I wont mind it if got nerfed. Lets say a 10s CD on a 5s duration but if they nerf it I would like to see other profession get their own versions of perma swiftness nerfed.
It’s almost mandatory to have perma swiftness in spvp / wvw. Without it your just going to get run down or perma kited as an engineer. While the power shoes and leg mod traits are ok. Power shoes is far to deep in inventions for most builds, and both of them give far less passive speed than other signet’s and traits do.
I’ve actually always felt that these two traits should be combined and a new trait to give a passive 15-25% speed boost for using speed shoes or rocket boots added. To give those gadgets a nice passive boost.
Chain CC or condition spam.
The weakness of the bomb / mine / rifle build is they lack either a CC break or Condition removal.
Warrior greathammer tends to tare these builds apart if they get the first CC hint in and then chain a few in a row.
Circle strafing keeping chill / cripple up will also pretty much stop blunderbuss and jumpshot.
But if they are doing a toughness bomberman build then you can condition damage.
This really depends on your profession though. Bomberman works much better against some professions than others.
It’s important to keep in mind that you get sigils with the pistol #1. So if your running a vulnerability sigil or a chill sigil you can get extra support that way.
If you want to do a bit more damage in your support build you can use elixir U in place of elixir B and use toughness, healing, condition gear.
It’ll let you spam up bleeds with pistol 1 / elixir gun 1 at a much faster pace. The combo walls from the tool belt are also nice, if not a bit random. But with the elixir traits they still give condition removal / might.
10 min or even 5 min is not that bad, as long as they don’t put ability limits like ele spirit weapons it should be ok.
To be honest I found going condi / toughness / healing better for being tanky. Since when I want to be tanky I always run P/ S. The shield block moves are simply awesome.
But I haven’t tried a power build with the gear you suggested. You might be able to get ok damage with the grenade kit or bomb kit using that gear setup. The scale well off just power.
it depends how you use the tool belts. With static discharge from tools in power builds they become a vital component of any dps rotation.
Abilities like throw wrench, grenade barrage, and bi ’ol bomb do massive damage as well.
Except for 2-3 tool belts most of them are actually really awesome abilities. These exceptions are mostly elixirs and some of the turret ones like thumper.
A good example is the tool belt from rifle turret on it’s own is not that great. But in a power tools build it’s fantastic since it’s a static discharge every 8s which is solid dps.
Elixir H is another example. With the Hgh, and condition removal traits. It gives not only a random buff but a condition remover and a might boon.
The turret detonates with the 20 point explosive trait turns them into on demand AoE KB’s as well.
There are kitten toolbelt skills, and skills with good toolbelt skills but kitten utility skills but I don’t think it’s a bad mechanic at all. It just needs some tweaks and optimizing.
(edited by Karast.1927)
The current system does penalize players that focus on condition removal, skillfully boon application (clutch play with protection / stability) healing, and reviving. Often in keep and tower sieges having 2-3 people protecting those on siege by healing and removing the “lol I spam from below” AoE conditions off them is vital. Yet you get nothing for doing it.
If your not on a siege weapon and don’t have an AoE you can arch onto or off of a wall you might as well give up on getting rewards.
This really force play on certain weapons and abilities which is lame.
The engi downed is not so bad, but the randomness of the 1 ability is horrible. If it stuck to just damaging conditions it would be ok, but when your spamming it to finish off a mob at 10% and it does nothing but apply weakness it’s frustrating. On any other profession you would have finished the mob, and lived but due to bad luck on the random conditions you died.
Each mine should remove 1 boon. But I can’t honestly say if it’s working as intended or not. Sometimes it seems to and others it doesn’t. I haven’t done a through test since I typically use mines in a fire and forget capacity. Drop them in a narrow door way (so they clump better) and then kite / pull someone in. If they all hit and crit ~6k damage.
I know the fix is a big loss to engi group viability. I to used them as part of a group support build giving might and ret.
