Guild Wars 2

I’d say conditions primarily because higher level fractal mobs have increased toughness and for the few things that Scrapper utility could be useful for, you can simply switch tools to scrapper without too much of a DPS loss.

That said Power Scrapper is still viable.

Now you don’t need toughness / inventions / alchemy, what you want to do, is to keep mobs blinded with mortar 4, bomb 4, grenade 3, ft 5, and pistol 3. Time your blinds and you should have no problem. In the cliffside fractal during the hard seals event, I am able to chain pull tank one side because of exactly that.

Engineers have a lot of different tools at their disposal for soloing most things. I, as well as others, have soloed Hearts and Minds migraine mode with an engineer. It takes a little ingenuity and practice, but it’s very possible.

There will always be an optimal build for different situations.

Currently it’s Condi (and whatever traits max out your condi damage) for PVE.
And a certain bunker Scrapper build for PVP.

One thing I will also say is, you do not want Scrapper nerfed. PVPing as condi is impossible against necros. Necros are a super hard counter to condi. The pure existence of necros makes condi a death sentence in PVP. Rifle/Nades is also impossible, not because of rifle or nades being in some way bad inherently, but because they are projectiles. Projectiles in general are really bad in the current meta, there are too many people with reflects.

Scrapper was basically made specifically because the changes to the other classes screwed projectiles. And there is no class that as heavily relies on projectiles as a non-Scrapper Engineer.

I was actually thinking of an Asura themed Engineer Elite Spec :

Technomancer – Staff
Special Ability – Circuit Wells
Like Necro and Chrono wells, except their effects change depending on how you stack them on top of one another. (The circuitry aspect)

So for example, Well A may do like 100 damage pulsing, and Well B may do cripple pulsing, But Well A + B does 2500 damage pulsing while Well B + A does a pulsing root.

Sort of a Synergy + Mathematics take on the well idea. Combining Wells and Circuit boards.

Deximus.8640:

I just want to throw my name down here as an interested raider. I have a fully ascended PS Warrior and I have the mechanics of VG down pretty well (I have 3 kills). I’ve put in several hours on Gorseval and I’ve yet to get a kill so definitely looking to practice that even more. I’ve put about an hour into Sabetha and I’m still pretty terrible at that. I also have a Viper Reaper that’s not quite meta (Full viper armor and weapons, but I only have 2 ascended sinister trinkets and 1 ascended viper trinket, the rest are exotic rampagers). Looking to practice with that toon on anything.

You can get a full set of sinister trinkets (except the back) from doing the Living Story achievements. I think it took me about a day or two to solo them all.

Mortar has 5 pretty good skills on short cool downs.
-2] Poison field is something people generally ignore because it doesn’t do damage, but the point isn’t to do damage, it’s to simply keep poison applied.
-3] Chill field is annoying as hell.
-4] Blind field is worth a few good dodges.
-5] Water field is great in combo with Orbital Strike and Hammer 3 for an extra heal.

That said, Elixir X has the Moa which deadly against Necros and runners. Necros rely on their shroud as sort of a second and third health bar. So if you get a Necro low, they will quickly shroud up to buy time. Moa is a death sentence to them right there.

Sneak Gyro on the other hand is great for survivibility and running away, but is also capable of destroying thieves and mesmers who rely on their stealth for defense.

In general I find that Mortar is great against melee classes, while the other two options are just great in general.

Honestly, I would have loved to. It’s been about 2 months since I played last, I burnt out on crafting HOPE. I was never able to get past Gorseval mainly because I was never able to find a group.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much time for GW2 at all now. Just posting to show, that even though I can’t play, I appreciate your effort for the community. It helps pull the community together since challenging content can usually result in elitism that tends to pull it apart.

anking.6245:

Ging.6485:

That said I have been dabbling in Dragon Hunter, and it probably is the highest damaging burst class at the moment. I can down chieftain / svanir in under 10 seconds if I really try. And to an unsuspecting squishy, if you lay traps on a point, they can pretty much instantly die just by activating your traps. In fact, I once killed 4 people simultaneously when I set up 3 traps on the orb in spirit watch, immobilized them with lb 5, and pierced them with lb 2.

I think it would probably be sufficient to nerf Dragon Hunter’s burst damage by ~5-10%. The class doesn’t really need anything changed. It can be beaten if you simply know how to play against it (watch where you walk).

