Guild Wars 2

Top 5 things to do with Angry Grawl:

1) Learn to dodge. No, seriously, learn to dodge. Every time I see you get hit by an arrow when there’s nothing else going on, I want to hit you with my wrench.
2) Bring CC for the oozes. Good CC. Not ranger-tier skills of a line target cripple, I mean Freeze Grenade, Caltrops, Frozen Ground, Line of Warding, etcetera. Pope’s idea of Daggerstorm is actually quite genius – reflecting those DoT roots will probably wreck most oozes, not to mention crippling them for a healthy duration.
3) Bring a block / invuln skill. For classes that don’t have this, use a blink effect. The only class that doesn’t actually have either of these is ranger. Go figure. You’ll want this in case you end up walking into those impossible-to-see AoEs with the root effect and massive damage – if you get chained by this from the several oozes, you’re gonna die without an escape mechanism.
4) Reflects! If you have a reliable one, bring it. It’s not essential, but it takes a ton of pressure off players. I wish so badly they’d make engineer’s Toss Elixir U reliable (I currently see it as “33% chance to be useless”), but wall of reflection, smoke screen, and feedback (best mesmer utility in PvE by leaps and bounds!) are all outstanding.
5) Blinds. Flashbangs, leap of faith, warrior’s bow 4, etcetera, all of them are great for mitigating the ooze damage. Longer duration blinds are great (like flashbang) because blinds won’t go off until they either expire, or one thing misses. Every time you blind something in this manner, that’s like 3-4k health saved.

I will say this though – avoid bringing rangers. They were good when Search and Rescue could cheese Jade Maw. Now they can’t, so try to encourage 1 of 2 things – either for Anet to buff Rangers (either through pets or giving them more AoE), or for your ranger friend to level an alt.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Run a shortbow. Both a cripple and a daze/stun, plus constant bleeds and frequent poison. All attacks work on the go. And when the shield bubble comes up, auto-attack and swap pets. Quick quickness burst. Can almost solo that shield down in seconds.

Rangers are highly useful if played right. I am sorry that you have not encountered many good rangers, but we do exist.

Again, these are all in a line. When I drop a freeze grenade, or a supply crate, or a mesmer uses iBerserker, or an elementalist any of their many AoE chills, they’re going to hit 5 of the oozes almost every time. A ranger would be lucky to hit 2, and the cripple lasts 3 seconds. Maybe 4 with all the points into a condition duration traitline. The ranger doesn’t even have a method to survive any sudden spikes of root abuse (by this I mean an invuln essentially – endure pain, shield stance, gear shield, renewed focus, etc) – their best bet at that point is to chain their evasion skills and hope that the current root falls off before another refreshes.

I’m going to just stop bothering, it’s clear you’re the kind of detriment who will defend subpar play and magic find to the death, and argue for the sake of arguing. 5 > 2, Chill > Cripple, and Anything > Ranger (until a tweak to pets occurs).

JJBigs.8456:

There is no build that counters the damage from the Add’s lol. You crazy. The tankiest of tankiest cannot just tank through the Add’s. Obviously you need to mitigate, kite, CC, something. So ranger doesnt really need healing spring to counter the adds as hopefully they will be far and kiting good enough.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blind

The oozes attack fairly slow. Warrior Longbow 4, Guardian [anything], Engineer Flashbang / Smoke Bomb, Necro Blinds, any projectile reflection. Boom. You just mitigated a horde of oozes while getting to wail on them in turn. Warriors taper off at higher fractals given how impossibly hard mobs start to hit in melee – the margin for error becomes incredibly small. And when a warrior isn’t in melee, their damage output becomes more on par with an axe necro. This isn’t CoF where the mobs will stand there and take it – walking up to the Archdiviner will get you a crater where your face was. And Guardian DPS is uh.. well, after last patch, their best DPS build was neutered. They can still do solid though – but they aren’t on par with a warrior anymore.

SynfulChaot.3169:

That is exactly why piercing is useful. You keep attacking the shaman and strafing to keep the oozes between. That way you take out the oozes while maintaining pressure on the Shaman.

How exactly is that useful? You’re pewpewing one, maybe two, while an engineer or warrior or guardian is slamming 3-5 at a time, with actual crowd control effects. Where’s the ranger’s blind? Their cripple on the move? Anything at all? There is not a single bow ability that hits harder than the auto attack, sadly – they’re all for defense or conditions, and then we have Barrage – a skill that will take you getting a good distance away from any nearby oozes (so they don’t root + kill you with their ability) before you can make any use of it. If poison volley crippled, perhaps I’d say otherwise – but it doesn’t.

And you don’t break his shield immediately. The smart thing to do is to get him down to 1-2 points left on the shield, kill as many oozes as possible before he heals, and then break it down. Again – ranger is a suboptimal choice for this fight. There is no build on ranger that makes them suddenly an ‘oh god yes I want you on my team’ – spirits are severely limited (in fact without a 30 point trait they’d burn to death). Healing Spring is great though – that’ll counter the roots. Not the damage though, regeneration alone isn’t much. 15 second water field is awesome though. Sadly that’s the best feature of the entire class until pets are revamped.

