Y’wanna know the real reason we’re not returning to Cantha? Nagas
Halfway through development they decided to make Nagas the main aquatic slaving race. Then they realized that sounded too much like other fantasy stereotypes, so they replaced it with something they’d established in Eye of the North: Krait.
Except the Krait in GW2 only share one thing in common with their GW1 incarnation – they both look like snake people. Except, y’know, metamorphosis and looking completely different and all that jazz, but whatever, the decision was made, Krait now look like Naga.
Oh wait, weren’t Naga in Cantha? Uh oh. What’re we gonna do when we go there? Let’s dodge the issue and just never return to Cantha. Al Qaeda bombed it, the end, moving on to Elona..
Fyi this is a sarcastic post, but in all seriousness we better return to Cantha, compared to Prophecies it was a breath of fresh air. You can’t just disregard all the potential that was had there – potential remnants of the Kurzick/Luxons after they were absorbed into the empire, what happened to the Monastery on Shing Jea Island, did Mhenlo & Cynn have children, ‘cause Logan Thackeray is kind of a crappy successor to GW1’s lineage, given Gwen wasn’t a major character until EotN, unless you consider raining fireballs of doom in the beta a major character, etcetera! You can’t just toss all that aside, the shepherds of the Canthan people that you saw, the celestial beings, it all ties in to a greater power that may reside alongside or above the six! So much potential lore, you can’t just sweep it under the rug and dust your hands off of it.
Bleed duration runes if you’re looking at PvE. You’ll hit 22 second bleeds and hit the bleed cap all by yourself. However, with that said, if you play with a group regularly that also has other players applying a good deal of bleeds, you might want to consider the might runes instead.
I will say this though – I’m not fond of stacking might via HGH. When you could be planting more conditions and damage, you’re spending 2-3 seconds chugging and tossing elixirs at often inopportune times, purely for might. The only elixir you’ll want to chug every chance is B (and maybe U, but don’t tell me you’re wanting to toss U every time it’s available, that’s a lie and we both know it), all the others are timed based on necessity, given we don’t have any damage elixirs (don’t bring up the god-awful trait, please).
Who made Vexa’s lab? Was it you? Put them in charge of everything dungeon and puzzle related. That whole dungeon feels like I’m infiltrating Dr. Evil’s secret base or something – it even has a friggin’ shark tank at the end to fall in to! Dear god it’s awesome.
I think a more balanced trait would be ‘Bombs have a 20% chance of being a blast finisher’. If you made all explosions be blast finishers (or have a chance), grenades would win out again, just like it does with Shrapnel. Giving that chance to Bomb Kit would give it a combo-able edge that would make people look with a more approving view at it, as the only thing Bomb Kit has going for it is either condition damage (in which case you don’t stay in bomb kit for more than the 2 and 3), or the highest raw auto (in which case you’re completely ignoring the 2 and 3, and probably the toolbelt since that scatters mobs).
Anyone actually trying to defend the ‘It lets enemies know what they’re using’ argument needs to take a good, hard look at what some better engineers do. Usually you jump into a kit on the fly, blow the ability you want, then return to what you were doing before. Kits aren’t like weapon sets for other classes – you don’t see them swap weapons, think ‘Oh, for the next 10 seconds I should expect XYZ’, and plan accordingly – you watch them swap to flamethrower, push 2, then go back to rifle and overcharged shot you into the explosion. Or the other way around. Point is, the weapons in your hand change just like other classes, so how is it fair that we have both a backpack to show what we’re wielding alongside a weapon (exception being grenade and medkit I suppose, although grenade kit is pretty obvious when.. well, grenades are flying around, and medkit making those BWOOP BWOOP noises), while other classes only have to display a weapon?
There are basically 3 used builds in WvW:
I am on the tier 1 sever of Jade Quarry, and I rarely see the builds you are suggest are what everyone uses. We have some really solid engineers, sometimes even 5 of us run together with pure bomb/grenade builds and rush the zerg. With 2 grenadiers and 3 players running around inside their zerg, dropping bombs every where, allows 5 people to completely rattle 40.
Broad generalizations like this are what bother me about the engineer forums. One person can make an inaccurate statement of this nature, and taint new players unnecessarily.
