Guild Wars 2

I don’t ger why Casia keeps saying that grenade 1 was the best aoe DPS in the game. Staff Elementalists could easily beat it over short sprints (which is what matters for PvE; few long fights involve standing still and dpsing without missing for >30s).

It wasn’t exactly a threat to other support DPS roles.

You all are getting a bad link because you’re using textile wrong. Read the freakin’ instructions.

Anyways, I do not get the choice to go 30 into inventions for a wimpy +30 power. Why not pull that out, get more precision and condition damage, and give your rifle kits the power to blind to give you some addition support and staying power? Here is a link to the build.

You could also go for speedy kits and 10% further faster recharge rate on throwable elixirs, but I confess to despising that goofy kit dance while running just for mediocre mobility that is impossible for this build to maintain in combat. The days of everyone feeling obligated to take the medkit are over.

Basically every build requires 30 in alchemy and nothing else matters.

AFAICT, there are no good solo roamer builds anymore; you simply lack the power to kill a similarly geared opponent and still have staying power to evade Nv1s (not like that was easy before, the only class you can reliably outrun is necromancers given how pokey and slow engineers are).

That said, the sigil kits add a lot of interesting support tricks. For example, bomb+fire can become a real threat if you don’t get focused, and vampiric effects are weirdly broken with flamethrower (go 0/30/0/30/10 and get backpack regenerator instead of hgh, gear power+toughness+vitality, and you will see what I mean when they try and kill you). Do not expect that to last long.

I do not think the “high aoe damage” variant of Engineer is really worth taking into WvW right now; they just don’t add much to a wvw situation unless you really focus on chokepoint control (and a thief is going to find you and turn you inside out if you start getting good at that). What you can do is be a heck of a sidekick by packing a LOT of knockdowns and blast finishers. A well-placed knockdown and net can freeze those annoying d/d roamer elementalists in their tracks and the humble Thumper (yes, thumper!) and Net turrets can make roaming thieves absolutely miserable when you’re defending siege.

You can succeed in WvW still, but you have to redefine success as “not getting badges or many kills.”

I love how furious Necromancers get about minor traits. Several classes have useless minor traits they ignore to get Major traits or stat points. Why is Necromancer special?

People get so furious they have minion skills at all; but reanimator is not broken, not useless, and the only downside to it is that it triggers character voiceovers.

Linc.6834:

BUT who really thought HGH was bad to begin with? There are so many other traits and skills in such bad shape its ridiculous

I did, I do. It’s still terrible. It’s just a gimmick then, and it’s only slightly less so now. If it gave might and protection, that might be something. Might and regen? Might be something. But just additional might? Gimmick.

> I’m wondering if they nerfed us like this because the weapon stats on kits will bring them back up?

The thing is, weapon stats on kits will only further serve to specialize engineers on their itemized roles and further move them away from being a mid-fight multi-role class. It’s crazy, but the more independent kits are from engineer stats, the better it is for the idea of a “hybrid” class because they can have their own itemization (the way elementalist conjurations can).

I don’t know if it’s all self-contradictory or not.

What I do know is that as it stands it seems like Anet considered engineer players to be people who crave “sidekick” style gameplay: “Sure thing boss whatever you don’t got I’ll cover. And that nice emo guy you’re with? He can handle the healing I guess he’s way better at clearing conditions anyways… I’ll just shore up what you two can’t do. And if your friend Thiefy McGankerstein is around she can handle the big numbers…” Which is a valid design decision, but fundamentally one I don’t like or want to play.

The only reason Murtaguh is around is to occasionally give Riggs a comedic foil and keep him from going over the edge, and to be a warm body holding a gun in some scenes. Maybe there are some people out there who’d like to play Murtaugh, but I’d rather play Riggs (or Riggs hurling a fireball).

My only decision now is do I delete my engineer or keep him in stasis or fully delete him. I in the interim, I won’t play a sidekick.

DreamOfACure.4382:

AND DON’T FORGET.

ANet is working on making all kits scale with weapon damage

That won’t actually fix any of the problems people have with the class.

DreamOfACure.4382:

So none of you have the right to complain. Grab some patience and munch on it.

