Guild Wars 2

You don’t need any coins for ascended gear, just the upgraded infusions, and even then the amount of investments for not even 1% more crit chance (15 more precision) is just absurd. You only need mystic coins for mystic clovers, about ~230 with average to bad luck. I think a big issue is a lot of coins were wasted making mystic weapons. Yes, I said wasted. Why would you waste 30+ coins on those weapons when red versions (which obviously is a superior color to 90% of the playerbase, unless you’re a guardian) are available from CoE?

With regards to the several flesh golems – that was because Trahearne is supposedly a sick-nasty necromancer. I feel it was the only time in the game he was able to display his combat capabilities, as every other time he just spins2win.

Why exactly is a downed player allowed to cap / neutralize a point? This is kind of an infuriating issue with regards to things like elementalists vapor forming around, thieves warping about on the point, and guardians ‘bunkering’ while downed.

While many people want the downed state gone, I feel it’d be fine if they couldn’t impact point captures. That, and maybe get rid of rezzes or make them all like Elixir R (over time, not instantaneous). It’s just infuriating to have 3 downed enemies on a point and have to work them down one by one (no stomping allowed, just get knocked around – better off DPSing 2-3 at a time with AoE), and by the time you’re killing off the last one, the respawning players are showing up again.

It’s been a while since a monthly was made available for completion. Once the 14th hits, it’s likely the monthly achievement can be finished, and suddenly 70~% of the playerbase will be getting 10 coins each, and the price will once again plummet.

Was just playing with Cilantro tonight, and I admit there was a player on the other team who kept gunning purely for him, constantly bringing it up in mapchat. It was pretty irksome for everyone else (“die anet guy”) and whatnot.

Can cross off Anton, his ghost is by the battlepit thing in Gendarran Fields.

KirinDave.6451:

The great thing about a light field is that its blast finisher is Area Retaliation. And Engineers have plentiful blast finishers.

3s AoE retaliation versus 1.2k AoE healing per blast.

I’m not sure there’s a debate here, merely pointing out how one dwarfs the other.

I’ll buy gems to show my support once they start properly working on things. At the moment they’re playing favorites with classes (What’s that Lassie? 5 warriors? Sounds great – No I don’t care how bad they are in sPvP), neglecting garbage traits, fixing bugs two to three per patch (out of at least a thousand), taking leagues to ship out new PvP types (OH BOY A NEW MAP – wait, what about the balance and busted skills?).

I will give them that Fractals was a great idea. But then they threw on a gear treadmill (They lied in their statement about ‘not adding more tiers’, because they clearly are going to add better infusions – +5 precision will end up eventually becoming +20 power, +15 precision, and +2% crit damage in a year’s time), one method of implementing said gear, and TERRIBLE balancing of Fractals compared to one another (Get Ocean? Eff yeah. Get Colossus? Kthxbai). It’s like they keep handing out sandwiches covered in antifreeze.

Necro does things that actually help the group. Epidemic alone outclasses thief.

Thief can stealth your party and provide a few burst blast finishers as far as group play is concerned. However a necro can burst off 4 blast finishers in ~1s every 20s so I think that still puts thief to shame, since it doesn’t make his normal attacks garbage until initiative regens.

Protip – you’ll increase your damage and survivability (at the loss of ~10% crit rate) by swapping to 30/10/0/0/30. 50% more endurance regen, double super elixirs via elixir gun (and another backwards-escape via acid bomb), and.. well, if they ever bother to make the Scope trait work, you’d make up for your 10% crit loss with that. But anywho – yes, use that. Works really well. I use power wrench instead of scope since I use toolkit’s gear shield, magnet, prybar and throw wrench quite frequently.

milo.6942:

the real problem is player’s skill is tied to rank, but rank is something you grind in hotjoin zergs with your glory booster on.

I’m disagreeing here, all rank says is how much PvP you’ve played. Could have a guy who just loves doing sPvP even though he’s no good at it and be a higher rank than people regularly doing paid tPvP.