Part of me wonders if the most of the complaints come from those who have been JI’d with 5-trap drop. It’s really a cheese tactic that’s getting under the skin of a lot of players who don’t know how to properly mitigate or counter it. For those who do, it seems to be less than a problem; scrappers, Mesmer’s using F4, Ele’s invuln, etc. all provide easy mitigation to the trap drop. This also leaves the DH vulenrable until the cooldowns come back up.

I’d honestly be cool with a small baseline nerf to damage. I don’t want them touching trap mechanics anymore than they need to. I started off hating the DH, and conceptually I still think it’s lackluster, but after the tweaks and some hindsight I’d have to say it is massively more entertaining that I could have hoped for. The DH has come a long way from what may have been perceived as the worst specialization, to one that is viable.

Conversely, how about slightly modifying the damage or trap mechanics in PvP only, Anet? There’s no shame in separate stats for separate game modes.

Really? Conceptually I think that Dragon Hunter is my favorite class. I love Engineer/Scrapper, but the idea of setting traps, leading a dragon into them, disabling him, tethering him. Going 1 on 1 with a giant monster basically. I love the idea of a class based around that. It just feels so cool.

I main Engineer/Scrapper, and I can tell you that 1 on 1, I can beat a Dragon Hunter. It’s about an even fight. That said, Scrapper has the advantage that it has a lot of blocks and mobility. So with a little bit of knowledge of how Dragon Hunters work, I can avoid trap bursts.

That said I have been dabbling in Dragon Hunter, and it probably is the highest damaging burst class at the moment. I can down chieftain / svanir in under 10 seconds if I really try. And to an unsuspecting squishy, if you lay traps on a point, they can pretty much instantly die just by activating your traps. In fact, I once killed 4 people simultaneously when I set up 3 traps on the orb in spirit watch, immobilized them with lb 5, and pierced them with lb 2.

I think it would probably be sufficient to nerf Dragon Hunter’s burst damage by ~5-10%. The class doesn’t really need anything changed. It can be beaten if you simply know how to play against it (watch where you walk).

From the current state of the game, I think that Thieves and Warriors could use some buffing. It doesn’t matter if I am on DH or on Scrapper, those two classes do not threaten me at all. You can ignore their contribution to a fight.

I actually don’t care about Thieves keeping stealth.

It’s those kitten ed Mesmers that I want to reveal. I hate Mesmers, they are the most annoying class to fight against in the game. The stealthing and teleportation they have just adds insult to injury.

EdwinLi.1284:

Ging.6485:

Yes , and what I am saying is that the Scrapper gives us the ability to do things that we CANNOT do as opposed to a new way of doing something that we are already capable of.

Where you are essentially saying “I’d rather be an engineer and also beat on NPCs with a hammer, instead of throw grenades at them.” Might as well roll a Warrior or Guardian then.

Unless PVE changed, you are all just going to stand in a pile and just spam a rotation of buttons anyway not noticing the animations of the skills. If you want to solo, just equip berserker’s gear and do whatever, the game is not at all challenging solo.

Well we don’t know the full extent of Scrapper yet in PvE for HoT.

From beta we already see some of the mobs being very Anti-Zerker and a lot of players drop dead fast for not having proper amount of Toughness or Vitality in the HoT zones.

We already have people calling for Nerfs in HoT zones mobs because they’re being slaughtered for using Zerker Build or any type of pure DPS build that ignores Toughness and Vitality.

If that is true then great. I really want the meta attitude to go away. I want to enjoy GW2, not Fashion Wars 2 : Speed Run Edition.

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Ging.6485:

Are people really complaining about the lack of use of the Scrapper in a PVE environment?

It’s pretty obvious that it was designed to fix what the Engineer was lacking : support and survivability. Not give it another way to DPS. We have grenades, we have condis, we have plenty of damage options. What we lack is a concrete way to be of use to a group, and a concrete way to stay alive against conditions and focus-fire. That is what the Scrapper gives us.

I don’t mean to burst your bubble but with the way PvE works there is a golden rule:

If you aren’t doing damage, you are effectively useless. No one wants the full cleric guardian to show up and “heal” everyone while slowing the group to a crawl because someone is hitting for 400 damage.

Guess what the Scrapper doesn’t do? Yep. Damage. And what is it DESIGNED to do? Yep. Tank. It’s a PvP spec, designed to be a boring stunbunker.