I’ll second this, the only time you see something stupid like flamethrower is when an engineer is desperate to defend his keep from rams and the like, and they aren’t using retaliation (bombs would normally be better, but usually getting close enough to use bombs = death). Tool kit sees use sometimes to magnet + gib players one at a time (Magnet, net shot, faceroll, gg), and Gear Shield is a much faster cooldown escape tool than Elixir S (it doesn’t break stuns, but I get gibbed by far more other things than stuns). In WvW (I’m also a JQ resident), I often either forfeit elixir gun for elixir S, or tool kit – but sometimes I just keep both if I’m feeling lucky. Elixir Gun is great for sieges (when your allies are on a door pounding away, dropping two super elixirs can make a very large difference), as are grenades. Tool kit isn’t so much when you’re besieging,
I honestly can’t think of any. Thief brings smokescreen and some spammable blast finishers to the field, but also very poor sustained damage until a boss gets to < 50% health, and at that point it’s simply ‘doable’ damage. I don’t like rangers on my team for the same reason, their single target is mediocre, their AoE is doable, and their support is nearly nonexistent (healing spring is the only thing of value they have, and maybe frost spirit – I can’t confirm if the 10% is constant or not). And most engineers (as much as I love being one, don’t tell me that you’ve never seen an engineer use a flamethrower in a dungeon – for those who don’t know, it’s our worst DPS option next to using our mainhand pistol) as well, I’ve only found 1 other who smartly plays the class, most others rub themselves in elixirs and pretend might has a notable impact on flamethrower damage. Truthfully, compared to even the best thief/rangers, you get a lot more mileage from an ele spamming blast finishers into his own fire field, a guardian running WoR (especially if traited, dear god!), any half-intelligent warrior given the skill ceiling to the class (push 1, 2, 3 if they’re against the wall, and make sure that banner of discipline and FGJ is always on cooldown), or an engineer stacking up the vulnerability, crowd control, and heal fields for everyone to enjoy (not to mention eating up 70-100% of the bleed cap with one trait, varying from no bleed runes to all bleed runes).
Make the auto do more damage, or make 2 detonate like the underwater harpoon gun 2 and 5. Both would be overkill (but awesome overkill), but as it stands right now it’s a joke or farming weapon in PvE. I use it in Orr to tag all the mobs, given how fast most things die when in a zerg, 5 hits per second usually guarantees I’m getting 800-1k damage on the target before it’s sublimated.
You’ve been using grenades for a while it seems, so using flamethrower will kill things at about half the speed. Flamethrower has one purpose in PvE, and it’s tagging mobs. For PvP air blast is ingenious and incredibly usable, as is the blind and 9-12 second burn from the toolbelt skill. But for PvP, look elsewhere for your berserker kit – I’d suggest adding tool kit and elixir gun alongside grenade kit, as you can swap to those kits, use their high damage abilities, and return to stacking vulnerability and bleeds through explosive shrapnel grenades.
‘Can only specialize in one or two kits’
Kit refinement, power tools, grenadier. That’s 3 kit specializations, if you count the only good part of Elixir Gun (dem healz, and I admit acid bomb and Elixir F are awesome too, but going into a health/boon duration tree for 15% more damage isn’t worth it). Power tools lets you prybar and gear shield that much more often, and giving a six second cripple to throw wrench is pretty awesome (eight seconds if you are managing grenadier).
Bloodlust hands down. With the Sigil of Perception at 25 stack of perception (+250) your only going to see an 8% crit chance increase.
The reason why bloodlust is so much better is because the Power is maximized 100% of the time whether you are crit built or not.
250 / 21 = 11.9, with berserker stats that’s a ~12-13% damage increase, more if you’re an axe warrior with the 10% crit damage trait or somesuch. Having a full stack of bloodlust for most weapons usually results in an 10-11% damage increase (from normal full-berserker setup).
Anet has overlooked a ton of abilities that double-tap from mobs, and it’s quite irksome in the overworld, but rarely seen in dungeons (I’m not sure if it’s intended in Fractals of the Mists, but I’ve checked my damage log and been double-tapped by several abilities, and at level 30+ that usually means you’re getting downed). Sharks hitting 5 times for absurd damage (from stupid range, mind you, I use net wall as an engineer to try and stop it, and it’ll hit me from a good distance away regardless), veteran / champion wolf type monsters with their lunge (not only does it double-hit, I believe champions have one that does damage + summons a minion, and one that is just their regular ‘lunge’), and a few bizarre cases like the Archdiviner’s Circle of Warding ability (the one that shoots out projectiles at the start – I’ve been hit for 8.5k twice at once by it, now I just blow both dodges to be safe, and no visual projectile impacted me).
