Guild Wars 2

I have two that I use.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fcAQJAqelspSXHvShF1LJRIF43wgUkX9KSxjp8nCsF;ToAAzCpoay0koJbTumkNNqYSA
-Pistol build that focuses on spreading conditions with crits and in general, buffing yourself with solid condition removal with elixirs.

And
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fcAQFAUl0p6dX7STF17IxoHkmzbG0j8qX/+pAbB;ToAg0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1MoYSA

Burst to the max.

Meant for getting big crits, and critting often.

Plus, it gives you a very powerful rotation that does insane damage:
Rocketkick>Analyze>Surprise bullet
This all happens in the space of one second, as the only one with a cast time is rocket kick. All do damage, and spawn a lightning discharge, which does good damage and has a chance to bounce back onto your guy.

Alternatively, you can swap rocket boots for tool kit, as its toolbelt is better for the burst as it is ranged, unlike rocket kit, but that is preference.

metaphorm.6904:

Andazeus.1928:

Engineers are the only class who can’t reliably fight at 1200 range without using traits.

Thief has nothing with range 1200. Shortbow and Pistol are both range 900 weapons. There are no Traits or anything to extend that range. There are no Thief utility skills that can do damage at range either.

Necromancers have very limited options for 1200 ranged as well. The staff is the only Necro weapon with attacks at this range but most of those attacks are actually AoE ground target marks that don’t really function as ranged attacks, and rather are intended to be placed in close quarters fighting.

I disagree, necros may indeed have AoE targetted marks, but they are instant, they don’t have a travel time like grenades and that makes them pretty good at range.

Warhorn:
4) Righteous Judgement: Judge your foe with holy words to cause vulnerability 5 stacks, weakness and cripple for 10 seconds. 30s cooldown. Does some damage too. 900 range.
5) Inspire Vengeance: Buff your allies and self with Protection , Might and Fury. Number of stacks of might varies with your health. Full health= 2 stacks. 100-50%= 4 stacks, under 50-25%= 6 stacks and under 25%=8 stacks. Lasts for 10s.

40s cooldown, 600 range, maximum 5 people.

@Tigger

What led you to think I wasn’t?

And even if I was a level 1, and you were level 80, with full exotic and legendary weapons, it would never make your assertion that the advantage of the range of grenades is negligible or non existent.

I don’t believe it is a kit.

Its just neat misleading art.

Tigger.8035:

Learn to READ.

Kit refinement

swapping to grenade kit

You have to be in melee range because the grenades fire out of the back back

and lol at you still having the misconception that just because you’re range you don’t get hit.

Have you even played in a dungeon? Like seriously you’re talking much bull right now.

this argument isn’t going anywhere because I’m speaking from personal experience since I use all 3 kits.

You’re just doing that typical theorycrafting nonsense that’s all in your head. Melee enemies will run you down, and you can’t always kite them, or a big mob, and there are ranged enemies in dungeons.

K thx.

My main build involves the bomb kit, grenade kit, elixir H and elixir R.

Honestly, you do have to run into melee range for grenade barrage from kit refinement, but that has a very long ICD, and you have no idea when it comes back, so in most cases, unless you are stupidly staying in melee range for your grenades JUST IN CASE it happens, then it gets wasted.

And of course there are melee enemies that can get to you, but kiting is very easy. With the rifle you can swap easily to net shot, with offhand pistol, glue shot, with your allies and coordination, you can kite very easily too. And chill grenade helps kite very well.

And ranged enemies… well yeah, there are. But a ranged character vs a ranged enemy faces the same opposition a melee character faces from an enemy ranged character.

But the great thing is, a ranged character does not face the same challenges of a melee character against an enemy melee character.

If you think you are equally viable walking up to any enemy in melee with a bomb kit, as you are with hitting them from range with a grenade kit, then I’m afraid it is you who is stuck in theorycraft lala-land.

Killua.8041:

They’re working on making this feature available.

That’s what they said after BWE1 too…

Its clearly not intended, as you don’t lose any stats when equipping a kit with PvP.

See, in PvP you have the same number of stats that you would get with exotic gear in PvE, its just all put into one single amulet, as opposed to spread over gear.

