Guild Wars 2

Aside from the SE helmet, and the monocle I am rather depressed by helms for the engi. I really want something like that helm the engi has in the art on the tools trait line UI,

With the hood + facemask with goggles.

Could do with more steampunk / sand people type gear.

I wouldn’t trust promotion art for direction on balance changes.

Remember a lot of the concept art has engi’s with what looks like mini guns. Even the trait Ui art has mini guns, yet we as engineers do not have mini guns.

Art is art, made to look good.

I agree with you.

I run rifle though so sometimes I’ll use overcharged shot to remove cripple / chill before I use it.

The thing with the turret damage is, you can easily get the same damage from other utility skills. Like PBR, or bomb kit, or grenade kit.

Even with rocket and rifle turrets out and firing with me hip-shotting. I notice I still do more damage with the 1 skill from bomb kit in the build your currently using.

You can also swap in traits to get protection, more power, and a heal on each bomb.

I am not trying to be negative or go against your build, because I have tried to use turrets a lot myself, and I’ve just found them to be to easily countered.

I think GH is more than likely going to drop a tier or two in the rankings but we’ve got a good community, and these last two match-ups have really shown who much our organization and coordination at the guild to guild level has improved.

While KISS may be gone, during the last match up we had a lot of less frequent WvW guilds start to branch into WvW.

If we keep working on building guilds, and organizing our existing community I think we will make a climb up the ladder again. As we did after unnamed left for BT. About a month ago.

There is still a lot of room for us to grow and improve if we put the time and effort into the community.

The best thing to do right now is to try to remember to join the mumble server, encourage more people to come do WvW, and let others know about the GH community sites, mumble, and WvW.

Right now is a great time to get people organized and to test stuff out, work on group comps, share information. To improve the core of our game play to make us a small but effective force.

((Hi Slips! Great fights on Sunday BTW!))

Karast, Melee Engineer of Cantankerous (CNTK)

Gunnar’s Hold

GH big problem last week was a matter of coverage and coordination. There were times of day ((late night / early morning)) where we’d take control of much of the map for 1-2 hours. But the commanders and players at those hours do not upgrade or guard. So when piken / AM came back online they just breeze through the non upgraded / defended keeps and towers, and by the time that GH starts getting numbers together we’re stuck facing fully upgrade keeps / towers defended by organized groups. Pug groups can’t take organized groups that are portal bombing / culling exploiting, the only way to face them is to use other organized groups, and while we do have a number of organized guilds, they are not active everyday and sometimes there are simply not enough to spread around to make advances into borderlands.

To top this off even in prime-time we did not have the numbers last week to do more than EB + 1-2 borderlands.

With KISS and a few others off to go Easy mode, our numbers have fallen again. Now we have about enough in prime time for EB / a Borderland. But the first hour or so is typically spent trying to break into upgraded / defended towers guarded by the likes of Boon / tainted / Hob / Tud / DT among others. All while being out-manned.

It breaks the will of the pug players, and the minute any of our commanders / organized guilds leave the map we get pushed back.

So population is a big issue for GH right now. Every time the server starts getting organized, and we get into some good match ups, we lose a great number of people to Easy-moding.

It’s a real shame. But all we can do is keep rebuilding.

On a side note though if you PS / and AM want a fight from GH there are still those that will fight you, but if you toss the full zerg on us we simply do not have the numbers or means to fight back. We try, and we do kill lots of you! But it’s an inevitable defeat.

So if you want to sit with the map green / red and camp the warcamp while twiddling your thumbs that’s fine, do as you will.

But if you want to get some fights, split up a bit and give us a chance to push out and form up.

You left a server that was in the midst of a solid match-up, with great close fights to go have an easier time on an American server, fighting little to no opposition in the US night time hours.

You have to do what you have to do as a guild. But rather than spending the time and effort required to build a community, you opted to transfer to a server where you’ll have an easier run of things, and an easier time moving up the rankings.

Whether you care or not your actions have damaged the experience of those that have been fighting without in some very fun, and competitive match-ups.

You went for the Easy-moder option, which unfortunately a lot of guild choose to do, because they have the option of free transfers.

((as an additional note the competitive guilds who only compare about rankings transfer up the ladder no down, they are easy moders. The less competitive guilds that are in WvW for the fights and challenges will move down brackets because it is being able to play together and get challenging fights that is important to them. ))

If you play WvW as an organized guild to get fun fights, being stuck on a T1 server with horrible queues that prevent you from getting your guild into WvW it just doesn’t work.