1. No. I’m going to play another class. Why shouldn’t I? I’m told other classes have higher skill caps and I want to rise to that challenge.
2. I’ve been fairly patient. I’m just a bit sad because I spent a fair amount of time on my engineer; it was my first 80. Today I tried to take him into a fractal and was told no. “Your healing got nerfed, we need an ele.” It’s WoW all over again.

I’m pretty sure it’s not true. But, only one of each type of sigil can be in play at a time. So you can have a +5% damage sigil and that’s +5% across the board. You can also have an on-crit sigil but those all share the same cooldown so having multiples doesn’t work.

Or so I thought…

Tuccos.8592:

this patch is a colossal cheek for necromancers. ANet just laughs about us while buffing and improving other classes.

Just be happy you don’t have an engineer main. I’m thinking of trying to organize a mass delete in protest.

So I just did some mist tests too. I know non-condition-necros don’t have much to be happy about, but this terror change is really intense. You can see some really frightfully weirdly high condition damage. It’s like a “burst” condition damage.

In one test I did 5.8k in fear ticks, and that’s completely independent of anyone’s armor. There’s not many easy ways to mitigate fear.

I’m wondering if a hybrid condition damage build that itemizes to supplement toughness could work. It’s not an easy balance to hit in PvP, but it’s doable in WvW. Something like this could, if played correctly, actually live a long time.

Einherjar.6709:

In a heavy condition build pistols are viable. 20-25 stacks of bleeds all ticking for 120 damage each second, in addition to poison and burning is viable unless you’re grouping with other heavy condition build players (which honestly, I think everyone’s damaging conditions should be separate to be fair, but that is another issue entirely).

Well, except that pistols scale with power much better than they do with condition damage. You’d only start upping the condition damage secondary to power, or because you do not expect to be using pistols very often.

Einherjar.6709:

Your fallacy is presuming they’re not viable.

I think the “fallacy” is more Layne’s Law. Define “viable.” If “viable” means, “They are not completely absurd to play and can make it through basic content,” then yes–viable. If you mean, " The skill ceiling … is exceptional" and “is the king of versatility” then no.

I think ANet shouldn’t have added that writeup. It’s pretty demoralizing to be told that you spent a lot of class that’s weaker by design. Especially given how dubious the stated benefit is.

Sigils only work for the weapon they’re applied to

I thought we’ve all agreed this isn’t the case?

I want to play a versatile class, so I guess I’m supposed to be an Elementalist.

Penguin.5197:

Engineer
The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-December-14-2012

Its on second post. Man I don’t know what to think of kits anymore. Considering we still give up a utility slot I thought that was a price enough for “versatility”

I don’t understand it either. Because it’s not the case that the engineer can hybridize in mid-fight, so it’s in exactly the same boat as the Elementalist: you pick what you want to be at the start of the fight (in the Ele’s case, it’s staff vs Scep+? vs Dagger+?).

So why exactly does Engineer get a hybrid tax at all? Itemization is fixed. Maybe the engineers could get armor swap abilities?

As far as I can tell, the Engineer is a failed design concept. The idea of a mid-fight hybrid class is a really neat one, but mechanically very challenging to pull off. Of all the classes, Anet seems to have the least idea what to do with the Engineer. It’s clear they’ve hit their stride with the warrior, guardian, elementalist, thief, and they’re dialing in the Necromancer (this terror change is a great change) and ranger.

But the Engineer is basically a broken class right now. I think it’s one of those classes Anet envisioned having a high skill cap, but they haven’t figured out a way to do it that doesn’t break the game or fit into the existing framework.

I was hoping to have a reason to play my Engineer more. I don’t see one right now.

But check out the stealthy buff on Necromancers! The terror trait is seriously cool!

Halo.8976:

02 – Retaliation
But who needs retaliation anyway?

Just an aside, Retaliation scales with your power. This is an interesting fact exploited by some tank builds. Search Youtube for Tankcat to see a very humorous Engineer build that uses retaliation and confusion.

Retaliation is currently undervalued, not unlike confusion was in WvW awhile ago. It’s actually quite good on some builds.

Anka.3675:

Most Europeans would be just happy if they deployed the patch about first thing in the morning PST. That’d make it what, 6 pm CET. We’d have the entire evening to play and Anet would have the entire work day to keep it smooth.