I did a 38 run earlier that went incredibly smooth. 2 mesmers, 2 engineers, 1 guardian. The mesmers were using sword/pistol and greatsword, the guardian GS and staff, and both engineers grenade/rifle. It was smooth as silk – the guardian even commented that the DPS was absurdly high compared to usual, and he was pleasantly surprised with that, given seeing 2 engineers made him think it would be an awful run. And, yes, the other engineer and I run very similar builds, he just runs elixir R/S where I run toolkit.

JJBigs.8456:

Arrows pierce targets.

Linear AoE isn’t really sufficient when the oozes are in a horizontal cluster trailing behind players. You might hit 2, possibly 3 in that situation on a good moment – and to be blunt, engineer rifle has a harder hitting potential in those cases. Only time piercing is useful is when you’re trying to hit the Shaman through some oozes.

I’ll say this – engineer is far more useful than necro at 80. Necro’s sub-par raw damage somewhat pigeonholes him into a condition setup, whereas engineer can go condition or raw to great effect (not to mention engineer can actually stack 25 bleeds without pizza by just hammering on grenades, while also busting out poison and burning. I have an engineer and necro (among other classes) at 80, and the necro is shelved except for crafting. I don’t even bother bringing him or my ranger into CoF because they slow the run down by a good bit compared to war/guard/engineer.

Also, engi is way easier to level. Necro relies on blowing both wells for most ‘oh crap’ moments – and I won’t lie, it works well.

Engineer can burn everything (literally, burning) in seconds up to level 20, then from 20-60 you can abuse bomb kit, and from 60-80 use grenadier all in efficient order. Bomb kit is pretty sick for levelling – and there’s also a static discharge build you could use while levelling, if you want. Necro can spec for a little bit of stuff while levelling, but none of it is particularly impressive (Ooh death shroud build – oh death shroud’s over, time to zzzz). Minion Master isn’t bad but kind of an overworld only thing – and it’s actually somewhat slow, but safe certainly.

Life-stealing food buffs based on critical hits no longer affect gadgets.

I was wrong, and apologize for any confusion I caused. I’m not exactly sure what this means – engineer gadget utilities? This seems incredibly specific in that case, I inferred it as any pick-up bundle, but then it would say bundle.

Seeing all this commentary just makes me want to say one thing – learn to strafe. The lightning balls will stray wildly and their rapid fire will miss at 900~ish range.

Incoming lengthy post about higher fractals (as in the ones you can currently do without cheesing):

Engineers are fine, if and only if, you use grenade kit. In fact, they’re a lot better than any other profession for the more difficult encounters if they’re geared properly, and utilizing that kit! Freeze Grenade can clump up a mob, shrapnel and barrage do heavy damage, and flash bangs help mitigate any incoming damage. The hardest fractal boss (Grawl) is made substantially easier with engineers, as they can run around and kite the lava oozes while still killing them (you can throw grenades over your shoulder, it’s pretty awesome while running). My group and I have had very much success with our setup.

However, now for the bad part – we don’t allow rangers in our group anymore. At least not on 30+. Their AoE is the worst amongst all the classes (mesmer isn’t so hot either, but at least iBerserker does a huge chunk of AoE damage + cripple). Ranger has 2 decent AoE methods – the first is on a very large cooldown (Barrage), but it’s also channeled so they might get gibbed in the process. The only time I appreciate barrage is when we’re doing the Ascalon fractal. Their other method is axes – which is a whopping 3 targets hit, and they have to be facing their target. Their burst is nonexistent due to pets becoming crippled macro-minipets, and their sustained damage isn’t even that hot at range, which is kind of a kick in the groin when you realize their other options are pretty weak (I’ll admit – sword/x does great damage, but being locked in to your attacks will get you killed).

We’ve also shied away from bringing staff elementalists or thieves, and.. well, any engineer that pulls out a flamethrower. If the thief clearly knows their class (as in we see permaweakness on the mobs), we’ll add them to our friends, but most PUGs where we grab a 5th or maybe a 4th too? Nah, get out, guardians/warriors/grenade engineers/ dd or sd eles/sword mesmers only. We need aoE for the harder stuff, and while sure, your ranger can get carried through a setup like ocean/swamp/blizzard, if we end up hitting grawl on that third fractal, we don’t want to spend 30 minutes wiping at the boss because you’re a worthless pile when the oozes spawn. I’ve seen some great players who used ranger on that part do their best, but it’s not within the class’s limitations – they back up, axe the oozes, but the damage output is laughable. Meanwhile, I’m strolling past with 5 oozes behind me, grenading oozes chasing other players to help them live, swapping to tool kit to Box of Nails (2 of them actually due to kit refinement) cripple the mob behind me, and start rifling down the Shaman before he heals. I’m done now.

P.S.: Not much reason to discriminate pre-10 fractals. 10-20, if you have 3+ of the ‘bad’ PvE setups I’ve mentioned above, you’re gonna be in for a rough time. 20-30, 2+. 30+, we just don’t want any in case we bump into the angry grawl.

Not gonna quote ‘cause that’s just flooding at this point. My group and I enjoy fast, successful runs – when we pick up some strangers, we want to make sure they’re someone who can contribute to their fullest. Instead of noble runes, you could be benefiting from far superior stats simply by slamming six rubies into your gear. The difference between contributing, well-geared players, and contributing, selfish players, is a 40 and 20 minute CoE run. You think I’m kidding? I’m not – you’re at less than 66% effectiveness gear-wise compared to a properly equipped player, with a decreasing difference if you just run runes or somesuch.

