week. Easy modes can be used for farming magnite shards or what not. Keep the cap.

Hardmode bosses drop exotics with a chance of special ascended gear + LIs.
Easy mode bosses drop rares with a chance of exotics and 33% less mag shards.

As for the Legendary Armor problem, they could always add LIs as a mystic forge recipe and just make it expensive. That actually follows with the philosophy of GW2 considering that ultimately, everything in GW2 has been behind a cash wall. With Ascended Gear, you can either run Raids (Skill), run fractals (Luck), or simply buy the materials required to make it (Cash).

Sylvyn.4750:

Ging.6485:

Scrapper’s real strength though, is in it’s sustain. Condi pressure is strong against scrapper but power pressure is extremely weak. This means that Scrapper is king of the power battles. Good counters are Necros, Condi Warriors, and Revenants. Thieves and Mesmers will get eaten alive. Bunker Ele and Druid is a stalemate. DH can’t win a fight but will stay alive longer than Thief or Mesmer.

So…3 classes better than Scrapper, 2 are stalemate vs Scrapper, and 3 are worse than Scrapper? Sounds like it’s balanced to me!

I think most of the complaints actually come from Pistol Thieves and Longbow Rangers. Dragon Hunters from what I’ve seen have all but given up on the Longbow, they tend to just combine traps with melee weapons. However I occasionally do see some Thieves try to run Pistol/Pistol and some Rangers/Druids try to run a power longbow build. If I am on a mesmer or something like that, they can snipe me and burst me down if I am not paying attention.

On Scrapper though, combined with the sustain, I have more than enough time to put up a reflection and they just kill themselves. It’s cheap builds complaining about a counter to them.

Kaizoku.1298:

No matter what power build I try, I get devastated by s/f elementalists that know how to play. I feel like I don’t have anything to hit them with or to defend.
Say I use block, they have an unblockable skill that knocks me down and then I eat a phoenix. And if their knockdown skill is on CD they just use phoenix which is also unblockable and deals a ton of damage.
My attacks are also very easy to dodge, blind and reflect. Do they completely counter power engis ?

It shouldn’t be a problem if you are playing the meta Scrapper build.

The only thing that should be difficult is actually killing an Ele. Stalemating them though should be cake.

I have only done Gors and VG so far but I have a good idea of what would be a sufficient easy mode for these that would allow players to beat it but also train to do normal mode.

VG – Reduce seeker damage by about 20%, reduce boss HP by about 10%.

Gors – Reduce boss HP by about 10%.

That really is it. Every failed run I have been on has been because of 2 primary factors. For VG its odd seeker positioning and somewhat slow dips.

For Gors… its entirely slow DPS.

Rewards would be, keep mag shards the same as they are only used for asc armor, but remove unique drops, LI, and unlocks.

When people are able to beat VG easy with like 1 min left on the clock, that would be more than enough exp to do VG normal. Same with Gors easy.

The bosses right now are on that fine line where they are just out of reach of most players and practice is difficult because of hard failures. However if you soften some of those failures you can quickly train people to learn to react properly under hard circumstances.

Lalainnia.3598:

PierPiero.9142:

The Game Slayer.7632:

Scrappers don’t have a second weapon. Yes, they have kits. But if being forced to have at least 1 or 2 kits becomes the norm for scrappers if they get nerfed on hammer cd’s, that would murder engineer build diversity.

I saw someone in this thread post that hammer 3 is a 1000 leap, so they can enter and exit combat at will.. That argument is silly, because the real distance gained is close to 100-200 out of combat and about 300-400 in combat. Yes, its better if you’re snared too, but its absolutely nothing compared say, an instant teleport.

My question to those who think scrapper’s are op is this: You claim that these cd’s are the offenders here. Okay. But what is it that is offending you? What about scrapper is overpowered? Furthermore, what class are you playing?