Sorry for the offtopic, but…

Yeah, no. No software shop does anything before 10am in their timezone, and that’s pushing it. It’s kind of amazing ANet deploys on a Friday; only game companies do that when they have any sort of user volume. And the last few minutes before I bit software push: a busy time.

Liquid.9672:

Hey I use turrets! OHHHHHH you meant DROP turrets. No sorry I don’t do that. I only use the the toolbelt skill so I can trigger Static Discharge every 8 seconds. =)

Yeah that’s the sad truth. The rifle turret exists solely for its toolbelt skill. Until recently, the same was true of the toolkit. Then they made Magnet awesome and that all changed. Let’s hope the same happens with the rifle turret.

coglin.1496:

KirinDave.6451:

100% swiftness uptime is not high mobility. And there is more to “mobility” than your sprinting speed. A lot of very good abilities force us to stay in one local otherwise we eat a bad cooldown.

Your not even making sense. To sit here and openly claim that 33% speed boost avaliable 100% of the time is “not” mobility?

Most classes can have very high uptime on swiftness. In WvW, most prioritize that (or make sure to keep a speed boost on). Swiftness in general will also become less valuable after tonight for many classes as runspeed signets will all be bumped to 25%.

What’s more, other classes have better positioning abilities. Why is a thief so mobile? Multiple teleports (including one based on initiative from shortbow) in addition to access to good duration swiftness, and 25% runspeed boosts when they’re not. Why is an Elementalist so mobile? Perma-swiftness, multiple teleports and a very long-distance dash, and the ability to shrug off multiple conditions rapidly.

As it stands the only class less mobile than the Engineer is arguably the Necromancer. And that’s mostly because of the weird slow speed on Dark Path (which would not make them more mobile over a distance, but would let them do a lot more tricky stuff in tactical engagements).

Have a footrace with either class; you will not beat them in a sprint, nor in a marathon, even as you flip your medkit around your neck like a hula hoop.

coglin.1496:

“A lot” of our abilities require use to stay in “one local”? Your just making stuff up now.

Did my tablet correct “locale” to “local?” My bad, sorry about that. Turrets. You know, part of what you pop your elite for? They could use some improved effects, but actually a turret nest is a surprisingly powerful thing. Turret nesters exist as bunkers in tPvPs and while they’re not too popular, they can be very effective on some maps where the terrain keeps the turrets safe from random AoEs.

coglin.1496:

As far as casia’s post. See other post pointing out haw nearly every post casia makes omits numbers almost every time, uses inaccurate numbers, or actually does the math incorrectly.

I do not agree with every conclusion Casia draws, but I firmly agree that Pistol damage is inferior to Rifle damage. It’s high school math, and Rifle has superior burst; which is important for actually downing people.

coglin.1496:

What does someone making a guide for other classes have to do with anything?

Everyone seems to misinterpret their class as a “jack of all trades,” and acts like this is a unique condition their class must suffer. But it’s not, and most every class is, by design, trying to have many options.This idea that Engineer is more versatile somehow than other classes is something I am skeptical of. I feel much more versatile on the battlefield with my Warrior or Elementalist, and one of those is not even at L80 yet.

You saying, “We’re so versatile…” is just more of that same misapprehension.

I’m not sure why people are arguing Engineer is okay in its current state. Clearly the devs don’t think so. Up until now we’ve been suffering outright incompleteness when we log into them. It’s one of the least played classes in all venues. These are not the signs of a successful design.

coglin.1496:

KirinDave.6451:

will these things actually make the engineer a competitive and well-rounded class?

Sorry, but the engineer already is competitive. It is very arguably the most well rounded class, based on its various diversity.

Name a class, I will show you a class guide written by someone very good at that class calling them “the jack of all trades.” Even thief. Engineer is not particularly diverse.

coglin.1496:

We have 100% swiftness up time through multiple ways. Are you sure you played an engineer before making this thread?

100% swiftness uptime is not high mobility. And there is more to “mobility” than your sprinting speed. A lot of very good abilities force us to stay in one local otherwise we eat a bad cooldown.

So yes, low mobility. How many leap abilities do we have again? Just checking. How many faster-than-sprint moves? How many teleports? Even rifle 5 is slower in many circumstances.

coglin.1496:

We can use 1050 ranged pistols with a shield that has 900 rang attacks. So I am not sure why your making these inaccurate statements.