And at the guy talking about warriors – that’s primarily because PvE warriors are the easiest class to play to their high damage potential. Engineer can put out similar numbers, but it takes a lot more thought. Guardians can also compete up there but admittedly it takes only a fraction more thought than warrior. Imagine how much damage you could be doing if you were well geared, huh?

Same usual super damage build with double super elixir + gear shield for utility, and using flash grenades as much as possible to help mitigate incoming shots.

SynfulChaot.3169:

That action does neither you nor the community any service.

Does the rest of the group the grand service of speeding up the run, and any subsequent paths we do on that same dungeon. Also does the rest of my group the sense of helping cull the wheat from the chaff. I’ve got 2 people I regularly run with who frankly feel insulted when someone comes into a dungeon in MF gear. The best loot comes from the chests, not the corpses, in these dungeons, I’ve personally seen 3 precursors drop since launch from them (none of them for me, sadly).

There’s a distinct feeling of hatred I have every time I see a Tropical Bird [Worthless Player’s Guild] spawn when I’m in a dungeon. I saw one spawn on level 28 of Fractals of the Mists, and we were already taking a while to kill things (2 rangers, enough said) – you can bet your bottom dollar I said something along the lines of “This upstanding gentlemen appears to be doing us the disservice of utilizing Magic Find armor, let us convince him of his errors and continue the dungeon without such impedances”. Except the opposite of that, I right click → kicked and pulled one of my friends in.

The other give away (if you’re going to say WELL I DON’T USE ALL SIX PIRATE RUNES) is if someone’s saying FOR GREAT JUSTICE when uh.. you’re not a warrior.

Carzor Stelatis.9435:

This same issue was raised in GW1, when ‘too many people’ had 15k armour or even Vabbi armor. The obvious answer is: so what? Other people having legendaries doesn’t make your character’s Kudzu or whatever look any worse, just as 10,000 other people having Dervish Asuran Armor in GW1 didn’t make that look any less awesome.

PS: I don’t have a legendary

In GW1 there were rare drop weapons you could use to show off, as well as Tormented Weapons. Celestial Compasses, Dryad Bows, Crystalline Blades, waste-of-ecto-gloves, etcetera, all were very expensive ways to show off. Not to mention limited minipets, which I personally hope they don’t bring back ones like Kanaxai and their ‘top tournament players only’ rewards, but ones like the Ghostly Hero minipet from HA wouldn’t be bad! (As if Anet is going to give us an actual new PvP mode any time soon)

In GW2, we have: Legendaries, fractal capacitors, minipets (this is my route right here, all of them!), possibly include any of the charged lodestone weapons (350 charged lodes is a heck of a lot of gold down the crapper!), and uh.. I can’t think of anything else. Some people think commander is impressive, but I don’t see it. Titles like Miniature Collector don’t include limited ones (and as of the last patch, you only need 53/54 and a miniature risen priest of balthazar), so they have no weight, and The Emperor is interesting, but is honestly just an alternative goldsink. Anyone who grinds alternate legendaries (unless their first was a one handed one, that’s different) is honestly just trying to find something to do with their life and impress people, to have what they’ve done be recognized as an accomplishment. You get one for your main and be done with it, there are way better games out there to play that only take a few hours of your free time to go through, and then you can come back to your MMO and grind away. Oh! Champion [x] titles are mildly impressive. 30x more impressive if it’s not thief, ele, or mesmer.

If we want some impressive stuff, we’ll need more dungeon-only drops. Possibly incorporate a hard mode into the current original set of dungeons! ’Cause right now, my group has CoE on farm status, and one of my friends just does Arah constantly because most of the playerbase is too bad to actually do it, let alone as fast as we do.

Just hang onto your gold, there’s plenty of other things to put it towards. Minipets, getting The Emperor title knocked out, or you could make another gift of fortune and just save it for the second batch of legendaries (along with the gold likely required to purchase the precursors for the second set). I keep rewinding my progress on gift of fortune because the prices on T6 mats shoot up, and I just sell all mine. They’ll go down in time (when less people are legendary hunting), but for a while now they’re going to stay where they are unless the next patch changes it. I also keep reinvesting my gold to make more gold, so if I bought a precursor, that’d kind of dampen my overall monetary efforts!

You can see the green arrows beside names at the start, I wouldn’t have minded if the video wasn’t reminiscent of some TF2 fragfest montage where you pick and choose the scenarios that worked in your favor.

I’m going to chime in here, given all the pessimism – Engineer is, in it’s current state, very usable. It just takes some rummaging and testing to find out which build eats lightning and craps thunder. Several skills and utilities need work, I won’t deny that – however, there’s at least some functional framework within the dessicated chassis of the Engineer class. In fact, there’s enough to produce an incredibly efficient PvE damage build that drips with utility while still dropping mad deeps yo. At least we’re not the ranger class, who doesn’t have any good damage options for PvE (unless you count a cat/bird pet, which is pretty solid I’ll admit – when it’s not dead), or the thief class who has very little in terms of sustained damage output (their best option being sword/x as of this writing). Guardian’s best damage build got kicked in the groin last patch with the neuter to spirit weapons (30/30/0/0/10 or something along those lines, abusing hammer and sword commands for immensely increased burning uptime). Engineer is solid, between juggling various kit abilities that hit like a truck.

tl;dr – Engineer is incredibly usable, but most utilites are completely garbage, as are most traits. Tweaking is needed – but not an overhaul, the idea and concept are very solid. Turrets are the only thing I feel needs revamping, and possibly the RNG nature of elixirs – I’d rather get my toss elixir B to give me 3 seconds of every buff instead of a variable amount of one. Gadgets are also in a weird spot – most of them are obsolete compared to just running a kit for it’s comparable skill.

