My opinion: Underpowered Engineer - It is realy bad at pvp and pve
in Engineer
Posted by: Karast.1927
Whats important to understand is that Spvp is not team pvp. It’s holding points solo. So if your going to Spvp you’ve got to be able to hold a point for the team solo. Which means being able to do 1v1 and at times 1v2 and 1v3. It’s more LoL style than WAR or WoW.
So that typically means you want to be as tanky as possible, with as much CC, and condition removal as possible.
It’s pretty obvious that the professions were not balanced with 1v1’ing in mind and for defensive point guarding some just simply do a better job then others.
I don’t like it at all so I tend to stick to WvW.
Another important fact unique to engineer is that in most situations regardless of spec we are not ranged fighters. The bulk of our kits / weapons, our dps options are stuck at / near melee. Rifle, bomb kit, grenade kit, flamethrower, and even pistols are at their most effective in the sub ~500 range.
Being a melee fighter we gotta to have the survivability to get into and survive in melee. For that you need a lot of toughness and vitality.
Engineers also only have one extremely defensive skill for when things turn ugly. That’s elixir S. Warriors get endure pain, rangers get protect me, thief’s get teleport moves + shadow refuge, guardians get sanctuary and a few other moves. We get elixir S. It’s pretty much mandatory in most pvp builds be it wvw or spvp.
Melee has a hard time as it is in dungeons due to the way a lot of the boss mechanics work. Ranged Professions can also put more into dps and cut back on defensive stats thanks to the range benefit, so they generally will do better damage than melee.
But almost regardless of spec a lot of the time if your dieing on Engineer you need to consider putting more tanky gear into your gear setup.
Whether your doing a power or condition build, you should look into getting more toughness or vitality using Knight, Valkyrie, Carrion, Cleric, or Shaman gear to augment your dps kit. For WvW doing a 3/3 split with 20 points in inventions or alchemy and elixir S tends to do the trick.
As long as you’ve got 2k+ power and the explosives traits grenade / bomb and rifle in power builds will still do good damage. But remember the bulk of our spike abilities are AoE not ST.
The same works for pistol, grenade, and bomb in condition specs.
It feels very counter intuitive for a lot of people who roll engineer because there are many who think of the engineer as a ranged profession at heart, and the guildwars engineer is simply not that. It is much closer in form and function to the TF2 Engi.
Sometimes I feel if rifle wasn’t a rifle but hammer like it is on warrior / guardian many people who rolled engi might have rolled a ranger, warrior, or elementalist instead.
Any and all of the specs that work for me on my engi in PvP tend to be tough melee specs.
Push in get some attention, do a little bit of burst, CC, and cheese it. A lot of it is acting as a support dps’er. Running around and applying slows and immobilized for ele / necro / ranger AoE. Using blinds and knock backs to keep people alive.
We have the CC and the effective abilities to be a tank, often more so than professions you’d typically consider to be a tank, such as warrior.
Or at least that’s my impression of it.
Yeah we need fixes and we got weak areas, but, and I may be wrong, the profession just doesn’t seem to be built for what a lot of people want to use it for. I had the same frustration when I started out. Once I gave up on the engineer as a ranged kiter, or ranged dps, and focused on being a tanky melee fighter I found myself to be a lot more effective, and engineer to be enjoyable.
Why would I even bother switching to my pistol with grenade kit equipped?
in Engineer
Posted by: Karast.1927
You do better damage with the tool belt skill if you have your main weapon equipped.
Also if your using a power build you might want to swap to rifle for a burst rotation / CC.
You don’t have to use grenade though. It’s a really a 1 mashing play style right now, but there are other builds that are more diverse
For me its the already suggested mortar changes.
Fixes for broken traits. ((Elite Supplies, Scope, Rifled Barrels, Deploy-able Turrets))
Buff kitten traits. (Armor Mods, Shrapnel, Packaged Stimulants, Acidic Coating, Protective Shield)
To many traits are overshadowed or rendered obsolete but other traits such as Protective Shield vs Protection Injection. Protective Shield isn’t bad, it’s pretty much on par with other 10 point traits you see on the other professions. But Protection Injection is fantastic since it is pretty much perma protection up time in group pvp / wvw / pve due to the large amounts of CC flying around.
Turret stat sharing and fixed targeting
Rocket Turret Rockets to count as explosives
Rifle Turret Shots to pierce like hipshot
Rocket Launcher Kit
Steam Orge summon-able elite!