Pistol damage is pretty bad except in PvE when mobs clump up. See prior posts by Casia in this forum for a breakdown. People take rifle, but then they don’t have access to the shield, which is actually a very very good pair of skills.

So I’m not sure why you’re calling it inaccurate.

Casia.4281:

d/d can’t swap to any weapon for ranged damage.

Neither can thief. Who racks up more qq’s from the masses in WvW and PvP? Not the ranged damage part of the equation.

Casia.4281:

And doesn’t have toolbelt skills.
You can’t ignore 3/4’s of your professionals abilities.
And even rifle itself is not entirely melee..

If you blow all your cooldowns and pick the skills I listed you can do 20k bursts with a balance build if you’re lucky. You’re on cooldown for that kind of burst for a pretty long time and have no escape tools (or even good defense tools, all you have is toolkit 4!) at all, so it’s sort of pointless to take that build anywhere except to the DPS golems.

Casia.4281:

Elixif F and acid bath are better then you seem to think they are….

Oh no, I know F hits fairly hard, as can Acid Bath. But F is, um, also range 900…

Lord Aargadon.4135:

You’re also forgetting blunderbuss is not completely melee, its range is 500 I believe? You miss with HB or grenade barrage, Anets not like, “Ehh, yeah we feel bad so we’ll give you half the damage on target if you miss.” NO, its does not work that way. For its range, cd, damage, blunderbuss is probably perfectly fine.

Same as Casia said, #2&#3 EG skills are pretty darn good if you use it in the right situation.

I’m really confused how anyone can call Engineer Burst “fine” as it stands. Only necros are worse at burst damage. And Engineer conditions, as Casia has so diligently shown, are not a winning proposition.

The idea that “it is at range so that’s okay for it to be lower” only holds if you stay at range. For PvE, that’s probably fine. For PvP and WvW, Engineers have a paucity of mobility skills in general, and “permahaste” is something nearly every class has access to with minimal sacrifice.

Perhaps the coefficients are fine but the reality of the engineer utilities means you can’t ever spec in a way that makes it shine. I ran in WvW for nearly a month with that rifle build and I only saw the big numbers Casia is talking about against underleveled foes. I don’t have L80 exotics for my engineer, but last time I checked the difference in damage would not account for these claims.

I have other characters who outburst Engineers with hardly any commitment to power at all.

Casia.4281:

No? Its Auto attack is ranged.

Rifle burst in PvP/WvW is traditionally 2-5-3-4, which puts you in melee range.

Casia.4281:

one of the best auto attacks in the game.

Doesn’t really contribute to burst.

Casia.4281:

Toolbelt skills can be ranged. Wrench? barrage? Discharge?

They are not rifle-specific? And the util choices you have to take to get good, reliable sparks are pretty… unexciting. Rifle Turret, Battering Ram, and Tool Kit. Personally, I’ve had problems with sparks on grenade barrage.

Casia.4281:

I can swap to other ranged kits.

You mean Grenades, I assume? The Elixir Gun is not a kit we’d include in a discussion about burst damage.

Casia.4281:

10k flame grasp is glass cannon.

No. 16-20k is glass cannon. 10k is balance. 5-8k is bunker. Video proof trivially available.

Also, d/d is 100% melee.

And the Rifle’s burst isn’t?

DreamOfACure.4382:

Yeah… No.

3k is a big deal for 1 skill.

Written from Stockholm with love. Bunker Elementalists, Bunker Thieves and Balance Warriors do 3k crits routinely, with better cooldowns.

DreamOfACure.4382:

Try thinking of it terms of a your whole skill set.
It can be combo’d with other skills for amazing burst damage.

Since when is 15k burst on two unreliable skills combo’d with 2 other skills “amazing?”. Elementalists can crit 10k with flame grasp on balance builds alone, and so they have a 3 step teleporting 10-25k spike. GC builds can crit for this for over 30k in aggregate (20k single hit crits on soft targets!), and unlike Rifle 5 there is no gracefully parasailing engineer to see and trivially dodgeroll; by the time you see the lightning flash you’re already knocked down and on fire.

People seriously need to play other classes.

little.6509:

I am downloading something to attempt to record this to show you, but he will probably be hacking elsewhere by the time it finishes

Just report him.