What I’d like is a method to convert one fractal weapon to another. I’ve gotten a few weapons I can’t use on my engineer (I just really want a rifle!), so perhaps adding a ‘Fractal Inductance Chassis’ as a drop (instead of fractal weapons) could be a solution, and players could take it to the mystic forge! 250 [weapon component 1] + 250 [weapon component 2] + [Fractal Inductance Chassis] + [gift of ascension] or something = boom, fractal weapon! ‘Cause I want a rifle. Super bad. I can’t use a dagger. I can’t use a sword. I can’t trade them. I could give them to alts, but uh.. I just use them to run CoF 2 more times each day. Or maybe my suggestion, but instead it’s a reforging? Turn one weapon type into another. Idk, but something!

I’ve soloed the Grawl Shaman from ~15% of his max health to zero. Then I died the next time this chance came up, but point is, it’s very doable. He only has two attacks, and the more serious, agony-inflicting one has a very blatant tell. I just wish that they’d give his meteor shower a tell, because right now there isn’t one, aside from him ‘standing still longer than usual, and sud-OHGOD’. The hard parts are when you have to actually pay attention to both him, and the many oozes littering the area. Getting caught in a multitude of their roots is usually a death sentence – although most classes have an easy way to get through it (guardian can pop their invuln, warrior can whirling blade through it, engineer can gear shield, etc), it’s usually getting distracted from one of the SHaman’s arrows that gets players killed (or rooted so they can’t avoid it). I do feel that they need to tone down the number of adds that spawn – or at least cap it, as at 36 there are faaar more than enough to be considered ‘challenging’, I’m basically running around grenading a horde of red slime while dodge rolling arrows.

I’ll just say this – as cool as it all seems, new skills and traits likely won’t be implemented until an expansion is released. At that point we’ll likely see 1-2 new traits for every tier, 1-2 new skills of every type (gadget, kit, turret, etc), and I’d like to think new weapons (either new skills for each weapon that you can choose a la GW1, or.. I dunno). The only trait added since launch was Glacial Heart, and that’s because guardian didn’t have 12 traits in that line.

Penguin.5197:

Even with vulnerability that sounds a little too high. unless I am missing something, Individual grenades have a based damage of 107. Even with stats applied they reach about 250 per grenade. On crits it could go to 600-ish depending on your crit damage.

Plus if vuln has been applied to a warriors target, they can also be hitting for way more than said damage.

Base damage isn’t the actual damage dealt. It’s usually 2-3x that amount in berserker gear (pre-crits). It’s why, from looking at the tooltip (on a weapon to weapon basis), Warrior Longbow versus Warrior Rifle, the autos look like rifle wins out – yeah no, bow grossly outclasses it due to it dealing almost twice as much raw.

Stray.1864:

Okay, I was under the impression that other professions were also critting for 2k or so and hitting for around 800

Huh? That sounds about average for my warrior’s bow (full berserker). And sub-average for grenades. Individual grenades crit for about 1.3-1.4k in CoE and Arah, adding up to a typical bare minimum of 2k per hit (given one nearly always crits), and a potential, rare ceiling of 4k-ish. Yeah, this is after some vuln has been applied, but it’s still true.

I’ll give my 3 favorite that aren’t grenade related, ‘cause uh… yeah, else it’d be grenadier, steel-packed explosives, and shrapnel. Dat damage.

Kit Refinement. How to have no cast time and whip out some cool effects in a split second: the trait. I run 4 kits, so when I get knocked down, mashing every kit shortcut at once is kind of fun. I double tap medkit ’cause you can actually double proc it, and it crits for 1k in CoF explorable.

Enduring Damage. ’Cause, uh, more damage. 10% to boot.

Adrenal Implant. Dodging more is cool. And we don’t have to give up a utility slot, and it’s in a great trait line. I’ll admit I’d take something else if the alternative weren’t completely awful (oh boy retaliation! I don’t make enough of that with my double super elixirs).

From other professions, it’s ranged damage actually is out of balance. I have an 80 necro, guard, war, and engineer, and have played more than my fair share of dungeons. The damage disparity is huge when you can do a clean slate comparison. For example, I’ll look at how fast a ranger is taking down their Jade Maw Tentacle compared to me – it’s usually less than half the speed. Shrapnel and the vulnerability make you outshine other classes at range. In melee, warriors and guardians ramp it up – but you can still outshine a guardian with proper playing (and guardian can’t keep up after the spirit weapon nerf, prepatch they could outshine engineers – although the stats from weapons also helped in the engineer’s favor). I do actually feel condition necromancers can compete, but given I, an engineer, with no bleed runes, using shrapnel, can hit 16-19 bleeds if I focus purely on staying in grenade kit? I’m cutting out up to 20-30% of his entire damage simply by being me the moment that stack limit is hit. I’ve actually seen a solid dungeon group whose engineer stopped running shrapnel (thereby lowering his personal DPS) simply so the necro’s DPS wouldn’t be diminished. When I inquired about it, he pinged me 198 rare veggie pizzas and said the necro told him to stop.