Prybar hits harder than the grenade kit’s auto attack, and there’s 5 other skills you picked up by choosing toolkit. And this is before confusion. Throw Wrench also hits harder, and you’ve got a gear shield to pull shenanigans with.

l2strafe, their shots miss (including the knockback ones) if you’re moving side to side.

Schwahrheit.4203:

Basically takes more skill and is more rewarding.

Hahah, what a joker. This guy. Infinitely more skill required when playing an engineer compared to a guardian, at best a guard has to time when they pop their virtues. But you’re obviously joking since everyone knew that.

Vasham has it down, but I still feel medkit is our best heal. Great for sPvP (healing between points, dropping stacks of medkits + antidotes on the point while camping / capping it, etc), not to mention DROP STIMULANT. A fury/swiftness buff in our heal skill without actually popping our heal sounds pretty amazing to me.

And you can get the turret to activate the first time, I tested it on the spiders outside of LA – drop it and mash it instantly, and it’ll purge the conditions (and actually provide a slightly higher heal). Just don’t do this more than once a minute (as you can’t see cleansing bursts cooldown), else you’ll be forfeiting an extra <2k heal due to a blast finisher.

Rocket Boots are bad in most sPvP situations because it blows you off the point. The toolbelt is nice, I’ll admit.

Oh, and S guarantees stomps. The toss ensures you’ll kill a warrior, engineer, or necro without any issue. 50% chance of the toss getting guardian and ranger killed. Or, you could just pop S mid-stomp to make kitten sure you kill them dead. This can be a critical issue in the heat of a fight, when both sides have a downed player or somesuch and their death means your teammate’s survival.

I will admit that rocket boots does mess up basilisk venom or whatnot quite well, as they’ll miss another of their heartseekers while you’re lining up shots.

Pact Shotgun works.

Use glue bomb and big ol’ bomb for more roots into more disables. That’ll get them killed.

Alternately, burst harder – grenade barrage into jump shot is uh.. that combo takes off 70% of a thief’s health. And you’ll still have ~1s of root left.

Casia – the thief’s cluster bomb skill actually does weak damage if you go for the blast finisher, and comparable damage (only due to bleeds) to the grenade kit’s auto attack if you detonate and land all 3. It’s significantly less damage than the engineer’s shrapnel grenade.

Littledeath.2684:

So what your saying is they have to select their utility skills just to be able to do it.. ok yah not the same thing if that was the case we could have what? let me count. 5or 6?

6 at most, and that’s, but as I said, you’re kittening yourself with fairly kitten skills. I’m saying 6 because you could run 4 turrets + supply crate + shield, and the only good utility skill would be crate (and maybe net turret but you’re detonating it so why did you even – nevermind). Warrior could run 4 banners, pick one up, and use plant banner for a 5th blast finisher. And banners are hardly useless, the worst one is probably the might/condition damage one, and it’s like a free 3 stacks of might (which in my opinion is actually pretty weak for a banner, why not just run FGJ, but that’s only because the other banners are much better).

I suppose engineer could use bomb kit for one blast finisher, shield for a second, crate for a third, healing turret for a fourth (have to time it so you don’t pop it in the water field), but there’s just so much bluh about doing all that – you shouldn’t be going out of your way to produce effects like that in overall benefit, it should simply happen due to clever timing (like using fire bomb before big ol’ bomb) for maximum effectiveness. The only time I’d say going out of your way is worth it is blast finisher + water field, and the only decent water fields in the game come from rangers/eles (a 2s field or .25s field from healing turret is not decent). 3 stacks of might per blown skill for 15s isn’t too gravy when the other options for engineer (toolkit, medkit, elixir gun, grenade kit, RIFLE) are just straight-up better bar niche situations, like bunker engineer (why aren’t you a guardian!?).

