Guild Wars 2

It’s weird because the engineer down state seems to be built with this idea that the engineer was at range and that pulling the enemy out from the fray would be helpful to the team (same with chilling at a distance). But the reality is only a few builds maintain distance for any time, and the engineer is more of a midrange-to-melee class.

That said, if they just made skill 3 available with no cooldown (like they did for Elementalists with skill 2) then engineers would have an area stomp interrupt and a single stomp interrupt, making them fairly hard to stomp in NvN situations, and that’d be great.

tigirius.9014:

I guess what I’m trying to say is I’d really REALLY like to play my engineer again..thanks.

The first 40 levels of necro are a good way to kill time. That class is really fun, and has a lot of the same “support, damage, and offtank” functions that Engineer has.

Asum.4960:

You chased a roamer.
Problem detected.

Why?

Maybe they were siege-ing?

Ahlen.7591:

KirinDave.6451:

Kamahl.3621:

KirinDave.6451:

The great thing about a light field is that its blast finisher is Area Retaliation. And Engineers have plentiful blast finishers.

3s AoE retaliation versus 1.2k AoE healing per blast.

I’m not sure there’s a debate here, merely pointing out how one dwarfs the other.

Given how retaliation scales and stacks duration and engineers can trivially drop 2-4 blast finishers in rapid succession, I’m actually in favor of the retaliation. It’s pretty rare to both need to suddenly heal 5k and have the capacity to coordinate it with all cooldowns up. Whereas big retaliation is something that is always useful for the group unless you’re totally braindead.

I’m not saying a water field in our arsenal woudn’t be nice, but a light field shouldn’t be underestimated.

If you’re using blast finishers on light over fire or water, you are doing it wrong.

100% wrong.

Oh no, fire is great. I’d just rather not waste a utility slot on the flamethrower just for periodic might stacking. Rolling w/ an elementalist… if they’re dropping fire fields I’d blast with them.

I’m just saying that water blast finishers are sometimes incredibly useful, light blast finishers are somewhat useful all the time, and the projectile finish is good.

But I’m of the opinion that, in general, might is overvalued as a buff unless its heavily stacked. I’d much rather be clearing poisons and cripples than making someone’s damage number slightly higher.

SoulstitchMMO.1396

How many blast finishers does the average Engineer actually run with?

In a field-heavy group, you can run with at least one easily. And you should, because as it stands Engineers have basically no place DPSing even in PvE content unless you’re mighty short on DPS classes in the group. Grenades just aren’t that good, they’re just the best we have. Hopefully that’ll change with the wintersday patch.

NightyNight.1823:

Oh common ,8 people ? What were you doing ,sitting pretty?He can’t stay in stealth forever .When he shows up , imobilise , stun , nuke.Shouldn’t be a problem for 8 people LOL.But I bet you’re just exagerating or lying.Lame..

Well he probably isn’t. I’ve seen this happen even against coordinated groups. Even without a bunch of bads.

A common example of where this can happen in WvW and a thief makes an impact is around siege engines. A lot of times you and a stealth-heavy thief can just agree to disagree and move on about your business, but when you don’t have that option it can be just brutal. Very few classes have AoE sufficient to deter a thief, and those people are usually so glassily spec’d that they make tasty first targets.

The only time I’ve ever successfully driven thieves off (with my admittedly underpowered and badly-in-need-of-fixes engineer that basically can never beat a stealth thief in a million years) in a situation like that is by knocking them off cliffs. And that generally only works once (and terrain doesn’t allow it).

I’m not sure what happened with the OP, but it’s definitely the case that sometimes thief stealth is ludicrously powerful and there really should be some way to ward them off that doesn’t involve terrain or some sort of high-level coordination or glass cannon aoe. And “dodging and understanding the thief” is not a valid answer. That’s what you do against every class.

Kamahl.3621:

KirinDave.6451:

The great thing about a light field is that its blast finisher is Area Retaliation. And Engineers have plentiful blast finishers.

3s AoE retaliation versus 1.2k AoE healing per blast.

I’m not sure there’s a debate here, merely pointing out how one dwarfs the other.

Given how retaliation scales and stacks duration and engineers can trivially drop 2-4 blast finishers in rapid succession, I’m actually in favor of the retaliation. It’s pretty rare to both need to suddenly heal 5k and have the capacity to coordinate it with all cooldowns up. Whereas big retaliation is something that is always useful for the group unless you’re totally braindead.

