Guild Wars 2

Letifer.4360:

For a second I thought this was the Ranger forum lolol

The real irony is that Rangers are better at switching roles midfight than Engineers. As annoying as they are to control and preserve, pet effects tend to be very powerful. I ran CoF the other day with a Ranger who kept a pig on tap, and we all were so happy to have her switching between cat and pig in those tedious trash fights.

Rangers are actually in a way better place than engineers right now, and I think the play stats and pvp performance suggests that. The best part for now is that everyone underestimates the ranger, so when they bust out with a GC sword build w/ quickness while their cat goes wild and eat 10k of your health in 3 seconds all you can think is, “Omg haxx?”

I think that the minute people in sPvP identify that you are running this build you will be instantly focused and die. It is a popular build and therefore people realize how incredibly fragile you are, with almost no good ways to mitigate damage over the long term. Watch how long it takes to kill the heavy golem in the video: that is not encouraging.

In WvW, this build is not so crazy in groups but the risks are much higher. Dying in WvW can mean running for minutes if your group wipes. But at least you get to keep toolkit for magnet, aka “the best single-target CC skill in the game” (yes, this I think this skill is better than Moa Morph).

In PvE, this build is not worth running. Spike damage builds just don’t do much.

So, because I (not so) subconsciously hate myself and like risky challenges, I decided to pick my engineer off the rightmost side of login screen after many hours with necro and thief over winter vacation. I tried a few popular builds (sparks, that goofy pistol+elixirs build that hasn’t been viable since BWE3, etc) but found them hugely lacking compared to what I was already doing with other classes. Not just a bit sub-par, but way lacking.

So I decided to re-approach the problem. What does the engineer do better than anyone else? Let’s try taking that to 11 and seeing what happens? The only answer I could come up with is "knockback, free-cast damage skills+sparks, and asynchronous damage sources (because like it or not, only ranger pets are better than turrets for defensive spvp, necro minions are WAY worse and everyone else’s async skills have a lot more baggage involved).

The build I tried: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIqyUnrynF1LJxoHMm0bOUB8Lqg+/oQu0F;TkAg1CnoKyUkoIbRuikFN4A

(please note that this build calculator doesn’t show the correct skills for healing turret, the toolbelt skill is actually “drop the healing turret” which means that like with medkit you get another heal at 25% health).

The reason for those 20 in explosives is to get bigger knockback detonations on those turrets. So you can use 3 skill slots to position turrets, trigger them, and then detonate them for another knockdown. Between this and the rifle, you can juggle people for a very long time. Someone would have to fill their entire bar with stunbreakers just to keep up, and even then you’d have your rifle and toolbelt skills. Forceful Explosives and Accelerant Packed Turrets is a combo I think most of us know exists but I see very few people using. The knockback radius an damage are both impressive. And because I tended to drop, trigger and pop turrets, their durability was almost never an issue.

The goal of the build was to create solid damage and rely on CC for survivability in 1v1 and 1v2 situations, with the bomb kit coming into play for NvM (where M > 1) situations.

What actually happened was that I was consistently capable of annoying the hell out of people (to the point where in many cases people would just run away rather than deal with me 1v1), but I had no real way to kill them. Any sort of durable build had a nearly 100% chance of beating me.

So, my question to you–fellow disappointed and maligned engineer players–is: could we make this build better, perhaps even fun?

So given that I suffered a lack of finishing power and had reasonable durability at or over 2k armor, I ask:

1. What amulet? I tried several amulets (but not Knights, that’s my next thing to try) including celestial, rampagers, and berzerkers. Berzerker was great, but you die too fast below 2k armor. Rampager’s is the bare minimum, and it’s nice to have the condition damage for the rifle turret overcharge and bomb kit, but I suspect more power would be better.
2. Is the last 10 points in tools worthwhile? Would it make more sense to dump those into something else like marksmanship for Hair Trigger, or 10 more into alchemy for Self-Regulating Defenses? Or perhaps close out Explosives to get Explosive Powder?
3. What runes and sigil could be better? The intelligence sigil was there only for when I was using the celestial amulet. Should I try an Air Sigil for extra punch on rifle? Likewise the Lyssa runes are there to add critical chance, increase CC duration slightly, and add another source of boons besides the Alchemy minor.

Leadfoot.9071:

I think one issue I had, and granted I did not try it for very long, was that the uptime on the elite minion was pretty low so his knockdown was not available to me very often. This could very well have been a l2p issue. Therefore, the only immobilize I had left was dagger #3 but the enemy typically had a stun breaker ready for that.

You might really appreciate using a focus as your offhand. I typically solve these problems by baiting out dodges with early life drains (“the necro is raising its hand dodgedodgedodge!”), warhorn toots, etc. But having the focus there offers chilled and something to do with yourself while you try and close.

Surinen.9684:

Dagger seems to be the worst choice for melee.

Cultists always have wavy daggers. And the dagger is a pretty strong melee weapon mechanically.

Surinen.9684:

Do you think that is possible that Arenanet will change it ? Personally I feel that staff is the most unnatrictive g ameplay wise, you just mark the field, completely boring.

Not if it involves taking the awesome marks away.

Leadfoot.9071:

I want to try a dagger based build again because it seems to put out pretty good dmg… I think I just have to get used to playing in melee range and learning how to survive despite that.

The trick the dagger build, like any build really, is to know your limits. Don’t try and run after people waving a dagger wildly if they don’t have a reason to be around you. For example, if a ranger is pursuing you should pull them around a corner into close quarters, because on an open field the ranger will kite a dagger build forever.

The other trick to realize is that you’re constantly regaining health as you attack. Those little 38s and 120’s add up over time to quite a bit of health, and it happens even when you’re in alternative forms like DS or Plague. Life draining with dagger returns a lot of health, too. So you can use your DS 4 premptively just to get back some life and blunt heartseeker damage. So the goal is to try and fake people out on the immobilize dodge so you pin them, fight in your wells and get behind them. Your survivability will mostly take care of itself so long as you are hitting and use DS appropriately.