With regards to this story step, back when I thought survivor worked the way it did in GW1, my guardian was doing great. Up until this story step. Fighting went just fine, th-OHGODWHY. You just have to zzzkite it until it’s dead. I’m not going to call Jeffrey a liar, but I am going to call shenanigans on his statement. Probably something more like “I did it on my level 80 warrior scaled down to 8.” or “I know how long it is between each lunge, and appropriately used both dodge rolls even though there’s no tell for this monster.”
snip
My grenade autos are hitting for 1.2k per grenade once the vuln gets going. Before bleeds. And before I start rotating everything. I’m not gonna go through the trouble of making a video and breaking down a complex class piece by piece, but I will give you a skeleton:
30/10/0/0/30
Shrapnel, 10% more explosion damage, grenadier
20% CDR on rifle skills
Refined Kits, 20% toolkit CDR, 50% endurance regen
Full berserker gear, precision sigil on rifle until 25 stacks, then swap to flame sigil.
Just rotate your hard hitting skills. You have more than any D/D ele and the longest cooldown is 21 seconds as opposed to 45. Jump Shot alone deals more damage in such a small time frame than any channeled ele ability. You don’t bring eles into groups for damage, you bring them for 25 might stacks + burning (assuming a guardian doesn’t have this covered already), and maybe a splash of healing given the offhand dagger. Any damage that happens from therein (which isn’t bad damage, just not competing with a smart engineer) is just gravy.
The only way I would see a Zerker Engi work is if you run dungeons with a coordinated team. But then again….whats the point of running a zerker Engi when a Zerker Ele, Zerker Ranger, Zerker Guardian, Zerker Warrior, and Zerker Thief will do SO MUCH more damage than you while surviving better than you??
The only thing that’ll do more damage is a zerker warrior when you’re playing zerker engineer correctly. Thieves only start dealing notable damage at < 25% when heartseeker ramps up on bosses, and before that their best single target damage comes from sword. Thief sustain is pretty terrible outside of when there’s only 2 enemies to deal with and you have a shortbow. Ranger has the same issue – except he has /no/ good direct damage at any point. The only time I might say otherwise is if they could run cat pets without said felines being gibbed by bosses. But they can’t, so it’s a moot point. Zerker guardian used to be outstanding pre-patch, as their 30/30/0/0/10 build with spirit weapons was outstanding in the DPS / support department, alongside engineer. 10% more damage while burning, 10% damage while they had a condition, etc. Sword for bosses, greatsword for mobs. But the spirit weapon nerf was a serious kick in the nuts – they’re still great, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not on par with a properly played engineer. I’m not even going to explain what’s wrong with someone trying to run berserker elementalist. I’ll just sum it up with ‘Engineers spend 2-3 seconds waiting for another good ability to come off cooldown, while either a D/D elementalist spends 8-10, or a scepter/dagger spends 4 seconds doing no damage’.
A good berserker engineer will be juggling tool kit, grenade kit, elixir gun, and their rifle skills to constantly bust out one hard hitting skill after another. There’s at least 2 abilities from every one of those kits that do good damage, and you’re not giving up utility. Double super elixirs, magnet, gear shield, blind / poison grenade, even Vent Healing Mist, all outstanding tricks you can bust out without sacrificing damage.
I don’t think so !!
The strongest kit is bomb not grenade ( even when traited )
I got both + mine. http://tinyurl.com/ap5uwkp
I use grenade till I reach the melee range then switch to bomb.
Against melee zergs ( even 10000 foes ) , bomb is the best kit specially with speedy kits and power shoes traits .
I’ll still vouch for 3 vuln stacks and 3 chances for shrapnel as opposed to one, and grenade kit having 2 more high-damage abilities than Bomb kit (Bomb kit has BoB and the auto attack, the other abilities do very little non-condition damage, and BoB is debatable since it scatters the enemies for your follow-up attacks to whiff). Shrapnel Grenade does a very large chunk of damage on a 5 second cooldown, and freeze grenade does just slightly less (albeit on a 20s cd). That, and grenade barrage is just.. it’s god-tier amongst god-tiers for that packet of damage every 21 seconds. 8 vuln, 8 shots at shrapnel, often 15-16k damage within a half second throw for PvE dungeons.