I’m not saying a water field in our arsenal woudn’t be nice, but a light field shouldn’t be underestimated.

Architect.3851:

I recently just started the game, the thief totally got me really bored. I now want to start a mesmer but im having a tough time picking out a race, as all of them are beneficial. What is your race ? and what’s a good suggestion for a starter * did not play GW1

My advice is: be prepared for it to be more difficult than thief. Mesmer is a very slow-starting profession. Once you hit Level 40 and can get Deceptive Evasion to up your clone generation rate, it can be slow going.

Carighan.6758:

What I mean is, when they apply nerf they listen to the sPvP side of the complaints only.

Well sPvP is supposed to be “fair”. WvW is definitely not using “fairness” as a design goal. They set up wildly asymmetrical systems all the time. I think that’s part of what maks it fun.

Carighan.6758:

The WvW side was: For all I care Portal could be 5s CD, so long as it’s limited to 5 players per Portal spawned.

5 golems is still enough to make Portal earth-shakingly powerful. And a 5 second cooldown would make Mesmers basically unkillable except by a vastly superior force.

Carighan.6758:

What happened? 90s CD. Which made the skill atrocious to use in PvE, and it was already not fun due to the excessively long CD of 60s before (given the use, in PvE). Now the sPvPers are a tad less unhappy, but in WvW raid-teleportation is entirely untouched, you only did it every 2-3 minutes anyhow, never needed to do it more often.

Portal bombing was only one use. See the videos in the shatter-cat thread. Your proposed changes would only make portal stronger in WvW.

KayZee.9018:

It makes me a little sad that my super elixirs are light fields. Condition removal is nice, but i feel like engineers have a ton of that already. It’d be nice to get a more reliable water field that isn’t the pulse on healing turret.

The great thing about a light field is that its blast finisher is Area Retaliation. And Engineers have plentiful blast finishers.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Today on SoR BL in WvW, before the game reset, our force went to the southern windmill to engage in duels with a guardian from BG. The guardian was very skilled with their class, and was running some insane tanky/toughness/vit/healing build with crazy boons and regens. Out of the numerous people who dueled him, none got him below 70% health, and 70% was rare. Most couldn’t scratch him, while he wore everybody down. Only a few players, three or four, could counter-tank him and had to call stalemate. They could go toe to toe (with a lot of effort) and stay up, but couldn’t deal any damage to him whatsoever. Then I entered with my mes. Using my CD confusion build (sceptre/torch for all you haters out there), I was taking him down to a slither of health where he had to, for the first time out of all the matches I watched, disengage and flee from me in order to survive. Yes it required effort and a fair amount of skill, but it showed he was vulnerable.

Unfortunately my daughter came in and started talking to me, I messed up my CD’s, and things went south in the end, but I know I made my point when the Guardian contacted me to compliment me on the fight.

In conclusion, I disagree that mesmers are weak compared to other classes. In any engagement there will be some way to outplay your opponent. You just have to find it, and play to win. The guardians you’ve encountered have obviously found what works against YOU (not your class, generally speaking).

Confusion builds are really strong in WvW, and under appreciated.

Halcyon.7352:

Orion the Cursed.1206:

@KirinDave~“The class is not “broken.” It’s incomplete. In terms of buggy skills, I think the engineers are actually in a better place compared to many other classes I’ve played. See mesmer phantasms and necromancer minions for examples of really awkward bugs.”

Mesmer illusions are mostly ok but OMG im so sick of my necro minions just standing still while i fight and die.

The recent patch a week or so ago pretty well broke Mesmer Illusions. They just stand around doing nothing for several seconds. (Not sure if it’s been fixed)

It’s not entirely true. That delay has been there for a long time. The big problem is the inability to actually hit a moving target despite passing right through them.

As for leveling a necro, stack power, dagger+warhorn, wells. Spec for better vampirc. It’s basically an ambulatory mob blender until Orr. You turn everything into smoothies except for champions and brute-type vets.

Lackluster? Compared to what, Time Warp? Perhaps you’d like Mortar or Tornado instead?

Plague Form can be used offensively to spearhead assaults into larger groups in WvW and its devastating when used this way. In PvP plague can tip the balance of a mid point very suddenly. Plague is one if the better elite skills. It’s no Time Warp, but its not Elixir X either.