If you’re having real problems closing, you might want to try exchanging your offhand warhorn for offhand focus. The extra chill is great, and Focus 4 used against a single target stacks a lot of vulnerability (like 15 or more stacks, which is seriously dangerous). Smart people dodge roll it, but that can be to your advantage because you can pick up the immobilize as they finish the roll. You sacrifice the interrupt to do this though, which is too bad because running with 3 interrupts is really wonderful.

I’m trying to put together a video of this because everyone is stressed here over burst thieves in sPvP and this build is a great counter to most of them (at worst you force them to run and you keep the point to yourself), but Apple hates screen recording.

Funky.4861:

@ necropsy- we have a nice trait which extends the duration of all sceptre conditions by 33%

And this trait does not interact with +condduration bonuses, but rather underneath it. Necromancers can exceed the +100% cap for bleeds.

Poplolita.2638:

Engineer… I completly forgot they are decent at tanking damage, I would even say they are even better than guardian in certain situation. But they are currently so rare both in pvp and pve due to the amount of bugs they got, it’s really sad =(

Even if we dismiss the bugs, the problem with Engineer bunkers is that they’re the weakest damage bunkers in the game. They do negligable damage and are just there to harass. So yeah, they can do the toughness+hpgen+weakness tricks to stay alive a long time, but they cannot do very much to clear a point. Guardian and Necro bunkers can actually kill people. So they’re good at what they do but very limited to a specific kind of holdout bunker.

I’d rather have a guardian or necro bunker who can holdout 2-4v1 and win 1v1 to free up the rest of the team to actually do things and feel safe not running back to support. Depends on the map, of course; some maps give ranged easier perches over points and in that case there’s only so many times spectral grasp is off cooldown.

The entire engineer profession is like the Axe right now; you can see the design intents glimmering though but the actual mechanics are clearly not working as intended.

There are viable builds with axes that show up in tournaments and sometimes even in hot join matches. They revolve around how much better retaliation is for necromancers than everyone else. And they don’t use axe auto-attack very much. I’ve played with one and he was very good at beating quickness burst hitters by simply making it prohibitively expensive to attack him.

For PvE, Nemesis recently demonstrated how Axe+Focus is a nice way to set up whole party bursts and throw in some damage yourself (BiP, Focus 4, Axe 1, Axe 2) and generate life force.

But Axe definitely needs a boost. It’s very, very specialized as it is now. We should do another “Dear Developers, please fix axe.”

So I’m still running primarily this build when I sPvP as necro (the vast majority of my time, but I’ve been playing thief to better understand them). I’ve actually changed it a bit and added a lot more vampirism stuff. Full vampire runes, and vampire and precision on the mainhand weapon set.

This doesn’t sacrifice much damage potential, but the result is pretty interesting. You siphon so much health during combats its almost unreal. You have to watch carefully for your health because being randomly misted can mess up timings, but if you keep an eye towards your health and a few neurons towards the cooldown it’s yet another survival tool that helps make this build have hilarious lasting power and very good sustained damage. For utilities, I tend to stick with well of suffering, spectral armor, and something situational. I don’t mind running with only one well if I need to; when good guardians or D/D elementalist tanks show up Corrupt Boon is just too useful not to take.

Probably the only thing I’m uncertain about with this build is weapon selection. I’m trying focus as the damage offhand later today, because of how good reaper’s might is.

Zenith.7301:

So why don’t you upload videos of your successful fights against competent thieves instead?

Working on it, actually. I got a mac laptop and my traditional screencap tools do a very poor job of games, but I found a workaround and I’ve already logged a few games with decent footage. The quality will… not be exceptional.

But I am not sure that’s really the claim. The claim is, “A thief can do a single burst and kill a necromancer with >30k health and >2k toughness even through their deathshroud.” Which I think is absurd. No one has said, “Thieves always beat Necromancers.”

In the meantime, someone much better than me has a few WvW duels vs. decent thieves in this thread. I am so glad to see Corrupt Boon get more loving; not enough people rock that skill (or use Staff 4 offensively) but that video has both! And Rune of the Forge gets some loving, which just doesn’t get enough play.

Rubbers.5261:

http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_1/necromancer#0.0.3.0-1.1.2.13.2-0.10.30.10.20-3.6.11.10.5.12.8

this is the build

I use Rune of the Forge.
if you cant get this then any rune with toughness as mainstat on rune set

That rune is so underappreciated.

Thank you for the awesome demo video.

Kravick.4906:

And I’m able to read people. You, my friend, are an open book. You hide behind theorycrafting because you have limited or no actual experience in PVP. I’ve run the Juggermancer build. Its pure defense. Vitality and toughness as high as you can get it. Talking 2k+ in both here. I’ve been destroyed by burst thieves in a matter of seconds using that build when caught unware. If I see them coming, I usually come out on top, but its not a long and drawn out affair by any means. The fight is usually over rather quickly. However, when I start winning, they just run away and reset the fight. I can never actually kill them. That is not a victory. That is a stalemate.

I like how you simultaneously dismiss my point, roll your eyes when I offer to do the hard work for you, and also make sure to hedge your bets so you agree with the part of what I said you know you can’t defend. It’s classic forum work, sir, and I salute your dedication to never being wrong no matter the cost to your argument.

You say, “I had an experience.” I say, “These are the forums and forumgoers are not reliable.” Even me, by the way. That’s why I like running the numbers, reality often intrudes on our lousy methods of drawing conclusions.

Kravick.4906:

The object is to win, not draw. We’re supposed to be the class that everyone has a hard time running from, remember? This isn’t the case and even you have to admit that much.

A thief that runs from a point, camp, dolyak, or gate has lost. You, as a defender, have won. If you want to melt individual noobs in a flash of blood and steel, you’re playing the wrong class. Or at least the wrong build.