Jumpshot is one of those abilities that you have to setup to be able to use effectively, and I’ve found it’s better to plan as a melee ability rather than a gap closer.
The animation could be speed up a bit, the bug where you land past your target and then glitch teleport back is really annoying and has screwed up rotations a number of times, but if that was fixed I think it would be fine.
It’s not as if any of the other targeted leaps are functioning any better in my experience.
There are sweet spots where AoE cant / will barely hit, and you easily counter that AoE by having players on your team AoE the spots that are used to AoE sweet spots.
But some of the ground target AoE’s need a radius nerf.
But most of the time if a siege weapon dies it was just placed badly. Remember balistas and cata’s can shoot twice the distance on any AoE so you can put the higher up or farther way and still have them be effective.
In fact most keeps and towers have nearby hills or buildings you can send sneaky commando teams to. Have 6-8 organized players sneak behind build 2 balistas and hammer the enemy zerg then kite away as they zerg around to push back.
It’ll get you more than a few kills and let defenders inside push out to kill rams.
A gorilla that throws barrels at any portal spawned …
Have to agree with medkit being the best.
For pvp and pve – speed, 3 mini-heals, cond remover plus a fast f1 ability.
If your cheesy and know a fight is coming you can put ~8 medpac’s, with 2 condi removal potions down before they start to despawn.
I’m thinking it is because the ability is based off the turrets stats and nothing else. It comes from the turret and not you.
Just another reason to push for turret stat sharing!
Buff the turrets! Rockets of Doom!
((I dream of being able to select rocket turrets target! with suck a high arch you could place it safely on a keep / tower wall out of aoe spam and have it pound AoE into a ram! Just think of it!))
Through testing it seems it is ~900. I noticed that if I fire a rocket at a max range target (1200) the lightning bolt wont reach. It doesn’t really come into effect that often since we only get 3 1200 range tool belt abilities, the rest are 900 or below, and if you play tools as a burst melee type spec, then you may not use the increased rifle range trait so you get use to the 900-1000 default range on rifle.
But the bounces seem to have an extended range from the initial bolt. So you can hit someone at 900 with the first hit and it will bounce further. I haven’t figured out a good way to test this though.
You get 2 bounces after the initial hit. So 3 hits total. It doesn’t bounce 3 times. So it hits your #1 target then bounces to #2 and then #3.
The Wiki is a bit off on some stuff.
The static discharge is a 900 range and bounces twice after the initial hit. It goes off your ability target but it’s buggy with elixir’s and some other gtaoe skills.
I play around a lot with swapping from tools and explosives in the build and I don’t really like dropping below 20 in tools.
But that’s mainly since I like having both speedy kits + static discharge, or leg mods + static discharge.
When in berzerker gear I find having swiftness + the passive speed boost with medkit out to be a huge lifesaver.
It’s really my only hope of escaping a zerg in WvW. Either it or thr elixir U tool belt! Come on stealth / wall!
it’s a bit frustrating but after you’ve seen it done a few times you’ll know the route the mesmers have to take to do the teleport line to a keep so they are fairly easy to spot. stealth doesn’t last long enough unless they have tons of people tossing it up to remain fully invisible.
maybe if it gets to the point people bring 10-15 mesmer in a group of 25-30 that it might need to be changed.
I’m more worried about the stops where you can bug out the portals on the other sides of walls to skip keep doors entirely. That’s a bigger issue.
I would suggest trying a rifle / tool belt burst build or a p/p or p/s elixir build before rerolling.
They are my two favorite builds and while they use kits they are not heavy on kit swapping.
For the rifle build I like to go 10 30 0 0 30 or 10 30 0 10 20
I use a mix of power percision crit berzerker gear, and power percision condition damage rampager gear.
I use it with medkit / healing turret – tool kit – portable battering ram – elixir s / utility goggles / rocket boots / rifle turret / flamethrower
(you can tweak the traits and gear to do a lot of different things like using juggernaut and flamethrower to build might, but I typically stick with a CC break or rifle turret)
The key traits are the burn on crit from explosives, the decrease rifle cool downs + 10% rifle damage, and static discharge from tools.
The pistol elixir build is either 20 , 30, 0, 20, 0 or 10, 30, 0, 30, 0 or 10, 20, 0 30, 10
The core of the build is to use rampager gear with the burn on crit, cleansing elixirs, improved rifle / pistol range, and reduced rifle / pistol cool downs.
I take elixir H, elixir B, elixir U, and flamerthrower, although sometimes I’ll use elixir S in place of B or U.