As someone who plays WvW for the fights, I cannot understand why anyone would transfer offer after the fantastic fights we have had in the last 3 match ups.

I’ve ran similar builds. I usually go tools rather than inventions since I found that deploy-able turrets in Spvp is much better survivability for turrets than both metal plating and auto-tool installation.

They work well against players that do not know what they are doing or people who ignore them, but once you fight someone with a bit of AoE or bouncing attacks they are semi useless.

A good example is a smart thief / ranger / ele will just range down your turrets before they come at you. Even with the tanky traits most turrets still get taken out in 1 if not 2 hits.

They do come in handy against builds that have no ranged damage like a GS warrior or guardian, but most of the time I feel they become a wasted utility.

You toss them down and they often die before they get a shot off. Then you have a 40-60s cool down for all but rifle.

I wouldn’t mind a hammer.

But keep in mind it might not be melee if we get it.

They might make it like a ranged lightning rod, shooting lightning bolts or something,

if they did it like the other hammers or 2h’s it would have a lot of overlap with our melee kits + rifle.

Although there would be a certain awesomeness if they made it a 1200 range ligtning weapon!

Our rifle is melee but our hammer is ranged!

Yup it’s my favorite build out of the dozens I’ve tried. It keeps me on the engi even when I try to play my warrior or thief.

I also keep finding ways to tweak and adjust it.

Like running juggernaut + FT and stacking might with swapping + detonating healing + rifle turrets before a fight ((easy 11 might stacks!))

Or running rocket turret to deployable turrets to give me air support on Spvp maps.
((rocket turret can really kitten a D/D thief or GS warrior when it’s place sneaky like))

Activate rocket – overcharged shot – net short – (rocket hits) jump shot – blunderbuss – (swap tool kit) – pry bar – smack – block – (swap rifle) net shot – blunder buss – overcharged shot

That and it keeps perma burning up!

To be honest it is the only build I have ever worked multiple turrets or gadgets into where I didn’t feel I wasn’t screwing myself over by not having traited elixirs.

I can really see it becoming an extremely strong build with a few of the bug fixes we all hoping for.

First off it has not been specifically state that the dwarfs cannot reproduce. You can making an assumption by saying “doom their race by extinction” they meant “unable to reproduce”

Abandoning your homes / cities / way off like to go off and fight a near impossible enemy with no assistance sure looks like doom.

At the time of the ritual no one else was around to face the threat, there was no pact, and no real means of forging one, so going off to fight the destroyers on their own looked like an impossible task.

For all we know dwarfs are humming merry toons while hammering the heck out of destroyers and popping out stone babies as they go, waiting for us to get off our behinds, and head underground to help them.

I forgot about the champion in DE, the one in mount maelstrom I need to check out.

The lore on the dwarves after EOTN is vague, as is their current fate.

If desired they could easily become as big of a part of GW2 as they were in EOTN.

It’s important to keep in mind even if all the dwarfs at the time of the ritual were alive and kicking down there I doubt they’d have enough dwarf power to completely block destroyer access to the surface. We do get destroyers on the surface but they are typically only found in areas / places where other races have tried to expand underground or initially sought them out, such as Skritt, Dredge, and Inquest.

I’d wager there is a good chance the dwarfs are still around keeping them in check, because so far we have not really seen a new dragon champion burst out onto the scene for them yet.

It’s not like we got a destroyer version of the claw to deal with ((unless I somehow missed it in one of the zones))

I really think we might not also know enough about the new dwarf physiology to even know if the destroyers can kill them?

I mean how do you kill a rock? They could be having tons of rock babies! How did the great dwarf make the original draws in the first place?

If the stone dwarfs are the great dwarf does that mean they could make more dwarfs like the original great dwarf did?

We just do not have enough information!

killimandros.5087:

easymoders will be easymoders in any game :-) . After taking a fair share of server queues making guildgroups very hard to do at FS, im satisfied finding a bracket with decent opponents. Tier ratings matter nothing to me. Finding a map where my server has no camps, means more fights.

Yeah! WvW has been a lot more fun since we swapped from FS to GH. No queues, friendly active community, less of a zerg focus.

There are a lot more guilds in the 10-20 range that go out and do their own thing on different maps, and when your matched up with servers like PS ankittenhat have similar sized groups out and about doing the same you can get those nice fights here and there, between keeps, towers, and camps!