The only thief build I’m not sure about how to beat as a necro is the p/d attrition thief, becuase they can spec to remove conditions in stealth. But for burst thieves, tank necros and guardians are the counter and their only option is to run and hope they make it out.

Kravick.4906:

Theorycrafting and reality are two completely different things.

I cannot prove a negative. But I think you’re overstating the numbers to make your case. Load up a screencapture program and show your >2k toughness 30k health necromancer being exploded in (marvelously vague) “seconds”. Or don’t. But don’t sit here and say I’ve got no case when I can give you hard evidence and you counter by demanding I trust you.

Brujeria.7536:

Thats the point: Thieves dont have to spec to deep into power. They have insane base damages, and the ability to spend all initiative into that one burst – then get away and decide what to do next.

Their ability to do so is greatly exaggerated in the mind’s eye. I’ve been sPvPing a lot with various thief builds as a way to better learn to fight them. And my first observations were about my favorite sPvP class, Necromancers. Defensive or balance necros are one of the hardest classes to take down as a backstab thief (they just eat thief burst even through basilisk venom with DS then drop a well and ask the thief to play a dagger duel). I even know exactly what they’re doing and it’s hard to counter. I usually just avoid them if I can.

Brujeria.7536:

If a thief skills for power crit its okay for him to deal huge damage – but he always has insane damage and perfect escapes no matter if with traits or without.

Which he doesn’t. Thieves get those big hits by exploiting the same trick a bunch of fast-hitter classes use, by using the multiplicative nature of crit + crit damage stacking with reasonable high power. This eats up the backstab thief itemization budget and the end up with poor survivability. Drop a well of suffering and start life draining, most backstab thieves MUST run from this, especially if you start waving a dagger around in the mix. And if you cripple them and catch them out of stealth it’s pretty much over.

I know this because these are the things Necros have been using to kill me and it sucks and all you can do is hope to stealth in a random direction and hope the necro loses sight of you. You can only shadowstep so many times.

Brujeria.7536:

Those attrition based thieves are even more skilled and more OP.

I have to sort of agree with you there. Attrition thieves are very hard to deal with and I am hoping to figure out some ways to do it by playing as one.

Brujeria.7536:

Traits and utilities enhance that even further. They have no natural downsides, but yet the abilities to choose which playstyle they want to excel at.

Well ostensibly this is how every class should be. But they do have downsides. There is no such thing as a “tanky” thief, and thieves are lousy at contesting points compared to lots of other classes..

Brujeria.7536:

People are now capable of all things a necromancer can do – due to the pure need of trying to be on par with other classes.

I am so sick of the Necro whining. Go roll an engineer if you want to see what true despair is.

Brujeria.7536:

Thieves are yet to be fully mastered because you can get all of the OPnes of thieves even without much skill or thinking. If simple button mashing is superior to a combination of builds, skill and tactics a nerf will come. A hard nerf.

I like how Necromancers are now “mastered by everyone” yet Nemesis and Sheobix are still proposing new builds. You only recently started to see wellbombers become popular in PvP, as well. Meanwhile the thief builds have not exactly been where GW2 innovation has been happening.

Necromancers need some help: some trait cleanup and amping, minion AI will need work forever, and axe needs a modest boost like making Axe 3 a blast finisher. They are nowhere near as bad as people here want to complain, and bunker necros are incredibly strong against burst thieves.

You really should try playing a thief in sPvP and see how frightening necromancers become to you. They and Guardians are by far the most dicey matchup.

xev.9476:

I don’t even know what that means; it seems like an incoherent thought that just sounds nice to say.

No need to get defensive.

xev.9476:

If by “fair” we mean the opportunity for opposing teams/players a fighting chance to win particular battles, engagements, or maps, then WvW simply has to be “fair” in a big way.

It hasn’t been. That’s why breakouts have been added. On EB, taking your base fort is tough to recover from unless your server has coverage in hours that your opponent does not. On Borderlands, similarly weird things can happen.

You just see a lot of talk about 1v1 fights and how game balance should consider those matchups and how thieves are “OP” or “unfair” or “unabalanced” in those contexts because they’re so simple to demonstrate. But you could argue necros are “unfair”, “OP”, and “unbalanced” when used to hold people off gates. Because they’re really, really good at making siege operator’s lives miserable. Most of the time in the small tower cap groups I’ve run in we have a rule, “If you spot 2 necros on the walls, don’t use rams. It takes too long.”

Heck, when running my engineer (bad choice to go to 80, I know. Can’t undo the past though) my entire job during sieges was to try and yank necros off the walls into nailbox fields and then juggle them on knockdowns so we could use rams and take guarded towers in a reasonable amount of time.

My issue is that with thieves, there is no fighting chance for some professions in many different scenarios. It’s not an issue of tactics, it’s an issue of game mechanics: thieves have the ability to disable and spike down my 27k necro + DS in less than 4 seconds, and then completely vanish, regain any health loss and initiative, and do it all over again in a matter of seconds.

Actually they really cannot do all of these things at once “in a matter of seconds.” If they’re rocking huge hits, they generally don’t have more than one condition clearing skill (Hide in Shadows cures burns, poisons and bleeds but it is on a 30s cooldown) if they’ve gone deep into their power trees for the huge hits. And if they did go into Shadow Arts, it’s actually not the easiest sell to use a trait slot for that condition clear given how many good traits are in that tree. There are no 30/30/10/0/10 builds.

By the way, I’m not trying to say, “Don’t feel frustrated.” I feel frustrated too when one of my characters gets picked out for a gankgam style beatdown. But generally I just get stood back up by my group and the thief has run away and I shrug, because we still killed the dolyaks and took the camp. I am saying, “Try to keep perspective.”

The real shame is that these tiger thieves aren’t even the scariest thieves out there. Everyone just sees them and gets confirmation bias because you can’t see what they’re doing very well. Skilled attrition p/d thieves are way more obnoxious to deal with, and more likely to be able to win 4v1s.