Ayanavi.190

Necros. They wipe out conditions, wipe out your boons, buff themselves…

Necros do a very poor job of buffing themselves, and would kill for arcane thievery. Mesmers have superior burst condition support, but much of it is tough to manage because you have to carry the conditions on yourself.

I’ve leveled ele and found it hilariously easier than mesmer

Mesmer is no doubt very difficult until you get to 40, then its not bad at all. Necros are easy to level if you go power+healing, but that is a relatively new discovery. Most people didn’t do it that way.

The grass may be greener, but Mesmer is pretty sub-par in every field – Not necessarily because we’re bad, but because we’re diverse. We can do everything moderately well. But we can’t do anything exceedingly well.

Actually there is one thing that Mesmers do incredibly well: they confuse human opponents. Even with all the tricks, the sheer amount of havoc a mesmer sits in the middle of is a powerful tool. Its similar to why thief can be so strong. glass cannon builds are actually possible to field and survive with even in high level play.

Oh, and nearly everyone calls their favorite classe es “unspecialised”. Even thieves. Seriously! Its part of GW2’s novel design.

As a side note: This is the first I’m hearing about weapon sigils not working for engi’s. You guys got my respect, I hear it’s a real task juggling all your kits for effective combat.

Engineer kits currently do not benefit from sigils or weapon stats. Engineers cannot benefit from swap-to sigils. Turrets similarly do not scale with gear, nor do kits.

If you want to know what class is currently broken the most, look no further.

hackks.3687:

bah Plague form just turns you into a punching bag. all it’s good for is buying you time till help can arrive.

It’s one of the best support abilities out there. PvP, WvW, PvE, if you have a teammate you have a friend.

I’m still sort of stunned people don’t know how to read the damage numbers they’re seeing for channeled attacks.

The human racial toolkit abilities are pretty cool. The heal skill is a classic AoE immediate heal!

Creature.4038:

Mesmers seem to have become quite popular class, the least played would be either engineer or necro.

I think a lot of people here forget what a big playerbase GW2 has. Mesmers are very tedious to level past 40 right now (right around L20 it feels like you’re dragging yourself across a beach with your eyelids). So I think a lot of the casual PvE crowd doesn’t use them.

In the more dedicated circles, you see more mesmers because they’re a great class once you get them out of their awkward adolescence.

SteepledHat.1345:

to play mesmer over other classes. Every single other class seems superior. More damage, traits that don’t depend on clones, and easier gameplay. We’ve been damaged to the point that we aren’t effective. Five minutes with a guardian and I could tell you two things.

People who have leveled engineers, necromancers & elementalists are rolling their eyes so hard it may cause injury.

SteepledHat.1345:

I do well as a mesmer. But I know that with any other class I’ll do much better.

People who have leveled Engineers are still rolling their eyes, but this gives them an opportunity to check the calendar which has the Wintersday patch circled in bright red ink because that’s supposedly the day they finally get to use weapon sigils.

SteepledHat.1345:

Why bother with it when you can rofl stomp everyone with a guardian warrior or thief? Can someone tell me why I’m wrong? Or am I?

You cannot rofl-stomp everyone with one guardian or thief build. Thieves, warriors and guardians are definitely in a nice position in PvP right now, but I’d argue that if we’re talking PvP then Mesmers definitely have a place. In WvW, mesmers are basically required. In PvE, they can do a lot of good in dungeon runs.

Contrast and compare this to other classes who’s mechanics are either incomplete or not yet finely tuned to be effective in every context.

You do not realize how green the grass appears on your side of the fence.

Just fyi, in many cases the pistol still scales better with power than with condition damage. So the main reason to go condition is as a bumper for your power or for cases where you’re doing conditions with a kit a lot.

phobia.3958:

I do, Guess its the Bi Polar in me. I cant pick, Guess Im doomed

My advice is just keep doodling around until the Wintersday patch. Engineers are about to get a whole lot easier to level if ANet keeps their promise to make weapon sigils work with kits.

Petezahut.3068:

how do you deal with someone that knows how to get you out of your blocks? [fears/pulls from necros,warriors,other toolkit engis and mesmers]

The counter to the solo variant this build is someone who is better than you and is a condition build.

micshwoof is good enough that in WvW he seldom encounters people who are both better and understand what he’s doing in time to counter it. That’s what makes WvW so much fun! Even bad builds can surprise you to an extent that you lose.

proxy.7963:

You seem to be fine with the concept of the class being less effective in situations than others, but that doesn’t precluded me from enjoying it regardless.

