If it cleansed conditions when you hit 25%, it might actually be worth taking.
As it is, even at 25% health (let’s say you stack vitality? 27k – so you’re sitting around 7k health) – you can’t take more than a few hits before biting the dust.
Woah, seriously? I might start hopping in the water before going towards a point now on Capricorn.
First off, you’re looking at channeled abilities, which isn’t a fair solution (although yes Flamethrower is channeled, but it’s also garbage).
Second, engineers can still output more DPS, especially in the short term. It takes a lot more skill though than mashing 2 every 10 seconds (6.5s cooldown + 3.5s channel). My method is (assuming it’s something stupid enough to stand in hundred blades):
(Grenade Kit) Shrapnel Grenade, Freeze Grenade, (Swap to rifle) Throw Wrench, Grenade Barrage, Jump Shot, Blunderbuss, (Swap to toolkit) Prybar, (Swap to grenade kit) Shrapnel Grenade, (Swap to elixir gun) Elixir K, Acid Bomb, (Swap to grenade kit), Auto/shrapnel grenade for ~10 seconds, then repeat minus grenade barrage and jump shot.
You’ll be crapping out kittenloads of damage. No, seriously. You’ll out-DPS everything that isn’t a warrior.
Engineers now move 20% slower for every kit equipped, to balance out their utility options.
I think the biggest buff to it would be to either 1) make the bleed 4 seconds like it was in the beta weekend events, or 2) make explosive shot trigger ‘on explosion’ traits. Shrapnel (15% chance of a 15s bleed), 10% more explosion damage, vulnerability on explosions, etcetera! Suddenly the pistol would look far more attractive.
I’m not sure what to tell you, or how to build yourself. Giving up one skill forfeits some potential in exchange for others. I’ll be honest, here is my experience at the moment with my current build (and the details on current build), with weaknesses that my old build didn’t have an issue with:
I currently run rifle, medkit, elixir S, grenade kit, and toolkit. I have issues with good mesmers (of course they’re abusing the F3 → F1 shatter bug), and decent rangers, due to how obnoxious their pets are. Rangers are a complete pain because half the time I try to line up my kill combo (you’ve used rifle, you know how it operates – but to sum it up for those who don’t, overcharged shot into freeze grenade into shrapnel grenade, net shot, grenade barrage, and then either magnet → prybar or if I was close enough, prybar → blunderbuss), I end up hitting their pet instead, or the pet knocks me down mid-combo.
I didn’t have these issues when I ran bomb kit. At least not with rangers. Their pets were often blind, confused, burning, crippled, etc. Big Ol’ Bomb is /amazing/ for crowd control, as it usually covers the entire point on a relatively short cooldown. However, if I got rooted, my defense options were limited without toolkit – I could blow Elixir S (I usually use this to ensure either a fast stomp or to avoid a mesmer burst). The nerf to grenade kit didn’t help either, as it now takes 2-3 attacks to kill a clone, and 3-5 to kill a phantasm. Usually by that point they’re already shattering me, so I now literally ‘waste’ grenade barrage on one phantasm. Thanks again for the nerf Anet, delayed ground-targeted AoE with spread couldn’t possibly be allowed to have competitive qualities.
It looks alright, but I’ll just give you some quick pointers:
1) Invisible while immobilized is worthless once you start playing anyone with half a brain. Engineers only have one non-combo source of stealth from their abilities, and one trait method.
2) No stunbreaker. Your own personal defense is kind of limited due to this fact. Sure you’ve got a lot of point control, with the current turret spam. However, consider what’ll happen when you end up going against a ranger who just doesn’t care? He stays off the point, his pet encourages you to waste your bombs on it instead (and the moment it gets low, he’ll just swap it out and get 2s of quickness to hammer you with – even worse if he’s using dual hound pets to fear you off the point). Same thing can happen with a mesmer, albeit much worse.
I’d personally discard the static discharge idea, dump rifle turret, pick up Elixir S and Toolkit. Magnet + Prybar will usually get most classes in a pinch, the toolbelt skill (Throw Wrench) is fantastic (especially if you trait it, which you’d be doing if you took out static discharge), and Gear Shield is god tier (OH NOES I’M IMMOBILIZED AND – oh wait I’m immortal suckers), as it’s the fastest cooldown block in the game (3s block every 16s is pretty nice).