Kravick.4906:

KirinDave.6451:

The only time I’ve had this seem to happen was with culling issues: a culled thief’s damage can render unreliably and this can give the appearance of a much bigger burst because they’ve actually had longer to work on you than you realized.

Yeah you’re not aware of whats actually happening. I figured as much.

I know how to crunch the numbers. Shall we? Before we begin, let’s have you set the parameters:

1. How much toughness do you have with 30k vitality?
2. How long is the burst? In seconds. There is a big difference between what a thief can do in 4 seconds vs what a thief can do in 1. In 3-4 seconds, 30k of damage is not only possible, it’s easy (and not just for thief). In 1s, you have 1 mug, 1 C&D, 1 AA double attack or maybe 1 heartseeker and possibly an air proc? Under assassin’s signet. The other 3 attacks need to put you below 50% before heartseeker makes sense to use.
3. Should we ignore all necromancer traits?

I’ll even make a repeatable program you can run to plug different numbers in. The raw data is easy to find. And example builds are not exactly trade secrets.

Kravick.4906:

Except that you DO lose that much health, even in gear that would be considered tanky. I’m starting to doubt the validity of your claims based on that fact alone. Thieves, ATM, do insane burst damage, even to people in full soldiers gear. Combined with the current culling issues (thieves can do damage to you while still appearing stealthed), I seriously doubt you have any idea whats actually going on.

You can validate what I’m talking about in sPvP for a basis, and then use WvW videos on youtube for other reference. What exactly are we talking about for “burst” here? 1 second? 4 seconds? 30k is a lot of health.

The only time I’ve had this seem to happen was with culling issues: a culled thief’s damage can render unreliably and this can give the appearance of a much bigger burst because they’ve actually had longer to work on you than you realized.

ukuni.8745:

and finally if u have so much ways of explaining why a engineer fails in these areas please go out with you engineer fraps some kitten and prove that the engineer is under par, till then you clearly dont know what your doing with the engineer and therefore are not a skilled player

p.s grenade kits are better then they were before stop rolling with the meta and u will see why

Or you could show people how the engineer is awesome, the way Sheobix and Nemesis are doing for Necromancers. Let’s be honest here: very few people believe what you’re saying. And you’re asking someone else to prove a negative, which is all but impossible.

So you laid down some big talk there and unlike us you can prove a positive: that the Engineer is up to snuff.

I eagerly await your videos. Because I gotta be honest, it feels like lately every video in this forum I see is like extremely underwhelming footage of useless stuff like random wvw solos and usually sort of mediocre matches.

xev.9476:

It’s bad design as far I’m concerned, since I’m not particularly interested in dying before I can get a single skill off. You seem to find it acceptable because, perhaps, a single death doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. To me, though, it means a good bit. It’s irritating and not enjoyable. I’d prefer to be outskilled or outzerged, not just suddenly dead.

1v1 burst is one thing, 1v1 instant death is quite another. No, no, I think the design is quite stupid.

See, this is one of those “design decisions.” WvW is not fair. If you want fair, you want sPvP. WvW is all about tactics and numbers and terrain control. It’s the very opposite of fair, and Anet has only recently taken any steps to stop total map domination in perpetuity. In WvW the power gap between geared and ungeared players is huge becuase they use the PvE formulas which are tuned to allow players to take on monsters with enormous stat budgets.

If you want “fair”, then sPvP and tPvP are where you should go. You can’t generally instaburst someone unless you’re using a berzerker’s amulet and the target is too (e.g., one thief gets the drop on another).

And in general, unless you’re upleveled or undergeared you shouldn’t be losing 30k of health in a burst. The burst is generally around 5 hits, and if it involves heartseeker spam then you can really mess it up by dodging even a single heartseeker. Thieves are on a very tight initiative budget (even if they trait for more). Dodging a heartseeker (or even better, a C&D) will completely ruin them.

nakoda.4213:

KirinDave.6451:

That’s sort of why people are in here complaining. We all like lots of aspects of the class. But we want something that is effective and cohesive. It says a lot that we’re still here complaining. If we didn’t care at all the we wouldn’t be bothering.

I don’t follow, peeps be kittening cuz they have a class that is deep, fun, and challenging?

The “challenging” you’re talking about is the kind of “challenging” that results from bringing a knife to a gun fight. WvW is a big part of the endgame for a lot of people and WvW for Engineers is pretty bad. Even for PvE, their damage output and condition output is outright lamentable for a condition class.

And I like some aspects of the engineer playstyle (e.g., fast kit swapping is like elemental attunements but moreso), but right now it’s a lot of work for mediocre damage output and mediocre control. I don’t mind doing support, but I refuse to be a healbot or a sidekick. You may like being someone else’s medic, but that’s not really the sort of role I want to take. But it’s one of the only worthwhile things to do as an engineer right now, because no matter what Casia says most classes can trivially outdamage engineers while still providing support and some control; and they could even before the grenade nerfs were in place, the mechanics of grenades and the class greatly offset the damage equation of grenades.

I’m sold on the general idea of the engineer class, just not this specific expression as it stands. Right now the playstyle is “I bought some toys a real engineer made for me and I don’t quite know how to make them work right so I dunno lol rng.” Not “I am an engineer and my playstyle is about building the terrain and outthinking my enemy.”

I find that objectionable. It turns Engineers into a perpetual Robin to everyone else’s Batman. Robin is only cool because you know one day he’ll become awesome and so you want to see how a superhero grows up. Robin without a future, permanently stuck in those short shorts and that yellow cape, starts to seem a little creepy and stale and sad.

The worst part of it is that so many people here don’t understand how the game works nor have they tried other classes. For example, someone was telling me their flamethrower #1 hits for >5k before L80. Shall we all laugh at that all-too-common misreading?

For all the people saying, “If you understood stealth you’d have no trouble…”

I’ve played a thief in sPvP a bunch now. I know how it works. I still have trouble with many builds. So maybe you could tell me how I’m supposed to beat stealth? Maybe you should write a guide, “This is how everyone can fight stealth, so you all can stop complaining.”