We are not the people you need to convince.

Are there perhaps just multiple thieves? Because it’s pretty challenging to do this on a moving target even with infinite initiative.

Anvil Rock has a thief wolfpack and they’re pretty scary when they run 5 deep. Especially when they mix sword+dagger with dagger+dagger. Pretty much nothing can escape if they surround you.

TheAngryLlama.7641:

It seems every time I die (and as a lowbie elementalist its a lot) I end up having to respawn 5mins across the map because all the closest waypoints to me everytime are contested by an event or champion.

This is because Asura are the least played race, so there are far fewer random players running around mopping up the DE events.

shrewd.5319:

Well, this is just great. Everyone is becoming more thief-like, just with insanely better damage, tanking, healing, aoe, burst, mobility, evasion, etc, etc.

Necros need better mobility options badly, man. Don’t be mad about that. Have you seen the projectile speed on Dark Path, lately?

But in general mobility is absolutely essential to every class in WvW and PvP. The classes with best mobility (thief, elementalist, and to a lesser extent ranger and warrior) can do things the other classes simply cannot, and that’s probably a design failure.

shrewd.5319:

While thieves will be (surprise, surprise) unjustly nerfed and impaired even more. Every day that passes I’m becoming more disappointed with this game.

Thief is in pretty good shape, overall. Your burst damage is still great, you have attrition builds, your mobility is good, your core mechanics are sound. You only have one weapon combination that is lackluster!

Oldgrimm.8521:

yes, i know that no movement speed stacks, and the cap is 33% speed,

Fun fact: Engineers have a movement speed increaser that does stack. (perhaps due to a bug?) Its duration is short though, so don’t start writing angry letters to your congressmen.

Slic.2406:

1) Stop reacting slowly and being bad/slow in general.

2) Get good framerate/performance, so you at least eliminate the tool/hardware-end of being BAD.

3) Stop ****ing lagging.

4) Stop ****en lagging.

5) If you can’t stop lagging, then know that even if that thief rendered instantly, you’d still have a ridiculous skill-usage delay, and their attacks would hit you several seconds before they show up/register on your end, rendering the whole ‘culling’ issue moot.

Oh, and-

6) STOP LAGGING.

P. S. I know that I place a lot of importance on lag, but bear with me here. The ONLY time I had culling issues in small fights vs thieves was.. Take a guess. When I was LAGGING and had more than 150-200 ping. And I’ve been in a lot of fights. And I mean a WHOLE LOT.

How do you “stop lagging.” What do I tell comcast? Why am I allowed to lag against other classes?

I suspect Necormancers will be pleasantly surprised. I predict:

1. A static increase to the efficacy of leeching traits.
2. Better mobility options. We have at least one of these confirmed, but an increase to the projectile speed of Dark Path would be great.
3. General increasing of numbers on GM traits.
4. Increase in damage on Axe, and maybe even a blast finisher.

My ideas:

1. Flamethrower + Sigil of Ice. It will help make FT more viable in 1v1s, which is its big weakness.
2. Bomb Kit + Sigil of Flame. It will help make the bomb kit hit even harder in AoE.
3. Grenade Kit + Sigil of Air. More burst damage, you say?
4. Elixir Kit + Sigil of Debility or Sigil of Water. For PvE, you can stack a LOT of weakness with a few moments of auto-attaking, which is huge damage mitigation. For PvP/WvW, fumigate’s damage makes it lackluster but by leveraging its burst of speed in attacks you can attempt to force a crit for quick extra healing.
5. Tool Kit + Sigil of Rage. Quickness on one of our slowest but strongest single hit kits? Sounds good; magnet + quickness = Kneel Before Zod!

Pirate.4631:

Just invest in crit/crit gear while leveling and you will have an insanely high crit chance, it usually goes even higher if you go in WvW due to the weird scaling.

The most common class to see this happen is Warriors that stack precision early on; they can get buffs to precision per unused sigils that drive their crit through the roof. Sigils that give a bonus-per-kill like the Sigil of Perception can also break low-level scaling.

For engineers, it’s not hard to exceed 100% with sigils of perception because of our early access to long-duration fury.

So, the patch: fast approaching.