For me projectil hate is too strong, and i play condition engi p/p or scrapper . Against some classes that can not melee scrapper the projectil hate of scrapper is too strong , it makes scrapper really hard to beat.. you can only run away … ( i play it but i try also to stay on the other side of the river )

I really don’t think its the projectile hate the projectile defensive’s they have is fine its literally the fact that its specifically projectile (reflects) that are the main issue its extra damage outside of the normal damage they do while using abilities it’s overkill and unnecessary.

The current state of the game is less of class balance, and more that ranged specs aren’t viable. Every class has a viable PvP spec. Even ones that can stand up to Scrapper if played right, just none of them are ranged. The current meta dictates that you really can’t just stand a mile away shooting projectiles from a safe vantage point.

Scrapper’s real strength though, is in it’s sustain. Condi pressure is strong against scrapper but power pressure is extremely weak. This means that Scrapper is king of the power battles. Good counters are Necros, Condi Warriors, and Revenants. Thieves and Mesmers will get eaten alive. Bunker Ele and Druid is a stalemate. DH can’t win a fight but will stay alive longer than Thief or Mesmer.

This is nothing new though. Every balance patch always has a few specs that stand up above other. I think as it stands, the current balance allows the largest number of classes to be viable. There is just no room whatsoever for ranged options. Which I really don’t mind considering that PvP is about capturing points.

Sarrs.4831:

Ging.6485:

1. Keep things the way they are, small portion of the player base is happy with a larger portion that are afraid of raids or angry about them.

It’s pure conjecture to assert that there is a larger portion of the playerbase who disapproves of raids than those who approve. The vast majority is indifferent.

This forum presence which ‘is afraid of raids or angry about them’ is like half a dozen regular suspects on the forum and the occasional passersby.

It’s not really just the forums. I have joined a bunch of guilds, and a lot of them just avoid raiding altogether, even if they declare themselves as PvE guilds. Even if the guild leader tries to organize a raid, most people just kind of avoid it and there are usually only 4 to 5 people willing to try. There seems to be sort of an intimidating aura around raids.

Rednik.3809:

william dj.6953:

To those saying making these changes will hinder future raid development. Basically you’re saying don’t change the difficulty that way we will have more difficult content that even less people will do. In others words if Anet spent time making changes to help ALL the players then that would take away content from the elite players.

So why would players who are unable to raid now be concerned about future development of raids?

Then why Anet should be concerned with making more raids in future if their population will remain small fracture of whole? They are not a charity company, and GW2 was never advertised as raiding game.
Your logic works in both ways.

I stopped playing WoW in 2010, but the GW2 raiding debacle lead me to go read up about WoW raiding. Apparently what lead to the LFR tool was the fact that 90% of the player base didn’t have easy access to raiding and it was an expensive endeavor.

The inherent problem with raiding in anything seems to be the organization factor more than anything else. It requires that someone gets 10 people together and keeps them coordinated, which is not an easy job.

Fractals don’t require the organization, and open world content (world bosses, DS, etc) really only require that the zerg follows your lead, they don’t have to learn specific roles.

So really it seems the choices are :

1. Keep things the way they are, small portion of the player base is happy with a larger portion that are afraid of raids or angry about them.

2. Give up on raids all together.

3. Find a way to trivialize the organization factor.

WoW chose #3.

TexZero.7910:

Ging.6485:

TexZero.7910:

Ging.6485:

TexZero.7910:

Ging.6485:

The problem that exists is not unique to raids. Before raids the problem existed with dungeons and to an extent fractals. It’s a toxic competitive environment where the majority of the player base doesn’t want one. Fractals have become a once a day endeavor that are to some extent trivial enough to not bother the majority of people requiring perfection, but raids are intrinsically not that type of gameplay element.

While I was thinking about how to eliminate the toxicity from raiding, I came up with one idea that would probably kitten off a lot of people. That is, make all encounters pass / fail.

By that I mean, remove any extra reward gained from completing an encounter optimally. By any reward I mean even the time you save by having great DPS and awesome skill.

