Guild Wars 2

hooma.9642:

NevirSayDie.6235:

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I agree, but that’s a bit easy to say now. Back in March, how many people really thought warriors shouldn’t be buffed? And even after being buffed to essentially their current state this summer, warriors didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. There was a period of about two months in which warriors were faceroll powerful but no one knew it because we were all too busy complaining about necros.
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u should rewatch the update-history. warriors where used after certain key-changes nearly immediatly

Oh I know, but they didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. Sorry for repeating myself.

Kavia.8249:

I agree its with the benefit of hindsight now that we are able to see the flaws in the “big buffs to what is not used” and then “lets not revert the big buffs but now tweak unrelated stuff” strategy. I just hope the PvP balance folks can learn from these mistakes.

Agreed. That’s going to be really hard, though. It means they have to not over-buff elementalists, which will be tough since the forums will ask for large buffs. And it’s very difficult to revert something you’ve already implemented. I’m also hopeful that they’ll just be willing to ease back some of the things they overshot (like healing signet—needed a buff, didn’t need to be doubled). But again, that’s difficult for a game company to do.

Kavia.8249:

There are lots of builds out there, but one will always be considered “optimal” for any given class. For warrior alone I could name like 5 or 6 builds. It is inevitable that they will be tested, compared, and that one will achieve dominance over the others.

If they keep buffing every time they nerf they will never stop the power creep that is currently very problematic with this game.

In the first ~8 months of the game it was mostly nerfs and bugfixes going out. That was fine. In the last ~6 months they seemed to change their philosophy (based on misguided advice from the playerbase, unfortunately) and started buffing things that were less used. Many of these buffs have turned into something from the Little Shop of Horrors. Spirit changes, necro changes, warrior changes – these buffs all were disastrous. For reasons I do not understand, instead of reverting or toning down the buffs, they have continued on the path of nerfing things unrelated to the buff in an attempt to bring things back into line (spirits OP? lets nerf healing spring. dhumfire OP? lets nerf terror and bleed stacks. Signet OP? lets nerf stun duration on all classes).

The devs need to know when to suck it up and roll back or tone down changes they made instead of spiraling further down into the abyss. They are currently playing the very game of Whack-a-mole they have stated so many times they want to avoid in State of the Game webcasts earlier this year.

I agree, but that’s a bit easy to say now. Back in March, how many people really thought warriors shouldn’t be buffed? And even after being buffed to essentially their current state this summer, warriors didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. There was a period of about two months in which warriors were faceroll powerful but no one knew it because we were all too busy complaining about necros.

So I do agree that power creep is a problem, and that the forums saying “X needs a massive buff to be viable!” is a problem. I’m just not sure what they were supposed to do differently. The forums had been screaming for buffs to warriors, necros, and rangers for months. There were accusations of “intentionally keeping the meta stale” and just being too lazy to fix things. The slow, steady path they were on may have eventually worked out, but in some cases, it would have been years before certain professions would have been taken seriously.

On build variety, I do honestly believe that more than one build can be considered optimal. Is Five Gauge is the highest-ranked engineer on the NA servers, but almost no one else uses his build. I don’t think that’s because he’s using a sub-optimal build. Nor do I think all other engineers should re-roll to his build because it’s objectively the “best.” Actually, I don’t think more than 2 or 3 engineers in the top 500 team/solo use the same build at all, so there’s that.

It would be a good start. What we really need is completely redone tutorials. Also, rewarding glory for making good plays would help hotjoin players understand the game a lot.

I agree with you, but I also believe that there are a lot of meta-quality builds that are already waiting to be discovered. I use three engineer builds that I know no other player on the NA servers uses. Sensotix over on EU uses a sword/torch shatter mesmer and I know he’s got some interesting trait allocations. Stunningstyles, Google, Five Gauge, CMC, Eurantien, and others all use builds that to my knowledge, no other player uses.

I agree that it’s way to easy to just roll hambow and not have to think about actually theorycrafting a creative build; however, it’s also something of a cop-out to say that nothing else can compete with that. I’ll be glad when the adjustments come and I think warrior players will get a more satisfying playstyle, too.

I’m just saying there are top-tier builds waiting to be discovered, and it’s not really fair to point to FOTM builds and say that there’s nothing else that can compete.

It would probably not be optimal for Anet to have hundreds of empty custom servers all the time. Even if thousands of people bought a custom arena, it wouldn’t be a significant source of income for Anet even at $50. So they probably set the prices based on how many custom arenas they’d like to see. Since they’re still kind of expensive, Anet probably feels there are enough, although I think they went on sale recently.