Which sigil are you using and what do you mean with careful usage? My engineer is on his way to lvl 80 and I will have to decide how to gear him up so I am very thankful for ideas.
I suppose I didn’t include all the details – I also should have said ‘with my rifle’s stats now included’ as well. But, I typically run a superior sigil of precision rifle until I hit 25 stacks, then swap to a rifle with a superior sigil of flame. It’s taking advantage of a but I’ll admit, but I see no reason to not do it if Anet is fine with warriors doing so much damage with a few key presses. I’m also constantly juggling kits – swapping to tool kit to use prybar, swapping to elixir gun to use elixir F and acid bomb, and back to rifle before using throw wrench, grenade barrage, blunderbuss, and jump shot (not necessarily in this order, just listing off the skills I use). Make sure you have your rifle out when you barrage / throw wrench, as they do higher damage given the rifle has a higher base value than a kit. I’d use pistol/x for 2 sigils, except the pistol has no good damage abilities in a power build, and net shot is the best spammable root in the game.
I agree mostly except on fractals. Warriors dip tremendously later on, engineers have the ranged damage to make them look like a collection of gibbering children. Toss Elixir R is fantastic for surviving 40-49 agony with proper AR.
Is there any traits or abilities that are “must have”?
I’d say grenadier and kit refinement. Double super elixirs are ridiculously good. Right now the best heal is a tossup between medkit and healing turret – detonating healing turret ~0.25 seconds after laying it results in a very nice heal, or just picking it up for a decent heal every 15 seconds. With 30 points in tools, medkit also has a 15 second heal, but also 3 medkits to drop, a reliable condition removal ability, and fury/swiftness (this is the big reason medkit is awesome). If you run grenades, I encourage shrapnel – it procs a 15 second bleed, and it’s 3 chances per grenade attack. For your other grenading trait, either 10% more damage or 20% CDR is good – they both have their pros and cons. No one will complain when you’re chilling bosses that much more often.
Grenade kit has the most long-term damage compared to any other kit. This doesn’t mean you can’t run other kits – they slaughtered the grenade auto, but now it hits almost as hard as it did back in october through careful sigil usage. The bomb kit has the only auto that hits harder, but then you can consider ‘Do I like 3 stacks of vuln and 3 chances of 15s bleeds on my attacks?’ and the answer becomes pretty obvious. It also has the best boss-control (chilled isn’t reduced on any mobs in the game I can think of), which only becomes better if you choose for the CDR trait over damage. To put it in perspective:
My grenade auto attacks can hit anywhere from 1.2k (no crits) to 4.5k on a given mob in 0.85 seconds.
On the other end of the spectrum of kits, we have the flamethrower, which can do 1.2k (no crits) to ~3k + burning over 2.25 seconds through it’s auto, and it’s only good damage ability (The 2) requires you set it up somehow with a root, or by it being a stationary boss, otherwise it whiffs and you just wasted some potential damage.
There’s also tool kit (prybar, throw wrench), and elixir gun (elixir F, acid bomb) that bring some decent damage to the table, but their autos are a bit iffy (wrench is awesome, but slow – at least it cripples every hit with a trait!).
Edit: After some actual usage in a dungeon for a bit, I tweaked my flamethrower numbers. Turns out I was being overly generous.
(edited by Kamahl.3621)
The biggest improvement you can make is stop looking at your sigils, and look at your weapon.
But, the question is about sigils, so I’ll say this – Bloodlust if you know how to play. Superior Sigil of Precision actually gives more overall damage if you use berserker gear, however. The might sigil isn’t bad, but it isn’t that great. Sigil of Flame is /amazing/ however.
The highest scaling non-auto attacks come from grenade kit, rifle, elixir gun, and tool kit (for engineer, if you only have 4 options to choose from). Technically flamethrower’s 2 does a ton, but it means you’re taking a lolthrower. With berserkers, I’m constantly cycling through elixir F, acid bomb, prybar, throw wrench, blunderbuss, jump shot, shrapnel grenade, freeze grenade, and grenade barrage, and the damage is quite obscene. Auto attacks go Bomb Kit > Grenade Kit > I don’t care past this point because those 2 do enough. I prefer grenade kit because 1) It has 4 good damaging abilities compared to bomb kit’s 2, 2) it gives 3 stacks of vuln per hit instead of 1, and 3) It gives me 3 chances to proc shrapnel per attack (those bleeds last 15 seconds with 30 points in explosives, 23 seconds with bleed runes if you choose to go that route. Yes you can hit 25 bleed stacks this way, no issue whatsoever).