So, if it was intended, then you would lose some stats in PvP as well.

My main beef with the rifle isn’t what it skills offer, my main beef is with how a lot of kits seem to work best at a mid/melee range, which is where the rifle also works best at.

Flamethrower, Bomb Kit, Tool kit all work best in an area where rifle already works great at.

Elixir gun has more range but it is a conditions kit and does not synergies with the rifle well.

Grenade kit is a power based weapon too and it is probably the only kit that naturally compliments the rifle.

Welcome to a few months ago.

This is a known issue that has been acknowledged and reported for months.

Hopefully it will be fixed soon, but I won’t hold my breath.

Tigger.8035:

What else do you think I’m talking about.

the 1 skill breaks the 1k Mark tho

So where does 6k come from?

And remember the horrid fire rate, dead zone and slow flying speed… that 1k is terrible considering all the other factors.

Tigger.8035:

You have to invest 30 points to “out damage” (barely might I add) Bomb kit when I only have to throw 10 points in one and can throw points in other traits for other abilities to “outdamage” you completely.

STOP THE PRESSES

also are you sure about longer burns =/= more damage?

4.1 * Level + 0.25 * Condition Damage per second

explain this equation to me , I didn’t make it, but clarify it

Umm, why is that equation even relevant? At least explain why…

That equation shows you how condition damage is calculated, if burn did 1 damage per 1 second of burn, then adding more time simply means you do 2 seconds instead of 1. It doesn’t mean that 1 second= 2 damage. Plus, its a 20% increase, now, the trait on crits is a 2s, 2s+20%= 2.4s, with fire bomb, it goes from 6s, to 7.2s

Now, is it exactly worth a major trait to got from 6s, to 7.2s? I really doubt it is. And of course, you have to take into account how often bombs tick, it may well make it increase the time it burns by 1.2s, but I’m not sure if that equates to a full tick.

And the bomb kit is, remember, melee range. What happens at melee range? You die, so the grenade kit, even if it does less damage than bombs, still has the advantage of range. Doing a bit more damage with pure bombs, than pure grenades is no good if you are dead due to being hacked to death.

And honestly, your 5% damage when immobilized trait is just misguided. You have a 1s immobilize on a 25s/20s cooldown. That uptime is appalling and its such a short window, that it might as well not exist.

Its not powerful.

Its very weak, did around 100 damage, when something like bombs was doing 600 for me.
And it didn’t benefit from explosives traits, because it didn’t stack vuln for me.

Tigger.8035:

since when is 6k Damage in dungeons weak…..

Since when is it 6k damage?

I’ve only ever seen grenade barrage go upwards there.

Longer burns=/= more damage. Burn is not an intensity related.

And 5% damage during the 1s immobilize of glue bomb? STOP THE PRESSES!

Andazeus.1928:

Remember: is you trait the pierce, it will actually consider everyone hit by the pierce as a primary target, meaning it will apply the full bleed and cause additional explosions which will, again, cause even more aoe damage. And the piercing poison darts also get considerably stronger.

Sure, only two skills are affected by it, but they gain quite a lot.

Also don’t forget, that by using pistol, we are the only class besides the mesmer, that can reliably apply confusion. And we get free aoe blind.

I think the pistol does great consistent damage. It doesn’t have any burst, but then again, the engineer as a whole is missing some proper burst options.

That’s fine and all but remember:

Engineer- 2s single target bleed, traited to cause 2 skills to pierce with grandmaster trait
Warrior- 6s single target bleed, traited to cause 5 skills to pierce, and 5 skills to have a 20% shorter cooldown with a master trait

Its simply out of line.

I don’t think it outdamage grenade kit, well, with grenadier it certainly doesn’t. And its melee range.

draculthemad.6273:

Ok, I just did some napkin level math.

To get 1 point of damage on Grenade and Shrapnel Grenade:
~5 on grenade, ~4.5ish on Shrapnel.

To get 1 point of Bleed on Shrapnel however, you only need:
~1.4 ConDmg

So the break even point on ConDmG is very quick, especially if you factor in the on-crit Conditions engies also get.

Right, but bleed is the only condition damage with such luxury.

Apply that to poison, the only other thing there is, and it isn’t so good.