It would be advantageous for you to do that, because the majority of the player base is complaining about your mechanics and if that doesn’t change, eventually your revealed debuff time will be increased.

P.S., if you do write it and it includes the words, “Click on the black smoke” you’re immediately disqualified. It doesn’t work reliably, it has been shown to not work reliably.

xev.9476:

I do find that level of vigilance rather engaging, but there are many – many – scenarios in which it’s just not possible, like when a thief stealths behind enemy lines in a zerg to gank all of your back lines. I can save DS and a defensive utility or two and there’s still absolutely nothing I can do. I don’t think that’s an l2p issue at all – I think it’s bad design.

It’s not bad design. Thieves are a class that is incredibly good at 1v1 burst. That’s like, their primary specialty.

And so they run up, they gank you, you go down. Your team chases them off or the stomp you. Either way, if your zerg wins they stand you back up at the end of the engagement and nothing changes. Random ganks are not how WvW is won, except in very very close races where supply becomes that crucial.

Thieves are basically overrated in WvW. They pick one person off then run away and that one person screams “Unfair!” Meanwhile, they COULD have actually been helping their zerg out. Most don’t. They just like selfish kills.

Tuccos.8592:

a thief still destroys you in a few seconds and so does a Warrior or dagger elemenentalist…… usually before you even got off any skills…

zipp zipp zipp zapp zipp = dead necro 30k HP + DS gone

How on earth does a necro ever, ever, EVER lose to a GC d/d elementalist? You must be insanely outgeared and/or upleveled in WvW for that to happen. I can understand how you lose to thieves because necros tend to rock high vit, low healing and low toughness making heartseeker “super effective!”… but most d/d elementalists can’t put a single hit above 4k, let alone put together 30k of burst without using an insane combination of maneuvers that requires a lightning flash and/or is spoiled by a stunbreaker.

If they’re GC, they should just melt away in the bleeding. Break stun, apply bleeds, reapply whenever you see the sploosh. If they run, you win.

Seriously man, d/d elementalist roamers are so much bigger in everyone’s heads than they are in the game, and with the EA nerf they’re not even that scary anymore. They’re just the best build at running away.

nakoda.4213:

Anyway, a little while ago I started knocking about with an engine alt.

Holy kitten am I having fun, so much so that I haven’t touched my warrior since I rolled this lil’ spitfire.

/0.02$

Edit :: I don’t just play pve or pvp, I play everything… like, you know, the whole kitten game, so maybe that’s why I’m having fun… with the game and all…

That’s sort of why people are in here complaining. We all like lots of aspects of the class. But we want something that is effective and cohesive. It says a lot that we’re still here complaining. If we didn’t care at all the we wouldn’t be bothering.

Coltz.5617:

Dantos.1065:

I love the feel of my engineer. I really do. But the kits I love using, grenades, bombs, and FT just FEEL so awkward to use. With grenades and bombs its the 11111111 spam, (yes, i do use the other ones too) and with the FT its the missmissmissmiss bugs. Give me a sniper rifle dps kit or something, take away the mortar and make it the new 30 pt elite =P.

I rolled a necro, and yes I am a glutton for punishment >_< stupid pets.

I did the exact opposite. I complain about necros in wvw and moved in to engineers. I think lyfe sux more as an engi is true.

Funny, I’ve been working on Elementalist and Necro and I feel like Necro is such a crazily stronger class than Engineer. You just use pets ad hoc instead of having a horde, and hybrid builds for necro are easy and strong.

Elementalist is better at everything but crazy-hard to play correctly.

Don’t feel to bad.

Burning has good +conddmg coefficient, but otherwise is way less awesome than most other conditions you have access to as a necro. The biggest problem with burning is that it stacks duration instead of intensity. For a pure damage condition, it’s really not awesome to overstack burning and lose a lot of damage. It’s less of a problem for poison and chilled because those have secondary beneficial effects.

- a coherent idea of how to make a mid-fight role hybrid in GW2 has actually been formed, and it doesn’t require a pet.

Because it is very obvious that Anet is struggling to figure out how to implement this.

Kravick.4906:

Weakness is a pretty terrible condition. In PVE its ok since NPCs don’t crit very much, but NPCs don’t dodge, so there is no point to the half endurance regeneration.

But it is still a huge damage mitigator.

Kravick.4906:

In PVP, where most people are running crit heavy builds, weakness gets completely negated since only half of non critical hits are affected (does absolutely nothing to thieves since they’re all running glass cannon crit builds). The half endurance regeneration is moot since most fights are over in 10-20 seconds with all the ridiculous burst being thrown around. Its pointless to bother using this condition.

Weakness can mess up bursters. It’s really funny when a thief’s backstab gets weakened and their burst is ruined. But who weakness really shuts down is the bunker builds. They tend to operate on a power+defense+no-crit strategy. Against those bunker builds, weakness turns them into total pushovers unless they’re condition types.

I couldn’t help but laugh and make this image.

This should really be called, “Why the Necromancer’s Axe is not nearly so bad as you thought it was.” Axe+Focus is a really clever deal. In group fights Reaper’s focus gives a lot of healing out. In solo fights it stacks like >15 vulnerability, making your burst hit like crazy hard.

My eyes are totally opened to the proper use of the axe.

smapty.4270:

Here’s a nice balanced build with good survivability and strong damage ive had a lot of success with in spvp.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlspyanwynF1LJS4DSI4D7lIF6Hl9Rhc1WA;TgAA1Cno2yslYLbNutkbB

(Copy and paste the link)

Great control with the various knock backs… Strong against burst classes with the defensive traits and over 2700 toughness and 23k+ health. You can clear and hold a point against multiple foes. Solid damage with your attack rating over 3500 (I have been running superior fire weapon sigil which procs for 1k AE damage). Good group utility via combo fields and rezzes with elixir R.