Jade Maw targetting pets with his laser merely prolongs the fight, doesn’t give a disadvantage to the team the same way Lupicus does. Subject Alpha targetting with his crystal is entirely beneficial to the team though.
These two things aren’t inbalanced in the mobs favor, they’re in the players favor, and personally think they are fine.
I’m gonna second that you don’t change this, I purposefully drop Supply Crate on higher level fractals when he downs my friends with the party-wide spectral agony (so I can more likely be safe while I rez up my friends). When I see that skull over a turret, I strike a ;D face.
Took me 60 boxes, got 7 minis. Last 20 were in an effort to acquire the golem. Before that I had 3 snowmen and 2 infiniariums. Also got a winter’s weapon claim ticket.
I was doing some testing today. I hit 25 bleeds alone in Heart of the Mists (engineer via shrapnel grenade + shrapnel trait). I can do it again if you want with a screenshot, I took one but I didn’t realize my screenshot folder was full. My point regardless though is that if one player alone can hit the stack, he can prohibit it for any other player with a condition oriented build. Even worse is that I run shrapnel anyway in PvE, but no condition damage, and can hit 15-18 stacks without breaking a sweat, and no bleed duration runes or anything. By just playing the game normally, I limit someone who would be condition oriented (Carrion-armor or rampager-armor sporting, bleed-focused engineer, necro, or warrior, for example).
Need to do something about Izzy, he’s proven in the past just how he balances things (25/90 is just one example out of many).
In about 90% of situations, rifle will be better than pistol/shield or pistol/pistol with regards to sPvP.
The two times I want a shield are when fighting a ranger (and you’d still be standing still getting hit by their pet for those 3 seconds of reflection), and this one time when I was fighting a pistol/shield engy and he just got extremely lucky with his timing on everything (he reflected overcharged shot, gg).
Fun fact – swapping kits while mining / gathering will ruin whatever you gather.
Jump puzzles are way easier with an Asura, the only issue that ever arises is other players blocking your view. And, yes, it was remedied this time around with multiple paths. Heck, on my server (Jade Quarry), I only encountered 3 other people in the JP at 3:00 PM when I was doing my daily (and the reward glitched but w/e).
While most of this seems silly (nerfing the engineer’s good traits), I will say that I agree on things like merging 20% elixir CDR with 20% longer elixir duration. Other classes get traits that increases their utilities two-fold (Physical Utility skills deal double damage and recharge twice as fast, Rifles & harpoon guns pierce and recharge 20% faster, might on greatsword crit & recharge 20% faster, banners apply to a wider area and recharge 20% faster, warhorn – wow why does warrior get all these, oh right, etcetera etcetera), while engineer’s all apply exclusively to one/two kits, except shield (every class that uses a shield gets the same crappy bonus of 90 toughness + 20% CDR).
Also I like the thought of unblockable bombs. Necros can get unblockable marks, right now all engineers have that is unblockable is (off the top of my head) poison grenade (the poison field itself can’t be blocked, but the damage can), box of nails, glue bomb / glue shot, and.. I’m not actually sure if concussion bomb is blockable or not, but I’m going to guess yes.
I swear it was 5s before, but maybe I’m crazy, the wiki page hasn’t been edited in a while.
Then I checked a few skill calculators. It was 5s. Thanks Anet. Thanks again. Thankyou from the bottom of my heart. Engineers had underwater combat as one of their few good niches left, but it seems you’re working at ruining that too. Thankyou so much. It was only good point blank but whatever. I think a 5sig Jon Peters got wrecked in sPvP on Capricorn or somesuch. Rabblerabblerabble.
lol why would I spin in a circle and face them?
180 you mean
180*
Glad to see the joke is lost on some people.
Fighting a thief in spvp is like being in a target shooting contest and your blindfolded while your opponent is not. You can only take your blindfold off for 3 of the 10 shots you are allotted. While not only does your opponent not use a blindfold, he also gets 20 shots to your 10.
