Guild Wars 2

I couldn’t have said it better myself Soryuju. I really like playing on engi, but its so outmatched by other classes in a zerg. I still prefer engi for havocing or tPvP

JakHammer.7094:

I need to ask a quick stupid question here.

Do WvW Mortar Skills affect/buff the Engineer’s Elite skill Mortar?
Is that Elite skill Mortar of any use in removing siege in enemy Towers, Keeps?

Thanks.

thats some good thinking, but the mortar has a much shorter range than arrow carts/ballistas. it has 1400 ranger (1500 if traited). it would just be taken out. plus itd be nearly impossible to hit an arrow cart on the other side of a wall that you cant see, since the mortar uses ground targeting.

Chaba.5410:

Maiden England.3491:

Chaba.5410:

I think it is important to make that distinction, because when someone writes “organized zerg” I just have to laugh.

you must’ve never seen one then

Because there aren’t any. As size increases, the frequency of undisciplined actions increase. Zergs can be semi-organized in that a commander calls for fields and blasts, but they usually are a mess. Someone always manages to drop the wrong field and just forget trying to drop the right field in the middle of a battle. A zerg always manages to become amorphous on a field. Maybe some in the zerg are using VOIP which gives the appearance of organized play. Most in a zerg are not and, given enough numbers, do not need to be.

Compare with organized groups who strive to remain disciplined and coordinate on VOIP. Wrong fields and formation issues are mistakes in these kinds of groups rather than a feature.

Another distinguishing feature is that in a zerg, people don’t know what builds others are running while in an organized group, members should know each others builds. I’m talking about beyond just a zerg field commander calling for all warriors to run battle standard, etc.

there most definitely are organized zergs. maybe not in fort aspenwood, but its not even debated whether there actually are or not.

Chaba.5410:

I think it is important to make that distinction, because when someone writes “organized zerg” I just have to laugh.

you must’ve never seen one then

Punny.9210:

one of the reason i dont play my engi these days. in T1 zerg you need something BIG.

when i spec for bunker / condi to get more survival, my dmg really suck in mega zerg.

yes thats a good point. i find myself only using engi for either scouting or just for fun. when i need to get some work done in a zerg i dont even consider engi.

that all sounds great on paper dropper, but have you actually tried using all that in a zerg? all the fields are outdone by eles, all the condi damage is outdone by necro, and you dont need any extra blast finishers when you have 3-5 guardians with hammers. im talking about organized zerg vs zerg. all the small stuff REALLY doesnt make a lick of difference in a zerg. its about the big support the classes have to offer, which i dont see how engi has any of.

yes this would probably work if the 8 man team was extremely skilled and organized whilst the 30 man team is scattered, unskillful, and unorganized. When I said this I meant in a very organized fashion. If both sides are skillful and organized, the 8 man wouldnt survive. but my question was if the engineer has something special to offer an organized 30-40 man zerg.

Engineer is great for small group fights in wvw, but what about a zerg? I seriously don’t see anything that this class has to offer in a zerg. guardians can offer massive amounts of boons and soak tons of damage, also have 6 second CD blast finisher. warriors are most sought out for their warbanners. eles have great water/fire fields. necros apply aoe conditions wonderfully. and on and on it goes. the trend for all these professions is that theyre only really known for their SUPPORT abilities in a zerg. when i open up the trait/skill lines, most of the good things i find are just outdone by another class, in terms of support that is. ive realized that engi is a very very selfish class, and that is why i think they are good for small group, but not zerging. even rangers waterfield far outdoes healing turret. its permanent waterfield, removes conditions, and cannot be destroyed. is this class actually useless in a zerg or does it have something to offer?

i know anet wants all classes to have every weapon, but why is everyone so sure next weapon engi gets is hammer? was it confirmed somewhere?

go rifle/nades or flamethrower with power/precision gear when you level. in low level maps you should be able to dodge npcs attacks easily without getting hit too much. keep your distance from a mob, if you have issues surviving add a little vitality/toughness. you generally want to stay away from condition damage when you level. bomb kit has some cool cc that can allow you to survive longer if used correctly. i dont want to spoil the class for you since you’ve only just begun using it, i recommend testing out different things and figuring out whats best for you.

i dont put any points in inventions, and if i do, its not for the toughness. but i do see what you mean, if you run an amulet/trinket without toughness you have a very small chance of staying alive

utility goggles are most ok skill ever. nothing special, nothing cool, not bad, not that good. i almost always have another skill id rather use

generally, p/s engis are going to be tanky. when you land your hard earned strikes, they will not as high as you’d hope. i can be tankier on my engi than on guard. my guard can take more hits, but engi has SO much CC, especially compared to guard. but its also a matter of skill. amateur engineers dont usually run p/s, so the ones that do will probably be good. just have to be unpredictable, and know the engineers skills/cooldowns. for example — if he uses shield block right before you land an attack, back off til the duration is over, then start bursting when it is. there are lots of thieves that waste initiative bursting my gear shield, then they have nothing left once the duration is over.