Mine Field is incredibly strong with larger blast radii, check. Grenade kit is incredibly strong, check. The only strong components of the bomb kit are the BoB and auto, all the others are condition and have poor power scaling, I’d advise swapping that out for tool kit (prybar, throw wrench, and gear shield).
However, consider mine field’s limited useage (1 second point blank nuke that usually hits for 70-80% of it’s potential damage with larger radii trait), I’d also advise elixir gun over it, but that’s just me.
And throw the pistols away and grab a rifle. Blunderbuss and Jump Shot do large chunks of damage (the pistol has no heavy-hitting attacks), while net shot sets up your nukes.
While I wish what I had to say was more constructive, it’s a sad, depressing truth about the flamethrower:
The only time you should consider using it in WvW is when you’re behind a keep or tower door fwooshfwooshfwooshing the enemy from a safe distance, and using Air Blast to keep them disoriented. The damage is pitiful and the control it offers outside of AB is miserable. The only good damage on it is the 2, and that’s if both components hit. Every time I see an engineer using flamethrower, I have threads like this to thank for it. So I’m speaking up now so I can have less bad engineers flooding my groups and squads.
Most important thing ArenaNet should do is to remove the Grenadier trait (3 grenades instead of 2), then buff damage 50% and increase the radius to compensate. That way Grenade kit would be usable with requiring a 30 point trait.
No other class is forced to go 30 points down a line just to use one of their weapons.
Given how much ranged damage it gives the engineer, I’m completely fine with it. Even after the nerf, this recent buff has really put grenades back up there.
Your group is just bad. We’ve been doing CoE all 3 paths every day since the patch, it’s even easier with the health reduction. Stack up on Alpha, dodge the double circles, and the fire attack is negligible with a single engineer in the group (if they know how to play their class, anyway), let alone having a warrior bring “Shake it Off!” or whatnot. I can almost see justification for the earth attack, but if you stand inside him (jump if you have to), you’ll be fine. Use group-wide healing effects and you should be golden. If you stack, crystals aren’t an issue, and rezzing isn’t an issue (if you have at least a 1 second reaction time).
My only issue is when I’m low on health, on a path with the earth attack, and can’t block it because it’s apparently unblockable.
I’m surprised you lost, usually the question I see is ’How’d an engineer make me implode in 2 seconds from nowhere in WvW’ and the answer is magnet, net shot, grenade barrage → swap to grenade kit for another barrage. P/P engies are pressure engines, and D/D eles have a plethora of heals and condition removals. I’d say you just misplayed. This ‘tankcat’ crap is garbage, just an idiot glorifying prybar and being beefy, while dealing very little damage outside of conditions.
Precise Sights: Vuln on half your crits. Makes my team better.
Not critiquing the entire build, but I will say this – pick another trait. That one’s bad, and you could be doing better with a different one. It’s a 2s duration, and arguably as bad as ranger’s Sharpened Edges trait (chance of a 1s bleed on crit, unspecified chance).
What is Engineer’s role in a group?
Damage and CC. Engineer’s up there one rung beneath warrior in damage, but flipping houses with regards to CC. Chills, cripples, pulls, blowouts, knockbacks, immobilizes, engineer can bring them in droves. At the very worst, you can equip power tool and wail on something with a wrench to permacripple it. At best, you can keep things immobilized 25% of the time, and chilled the rest of the time (both of which are unaffected by Defiant, so enjoy that).
Lowest cooldown? Not, Necro have the same CD, but his skill is more usable. Elem have 2 times more CD with staff, but his skill more usable too. With daggers – he have lowest CD on chill.
It’s hard to take you seriously when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Dark Pact has a 25s cooldown, immobilizes for one more second, and does some damage (it also has no travel time, which is very nice). Elementalist root is a 2s root on a 30s cooldown. Engineer has [holy crap there’s so many roots] to choose from, the only one another class has that’s even remotely comparable is Throw Bolas, as it has the same uptime percentage (4s out of 20s, whereas net shot is 2s out of 10s). Engineer also has the longest lasting chill on a 20s cooldown (freeze grenade, 6s base duration, although it will be 7.5 if you have grenadier and 30 points into explosives), and also a very high uptime as a result.