Ayestes.1273:

As to fighting opponents that stick to range there are a number of ways to deal with it. You can force them off point, which can be essential but isn’t always useful. Simply using Pistol cooldowns and line of sighting them beyond that can work as well. Glue Shot and Freeze Nades can help you catch an opponent to use (accurate) grenades and enable the use of Bombs (although, you will still have troubles with Bomb accuracy on a target that isn’t melee or staying on point).

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m asking Ostricheggs. He’s #57 on the sPvP QP list. I know that doesn’t mean he’s god-tier (in fact, given the size of the sPvP community now, it just means he won’t give up and isn’t bad), but it does mean he has a lot more experience than most people I can ask. I’ve done a good deal of sPvP, and I’ve been running a very solid damage build that does outstanding – except against those types of players, like rangers who abuse two dog pets to chain fear me. The issue isn’t taking the point – they usually won’t get on it, but they will harass you down while you try to take or defend the point, until you flee or die. That, and mesmers are just mesmers, a good one seems to obliterate me, no matter how well I play. Of course this was back before they were given a 0.25s global cooldown, I’m not sure if they fixed that or not.

While I understand a smart, good engineer can easily defecate on d/d eles and warriors and thieves and the like, what do you do about a mesmer or ranger who stays at range and harasses you down? Bomb kit is a dead end against them (I feel), and grenade kit is hard to pin down, even if you root them, given how decoy and their other stunbreaks work. I’ve always wanted to try killing the ranger’s pet, but it seems like wasted effort sometimes.

I’ve spent a lot of time crunching the numbers for my current setup (this was for the sake of ’if I gained 250 power or precision from their respective stacking sigils, which would allow me to do more damage?) as a berserker engineer. The 250 power (comparing a scaling coefficient on my abilities) improved the tooltip number by ~10%, which, given that has no impact on critical hits, would provide an overall damage increase of 10%.

On the other hand, I analyzed that convenient chart on the wiki for precision and critical damage, and how they increase your damage overall. I currently sport 108% critical damage, and after analyzing the graph, adding 250 precision increased the old damage increase by about 11.x% (this was taking my original, pre-precision-increment increase as the graph states, of, for example, 150% more damage, and comparing it to the new value of 168%, not just saying 150% to 160% is a 10% increase, as that’s obviously incorrect). These values of my memory aren’t exact, except for the 10% and 11.x%. This wasn’t taking into account on-crit effects for the engineer, like the minor bleeding trait, but the trait is almost negligible anyway. But it did show a difference for my case – with high crit damage (as in, full berserker gear), precision outweighed power by a minimal, but provable amount.

I’m not sure how to feel about that utility goggles change. It’d make flamethrower a heck of a lot more viable though, that’s for sure. Would also be almost-as-abusable with grenades though, 6 vuln per attack? Hnngh. I’d actually consider dropping toolkit for that if they did it.

bromi.7809:

You see, when you make it about bragging and not numbers, i can put your argument back to you: “the only time i’d use heal is error of some noob who i had to res under cover of that unusable elixir s you don’t use in pve” ;[

And to put smth back also: I never mentioned kit swap time, i said MANEUVERS. running back and forth, you know. Evading boss attacks. Compared to stupid gren spam from 1500.

I don’t quite understand a lot of what you’re saying, simply because you’re not getting it across as intended I feel. I never said elixir S was nooby or anything – it just doesn’t give you any damage, which is what this thread is about. And it’s even more critical with Simin – you can’t rely on condition damage given that you’re on a timer with her. If you take too long, she disappears and goes invulnerable, negating all the conditions you applied. Grenade spam from 1500? I spam grenades at 100 range. It allows me to mix in blunderbuss, both ends of jump shot, etcetera, all that I outlined in my other post. You can cancel acid bomb’s leap part with ~, so that’s not an issue whatsoever.

I’ll be blunt, and I don’t know how this can’t come off as insulting, but it feels like you’re trying to promote a lazy, more thoughtless build of just chug & plug elixirs and defending it vehemently, when raw damage has repeatedly proven to be the #1 option in PvE for multiple reasons – especially since the condition stack cap prohibits a lot of possibilities. On one end of the spectrum, we have grenade facerolling – you see something off cooldown, you push it, boom, keep mashing 1. On the other end, we have a player who will try his best to keep track of how long it’s been since he last used Prybar, jump shot, acid bomb, etcetera, for producing ideal damage output. At this point we clearly have nothing more to offer one another, and I’ve overstated how I feel on my build, although I do have a plethora of experience to back up it’s claims in all realms of PvE, bar high-end Exploits of the Mists.

bromi.7809:

First thing people keep forgetting is might ALSO gives condi, not only rampager.
Second thing is, i personally run with strict power builds since i’ve got 80 and i was first of all surprised myself that hgh really effective enough to the point i can’t compare it to zerk crit from simple observe.
Third thing is, the utilities.. the only difference is whether you take B (for HGH) or wrench (for crit zerk) and what do you take in heal slot. Other two are always grenades and Stomp anyway.
Fourth, elixir juggling personally i find irritating but i don’t find it more time consuming than maneuvers with wrench in case of zerk max.