We’ve heard a few promises for the class: rebalancing some traits (e.g., HGH has been explicitly called out), some speedups, improvements to speed-increasing skills, kits will probably be able to interact with weapon sigils, and if we’re very lucky and the devs had time we may see weapon stats interacting with kits. And that’s great news, and we’re grateful to the devs for taking our feedback and paying attention.

But, the big question is: will these things actually make the engineer a competitive and well-rounded class? Do you think that any of the fundamental problems of the class (low mobility in a mobility dominated game; melee-range focus with few options non-turtle options for high durability vs. bursts; over-reliance on the alchemy tree to the point where many utility skills are pointless (e.g., Elixir B vs. every gadget); poor duration making condition application a dicey prospect, thus weakening pistol; weakness of knockback cc in PvE; turret targetting issues; etc) will be mitigated by these changes?

Of course we don’t have a crystals ball that will tell us what the patch notes will say (or what they will actually do), and any improvement is good improvement. But let’s talk long term here: what will actually bring Engineers inline to be as all-around useful as Warriors, Guardians, Theives and Elementalists? What can make the engineer playstyle more versatile and rewarding? What can bring us out of the “go fulltime grenades or fulltime elixir gun or go home?” What can salvage the versatility of the class–which is currently eclipsed by elementalist and warrior?

Crisvok.9307:

KirinDave.6451:

Engineer damage is pretty lackluster right now unless you use the grenade kit. We’re hoping to see some dials turned up a bit with tomorrow’s patch.

I’ll go further than that. Engineer damage is bad right now, and only the grenade kit has any shot at keeping up with most other classes.

i thought they nerfed the grenade kit? :S

They did nerf it a bit in PvP. It’s still the best sustained DPS in theorycraft. In PvE and PvP it’s fairly unreliable, but has the potential for best damage.

LOCO.1785:

KirinDave.6451:

those swirls will only be visible if the character is not culled

Wrong.

The swirls are always visible no matter what.

I can’t be sure if you’re right or wrong; I’ve never seen them when suffering an attack in a culling situation. I wonder if the Mac beta that I use has worse performance in this situation, or if I just missed them. There is no way for me to tell.

You know that “click on black mist to target” thing? That’s not reliable on the mac beta either.

The effect of regen and other small continuous heals tends to be underestimated in our community because we tend to think in terms of things like heartseeker thresholds. Barring those, regen and small continuous heals like our siphon traits can function like a second regen, and that can be very good. Siphon skills could probably use a (small coefficient) +healing component, but even now they can add up.

Think about Guardians, who have pretty small base health pools but perma-regen, and good armor and tend to have good toughness. You can read a lot about this (and the logic behind choosing vitality vs. toughness in this thread at gw2guru. High health leech necromancers just need some tuning up, but sometimes the stars will align and you’ll live a freakishly long time and it’ll feel a bit strange, and that’s what playing a Guardian is like all the time.

kenshinakh.3672:

Yes, you can tab target the thief, and watch carefully for the swirls. You can also bind a key to target nearest enemy. Hope that helps.

This is not a solution to the problem stated. For example, those swirls will only be visible if the character is not culled.

And you can sometimes tab target to a thief, but it’s not really helpful to be able to do so because by the time you can find them they’re already at a huge advantage or positioned to run if things go bad.

Engineer damage is pretty lackluster right now unless you use the grenade kit. We’re hoping to see some dials turned up a bit with tomorrow’s patch.

I’ll go further than that. Engineer damage is bad right now, and only the grenade kit has any shot at keeping up with most other classes.

Elementalist is the most depressing class for me, because I took a Necro and Engineer to 80 and all I have to show for it is an elementalist dancing over my corpse in WvW. :\

Casia.4281:

I’d probably be willing to disagree on the engi can’t do a good 8v1 build. I have not looked into locking one down admittedly, save looking at the tank cat, and thinking its too defensive oriented. Some more killing power equals staying power.

When the bomb kit gets sigils and the bomb kit range bug is fixed there are some very interesting builds there that are derivative of Tankcat. The only thing you can really do right now is stack confusion after getting 25 bloodlust sigils to buff your condition damage and finish peaking your power or stay at range with GC grenade builds and hope a thief doesn’t notice you.

With sigils there are more options. Sigils of Ice are going to skyrocket in price for bombers, grenadiers and flamethrowers, as they really help the 1v1 viability of such builds.