And any good plyer will evade of your grenades… just walking! not even running ><
If you’re talking about sPvP, you can always set it up with the lowest cooldown root in the game to land your freeze grenades. After that, you should be landing every grenade. Overcharged shot works as backup. c:
Flamethrower was god-awful before because it did miserable damage and missed a lot.
Now it’s just bad because it does low damage. The only thing good about it is the 2 (this is for PvE purposes, it’s a different beast in PvP). I’d recommend you go pick up grenade kit or tool kit (or bomb kit, given it has the hardest hitting raw auto of the kits – but only 1 stack of vuln compared to 3 from grenade kit, only 1 chance to proc shrapnel, etc). If you’re running berserker gear, the only reason to even consider flamethrower is the 2, as it hits pretty hard. But, so does Throw Wrench, Prybar, Elixir F, Acid Bomb, Shrapnel/Freeze/Barrage, blunderbuss, and jump shot (I’m assuming you’re showing 2 sigils because you’re wielding pistol/something – which, while 2 sigils are nice, I don’t feel giving up how much damage those 2 rifle skills deal, along with net shot’s INSANELY good control in boss fights, is worth it unless you’re in a situation where you’re only using a kit).
I run 30/10/0/0/30, I have a 47% crit chance before my sigil of precision starts stacking up, and I have 50% fury uptime since I keep eating my medkit’s 5. I just juggle all those abilities I mentioned and spam grenade 1 on downtime, and the damage output is obscene. I just can’t ever justify taking flamethrower in PvE because of how weak it is by comparison (and I’ll admit how awkward it would be for me to try to line up net shot → napalm blast, and then get back into melee range for my prybar / blunderbuss / etc chain, it’s the same issue as using pistol for DPS, you have to stand at 900/1050 range for double hits).
Oh, and ditch the force sigil. If you’ve 30 points in firearms, and you’re using force over something like sigil of fire / air, you just picked up whatever weapon you had and took a screenshot. The might sigil isnt’ bad but you’ll get more damage from even an accuracy sigil if you’re going full berserker (106%+ crit damage, which would translate to a ~6-7% damage increase, more than force is giving you). Actually, it’d be straight up better if you used a sigil of battle (3 stacks that last 20s on weapon swap) than the might one, as the latter has a 2s internal cooldown – meaning you could, at best, have 5 stacks (this is before duration increases), compared to 6 stacks (again, before duration increases, and the latter would be better since it’s 20s base duration as opposed to 10 – and it’s also skill based, rather than luck).
I tried using flamethrower again, and while it’s nice they fixed the missmissmiss, it’s still our worst kit by a significant margin, even with the 15% damage trait. You’re getting < 400 damage per tick on that? That’s < 4k over 2 seconds (I’m assuming you were showing crits on those numbers). That’s pretty terrible compared to even the grenade auto (which is less than the bomb, given that bomb is slightly faster on the attack, and, again, has higher base). I know you want to bring up burning – don’t. Having one guardian who knows what they’re doing in your group completely obsoletes the condition, as he’ll have it up, at the very worst, 25 out of every 30 seconds, and at the best way over 100% uptime. Only exceptions I can think of are things like Alpha who purges conditions every few seconds, and even then you’re pulling out 1 tick of burning. So 4.7-5k.
I’m an engineer. My bud is a warrior. We duo the Crucible of Eternity group event to open it for our groups. They go well together, assuming you both know how to play (read: no elixirs, no turrets, nothing stupid like flamethrower or pistols, just blow the kitten out of everything you meet).
Some people already had the triforge amulet.
Others are just, uh.. special. Abaddon’s amulet is pretty kickkitten.
Sorry, but you say Ranger are worthless and Necro’s are “Ffffbbt”?
Rangers bring some of the most gimped utility in the game. Spirits are a colossal, neutered joke of their GW1 incarnations, and traps are fairly god-awful for anything useable beyond a fire field every 15s in melee. The one thing a ranger can do that is genuinely useful is Barrage, as an area-wide cripple is pretty annoying. Healing Spring is outstanding, but only because it’s a 15s water field. If they fixed Healing Turret, every 20s I’d be making a water blast finisher purely off my own skill.
Necros have marks, and single target bleeds. Epidemic is pretty outstanding if you can properly land it, but consider how often a zerg is clustered up versus how often it’s flattened around a keep / tower’s defenses, peppering all spots to keep players away. Their minions are useless (Golem might be useful on a one-in-a-million shot where it blows back an entire column of invaders), their only decent utility (bar wells, which for WvW purposes are still mediocre, and barely useable with the ground-targeting trait) is spectral grasp, which, guess what? Engineer has that on a 25/20s cooldown, with 5 other skills attached (one of the few cases engineer gets the best version, along with the best 3s block in the game).