Either way i’ll try in foreseable future take proper tests of combinations of different gear and these 2 builds (30/0/0/30/10 and 30/10/0/0/30) variations.

I was already being generous by giving the benefit of the doubt with 700 condition damage – at best I’d give anothe 100 dps through your bleeding for those moments where you’re at 15 might stacks.

And you said stomp for your utility – did you mean elixir S? This thread is about PvE damage, the only time I’d use elixir S in PvE is for Ascalonian Catacombs, to escape from Gravelings.

And ‘lost damage from swapping kits’ doesn’t exist. You deal no damage when you’re chugging + throwing elixirs, there is a cast time when you do these actions. When I swap to a kit, there’s zero downtime between throwing shrapnel grenade and slapping a charr upside the head with prybar. Our healing skill is a big difference – HGH usually runs the healing elixir, and just blows it for 2 more might stacks. I run medkit, and get 10 more seconds of fury as a side benefit, along with a heal that takes 15 seconds to recharge.

I’ll say this – there’s no difference in hitbox sizes between races. All this whining about that is a serious proof that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

However, talking about their animations being harder to recognize is semi-valid, although for quarter-second or half-second abilities, that’s hardly a valid complaint. Asuras still raise their fist high in the air and “AWAHHHH” before popping their heal skill, just like any other race.

The part where you mention losing the end stomp is what makes me sad, I use both parts of jump shot for some serious damage in PvE.

bromi.7809:

As there is between having almost 0 might and 15 might, both in power and condi damage. If only we had kit with totally power skills (like warrior GS) there would not be a things to compare. But we do and in absence of proper measurement..
P.S. i forgot to add that it’s a rampager + beryls + crit trinkets i was trying. So its not THAT big difference of crit damage, its about 30%.

With all the extra condition damage, we’re looking at an additional 500 dps (this is assuming 15 bleed stacks, my point is it’s bad). That might be generous in fact, given I’m going off the condition damage you’d obtain from a full set of rampager’s, rather than the half and half you’re suggesting. And allow me to break down why HGH is bad:

You’re spending 3-5 seconds both wasting all your utilities (except B, because that’s just a flat buff chug anyway), purely for 2 might stacks each time, while a better player is going to use their utilities for flat out more damaging abilities and support tools simultaneously. Those several seconds where you do nothing but blow your elixirs is DPS lost – not to mention you’re giving up 10% damage from full endurance in exchange for 1% more damage per boon (which is an awful trade, by the way). Alchemy is one of my favorite traitlines – the only one where I honestly feel there’s a ton of good options. But it’s good for survival, not damage.

You wanna stack might? Go do it on a guardian or elementalist. A guard with might runes and 20 points in the last tree (30 is kind of a waste) can still output solid DPS, and keep ~18-20 stacks of might on the entire party by simply swapping to staff and pushing 4 every time it’s available, along with Empowering Might. HGH is a decent idea in theory, but terrible in execution – encouraging players to simply blow their utilities for more damage is a trap to encourage such reckless, wasteful behavior. An ele can run scepter/dagger and one, maybe two utilities, and bust out 22 second stacks of might without even thinking about it every 4 seconds, purely of D-tooth.

We do have kits with totally power skills – the condition damage is simply supplementary given it’s immense base duration. 1 Shrapnel Proc will equal the damage of 1 Incendiary Powder proc nearly (at 0 condition damage), except Shrapnel has no icd. Prybar, Throw Wrench, Acid Bomb, and Elixir F all have VERY high power coefficients – as does shrapnel and freeze grenade.

Tyldor.9078:

Sorry for the curiosity and going way off-topic, but I’m really wondering what armour, runes/orbs, jewelery ( + jewels ) and sigils you’re using with this build. I’m not the type of guy to completely ’’steal’’ a full build but I might take this build in consideration when I get all the details and make some adjustments here and there to optimize it to my favours.

All berserker statted gear & rubies, with a superior sigil of precision until I hit 25 stacks on my rifle, and then swapping to a superior sigil of flame. This works great in every dungeon except CoE – I always get downed by something and it makes me so friggin’ mad. “Oh look a bomb got popped your way.” “Oh look Alpha decided to target me with his earth shards at point blank” “Oh look I’m stuck even after the crystal has been destroyed”. Anyway – I’ve debated a few certain runesets, like scholar and anything that gives more precision, but pound for pound rubies give you the most damage. The fact that they’re cheap as dirt is just icing.

bromi.7809:

But then you can go with rampager and 30/0/0/30/10 and have both power, condition and crit damage. Tbh, i’ve tried fractals 20+ with that one and with 30/0/0/10/30 to no great difference other than HGH is much more survivable and forgiving but on the other side much more button mashing…

There’s a colossal difference between 10% crit damage and 108% crit damage, based on your armor and trait decisions (to be blunt it’s ‘your crits do 160% of their normal damage’ to ‘your crits do 258% of their normal damage’).