It annoys me a bit that it’s gone now and some builds have been weakened / lost because of it, but I can’t get to flustered when a broken ability is fixed. It was way to powerful. There was not another ability even close to it in game. Even if you detonated 4 turrets and dropped a supply crate you couldn’t get as many blast finishers as that one tool belt ability gave.
I see overly strong and abilities that are strong because they are broken as being as much an issue as abilities that are extremely weak or weak because they are broken. Often you might not find yourself using a balanced ability in favor of using a strong bugged ability.
Once all the bugs are fixed the dev’s will be able to sit down and access whats really going on. You don’t want them to balance around bugged abilities, because once the bugs are fixed they’ll become imbalanced. This leads to even more changes and re-balancing.
Engineer rifle spells and warrior rifle spells seem to be backwards.
in Engineer
Posted by: Karast.1927
I think part of the issue is not that the rifle plays a shotgun but that there is no “rifle like” ranged weapon. Grenades are our ranged options but not everyone likes the gtaoe nature or the esthetic of throwing grenades farther than you can shoot. It’s my hope that this gets tweaked in future content expansions by the addition of a new weapon or weapon kit that will function as a ST targeted weapon with a 1200+ range.
Like a rocket launcher kit, or some such.
In some cases I do not mind randomness. Such as with elixir B. Whether I get fury or might is not a huge impact on the game play. Both are dps buffs, and the have roughly the same effect.
But when this randomness is applied to the Elixir U tool belt, the Elixir S tool belt, the Elixir H tool belt, or Elixir X it doesn’t work out as well.
When in a group setting you cannot count on an engineer to bring the utility they spec for. If you bring an engineer for a barrier wall or AoE stability and you get a smoke wall or invisibility instead it doesn’t work out. The group is better off bringing something else to fill that role because those abilities and boons are to vital to group survival to trust to a random mechanic. This is a really limiting factor for engineers and one of the reason many prefer to take guardains and mesmers in their place. They have access to many of the same buffs and utilities, but can guarantee their application. If you want stability, protection, or a reflect wall they can give it on demand, with engineer, well maybe?
The same is true of elixir X to an even greater extent. If you do not know which effect you will get you cannot plan out how to use it ahead of time. You can say to your friends “when they come around the corner I’ll pop this you hit them with that” since you don’t know which abilities your going to get.
I’m not doubting it i’m just not sure whether it’ll be in the first expantsion, the second expantsion or the thrid expantsion ^^. Yes i’m calling it now we’ll have 3 expantsion over 3-4 year.
My bet is we’ll see an expansion for each dragon. So we might not see any dwarfs or dwarfy stuff till they move onto the fire dragon.
They already go a lot of Tengu stuff in the game though so we might see Tengu first.
- works both ways. An attack can shoot a catapult at a gate to prevent repair. Places can use knock backs and AoE through the gate as well. It’s more a splash AoE issue than anything else.
The problem though with tying the points into server population is that as you said competitive players will take any advantage they can get. You might run into the situation where competitive servers initially avoid joining WvW to slow an enemies point gain until the situation favors them.
Those that played WAR early on might remember that all it took to prevent enemies from taking a zone, was to leave the zone.
In effect linking point gain to population could have the same effect.
That’s my concern with your suggestion. I agree night-capping is an issue, but I think it may be something that individual servers may need to address though community building. Forming guilds, and alliances, and recruiting players to play in the off hours.
The build I like is a 0 0 20 30 20 build. I use the healing condi toughness gear with it and run pistol / shield with elixir H, Elixir Gun, Elixir B, and Elixir R.
You take the protection on crit and shield CD reducing trait from inventions. The protection injecting, condition removal on elixir use, and Hgh traits from alchemy, and the speedy kits / kit refinement traits from tools.
This lets all your elixirs give might and remove conditions, with a reduced cool down on the tool belt skills. With elixir gun and kit refinement swapping to the kit drops a condition removal field. So with that the #5 ability and Elixir R you have 3 condition removal fields that all tick healing as well.