Refined kits. I run CoE daily. When Subject Alpha crystallizes you, if you don’t have grenade barrage ready to bust you out, you can double tap medkit (yes, double tap it, it explodes twice) to deal ~7-800 damage to the crystal. Yeah, it’s not a lot, but when you’re praying to the six that you bust out before his next set of ‘OH GOD NO’ attacks go off, it’ll help. And besides, you don’t have anything better to do.
What you want from a profession in WvW is its addition to a fight. Zerg on Zerg, defending a tower/keep, sieging a tower/keep, scouting, supplycapping team, escorting dollies. This is stuff that makes a difference.
Again, I’m not saying engineer is in an ideal state yet, but he does bring a great deal more than other classes (necro, ranger, warrior relative to sieges, thief relative to sieges). I’ll admit sharing boons is a bit awkward (HERE LEMME RUN IN FRONT OF OUR DOLYAK AND DROP A STIMPACK), but between 1500 range damage spam and the ability to both pull (which leads to a kill, which is one less defender to fret about), and shield out of danger through one utility skill (Toolkit, kotyay), not to mention guaranteeing a downed non-ele will die the moment they hit the ground (unless some Shield of Absorption effect goes off), engineer is most certainly one of the better WvW professions to have around. Elementalists are only considered for their siege-tastic abilities, and swapping to a d/d setup for skirmishes, and both are going to be nerfed in time. Rangers are positively worthless, given they’re only useful for single target damage, and even then you can strafe those 1500 range arrows like you’re breakdancing. Necromancers have marks, wells for defending a door, but past that they’re fairly pfffbt. Guardians are pretty great – but not in the way most people realize. The most obnoxious (and obvious) usage is to drop the greatsword’s retaliation mark on a door they’re assaulting, and in turn VIOLENTLY punish anyone trying to AoE the assault mob down. Another is tricks like wall of reflection, shield of absorption, etcetera. The thing that irritates me is that the people in this forum will gladly overlook the 4k AoE heal over 10 seconds that dual super elixirs bring (yes, I realize other skills have more HPS, but we have a 50% uptime on ours, and it is certainly a welcome sight when sieges are afoot). And even better – if Anet would stop screwing around, we’d have an operating healing turret with non-detrimental regeneration that we could pop every 20 seconds for a ~7k heal (no healing points), and some regeneration to boot!
tl;dr engineers are great in WvW. They don’t siege as hard as an ele, but they siege more consistently, while having a bevvy of tricks to dish out, and not being useless while the staff is out for actually finishing off a given player (let’s face facts, staff ele is only annoying for the lightning field, meteor shower, and lava font if you’re unfortunate enough to somehow get stuck in one).
I run a p/p build and I beat mesmers without any problems, and anything else too. your protip lacks the pro part.
Not hard to beat a bad mesmer. I’ve done more than enough sPvP to learn how to counter anything viable, but a good mesmer will trounce the best engineer. We take too long to kill the phantasms at range now (unless we waste shrapnel and freeze), and the ability to instagib at melee range also deters an engineer from getting close (since that’s where most of their power lies).
And pistols are plain bad, the only time they become remotely viable is if you manage to stick your target at 900/1050 range away on a constant basis for double taps via coated bullets. Anyone who’s done their homework and/or actually tested it in game will agree.
On one hand, you’ll get people like Tigirius saying engineer is the worst thing in existence right now. I partially agree, as the only feasible build eats up all your utility slots and removes any option for elixirs or turrets (well, rifle turret goes well with static discharge, but that’s not my point).
On the other hand, the only 1v1’s I lose in WvW are to mesmers. People say engineer is hard to play, but then again they also say pistol is feasible (protip: it’s not). If you want to gank someone, pull out toolkit, push 5, and if it lands, they should die unless they have an invuln ability, which 90% of people you pull will not be expecting it, and will promptly be obliterated. You swap to net shot and hit 2 before they recover, then hit grenade barrage, blunderbuss, jump shot, and they are dead. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, they are very likely dead. You can repeat this gank combo every 20 seconds with proper traiting. And this is purely from a roaming perspective.