I enjoy my engineer time as well. I just wish it was more effective.

proxy.7963:

I accept that Engineer might not be living up to the current standards of other classes, but it’s by no means impossible to succeed. By holding it to the standards of other classes as it currently is, you’re likely to end up being disappointed – which is what the OP appeared to be doing.

These are not unfair standards. Why would you hold them to any other standards? What other standards could you possibly hold them to? I submit it’s possible to have fun with every class, race, and gender choice.

proxy.7963:

The idea that the class needs to be ‘competitive’ isn’t something I’m personally bothered about – it succeeds in being engaging for me. If that’s good for others – great. If not and it’s being looked at – super.

The only time it bothers me (in PvE) is when I go into explores with my guildmates or go into WvW. For explores, I’m just a wee bit tired of how pigeonholed I am. The Engineer class has a ton of diversity but most of what actually helps is grenades and light fields and if you’re lucky (or doing lower level content), CCing some trash.

Siofra Crumble.2098:

Funny. I tell people not to listen to people like you who just don’t seem to understand how it all works.

It’s not like I haven’t asked how it all works, or given it a solid try. I just watch even classes that people say are not good at pve grinding tear through Orr and know that I have no idea how I could possibly replicate what they’re doing as quickly with my engineer.

I do not have a full set of exotics for it yet, but throughout my engineer leveling process there has been “kill the veteran and friends to get to x” content that I couldn’t solo reliably. It wasn’t necessarily dying, sometimes the respawn rate simply forced me to retreat.

For example, here is a necromancer demonstrating melee and life drain in Orr with a pretty ambitious pulls. (it starts off slow but ends up pretty impressive). And Life Drain? Currently doesn’t scale right.

If you can replicate this feat reliably and as quickly, please post somewhere about how. If I am just not smart enough to be an engineer–so be it. I’ll lean on your brain. Please tell me. The best I’ve ever seen for mass pulls is to blind tank with the smoke turret and flamethrower then kite with the rifle; and many people I’ve shown that technique to say it’s much more reliable than what they were doing.

Siofra Crumble.2098:

I’ve played 6/8 classes for a decent amount of time in PvE and played everything in sPvP for a day or two.
Engineer was the only class that really stood out to me.

I like the Engineer class too. Its why I haven’t cleared the slot. I’m just not going to pretend that things are okay as they stand. There is a reason that you hear so much more talk about support and tank engineers compared to dps engineers; the healing and support skills scale properly and are much more finished than the dps side of the kits.

Siofra Crumble.2098:

Perhaps you should just come to grips with the fact that engineer is not for you.

The engineer not having reliable access to sigils is not my personal failing. You know what makes leveling a whole lot easier for warriors? Sigils of Bloodlust. Engineers having some very very very weak damage coefficients for some skills is not me failing; it’s a lack of balance tuning. The engineer’s offensive turrets not scaling in health and output with character stats is not my personal failing.

proxy.7963:

Chase your dreams, OP. Get that Warrior toon, that giant suit of armour and a big honking sword, and never look back. Or accept that playing as an Engineer isn’t Easy Street and that you’ve got to be on the ball to actually succeed.

This “I am better than you” mentality is not great, because it gets in the way of discussing what and how the Engineer needs upwards tweaking. It’s a class that can’t interact important stuff like sigils (so excited to see this on Wintersday) and who’s abilities by and large do not scale with gear, and everyone knows that has to change.

Maybe you’re way more awesome than the OP. Maybe not. But no one in this thread is saying, “Engineer is too many APM.” We’re saying, “Even if I do what the engineer asks me to do, the class is still lackluster.”

Kyon.9735:

Yes, engineer skills and traits are broken at most… but many people like me reached 80 without any problems at all. Seriously, you can’t just blame how broken a class is. If you’re having a hard time rolling an engineer yet other people aren’t, doesn’t it simply mean YOU are the one incapable of utilizing the class?

The class is not “broken.” It’s incomplete. In terms of buggy skills, I think the engineers are actually in a better place compared to many other classes I’ve played. See mesmer phantasms and necromancer minions for examples of really awkward bugs.