For Example : Making VG an 8 minute fight, period. Putting in artificial barriers that prevent a group from beating it in less than 8 minutes. What would this do? It would mean that, any group capable of beating the boss would be just as good as the best possible group capable of beating the boss. After all, there would be no difference in the outcome.

This isn’t really my idea as a player, it’s more of the idea I came up with to solve the problem of a min/max mentality while at the same time not compromising the challenging aspect of the encounter.

This is literally the worst idea possible.

Forcing the fights to all be a certain length removes any essence of player skill, build diversity and creativity. The short and narrow of your solution is well if i can’t do it in 4 1/2 minutes, no one should be and everyone should have to suffer. Talk about taking steps backwards.

It’s wrong to assume there’s extra rewards for completing this quickly, the only extra reward is piece of mind and some extra time in your day to do whatever you want.

It’s also in the best interest of the game to give PvE players a place for them to test themselves as a group, an facet of the game where they can strive for improvement….something your system completely ignores. Doing that is in part what lead to this notion that GW2 is somehow meant for the casual everyman at all parts of the game. This is patently false. The game has a plethora of diverse content and raids do not need to see any change to dumb down, artificially lengthen or otherwise change their essence.

I told you it would make you mad.

However it is a solution for PuG toxicity. Because what the hostile environment around PuGs stems from is the fact that someone constantly keeps raising the bar, and once that bar is raised everyone expects everyone else to be able to meet that standard, instantly. It would be like if a school structured its entire curriculum around its most gifted student, and when that student proved that he could overcome a challenge, then the school would present an even more challenging curriculum regardless of how the other students are fairing. As is the case with GW2, this would cause a lot of students to drop out.

The idea I presented basically says that the bar is cemented. No one can raise it, all you need is for people to learn how to clear it. You can set that bar higher every new encounter, but it must not be alterable by the player base, lest you create a highly competitive environment that alienates a lot of people.

No it doesn’t make me mad. A few other sorts of words come to mind.

The idea doesn’t solve any problem and only serves as a very narrow minded viewpoint.

I won’t argue that it wouldn’t create other problems.

It’s pretty much exchanging the frying pan for the fire. A lot of people find a lot of fun when it comes to trying out different comps and finding the optimal way to beat a boss. I myself do always strive to make myself better. However, you can’t turn a blind eye to murder just because it was your best friend who committed it. The thing that is driving the core raid community is also what is contributing to the alienation to the non-raiding GW2 community.

Love the extreme jump and comparing a game to a crime. Really helps selling the point.

But since you brought up the topic of murder, the only thing your idea does is murder creativity. The current system at best is like ignoring a drunkard in public. Doesn’t harm nor hurt you in any shape or form. Could you help them out, get them someplace better sure. But it’s not your civil duty to be their babysitter.

You are right. My point is that we are all forced to be drunk in public. Destructive, but the drunkard won’t be complaining about the sober people looking down on him.

Helly.2597:

Ging.6485:

snip

Well of course better players are going to play classes better than bad players. I can point out within the past month I’ve played warrior, thief, revenant, and engi and pulled off 1v4s with each class, but it is more about just having better game mechanics and game knowledge than being a complete master of each class.

What I’m saying is that a good player can basically pick up any class in game and within a day or two be able to perform well above the average player who mains that class. And a decent chunk of that is because much of the game is focused on knowledge of all the classes (ie how they set up damage) and how to do combos yourself. Its all very transferable between classes regardless what you play. Knowledge of animations to dodge, how to count dodges to land your own burst, cooldown timings, common combos for each class, etc are all not class dependent.

Also you’re kidding yourself if you think Condi Chrono and Bunker Scrapper are difficult specs to learn for an experienced player. Both have an absurdly large amount of fail safes available to save misplays, while also being able to spit out damage constantly.

Took me personally quite a while to learn Chrono. I picked up Warrior, Rev, Guardian, and Ele almost instantly. My first opinion with Warrior and Rev especially were just how straight forward they were, basically no learning curve.