Zanryu.3417:

The next OP class.

I don’t think it’s possible. Condi engi is very strong right now but gets hardcountered by necro, so you’ll never see very many of them go FOTM unless necro condi flips are nerfed hard. There’s bunker engi, which is a good solo build but lacks the teamfight of other tanky professions. There’s also glass cannon engi, which takes balls of steel to play…so the FOTM crowd will never go there.

Which is amazing, in my opinion. Engineers are set up to have a variety of strong builds but never be OP/FOTM for months or years to come. That didn’t just happen—there have been hundreds of mostly small buffs/nerfs to get them there. Hopefully that’s what can happen with your favorite profession as well. Don’t worry, warriors will still be incredibly strong after the next patch, and you may find that they’re more fun, demanding, and rewarding to play as well.

Darnis.4056:

Mesmer is top skyhammer class, prove me wrong.

It is, although as long as people think knockback spam is hard to deal with they’ll never recognize it. However, engi, thief, guard, and necro can all be pretty good, but not for the reasons people think. If skyhammer were taken seriously by top players, we’d see what the map is really like—and it’s not knockback spam.

tl;dr if two people are fighting on skyhammer, they’re doing it wrong. Just like all the people who charge into darnis’ platform thinking that stability will save them lol.

sorrow.2364:

I’m running a D/D elementalist right now.
I have the tools to close a gap and to snare the enemy, but as soon as any engineer gets under 25% HP, closing the cap is impossible because of the perma-swiftness and the immunity to CCs.

The engineer doesn’t need to leave the node, he can just LoS or disengage temporarily until the healing skill is back up, maybe he can leave the node for a short time, but that’s it.
This is a pretty huge issue considering that you don’t want the engineer to heal up and keep the node contested.

It is fine for a thief, since they are squishy and easy to force them to leave the node, but an engineer is already tough to bring down to 25%, being unable to finish him off because you can’t prevent him to escape to heal is incredibly frustrating.

Hmm, yeah condi engineer is a tough duel for a d/d ele. Hgh engi was popular because it countered d/d and s/d bunkers, even before nerfs.

I feel it’s a little unfair to come out demanding the nerfbat as an (I assume?) dps d/d ele. I run creative builds all the time, but if they don’t perform well vs. meta builds, I change them. Props to you for running something creative and difficult—it sounds like dps d/d ele needs a buff, though. Maybe combine the earth 3 skill chain to be a gap closer and immobilize in one skill, instead of a chain. A low CD daze would be a really good addition to the d/d set and would solve your problem—maybe water 2?

Alternatively, you could just change your build. /f is great vs. engineers because of swirling winds, condition removal, invulnerability, and ranged knockdown.

I’m generally against power creep, but in this case I think it makes more sense than the nerfbat. For example, condi necro already hard counters condi engineer, much worse than condi engineer counters ele. I’m fine with toning down AR, but it only makes sense to do so in the context of nerfs to other professions as well.

Also, I lol’d a bit when you said that engies just LoS you without leaving the node…;) I knew what you meant but it was humorous.

Divinity.8041:

I get the whole thing, but what techs do i use to get 25? I have gotten like 18 before, but never 25

Healing turret – BoB – Fire bomb – wait – shield 4 double tap – detonate healing turret – elixir gun 4 is one way.

Another is runes of the noble + med kit.

Again, you have to use multiple methods in the same fight.

sorrow.2364:

Nothing has been done yet.
That trait is gamebreaking, frustrating and stupid and someone will bring the topic back up periodically until we get some answer from devs or some sort of action.

Total immunity is broken. Automated and unlimited is even more broken.
I’m all up to give engineers more options of condition removal instead of AR.

You have no idea of how frustrating is when an engineer whose HP went to under 25% and he’s constantly kiting and LoSing with perma swiftness with no way to cripple/chill/immobilize/poison him, until his healing skill is off cooldown not allowing you to finish him off.
No counterplay at all, just hoping that the engineer fails to LoS.

Deep breaths, bro. It’s not even that strong of a trait. I use it sometimes but for 30 in alchemy it’s hard to beat PI, IS and BR.

The only thing this does is occasionally forgive an engineer for messing up, maybe one out of four times or so. LoS loses to s/d thieves, sword, hammer, or greatsword warriors, rangers, other engineers, and dps guards. Everyone agrees it’s not that super well designed, but that’s it.