If you still aren’t convinced. Look at the “new mechanic”. A ranged stomp and rez. Lets look at a list all the applications a ranged stomp/rez has in PvE:

1.
2.
3.
4. Killing those toxic Sylvari that showed up that one time in an event that will never show up again.
5.
6. Picking little Tim up off the ground when he doesn’t dodge a oneshot.

Scrapper is anet forcing their esports game mode on the second-least popular profession. It is also their second attempt at balancing turrets. Furthermore, it doesn’t even add anything new, neither to the class or the game. Gyros are either boring and passive (50% less damage, poor healing) or an underwhelming active. (whirling and counter-intuitive stealth). I laugh every time they say “fuel system”. It’s not some complex system, its a DURATION for the love of god drop the act.

But yeah whatever back to Grenades I guess (Which still apply vuln faster than the hammer does)

Yes , and what I am saying is that the Scrapper gives us the ability to do things that we CANNOT do as opposed to a new way of doing something that we are already capable of.

Where you are essentially saying “I’d rather be an engineer and also beat on NPCs with a hammer, instead of throw grenades at them.” Might as well roll a Warrior or Guardian then.

Unless PVE changed, you are all just going to stand in a pile and just spam a rotation of buttons anyway not noticing the animations of the skills. If you want to solo, just equip berserker’s gear and do whatever, the game is not at all challenging solo.

Leon Heart XIII.4609:

“Sees stealth gyro scampering nearby”

“Tells guild mates to bombard area with aoe”

“Everybody ded”

Yeah not your best idea Anet.

You could use it as a decoy in WvW.

In PVE you could combine it with elixir S for 10 seconds of usable stealth.

You just have to use a little ingenuity. Turn the weakness into a strength.

You could use it to run around WvW alone because roaming thieves will be scared to attack it. They don’t know whether you are alone, or in a group. And if they give themselves up by attacking it, you get the opening strike on them. And they are screwed because you can just reveal them if they try to stealth and run away.

AED was useful until they nerfed the Inventions trait. I was able to pull it off about 4-5 times during a fight.

Are people really complaining about the lack of use of the Scrapper in a PVE environment?

It’s pretty obvious that it was designed to fix what the Engineer was lacking : support and survivability. Not give it another way to DPS. We have grenades, we have condis, we have plenty of damage options. What we lack is a concrete way to be of use to a group, and a concrete way to stay alive against conditions and focus-fire. That is what the Scrapper gives us.

I run, Balthazar – Bursting / Generosity – Rabid
P/P – Flamethrower – Rocket boots – Elixir S – Mortar
Firearms – Alchemy – Inventions

It’s extremely simple, If you fight 1 on 1 against someone with minimal Condi Cleanse, you WILL win quickly. If you fight someone specced to the teeth with Condi Cleanse , you WILL lose slowly.

Ideally, find a battle in progress, stealth, choose a squishy looking person, apply 15 stacks of burning to them, finish them with either elixir S or Mortar 4 (Blind Field). You are essentially a condi thief, you gank with burning. You can also offer support with Mortar field etc. Works really well in a group.

The Generosity sigil helps against other people who have the same idea as you, you can send their burning back at them, usually they will get 10 stacks on you quickly so it works wonders.

Best part of this build is that you will be able to drop Svanir / Chieftain or even Blue/Red lords extremely quickly even with all the other NPCs on you. The weakness is though that people will start to focus fire you and you won’t be able to survive as long as you would like with that happening, and if you come across a Necro / Guardian / Elementalist armed to the teeth with Condi Cleanse, they will most likely defeat you. Necro and Elementalist for sure.

The thieves are complaining about our stealth reveal (which I don’t think is all that useful outside of WvW)

and now the Necros are complaining that we got a slightly shinier version of something they have.

Arioso.8519:

Hey now, it doesn’t sound that bad! I’m sure I’ll use it right alongside my battering ram, because this gyro sounds exactly as useful!

/lovingly places the blast gyro on top of the battering ram in the trashcan in the corner.

Everything aside from Kits and Elixirs is pretty bad. Although I have found that Rocket Boots do synergize pretty well with a condi build.

The gyros will need reworking but I am more than pleased with the way the Hammer looks. It’s much better than the Dragon Hunter’s Longbow, the other class I am thinking for playing possibly.