It’s really a fun build to play once you get the feel for it and feels very strong vs any class or build you may face.

-Sterno Lecturo
80 Engineer -Sorrows Furnace

This is really interesting? Do you have any footage of this build in play?

I’ve been looking for any signs of life on engineer spvp, since everyone tells me that they’re still fine in sPvP and I am sort of reaching blindly trying to find SOME reason not to beat myself up over being suckered into leveling engineer to 80 before realizing what was up.

ABC.8360:

It is very hard to tell wich build is the best , I prefer this one because of the damage output .

Why not go for a more bursty rifle build then? The damage output is not very good on this build.

ABC.8360:

The build I show dosen’t fit a support style nor bunker style , it is completly different .

I am not sure from watching you how to use it. You seem to run for points a lot. It seems to me like a sidekick dps skirmisher? Might work better in tournaments.

and I am also at the top of almost every bg soo it can’t be that bad!

I guess your streams have just not been representative of that consistent high score. Maybe lag introduced from your capture software is throwing you off? I know it took me awhile when I introduced some.

Thanks for the stream. Interesting stuff.

ABC.8360:

Hey there Kirin , very interesting questions.

1. The build I use is 10/30/0/30/0 , that is correct. I use rune superior rune of the afflicted and Rampager’s Amulet.

2. You might have seen some sequences where I was running from rangers haha… but I do not particuly fear them , id say i have a 65% chance to win a fight 1v1 against a ranger .

3. The best thing to do really is to start up with elixir H , B and U ( throw) but you dont always have the time throw all of these before someone charges at you. Most important is to use these when the timing is right , especialy elixir S

4. I feel this build is one of the strongest in 1v1 , i am truly glassy , but soooo hard to kill . Those elixir makes you untouchable , invisible , faster , etc. And , you do live long enough to see condition damage do their work ;P

Hope it helps , if you have any other questions or comment , let me know!

I tried the build for about an hour today and I found myself incredibly unlikely to survive a 1v1. The class has so few survivability tools and is very, very glassy. So if someone does come along with burst they mow you down almost instantly unless Elixir S is on cooldown.

If the stars align and your elixir B buffs happen to be up AND Elixir S is up, then you can win a fight against another burster IF they don’t immediately withdraw, but this build has very poor control because of the slow firing speed of glue shot and the lack of reliable access to speed buffs.

I’ve got to tell you, man. This build seems a bit lackluster. Maybe I just got the traits wrong? But I experienced most of what I saw in your stream: mediocre damage that really only makes sense when you’re with other teammates and hoping they take the focus. Worst of all, there is no way to cover your teammates from a stomp (which is something traditionally the engineer can do well). I got yelled at for having no knockback.

This is in really sharp contrast to my other recent experiment, the 30/0/20/20/0 necro dagger build where I was constantly near the top of the boards, had shocking burst and was one of the few classes that could reliably drop bunker eles, and could survive in 2v1s long enough to get a teammate in and even the fight, and could interrupt stomps and eat a lot of damage.

I can’t help but think support bomber is superior on every axis for this. If there was a cripple-on-crit sigil this build might work? But as it stands it’s a build with the survivability of a burst build with pretty underwhelming burst, some slight team buffing, and a pretty long-cooldown 4 second invuln.

Knox.3748:

engi with the correct gear, traits and runes is the best condition dealer of the game with pistol + shield

What do you mean by “best?” Most diversity of conditions? Longest duration? Best damage? Highest stacking?

Because I dunno if you have seen how Necros can stack bleeds, chills and poison, but they can make them incredibly persistent.

Hazal Birunae.6082:

After playing with this build for several hours, I gotta say that I love it. I have not, however, been able to kill anybody. I’m guessing it’s because I’m not fully geared yet (mostly rares with soldier stats) and because I suck at PvP, but we’ll wait and see.

This build gets less kills as the knowledge of how incredibly powerful confusion is in WvW filters through the collective consciousness of GW2. That and the fact that several retaliation builds are getting more play.

I’ve watched a few of your streams now, hoping to see something amazing. I have a few questions after watching you:

1. Your build is 10/30/0/30/0, right? What are your runes and amulet? Your burns are ticking pretty hard.
2. I notice you run from rangers almost every single time unless you have backup, frequently to nowheresville on the map. Why are you afraid of rangers in particular? Especially given what an incredibly hard time necros and warriors seem to give you, yet you stick those fights out.
3. I see your throwable elixirs off cooldown a lot; and I seldom see you buffing your teammates. Do you think it’s just not worth it to make an effort there given how short and random many of those buff circles are?
4. Do you feel underpowered with this build in 1v1s? You seem pretty glassy (low hp, I see some pretty big hits on your toughness) but have condition stats which seems counter-intuitive; how do you last long enough for your conditions to do their work.

Why do you people even play Ranger if you don’t want a pet to manage? If you want to join the Elite Sniper Team™ roll warrior and use camo paint colors.

Is sigil of battle really so much better?

My experience with a well-bombing build was that when it tends to proc is in the opening of an engagement, right as you are starting to CC and well bomb the enemy. If you see it happening and move in, your dagger’s DPS spike is very frightening amidst the well damage.

I used Hanzo’s build last night on a lark, and I’ve never performed so well in sPvP ever. I highly recommend that build. Multiple rampages, multiple top player bonuses. Multiple cases where I kited 2-4 people across the map being an unkillable rabbit the hounds could never catch; I was shocked at the survivability of the build. My one change was to add a sigil of rage to the instead of battle (which I see someone else noticed), and to run spectral armor instead of blood is power for some more escape and LF generation options.

What’s even more fun on maps like Kyhlo is the well bombing of mid from the windows on a contested point is just crazy strong. You start by fear and chill marking the stairs up then well the point. If they try to run down the stairs then they get feared back into the wells, or they can drop off the sides and have to overcome the marks on the way back up, making it easier for the team to capture mid. Every time Kyhlo came up my score spiked dramatically.