I have an engineer at L80, and I can kill things with it. I just know that with my necro, mesmer and thief I have a much easier time of things in solo world PvE. A much easier time. And while you might say, “That is because thief damage is broken!” and that could be argued (I don’t agree, in PvE or PvP) you certainly can’t argue that about necromancer or mesmer.

And if I hadn’t decided to roll a mesmer and necro and elementalist, I wouldn’t have known this. A lot of people I talk to on my server asking for help with engineer don’t have any grounds for comparison, and when they see what the situation actually is they get a bit upset about it (like the OP).

Engineer is playable, but needs a lot of ongoing work to be competitive. Maybe I am just a terrible player, but I do a lot more than I see most engineers trying to do. I set up blast chains for my groups, I pre-set turrets… I do all these things and more. It is a lot more effort than other classes have for world PvE and dungeon PvE, and the results are not really “better.” In many cases they’re actually worse. And there is only so far that an argument of “skill diversity” can go.

At least ANet has told us they agree that the class needs work, and told us what’s next and what’s ongoing. I have a lot of character slots, but right now my engineer stays towards the back of the list unless I feel like tankcat-ing around WvW.

Halcyon.7352:

Read for yourself:
http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/guild-wars-2-gender-profession-race-and-craft-statistics-released-15061

Looks like I got engineer and necromancer reversed. Shame on me. Mesmer was still the least played class at the time.

That makes me want to play it more. Once they fix the phantasm miss bugs that class will be fine, and it’s easily one of the most interesting mechanics I’ve tried in a mmo. It is like turning a thief inside out.

By the way: even with minion problems the necromancer is an amazing class to play. Seems simple, but is actually a very complex and subtle class. Very close to being done, too. They could use some traint amps and their axe skills need improvement.

MikeT.9428:

I would say it’s between engineer and necromancer for the lowest. At least for the WvW classes I regularly run into. Mesmers have probably gone up and rangers have probably gone down from that census.

I think you’re seeing a lot more Necromancers in PvE as people see the viability of power dagger+warhorn necros for world content. My necro has been leveling in open world PvE at a pace that exceeds any other class I’ve tried but Warrior.

People keep saying, “Engineer is fine! Our DPS is great!”

Do not listen to these people. Engineer is not “fine.” It’s not actually “done,” to a degree that seems greater than most other classes. About half the engineer’s utility is completely divorced from gear choices that other players can make. For example, certain minor and major weapon sigils make leveling much easier, but Engineers are only just going to get access to them in the next patch (we hope).

It is absolutely a harder class to world PvE grind (pre-80) with than many others (possibly excepting mesmer, which is quite hard to work with pre-L40). I have done that grind and I am still wondering what the “right” way to do it is. I suspect anyone who tells you otherwise is not objectively assessing the class, and is instead saying “I enjoy the playstyle.” Engineer has the potential to be a very fun and powerful class, but is currently limited pending patches and balance tweaks.

In sharp contrast to this: power dagger+well+vampire necromancers can basically carve a bloody swath across any map. Warriors are unstoppable engines of destruction. Greatsword Guardians are not terribly exciting, but basically trivialize anything but veteran adds. Shortbow rangers with tanky pets are seldom in any real danger.

One thing that you can do well pre-80 as an engineer is in PvE dungeon runs for support. A lot of the story mode dungeons have many enemies susceptible to knockback, and you can design dungeon builds with plentiful blast finishers that the earlier, easier content rewards heavily. This in addition to WvW zerging (even post tweak, grenade engineers make sieges way easier) is where the bulk of my levels came from on my engineers.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Gav.1425:

Why use a +20% swiftness 4th bonus rune when you can use two +15% buff duration 2nd bonus runes (Water and Monk)?

Am I missing something?

In addition to the +20% swiftness duration, the sixth centaur rune gives area swiftness for 10 seconds when you use a heal skill. So, using six centaur runes and the med kit would be perma-swiftness, even without any other traits or + boon duration.

It’s even better than that, because of the way “heal skill” is counted for engineers wearing the medkit. Honestly, its probably a bug the way it currently works.

JonPeters.5630:

Step two is to get the weapon stats to apply to kits as well. We felt sigils was the more important first step because it creates build diversity. Flamethrower with sigil of air? Yes please.

Imma let you finish, but I just wanna say that air sigil is probably not the most exciting sigil to put on the flamethrower. It’ll be pretty exciting with ft+chill or ft+more aoe blasts.