What spec are you using? Because there are only a couple that AR is really frustrating to face with. Spirit ranger and p/d thief off the top of my head, there may be others.

Also, are we talking duels or conquest? Because conquest is designed to force conflict, meaning that if you beat the engineer and he runs, you don’t have to have enough mobility in your spec to catch him. He already lost. If you’re running a spec with a gap closer or ranged interrupts, you can kill him and that’s that. If not, you still won. Kind of like beating a thief.

You can’t do this just by chugging elixirs, but you can reach 25 might stacks with enough might duration, using combinations of blasting fire fields/sigil of battle/might on heal/optional juggernaut or hgh. You’ll have to be in combat to get the sigil of battle stacks and have a good sense of micromanagement/high apm, but it’s not too tough once you get the hang of it.

That is partially correct, but it’s also a bad over-generalization. I don’t think anyone here is using a cantrip ele or d/d thief.

Also, people are calling for nerfs for a variety of reasons. Some are having trouble beating warriors, that’s true. Most top-tier players are calling for nerfs just because they see how unhealthy the current warrior is for the game.

In other words, we’re not dying to warriors, we’re just watching them drive new/casual players away from the game (just like thieves/mesmers last year), and that bothers us.

Rufy.6093:

a t s e.9614:

Good warrior uses his utilities as well . Joke of the year . Dolyak SIGNET
Healing SIGNET , SIGNET of rage .

Nuff Said .

Why would you not use them at the proper time? Even healing if you are about to be killed and it gives u that 1 extra second.

Well that does sound like a next-level strat, but his point was that every profession uses their utilities. Warriors needing to use their utilities to be effective does not make them difficult to play. “I have conditions on me…zerker stance. I’m getting cc’d…dolyak signet.” It’s very 1:1, zero-variety gameplay. That in itself doesn’t make warriors “OP,” but it does make them unhealthy for the game.

silentnight warrior.2714:

I can see your point.
The problem is buffing classes to be at the same level as others and that was what hapened to the warrior class. If you do this all the times when a profession needs help then you are going to have a insane power creep. In the future, in order to nerf one class you will need to nerf all other classes that can be a match to that class other wise that class will be UP from night to day. They can nerf one class but they will need to see the tools that are working right now and then balance them.

I hope it makes sence to you.

I agree completely. For example, warrior healing signet needs to be changed a bit (maybe weaker passive, stronger active) and CI needs to be tweaked (maybe no effect/full cooldown for missed burst skill, or just reduced to 1-2 conditions instead of 3). UF and MH might need slight reduction as well.

At the same time, necros need a couple of tweaks; otherwise, we’d be right back where we were a couple months ago. I’d suggest increasing CD’s on condi flips (so they don’t hard counter other condi builds so much) and making the huge condi dumps more telegraphed.

At that point, engineers might even need a couple things toned down. Thieves would be very strong comparatively but should be all right, I think. Guardians will always be a great profession, rangers still need some buffs/nerfs to get more build variety, eles might need a bit more attention.

But I agree—no profession exists in a vacuum. If they buff one profession, another one suffers. If they nerf one, another one is indirectly buffed.

jmatb.6307:

Fun counter fact: Healing Signet, while poisoned, is still more effective than the vast majority of heals

Right, that’s what I meant. Perma poison reduces it to around 8000/30 seconds, while ticking for a little more than 2500 damage. So given a 30-second poison duration that’s never cleansed, HS will still heal about as much as other professions every 30 seconds, even after subtracting the damage that poison does.

Fun fact: perma poison will reduce healing signet to about 6000 healing every 30 seconds (after factoring in both the damage from poison on a non-condi profession as well as the 33% healing reduction), or about equivalent to most other professions’ heals with no poison.

silentnight warrior.2714:

NevirSayDie.6235:

The current warrior is way better than the old d/d ele, although power creep on other professions prevents ten warrior matches from happening most solo/team queues.

There are lot of classes that need some balancing. If the power creep continues this way it will be impossible to nerf any class some day.

Don’t get me wrong, warrior is the best profession in the game, period. I don’t think anyone can seriously argue against that. But other professions have gotten somewhat better as well; the current warrior vs. builds from last winter would be even more absurd than balance is now.

The current warrior is way better than the old d/d ele, although power creep on other professions prevents ten warrior matches from happening most solo/team queues.

I’m fine with AR getting toned down because it’s only any use maybe once a match, so I’d just take something else (better?) and be done with it.