Elementalists have a blast finisher on a 4.5s cooldown (I know it doesn’t work at the moment, many things don’t work). I don’t think engineers can compete. If you’re talking about just chaining blasts together, warriors can chain 5 in a row purely off utility skills. Guardians have a melee-ranged one on a 5s cooldown. Ours are flashy and require chaining (double-tapping shield, crate, big ol’ bomb, detonate mine), but then we have to wait for quite a while to pull that off again.

I do have to chime in and say that every class has crap traits. And engineer, if you wanted, could combine static discharge with tossed elixirs for a decent chunk of damage per throw (not that I advise this, as you’re kittening yourself compared to the option of just running grenades).

I will say that the explosives early traits are not bad though, bar acidic elixirs. 6% chance of bleeding per explosion translates to 17% chance of at least one bleed per grenade attack. The bleed lasts 15 seconds (assuming 30 points in explosives). If you don’t like grenades, it has a 33% chance of a 2s burn every 3s. Great for single target things in sPvP.

The only craptastic traits that come to mind are a few – 3% chance to convert incoming conditions to boons (If it ever goes off, I don’t notice – unless it gave me aegis and I suddenly, randomly block with no allied guardian around). Juggernaut (if only because flamethrower scales so terribly with power, and giving might is like saying here’s a pixie stick to go with your lighter), Precise Sights is indeed crap (1 stack of 2s vulnerability oh my god), Autotool Installation (Wow it heals for 10% every 5-10 seconds? What a great trait!), Armor Mods (another crap 30-point trait: WHY IS THIS NOT PROTECTION, I don’t care if we’d have 2 traits that did it then), Scope (doesn’t work), Always Prepared (Here lemme rez y- what the kitten did I just pick up?).

Compared to other classes, we actually have far more useable traits. I mean, look at warrior – regenerating banners compared to healing shouts is like comparing grenadier to the smoke bomb dispenser (not that smoke bomb’s bad, just terrible by direct comparison).

There’s prominent issues with HGH/grenadier builds – one, they’re sacrificing the 20-30 points of potential critical damage, and in turn, they lose the sick-nasty “10% more damage while endurance is full” trait. A second is the ~2-3 seconds spent every now and then forfeiting potential DPS in exchange for chugging / chucking elixirs. A third is the double-edged sword of running HGH and 409 – you’ll want to spam your elixirs for more might, but you’ll also want to save it for those condition-flooded moments. It’s a situation where you’re literally debating hanging onto a elixir skill for just one stack of might each, over the potential of hanging to both cleanse something and get a might stack.

Be a glass cannon grenadier, but learn to use your flash bombs.

I admit at level 30 it’s not working so hot, I’ll have to consider swapping to pistol/shield just for the 4 skill.

I know you’re talking about WvW, but I’ll explain how to deal with each (using your setup) from a sPvP viewpoint:

Thieves – if they’re using melee (90% will), simply run away / in a circle while throwing grenades over your shoulder. The moment they hit ~70% health, do a 180, hit them with net shot, blunderbuss, jumpshot, grenade barrage, then stomp them (twice, because they’ll use their obviously balanced downed skill to get away).

Mesmers – this is tricky, I’ll admit. It’s almost the same thing – if you can land a netshot on them, they will die quite quickly. If you can’t, you have to resort to pew pewing with your rifle, possibly use supply crate as a backup for netshot (since you use net turret, you have 2 other immobilizes to make this super easy), and wail on them. Mesmers don’t have much in terms of healing – they have a heal based on illusion count (which is pretty weak), mantra of healing (also weak), and a reflect-oriented heal that is also subpar. If you can stick close, hammer them with grenades – any clones or phantasms they create will be promptly obliterated from the ensuing AoE. If you can’t, you’ll have to fall back to pewpewing with the rifle until you can land a root or knockback from overcharged shot.