Thanks to your + healing your regeneration boon, and combo fields heal for a solid amount.
You’ll still do okay condition damage with pistol 1-3, and elixir gun 1/3. You can also use mortar for keep defenses since it’s damage on scales on condition not power.
If you want a bit more of an offensive spec you take take the 20 from inventions and put them into firearms to get more condition damage.
But the general idea is that you provide might stacking, passive healing, and massive condition removal, while being tanky. Elixir R is handy since you can deploy it when things get bad before someone gets downed and it will pop them back up quickly. Healing turret and medkit can also work well in the build.
What type of spec are you looking for? If it’s purely for keep defense you might want to look at a grenade build. Whether your attacking from the walls or looking to gank siege it’s one of the better options.
The core of these builds is 30 in explosives for the grenadier trait. With crit power gear at 80 it lets you spam grenades for 2.5-3k with the 1 ability with a 1500 range. So at keeps where you don’t want to be in los you can lop grenades over the walls. Also since it’s a power move it does well against siege, since they are immune to conditions.
If your looking for a more healing support build there are elixir gun / elixir builds for condi removal / aoe healing that are nice. You can go 30 into alchemy and 20 into tools to get a lot of condi removal and with a lot of + healing have good group healing with your regen boon, and combo fields.
There are also bomberman builds to fighting the zergs in the open field.
So it really depends on what you’d like to do.
P/S and P/P both can work equally well. Don’t forget you can do condi spec’s with kits like bomb / grenade as well.
Bomb / P/S is nice since you can use the confusion bomb then pistol 3 and channel block while your enemies kills themselves.
I like doing an elixir / elixir gun build with alchemy and tools.
it’s 0 20 0 30 20
I run p/s with the the elixir h, elixir gun, elixir B, and elixir R
My traits are the protection on crit / shield from inventions. the protection injecting, the condition removal on elixir use, and HgH from alchemy, and speedy kits / kit refinement from tools.
I pair it with toughness, healing, condi gear
You get an insane amount of condition removal and survivability. Nice group might buff, condi removal, condi damage, and healing.
I pair it with the mortar for my elite. With regeneration up, the double light fields from elixir gun, and the healing field from mortar it does ~700 healing a second in a small area. You can also use healing turret to get some spike healing in.
It’s a fantastic build for WvW.
I use turrets in my Spvp setup but typically never more than one. I have tried multiple turret setups but they just don’t work well. Even with the traits in inventions turrets die far to easily. One barrage from a ranger, or meteor shower / lava font from an ele and they are dead. You also can bring enough condi removal / anti CC if you do a multi turret setup.
When I use turrets its typically, net, rifle, thumper or rocket. I like rifle in my tools build for the toolbelt ability with static discharge. It becomes a nice addition to my dps rotation, and having a combo field I can trait into an AOE KB on demand is handy.
Thumper turret is nice CC to toss onto a control point, the same is true of net.
I like rocket for its dps output. If you set it up on top of a building then swap traits you use it for the KD + a nice bit of passive dps. In condi specs with burn duration that 3s burn turns into a 4s and the turret can almost keep burning up on it’s own. The 800-900 base hits are not bad. I can lay down some nice damage while you block, dodge, and kite someone around.
But I can’t make anymore than 1 turret utility work. It might just be me, but I have to have elixir S, and typically, elixir C as well. You can give up one but not both.
Well just as you can hit them, they can hit you. Even siege will hit you thru the gate. But that is something that needs to be looked at.
Currently I am running a rifle / ft hybrid build that I like a lot.
its 10 30 0 0 30 (although I might swap to 10, 30 0 10 20)
I use a mix of Berzerker and rampage gear. I have ~47% crit ~2000 power and ~500 + condi unbuffed with a solid amount of + crit damage.