The optional specs give you static discharge or more condition duration and I like the static discharge spec the most. I’ll trade out elixir B and get tool kit or pbr for some burst.
But you pretty much just use the weapon abilities + utility abilities in these spec’s. With practice they work really well and I at least find them to be fun.
You might give them a go and see how you like them.
Well in sPvP against a good team you might get 1-2 kills before they focus you to death, without any CC breaks or condition removal to save yourself.
That and spvp is more about objective control than killing power. You’ll have trouble killing any tank spec’d point guard with the burst setup. So your limited to running with the pack and any kind of a focus will kill you.
The thing with the video is he picked all his fights, and was always the initiator. It’s completely different when he gets someone joining in after he burns his cool down abilities or if he gets caught off guard. But that’s typically how all 1v1’s end up.
Have you tried any of the tool belt burst builds, elixir pistol builds, or bomberman / grenade builds (where you stay in grenade or bomb kit full time) ?
Um its NOT night capping. Its a population issue. That’s why ANet dont see it as a problem; it doesnt exist. Wonder when ppl will realize, while its night time in the USA, its Daytime in other places? Off peak on USA is Peek for others. Ergo.. No issue.
HOWEVER, the population imbalance is another issue. Hence, the outmanned buff and as soon as people realize that, maybe solutions can be discussed properly. So what we really SHOULD be discussing is what will help those servers who are outmanned?
As per the suggestion in the post.
Night capping = population issue.
Change out manned buff to help with population issue.
Well after 48+ hours of holding stonemist fully upgraded with no sleep for 2 days leading desolaton as much as I could, we wiped the whole map this morning in EB and reset all of GH and AR upgrades on everything.
But we finally lost stonemist due to these exploits. We took it back but all the gold spent and all the hard work after 2 days of holding it from being attacked every 5 mins only to lose it because the enemy is exploiting with trebs and using them to hit stonemist 24/7 when we can’t do anything to hit those trebs.
Also they have players wasting supply on purpose and without supply holding stonemists is very much harder. These server transfer exploits need to stop in WvW.
Some of the trebs there using are inside the guild claiming roomkitten We sent squads of players to kill the trebs with AOE but there too far deep into there main keeps or towers that you can not counter those trebs. Even with siege of our own to counter t we can’t hit them.
So holding a fully upgraded position in EB map in WvW is impossible because of treb exploits where they build 4 trebs in perfect safety in guild claim rooms and too far to hit, and just spend an hour hamering on a wall and not even attacking. Over and over.
Oh well, has been fun battles anyway, all of there stuff is weak now because we reset there upgrades and now GH and AR arekitten because there have now allied against desolation lol.
Use the hill behind orges. You can arch treb shots inside to hit the trebs at overlook. You gotta get the placement right but it works.
Unless they build them on the very top of the Poi.
I do really well on my engi but I’m not a constant kit swapper, and I don’t think you have to, to be effective as an engineer.
But each spec that I use is tailored for a very specific environment.
Support spec for dungeons (elixir gun with tool belt)
Dps spec for dungeons (grenade with turrets)
Solo PvE spec (turrets with rifle)
Solo WvW spec (tanky rifle)
Dps WvW team roaming spec (tool belt / rifle)
Dps WvW keep / tower spec (grenade + pistol / shield)
Support WvW team roaming spec (elixir gun + bomb kit)
Support WvW keep / tower spec (grenade + elixir gun)
Spvp Tank Spec (bomberman)
Spvp Dps Spec (grenade / tool belt)
Spvp Support Spec (elixir / elixir gun)
I’ve got different specs for everything and depending on my needs I swap out traits and gear along with my utilities, or I respec my traits.
I’ve yet to feel that I have found any spec that I like well enough or feel is effective enough to try to use it everywhere and for everything, and none of my specs force to to swap between 2-3 kits in a rotation.
The only one that comes close is my tool belt burst build. I swap into tool kit for the block + box of nails if I am running into a keep, or the medkit if I need extra healing / condition removal. But The bulk of my abilities are my 1-5, F1-4, and then 2 utilities.
Tool kit and Medkit are more for the “OH FUDGE” moments.
I understand your frustration at the extremely long prime time queues, and the large numbers of bots / pve farmers we have on Far Shiverpeaks.
It is extremely frustrating when your trying to defend a tower or keep under manned with Friends and guildies in the queue while 10-15 people are afk in the spawn camp, and another 5-6 blatantly and publicly joining WvW to farm crafting mats. Nothing like see 5-6 people farming wasps and skale for trophies to sell on the AH.