That said, I’d love to be proven wrong. I have 0 interest in trying to make anything but support engineers until I see evidence that it’s remotely possible to make a worthwhile balanced dps build for engineer. At least in WvW, I cannot find one after many hours of experimenting.

Casia.4281:

Your survival would be the same, and your offense would be dramatically higher.

Damage avoidance is far stronger then mitigation.

It is not a binary equation. You can have both. And the math on what happens when a high toughness, high healing, high vitality player also gets regeneration is pretty clear. It’s why Guardians are so tough to kill even with low base hp. Because frankly… Engineer as the “master of CC” is something of a misnomer.

If you think I have written off Engineers for damage from talking with me, I have. There is no reason to every build an engineer for damage as the system is currently defined in the domains I play in. You are always outshined significantly by another class that has better avoidance mechanisms.

As of right now, I find the class useless except for as a healbot. If you want a glass cannon DD support, take an Elementalist. They can easily beat grenade spam with a trivial rotation on staff, and they have better escapes and invulns which, unlike engineer, they get to keep while outputting damage. The idea that grenade spam somehow beats a 30/*/30 elementalist staff build on AoE is completely wrong when you throw arcane power in the mix.

We should make a separate thread for that discussion.

Again, look above.

I have to be honest, that last post? I cannot read it. It’s all but incoherent to me.

High toughness is NOT countering high damage. so, some hp and toughness to reduce damage by a % is fine. but the majority if your avoidance needs to be active skill based on dodge, CC, etc. [/quote]

Since this is a DPS thread.

The idea of an engineer dps thread is the problem. The class is broken for DPS right now and should not be used as such.

Travail.7390:

There are many times when every cantrip is on cooldown, but no one is CCing the Elementalist. With that many players around, that player should have died 10 times over.

Having fought against elementalists like that as an engineer, I can say it can be very tricky to be in range for good CC. The hallmark of that video is the absurd mobility. If you watch they set, you’ll see people do try to CC and they keep ending up out of range because of projectile travel time and well-executed use of LOS.

Note for example the frequent decision to fight amongst trees or other obstructions. This seemingly innocuous decision gives mobility players a pretty big edge. Watch the other videos in the series for really brilliant uses of the terrain for high-mobility characters.

Travail.7390:

Especially if anyone had bothered to chase the them down when they ran away. Half the reason that video seems so epic is because they allowed the elementalist to escape and heal up, over and over again.

It is all but impossible to stop a D/D elementalist from escaping. They can shrug off almost every CC with ease if they need to.

There is no strategy for Engineers that would allow them to win or even survive an 8v1 except turtle-mode (shield, toolkit shield, active elixir s, passive elixir s), and turtle mode is not sustainable; you’d need a 1-way door nearby like in WvW. Believe me, I’ve tried to find a way. Tankcat has nothing on Water D/D elementalists.

It’s unfortunate.

Casia.4281:

I appear to be talking in circles at this point. I prove a point, and people just repeat the same stuff without looking at the math.
300 cond from firearms was 115 damage per shot from cond on the bleed. + 32 av sharpshooter.
1223 cond from rabid+firearms was 207 damage per shot from cond on the bleed. + 46 ave sharpshooter.
Increased cond more then 400%, and damage increased less then100%.

I agree with this assessment.

Casia.4281:

You say, traiting for cond. yet, name the traits that scale cond damage. sharpshooter.
explosives.(does anyone spec explosives with cond for +duration?) 6% chance to bleed on explosions. Every other trait scales with power/crit/crit damage.

You’d do this with some kits, under the misguided assumption those kits work well.

Casia.4281:

The only situation where cond> power or crit is if you are gearing cond/vit/toughness for some reason. Which really. your damage would be so terrible, its not worth discussing. even in a tank build, it would be laughable.

In WvW, there are very good applications of a 0/30/0/30/10 (or 0/30/10/30/0) Flamethrower build that uses backpack regenerator, flamethrower, and elixir gun. And that build will only get better. For that specific build when you max toughness and vitality, condition damage can make sense because your damage is so bad no matter what you do with your power stacking that there’s no sense optimizing for it.