TexZero.7910:

Ging.6485:

TexZero.7910:

Ging.6485:

The problem that exists is not unique to raids. Before raids the problem existed with dungeons and to an extent fractals. It’s a toxic competitive environment where the majority of the player base doesn’t want one. Fractals have become a once a day endeavor that are to some extent trivial enough to not bother the majority of people requiring perfection, but raids are intrinsically not that type of gameplay element.

While I was thinking about how to eliminate the toxicity from raiding, I came up with one idea that would probably kitten off a lot of people. That is, make all encounters pass / fail.

By that I mean, remove any extra reward gained from completing an encounter optimally. By any reward I mean even the time you save by having great DPS and awesome skill.

For Example : Making VG an 8 minute fight, period. Putting in artificial barriers that prevent a group from beating it in less than 8 minutes. What would this do? It would mean that, any group capable of beating the boss would be just as good as the best possible group capable of beating the boss. After all, there would be no difference in the outcome.

This isn’t really my idea as a player, it’s more of the idea I came up with to solve the problem of a min/max mentality while at the same time not compromising the challenging aspect of the encounter.

This is literally the worst idea possible.

Forcing the fights to all be a certain length removes any essence of player skill, build diversity and creativity. The short and narrow of your solution is well if i can’t do it in 4 1/2 minutes, no one should be and everyone should have to suffer. Talk about taking steps backwards.

It’s wrong to assume there’s extra rewards for completing this quickly, the only extra reward is piece of mind and some extra time in your day to do whatever you want.

It’s also in the best interest of the game to give PvE players a place for them to test themselves as a group, an facet of the game where they can strive for improvement….something your system completely ignores. Doing that is in part what lead to this notion that GW2 is somehow meant for the casual everyman at all parts of the game. This is patently false. The game has a plethora of diverse content and raids do not need to see any change to dumb down, artificially lengthen or otherwise change their essence.

I told you it would make you mad.

However it is a solution for PuG toxicity. Because what the hostile environment around PuGs stems from is the fact that someone constantly keeps raising the bar, and once that bar is raised everyone expects everyone else to be able to meet that standard, instantly. It would be like if a school structured its entire curriculum around its most gifted student, and when that student proved that he could overcome a challenge, then the school would present an even more challenging curriculum regardless of how the other students are fairing. As is the case with GW2, this would cause a lot of students to drop out.

The idea I presented basically says that the bar is cemented. No one can raise it, all you need is for people to learn how to clear it. You can set that bar higher every new encounter, but it must not be alterable by the player base, lest you create a highly competitive environment that alienates a lot of people.

No it doesn’t make me mad. A few other sorts of words come to mind.

The idea doesn’t solve any problem and only serves as a very narrow minded viewpoint.

I won’t argue that it wouldn’t create other problems.

It’s pretty much exchanging the frying pan for the fire. A lot of people find a lot of fun when it comes to trying out different comps and finding the optimal way to beat a boss. I myself do always strive to make myself better. However, you can’t turn a blind eye to murder just because it was your best friend who committed it. The thing that is driving the core raid community is also what is contributing to the alienation to the non-raiding GW2 community.

Harper.4173:

Ging.6485:

The problem that exists is not unique to raids. Before raids the problem existed with dungeons and to an extent fractals. It’s a toxic competitive environment where the majority of the player base doesn’t want one. Fractals have become a once a day endeavor that are to some extent trivial enough to not bother the majority of people requiring perfection, but raids are intrinsically not that type of gameplay element.

While I was thinking about how to eliminate the toxicity from raiding, I came up with one idea that would probably kitten off a lot of people. That is, make all encounters pass / fail.

By that I mean, remove any extra reward gained from completing an encounter optimally. By any reward I mean even the time you save by having great DPS and awesome skill.