But the problem isn’t the free transfers imo.
You’ll find PvE’rs in WvW on almost any server. Heck just this morning I found a group + from VS grinding skale / wasps on their home map rather than fighting.
I am also fairly certain that the queue problems are more a result of bugs than just population numbers.
Some people can be queued for hours and never get in, others get in instantly. It’s random to the extent of being broken.
Well this is a fix that would address night-capping but it works primarily for out manned servers.
The extra supply capacity suggestion is a good one but I don’t think it would get to the core of the issue.
The big problem as I see it, is to have a chance at defending a keep or tower against a much larger force, you need to have the objective upgraded for the larger supply capacity / door HP.
If your out manned the chances of you being able to take and hold a supply camp while a keep or tower is being sieged is very low, so your not going to be able to get supply into that keep for repairs or siege weapons even if you wipe the enemy.
With upgrades in and a pool of 500-700 supply rather than 100-200 you can take your force out after wiping an enemy to reclaim a camp and run 2-3 dolyaks in to get supply up.
But normal upgrades simply take to long. A large night capping team can recolor all the other maps and come back before you get more than 2-3 upgrades in. I see it happen almost nightly.
The proposed change creates a system that encourages the underdog to put it out there and try to take and defend anything they can letting them take better advantage of the increase karma, coin, and experience buffs.
it also gives the larger side a better fight of it. I’ve been on both sides of the night capping recently and there is nothing I dislike more in WvW that hammering at the door of an empty keep or tower. I go to open world pvp to fight other players, not to pve objectives.
The mortar is extremely useful but only in certain specific settings.
The water field on the 3 ability does a tremendous amount of healing and has a fairly long duration. Making it one of the most effective forms of AoE healing in the game.
With + healing gear and a regen buff up it’s easy to get 1000 a tick healing on allies in the target area.
The duration on the cripple field and chill field are also very long duration. Putting both of these down in a choke point and then using the AoE knock back can be devastating in effect.
The damage from the 5 skill is also fairly decent decent 5-6k AoE.
The problems for the mortar are the fact that it has a dead range, the 1 ability is weaker than any other kit / weapon, it has a shorter ranger but higher arch than grenade kit, and it forces you to be stationary.
But in keep defense / assault situations, in certain dungeons / boss fights, and with support in WvW it can be fantastic.
I use it for the slows + healing in WvW.
I have found no use for elixir X however. I don’t like the skills it gives and haven’t really found a way to use them effectively.
The randomness gets in my way.
If base mortar range and damage was increased. So the #1 ability did closer to 2k and the range was 1600-1800 I think it would be much more effective.
I would like the supply crate to get the flame turret swapped for rocket as well. The supply crate is a lot more effective underwater as opposed to on land.
That’s a pure burst build. He is using grenade kit, rifle turret, and tool kit.
With good crits grenade barrage will do 6-7k + a 1.5 lightning bolt (can hit you twice if it bounces) rifle turret will do 1k + another 1.5 lightning bolt, and throw wrench will do 2x 2.5-3k hits with the 1.5 lightning bolt.
All in all from those 3 you can do 15.5k – 20k with your tool belts. If everything hits and crits. Also since you get a lot of multi hits from grenade it trigger sigil of rage for quickness.
If you add in jumpshot and blunderbuss they can add another 4+6k for an extra 10k.
The strength of this build is it’s weakness though. It’s all burst and heavily CD dependent. If they don’t kill you with that burst or if they are fighting multiple people they get into a tricky situation.
Once those abilities are on CD hipshot doesn’t do much. So using a projectile reflect, immunity move, or dodging like a pro / CC’ing will shut down the build.
The other issue this build has is you have no CC break or condition removal.
If you see him coming you can toss up 4-5 stacks of confusion. Static discharge counts as an ability so burst engi’s explode to confusion.
Basically, CC – Stack Confusion – dead engi.
I run the same build with PBR in for grenade and while I can smoke someone in a 1v1 if I surprise them it is an easily counter-able build.
bump to keep post visible
There are a lot of builds which frankly suck on the engineer when played solo or without the right class mix.
For example I tried out a build this weekend using a 10,30, 0, 0, 30 build. Setup for rifles, with medkit, pbr, tool kit, rifle turret, and mortar.
My gear was a 3 way split between berzerkers, rampagers, and clerics, with a full set of centaur runes.
I didn’t intend to use this spec, it’s fairly squishy stat wise, it has no CC break, or condition removal, but it ended up being monstrously effective.