I will say this – fighting a thief is /far/ easier as an engineer utilizing a rifle, especially with grenade and/or toolkit. If you can land either magnet or overcharged shot, they’re probably going to die. Magnet is followed up with net shot, grenade barrage, blunderbuss, and.. well, overcharged shot. Overcharged shot is followed up with shrapnel grenade, freeze grenade, and, if you started with overcharged, Magnet into.. the aforementioned combo. Squeeze a prybar in if you can but there’s never enough time between disables to fit it in.
Grenades are also pretty great for hitting them when they stealth, although it’s admittedly a lot of prediction. If they cloak early, Gear Shield allows you to pretty much eat their backstab attempt (although lenient / lazy Anet coding doesn’t reveal them on blocks, which is infuriating) while you cap the point. I’m getting off the point though.
They have escaped from me several times with shadow refuge. I even didn’t realize I downed someone for a good 12 seconds (I kept attacking the spot, but gave up after ~5 seconds of attacking) after the downing. That’s not balanced at all.
tl;dr – thieves should be revealed for longer, and be revealed when they attack or are downed.
When you see someone meleeing you, do a 360 and walk away. And throw grenades over your shoulder.
I’m not going to claim engineers are in a fine position right now, but they are one of the stronger roamers at the moment. Not so much in 1v1 situations – a good mesmer will always beat an outstanding engineer, unless he gets lucky with his elixir S and promptly NUKES the mesmer out of orbit. But I suppose in contrast a good engineer will always beat an outstanding thief, so whatever.
More or less they’re strong through a mixture of mobility and versatility. I run up to a point and see a 2v2 going on – I swap to toolkit, magnet someone at ~80% health off the point, swap to rifle, root them, use grenade barrage, blunderbuss, then overcharged shot (I do this all before the root wears off), that was easily 8k-12k damage, and while they’re on the ground, I can either 1) Jump shot to them and use prybar, or 2) Use shrapnel grenade and freeze grenade. Either way kills any non-guardian class without an invuln (unless the guardian already blew his block skills).
Engineers are also incredibly painful to chase, so that’s always a possible solution to a mesmer. Run up, have him blow his clones and phantasms on you, magnet + root him off the point, then run. Run very far away because he’s about to do a glitched shatter for all your health.
10s seems painfully long, but.. given how absurdly long of a stealth they can acquire from a few moments in a shadow refuge, it seems balanced. At least from shadow refuge’s viewpoint. Every other stealth is far too short for a 10s revealed state.
As a grenadier engineer in sPvP (typically only managing for 2-3 seconds at a time), I will respond with an immense GODJESUS YES RETALIATION STACKS
It’s most obviously exemplified in WvW when, say, grenading a group of players in front of a door who have the retaliation symbol on them. Ow 3k per attack.
Also, this applies to chaos armor / flame shield / etc. Chaos armor is a major issue against heartseeker thieves – as when they steal from me, they get Gunk, which makes a field that creates chaos armor when they leap combo through it (HEARTSEEKER), and makes my grenades give me 3 random conditions and them 3 random boons every time. It really is a complete nightmare.
Toolbelt skills always ran off your currently equipped weapon. It’s why you’re supposed to swap to your actual weapon (rifle in my case) for the extra critical damage, precision, and power, not to mention an overall higher base damage. It usually ends up being 40% or so more damage than if you use it with a kit out. The same would be true in sPvP since (albeit not by 40%) simply because the weapon has higher base stats than the kit does.
The vulnerability and bleeds you’ll apply via Shrapnel will still outdamage all other options in the long term.
Unless you’re hitting bleed stack cap, at which point I’d look at tool kit or rifle for your auto needs until shrapnel grenade comes off cooldown.
I only read the first 20 posts before nearly passing out, but I’ll point this out for those regarding engineer as weak in sPvP:
Engineer is incredibly solid there. It’s just mesmers are fairly overpowered at the moment, and guardians are incredibly difficult to ‘control’ with their long-duration stability abuse, and several, unnecessary blocks (and the needless nerf to grenades, it was our solid method of fighting off thieves, but now the autos do kitten-all, so bomb kit is now the anti-thief measure).