If the bleed was more common, maybe if it had no cooldown ,and if there was a burn grenade, I could see it that way.

But simply put, only 1 grenade benefits most from condition damage, and that is shrapnel grenade.

Others benefit more from either power, or expertise.

I love it.

Smoke bomb is my favourite skill in it since it creates a smoke field that reapplies blind, reapplying blind is useful, since it means that you are able to survive melee, surviving melee= free reign to spam bombs/blunderbuss/jump shot.

Plus big ole bomb is very very powerful.

Pets=/=Illusions

Pets are persistent and optional, you can CHOOSE to have pets.

Necro is not forced to take pets, neither is engineer, or elementalist, or guardian.

Those pets, also have different mechanics, some die from a timer and a health bar, but illusions also die from your opponent dying.

Think of illusions and phantasms as DoTs your opponents can kill.

MeVe.2856:

It can’t be like a fixed mortar because that will be totally op.
We do have a trait to increase the mortar range but is currently bugged, we will see how much range it will increase.. 20-25% would make the mortar pretty good even with the low damage it have.
Grenades are simply op atm.

What is a ‘fixed’ mortar though? the only broken thing about it is the trait that increases range.

Apart from that, it is working ‘as intended’, I.e the mechanics are fine. Maybe damage is too low but that isn’t ‘broken’.

I’d ideally honestly make it scale with your stats, since its a turret for… God knows what reason, it doesn’t take into account your own stats, well I would change that and make it indeed notice your power and malice and expertise. That way, it would be a huge damage boost, and if that isn’t enough, give it more of a damage boost.

This is an elite skill, an ultimate, and it is hamstringed by 0 mobility, and a dead zone. If this doesn’t hurt to get hit by, then its simply a huge waste.

Mortar is very bad sadly. Damage is poor and scales poorly, has a dead zone and poor range for what the skill is aimed at doing.

Grenades when traited go further and do more damage if they hit.

I’ll just state the ones I know off the top of my head:

Grenadier lowers the cooldown of freeze grenade to 15s
Grenadier is incompatible with grenades and short fuse, it doesn’t lower their recharge, but without grenadier short fuse works
Toss Elixir Bs tooltip very wrong
Elixir S does not work with Fast Acting Elixirs, the tooltip changes to reflect a 48s cooldown but in reality, it remains 60s
Toss elixir C gives a random boon regardless of whether or not you remove a condition
Double tapping to get throw shield, and magnetic inversion often leads to no effect but a full cooldown
Elixir gun does not fully benefit from the trait “fireforged trigger”, it only reduces the cooldown of fumigate, and acid bomb. This is very inconsistent since some of the abilities are listed as “elixirs” but are not reduced by ‘fast acting elixirs’ either, and ‘acid bomb’ itself is listed as an elixir, but benefits from fireforged trigger, while fumigate is not and benefits as well. Very weird and inconsistent.

All turrets, if deployed and immediately picked up (within 1 second or so), get picked up but do not benefit from the 25% cooldown reduction. This is particularly annoying on the healing turret.

Healing turret+ deployable turrets trait, loses the toolbelt skill of the turret. It gets replaced by the “deploy healing turret” command.

In PvE, grenade barrage is disabled underwater, but enabled in PvP.

Elixir X has two cast times (might be intended)

Mine field (toolbelt skill of mine) does not benefit from ingenuity (though this might have changed, haven’t tested it recently)

Big ole bomb does not act as a blast finisher.

Explosive shots description suggests AoE bleeding but it does not. This might mean the tooltip is wrong, or that it is bugged. I can never tell with the engineer.

Prelude.3817:

It would be so simple to add a trait in Alchemy or Tools, like “remove a condition on kit swapping” with an icd of 10sec, or specific condition removing on dodge, like Elem and Thief have, or even remove a condition upon healing…

I like that.

Maybe change how ‘always prepared’ works, since Its not really popular?