When you combine those 3 tool belt abilities together they give an insane amount of ranged burst damage, added with the fact they are 100% chance projectile finishers. With a mesmer using the confusion combo fields you can toss up 5-6 stacks of confusion, with 3-4 being AoE with each field. This added to the ability damage, static discharge, blunderbuss, and jumpshot meant that anything in front of you gets liquified.
Add in a support guardian pulling, healing, and removing conditions, 2 healing shout warriors, a high damage ele / ranger / thief and it becomes an extremely deadly setup. Mortar also gives you a lot of support ontop of group swiftness in WvW. The AoE slows, and the healing from the water field even when you only have a few + healing items easily tops 400-450 a tick.
I can’t really run this build alone, but with support it seems monstrous.
It takes organization and dedication to do but its not impossible. First you got to cut off a supply camp and treb the outer. Once to the inner build trebs on the outer and hold your force their. Keep eyes on the supply camp and run supplies in. Even if the spam repair and build counter siege they will run out of supply with only 1 dolyak coming through. You have to go slow and play smart if you do not have massive massive numbers.
Half the time when a siege fails its because siege wasn’t used effectively. Cata / Treb provide cover for rams / balistas / golems. Balistas an carts provide cover to trebs. Pick your terrain, and build your siege and you won’t fear 5x your numbers.
GW2 actually makes people siege rather than simply zerg when realms are evenly matched.
So I am really big on WvW, I love open pvp and I am really enjoying the game right now. But I have come to notice a few issues and I have a suggestion that might help to make WvW even better.
One of the issues that pops up when you have 24/h pvp is that of night capping. Some servers will have either a higher population or more active population at night. This can allow them to cap the maps with ease or little to no resistance.
The only effective counter to this is to forum alliances and recruit guilds to fill the gap and build your own night capping squad but this is difficult and takes time. If your server is being squashed at night, and there is another server that isn’t a lot of individual players and guilds will transfer or opt not to roll on your server.
Now defending while out manned is not a hopeless affair. An organized team, even when fighting another larger organized team can hold out for insane amounts of time from within fully upgraded towers and keeps. These towers and keeps will eventually fall to superior numbers and a lack of supply but the sieges can take hours and this buys time for more players to log on. It’s also far more enjoyable game play for both attackers and defenders. It’s not hitting gates, but countering enemy siege and tactics.
The issues that these undermanned groups have is that when you do eventually lose your upgrade keeps and towers your out of options. Against a larger organize or semi organized force an non-upgraded keep or tower is easy meat. Without supply and upgrades a good team can take out a tower in 3-5 minutes, and no matter your organization if you do not have near equal numbers you can’t hold it.
So under manned crews can take towers and keeps but they can’t hold them long enough to make a difference. Upgrades and supplies take to long to build. By the time you get any supply into that keep or tower the enemy will have retaken it. It also only takes 1-2 players to stop supply, but 4-5 to defend it. This makes it even more challenging for the undermanned side.
But you can’t simply increase upgrade speed or supply rate. This would ruin the balance and shift it more to the opposing side. One of the issues that night capping causes is when more players log in during the mornings and evening and numbers even out you have the situation where a server holds a majority of the map fully upgraded.
TL DR:
My suggestion is this: Have the undermanned buff decrease the supply cost of siege weapons and upgrades, and increase the speed of upgrades for the out numbered servers.
yes med kit with the #5 skill. It’s pretty easy to keep up that way with less kit swapping. Also if you have any points in alchemy the boon duration ups the effect.
If you also combine it with another swiftness trait, swiftness runes, runes of the centaur, or swiftness proc sigils it is easy to get and maintain swiftness with little effort.
It’s somewhat broken to be honest.
When you think about the Great dwarf in relation to dwarfs and the Pale tree with sylvari there are a lot of similarities.
I don’t think they are all dead, else-wise we’d be getting swarmed with destroyers wouldn’t we? Whatever forces they were holding back would be flooding the surface world.
But if the dev’s want them to make a return they will. No matter what happens I am fairly sure we’ll see more of them. Otherwise why would they have put Ogden in as an npc. If dwarfs were gone for good there would be very little need to.
I’ve seen and reported bots on FSP already. Park of it is people using scripts to bot farm / get event contribution from a guild that’s doing an event. It’s like a fail mode power leveling system a few guilds have been trying.
In addition to those during prime time you’ll have anywhere from 5-10 afk bots. Queues are so bad they don’t want to leave or be kicked if they go to get food or something. So there seem to be more and more people using scripts or macos to run around the spawn camps / against the walls inside keeps / forts.