From a siege/defense perspective, you have your grenades. They got gimped last patch, yeah, won’t deny that. They’re still useable though, it’s just landing an auto attack doesn’t carry the same oomph it used to, while landing a shrapnel or freeze grenade does.
Until they either let your legendary keep the ‘legendary’ status upon transmuting, or give it berserker stats, I wouldn’t shoot for a legendary yet. Especially since engineer pistol is awful for PvE, and rifle will only be pulled out for intermittent periods to use blunderbuss and jump shot. You could use a static discharge build, which isn’t too bad, but it’s also not that amazing either compared to the kit juggling build.
It’s great for PvE, but I prefer elixir gun, toolkit, and grenade kit over it, the only time I take it is if I’m at a part of a dungeon where clustered mobs will take the most advantage of the smoke bomb (as in – I want to stay put, and not have to use an AoE cripple before acid bomb). Fire bomb and Big Ol’ Bomb are the only decently damaging ones, and smoke bomb is obviously quite useful (for non-bosses anyway), but toolkit has prybar / throw wrench, and elixir gun has Elixir K and acid bomb.. and grenade kit is grenade kit.
A simple question – I still have a Wintersday Weapon Claim Ticket or whatever: Will Gnashblade still exchange it after the 28th? I’m not quite sure what I want to redeem it for just yet, and was curious if he’d still accept it after the next patch.
I’ll disagree about thumper turret, it’s awful. The radius on it’s attack is way too small, it’s damage is zilch (rocket turret has the best damage, given the burning it applies), the only redeeming quality is it’s overcharge. Also, overcharged shot is fine, the self-knockback is literally a half a second or so. Great in PvE for dodging boss abilities, and given how it’s the shortest knockdown in the game (12s when traited, 2s knockdown + self cleanse + ‘GET OFF MY POINT’ ability?), it /should/ have a drawback as dramatic as a half second self-stun.
Everything else though seems fairly accurate.
15% chance isn’t really that much, you’d be on the lucky side to get a single proc over six grenade hits. Earth Sigil is only going to give you one bleed in this as well. Shrapnel Grenade gives three stacks of course, but even then Shrapnel Grenade + Poison Grenade is probably only going to give you 5 stacks of Bleeding. The bleed cap is 25. I’m confused.
Because math. You get three chances for shrapnel to proc with every grenade attack. The shrapnel bleeds last 15 seconds with 30 points into power. The chances of getting at least one bleed per attack is (1 – 0.85^3), or 38.5875%. That’s before the minor trait, or any earth sigils one may be using. If you happen to use 3 sets of bleed runes, the duration is ramped up to 22 seconds.
It’s an issue because one grenadier engineer can hit the bleed cap against bosses. This isn’t a problem for us – it’s a problem for other classes. We’re hampering their bleeds usually (say, a condition specced necro), and if we chose to eat the Pizza buff, well we’d hit 25 bleeds in pretty much no time at all.
I’ve noticed it in the Ocean Fractal and on HotW path 1. Unless the bosses at the end of these paths have some sort of reflection skill, I’ve been hit by my own grenades and timed charge repeatedly while fighting them alongside a guardian. Something a guardian does with their underwater skills reflects allied projectiles for a brief moment, and it’s pretty annoying. Anyone else encountered this before?
- The engi has no real gap-closer
Magnet. Hardly even has a tell. Works 70% of the time, every time.
It would certainly make pistol a viable option for condition DPS when combined with coated boolits. Stand at 900/1050 range, get double hits (hard to manage, but with enough practice it’d be doable), get mad bleeds, make pistol decent? Add in ‘vulnerability on explosions’ and suddenly pistol seems /good/.
D/D ele is incredibly obnoxious, one of the two classes an engineer can’t reliably deal with (other is pre-‘fix’ mesmer, which isn’t entirely fixed still). The more cantrips / stunbreaks you run, the harder you are to kill, and all your damage comes from your first 5 abilities, whereas engineers need their kits for spikes of damage.
20 points into explosives for 3 stacks of might on heal, the sigil that gives might on weapon swap (or crit would stack faster I suppose, and take less microing.. but you’ll be doing it anyway so whatever), 2 runes of altruism, 2 runes of might, 2 runes of hoelbrak, 30 points into alchemy. I’m not mentioning juggernaut ‘cause it’s garbage. Maybe use Elixir B for 4-5 more stacks of might (3 from chugging with HGH if you choose to take it, 1-2 from the toss).