Air on grenades, on the other hand? Deploy your wicked laughter.

RoRo.8270:

Halcyon.7352:

… You don’t need any traits or any build to have perma-Swiftness as an engineer. Medkit Drop Stimulant for 10s Swiftness every 20, and elixir B for an additional 10.

That’s without Elixir H and Toss B, too. Speedy Kits is a waste of a major, imo.

Medkit is really only good for dungeons and certain situations elixir h is better for solo but this depends on the build also

Elixir H and Healing Turret are pretty awesome, but the medkit can give you fury as you go into combat and provides an extra condition cure.

Also, switching to Medkit counts as “using a heal skill” for the Performance Enhancement trait (I don’t think you even need kit enhancement for this to be true). If you take that trait, MedKit is a crazy-awesome way to stack might, limited only by a modest internal cooldown. A 20/30/0/20/0 or 20/30/0/10/10 build can be really interesting flamethrower vanguard build. It will be even more interesting on the wintersday patch when weapon sigils can affect flamethrower. Screw FT+Air, I want FT+Ice. AoE chill on crit with juggernaught. Mix in a net turret and rifle for extra immobilizes and you’ll have an incredible control build with decent AoE damage on a build that’s pretty easy to itemize for tankiness.

If you want inexpensive blast finishers, slot the thumper turret. You get an instant blast finisher on your bar, and you can drop and detonate the turret for another.

It’s actually not bad in WvW in defensive situations; you can drop a field, use your toolbar skill for a blast finisher, drop a thumper turret, overcharge it right as you drop it for a quick blowout and blast finisher if you need some breathing room, then detonate the turret for another blast finisher, all in the span of a second or so.

I actually think turrets are sort of neglected in WvW. When traited they’re a great counter to a lot of burst and melee builds. Not unlike mesmer clones and phantasms, you need to keep your eye on them to know when to detonate them. The ability to mix area retaliation into your builds is pretty amazing (as high power retaliation builds like the Tankcat show).

GoZero.9708:

Every turret except the Rifle Turret has a useless toolbelt skill (mostly because of absurd C/D times) And again, they all have no mobility and are cripplingly fragile.

The net turret in conjunction with the rifle gives you all of the immobilizes. All of them. It’s pretty crazy how much immobilization you can spike if you want to.

So as I’ve been leveling other characters waiting for ANet to hopefully unbreak Engineer a little bit, I’ve noticed that I was having a really rough time with Engineers and open-world leveling. This can’t all be the class, some of it has got to be me doing it wrong.

And so I ask you, gentle forumites: How do you grind multiple enemies at once in Orr? Do you have a video of it? Because compared to what I can do with my necromancer & mesmer, Engineer seems incredibly slow if I use a turret tanking trick or really risky if I use glass rifles.

I suspect the answer is, “I lean on grenades like I’ve got no legs,” but after combing youtube there is actually very few good and current resources on engineer leveling.

Could it be fluctuations as you leve and your gear expires?

I’ve noticed that my Necromancer can easily keep gear for 10 levels and carve a bloody swath across the map. After being unable to ever do that with Engineer (I’ve never had anything but a terrible experience with engineer pve), it was quite a shock.

Whizzy.5723:

Is Toolkit stronger than Flamethrower? DMG-wise?

The flamethrower is deceptively weak. It does hit a nice area once you understand the targetting, though.

Casia.4281:

If you want to complain about rifle, the melee nature is something.

Not to beat a dead horse, but it’s everything. Lots of other classes can use other mechanics to reduce incoming damage; the result is they can go glass cannon in PvE with much less risk.

Engineers cannot, so they cannot itemize in a way that maximize their output. I’ve yet to see someone show me an engineer build itemized fully in crit and power that is not incredibly difficult to use in explorables.

And that’s fine! But then the rifle’s skill coefficients should be amped up for engineers to compensate. It’s a high-risk weapon with some single-target control, but it should have damage coefficients as such.

Casia.4281:

Pets.. turrets? toolbelt skills?

Only a few toolbelt skills can be used while channeling or auto-attacking. It’s unfortunate how many. And without investing in tools for the static discharge, very few will substantially up your DPS. I guess Incendiary Ammo is your best bet?

Do coated bullets apply the bleed to every target the touch? I know the “explosion” part of the pistol doesn’t spread bleed. But if the bullets spread bleed as they pass through targets that’s a whole different story.