I report them when I see them but it’s really lame regardless.
Nothing like trying to fight 10-15 down people since a good chunk of your realm are afk bots preventing people who’ll actually play from playing. It’s like trying to play a football match with a third of your teaching being cardboard cutouts of Mr. T. Mr. T tries his hardest as a card board cut out but he just can’t contribute to the game. So he stands there propped up looking slight annoyed and sad inside.
I pitty da fool that bots!
In general I agree that the shield is much more beneficial than the offhand pistol. The survivability the block abilities, as well as CC + finishers provide is simply fantastic.
But don’t look down on the offhand pistol. It may need some slight buffs to be on par with shield but it’s still a great weapon depending on what your doing.
The blow torch does massive damage 6-7k AoE in condition specs. So it’s fantastic if your stacking burns.
The AoE cripple / immobilize is a bit broken since the animation seems to have some issue right now, but even it when paired with the AoE chill, or glue bomb from bomb kit, does wonders in pvp, wvw, and pve for kiting. Toss down the chill grenade then use glue shot and you can stop or slow groups at a time while siege cut them apart.
I love doing this at the gate to the fishing village on border land maps. Build a few carts and a balisita, bait the enemy thru the gate and then drop the multiple slows / immobilizes to lock them in the arch way so they can’t escape.
percision power condition gear is rampagers. It can be crafted using the venom sacs dropped by mobs such as spiders, devourers, wasps, hylek, and some types of skale. After carrion they are the easiest exotic set to craft thanks to large numbers of risen hylek, and risien spiders in cursed shore.
My current hybrid setup I run with a mix of precision / power / crit damage (armor + weapon) and precision / power / condition (jewelry) with runes for precision / condition.
I run rifle – healing turret – flamethrower – rocket boots / elixir S – elixir C / Tool kit / elixir B – Hounds of Balthazaar
With a 10 30 0 10 20 trait setup. The key traits are juggernaut + static discharge + protection injection.
You get good burst / power damage from rifle 5-6k crits on soft targets with jumpshot. While still doing 550-600 a tick with burning, and decent bleed damage as well.
Someone mentioned elixer S, I’m not a fan of it. Rocket boots gets me out of stuns and locks all the same and away from my enemy just as well, plus it does a little dmg.
In pvp and wvw elixir S tends to work better than rocket boots as a stun break since a lot of players will CC as you fly back, since you can be hit while flying.
So there will be a lot of situations where you’ll try to use rocket boots to escape a hammer warrior only for him to immobilize you with bolas and them leap / charge you.
That and you’ll sometimes hit a tiny rock or bush and fly 2ft then fall down.
Elixir S also allows you to run through AoE or a zerg to get into a keep or tank a boss for 4 seconds while you wait for dodges to recharge.
You do not have to do elixir spec’s but you will use elixirs in a lot of spec’s is the best way to put it.
Alchemy and elixirs offers good boon stacking, survivability through stats and traits, and lots of condition removal. The makes it extremely optimal for any build.
But you can do non elixir builds. I typically don’t go into alchemy, or if I do I go just 20 points.
But if you do so you have to know that your going to give up something. Either a utility slot for a CC break + condition removal, or have to rely on group support for condition removal.
This typically means taking elixir S and elixir C / R, and if your going to take 2 elixirs way not do any alchemy build to support them is the basic logic to all this.
But you don’t have to, and you can be just as effective without them if you have the support to do so.
I enjoy engineer a lot. I find it to be fun, and it has a few play styles that I like.
But I also know that some of the current effective spec’s can be either dull or skill intensive to the player, and the more niche spec’s I enjoy will drive people mad.
It really depends on the play style that you like.
I tend to use jug with elixir B and 10 points into alchemy for the minor for elixir B at 75% So it’s not hard to get 11-14 stacks of might on my own. I’ve debated using runes to get extra might but I found that in guild groups the might I get from our shout warriors, guardians, ext, keeps me at or near 25.
The preference of using these runes is up to you. They are expensive but they double the uptime of might, making it easy to stay between 20-25 might on your own. With additional help from party members it would be easier to stay at 25 longer.
yeah but I tend to get a lot of crit / burn duration / condition damage from rune sets. Or even protection / group swiftness. So I find the might stacks to be slightly less important in the long run.
I want more condition removal, but focused condition removal. As in burn, poison, bleed, and confusion.