I suppose rangers give me issue too if they’re good. But only because troll unguent heals so much, and they have far too may abilities that make the word “EVASION” repeatedly pop up in succession. It’s quite irksome.
Technically he never said there’d only be enough cogs for 2 toys.
Iirc his exact words were something along the lines of “If you do all 5 infiniarium events, you will have enough to produce 2 toys.”
It left a lot of speculation up to ‘Oh snap what if toypocalypse gives cogs!?’, although it obviously doesn’t now.
I’m simply posting out of curiosity – a lot of us are hoping that Anet will learn their lesson by next year with the Mystery Boxes and not force the contents therein to be account bound or the like. There is also a Winterday Trio in the game files, which has several of us curious as to what may have been. Will the Toys be changing next year, and Foostivoo & Co be returning? Or will it be the other way around? Or none at all? It’s a question that would make many of us glad to hear the answer on, if possible.
I won’t lie, I’d swap it out for flamethrower, bringing me up to 5 kits.
During my entire combo, shortly after using acid bomb, I could position myself and use napalm blast. I’d also get an AoE point blank blind, and a projectile reflect / knockback to utilize. And a nice flame wall should the situation rise (like a mob staying perfectly still so I can throw it on them).
It’d be nice if Anet didn’t outright lie (as of this posting) about Mystery Boxes being dropped in-game. Nobody has had any drop. I’m hoping they drop on Christmas or something.
You can’t queue up multiple toolbelt abilities. Example – if you push Big Ol’ Bomb and Grenade Barrage at the same time, it won’t use one and then the other, just the first.
Or at least last time I tested it.
Adrenaline Implant is fine. It’s pretty strong for perma-semi-vigor, you get a strong defensive trait while getting many points put into a damage tree.
Armor mods is one of the dumbest pieces of crap ever though. Whoever put that there needs to get their head checked. Even if this POS gave perma-retaliation, it’d still never see use except in a hyper-niche situation: Like if I saw a flamethrower coming through the door on a keep I’m assaulting, so I could make that guy’s life a nightmare for a brief few moments.
The joke is, that that’s not even the more effective burst. Usually they open with an illusion + phantasm from one weapon set, then swap to sword/pistol and make the 3 illusion → if they really want you dead, they’ll tag you with magic bullet, then swap with their 3 skill, use blurred frenzy, mind wrack, hit mirror images mid-frenzy, and then give the confusion shatter. The burst here is so painfully strong, and typically leaves a target either dead, or scrambling for life with 8 stacks of confusion (!!!). At this point they still have iduelist, and maybe magic bullet if they saved it (say, for a class whose stunbreakers can’t get out of root and don’t pack an invulnerability skill).
I run 4 kits in my high-end PvE stuff. It’s pretty awesome being able to handle any situation the game chooses to throw at me. I do admit the grenade nerf has severely gimped my long-term damage, but from what I’ve experienced through other classes as of late, I still do just as much DPS (if they’re not a warrior). The entire damage chain – throw wrench, grenade barrage, jump shot, blunderbuss, swap to toolkit → prybar, swap to elixir gun → elixir K, acid bomb, swap to grenade kit and use shrapnel, freeze, and.. then debate autoing with rifle or keeping up the grenade autos for more bleeds + vulnerability, or maybe just facetanking the boss for a brief moment with gear shield.
Yeah, I don’t have a stunbreaker. But unless I get knocked down, that’s what my 16s cooldown shield is for (19s if you get technical due to channel time, just like 6.5s cooldown on HB is actually 10s).
Removes 1 random boon. Not reliable.
The mine field removes 5. And it’s reliable if you spec for larger mine/bomb radii.
Retaliation destroys flamethrower. The toy ventari in the grove wintersday dungeon, where there are usually 3+ of them with retaliation clumped up? I just swapped to pistol and ran around pretending to be doing something while everyone else killed them. Engineer doesn’t have a real way of stripping boons apart from that one sigil either.
l2throw mine/mine field (yes the toolbelt strips boons too)
Am I the only one encountering this? When you jump into the box at the end, it always loads twice for me – and as a result it’s crashed me twice, and made me miss the next jump wave by a few seconds. It’s kind of irksome, is anyone else experiencing this?