For Example : Making VG an 8 minute fight, period. Putting in artificial barriers that prevent a group from beating it in less than 8 minutes. What would this do? It would mean that, any group capable of beating the boss would be just as good as the best possible group capable of beating the boss. After all, there would be no difference in the outcome.

This isn’t really my idea as a player, it’s more of the idea I came up with to solve the problem of a min/max mentality while at the same time not compromising the challenging aspect of the encounter.

How does this improve anything? People will still min-max. Even if you’re min-maxing effort vs kill and not something else.

You can’t stop people from min-maxing.

If you take the incentive to min-max away, you can. The inherent incentive is that they save time, or get to show off. If you take the ability to do that away, then people will have no reason to min-max.

I am not suggesting that they actually implement this. I am just saying, that the root of the (LFM Vegeta, 9001 LI exp Super Saiyan) requirements, is that there is an incentive to take a class / person who can do the encounter optimally, versus taking someone who can just do it adequately.

TexZero.7910:

Ging.6485:

The problem that exists is not unique to raids. Before raids the problem existed with dungeons and to an extent fractals. It’s a toxic competitive environment where the majority of the player base doesn’t want one. Fractals have become a once a day endeavor that are to some extent trivial enough to not bother the majority of people requiring perfection, but raids are intrinsically not that type of gameplay element.

While I was thinking about how to eliminate the toxicity from raiding, I came up with one idea that would probably kitten off a lot of people. That is, make all encounters pass / fail.

By that I mean, remove any extra reward gained from completing an encounter optimally. By any reward I mean even the time you save by having great DPS and awesome skill.

For Example : Making VG an 8 minute fight, period. Putting in artificial barriers that prevent a group from beating it in less than 8 minutes. What would this do? It would mean that, any group capable of beating the boss would be just as good as the best possible group capable of beating the boss. After all, there would be no difference in the outcome.

This isn’t really my idea as a player, it’s more of the idea I came up with to solve the problem of a min/max mentality while at the same time not compromising the challenging aspect of the encounter.

This is literally the worst idea possible.

Forcing the fights to all be a certain length removes any essence of player skill, build diversity and creativity. The short and narrow of your solution is well if i can’t do it in 4 1/2 minutes, no one should be and everyone should have to suffer. Talk about taking steps backwards.

It’s wrong to assume there’s extra rewards for completing this quickly, the only extra reward is piece of mind and some extra time in your day to do whatever you want.

It’s also in the best interest of the game to give PvE players a place for them to test themselves as a group, an facet of the game where they can strive for improvement….something your system completely ignores. Doing that is in part what lead to this notion that GW2 is somehow meant for the casual everyman at all parts of the game. This is patently false. The game has a plethora of diverse content and raids do not need to see any change to dumb down, artificially lengthen or otherwise change their essence.

I told you it would make you mad.

However it is a solution for PuG toxicity. Because what the hostile environment around PuGs stems from is the fact that someone constantly keeps raising the bar, and once that bar is raised everyone expects everyone else to be able to meet that standard, instantly. It would be like if a school structured its entire curriculum around its most gifted student, and when that student proved that he could overcome a challenge, then the school would present an even more challenging curriculum regardless of how the other students are fairing. As is the case with GW2, this would cause a lot of students to drop out.

The idea I presented basically says that the bar is cemented. No one can raise it, all you need is for people to learn how to clear it. You can set that bar higher every new encounter, but it must not be alterable by the player base, lest you create a highly competitive environment that alienates a lot of people.

Helly.2597:

PierPiero.9142:

scrapper is all except complicated to play. 2 kits old engi was complicated but scrapper is really trivial to play …. one of the easiest class to learn

Every class is easy to learn in this game…

Not really. Mesmer and Engineer are probably the hardest to learn to play properly. As an example in support of this, I have won 1 vs 3s and even a 1 vs 4 against other Engineers.
On the other hand, playing a Revanent, Warrior, Guardian, Ele, pretty much everything else doesn’t require all that much ingenuity. Mesmers and Engineers though have some very timing specific and situation specific skills/combos that if you don’t know how/when to perform it seriously undercuts your power.