Casia.4281:

Longbow 2 is a 5second cast. Not cooldown. CAST.
if you can’t do 5-6k over 5seconds, with rifle or grenades, something is very wrong.
Rifle 1 auto attack should beat that hands down.
It hits 6 times in that 5s.

Rifles have the highest average damage. (burst)
Rifle 986-1205 1096 average.
greatsword 995-1100 1047 average.
Longbow. 920-1080 1000 average.

1205 means rifles can burst higher.
And 1096 average means they average more. 9.6% higher then long bows in fact.
Pistols are
876-1029 953 average. Rifles hit for 15% higher then pistols innately.
Kits are
871-969. 920 average. Rifles hit for 19% more then kits innately.(+more stats)

This explanation totally ignores skill coefficients and mechanics. Rifle can burst, but its burst involves moving int melee range and using the slow rifle 5, and to some extent relying on immobilize which doesn’t work on a lot of things in PvE.

The ranger isn’t just doing 5k in their cast as well, as their pet damage is not insignificant. So at range you have about 6 shots from the rifle to do 5k. It means you have to be doing about 800 on average. But unlike the ranger, you can’t neglect toughness or vitality nearly so much without being a liability to your group if you want to burst.

Maybe you have gear to make the rifle hit that hard in PvE. My rifle hits certainly aren’t hitting that hard. They might even out if we count the conditions from traits. But then we’re reaching parity with a single skill while ignoring pet damage.

Why are people so eager to defend the engineer’s rifle as it stands? It’s not bad, it just needs slightly more kick because engineers cannot go as glassy as many other classes due to the skill mechanics.

Coltz.5617:

I agree, med kits refinement skill – small explosion – is just as amazingly useful as necromancers jagged horrors.

At least jagged horrors sometimes confuse opponent targetting.

Coltz.5617

Well, in another thread it was mentioned they are trying to apply sigils to work on kits as well as primary weps base dmg. if the rifle dmg is too high then grenades would be too op.
I am a primary rifle build myself and I agree the dmg really sux though.

The rifle skill coefficients need to be upped. This need not affect anything else. Every skills damaged is determined by a formula: (coefficient * weaponDamage * yourTotalPower) / enemysArmor. Each skill has a specific coefficient they could (and should, for the rifle) tweak.

They should also increase the power of pistols by improving the rate of fire back to the old rate. It was not OP then and it’d only be more reasonable now.

I have hope that my time in engineer is not wasted, after Jon posted.

Liquid.9672:

KirinDave.6451:

Great video!

I’m not sure how much actual impact on a WvW game this build can really have though. It really relies on you being focused. If there was room for the bomb kit, then we could see some real havoc.

Well, you could conceivably replace Elixir S/U with Bomb kit. Sure there’s a trade off but it could add a fun dynamic to the build. In fact, I may give this a go in a sPvP hot join match this week.

The sheer awesomeness of having Big Ol’ Bomb, Bomb 4 and Bomb 5 really do beg for someone to try. I’m surprised there are Engineers left in sPvP though!

Great video!

I’m not sure how much actual impact on a WvW game this build can really have though. It really relies on you being focused. If there was room for the bomb kit, then we could see some real havoc.

hydeaut.1758:

Kain Francois.4328:

All my damage is no way comparable to my Warrior and without epic support options I feel useless in dungeons and fractals.

I watched a lot of fractal-vids on youtube lateley and just went “wtf” when I saw some damage-numbers popping up. Even these “underpowered” Rangers pull out 5k-6k longranged auto-aimed damage on longbow skill #2 with low cooldown. That doesn´t really make my rifle look good and even my grenade-barrage is worse on single targets.

We can have CC, condition removal and some survivability, but concerning damage and heals we are very limited compared to others.

This is why I always roll my eyes when people talk about Rifle’s amazing burst damage.

In PvP, it’s very hard to land. In PvE, it puts you into situations where you’re likely to go down. And at the end of the day it doesn’t matter because everyone else’s attacks have better modifiers and/pr their builds have room for big crits.

ANet really needs to improve the rifle’s damage. They also need to un-nerf the pistol. So long as kits don’t pick up weapon features, Engineers are reliant on their base weapons for the bulk of their damage. Right now those weapons are sub-par (pistol is not a great dps weapon compared to others and rifle’s damage is uninspiring when you really compare it to what other people’s skills can do).