We actually have good condition removal when it comes to chill, immob, and cripple outside of elixir use.
But any change to the current system where elixir C, and a 409 elixir build are mandatory would be welcome.
You can try to use elixir gun, but the light fields work more for group condition removal rather than self, and without 3-4 fields down they just are not effective enough, that a people love to toss wells and AoE on them to negate the effects.
I would like to have a version or elixir C or the 409 trait tied into a kit, like bomb kit, ft, grenade kit, or even onto gadgets.
Conditions are powerful enough I do not feel I have a choice in taking elixir C or not.
I tend to use jug with elixir B and 10 points into alchemy for the minor for elixir B at 75% So it’s not hard to get 11-14 stacks of might on my own. I’ve debated using runes to get extra might but I found that in guild groups the might I get from our shout warriors, guardians, ext, keeps me at or near 25.
It should be ability effect – trait effect. So the normal condition to random boon should happen before the secondary condition removal. But I am not 100% on this, it could use testing.
The build in the link doesn’t show for me..
But with a toughness / healing and later on toughness / healing / condition damage gear setup you can make a very effective support build with elixir / grenade kit.
Personally I would do an alchemy build but since your using 2 kits + healing turrets is means that you will not get as much out of elixirs.
But you could do a lot with something like 30 explosives, 30 inventions, and 10 tools.
The 10 tools is for kit refinement for when you swap into elixir gun.
But if you run healing turret, elixir gun, grenade kit and elixir R with P/S
It would give you a lot of condition removal and light / water combo fields. If you use supply crate you’ll also have a nice amount of blast finishers for clutch healing.
You’d have the shield 4 ability, detonate turret, and supply drop.
You also have good condition damage from pistol / grenade skills and good utility with stacking vulnerability, weakness, cripple, and chill from afar. As well as 2 ranged AoE blinds pistol 3 / grenade 3, a 2 ranged stuns (supply crate / shield 5) 1 maybe 2 AoE KB’s (sheild 4, and healing turret with trait)
The other nice aspect is you also use + power / heal / toughness guild and use this in an up close bomberman build and do healing with bombs thanks to the elixir infused bombs trait.
But I’m not sure if that’s the play style your going for or not.
the nice thing about this build in WvW is grenades are good for getting you loot bags. If you go elixir gun / alchemy you won’t get as many loot bags from players.
Rifle – hybrid build. (10 30 0 0 30) or (10 30 0 10 20) or (10 30 0 20 10)
I go berzerkers on my rifle + armor, with rampager jewelry + runes.
For utilities Healing Turret (or Elixir H if 20 in alchemy) Flamethrower, Elixir S, Free Slot
For the elite I use my racial hounds of balthazaar, or supply drop.
The traits are reduced vuln on crit , improved rifle damage, and juggernaut for firearms.
burn on crit for explosives
If alchemy protection injection at 10 points, and cleansing formula 409 at 20.
For tools static discharge, kit refinement, adrenal implant.
With high crit and power hipshot will do good damage from range and will stack bleed + apply burning. Flamethrower helps with this as well. When mobs get close you can use blunderbuss, swap to FT for the burn from kit refinement, use the flame wall + AoE blind then go back to rifle for jumpshot. After jumpshot you can use elixir S and heal and 4-5 non veterans will be dead.
The nice thing about this setup is burning and bleeding does a lot of damage. 550-600 on tick for the burning, but power moves like blunderbuss and jumpshot crit above 3.5k and 4k respectively.
I like to use bomb kit, or tool kit in the free slot since they give a nice bit of extra survivability and damage. The nails from tool + block are fantastic and the #3 does insane damage, or bomb the #2 and #3 are great and the #1 is still nice AoE. But I can easily put a rocket turret or rifle turret, or elixir in that slot.
Your survivability goes from blinds, and elixir S and timing dodge rolls, but you can easily build into elixirs to get more condition removal and protect on CC.
But its my by far favorite build.
It’s active with kit switching, has flexibility, and doesn’t end up as a (spam 1 key) build.
The thing with those youtube videos is that they show niche spec’s and play styles. They will work in one specific area but when you go someplace else or fight a different enemy team comp your fudged.
Teldo has said so himself.
If you don’t mind being very specialized there are more than a few builds. But if you want something that works well around the shop, aside from power / grenades picking are pretty slim.
This is true for most professions though. Only a few spec’s shine in multiple facets, and those are pretty much considered OP at the moment.
In all seriousness engineers are better at dealing certain kinds of damage, and the kits / weapons tend to be very specialized.