You’re there to soak up hits, cc, and provide healing and light fields for your group. It is an inglorious, boring, terrible job. But in that specific type of vanguard build for WvW, condition damage is superior because your DD options are pathetic and your condition damage options scale independently of that.

I am not sure I agree with the itemization rule that 1 condition damage = 1 power or 1 precision. But it is absolutely the case that if your power is rubbish and you follow that build, condition damage is your only real way to do any sort of appreciable DPS, even if it’s mediocre.

I’m not sure why you’re arguing against this. There are constant offsets you’re ignoring.

Casia.4281:

You would be building far too tanky. Ignoring the fact this is a dps thread. Wherein cond has been proven mathematically inferior even in high armor situations.

Only in PvP would it be “too tanky.” In WvW and PvE this build has uses. Especially if you can get confusion in there. Confusion is brokenly powerful in WvW, and you’re seeing a lot of builds start to reflect that.

Casia.4281:

so stop saying, “but vs high armor!!!” I just proved it still is less, then crit, alone.

You demonstrated (not proved, by the way) the derivative of the damage function is superior. I don’t disagree But you’re neglecting those troublesome constant offsets. In one specific kind of support tank build condition damage is better because you simply cannot maintain your goal of being an infinite and nigh-unkillable and highly obnoxious damage sink that does knockdowns, CCs, and heals for the group and not have rubbish direct damage. It is not possible. And given how much better damage other classes’ balance and offense builds do, I think you’re wasting your time when you gear an engineer for damage unless it’s support dps, and support DPS is a role that is losing popularity in WvW except when you’re low level and you can only itemize for one or two stats.

It’s sort of frustrating you won’t yield this point, because I agree with your math. I think you’re arguing against a different point than I making.

Mesmers function by confusing you, the player, so counter this by developing a good eye for the “odd man out” in a mesmer setup. You will never see a clone strafe, dodge roll, or backstep.

They also telegraph their burst tricks fairly obviously at range when they play burst specs. Keep at range from the clones and when they start running for you and not attacking you know it’s time to dodge. Remember that clones have the same goofy AI that every pet has, without the special pathing shortcuts ranger pets can take, so use the terrain to stagger out burst damage so that you have some time to deal with it.

The only specs you really should have trouble against in a 1v1 are these suicide specs that are gaining popularity, where they exploit clone overwrite mechanics to lock you down pretty severely and use spread-out phantasms.

I do not mean to denigrate your video (which is well edited, has good music, has you playing pretty smart, and has a few good matchups). It is a “good” engineer video.

But it’s mostly 1v1s unless you’re fighting some really horrible folks (the first few kills in your video are against some pretty helpless foes). Meanwhile this is a “good” elementalist video, which is… you think the elementalist has a death wish until you realize how good they are and the strategy they’re using.

Engineer needs buffs so bad. Every class should be capable of outplaying that many people to that degree when they’re that much better.

The Sylvari racials are actually really neat for defensive engineers. The Human racials are a bit less exciting except for the heal, which is rather strong and has a direct ground targeted and fairly strong AoE heal.

People love the Char abilities, but I really cannot see why. Between that and the rather anemic personal storylines for the Charr, the only reason I could see that you’d want to play one is because you like cats that think they’re people.

As the current system stands, the reason you go condition damage as an engineer primary is because your itemization and traits don’t allow you you stack sufficient power. If you’re 30 deep in Marksmanship and can’t be itemizing power because you’re going for crazy durability then your only option is to go cond because it’s your only way to get around enemy toughness.

Engineers also have very good condition output; they don’t do big long-duration conditions but instead continually apply shortlived ones, minimizing the effect of condition cleaners. So there is nice synergy there.

So there is a place for condition damage, but only with specific builds that can’t itemize for power for whatever reason.

Either way, pistol needs to be improved in either its ROF (the way it used to be, I’m told) or its damage (which would be disappointing).

Actually the medkit is one of the engineer’s best options. It provides easy access to a “healing skill” by swapping into it (many of our healing skills don’t count as healing skills so that’s nice). It lets you lay down “preventative” medpacks, and gives an extra condition cure and access to fury and swiftness. The toolbelt skill is plenty strong and can be traited to really good cooldown.

The reason it feels clunky to use in combat is because it’s meant to be used before combat, or during an interlude as you’re disengaging and LOS-ing.