Its a .65 skill coeff, pierces, can be traited for +10% damage, 5% damage while bleeding, 50% vul on crit. (or 5 stacks of vul on immobalize now.
Just an FYI – that vuln on crit trait lasts 2 seconds. Do not touch it. It’s as bad as the necro’s bleed on crit (that lasts 1 second).
HgH huge buff. No really. no clue why they did this. Not running 30 alch, with 409/hgh, and B+R in pve, you are doing it wrong frankly atm.
Gonna disagree here. 30 points in tools means 10% more damage from full endurance and (if scope worked) 10% more crit chance while grenading from the back lines – this put it miles ahead of wasting potential DPS time chugging/tossing elixirs. It doesn’t mean much when you’re wasting utility slots and ~3 seconds of potential damage just throwing down bottles. 2 stacks at least makes it seem like the opportunity cost is worth it.
That and 30 more crit damage, just to put some icing on the cake.
Hrm. I dont think you appreciate 10 stacks of might, and 70% uptime on fury.
The might, and well aimed discharges make them not dps lost.
Already had 50% uptime just from drop stimulant. 10 stacks of might aren’t bad, but not when you’re forfeiting potential attacks in exchange. If it were an elementalist, I might argue otherwise – they can churn out 12-15 stacks of might every ~10 seconds in an area-wide usage, that are far more beneficial (and can be arranged to not lose /any/ damage, albeit that involves being in melee).
And static discharge + elixirs + throwing them point blank on yourself while being at range? That’s miserably inaccurate. And, again, giving up 2 utility slots.. you could be using something like Prybar, Throw Wrench, and Acid Bomb to more than make up for the damage ‘lost’ by wasting several seconds toss/chugging. Oh, and get 9 other skills to help out (super elixir, gear shield, and magnet being the admittedly generally-useful ones).
Yes, spam those elixirs instead of doing damage.
Almost as bad of an idea as the perma-protection elementalist (the actual method, not the current 25s protection bug).
HgH huge buff. No really. no clue why they did this. Not running 30 alch, with 409/hgh, and B+R in pve, you are doing it wrong frankly atm.
Gonna disagree here. 30 points in tools means 10% more damage from full endurance and (if scope worked) 10% more crit chance while grenading from the back lines – this put it miles ahead of wasting potential DPS time chugging/tossing elixirs. It doesn’t mean much when you’re wasting utility slots and ~3 seconds of potential damage just throwing down bottles. 2 stacks at least makes it seem like the opportunity cost is worth it.
That and 30 more crit damage, just to put some icing on the cake.
1) You ruined the only sustained damage method engineers had access to, that could even compare to warriors (Anets long-loved baby that shall never be harmed).
2) You justify this ruination with almost self-degrading posts talking about how ‘awesome’ it will be using something like a Sigil of Air with a flamethrower. Really? Last I checked, those internal cooldowns of 10 seconds kind of prohibit such abuse. Even if you’re triggering them faster, it’ll likely take 1-2 more seconds for another class to proc it at worst.
3) You toss salt in the wounds by putting damage on flash grenade and poison grenade. Initially I was like ‘well this isn’t so b-’ then I looked at the damage numbers. Really? I think box of nails does more damage than flash grenade.
The good thing to come from this patch:
Change to Shrapnel trait. I was honestly expecting (after this series of kicks to the metaphorical groin) you to have nerfed Shrapnels bleed duration, but you didn’t, so I thank you for that.
Wanna fix this? Make the nerf to the auto-attack’s damage between 5-10% damage. 5% for force, and 5% for accuracy (I know that’s not how it works but shh). 30% makes it seem like we’re getting our weapon’s stats applied to kits. You didn’t even bother improving other kits (golly gee my flamethrower is doing 1600 damage over 2.25 seconds on dummies!? My grenade kit was doing > 1k per auto on dummies pre-patch).
PS: If people start saying condition damage on engineer is a viable sustained DPS method, please go to another thread – there are plenty where the math is run, and it’s proven that condition engineer is like running a healing support ranger. I’ll admit the shrapnel grenade does make condition damage engineer far more appealing (75% of your condition damage applied on each proc of shrapnel!), but that was before this patch. Now I just feel like vomiting since our DPS is now comparable to a rangers (no offense – it’s just the depressing truth).