What’s surprised me the most is we can even get some good fights in the late night / early morning hours from time to time when the populations shift.

If your new to the engi or to SPvP.

For whatever reason there are a lot of skills / bugs that work differently in SPvP versus PvE.

I do miss the lack of customization on my engineer. Rangers can run different pets, illusion match the armor of their mesmer, but every turret, and kit is exactly the same. We lose out on a big part of the customization meta game, because unlike other profession we are restricted in the skins we can use.

For ranged you really have to push in on them, which can be hard to do. Once you get in melee to them blunderbuss + a double knock back and a jumpshot is enough to kill most anyone.

But you have to pick your fights since you do not have a great range closer.

Net turret helps a bit. But you still want to start the fight on your own terms. Net shot and throw wrench are really easy to dodge at range, making it hard to close in from 1200-900 to where your most effective sub ~600.

If I am solo roaming I pick objectives or areas where people can’t ranged me from ledges or not have as much room to kite so I can box them in better.

I kind of wish magnet had a better range like scorpion wire on thief so it could be an anti kiter tool. Even though its 600 the long cast means to hit someone moving away from you, you need to be ~400 to get it off. 400 is pretty much already melee.

I don’t like running berzerkers at all.

I tried it numerous times. I kind of got away with it when doing a grenade / elixir build thanks to the extra vitality from alchemy.

I normally run it with Valkyrie gear and a sometimes few pieces of carrion mixed in. ((I have found I like to be a bit more hybrid in my dps. It opens up more options)) I do not miss the crit that much to be honest. Since with fury from either goggles, or perhaps runes, or allies, or medkit. You can still get a lot of crit, 40%-50% easy.

I use the mostly centaur rune set for the swiftness on heal and extra power. This lets me drop speedy kits for kit refinement or power wrenches.

You can also use speed runes to get a ton more vitality and the added 7% speed boost that is great for staying alive.

Pack and Citadel runes sets are also good for dps boons like fury / might. Pack gives good swiftness as well.

For me survival is more about positioning and dodging, than stacking toughness.

With perma swiftness ((+ vigor in some builds)) and a 22K+ hp pool you’ve got a lot of survivability, add in the block on tool kit, tons of cripples, net shot, overcharged shot, and a self knock or stun break, you have a lot of tools to save yourself.

I found that in situations where I die with this setup, I die with heavy toughness, or heavy alchemy traiting, as well.

Not much you can do when you get rolled over by large groups.

Although if you have rocket boots doing overcharged – rocket boots – elixir X ((right after you hit rocket boots)) can sometimes get elixir X off before the knock down granting you stability and the ability to charge out of there!

You gotta get the full 900 range though to get elixir X off. Doing it off a keep or cliff works best for this.

I was thinking siege towers that have to be built at a supply camp and rolled to a keep by groups of players.

I like the idea of mobile canons, airships, and pact tanks but I do not think they would work with the current WvW maps.

Same goes for the turtles.

But maybe we can get them in an expansion or a new WvW zone if they are ever added.

Adding in airships that attack / drop players from above, or tanks and airships that can operate as mobile siege platforms could add a lot to the metagame of an individual map.

Especially if releasing an airship completely drained a keep of it’s supply or cost full supply to build.

I mean there would be tactics to defend against the airship, as well as risk versus reward. If your keep is out of supply it is vulnerable. So if your attacked while the airship is away it could cost you your keep.

Airships, ships, and tanks could easily be part of a new map. Picture 3 keeps in a triangle like like on EB but with mountains and a large lake / bay separating them. There would be land paths and islands along the way, but arranged to favor more open battles. Have the tanks and ships be slow moving between the keeps so you can get ship / tank battles often.

They could be unlocked as upgrades at the keeps, with the final being the airships that take you directly to an enemy keep.

To be honest on a warrior I think it’s equally silly for them to be doing snipe type aimed shots with a blunderbuss graphic.

Ever seen a warrior using the default crafted exotic skin. It’s not the pinnacle of sexiness.

Although it could be if Quaggan were playing. They make anything sexy!

To honest though I have most of the rifle skins in my bank and with the exception of the norn, the hunter, and the legendary I can’t really say that most of the graphics are traditional rifles or sniper rifles.

Most of them are muskets or blunderbusses, which were actually fired from the hip.

I do think the rifle graphics are a bit funky but they most work for the weapon in the way we use it.