Condi necros already hard counter condi engineers, and this trait gives condi engineer a chance. I agree that there Anet needs to tone down hard counters across the board, but please don’t just come out calling for the nerfbat on whatever’s annoying, not giving a thought to the broader consequence.

A balance patch like this would be possible:
Warrior stances reduced/UF moved higher/CI toned down to 2
Necro condi flips nerfed/signet of spite cast time increased
Engi AR nerfed

With the current lineup of total cheese dominating every competitive match, a marginally useful engineer trait would be an awful target for the nerfbat.

Bombsaway.7198:

How would you trait a Bomb/Nades/Elixir Gun? I haven’t seen a really good build.
II-VII-XII in explosives (do you want the recharge or extra damage)?
VI seems necessary from Tools for easy WvW.
Then it seems I can go firearms or alchemy. There are sooooo many interesting traits (as opposed to being a ranger). Guessing that backpack regenerator is going to be important.

As for the elite, guessing supply is the obvious.

For bombs/nades/elixir gun, I would do:

Dire/rabid mixed gear, maybe some apothecary

Traits:
Explosives 3, 5, 11 (bomb radius, burn on crit, grenadier)
Alchemy 1, 6, 9 (vigor, protection, regen)
Tools 6 (speedy kits)

You could trade around some explosives traits, but in general, IP will give you way more damage than shrapnel in WvW situations. Bomb radius is nice but you could also trade it for bomb/nade recharge or might on heal (which is especially nice with noble runes).

Alchemy is just an awesome traitline. You literally can’t go wrong there. You could go firearms, but in general you’ll get more dps out of might/boon duration than you will out of precision/condition damage from the traitlines. There are some nice inventions traits as well, so you could trade a few points around. It’s just hard to beat vigor, swiftness, protection, and regen. All four effects are incredibly powerful in PvP/WvW.

Let me know how it goes!

This question has come up several times and I think it’s actually pretty simple to make a straightforward, working definition.

There are three main factors:
1. Rate of actions (does your build have a high apm?)
2. Rate of decisions (do you have to make quick decisions based on your situation or does the same approach usually work?)
3. Level of forgiveness (how many mistakes can you make before you die?)

There may be other factors, but I think these are the main ones. I’m glad that Anet designed some professions to have simpler mechanics than others, but huge complexity gaps create imbalance at casual levels.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Moving it would also simply destroy the current HamBow build, and making a build worthless isn’t balance. Do you really think Warrior would be worth playing if they have to choose between being less tough than Guardians and having CC with no damage, or running Zerker and having less damage than a thief and less escape options.

Are you sure? I mean it would be a small decrease in sustained damage but nothing huge. It would reduce the damage of each earthshaker and the following 1-2 hits. Hambow is more of a sustained damage build than a burst build, so I’m guessing that in a 45-second duel it might lower the hambow’s total sustained damage by 10%-15%.

Remember that a ton of hambow damage is from burning. Pin down is significant as well, plus all of the hammer attacks that happen in between earthshakers.

UF is mandatory for all builds with hammer or m/s because nothing is better. That doesn’t mean that they would be ruined without UF. It simply means that nothing is currently better. My guess is that hambow would still be very strong with a 10% dps decrease.

Ashanor.5319:

You also didn’t prevent any valid argument, you just poked your head in and blabbed on about your rank and how YOU think warrior is overpowered because you were able to achieve rank fairly easily.

Actually, his post right above yours shows valid math in a a spreadsheet of every healing skill in the game. I know you’re feeling defensive, but please refrain from lashing out at people just because of how your profession is currently perceived.

Again, companies do balancing based on internal data, so your resolute defense of warriors won’t change Anet’s opinion. If you’re just trying to make your favorite profession less hated, it’s not working. For the sake of this downward-spiraling community, I ask you to rethink your approach.

Most game companies balance on internal data such as popularity/win percentages, not fan feedback. So I don’t think there’s any way to stop warrior nerfs, as they’re the most popular profession in solo queue by a massive margin, and in team queue by a small margin.

Threads like these are also obviously not swaying public opinion. I know it feels bad when your favorite profession is hated, but there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m sorry. If you want to defend warriors, I’d recommend lobbying for reasonable changes and small nerfs that will make warriors harder to learn without gutting them at the top level.

Bombsaway.7198:

In a completely perfect World, I would play bomb, grenades and toolbelt and use the healing kit as my heal skill all at the same time as they are so much more fun. But I think that would be a build meatball sundae.