It seems to me like you don’t want to use grenade kit. If you don’t, I’ll admit – the engineer underperforms damage-wise in a consistent manner. Without it, your main damage comes from the spikes every 15-20 seconds through rifle skills. If you’ve tried grenade kit with smartcasting and still didn’t like it, then I guess engineer isn’t for you. I have seen a decent medibomber setup for dungeons, and it’s fairly supporty – but it’s taking advantage of a glitch currently on one of the engineer skills to provide some quite blatantly OP support, that I’d rather not divulge right now. Still – it’s an interesting, supporty, tanky build. Just don’t expect healing bombs with healing traits and whatnot to be obliterating mobs in a few seconds.

Engy can do it all at once. It’s called kits. I equip 4 for my fractals of the mists runs. Medkit, elixir gun, grenade kit, toolkit.

Gives me access to:
Group-wide AoE healspam (double super elixir via refined kits – this includes double condition removals, AND light fields that remove a condition on yourself when you use a projectile finisher through them)
Immense self-sustain (medkit + super elixirs)
An emergency block (3s block from toolkit)
Incredible ranged damage (grenade kit)
Monstrously good mob control (7.5s chill via grenade kit, double box of nails via tool kit)
And, this’ll sound crazy, but I actually use my main weapon from time to time:
2.5s root
Emergency knockback
Spike damage (with rifle out, use throw wrench, grenade barrage, blunderbuss, and jump shot, then swap to toolkit to use prybar, swap to elixir gun for Acid Bomb, then swap to grenade kit until everything’s up for your next spike).

Crazy what happens when you know how to play a class, huh?

If you want to be useful in end-game dungeons, pick Engineer. Thief has pretty low non-melee damage, and offers zero support. If someone mentions Shadow Refuge, I will find them and [kittens everywhere]. Taking the heat off a few players and putting them all on another is not sufficient to bring something to a team. And don’t mention venomshare, it’s.. blughtastic.

Engineer? AoE heals out the wazoo, AoE blinds (yes thief does this too I realize), all the conditions, stuns, 7.5s AoE chills (this is a big one right here), just bucketloads of stuff.

I think the question you should ask yourself is – are you good at microing? Do you want to play a complex class that will reward your efforts? Then pick engineer. If you want to just push 1-2 buttons per fight, maybe you should go with thief.

Free bed of nails without the painful 1s cast time.

Good question. Full berserker. My rings at the moment are an infused all-stats ring (Lunaria, Circle of the Moon), and Vine of the Pale Tree (berserker stats, but with vitality instead of precision on the gem).

Ideally the rings would be an ascended, infused Red Ring of Death and a Crystalline Band. But you take what you can get to fight agony – if it gets worse I could use my infused Mellagan’s Whorl (it’s so crap I’m not going to list the stats).

Just did fractal level 28 last night. I’m an engineer.

I got a fractal dagger.

I guess it’s nice that it’s a dagger large enough that an Asura can hold it and be seen, but…

Engineer who just did level 28 last night here.

I’m not taking the immense time to explain what to do. If you wanna kitten yourself and try to be needlessly complex (which is funny because I’m swapping kits every other attack) just for a few might stacks, that’s your issue. Elementalists are far better for that. You should be focusing on playing to your class’ strengths and utilizing the weapons that are good. I’ll sum it up briefly (my loadout, and skill choices):

30/10/0/0/30. Traits: 6% chance of bleeds, 10% more explosion damage, grenadier, 50% chance of swiftness on crit, refined kits, 20% cooldown reduction on toolkit, 50% more endurance regen.

Rifle, medkit, elixir gun, grenade kit, toolkit, supply crate.

You’ll do more ranged direct damage than anyone in the game – and a heap of condition damage on top of it to boot.

http://imageshack.us/a/img5/755/gw960j.jpg

((Yes the skills in the image are different. This might be crazy but you change skills depending on situation – since engineer is ready for every situation based on his skillset.))

It’s a heart quest, there’s plenty where you get some overpowered mechanic to do it.

This one just had grenades we can’t normally access. Not much else to discuss about it really.

It’s one of the things keeping Guardians in check. You wanna try to cap a point using Sanctuary? That’s fine.

Now deal with the fact that for 2 minutes you have 2 utility slots.