It lets me hit fairly hard with FT 1 /2 and have burns that tick 500+ with strong bleeds. When I use the rifle I can still crit above 4k with blunderbuss and 5-6k with jumpshot on soft targets.
My utilities are typically healing turret, FT, rifle turret, elixir S. I play around with rifle turret though. I sometimes swap in bomb kit or tool kit.
You can do some nice dps with FT and build might stacks and then switch into tool kit / bomb kit or to rifle to do some nice burst damage.
Bomb kit works really well since you get a lot more out of the confusion as you would in a power build.
The toolbelt skill was not meant to provide 6 blast finishers, this was a bug. The bug was fixed.
Mines still do solid damage, and remove boons. The utility mine still provides a blast finisher and a knock back.
You simply can no longer use the broken blast finishers to super buff might, or retaliation anymore.
I would like to see the escort reward brought back but maybe changed to make it so you need to do more than toss a boon or two on the Dolyak to get contribution.
When I don’t have a full group or am solo I tend to upgrade / guard supply camps, and escort Dolyaks. Without the escort rewards this is very expensive. I can recoup some of the upgrade costs and gain karma while helping my realm.
Without the rewards it’s hard to sit around and just guard the Dolyaks for the sake of supply. Everyone else is off grinding karma, xp, and cash. While your stuck spending cash and praying that people come to your aid when you call for help.
Even though it’s not much the small event rewards do help to make you feel like your doing something and being rewarded.
It’s a mind set issue.
coglin, I would like to know exactly what 4-5 viable builds you’re speaking of. I almost haven’t seen a single engineer in dungeons, and most people just write them off as a class. If you know there’s more viability to the engineer than most people think, please do share, and include videos that might prove they’re just as effective as a warrior running his index finger from 1 to 9 repeatedly
You’ve got Bomberman builds (30 0 30 10 0) or (30 0 20 20 0) and some other variations
You’ve got Grenade builds (30 20 0 20 0) or (30 10 0 10 20) and some other variations
You’ve got Condi P/P and P/S builds (10 30 0 30 0) or (10 30 20 10 0) and other variations
You’ve got Rifle tool burst builds (10 20 0 10 30) or (20 20 0 0 30) or (25 20 0 0 25) and variations
These don’t go into the more support / healing tool / invention and tool / alchemy builds for condi removal, healing, and boon stacking.
The only issue with a lot of engi builds is they tend to be specialized for certain game play types and while they work fantastic in some settings they are sub-par in others. Like bomberman in WvW can be useless as can grenade when kiting. condi builds can be good 1v1 and solo pve / group pve but they lack the range and aoe for WvW. Rifle builds have nice damage but put you up front in melee.
So there’s a give and take. it’s not that engi is bad, just that certain spec’s on others are just insane.
I can see your reasoning but at the same time can’t really think of a change that would really work, since shields are a defensive weapon to begin with and inventions is our defensive trait line. It could be moved to 10 points but then your still spending 10 extra points over p/p.
Giving both pistol / shield in the same trait would work but I actually think it’s good to make P/S go into inventions. Even without toughness shield offers tons of survivability, to give it reduced cool-downs in a dps tree would be somewhat OP.
It’s a nice balanced condition build. I use the exact same build except I change the 30 firearms trait to 20% burn duration. Piece only affects the #1 ability and its not really worth it since it doesn’t spread the bleeds, or at least didn’t the last time I tested it. But the burn duration will help lots, especially. if you get runes or a sigil with + burn or condition duration
You can also swap elixir gun into the build in place of flamethrower and trade elixir B for Elixir U and then use the increase pistol / rifle / elixir gun range over the vuln on crit trait to get some long range bleed stacking / cripple. With addition condition removal for the tricky boss fights. This works pretty well since you can stack up 6-7 bleeds pretty quickly then swap to pistol’s once in range.
You can also get a toughness, power, condi gear set and pair it with shield for extra PvP survivability.
There is a lot of versatility in which utilities you pair it with.