In general, I like range and CC. I just got lured by the thought of having so bloody many pet options on the ranger. Dad always told me I should get out of the woods and go to school to be an engineer. Finally, I understand!

You can definitely use 3-4 kits. You might consider elixir gun, since it has a stunbreak and a condition removal skill (super elixir removes a condition even though the tooltip doesn’t say so).

Forums complain about missing holiday rewards—>devs include holiday rewards.
Forums complain about getting holiday rewards—>devs hint that they may reward double tournament chests the following month.
Forums don’t see that and continue complaining.

I think I see a pattern.

Wintel.4873:

Currently I hate to have an Ele on my team, I would rather see them on the enemy team because they barely do anything.

I love to see an ele on my team. Every single ele I’ve seen in high-level solo queues has been a very good player. Easy professions sometimes get up to high levels without having any idea how to play the game, and then get wasted by people who aren’t just button mashing.

Ashanor.5319:

and warriors also have to slot stunbreakers, as well as specialize their build around condition removal and work with what they have. Even warrior runes are nearly always condition removal or reduction. In order to be able to withstand to an extent the insane amount of conditions spammed off in this game I have to dedicate 20 points into defense (and both traits there) as well as use either Hoelbrak, Melandru, or Lyssa Runes and even that isn’t really enough. I still have to take Berserker Stance to give myself some breathing room and use a defensive amulet generally (for higher health and of course toughness to help lesson spike damage). If I have to do all of this just to deal with condition spam, and don’t forget that warrior has to be right in the middle of where the spam is happening in a lot of team fights, why shouldn’t you have to slot a stunbreaker, or some stability, or make a better build than pew pew spam expecting to win.

With respect to your admirable forum warring skills, I’d submit that you do not have to do any of those things. It’s true that those are the best choices. Every warrior build should have cleansing ire because there is no better way to spend 20 trait points, period.

However, that doesn’t mean that you have to have that. It just means it’s the best. Back when HGH engineer was considered OP, engi players wondered if the profession had any future after the series of mild HGH-related nerfs. Back in those days, every engineer was an HGH engineer. Were engineers even viable outside of HGH nades?

Suddenly, dozens of great new engi builds surfaced as people got over the fact that there wasn’t just one best choice any more. Isn’t that a good thing?

Bomb/nade both, or one at a time?

If you want to go both, you’ll probably want 30/x/x/20+/10+. I run some builds with that base and usually like elixir gun as my third utility, although ostricheggs likes elixir R as his third.

You’ll probably want rabid amulet for pvp, or dire/rabid for wvw. Builds like this can be quite good but are pretty tough to play. Good luck, and let me know if you run into trouble!

Admiral Zombie.8624:

How do we handle new game modes potentially splitting the player base

My dream solution is that a new game mode could replace hotjoin. Not sure if that’s possible though.

JETWING.2759:

Warriors finaly can face “bad” Thieves and Mesmers, and some them comes here to request nerf?

Actually who needs same attention are Necros (AI hits very hard, conditions rips 35k – 40k very fast) and Ranger LB.

I think that warriors are finaly near to pair anothers classes.

I…always try to be straightforward and polite on the forums, but…

Did you just say warriors are nearly as good as other classes and ranger longbow may need a nerf? Because it really looks like that’s what you said. It’s not, right?

Hotjoin is like that. In solo queues, there’s a decent amount of communication. If you queue with a team, they’ll probably want you to have a mic/headset and communicate constantly.

It’s to the point that I don’t even care if warriors are overpowered or not. I’m just tired of seeing 4-6 of them every solo queue. If they have to get nerfed for that to stop, so be it.

Errant Venture.9371:

I don’t understand how you can claim condis are attritional when dhuumfire necs, bomb/nade engis, spirit rangers, and s/s wars all have equivalent or faster TTK than glass power specs.

Think about it, what power specs do you see anymore? Just wars right? The occasional perma-evade thief? They’re the only ones with enough baked-in sustain to dedicate all or most of their stats to damage in order to keep up with condi specs. Condi specs can match or exceed power specs in TTK and they have much, much more sustain.

What is the TTK of a glass cannon spec, in your opinion? I think you might be surprised that some are faster than you thought.

I see a lot of different power builds, but that’s just anecdotal evidence. I’ll take your word for it.

Follidus.8027:

nothing is “unstoppable,” however there are a lot of builds that are extremely easy to play, requiring very little thought and/or execution to be effective.

That’s my concern as well. Similar to backstab thieves last year, it’s a roadblock to population growth. I don’t mind simple builds being effective at the top tier so much—it’s the entry level that I’m worried about.