Paulytnz.7619:

Meh I prefer rifle over pistol 99% of the time. Slightly longer range, it does more damage per hit (even if a little bit slower), single target hit unless they are really bunched up and a lot more control skills.

Pistols really are only good for aoe-ing small groups and the odd blind/confuse.

i agree with that. when people say pistol is superior, i think theyre only talking about pvp. in pve and wvw rifle can do some serious damage

i almost always run full berserker on my engi, which i mostly use for roaming in wvw. heres the build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlspSXH5y3F17IyIFdmoB6Bg5XjoIFPGlB-jUxA4LgkXR0YLlFRjVtgpMJiqBA-w
your build is more of a FT build which isnt very good in any situation other than zerging. rifle autoattack can hit for like 3k a hit when the target has conditions. best used in a group. you can do some real work with a similar build in pvp, but i still prefer tanky condi builds in tpvp.

ukuni.8745:

Main hand shield, why? Because I’m an engineer and I do what I want

correction, you are an engineer that does what anet wants

i checked it out, and the block duration is actually 2 seconds. i honestly dont know what the 1.5 seconds means…

lol @ drop the bass warhorn skill. i just thought of….. necro with rifle. thats gonna be wierd.

pistol is actually a mediocre choice compared to rifle when it comes to power builds

engineer is a condition applier with a decent amount of burst, sustained damage, and cool gadgets

well you HAVE to sacrifice one to gain the other, thats just how it is. i main a guardian that constantly runs over 3k armor so its definitely not going to be as tanky as that, but i do find that the cavalier trinket thing is the best way to go if you want some extra armor. thats just my personal preference though, you may have a different setup that you like

in wvw you WILL need some extra toughness. in pve you should ONLY use extra toughness if you have trouble living long enough. if you are already used to surviving with glassy gear, more dps is always better. when i go into wvw, for small group fights i run full berserker with berserker/cavaliers trinkets. with that setup im at around 2.5k armor 35% crit chance and 55% crit damage. with runes of rage you can maintain 100% fury uptime so that pretty much the vast majority of your hits will be crits. all this of course with the fact that you have 2.5k armor, which actually can soak some damage.

lol it only works on unaware players. either ones that are looking at someone else in a zerg, or one you just happen to catch off guard. in 1v1s and small fights people almost ALWAYS dodge it right when they notice so they dont get pulled.

icewyrm.5038:

The tooltip isn’t accurate. Test it with a stopwatch and see for yourself.

thats possibly true, but 1.5 seconds is such a ridiculous exaggeration. even if there is some variation, it lies somewhere around .5

icewyrm.5038:

Rifle 3 is weak. The cast/animation time (around 1.5 seconds from my estimate) means that even sub 100 range you do less dps than with bombs. If you count the bleed stacks the damage is improved but generally you won’t be taking rifle for bleeds.

Rifle 5 is much better since the animation tweak and is a decent dps skill (for engineers anyway) assuming both the start and finish components hit your target.

On my zerker engie the base rifle 5 damage (for both ticks) is 2733. The animation time again seems to be around 1.5 seconds. or so which equates to around 1640 dps before crit multiplication.

However I find that mobs frequently move away from one of the damage ticks or that I use the skill to position myself closer to the target, meaning I miss out on one tick of damage. In this case the damage again drops below bombs, which have a short animation time and a base damage of 1066. It’s also on a 20 second cooldown, making the meaningful dps increase in dungeons minimal over bombs.

Both rifle and bombs have a 10% damage increase trait which would of course have an impact on these numbers.

The thing is, bomb2+shield4 gives you and your entire party 3 stacks of might with a 66% uptime (assuming no boon duration) assuming you are melee stacking (which is when rifle 3 and 5 would be most useful) which gives a slight DPS boost to your whole group.