The issue with trying to push out of the keep though is the ghosting effect. It’s really hard to try to sneak around and ambush or hit from behind when the bulk of an enemy force doesn’t load on your screen until it’s to late. Even for people with higher end machines this is still a problem that can cripple your efforts. Also if you fail and lose someone outside the keep you can’t res them, while even if you kill 10-20 and pop back in they’ll be res’d up before you can bat an enemy.
Often with the main gate the problem can be worse. You have so much AoE and dps flying at that door that if you pop out the front and hit any lag you’ll die instantly.
The only time I’ve seen charging out at them work well is if you have close to even numbers or heavy siege damage coming down.
Can’t say about the Borderlands with Nugos. I am from GF, and we were at VS Borderlands, and we had a lot of fighting there throughout the night. I think Nugos were at Desolation Borderlands… and I don’t know about that one, but I think, at night I heard about us actually failing at FS Borderlands. So it all evens out.
It shifted around. For a while Desolation was pretty throughout camped by Nugo’s but it wasn’t entirely one sided VS was still taking camps and keeps but to many just hung around the starting camp, at least from my perspective. But Shiverpeaks borderland on Friday night / Saturday morning was heavily VS controlled. It took a few hours to take the keeps and towers back. There was good fighting a long the way as well. A lot of smart use of terrain and siege by some VS groups. Like at the bridges between the 2 towers in the south.
As for Saturday Night / Sunday morning I don’t know. I was passed out drunk then.
You gotta keep in mind, and this is true of all sides. Once you’ve lost an upgraded keep, even if you retake it, it’s extremely hard to defend since upgrades take time and it lacks supply. So it’s really easily for it to be traded back and forth. 30-40 people can cut right through it if you don’t have the numbers there ready to defend or siege to slow them down. VS does this to us all the time.
Without a strong core to lead the assault after a few bad wipes or failed keep defenses people will become demoralized and log out, or switch maps. If you only have 1-2 core groups running things, your limited to only really holding out on 1-2 maps. Which VS did quite well for a while. It was stonemist, and desolation / VS borderland keeps that put us in the point lead at the start.
If I am not mistake the scope trait from tools does not work right atm. It rarely if ever actually applies.
What runes / gems do you have in your gear? Depending on the rune set you can get another ~12%
I typically go 20 into firearms but I sit around ~50% base and ~70% with fury.
It is also possible to do a hybrid build if you swap a few pieces of berserk’s for carrion if you run a build with firearms if you got good might stacking going on. It’s not to hard getting your burning to do 470-540 a tick. You lose a bit off the high end crits, but the power stays roughly the same and the bleed / burns / poisons do better.
I have been trying it out in PvE, WvW, and will test it in dungeons pretty soon.
Even in power spec’s you’ve got a lot of condition abilities that just sit on your bars while you spam grenade 1 or hipshot.
Hidden pistol is a charr skill. Not an engineer skill
But shrapnel mine is a engineer skill
No it’s a charr skill as well. You might be confusing it with mine gadget which is an engineer skill.
Well rifle, bomb kit, tool kit, flamethrower, and grenade kit are all pretty much melee range.
While I don’t disagree a 1h mace / 1h sword or a 2h hammer wouldn’t be awesome, we already have a ton of melee options.
Personally I would rather see more ranged options aside from grenade kit. Pistols are more mid ranged than long range, and the few long range abilities on rifle / elixir gun don’t really cut it.
I personally want to see a rocket kit or something with 2-3 fixed target abilities at a 1200-1400 range.
Similar to warrior rifle in it’s ST focus.
But it might be a while before we get any new weapons, kits, or skills. They’ve got to fix the broken / unused traits we already have first!
The timing is tricky on it though, but it’s fun. I use it a lot.
I agree that the biggest issue though is the invisible enemies. It’s impossible to fight what you can’t see. You think your sending your group of 10 into ~15 people, when it’s actually 40-50. Or you can’t even use your siege weapons effectively since you can’t see the bulk of enemies to shoot.