If we had warrior graphics we’d have those built in .5-1s stops which would completely break every ability on the rifle, in a similar fashion to jump shot.

To get the warrior firing graphics we’d need a total redesign. Which I do not mind as long as we do not lose rifle as it is, and it comes after much need bug fixes, and balancing to existing kits and skills.

There have been a lot of good fights so far this week and I am really hopping the match up doesn’t change for a few weeks! Best fights in game so far.

That and is always nice to go after HoB, Tainted, VII, Duraz Tarag, and the whole bunch of other Norn guilds floating around from WAR.

We in CNTK Cantankerous ((a lot of Crimson players from Norn)) always delight in going after you all!

In the proud tradition of my past posts appreciating hob / tainted ((if only I could be a dwarf!!!!))

((((It’s a well know fact that yer all a bunch of yellow, dragon pleasing, troll hugging, water drinking, skelk loving, skritt fondling, quaggan beating, sober, ale stealing, dredge slapping, bear watering, keg banditing, krait eating, ettin kissing, dank, smelly, unkempt, never do wells! Who are to afraid of taking a bath let alone a keep, judging by the smell!

You had better get yer running boots on cause we’re coming for you!

For beer and spanners!

./lone engi charge ))))

As always it’s a pleasure!

Sincerely, Karast!

((if you see a human engineer beating people with spanners with the dredge helm on! that’s me!!!))

I like your suggestions.

They would make for fun and inventive master traits.

Althought scripting wise I can see the second one causing trouble. But something similar in fashion could be done. Such as turrets having a sanctuary type bubble for the first ~10 seconds after they are spawned.

The spider turrets would make turrets pretty much on par with mesmer and necro pets.

But just as with other pets it will open us up to the annoying way in which they will run off to attack a random PvE mob or player.

It would also allow through a combination of traits the ability to deploy turrets somewhat like a mesmer.

I’d rather see wheels / tracks than spider legs though. Mini tanks!

And for underwater! mechanical quaggan with rocket launcher!

beep boop ooOOOooo maggots!

I agree engineers need changes, certain builds need buffs, and certain builds and abilities on other professions need buffs or nerfs as well. But I do not think that every build on every professions has to be numerically balanced.

I do not see a real reason why engineer dps has to be equal to that of warriors or thieves when we can already provide utilities or skills in the way they cannot.

Already with a 10 point trait and elixir gun we can exceed the amount of condition removal either of these professions can easily supply. Even with fully traited shout warriors using rune sets, the condition removal from kit refinement + EG is a close match.

As long as we have the flexibility in our roles, and our roles are meaningful in their contributions I think we are fine.

That does not preclude balancing on our or other professions dps, but every profession does not need to be exactly mirrored but with differently themed / arranged skills / animations.

That would suck.

as for runes I think centaur runes are a bit better than orges.

The swiftness on heal is AoE and it can easily take the place of speedy kits to free up room for kit refinement, or speedy gadget if your going to be using 2 gadgets in a build.

its pretty much the same build I use, with the 10 points in alchemy swapped to tools. I use it with tool kit in place of the utility goggles for a bit more burst dps and utility options.

It’s nice in spvp and WvW. Dps is a bit lower than grenade in a sustained fight but for short bursty encounters I find it to be competitive.

For pve it’s ok, but for a lot of dungeons you do not want to be melee, and with this build a lot of dps comes from being melee. Grenade / FT / Pistol builds tend to do much better since most pve fights are sustained fights. But you can midigate this by using grenade kit in place of tool kit, or swapping in rocket turret for rocket boots and using smart positioning to keep it safe.

You’d be surprised the amount of dps rocket turret provides thanks to the constant burning from it + your crits.

Flamethrower is extremely good for the short cool down AoE knock back imo. The 8 sec fire field is also extremely handy.

But I’ve come to see flamethrower more as a support type kit than a dps one since I tend to use it for support.

But that’s just me.

I don’t dislike the idea but OH pistol works much as torch would.

I’d much rather see another MH before we get an OH. I suppose torch could be a MH weapon on engi. That would make it unique.

Rocket kit does fantastic dps for it’s CD. the stun break also has an extremely quick CD at only 30’s.

The knock back is kinda buggy and hard to use since you need a clear line behind you for it to be effective.

I always pair it with overcharged shot and time to break the overcharged shot stun to get super distance in open areas like WvW.

I think it would work better without the self knock down or if the angle was higher and travel speed faster.