It’s pretty easy if you have 3-4 smart players in your group. I’ll sum up what you need to do:

1) Know how your class does damage. This means thieves should be using shortbows on the general mob and daggers on the assassins, eles should be going D/D or S/D and spamming AoE effects, engineers should be making this a cakewalk (grenade kit does wonders on the mob, and they can burst down assassins in 2-3 seconds alone, bomb kit works great here too given the larger radius effect), warriors can faceroll with a greatsword (whirlwind attack through the horde does a great job thinning them out), Guardian can either use Staff or Greatsword to work on the mob (Yes I said staff, the damage isn’t that awful – and the ward is actually pretty amazing), etcetera. The only awful class here is ranger, and that’s only if they choose not to use an axe. If they’re not using an axe? Right click → kick.

2) Rallying. When someone goes down, hopefully they’ll call a target, start hitting it, and you can finish the job. It’s not hard, but too often I see people not give a crap when another player goes down, and I’m scrabbling from across the area to try and kill something near them to rally. DO NOT REVIVE PEOPLE, RALLY THEM, IF YOU REVIVE THEM ARE YOU A BAD PLAYER

3) Don’t talk about fight club

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Well, the issue with relying on Speedy Kits for Swiftness in combat is that its duration is the same as its ICD, and so without a decent amount of Boon Duration or perfect timing you’ll occasionally get dropped down to regular speed, which has the potential to end badly, while Power Shoes guarantees you a good bonus all the time in combat.
Point is, Power Shoes isn’t quite outclassed by Speedy Kits because of its limitations. And vice versa.

Or you could just use medkit’s Drop Stimulant and avoid putting 20 points in an awful trait line.

Honestly, I’m fine with it as it is, although a genuine use for the refinement might be nice. At the moment I only double-tap it when I’m disabled (Defend Magg, Alpha’s crystal, etc), as you can proc it twice if you’re quick enough, and Impact Trigger will usually crit for ~1k. I’m also making a Bed of Nails, and hopefully Grenade Barrage and Super Elixir in the process. Then double-tapping Medkit again before I get up.

Dont’ take this the wrong way, but I’m just breaking down why engineer’s “on crit” effects are pretty bad, partly to educate players. Also to make flamethrower look bad, ’cause it is (for PvE, PvP is a different beast).

nakoda.4213:

bleeds on crits, burns on crits, vuln on crits, and cripples for near death foes, the FT offers a great deal of dmg output potential.

Bleeds are 3 seconds with only a 30% chance ( times your critical chance, to boot, so more like 13-16% chance per tick), but the lack of an internal cooldown on it seems to make it alright. Grenade attacks with shrapnel have a 38% chance of applying at least 1 stack of bleeding that lasts 15 seconds.

Burns on crit are great, I won’t deny that, but from a PvE perspective it’s pretty bad – a single, smart Guardian in your party can keep a target perma-burning by just pushing F1 when it’s off cooldown (and positioning himself appropriately).

Vulnerability on crits is awful. They last 3 seconds with a 50% chance per crit, so more like 22-27% chance with each tick to apply 1 short-lived vuln stack.

Cripple isn’t bad, great for kiting bosses. But not when they’re near dead, or when something like a traited Throw Wrench (which, until they make Scope work, I immensely advocate) or Elixir F can apply a very solid chunk of cripple in two packets.

And they made lifesteal food stop working with kits. Thanks Anet, now D/D elementalists are even more stupid.

Destroyer.1306:

This is awesome. But in practice, it doesn’t seem like it would actually lead to highest DPS. If I’m min/maxing DPS, I’m probably in berserker gear. As such, I need distance to stay alive because I have no defense other than dodging… which lowers DPS. So the Tool Kit attacks and Blunderbuss are probably out.

But by all means, prove me wrong. I want to believe this rotation is sustainable!

In practice, I’ve been doing this for every piece of content in the game. There’s a few bosses you don’t ever want to get close to – and in those cases, a warrior doesn’t fare any better (the only cases that come to mind are some Fractal bosses like the Dredge and Cliffside, and Giganticus Lupicus – a warrior can only do this more safely because Whirlwind Attack is a great escape from his abilities). There’s probably some I’m conveniently forgetting, but with that setup the only situation I’ve ever gone “I need to change skills to survive” is Ascalonian Catacombs, because I get pounced on and don’t have a stunbreaker (I swap out toolkit for elixir S here). If I’m suddenly under a lot of fire, toolkit -> gear shield -> get somewhere safe. If I need distance, I have both acid bomb and jump shot, and medpacks to guzzle up. Not to mention the self-preservation-without-slowing-down that build offers: You can pop one super elixir and ‘Vent Healing Mist’ without stopping your attacks, although the second super elixir takes a little under a second of your pounding. The only time that Warrior drastically outshines Engineer (and in turn, every class) is when the boss is against a wall – at that point, whirlwind attack can be used for an incredibly strong nuke.

Oh wait – I swap out grenade kit for bomb kit on the ‘Free the hand Seals’ part of Cliffside Fractal. Change shrapnel trait out for forceful explosives, and spawn camp one hand at the corner through smoke bomb, jump shot, and blunderbuss.

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

You don’t compete with warriors in flat dps for PvE with a engineer.
Its like trying to outrace a commercial airliner with a paper airplane.