But to be honest there is a bigger issue for siege weapons aside from retaliation with arrow carts. The reflect and immunity shields can be effectively rotated by bigger groups to basically make rams immune to damage from trebs, mortars, and cata’s. It’s a big reason why a lot of organized guilds run heavy on guardians, aside from other obvious reasons.
FS did well this weekend because there were 5-6 different guilds out fielding around 2 groups + each leading on the various maps. Among these Nugo’s, GF, and KD.
All it really takes is 10-15 people who are organized to change the flow of combat on the maps. They take and upgrade towers, build siege, and defend objectives. Because they win the pugs and randoms follow them around, and tail their groups adding to their numbers.
The problem is while most of these guilds are active during the day time hours almost none of them and their pug leaders are active at night. Friday and Saturday were exceptions due to it being the weekend. But people who work Monday mornings can’t be pug leading till 2 am everyday.
So come Sunday night there was little to no leadership. Those that did try to lead did not have enough support from guildmates to make an effective enough of a force to push the balance.
VS on the other hand has 2-3 guilds that are fairly active in the wee hours. There is a group of 10-20 that hops maps and takes things. Add on a pug / random following and they have maybe ~30 to 40 sometimes when they hit towers.
So FS may end up with a good group + a few that will try to defend, but it just doesn’t work since the bulk of people online and in zones won’t help or contribute in a meaningful way.
To sum it up differently. Sunday night while towers and keeps were being taken there were groups of 4-5 spread across the map farming crafting mats, and dozen just goofing around at the jump puzzle while the borderlands were being recolored.
I play the wee hours nightly and do what I can but the issue isn’t magical Canadians or super french zergs, as much as it is a lack of organization, players actually heading into WvW to WvW.
All it would take to turn this around in the wee hours is a few organize groups working together. Once they start getting some kills, and successfully defend / attack objectives people will join them and numbers will swell.
Even Sunday night there a few groups trying to defend the borderlands and later EB, but it just feel to naught. They didn’t have the numbers on their own to be effective enough to gain pug / random following.
What interests me is in PvE a lot of the keep structures you see have thatch coverings over the walls.
Perhaps these coverings could be added to the keep walls at the gates to prevent AoE spam from below.
They could be put in as destroyable keep / tower upgrades similar to walls. If upgrade this would allow defenders to be able to more safely attack from the walls, but still give attackers the option to use siege to destroy the roofs to attack defenders.
the mines from the mine gadget remove boons. But only 1 per mine and I am not 100% sure but sometimes I think it does not take effect.
Well to be honest haired trigger is a bit of an exception to CD reducing moves, since it’s in T1. The other such as for toolkit, FT/EG, Grenade / Bomb, and shield as you’ve mentioned are all T2.
It could be moved to 10 points but it is a really strong trait. The toughness might need to be removed.
The way the gtaoe works on the walls needs to be looked at because it completely negates the risk of staying in range and los to do damage. It’s simply become a matter of fire and forget with a limited number of classes, weapons, and abilities taking over in WvW because of this. People get pigeonholed into certain weapons and spec’s. From a group perspective people also only want to bring a long the classes that have the most and strongest of these abilities, and the few immunity / reflect bubbles that can counter them.
Why bring a defensive warrior, when they can’t bring sanctuary like a guardian. Why bring a melee or shortbow thief when an elementalist does so many times more damage AoE’ing the walls.
The organized guilds are already focusing their comps and cutting out spec’s and classes. Their groups are now overwhelmingly composed of guardians, mesmers, elementalists, and rangers. If something is not done it will continue down this path.
Any reason you skip static discharge? The spike damage from it in a power build is intense. Easily 1.5k on crit + with your build + gear.
Not really. Might give it a try some time.