There is a build I run that uses Rifle – healing turret – bomb kit – rocket turret – flame turret – supply crate.

I do not buff much might myself, although I can get 12-15 stacks with BoB + detonate. I typically get a lot of might from my groupmates.

Specing fully into firearms, with condition damage food, and a few pieces of carrion gear ((I typically swap my jewelry)) is enough to give nice condi damage without giving up a lot of power.

With might burning and confusion hit really hard, and with both turrets it’s easy to keep burning up full time.

That depends on where and how your fighting.

If your bursting enemies down in 8-10 seconds, there is not a big difference between rifle and grenade.

This tends to be the case for me in WvW. I run with an organized group of 10-15. We pack a lot of burst dps. We focus on burst hit and run tactics. So the average fight is typically not longer than 30-40s before we pull out.

For this kind of fighting tool belt rifle / tool kit or bomb kit is a good rival to grenade. When your pulling back and getting the heck out of dodge, grenade kit is not as good as bomb kit or tool kit. It’s harder to dps with it while your moving the opposite direction.

But as a question do you utilize rifle turret with your rifle burst setup? The added dps from the tool belt + quick detonate in melee is very important.

The detonate with static discharge becomes a second blunderbuss pretty much. If you pair it with something like the mine gadget or rocket boots. You can build yourself into having 4-5 hard hitting AoE melee abilities all on sub ~20s cool downs.

With grenade you might go, chill grenade – grenade barrage – 2 skill – 1 skill spam

With rifle / tool kit it becomes, throw wrench – rifle turret tool belt – blunder buss – rocket boots – turret deploy + detonate – rifle turret tool belt

Jumpshot is used to help finish downed players. It’s actually fair good for that.

Things to keep in mind. You can deploy rifle turret while doing the rocket boot kick animation. Letting you hit with the kick and detonate at almost the same time. 1.5-2k + 1.5-2k with 2 lightning bolts each in the ~2k range and 5 seconds of burning. With good crits thats 7-8k with an additional 2k-2.5k depending on your + condi over 5 seconds.

~ 10k from 3 key presses is a fair comparison to grenade kit. It’s just they have 20s CD’s versus no CD’s

It does take practice to get the timing right. You gotta watch the range on the kick like a hawk. To far and it wont hit, to close and you’ll go past. But it’s maximum range is about the sweet spot for blunderbuss which helps.

If you are looking for more condition removal outside of elixirs. There is a crafted food that gives a 100% chance of removing a condition on heal. If you pair this with med kit it works really well. Since you can pair it up with the med kit condi removal skill.

But as far as the combo field goes it does not work that way. Throw wrench and the shield throw will however give you the condition removal if you use them over the field.

You might look at the forge rune set from SE. I use to rune earth but have swapped to it in my condi bunker build.

I think for engineers to shine in WvW you need a bit more group support and coordination.

For example bomb builds work great for their group fields, and dps if your running with a coordinate group / groups. If you have mesmers / guardians pulling enemies onto you, you can do great dps, while providing cripples and blinds.

But you need to have support, a few others pushing in with you to make it work.

There are also rifle builds that utilize the tools trait line and static discharge for a bit of sub ~900 ranged dps.

But I noticed with flamethrower, bomb kit, or grenade kit you typically need a more tanky bunkerish setup with good vit / toughness, and you need to be aggressive. Your front line infantry shoulder to shoulder with the warriors / guardians. Sometimes you can play a bit further back and be more mid-range with FT / grenade kit.

But close melee is where I think we shine.

If you do not like being melee, elixir gun / pistol specs offer a bit more of a mid ranged option as support or condition damage. But even with grenade kit I do not see engineers as a true long ranged dps’er.

For that style of play ele / ranger feel a lot more fluid and effective. They have more dps’ing options in the 1000-1500 range.

If I remember later I will make a 12k jumpshot video and link it.

It’s not hard to do. If you spec 30 explosives 30 tools, have full stacks of might / bloodlust. The power + crit damage food and vulnerability up on a soft target using full berzerker gear.

Even without orb buffs it’s still easily doable. I did a 9k jumpshot last night during Hotw explorable.

Grenade barrage does very comparable damage.

Rifle does good damage that is slightly behind grenade. It feels less since the 1/2 skills of grenade hit harder than hipshot. But rifle is more bursty in nature with the 3/5. If you pair it with another kit. Tool kit or bomb kit. You can easily build rotations utilizing the kit moves to get good sustained dps.