On the other hand, if you know how to play a condi Chrono or a bunker Scrapper well, then you have quite the edge over a lot of other classes 1 on 1 or even 1 on 2.

Warrior at the moment is pretty faceroll in just about any situation.

The problem that exists is not unique to raids. Before raids the problem existed with dungeons and to an extent fractals. It’s a toxic competitive environment where the majority of the player base doesn’t want one. Fractals have become a once a day endeavor that are to some extent trivial enough to not bother the majority of people requiring perfection, but raids are intrinsically not that type of gameplay element.

While I was thinking about how to eliminate the toxicity from raiding, I came up with one idea that would probably kitten off a lot of people. That is, make all encounters pass / fail.

By that I mean, remove any extra reward gained from completing an encounter optimally. By any reward I mean even the time you save by having great DPS and awesome skill.

For Example : Making VG an 8 minute fight, period. Putting in artificial barriers that prevent a group from beating it in less than 8 minutes. What would this do? It would mean that, any group capable of beating the boss would be just as good as the best possible group capable of beating the boss. After all, there would be no difference in the outcome.

This isn’t really my idea as a player, it’s more of the idea I came up with to solve the problem of a min/max mentality while at the same time not compromising the challenging aspect of the encounter.

I’d personally rather they buff other classes than nerf engi anymore. The previous round of nerfs made things so much more annoying in PvE. That leap finisher removed from hammer 3 took away defiance bar breaking power. The added deployment time to healing turret made it so much more awkward to use.

I’d prefer it if they just knocked off some damage or some healing in base stats here and there, or buff other classes to balance rather than messing with the class mechanics.

It’s probably the most complicated class to play as it stands.

I have geared out quite a few characters.
All characters have fully ascended trinkets and weapons, some have exotic armor though.

Condi Engi – full ascended
Tempest – exotic armor (ascended Staff, Dagger, WH, Focus)
Chrono – Full Set of Ascended Commanders Armor
– Full Set of Exotic Berserker Armor
– Ascended Berserker (2 x Sword, Focus, Shield, with Concentration Rune)
– 100% boon duration tanking set, 100% boon duration non tanking set
Rev – (3/6 ascended Armor)(Ascended Sword, Axe, Staff, Hammer)
—-
I have access to weapons and armor to gear out a Thief, Warrior, and Guardian also if needed.

I can never find any training groups though and spend most of my time simply collecting meta gear for my multi-classes.

I have finished VG 8 times on my condi-engi, and attempted Gors maybe 3 or 4 times. Anyway I want to learn and experience the raiding content and am willing to play any of those classes I have listed above.

You can still use it strategically. I tend to use it for clutch damage reduction, stability, and quickness to make a swift getaway.

zinkz.7045:

Ging.6485:

Problem is, Engineer in general is a hard class to learn

Not really, putting aside a game where you don’t need to aim, has virtually no resource management, is not mechanically demanding, etc nothing is hard to learn, engi is a middling class, and scrapper is one of the easiest to learn.

You need to manage your positioning,your energy, your healing, your combo fields, your boons, your condi cleanse; there is a lot you need to take into mind when playing a scrapper.

Just because an FPS has autoaim doesn’t automatically remove all aspects of skill. It just means you have to focus more on positioning, moving around objects and corners, throwing grenades in anticipation.

Dexterity does not equal skill.

Problem is, Engineer in general is a hard class to learn. It’s not a weak class though. Having mained Engi since release, then picking up other classes like Ele, Mes, Rev, it’s very evident just how complicated it is to learn to use Engi.

As such, I see a lot of bad Engi’s out there. To the point that I on my scrapper, in PvP and WvW, can go 1 on 4… with 3 other Engi’s, with NO THREAT of losing the fight. In WvW, unless you are up against heavy condi, and you know how to play Scrapper right, don’t expect to lose 1 on 1s, 1 on 2s, or even 1 on 3s on a regular basis. Played right, Scrapper is that powerful of a class. The only weakness it has is heavy condi pressure.