In addition you can also use bomb 4 and shield 4 to stealth yourself and an ally to res them without pulling boss aggro, something you cannot do with rifle. Unlike other engie blast finishers shield 4 does no damage meaning you do not drop yourself out of stealth when you use it next to an enemy.

You are also underestimating the usefulness of a channeled block in a lot of dungeons including COF. I certainly don’t find much general use for the reflect component of shield 4 however because you have to root yourself for the duration.

Cast time on rifle 3 is 1/2 seconds. i usually hit around 4.5k with it, and add 4 bleed stacks…

Kain Francois.4328:

PVT is very bad for PvE, especially on a class like Engineer so dependent on critical hits.

As an Engineer in PvE, your job is to do damage. If you can’t do that, who cares what your survivability is like?

i did say i wanted a build for wvw zerging. i already run full zerker for dungeons on my engi

icewyrm.5038:

Pistol/shield is a utility set – Frankly I don’t spend much time outside of kits asides from blowing the weapon cooldowns here and there.

At initial inspection the build you posted seems to be more about explosives than the rifle itself which is why I asked.

rifle 3 and 5 can hit EXTREMELY high, 2 and 4 are for cc. i dont see much use for p/s in pve to be honest, rifle outdoes it in terms of damage, and damage is most important in pve.

icewyrm.5038:

I disagree on SD but as I said I’m not a big fan of hgh myself. Having said that do you have any other suggestions for a rifle focused build?

yes, i posted one above. its a rifle/grenade build. itd be foolish to use p/s or p/p with that gear anyways.

icewyrm.5038:

There are times where I find the rifle is quite useful. For me its:
-Jumping places I probably shouldn’t be able to jump with 5, or being lazy in a tricky bit of a puzzle.
-Immobilizing a dangerous melee boss (like the hammer bosses in cliffside), usually take net turret as well when I do this.
-Knocking back some monsters, such as the vet shamans on the grawl fractal.

Beyond that the base damage, reliability, range and overall utility of the weapon is too low to compete with kits in the same role so I take p/s instead.

Beyond that I quite like using the rifle in spvp for reasons similar to those stated above.

Sorry, I guess I didn’t really answer your question. I guess what I’m saying is while you can build around the rifle as your main damage weapon I don’t find many situations where I’ll gain an advantage by doing so. HGH or static discharge are probably your best options since you can free up your utility slots for them but I don’t much like static discharge without grenadge kit and toolkit personally and I’m not a fan of the general mechanic of hgh focused builds.

static discharge and hgh or pretty useless in dungeons/pve….

I usually run something around the lines of this for dungeons/pve http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V;4Z;0h0m5V1kw0;9;4OO-J-16-48;219;2R;9;2G-Fv0;5VOVTWYXcYi3o_63V-F6Hl
of course you can switch the second kit for whatever your needs are, but i usually use grenades in all dungeons, even if its just for the toolbelt burst. you can slightly change the traits, although it just irritates me to run without cleansing formulae 409, its a must have for me. if you are going pure rifle build then take off 5 from explosives and put an extra 5 in firearms for modified ammunition. though you’ll generally have more dps with this. full berserker with berserker/valkyrie trinkets.

rogerwilko.6895:

Maiden England.3491:

the main purpose/goal of using PTV is to be very tanky, yet hit decently.

I would not call ‘decent’ the damage output of a player wearing PVT.

well when i said that i was comparing it to similar gears in a zerg. berserker doesnt make that big of a difference when you are fighting another zerg. thanks for all the responses guys, im trying out a build with full ptv and p/s. my goal is to soak the damage as well as apply conditions on enemies. its been working so far, but lacks those big numbers.

Just about every class I’ve played thus far has a build that works well with PTV gear. the main purpose/goal of using PTV is to be very tanky, yet hit decently. im looking for a PTV gear build to run in a zerg in wvw. I run zerker rifle/grenade mostly on my engi which i use for roaming/havocing and even dungeons. I’ve never seen an engi running PTV. is there a reason no one uses it? or is there actually a use for it?

the smaller the group the more toughness you’ll want. berserk works very well with rifle. you generally want to use pistols for condi builds and rifle for power build. pistols on power build arent very good. if you are so keen on going dual pistols, condi build is the way to go. my main go to gear is berserker power build with rifle/nades. nades can hit VERY hard with power builds. i generally use grenades/bomb kit for pve and toolkit for wvw roaming. of course if you are in a zerg, there are some very nice flamethrower builds out there

that build works fine, but of course you can switch out grenades for the kit of your choice (depends on the situation) and put more points into firearms/alchemy instead of explosives

human or charr.