Your just not spamming 1/2 as much. Rather than ~3k a second you do ~8k every 3 seconds.

But talking about 12k jumpshot making rifle really good on the dps is a bit of a red herring.

Sure you can hit hard with jump shot, just as you can hit hard with barrage. But the bulk of your dps is not from jump shot or barrage because both abilities have decently long cool downs, and a high miss rate in most situations.

If your playing rifle and counting on dps from just jumpshot / blunderbuss your not going to have an easy time of it. It is not a 2-3 button build, like grenade can be. If you want to do high dps with rifle, I’ve found you need to work a lot more into your builds. Utilize abilities like rifle turret for it’s fast tool belt skill, and the solid detonate damage, swap into kits like bomb / tool to take advantage of their auto attacks or bursty abilities like pry bar / confusion bomb, and learn to build and time rotations.

Engineers need some changes, many bug fixes, and the like. But there are a lot more options than most have really tried or experimented with.

I use to hate rocket boots, rifle turret, and elixir X. But now they important parts of a few of my favorite builds.

I don’t think we will see a major reword of Engineer, nor that the profession really needs one.

I could see a rework of a few of the kits, definitely of some of the traits and trait lines, and the turret system.

But overall we are in a really good place at the moment.

A lot of people decry a lot of our traits and abilities. But if you actually start playing around with them you find a lot of situational but functional / enjoyable builds.

You’ve just got to get past the numbers fetish that is grenade kit.

My build is 10 30 0 0 30. I spec my gear for a mix of Valkyrie and carrion gear for a hybrid power / condition setup.

I use rifle – healing turret – tool kit – rifle turret – rocket boots – elixir x

Depending on the fight I swap in rocket turret and flame turret, or flamethrower, or bomb kit as needed.

I do solid dps with rifle 3/5 I still crit in the 5k and 7k range. My burning does 560 a tick, with bleeding around 70. I’ve got solid survivability thanks to perma swiftness, tool kit block, tons of CC, and the joy that is chaining rocket boots with overcharged shot.

I do extremely well, and I use 3 utilities and an elite that are typically described as weak, broken, or totally useless. For a time I actually thought the same way about them.

There are bugs that need to be fixed. We’ve got a huge thread of them. There are traits that could use buffing, just like with all other professions. But before you call for a total rework I can’t help but feel you should give the less cookie cutter builds a go and actually spend time working on rotations, timing, and movement.

Grenade kit spoils people, with the push of a key and a bit of ground targeting you get big numbers in return. Other builds can give big numbers, but your not going to be spamming 2-3 keys, your going to be using everything you have, and there is a lot more movement and timing required to make them work.

Well even then I wouldn’t say ele’s have a significant advantage over engineers when it comes to access to combo fields.

Most kits give a combo field, some give 2.

And no matter what your weapon gives 1 if not more combo finishers as a default option.

P/S in fact give 4. 3 projectile 1 blast.

Most kits will also give a finisher except FT / Grenade.

Unless if your using a build without kits, and turrets, even with elixirs. It’s hard to have a build without some combo fields you can take advantage of.

I think it’s less of a matter of having them, but more of a matter that many do not think or actively use the options they have.

For example if your in a grenade build and you use the poison field, you may not look to use jump shot on that field. Since you might be playing from range, or kiting.

I see a lot of bomb engi’s completely ignore their fire and smoke fields, even though they can use them to great effect to get some extra might stacks or invisibility, if they time Big ’ol bomb right.

I use P/S + bomb as my bunker build with elixirs. I like to build up additional might stacks or a few seconds of stealth in SPvP.

But ele’s are no different in this regard.

I really think a lot of our combo fields are underused. In the hands of a condition damage engineer with a bit of burning duration the 8s fire field from FT is extremely good for AoE burning.

In PvE, and in WvW you can easily use it to stack AoE burning with the pistol offhand / tool belt. Even on it’s only it’s easy to 7-8k damage from it on boss fights / keep doors.

That’s damage easily on par with with grenade barrage, or jump shot.

Certain engi combo fields are really good because they are long duration. 8s on FT fire combo, you can chain light combos for ~12s on EG. Even smoke bomb as a nice duration + fast cool down.

A lone engi won’t get as much out of it. But if you put 2-3 hammer warriors next to an engi smoke field you can build 15s+ of stealth, which is enough to be somewhat sneaky. Or at least jump off a tower wall and get to a balista to gank it.