You can, and do. Engineers do more for the first ~4-5 seconds using my build posted above, unless the warrior uses Frenzy, in which case we could use Elixir U (giving up toolkit), which is supposed to give 1 more second of quickness, but is still bugged. After that, the warrior’s HB will come off cooldown sooner than the engineer’s next set of colossal burst. I’m not saying I’d run 5 engineers over 5 warriors – the fact their utilities are freed up allows for FGJ and Banner of Discipline, as well as another skill to be brought in. But I am saying that most engineers are fairly stubborn about ‘fun’, and intentionally gimp themselves by using subpar kits like flamethrower or pistol/x in PvE, and defend it with ’it’s a condition build’ like some mouthbreathing kitten.

I would say 2 engineers is a very good number though. Enough to nearly keep 25 vuln stacks up nonstop (not for brief instances like “On My Mark!”), quadruple super elixirs, plenty of blind and nearly keeping the bleed/vuln limit hit just by themselves. While banners don’t stack, I know FGJ does. It’s a shame engineer is so selfish with his boons, the only ‘sharing’ being done by tosses. Perhaps a trait that is like venomshare?

You can still hit with the flamethrower while moving, but you need to disable auto targeting and use your mouse to aim it. On one hand? It’s kind of fun, especially while farming in Orr.

On the other the damage is so kitten-poor you might as well put the barrel of the flamethrower in your mouth.

I’ll be honest about how to obtain highest DPS with engineer:

Time to play it like it’s starcraft.

You’ll be 30/10/0/0/30 (if I could go 10/30/0/0/30 and still have grenadier, I would for more precision), and using rifle, medkit, grenade kit, elixir gun, and tool kit. Elite is negligible. You’ll juggle Blunderbuss, Jump Shot, Elixir F, Acid Bomb (hit ~ in mid-air to avoid flying too far back, unless you want to make some distance), Prybar, Throw Wrench (line yourself up if you can so it won’t collide with a wall – if it will, don’t bother using this, your auto will do more damage than half of Throw Wrench), Shrapnel Grenade, Freeze Grenade, and Grenade Barrage. Since Scope doesn’t work, you’ll be running power tools, alongside kit refinement, 50% more endurance regen, grenadier, 10% more explosive damage, shrapnel, and 20% rifle CDR. The build takes a lot of memorization, but you’re basically bursting nonstop, with 2-3 second downtimes at which point you primarily use Grenade. You’ll hit 9-11 vuln without using jump shot or grenade barrage on bosses (when you do it can spike up to 15-17 for a few seconds), and can easily hit ~16-20 bleeds if you simply keep using the grenade auto attack + shrapnel, although I don’t advise this as you’re neglecting all your other VERY hard hitting skills.

I’ll have to do some number crunching again but I feel like Sigil of Flame will still win out, but this could be because I don’t run any might duration increases (I don’t waste time tossing elixirs given I run 4 kits and have no room for them – I might if I gave up elixir gun or toolkit, but those are both pretty good, and giving up grenade kit is like a warrior giving up a greatsword).

lepri.6504:

Burn me for this but I think engineer is fine when someone fix those annoying bugs. Removal of RNG on elixir can be helpfull too

I won’t lie, if they fixed Scope, our damage could get pretty ridiculous. Like, 10-12% more ridiculous than I can make it right now. And that’d be awesome.

I’ve actually stopped wearing MF armor when doing events in Orr – they ‘upgrade’ bags to other drops, and getting less bags = less dosh.

Consider medkit. It has several heals when you’re in a pinch, and Drop Stimulant is pretty outstanding to have appended to a healing skill. The issue for most players is it takes a bit of skill to use, and memory to re-apply your stimulant every 20 seconds.

I’m very glad to hear that ‘grenades are fine’. If other kits are brought up to par with grenade kit, that’d be outstanding.

I think my favorite thing is when you pull a ranger or thief, they stealth (rangers stealth on disable, although I can never tell if Magnet or another player is triggering that trait), you fire net shot – and it disappears right where they’re standing. I wonder where that grenade barrage combo is about to land~

Dante.1508:

haviz.1340:

You need more deeps, get 4 warriors and 1 timewarp mes.

So any other class can never ever pass this and get Dungeon master, great mechanics that then..needs a fix..

Every combination of the classes need to be able to pass 100% of this games content, or we need the trinity back.. at least that worked..

If you know how to play your class, you can damage her fast enough within the time period so that she won’t stealth. Thieves, engineers, necros, guardians, and maybe cat or bird-using rangers should be able to do it fast enough if they know their class (ranger is a stretch). Elementalist won’t be a detriment if they’re making 21+ stacks of might. Mesmer’s honest only use for the fight is time warp, and after that their best DPS comes from hacking away with a sword, which isn’t awful truth be told (yes having 3 iDuelists is great, but they’ll usually get gibbed by Simin’s random AoEs, or attract spark aggro on accident). Necros can drop both damage wells when she reappears. Thieves can be thieves (their sustain is mediocre, but their burst is, well, they’re a thief after all), and engineers.. well, if you see your engineer using a pistol or flamethrower, the easy solution is to right click → kick from party. Otherwise he should be halfway smart enough to do decent damage.

The most effective way to utilize Magnet is:

Magnet → Net Shot → Blunderbuss → Grenade Barrage → Jump Shot to the opposite side → Overcharged Shot →Freeze Grenade → You did something wrong if they’re not dead yet, but, you have a chilled target and can still use shrapnel grenade, and net shot is probably 2-3 seconds away from coming off cooldown.