I can see it becoming:
“Remove a condition on kit swapping. 10s cooldown”
Or
“Remove a condition on kit swapping.10s cooldown. Drop several bandages when downed”

I don’t think anyone sees the logic between dropping an elixir gun or flamethrower when downed, your allies won’t have traits, or experience with it, and it makes them lose stats, effects on sigils and they likely will have no experience with it.

coglin.1496:

I do not find it vary logical to compare an environmental weapon that a player can randomly run across, to that of a kit that fills a utility slot, cost skill points, and is part of Anets decision as a utility, out of the limited amount of utilities offered.

A random, general public usable, “spade” is just not a logical comparison to a bomb, grenade, elixir gun or flame thrower kit, that are a designed portion of the profession.

Its not comparable from a balance or ‘judgement’ perspective, but the point is they use the same mechanics and thats the point. Mechanically speaking, a kit, MIGHT cost you a utility slot, have traits and so on, but MECHANICALLY, it operates on the same principles as a spade you find.

And that’s the trouble, people want kits to work like weapons, with sigils, weapon stats and auto attack, but kits themselves are not weapons.

Try jumping off something high and try toggling off a kit.
Try making a new character, and make sure to never pick up an environmental object till level 5, where you equip a kit. You will get a tip saying “You’ve just equipped an environmental weapon, environmental weapons are…”
Look at the rune of the engineer, it buffs bundles, bundles are another word for environmental weapons… which are kits.
Try picking up a flamethrower from the ‘always prepared’ trait. You’ll notice that if you pick it up, with a flamethrower in your utility bar that isn’t equipped goes into ‘stow mode’, which shows you that a flamethrower picked up off the ground, is exactly the same mechanically, as a flamethrower equipped via utilities.

Plus, it also explains why engineers don’t benefit from ‘on swap’ sigils. If indeed you swapped to a kit, and swapped out from a kit, then it should indeed count. But you are not ever weapon swapping, which is what constitutes the ‘on swap’ sigils, all you are doing is ‘dropping’ and ‘picking up’ a kit.

Thing of kits as a rock that is picked up via utilities, and not your interface when you use the F key.

coglin.1496:

hackks.3687:

The F key tool belt skills are fine but they are all long CD (30 – 90 sec) which makes them very situational at best. That can’t be compared to having a 2nd fresh set of 5 weapon abilities with short CDs.

That is not true. The highest recast on a kit tool belt skill 60s. I find every one of them besides the med kit to be solid consistent damage and control in almost all situations.

All the kits really need, is the sigil and auto attack issues solved, first and foremost. After that, just some damage adjustments and work on th missing issue with the FT and elixir gun cone spray abilities. They iron that stuff out and they will be solid.

Trouble is, how do you fix it without making it a weapon?

The reason the troubles are with the kits:

No weapon Stats
No ‘on swap sigils’
No sigil effects with kits
No auto attack remembered

These are all symptoms of kits not being weapons, of kits being ‘bundles’.
Which makes fixing them really hard. They have 3 options really:

One being something akin to what OP suggests, make kits count as weapons and somehow appear on the character screen.
One being a fundamental change to how all bundles work, which includes banners and conjures.
One being creating some new class of ‘weapon’ or ‘utility’ where kits are neither bundles or weapons.

Try picking up a spade somewhere in the world and set it as “auto attack”, then drop it, and pick it up.
Try getting your weapon stats to extend while using it.
Try getting an ‘on swap’ to trigger when picking it up/dropping it.
Try getting a sigil to proc when using it.

This is pretty much summing up of my troubles with the mesmer.

It seems like it competes, with itself. The shattering mechanic is at odds with the phantasm mechanic, you can’t please both since a phantasm is apparently worth the same as akitten poor clone. So you go: Clones and Shatter, or Phantasms. Well, all 3 are class mechanics, why are they working against eachother? They should work together.

I really think phantasms should not be able to be shattered, give them a separate bar that is not clones. OR Make shattering them more worthwhile. Give them maybe, +10% damage, or +some condition or +some boon or +Duration or whatever you like for every phantasm you shatter instead of a clone.

I don’t agree, I think its a pretty solid mechanic but not without its faults though.

Some skills, are amazing, great and useful: Throw Elixir R, Big Ole Bomb, Grenade Barrage, Throw Wrench and so on.