I would say engineers are not bad, and that certain builds work in certain places. I also agree that we do have a fairly limited selection of builds built around a handful of traits / kits / elixirs.

But anyone who says engineers are not buggy, had best go take a look at our bug thread, because we’ve got so many bugs on traits, and skills its a bit silly at times.

We can use a bit of love. Namely bug fixes. Then once we get idea of how everything works when we can actually use all of our traits and skills, then we can think about tweaks, but they are really just tweaks in 99% of cases. A percent here, a cool down there, a change to the tool tip so it accurately reflects what the skill does.

While some full redesigns on stuff would be nice, and I have my pet things I want. They are not needed really, and will probably appear as future skill expansions hopefully.

I agree with Coglin.

But I also run a more tanky Firearms – Tools build with turrets in dungeons sometimes.

I use a mix of the WvW / PvE gear that has power / toughness / vit and the valkryie gear.

It lets me have decent toughness and vit while not cutting my + power

Traits are 20 firearms 20 inventions 30 tools.

I run it with runes of the citadel ((awesome fury up time for crit)) rifle – medkit- tool kit – rocket turret – rifle turret – supply crate.

The traits are

Rifle cool downs / rifle damage
protection on hit / 5% toughness to power ((or turret regen))
static discharge / power tools or kit refinement / adrenal implant or speedy kits

You’ll have 24k + hp with around 1600 toughness depending how you build it. Your damage will still be rather solid with about 2k power thanks to runes + traits, with of crit damage and maybe ~35% crit from perma fury.

So you still crit well with rifle’s blunderbuss + jumpshot, and tool kit skills hit well as well. With both turrets but and firing it’s damage is actually pretty solid if you get good at placing them.

The nice thing about the build though is you can easily swap in elixir gun or net turret depending on the pve boss for kiting or condition removal.

But keep in mind that this is not a dps’ing build. The damage is ok for someone intending to be tanky, but it does not compare with a dps bomb or grenade build on number output.

There are builds that do that though. P/S with bomb kit + elixirs. P/S with FT + turrets. Rifle with Tool kit + turrets (flame turret is key) or Elixir gun / bomb kit builds.

It’s just in the current rifle / grenade elixir builds, you do not have as many combo fields to work with, or ways to activate them on your own.

Engineers have the following combo fields, and combo finishers

Fire:
Bomb kit #2
FT # 4

Smoke:
Trait
Flame Turret
Bomb Kit #4
Elixir U tool belt

Water
Healing turret
Healing turret tool belt
mortar #3

Ice:
Mortar #4

Light:
Trait
Elixir Gun
Elixir R
Elixir U tool belt

Confusion:
Elixir U tool belt

Poison:
Grenade #5

Blast:
Bomb TB
All turret detonate
supply crate
thumper activate
thumper TB
rocket activate
rocket boots
Shield #4
Mine gadget

Projectile:
Tool kit TB
rifle turret
rifle turret TB
pistol #1
pistol #2
Rifle #1
PBR TB
Elixir Gun #1

Leap:
Rifle #5

((I might be missing 1-2, I am pretty sure I am missing a projectile))

It’s not that we don’t have a lot of combo fields and finishers it’s more that they are a bit funky to use.

Think thumper turret and it’s 3 blast finishers. Theoretically this should be awesome for stacking might with something like bomb kit / FT or even stealth. But the CD on the abilities are so absurdly long it’s not practical to use it like that.

A lot of the go to builds also miss out on these combo skills since a bulk are situated on turrets, and on kits. Turrets are somewhat underused, and for most of the current builds it rare to have more than 1 kit in the utility slots. The 2 most used kits seem to be grenade / FT which both do not have ways to really capitalize on their combo fields unless if you run shield. The leap finishers from rifle is somewhat meh imo as far as what it does with those fields.

So the issue is not having the abilities, it’s utilizing them in a functional build.

I always viewed out elixirs like shouts, and gadgets like signets.

The gadgets just need a bit of love though, since they are somewhat disadvantages compared with kits.

You can get the same utility ability + 4 more from a kit over a gadget. Kits get better trait support as well.

Clearly it was not the Charr but Sylvari that ate the horses! We know from the books that they are meat eaters!

It was probably a matter of survival, eat the horses, before the horses ate them!

Either that or a mad asura scientist, while trying to make an asura horse hybrid to combat centuars, accidentally killed them all!

It could totally happen!

What do you think happened to Gargoyles?