Nothing, turrets don’t scale with stats.

tigirius.9014:

The frost affect does not last long enough to keep enemies from reaching you, and poison does not do as much damage as fire, that is still imbalanced.

6% bleed is a useless trait as you are also without any real dps from these explosions because enemies just keep coming while they are poisoned bleeding and on fire.

The chill lasts 7.5 seconds, that’s longer than any other class can apply in the game (there might be a ranger pet with traits that lasts longer, I’m not sure). And it’s on a relatively low cooldown, to boot.

The 6% bleed trait is also quite strong. You have roughly a 17% chance to apply at least one bleed with every grenade attack, and guess how long these bleeds last? 15 seconds. There’s no internal cooldown on it like the burn trait, and 15 seconds of bleeding does as much damage as the 2.5 seconds of burning. This also means that, if you’re hitting multiple mobs (as you will very often be), you’ll be giving those long-lasting bleeds to several creatures, not just one target burning.

If you’re referring to PvP, I admit I run the burn trait instead – you want them dead now rather than later, and the mob issue doesn’t arise nearly as often.

If you want the highest DPS, I’d advise something like 30/10/0/0/30, grenadier setup, running bomb kit and toolkit as your other utilities, and a rifle as your primary weapon.

When able to, run up – use all 3 toolbelt skills (if you want to keep them still and they’re not a boss mob, avoid using Big Ol’ Bomb), blunderbuss, jump shot, swap to bomb kit and drop fire bomb and concussion bomb (unless the mob spends a long time not using abilities), then swap to tool kit and hit them in the face with a prybar. Then return to grenading.

If you want some more survival instead of a smidgen more burst, replace bomb kit with elixir gun. Double super elixirs are pretty great, especially the regeneration on the toolbelt skill (and 28s cooldown due to 30 in tools). That, and the damage lost isn’t much if you use Acid Bomb. Also Gear Shield is sick-nasty.

I use elixir gun, grenade kit, and tool kit for my DPS / survival setup in dungeons.

Use grenade autos when nothing else is available, and every time grenade barrage is off cooldown – swap to rifle, use barrage, throw wrench, blunderbuss, jump shot, swap to toolkit and use prybar, then swap to elixir gun and use the backwards leap (that thing does a ton of damage!). Return to grenade kit and continue throwing those until your next burst comes.

Kimbald.2697:

flamethrower #4 fire field can do just that as well

No it can’t. The fire field just applies burning, there’s no actual damage per tick from it like the warrior’s longbow adrenaline skill.

Toolkit’s Prybar, Throw Wrench, and Gear Shield are reasons alone to take it. I’ve been running it in fractals of the mists lately to improve my overall damage farther (that, and gear shield is strictly better than elixir S if you take out the stunbreak component – there aren’t enough actual stuns in most FotM dungeons to merit taking S over Toolkit). Prybar crits for 6k easily, Throw Wrench applies it’s projectile finisher twice, along with doing a chunk of damage, and gear shield is just awesome for those get out of jail free moments – and it’s on a 20s cooldown to boot.

I frequently stomp players in sPvP with grenades. The trick is to either a) get in melee range (they can’t evade at this point), or b) use a root / knockdown before using freeze grenade to ensure every grenade hits from thereon out. Considering the rifle has a 10s cooldown on a 2.5s root, and a 15s cooldown on a 2s knockdown, I think landing grenades is trivial at this point – especially if, the moment you get rooted, you’re also eating a blunderbuss, jump shot, and grenade barrage to the face. It puts players on the run, which makes them predictable.

Ashanae.9362:

1.No
2.14 ( I got few lvl 80 in fotm )
3.0

@Kobi tell me how to dodge Jade Maw agony scream and i will be fine…

Elixir S, Endure Pain, using group-wide AoE heals (Toss Elixir R, Super Elixir, the healing banner’s 2, healing spring, elementalist water fields, well of blood, etc etc etc).