More people need to apply superior runes of altruism to their daily attire, and arm themselves with superior sigils of generosity and benevolence.

I have been running a few things:

If you want to have some fun, run
Tools (mid, down, mid)
Alchemy (mid, mid, up)
Scrapper (mid, down, mid)

Berserker Amulet, Strength Runes, Fire/Air sigils.

bulwark, elixir b, elixir gun, mortar.

It’s hard to use against an organized group of people, but the damage output is insane. I have killed people without focusing on them just as collateral damage. If you start attacking someone that’s down, there is no rezzing them. You will down people rezzing faster than they can rez the person.

For something more sustainable :
Inventions (mid, down, mid)
Alchemy (mid, mid, up)
Scrapper (mid, down, mid or up) depending on whether you are fighting condi heavy team or not.

Demolisher/Paladin Amulet, Hoelbrek Runes, Generosity/Nullification sigil.

bulwark, elixir b, elixir gun, elixir x.

Might stacking works wonders for Engi. Though no matter what I do I still can’t survive condi spam.

Morte.5916:

Hi folks,

I’m a returning player, AFG since pre-HOT. I don’t have HOT, I’m thinking about getting it. I do (did) PVE, PUG dungeons and Silverwastes and so on. A couple of days back I made an engi, my eighth character. And I have some questions…

1. So condi Viper’s is the new hotness. AFAICT that’s HOT only, somewhere along the line you need a non-market recipe or component from HOT to craft it. Am I correct?

2. What do you use to attack things that are immune to condi, like doors or Rotmouths or dredge carts? I’ve been spamming grenade kit 1 at them, is there a better alternative?

3. What do condi engineers do underwater? The speargun doesn’t seem so great, apart from the grenade skill. So I’ve been mostly sticking to the grenade and occasionally bomb kits, with a lot of grenade 1. Any suggestions?

4. What do you do if you want on-demand condi cleanse available? There were times in LS2 when I wouldn’t have died if I could only clear that 15 second cripple to get some space… So far I’ve swapped bomb kit to Elixir H when I really wanted a ready cleanse, any other suggestions?

1) The only non-market things in association with Viper’s are the recipes for inscriptions, insignias, and recipes for ascended gear. You don’t need the ascended gear recipes typically since you can just craft something cheaper then transmute it in the Mystic Forge by putting in an exotic insignia/inscription, 5 ectos, the item, and an anthology of heroes (costs 10 spirit shards). The recipes you need you buy in Auric Basin from the Exalted merchants.

2) Nope. As far as I know, nothing aside from Power Scrapper Hammer does much door to condi immune things. Though not many things are condi immune in HoT.

3) Arenanet more or less abandoned the idea of underwater fights. Just use grenades and bombs, it’s usually enough.

4) In PVE usually Healing Turret is enough for me. I’ve never had an issue with condi cleanse. Here is a little tip that for some reason some engineers just haven’t figured out. If you are going condi, make sure that you blind a lot. Mobs are extremely susceptible to blind since they attack so slowly. Blinds include : Mortar Gun 4, Bombkit 4, Flamethrower 5, Grenade Kit 3, Pistol 3. Before the changes to Cliffside Fractal, I could easily chain pull and solo one side of the Arm Seals, even at fractal level 80 something.

Here is a little weird thing I found out.

Use mender amulet and water runes. I’m not sure if it is a bug, but with 1050 healing my regen was 1500 over 4 sec, with 1200 it was 2500 over 4 sec.

Swiftness was 150 / sec, Superspeed 530 / sec, Turret was about 3300/3300. Elixir gun 1300 initial 400/sec, and mortar was about 1000 / sec if I remember right.

You are basically trading toughness for healing power.

Mecha Anchor

Just search for that in the TP. It looks kind of like a mechanical scythe, it’s a hammer though.