I took Power Wrench due to the cooldown reduction at first and didn’t even consider static discharge. Hard to argue with a 2s block on 16s recharge :p
Try out static discharge you might really be surprised. It’s a bouncing attack that hits up to 3 targets with a 900 range on all toolbelt ability usage. So it can be devastating damage on pet classes, and small groups. It’d not odd for it do 6k to a ranger bouncing between them and the pet, added to the throw wrench and barrage damage.
Any reason you skip static discharge? The spike damage from it in a power build is intense. Easily 1.5k on crit + with your build + gear.
There are multiple turret models in the game aside from the ones that we have.
If you run around the char city you can spot a flamethrower with wheels on it and a chain gun pod turret. There is also the ghost bore and sniper turrets that appear in some personal stories.
You’ve also got the asura lightning turrets, the above mentioned sylvari turrets, and the flame legion turrets.
I think the dev’s may have originally wanted to do racially themed turrets and kits. But the art requirements and coding might have been to expensive.
Maybe we’ll see some of them later on as new turret types.
30/10/0/10/20 in full berserker exotics with Melandru Rune set.
Rifle, Med, Tool, Grenade kit and Elixir S.
I’ve yet to lose a 1v1 in WvW. I have 1v2’d and 1v3’d lvl 80s and my record is currently 1v6 vs. non 80s.
Guessing for tools your using static discharge and speedy kits?
To be honest the french do not zerg as much at night as people moan about. It’s usually 15-20 that move between the maps that take everything. There is a base population on each map but they don’t do much without the core to lead them.
It’s more a result of the lack of leadership, and people who join WvW only to grind karma.
Keeps and towers are left unguarded and without upgrades. Upgraded keeps and towers are rarely defended and most of those defenses fail due to a lack of leadership. No one on the mortars, no one defending mortars, zergs chasing solo players rather than pushing into the towers ext.
Nobody really runs supplies, and it’s a miracle if the xp / karma grinders even spring for a ram to take the towers they don’t bother to defend.
The borderland maps are completely neglected since the bulk of players just want to EB grind.
So the failure is 100% the result of FS players.
2-3 Nights of it is all it takes to make you decide to just not login anymore even though your US based! It just becomes a waste of time and money and the source of much unwanted frustration.
Why spend hours and gold ranking up a keep or tower to lose it while 20+ goof around at a jump puzzle flaming about stupid stuff and Canadians in team chat.
Rocket boots is one of those skills that could be awesome but just isn’t. It has so many issues the the arch of the self launch that like the OP said you hit a tiny rock and stop moving. The self knock down also last long enough that most players or mobs can get back on you by the time you get up. If you then take into account that you can be CC’d / hit while flying as others have mentioned it becomes completely counter productive in group situations.
Pairing the blast combo with a smoke field is nice, but not as great as you’d think. The launch moves you in a predictable strait line. Most ranged classes will hit you while your in stealth while not having to do much of anything, and typically the stealth fades by the time the self knock down wears off, so it doesn’t get you much.
As a CC break Elixir S and its 4s of evade works a lot better.
It’s really frustrating for me since I love the concept of rocket boots, and really want to use gadgets, but always find myself stuck using elixirs.
30 firearms/30 explosives/10 tools
lvl 76 1500 power / 25% crit / 442 cond damage.
I generally run nades/bombs/ff
as the nades are great for large skirmishs, the bombs is more about big ol for control and glue bomb for snare and i use rifle as net/overpowerd shot seem to work well for me as glue shot lets me die even sooner.
I run a similar build and until your 80 in exotics it’s not going to work well for 1v1 against 80’s.
The problem is that you have no survivability and are a sitting duck for ranged classes. When you do get in melee your going to get gutted by warriors who hit harder and have more HP.
But there are a few things you can do that will help.
- is you want to drop 10 points from firearms and move it into alchemy for protection injection. The protection on CC skill. Later on you’ll want 20 points to get cleansing elixirs for condition removal.
- You need to pick 1 kit, be it bomb or grenade. You’ll need the other 2 utility slots for Elixir S / another CC break, and or a condition remover, like elixir C.