power for pve, condi for pvp. thing is…. power builds still work VERY well in wvw, and yet decently in pvp as well. power is more of an all around thing, condi for 1v1s or pvp. even in small wvw fights, i still prefer power.

it might be so that all classes can use any weapon, but some of the weapons will just be obsolete in comparison to other. engi using a bow for example… its just out of place.

can you give us a link of where he said that please?

its dumb to use a guardian for dps. they can do it well, but then you’re just wasting its supportive ability. plus other classes are just better for dps. let them do dps, let us support.

well one of the few things thief is good at is roaming, whereas engi is more versatile, also having the ability to become quite tanky with the right gear. like these guys said, engi is more of a challenge, which makes it more fun for me. some people dont like that though, so if you’re one of those then go with thief. now that i think about it, there are very little similarities between these two classes.

Vash.9183:

Offski.4897:

Yep Smokee we quake with fear whenever we see you guys.

The 2vs1 is blatant. but i try and take it as a complement that Bg need to do it for the win, so gg.

Gotta say Merc are great opposition, put out pressure so many hours of the day = much respect.

This guy has no idea how long JQ has focused only on BG up until this point. Just because JQ surprisingly attacked your server for once doesn’t mean there must be a 2v1.

Blackgate has bumped heads with JQ more than any other server. BG used to get laughed at by SoR for calling out a 2v1, but here SoR is filling the forums with the same text. Strange how time can change things.

im afraid your a bit outdated. scroll up. the 2v1 thing isnt even denied by the people who did it…. read before posting pls

Ferris Bewler.9706:

Hey on another note Vizunah in EU is going against their 4th or 5th DIFFERENT matchup this week. They got 2 completely new servers to play with……

Not trying to take anything away from JQ or SOR but it would be nice to kill some fresh new faces for once……please arena net?

i completely agree. but what are the matchups supposed to be? T1 NA seems as balanced as its gonna get

LilMcGinley.3890:

Maiden England.3491:

its crazy how detailed everything was last night. JQ on one side of the keep, and BG on the opposite side. when bg couldnt cap the keep, jqs zerg ran in and capped it. about 5 minutes later it was BGs. its remarkable what you can do when you take sides.

If this is a feint at “omg 2v1 u workin together” its a realllly poor attempt. If 2 servers are inside of a keep and it’s freshly flipped, they don’t have to try and take down a door or wall, they are already inside… so capping it is easy. Not to mention, JQ probably lost a good number of people fighting against SoR AND BG which just results in BG having more people after the cap… hence a flip when buff goes away.

Try again.

it was clear they were 2v1ing… im not going to argue with you about it since the people who were doing it dont even deny it… scroll up and read the other posts buddy

its crazy how detailed everything was last night. JQ on one side of the keep, and BG on the opposite side. when bg couldnt cap the keep, jqs zerg ran in and capped it. about 5 minutes later it was BGs. its remarkable what you can do when you take sides.

depends on the situation. Hammer offers more CC and is generally better for higher amount of targets. GS has more mobility and is MUCH better for 1v1 or 1v2 scenarios. In PvE, usually the GS will outdo hammer, but if you need he CCs then hammer is better. Hammer 2 can also hit massive amounts… i hit 4k using ptv with it. each one really needs a different playing style. if you’re only used to GS then it will be hard to switch to hammer.

hard choice between stand your ground and wall of reflection. 24s CD on SYG makes it just too good to pass…

very good, the two most important points are turrets and mortar for me. all the turret skills are pretty much ignored when it comes to choosing skills. theres really just not use for them the way they are right now. since there are traits for turrets based on detonating them, why is the CD on them so high? and come on now… mortar is an elite…. elites are supposed to do a lot better than that…

I personally only use elixir guns for preprepared 1v1 fights. otherwise grenades usually do a better job in terms of DPS. traited grenade (shrapnel/steelpacked powder) will in the vast majority of cases out perform the elixir gun. thats just my opinion though.

Dedlaw.9130:

Engi with a over-charged rail-gun ftw. Long-range energy beam artillery to replace mortar

or just buff the mortar

since turrets are immobile, they should be hard to kill and do tons of damage. when an enemy sees a turret down they should actually care about going to kill it, whereas now they just take 2 swings without paying attention and its gone.