I will have to play around with it, hopefully the next beta weekend isn’t too far off. What I am thinking currently though is:

(Hammer) : (Healing Turret) – (Tool Kit) (Elixir Gun) (Rocket Boots) – (Mortar)
—-
Tools
Alchemy
Scrapper
—-
Sigil of Energy / Sigil of Doom
Runes of Strength
Celestial Amulet

And have it be a sort of lock down/ healer/ bruiser. Then again I don’t know how well that will work.

Scribbles.3974:

Raven.9603:

thieves don’t rate high enough on the meter of classes that matter to take an elite just for reveal.

this makes me sad

:/

It’s true. I main Engineer as it is, and thieves are the class that I fear the least. No way am I going to take this ability in SPVP. Especially when I have more effective ways of stealthing myself that don’t take up an elite slot.

Honestly, it’s only real use is going to be in WvW. Elixir X for moa or Mortar for combo fields are better in SPVP (Mortar 3 and 4 are awesome against thieves). Anything is better for PVE, especially since the drone is going to be visible and agro mobs, and reveal is useless in PVE.

In WvW, I will probably just have it running around with the group until I see red in the distance, then I will burst it, and we can gank. Or I will use it for 1 tick and burst it. Alternatively I will stealth myself only, run into range of the enemy zerg, and pop reveal to thwart any stealthed pushes. In a 1 on 1 situation against thieves though, forget it. I’d rather put down a smoke field and blast the crap out of it.

mompen.7952:

DavyMcB.1603:

Tool Belt Skill—Detection Pulse: Remove stealth from enemies in a large area.
On a short recharge, this toolbelt skill helps ensure that you are the one getting the drop on foes and not vice versa

Thieves’ tears…. they are coming…..

Thieves are already crying. Look at the Thief sub-forums :-P
I’m not one of those whiners, but it’s certainly hard to do good on a thief nowadays, and it’s not getting easier with HoT. Revenant also gets a revealed skill.

I’m gonna play a stealthless NINJA with my staff, so doesn’t matter for me, reveal all you want xD

The thing is, I think they never intended for stealth to be a long term thing such that you can just stealth for as long as you need to heal up. They are essentially giving us a way to pressure people in stealth, make it so that stealth isn’t exactly “free hit” mode.

I have a feeling that the drones are going to be like options from those old 2d shooting games. They will probably orbit you giving you different buffs/abilities. It seems like the forge is going to be heavy with blast finishers and combo fields, they will probably have something to do with that as well.

Essentially I think that they will be portable turrets.

Conditions are the Engineer’s biggest weakness. You probably won’t beat a decent Engineer using pure power, we have too many ways to mitigate / block / evade the damage. On the other hand we have really poor condi cleanse. It’s an uphill battle for me against even a bad burn guard for example, all he has to do is keep the burning on me which is not that difficult.

As far as Rangers go, learn how to kite, your damage at longer range is much more powerful than our damage at long range. Don’t melee an Engineer. Engineers, believe it or not, are close-ranged/mid-ranged characters. Yes most of our weapons are capable of long range, but they become considerably weaker the farther away you are. It’s why the easiest fights as an Engineer are against (Non-burn)Guardians, Warriors, and Thieves. They try to go toe to toe with us thinking that we are a long ranged class, which we are not. When you are up close, it is extremely easy for us to block your attacks, keep you blinded, keep you poisoned, without realizing it have you fighting us in multiple healing fields, chill fields, poison fields. The closer you are also, the easier it is for us to land our grenades, and grenades are really powerful. Theoretically, depending on the spec, being hit by 1 grenade toss can apply 8 stacks of burning, 3-9 stacks of bleeding, 3-6 stacks of vulnerability, and 3 stacks of poison. If it’s a power spec engineer on the other hand, the condis become negligible, but on the other hand you can expect each grenade toss to do anywhere from 2.5-5k damage.

If you are at range though, the grenades become easy to avoid, the only 1500 range weapon we have is mortar, and that is more useful for the fields than the upfront damage, also easy to avoid at 1500. Pistol won’t hit you at all, we may be able to get a rifle hipshot off, but your longbow is more powerful. We aren’t especially built to fight well at long range.

I was actually thinking, they could achieve a unique play style with Dragonhunter if they do 2 things. Make Long Bow more damaging but slower (essentially make it difficult to use against a freely moving target up close but extremely potent against a disabled target), but at the same time make traps a disabling and zoning tool rather than a damaging tool.

For example, add a 1 sec knockback to Procession of Blades. As is procession of blades simply does damage which can be mitigated. If you add a knockback to it though, people will avoid it like the plague and Dragonhunters can use it to set up combos with the long bow.