The Warrior minor trait Reckless Dodge allows him to do that. Other classes’ dodge traits work similarly, though almost none of them are as reliable.
So how exactly does “Deal damage at the end of your dodge roll” grant stability mid-dodge? That seems pretty kitten. I’ve got explosive evasion or w/e the engineer one is (leave a bomb when you dodge), it certainly doesn’t allow such shenanigans. At least I know what buggy code is permitting such feats, thanks.
This video irritates me. Not due to the player’s skill, which is obvious, but to the blatant several times where he’s inside the sphere (phase 3) and can just roll / block out. My engineer can’t do that (even when activating gear shield – it cancels my channel if I try to run out with it active and promptly gets me killed). No other class can do that. He doesn’t have stability (that I’m seeing), so I’m not sure why he’s able to do that but other classes can’t.
About as impressive as a fart in a typhoon. You can do any encounter in fractals by just grinding at it – all the ‘hard’ encounters don’t reset (Blizzard Elemental, Dredge Doors, etc) on wipe. Until they implement that, and a few fixes, it’s just a matter of pointless perseverance. No reason going past 30 in all honesty – 30 takes long enough if you get unlucky (dredge/colossus/grawl anyone?), and I only endure it from time to time to get a second shot at a fractal weapon some days.
Spoken like someone who has never played sPvP before. Thanks for reading the guildwar2 wiki. Go roll a warrior alt and try what you just recommended. Get back to me when you do anything useful with that build.
It’s like I’m really talking to a pro. I have an 80 warrior and an 80 engineer, and several level 20/40 alts for other classes. Engineers don’t even have passive condition removal, unless you want to count that lol-tastic 3% conversion minor trait. Just learn to play the class and incorporate a few skills to help deal with a condition or two here and there. Even if it means changing your heal skill around, mending is actually incredibly good.
Warriors suck for a different reason in sPvP. Lack of condition removal certainly isn’t it.
They’re lying. Highest you can really get is ~55% with 300 in firearms, all berserker/precision gear, etc. That’d be 75% with fury, 85% when they’re below 50% health, and 95% if Scope worked (which it doesn’t). So, optimally, if traits worked – when you stand still and the target is below 50% health, with fury up, you could have a 95% critical hit rate.
Casia’s right on.. every account she’s stated. I think the only people willing to argue with her are people too stubborn to be dissuaded from thinking a 2s bleed is worth investing in.
Let’s compare:
Engineers – can’t break a 2.5s bleed duration on weapons. 4+ seconds with elixir gun, which is still a terrible duration.
Necromancers – 14+s bleeds easily via scepter and proper traiting. 0.7 condition damage ratio per auto attack, versus ~0.1 scaling.
Using an engineer for condition damage is like using a ranger for healing power support (and to be clear on this comparison – no healing spring does not actually heal beyond the regeneration boon, it just pops off a condition with every tick). Pick up grenades. Using multiple kits to boost your DPS is fine – I personally run elixir gun and toolkit to supplement grenade kit. Acid Bomb, Prybar, and Throw Wrench actually add to the already high DPS, while bringing other skills to the table to be utilized (namely super elixir, gear shield, magnet, and healing mist).
1) Shake it Off!
2) Trait for Shake it Off!
3) Mending
4) Endurance Signet’s Active
5) Traiting Warhorn to convert conditions into boons
Warriors have plenty of condition removal. It’s just so many warriors are playing the class like the easymode thing it is without putting any thought into their build. You know those rune things? Guess what happens if you put 6 of the ones called ‘Superior Rune of the Soldier’ on? It makes “For Great Justice!” suddenly even better, and likewise with “Shake it Off!”
Not every class should get every thing. Warriors already have it good enough. I’d look at ranger before I even glance at warrior sideways.
Grenades are still great in PvP, but not exclusively – you use them for melee encounters (after you’ve blown your bombs – I use bomb kit mainly to aid in point captures and help fight off thieves) and for killing people off the point while capping it.
Oh, and barrage is still insanely strong burst. Net shot or overcharged into that = ow.