There are certain play styles that don’t work well on engi.
ST melee, and ST ranged are examples.
The bulk of our melee options are AoE so they take a dps loss for being AoE so they will not do as much damage or apply as many or as long of conditions as a ST ability.
The same is true of the ranged options. The bulk of them are AoE, and since they are both AoE and ranged they get reduced damage, and reduced condition durations. (with the exception of grenade kit!)
So a ST melee ability with no conditions is going to do much better on ST damage than one that is AoE.
That’s why even with solid power your not criting above ~3k to often with bomb while others might do so.
It’s the same with pistol #1. It’s ranged with an AoE component so to compensate the condition duration and damage is low, when compared to other 1 abilities.
The niches I think engi are best at for dps are
Melee AoE power “rifle, ft, bomb, grenade, ~tool”
Melee AoE condition damage “ft, rifle, pistol, bomb, ~tool, ~elixir gun, grenade”
Ranged ST condition “pistol, elixir gun”
Ranged AOE condition “pistol, grenade”
You’ll notice we have more condition damage specs than power specs but we tend to have more condition damage abilities than power ones.
That and I just can’t make tool kit / elixir gun work as primary weapons in power builds, but that might be my own failings.
Clearly you are not perfect…
Where would you get frost armour from?
Mortar + jumpshot!!!!
Step 1 build a mortar on a keep wall!
Step 2 drop the ice field
Step 3 Jumpshot into the ice field
Step 4 profit?
It’s almost as good as timing supply drop with a water combo field from healing turret! If your timing is good you can then detonate healing turret for a double heal! with a new turret for regen! It’s pro-tastic!
But my favorite is Rocket boots – utility goggles – jumpshot – overcharged shot – rocket kick! It’s like line dancing but better!
I find a lot of fun ability sequences! It’s my specialty. That and charging into a zerg on a super glasscannon rifle engi!
Engi’s lead the way!
I think with no + healing it should be about 125 a tick. With max + healing ~260? I might be a bit off I don’t use it much.
It’s nice to pair with regen / healing combo field if you got a bit of + healing, so good for elixir gun spec’s.
It depends on the kits that you use, and there are ways to use pistols with power, and rifle with conditions, depending on the kit setup you use.
But typically you get the most out of pistol with condition damage since they are condition abilities and don’t scale well with power, and rifle is the reverse.
For rifle Valkyrie and Berserker gear work well. For pistol Carrion and Rampager. Explorer is slightly better for rifle, as well as knights.
But while leveling using pistol gear with toughness + condition damage or vitality + condition damage will work well. Later on 50-60+ you can make your choice about the 3rd stats and whether you want power or precision.
Bomberman engis can have a lot of toughness which can work to counter power / crit thieves.
But they can be easily countered by a skilled kiter, and thieves are adept at this thanks to stealth and long poison duration.
If you wanna try melee though scorpion wire and shadowstep will help a lot. Use scorpion while to pull them away from the mines and CC them in the process. You can typically get 1-2 moves off before they get up. if you then blind them with OH pistol’s smoke field, and then interrupt after it fades you’ll get 2-3 seconds of dps time. When the combo field fades or you run out of initiative you can shadow step away and ping them from range until scorpion wire is ready again. Bomberman engi’s don’t typically have a lot of condition removal if any. Especially if they are running bomb kit + mine kit. So 20-30s of poison will keep them from healing up to much.
The shortbow can help with that was well.
It’s not a pure melee build mind you, but thieves don’t typically do well in pure melee in my experience. Not enough HP or Healing to duke it out blow for blow.
But conditions or chain CC are typically the bane of bomberman.
You wont be able to do the core of the build 10 tools / 20 alchemy until your level 40 though.
For healing your basically want + healing gear. You can also get + healing from inventions but it doesn’t have many major traits that help with healing.
If you go 10 points into tools you can get kit refinement with gives you a light field when you equip elixir gun.
With double light fields, regeneration, and skillful detonation of the healing turret with plenty of + healing you can get a nice chunk of healing going. Elixir R gives you the ability to help downed targets from range and adds a bit more passive healing.
When combined with elixirs you can get an insane amount of condition removal to go with the passive healing from combo fields / regeneration. You can pretty much make your group immune to conditions for set periods of time which is extremely handy in PvE / WvW.
If you bring mortar you can supply 2 water and 3 light combo fields. On top of might / swiftness buffs, and condition removal from elixirs, healing turret, and elixir gun #3.
It is an extremely powerful support setup.