Lucky Charmz.5089:

Yes, engineers are pretty kitten right now, but stop being so negative about it!

No. But I am not crying over it either, I’ve rerolled another class.

I just don’t have confidence that Anet really knows what they want to do with the Engineer class. And the current promises don’t sound good. For example, making kits scale with gear (instead of giving kits their own good stats) will only make the engineer situation worse.

Lucky Charmz.5089:

We’re not engineers to be good. We’re engineers to be engineers.

Which is one of the reasons I am out for awhile. I’m an engineer in real life, of a variety of kinds. I know how the sausage is made, I know what I want. The Engineer class has nothing but a bit of victorian lipstick on a pig. There is little that is engineering-ish about current engineer gameplay.

Lucky Charmz.5089:

The way I see it is there are two different kinds of class-choosers in mmos…the people who love their class, and the people who love to be OP. That’s why there are so many warriors around, half of them truly love the warrior style, and others just like that they’re so good.

See, this is the kind of beaten down talk that bugs me so much in this forum. Like you should be happy to have the class at all. Folks, there are so many other classes you can try. You don’t have to play the engineer out of dogged loyalty, nor do you need to delete those characters. Try something else for awhile.

Because it is not unfair to ask for a class that is both effective and fun.

I’ve been experimenting with a Dagger/Focus defensive build for sPvP and it’s been fairly successful so far. It’s sort of a hybrid auramancer/sigil build which exploits the power of lots of small heals on high toughness targets, and tries to stack +% damage effects to maintain a reasonable damage output.

It’s pretty amazing to have Obsidian Flesh in PvP. People just do not see this skill often enough to understand it. Swirling Winds also is a heck of a game changer, often holding snipers off mid points long enough to help overcome the melee presence and take the point.

swilkers.5938:

Asthenea.1546:

Well thanks for the posts guys, I’m still gonna try one! It seems like every thinks their class is broken so if they are all broken I’d say that means they’re balanced! Cheers.

Play to level 10, love it and then realize @ 80 that you have been mistaken. Roll another class until ANET decides to release that “significant changes” update that all Rangers have been waiting for. Believe me, if ANY class can claim the “broken” tag, it is the Ranger.

You do not realize how bad Necromancers and Engineers have it, do you? You really should play some other classes before you say stuff like this.

Code.1327:

The OP and most players forget one very important point.

PETS DONT SCALE WITH GEAR.

This might seem minor right now, but as gear creep continues, pets will continue to slide backwards as a class mechanic. It needs to be addressed at some point for the long term viability of the class, either by compleatly halting gear creep that started with ascended gear, or making pets scale with player gear.

So, I’m peeking in on this forum as I goof around looking for something to replace my Engineer (I’ve realized ANet has no idea what they’re doing with that class, and it’s just a hand’s breadth from utterly broken and useless right now). And I wanted to comment on this.

This is actually a good thing. Let me say it again; pets not scaling with gear can be a good thing. What this means is that your pets do not scale with your gear choices, which means you and one of your pets can be wildly different in spec. ANet has promised, unfortunately, to change Engineer kits so that they do have gear dependence. Try not to let them do this for you; instead have them make pets keep up with gear creep.

The reason it’s good is that right now, you could go full bunker spec and still whip out a cat and have cat-level DPS added to your own (which may be low with a bunker spec, but presumably you have control effects to help your pet). You have mid-fight role variability. It’s the holy hybrid grail, and right now the only class where it’s even remotely feasible is Ranger.

I do not have a high level ranger, but I’ve done dungeon and WvW runs with them. I’ve always been impressed by the class. I’ve watched people switch pets to dodge (exploiting the fact that pets do not instantly phase in, and as such a pet swap is actually a dodge if you time it right; even in melee). I’ve always been impressed by how much DPS Rangers can sustain while also being very good with helping the party. And in sPvP I dread stomping good rangers nearly as much as I dread stomping mesmers (“Oh kitten now I am dazed… Oh kitten now I am knocked down… Oh kitten you just got a rally… and you were contesting the point the whole time.”)

I also want to note that the people here talking about the absurd difficulty of managing a pet and themselves should probably try giving Elementalist, Thief, or (if you hate the idea of being effective) Engineer a try. All three of those classes require a lot of situational awareness, very quick decisions, and close-to-flawless technical execution. Which is not to say that Rangers are not in need of bugfixes; I think most classes are. But I do think it’s easy to forget how hard other players are actually working with their classes.

DJRiful.3749:

Armor of Earth is useful if you want to cast a long ability with unwanted interruption. To my issue, it was probably too many thing going on that everyone was hitting me with all sore of abilities. I’m always the one charge into the zerg and break them.

Well, Stability is a boon and those can get stripped off. Generally that’s the first thing you think of when you see someone with obvious stability like Plague Form or Armor of Earth.

So, inspired by Sekta’s videos I wanted to try and make a bunker/push build using Dagger/Focus. It’s not as bursty, but its there to make people pop their heals early so teammates can finish the work, and to stand up.

I figured sPvP was the best place to try it. Here is the build link for the first version.

The goals of the build are as follows:

1. Signets trigger auras and are permanently active. This triggers protection, fury and swiftness.
2. Signet of Restoration constantly heals you even as you use it. The math behind toughness and vitality suggests that if you can stand up for along time, small passive heals are actually incredibly powerful (and it’s how Guardians are so tanky despite lacking a big base HP pool).
3. Between the toughness, constant passives, healing in water, and the incredible number of defensive skills on the focus, you can easily contest points even 3v1 and hold out for a surprising amount of time.
4. The build has a lot of passive damage modifiers that trigger when you’re very close, when the foe is burning, and when your endurance is full. Your initial burning-rush-into-earth-rotation hits quite hard.
5. The rune of the smith is pretty perfect for this build, and in practice you end up with protection and constant healing all the time.