Tres.5427:

Darn straight im stingy 225 to be able to fill an Offensive slot geez :P. Jade Maw is really the only exception to the not needing Agony as a group without at least 1 person at 10 can not complete a 20+ Jade Maw (someone has to survive to res everyone after all). The rest of it? We had members going into our 20+ run without a single agony resist and everything else went fine. For the most part. Geebus those Chanters on cliffside and their vuln stacking =/.

I’m not even 100% sure I could have survived the Jade Maw’s agony with 10 resist. When it was cast the second time, I popped my heal, ate 3 medkits, and was standing in 2 super elixir fields with regeneration on, and I think in your healing spring too. It still managed to down me and take me to around 25% health.

Fun fact, just did level 20. You cannot even survive Agony with only +5 resistance. At least from the Jade Maw’s auto-application, as it auto-killed everyone else in my party except me (technically one other player could have had +10 resistance, but he was stingy with his fractal shards). We only managed to survive because when we re-entered the arena, the party-wide application left me clinging to life, and the jade maw couldn’t hit us where we’d reentered.

Wethospu.6437:

I thought Agony targeted everyone in Jade Maw. Though I admit I don’t know if it is possible to avoid.
No idea how it scales on higher level but eventually it will simply kill everyone. Simple “L2P” probably won’t help then.

It does. But some classes can heal for far more than others, or some players who have less health have a heal that restores a larger % of their total (given how Agony operates, lower base health = higher overall resistance against Agony via heal). For example, as an engineer, I popped my bandage heal, and dropped 3 bandages with medkit, and also dropped vent healing mist (the elixir gun toolbelt), and a super elixir from it, and I ended up just over half health by the time the party-wide Agony had downed everyone else. 2 people died before I could get them up (to be fair they were standing beside a tentacle).

There’s multiple solutions to the problem. Spec more into healing, cluster up and use a class’ AoE heals (elementalist water skills, ranger healing spring, necro well of blood, engineer super elixirs, etcetera). Or do it so much you can actually time when to dodge the Agony cast (given there’s no animation and it’s merely a timing issue of when you kill the last Jade Colossus to when the party-wide Agony is applied, that’s the only factor there).

If you’re defeated, you get revived by an ally. It’s pretty kitten easy during the Jade Maw fight, given nothing can hit you but the tentacles. If you’re a class that can do it, make some allies – engineer turrets, necro minions, something to reduce the chance of the killbeam targeting you. This’ll let you rez up faster, and take the pressure off of dodging the attack.

And if you wipe? Use a checkpoint. Anet was kind enough to not reset the Jade Maw when you do wipe. Or they forgot to.

Try bringing more heal skills, and stand next to the guy in your party who did get a ring so he can get up you when you get downed. If you know anything about the class you’re playing, you’ll know there’s more than one way to heal besides your actual heal skill. Engineers have super elixir, warriors have the healing banner, etc. If you combine your AoE heals you’ll live through agony without an issue. If you can’t, it’s your own team’s fault for lack of coordination. Hell, we beat the Jade Maw on level 10 with all of us getting downed, but we didn’t wipe. Sure, 2 people died – but we rezzed them up and dodged the tentacles and killbeam until everyone was up and running, and proceeded to smack him down.

tl;dr L2P

People are complaining way too much about precursors, but they’re forgetting a pretty kitten important detail – Anet announced the method of attaining precursors would be changed into a scavenger-hunt-esque method. This is probably something to hold the precursor market over until that change.

Ironically because people value their colored text over having good stats, a lot of Twilight, Sunrise, and Eternity wielders are kittening themselves with vit/tough/power weapons, when a tanky weapon is the opposite intention of the greatsword (at least on warrior and guardian, my ranger is level 2 so I haven’t looked at the skills there).

You.. you just attach another sigil to them.

You.. you just attach another sigil to them.Did you ever try it?

99% sure ascended will only apply to armor types, because of the ‘infusion slot’ thing. Could only infuse armor in GW1, so I’d figure it would carry over. Maybe. Hopefully.