So I tried several variants of the build I listed, and I was hoping I could be tricky and succeed. But as I played with it more I basically could’t make it work. You can make a pretty good point holder, but the axe just lacks the punch necessary. I think though if it had a blast finisher I could make it happen.

But occasionally everything would click and for a brief moment, you could see it working. If the axe was a bit stronger and vampiric was a bit more efficient, it would really work.

Kardiamond.6952:

Is there a reason why you are taking offhand dagger with axe over focus?

Because I misclicked? Actually that is a lie… it’s because I was in a WvW mindset. I should not be for this exercise.

Something like this build is more complete. I dunno if I am the only person who thinks that those +20% chill duration runes with only an investment of 2 slots is crazy-powerful or not, but for necro it seems like a no-brainer. You will chill and retaliate a lot with this build.

So the intent of this build is to use wells to make the point an unhappy place. If your opponent plays in the wells, you get all of that enjoyment. Grasping them to chill them and snare them helps to keep the engagement where you want it. If they swiftly move out, chill them and proceed to punish. Like many dagger pvp builds, DS is there for retaliation and gap closing and emergency HP (although I suspect your 100% life blast will hit like a truck full of other trucks given how much power is stacked on that build).

I cannot test the damage output now. It’s just so easy to stack vulnerability on that build while retaining pretty good armor. My big concern is the lack of healing power. I’m not sure if it’d make more sense to favor that in the trinket.

The big problem here is no stunbreak. I’m not sure what to do to fix that.

As I was building this I was thinking to myself, “You know what would make the Axe a really good weapon exactly as it is right now? If Axe 3 was a blast finisher.” It’s strikingly obvious that the Axe is missing any sort of combo field interaction at all. Dear ANet, please make Axe 3 a blast finisher and you’ll see a lot more people use it.

I’ll give it a whirl when I get home tonight, but offhand I’d say something like this could be plausible. Traits, of course, are subject to commenting.

Build here

With the exception of a few wasted minion minors, it actually seems acceptable on paper.

Edits: Cool story, forum link validator. Cool story.

Recently Engineers have been getting a lot of mileage out of medium range medium damage output specs with very high retaliation uptime. There have also been conversations in this forum and on Gw2Guru’s forums about really powerful WvW builds using a lot of retaliation.

Could a similar trick be played with a PvP wellomancer? No one argues that well+dagger spam is bad. But if you could use Axe and high-uptime retaliation as a counter to the people who fight off-point out of wells, so it might be a valid use.

Either way, let’s hope ANet sees this scaling issue and tweaks the numbers of Axes to make them more viable. Either by increasing the rate or variety of condition application or by increasing the damage of the weapon.

Kardiamond.6952:

@KirinDave

I doubt the AI can’t be fix, since other class minions use it (guardian, ranger to an extend) and it’s working.

Most other minions have a variety of pathing problems too. The only exception seems to be ranger, and their pets sometimes take pretty impossible paths. Turrets are likewise pretty silly right now with their targetting. Mesmers are pretty irritated with pathing errors during shattering, which can really mess up their burst.

Everyone relying on independent AI pathing has this problem. Necros just have it more.

Kardiamond.6952:

Because you rarely use minions, it’s not important? It’s not because you don’t use something, that other don’t. How many player on the forum posted about choosing the necro class because of the minions. Man even in GW1 Necro were a minions class.

I do not care about GW1 in this forum, this conversation, or with this player base. If GW1 necros are super cool, and they sound like they were super double kitten cool, then that’s really great. Please go play that game.

Kardiamond.6952:

And it’s not only the pathing, it’s the AI. It affects every minions except Flesh worm. Minions don’t attack, don’t follow, go different ways, attack what you don’t want. That’s a lot more then pathing issue.

I’ve seen the “minions refuse to do anything” but, usually as a precursor to the “I myself cannot do anything and all my actions are flashing and I am not lagged out because things are still attacking me and people are running by” bug. It is annoying. It happens rarely to most folks I talk to.

Kardiamond.6952:

Let’s say Water attunement for Elem would bug out. Wouldn’t work 50% of the time. Would you say it’s not big deal since you rarely use it?

I’m not taking the bait of spurious comparisons. This example is irrelevant. We both agree Minion AI should be fixed if that’s possible, let’s leave it at that. Personally, I am not sure what “fixed” actually means without giving everyone the controls that Rangers have over their minions.