It went pretty well, but I appeal to experienced focus users. Is this build nonsense? Are there improvements I can make?

Amadeus.5687:

@KirinDave you should start hunt these Rifle warrior’s seeing as they are even easier to destroy, since they got NOTHING to do when you target them… That pretty much sum up most glass cannon builds if you first break their only trick, but that’s way harder to do vs one of these engineer’s, mainly cause everything ain’t comeing from one single attack, which actually is baaaad to (All damage from one attack) if your enemy have half the brian!

The one-shot-doing-20k-from-a-group (not even a zerg) is just fine for WvW. You’re support DPS there to put spikes in the enemy and otherwise swap weapons and stay alive. That’s why the glass rifle is not good for that role; it’s requires close-up work.

In WvW, the reason I don’t chase down Rifle warriors is because they run away and they start further way. Engineers will stay close.

Amadeus.5687:

Now go reroll all of you whiner’s to that warrior rifle you admire so much, more free kills for me ingame, and less kitten whining on these forum’s so we maybe finally can get some constructive talk up about the class! Ain’t gonna bother posting in here, mostly in respect for OP, so he can have a somewhat nice clean thread about his still (good and funny video)

I rerolled Elementalist, primarily. Good luck killing a dagger+focus elementalist with a glass rifle build. It’s exceptionally difficult.

I was going to fisk the post, but I realized it’s a nice holiday and so you deserve better than some cheap line-by-line response.

The point of that warrior video was to get 20k killshots, which is pretty absurd burst at the range it can be done with piercing. You can build a great, bursty GC rifle warrior that is fairly survivable too. It can easily match unaided Engineer damage while maintaining range.

This burst damage is middle-of-the-road compared to what other burst classes can do. There are a few reasons why; part of it is that the big-hit style of burst often bypasses %-health-trait triggers which can change the fight pretty dramatically. It narrows the margin for error on your opponent.

You keep saying engineer rifle is “fine”, but in the context of the whole class it is not fine. The only builds where it currently makes sense are your kinds of glass rifle builds (because kit and tank builds benefit more from multiple non-cooldown-sharing runes). And those builds are substantially more fragile than other classes’s GC builds, because they cannot maintain range and have to sacrifice auto-attacks and control attacks for their defense mechanisms.

The saving grace of the glass rifle engineer is that most people are so used to engineers being thick that they don’t really understand what you’re doing. This is in no small part due to the fact that the engineer population is small and seems to be decreasing. The engineer burst is so protracted, there are a lot of ways to mitigate it. Personally, I make a point of finding and destroying burst engineers with my upleveled elementalist in WvW. That build is by far the glassiest and weakest of the glass cannons and easiest to drop, you just need to break one stun and one easily-dodgable immobilize and they’re entirely tapped out.

Casia.4281:

3k?

That’s around the mean, yeah.

Casia.4281:

wrench is 6kx2, discharge is 2. One skill for 14k. Also, not a 3second cast.When5 stacks of might, the engi would do way more damage then that war.

Even against the upleveled targets wrench seldom hits that hard. Watch the video again. And killshot is an incredibly better set of mechanics than our Rifle 5. Citing 3sec cast when the alternative is a slow, telegraphed, ground-targetted skill that should only ever hit against immobilized opponents (and how many immos does this build rock? 1.)

This video is a good player using a substandard class. It’s somewhat ironic that it’s then paired with a upleveled guardian doing similarly well. Meanwhile what other classes consider “simple” burst patterns (e.g., the increasingly popular dagger/focus elementalist) exceeds everything this build can do in terms of burst while also having better survivability.

Casia.4281:

I mean, don’t get me wrong. killshot peircing is a bit odd.
The very high uptime on all those might stacks is a bit odd.
12% damage in a t1 trait is odd. Design choices I would not have made. and probably should be looked at.

Look, all this is out of scope for this thread. What’s in scope is this: The engineer build seen in this video does a lot to achieve what it does, has nearly all its utility skills dictated by the build (and only 1 of the utility slots is really a great choice, let’s not knock toolkit).

What is sacrificed, first and foremost, is a sense of being an engineer. Most of the swapping and flexibility mechanics are discarded to create this build. This build is basically trying to rebuild a rifle burst warrior, but with a result that is harder to use, higher risk, and sacrifices what few concessions to the class theme we have in our class mechanics. In this build, you play a rife warrior with fewer projectiles.

It’s not a fun build. It’s not a good build. It’s not a particularly effective build.

And I don’t mean to come down hard on you in particular with this point, but what people in the forums should be shouting for is not so much higher numbers, but to tune the skills we have so that we can play our class with the feel that was advertised. I am not demanding a T1 class because I cannot unsee the math (though I can’t). I am asking for a class that I like to play.

Focus actually improves your burst in a few notable ways compared to Off Dagger:

1. Focus has a series of skills that allow you to ignore a LOT of enemy incoming, allowing you to focus on performing your burst. This alos means you can use more of your utility slots for damage.
2. Focus has more immobilization, knockdown and aura, allowing you to prevent the enemy from moving away from your short or midrange burst.
3. Focus has an extra instant attack (also a blast finisher and magnetic aura provider) that directly improves your PBAoE burst in a way that RtL doesn’t, allowing you to stack might and ignore more enemy crowd control.

So it’s sort of a question of what you want your role to be. If you are working with a group, there is a lot to say for Focus. If you’re solo roaming, the power of RtL to disengage is hard to beat.

What sort of blows my mind is that the Engineer community is so abused that they’re calling a quick string of 3k crits on a glass cannon spec with no diversity in its utilities “good burst damage.” This is not good burst damage. Then someone posts a very simple warrior video where a single button press greatly exceeds that burst to demonstrate how mediocre this burst actually is, and people complain about his lack of skill.

People need to realize what’s going on here. They need to disentangle their sense of investment in the class with the efficacy of the class. They probably need to play some other classes so they realize that very few classes are the “easy mode” that they’re so proudly claiming Engineer isn’t.