But then, there seems to be a divide of almost useless skills such as: Throw Elixir B, Throw elixir C, The Turret Toolbelts (except for surprise bullet) and others…

I’d rather all toolbelts be as effective and powerful as the likes of big ole bomb, with others getting buffed, or just nerf the good ones. I don’t like the situation where one kit has a very powerful toolbelt, but another doesn’t.

Nope.

But in sPVP that isn’t a problem since weapons have no stats there, but in PvE it does make a significant difference

My engineer. I like him.

I was under the impression that reflection meant projectiles, not melee? Or am I wrong?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fcAQFAUlsp6ZnuShF17IRoH4/+qV0j8/YK/pgcB;TIAgzCmA

This is what I’ve come up with so far.

Using cleric to get power, for general damage. Toughness for general surviving, and quite a few points in alchemy and inventions for more defensive stats.

Now I know that in general, bomb healing isn’t that great but I can see it working as something that aids you. Every little helps you know.

The thing I am concerned with, is that while the minor traits for inventions is great, I like the 2nd and third, I’m not too sure about the first 2 major traits.

Opinions and help?

Turrets aren’t really support in my eyes, except maybe healing turret if used in the appropriate way.

I’d honestly just go Elixir H, Elixir B, Elixir R, Elixir Gun and Supply crate if you want to go support.

With pistol/shield

Eviator.9746:

Lyuben.2613:

What do you mean ‘short bleed’, they get nothing? test it out in the mists, go hit those clumped up golems and see for yourself. They never get bleeds, save for procs from sharpshooter sometimes.

Here is the plan:

Go to mists.
Take off all clothes apart from a single pistol- no sigils
Put 30 points in explosives- no traits allocated though (for 30% longer conditions)
Hit a golem in a crowd.
Quickly swap to the golem next to him.

Yep, must have been sharpshooter. I guess what the OP is saying, and you seem to agree, is that a pistol-based bleed condition build is not viable for engineers?

Don’t know if its not viable, its certainly the weakest of all the bleed stackers.

I prefer rifle anyway so I don’t know what to say.

Eviator.9746:

Lyuben.2613:

Eviator.9746:

Yeah but other than the thief those bleeds are only single target, right? We also have a few bleed traits…not sure about those other professions. Look at coated bullets and…wow!

The 2s bleed is single target.

And traiting it to pierce only affects 2 abilities, 1 and 2.

A warrior can trait his rifle, which has a single target 6s bleed, to pierce and it affects 5 abilities, and it isn’t a grandmaster trait, AND it also reduces cooldowns by 20%.

Gooby pls…

Yep, I see you’re right about the 2s bleed. Other targets do get a very short bleed on the explosion, but not the full 2s.

What does Gooby pls mean?

What do you mean ‘short bleed’, they get nothing? test it out in the mists, go hit those clumped up golems and see for yourself. They never get bleeds, save for procs from sharpshooter sometimes.

Here is the plan:

Go to mists.
Take off all clothes apart from a single pistol- no sigils
Put 30 points in explosives- no traits allocated though (for 30% longer conditions)
Hit a golem in a crowd.
Quickly swap to the golem next to him.

I think the block could be spiced up.

Maybe make it cause bleeding/damage when it blocks melee attacks?

They need to swap skill 2 and 3.

Then I’d see it being fixed.

Eviator.9746:

Yeah but other than the thief those bleeds are only single target, right? We also have a few bleed traits…not sure about those other professions. Look at coated bullets and…wow!

The 2s bleed is single target.

And traiting it to pierce only affects 2 abilities, 1 and 2.

A warrior can trait his rifle, which has a single target 6s bleed, to pierce and it affects 5 abilities, and it isn’t a grandmaster trait, AND it also reduces cooldowns by 20%.

Gooby pls…

With the engineer, I can’t be sure.

So many tooltips are just plain wrong that I don’t even trust the description and just rely on testing it myself.

Don’t get your hopes up guys.

Us engineers have been reporting many many issues with Kits since BWE1, if you dont know, that is months ago.

And it has been acknowledged, since BWE1, and they even promised to fix them AT LEAST by launch.

Well they ain’t fixed.

Get ready for a long bumpy road.

Best word? Tool. Or maybe kittenwhipped?

Flamethrower seems to be more power based IMO.