The philosophy here is basically that you create an area with the traps which directs your enemy(s) in a certain manner, and you destroy them with your longbow. Also with Spear of Justice, perhaps if your enemy ran out of it’s range while they had it on them, it would cause a knock down.

Essentially treat the Dragonhunter like a Hunter rather than a Paladin/Monk style of class.

Yeah Dragon Hunter seriously lacks utility. I like the flavor of the class a lot but everything DH can do any other class can do better.

The only problem I have with spying in GW2 is that… when a real life spy is found out they are tortured / killed, there is risk involved and there are ways to weed out the spies.

In GW2 on the other hand, you can reduce a spy to a troll, that is about it. He may not be able to get access to your voip or anything that you can control, but you cannot disable his character in game. He can still waste supply, put down annoying mesmer portals, mess with siege, etc and there is nothing you can do about it.

Epoch.5396:

GrandHaven.1052:

Nirvana.8659:

Unholy Pillager.3791:

GrandHaven.1052:

Epoch.5396:

.

As soon as they tone down burning a bit we’ll be really strong.

As soon as they tone down burning a bit , we will lose our burning damage too,unless they don’t rework Inceniary Powder giving 3 or 4 stacks instead of the actual 2 stacks to compense the tone down.

Condi ngi is dead. Only reason it works now is because of burning abuse.
Our condition traits are either poor misplaced.
Our other condition application is too unreliable and spread over too many skills.

Condition specs from all classes are dead if you take out burning. Although we all feel conditions were boosted in fact it was only burning. Everything else is pretty weak. Stacking 14 -20 Confusion tickles now when it used to melt people. 20 stacks of bleed aren’t bad but ye, we cant do that :P

I am not sure what i would do without burning :P

Basically they switched the roles of burning and confusion, which I am not entirely sure was the right thing to do. Before burning used to keep constant pressure on a target, and confusion was used to spike.

Confusion had the benefits of spiking in that it was fairly difficult to apply properly, it made people wary of which conditions they had on them, and if they had like 10 stacks of confusion on them it made them afraid to even sneeze. Using confusion was playing a mind game with your target.

With burning for spiking there is none of that. Simply make your target waste his initial condition cleanse, then put like 6+ stacks of burning on him and he is dead. I kill people on walls almost instantly in WvW just by using incendiary ammo, incendiary powder, and lobbing a shrapnel grenade at them. 8 stacks of burning, 3-6 stacks of bleeding, 3-6 stacks of vulnerability, they take like 5k+ damage / second, and usually die before they know what even hit then.

My 3 looks. (Engineer)

Left : Magitech Helm, Magitech Shoulders, Magitech Gloves, Magitech Boots, Inquest Garb, Glorious Leggings.

Middle : Magitech Helm, Scarf, Magitech Gloves, Magitech Boots, Glorious Leggings, Duelist Coat.

Right : Reading Glasses, Shoulders Hidden, Duelist Coat, Magitech Gloves, Magitech Boots, Glorious Leggings.

I have been playing rather casually since release. I mainly have stuck to one class (Engineer).

I am looking for a guild that is rather active with PVE events. I have been looking through recent postings on the forum but really am not sure how to judge some of the recruitment posts.

If you are on a server that I am able to transfer to (aka not Tier 1 or YB) then I can participate in WvW as well. I enjoy it. Primarily though I am looking for a guild that does frequent PVE events.

Forge is one of the more obscure members of the X-men.

Why not instead have

Warrior = The Human Torch
*Guardian = Hawk-Eye
*Ranger = Nightcrawler
Elementalist = Storm
*Necromancer = Dr. Doom
*Mesmer = Magneto

*I just came up with these off the top of my head so these may not be the best suggestions. If you have better, feel free to speak up.

Sea of Sorrows still pretty active? I am looking to get back into the game. When I left I was on Sanctum of Rall, which were like #2 ~2years ago, but I come back and it’s pretty dead, so I need a new home. I am more just curious about the community, I have very little leadership experience, and will pay my own way.

You guys seem active and friendly, so I just posted an application.

Seriously, remove it for everything except grenade kit and bomb kit. Completely. Having those other kits trigger the global cool down for a completely useless effect makes this trait annoying to say the least. This is not trolling, this is not sarcasm, I am serious. By actually making this trait worse you would make it better.