Keep in mind that although we have multiple melee options some of them work in funky ways.

Bomb kit = Great for point defense / kiting. Horrible for chasing kiters. ((ever try to chase someone and dps them with bomb kit?))

Grenade = Ok for kiters, good for point defense, not great for kiting ((ever try to run away from some and hit them with grenades? if you got room to strafe it’s not bad, but bomb kit is a lot better))

Tool kit = It should be a great anti kiter tool but magnet doesn’t work well enough for this. It’s good for kiting, okay for point defense.

Flamethrower = Not really that good for kiting or fighting kiters, great for point defense ((you get a lot of miss issues if you try to kite someone, you strafe and hit with flame jet.))

Rifle = Good all around.

I’m on gunnars hold and I have seen 2 different kinds of bots since the current match up started.

There are bots that farm near the skritt / centaur camps on the borderland maps. These kill mainly pve mobs. I’’ll bet if I hunt around a bit on EB I could find them there as well.

I report any I see for Gunnars hold, but there was a large group from AM. I did spot 4-5 from AG last night as well at the centaurs on their home borderland.

The second kind of botting, the kind that enrages and infuriates me is bots that attack towers / keeps on the borderlands.

Over the weekend, and late last night / early this morning I saw a group of about 15-20 bots from AM attacking the north western tower ((near the skritt, always forget it’s name)) They were on GH borderland. They were very easy to wipe. Since all they did was auto shoot the door pretty much. I do think someone might have been guiding / controlling them, because every once in a while they would all seem to shift targets. They did not respawn after we killed them though.

I am worried that rather than being gold farmers / power levelers, this might be someone using a bot army, or multi boxing to an extreme extent to night cap.

As far as guild tags go I’ve seen a mix of tags, but mostly un-guilded players. But I’ll keep an eye out in the future for guild tags to post.

I’ll see if they show up tomorrow or later today.

If there are any AM players online that would not mind reporting them as well please let me know and I can tell you where they are if I see them.

I’ll do the same for any GH’s bots.

The only thing we can do is agree not to tolerate hackers, and bots. If we work together to monitor and report them, I think we can have a much more enjoyable and fair match up.

We had some great fights on the weekend and it’s a shame that those get overshadowed by the actions of bots, and a few hackers.

I am fairly happy with engineer, but there are a few things I would like to see.

The big items are things we already have but cannot use in an effective way.

Such as group stealth, group stability, and projectile reflect walls. These are really strong abilities, that are at times must have group utility skills in WvW, PvE, and SPvP. While we do have access to these skills, they are part of RNG mechanics, so we can’t guarantee we will get the skill we need, when we need it. We cannot be counted on to provide the needed skill at the needed time, so it is better to bring someone who can and will rather than risking death / loss on an RNG mechanic.

But I would too like to see a more thematically rifle- like rifle ((without losing the current rifle))

A ST melee kit, could easily be condition based using bleeds / burns. Chainsaw comes to mind as an option.

A DPS focused elite skill. All our elites seem to focus on control. I would like something that did a bit of dps. The above suggest machine gun kit, or a rocket launcher kit, or something similar could work.

Or something different.

yeah,

It seems to cancel itself fairly often. I’m not sure why but I noticed it rarely keeps going if I move or do a dodge roll at the moment.

MrSilver! -1

Tool kit is both sexy and awesomesauce. Hitting people with wrenches is what engineers are about. They are the defining feature of any true engineer class, and it is forever to the professions shame that they are lackluster in damage and utility compared with like options on the engineer and other professions as a whole.

The day will come when wrenches take their rightful place as the pinnacle of enginess and the doubters shall lay bruised and broken from the bluntness of it’s wrath!

coglin.1496:

I could see cross bows.

Yeah crossbows!

either that or a wrench bow. Cross bow that shoots wrenches!

The problem is that you cannot effectively guard them because they die to fast. A smart 1-2 players will always succeed in killing a dolyak even if you have a group guarding it.

They just have paper HP.

My hope is for a third tier of supply camp upgrades that increase dolyak speed / toughness.

The portal was clearly not designed with the intent to allow dozens of players to stack on top of single character’s model to completely break and circumvent player based AoE.

There is no organized group out there that can really justify portal usage in this particular parameter without admitting that it is completely broken.

Portal is an extremely strong ability limited solely to mesmers, making them a mandatory part of any organized group, which outshine most other professions in their usefulness in competitive game play.