Flame jet does a lot of power damage, and with Deadly Mixture, plenty of damage. Skill 2, if timed well can actually do some nice damage.

Skill 4 is poor for condition damage really. 1s if you step on it. Wow.

Its been nerfed so many times man.

Used to be a 4s AoE bleed.

Then a 4s single target bleed.

Now a 2s single target bleed.

They need to either make it: 4s single target, or 2s AoE IMO.

It used to be very powerful, but now its on the weak side.

In PvP, 0-1 (Though, that one is the tool kit and I use it just for the toolbelt skill mainly :P)
In PvE, 2-3 I always take grenade and bombs, and sometimes go for elixir H, sometimes for med kit. Depends.

From my experience though, the ‘weapon’ kits are not ever worth it.

I’ve probably had some bad experiences but I really hate dying quickly in dungeons, I hate it hate it, so I prefer to have survivability.

I don’t really see the value of crit builds from a power perspective honestly. Yes its more damage, but at what cost?

I prefer rifle+’soldiers’ gear. Power, Toughness and Vitality.

I’ve luckily been keeping my monocle for ages now, been keeping it alive and healthy by feeding it many transmutation stones.

Best bet is to find, if it exists, something with the same model. Surely something has to exist? Anet are pretty lazy at times with recycling old item models, you can go from 1-80 by upgrading your items and they always look the same certainly.

Well, technically the mine removes a boon.

And there are some sigils that do that.

You could try CCing them?

I’m surprised this is even a question.

Ask yourselves, what is the engineers most powerful nuke?

Does it scale with power? Yes, well too. Grenade barrage is the most powerful damage ability engineer has and it has no conditions on it.

Shrapnel grenade, while doing some bleeding also does more raw damage than the standard grenades. The only pure conditions is poison, and poison does not do very well with condition damage as its damage is quite low.

The reason poison is good, is due to duration, more than damage.

So, in the end, the grenade kit is left with 3 stats which help it out:

Power
Malice
Expertise

Grenade, Grenade Barrage, Shrapnel Grenade all benefit from Power to a good degree.
Shrapnel Grenade benefits from Malice to a good degree.
Flash, Freeze and Poison Grenades all benefit from Expertise to a good degree.

From that it seems fairly clear that your best best for grenades is power and expertise. And since expertise is very hard to obtain as a stat, save from the explosives tree and from a few runes, it makes sense to invest into explosives, and investing 30 points gives you both 300 points of power and 30 points of expertise.

Which means that if you want to add malice, its a bit of a waste, since you already are maximizing the two biggest stats by taking grenadier.

I’ll be honest, turrets aren’t that great at the moment but I suppose it can be made to work so I could go:

Pistol/Shield(not pistol/pistol, as you will be getting burning already from the flamethrower)- Gives you plenty of defensive options.

Healing Turret- Remember, this isn’t a turret, never use it as a turret. If you use this as a turret you are doing it wrong. Now, I should say, there is currently a bug with all turrets, that happens when you pick them up, and it occurs if you try to pick them up as soon as you spawn them, which leads to you having a full cooldown rather than a 25% shorter one. As a result, I recommend using healing turret like this: Spawn it, leave it for exactly two seconds, to give you 15 or so seconds of regeneration, and giving you time to overcharge it if needed. And PICK IT UP. If the healing turret is deployed, you have no self heal, so the best way to use the turret, is to not use it like a turret.

I’d then take a flamethrower obviously, and I’d consider using it mainly for the combo field to help you blast through it and shoot through it, and for the short cooldown knockback. And, if you aren’t facing ranged foes, then its a generally good idea to use this to kite and fight melee people.

Net turret is there to help you kite and keep distance of course, its one of the few turrets that is generally good at its job. Simple enough job in your build.

Rocket turret because it adds to the general level of burning and AoE for you, and because you can place it at a further distance, it should improve its surviveability if you space it well enough.

Supply crate because its the only viable elite in PvE and PvP.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fcEQJAqelIqyanrSbF17IRoHJ2wLG0j8W37+pAbB;TIAAzCpA

Something like this seems workable.

Focusing on the rabid set might work, toughness helps you survive a tad. Precision helps with crits and procs. And condition damage is self explanatory.