If you go 20 into alchemy you can use elixir H as your heal and it with elixir S will give you nice condition removal freeing up 2 utility slots. 1 for grenade, 1 for bomb.
Elixir S is real a life savor though since it can effectively break chain CC, and if you pop it when a ranger or mesmer is starting their dps rotation or using their burst moves you can gut their damage output. Most of the dps will come from 2-3 abilities, once those are on CD they are sitting ducks for 15-20s.
I found for burst melee thieves Elixir S will win the fight for you. If you pop it right when they get on you. Even against good thieves they’ll spam 1-2 abilities into you after it goes up before they can stop their attacks.
This guts their initiative and if they don’t drop into stealth right away and flee you’ve pretty much won. It works well whether you run conditions or power. To be honest elixir S is pretty much a most in any 1v1 situations since you can use it to gut most damage rotations without burning your dodges.
Engineer rifle spells and warrior rifle spells seem to be backwards.
in Engineer
Posted by: Karast.1927
I am fine with rifle being a shotgun. I actually think the rifle hit and run melee play style is fun and challenging. I think we could use some trait changes, and having more condition removal / counter CC moved around so that these builds become more viable.
I do agree that we could use a long range ST weapon. But that is something that can be added via another kit / weapon later on.
Once you accept the engineer as a mid / close range fighter, and give up on trying to be a sniper you’ll have a lot more fun with engineer I think.
It’s just not built for it. Our strengths are AoE, CC, and conditions.
The problem with the Tool Kit (and the Flamethrower kit too) is that it’s damage really only comes from two skills. Meanwhile the Tool Kit 2 is really only useful for kiting (I have found it useful is certain situations though), while the 5 skill is completely and utterly useless: its cast time is way too long and it only will work on things that are already close range.
As someone mentioned, Tool Kit is really only useful for the 4 skill, and for the ‘fun factor’ of pry bar. Using it as a real weapon is fun but definitely not effective in PVE or PVP.
My proposed changes would be:
- 2 Skill cast time significantly reduced.
- 5 Skill range increased to ~900, or cast time significantly reduced.
- 5 Skill causes damage to all enemies pulled.
The old flamethrower pull from early beta is a good example of what the 5 could be. It’s ranger wasn’t much better 700~ I think. But It had a 5s burn, that went to 7s with condition duration. So in condition spec’s it’d easily do 6-7k damage.
To be honest I could easily lose magnet in place of a stronger 5 ability. I’ve always kind of felt that engineers are lacking if the fact that we do not have any reflect walls or immunity shields.
Another options could be an air combo field like a static field or electromagnetic field.
They could also have some kind of deploy-able barricade. Think the #5 ability from the harpoon-gun but on land.
<— US player that plays for FS.
FS biggest problem is the sheer laziness and pure xp / karma grinding going on.
There might be 30-40 people zerging about, but out of those 30-40 people there will actually be only 1-2 dropping down siege. You can walk up and see 20-30 people melee’ing a door because they are to cheap and lazy to go buy and deploy a ram. Without those 1-2 people who bring and use siege everything shuts down.
The same goes for ballistas and arrow carts at keeps. Keeps and towers rarely ever get upgraded, and when they do it’s some fool that buys the upgrade in the middle of a siege wasting all the supply.
Even when you spring for the cash to buy upgrades, and fit out towers and keeps with trebs, balistas, and arrow carts 9/10 times when you call for aid. Even if you hold out 10-15 minutes your allies will never come.
They simply wait. They wait for the tower / keep to be taken so they can retake it for faster XP / Karma. They defend nothing. It’s cap move, cap move, wipe at stonemist, repeat.
Then when the fail zerg’s disband and log off we’re left with towers, keeps, and camps with no upgrades, and no supply. It absolutely ridiculous. Especially when all it takes to defend a keep or tower is a few well aimed mortars and trebs.
It gets so frustrating some nights I just can’t stomach it and quit.