Brigg.6189:

My point stands, hambow didn’t work in tournies until healing signet buffs were in. That’s pretty bold to insinuate that players weren’t trying to make it work before that.

I’m not saying warriors weren’t overtuned, but I will argue they’re closer to the cliff of being useful than people realize.

Apologies. My point was that no one tried it after the buff for a couple months. I know people were trying desperately to make warriors work before the buffs, but they’re come a long, long way.

Mrbig.8019:

In top 200 EU solo queue you see only Necros, Wars and Guards. Sometime a lucky engi-thief gets into it.

The bravest bring mesmers, but really THE BRAVEST.

That’s strange. I’ve always wondered why I haven’t seen more mesmers in NA solo queue, since they’d do great against most comps. In NA, wars are by far the most popular, followed by thieves, engies, necros, rangers, and guards, in no particular order. There are still a fair number of eles and mesmers as well, but I’d say not as many as the other professions.

Brigg.6189:

^ You do realize that barely anybody played warrior before the HS buff right? That was with long stuns, zerker stance, and CI.

No one played warriors for a while because they had no idea how good they had become. Then after a couple top teams used them in webcasted tournaments, and the warriors were crushing spirit rangers on sidepoints, people finally realized that warriors had been buffed enough.

Staff necro will always feel great in hotjoins because the aoe means you’ll tag everything, so you’ll score a lot of glory. That doesn’t really mean anything, though.

In general, standard condi necros are still extremely strong but don’t get used much because it’s very risky to take one in a competitive match. They’re fairly vulnerable to focused fire and have limited usefulness outside of mid teamfights. So they’re a build that does amazing in the right matchups, or given a strong team, but you don’t see many in solo queues anymore.

Zanryu.3417:

What do you mean by starting builds? Builds that people just throw together without checking to see how effective it is or without looking at meta builds? ‘cause if you’re using a non meta build vs a meta build, one that’s been tested and shown to work well, can you really expect to do as well as you’d like?

You’re gonna have to define “starting build”.

I know you’re feeling defensive because your profession is so hated right now. Try not to overreact to stuff, though.

The “starting build” a new player gets when he tries PvP for the first time is usually a kind of semi-tanky soldier’s amulet build. As far as I know, they’re pretty awful for most professions. My only point was that two completely new players using default builds could duel each other; if one was a warrior, the other wouldn’t be able to move his health bar, because I don’t think there’s a soldier’s amulet build capable of doing that. That’s why I said warriors appear even more OP to newer/starting players, even though top-tier players are also calling for nerfs.

Errant Venture.9371:

Power specs can be blocked + blinded.

Almost all attacks can be blocked or blinded. It doesn’t really matter if they’re power or condi. It just feels like condi damage can’t be blocked/blinded because you take the damage after the missed block/blind. The only differences between condi and power are:

—instant vs. dot (power wins)
—non-removable vs. cleansable (power wins)
—condi ignores armor (condi wins)
—multiplicative vs. mostly additive stat scaling (power wins for glass cannons; condi wins for tanky dps. Condi duration could be considered multiplicative scaling.)

If I attack you with a 3000 damage direct attack, you take 3000 damage if you don’t dodge/block/blind it. If I hit you with a 3000 damage burn, you take 3000 damage if you don’t dodge/block/blind/cleanse/regen it.

In the same amount of time as it takes burn to deal 3000 damage, warriors will gain about 3000 health from HS + AH. In other words, perma burning alone will not move a warrior’s health bar at all, but a 3000 damage direct attack will move it down 3000. That’s what people mean when they talk about regen negatively affecting condi builds. If a warrior is almost dead, with 3000 health left, which attack do you want to use?

Perma swift/vigor is good in a lot of builds, from glass cannons to tanks.

And you can play engineer as a point assaulter the way you describe, just don’t expect to be a better mid bunker than a guardian.

Tanky dps is also good. Usually looks like condi nades and bombs with 20-30 alchemy and the swiftness/vigor combo, and the rabid amulet.

I haven’t seen two engineers use the same spec in top-tier tournaments for a long time. I believe there are a couple engineers running Five Gauge’s power control build. The most common is probably a variant of condi nades or nade/bombs.

Zanryu.3417:

Cynz.9437:

you know there is something wrong when i go to do tpvp and half of the ppl on map are warriors… i am sadly not even extraggerating

That doesn’t necessarily equate to overpowered. That could just as easily be word of mouth or hype.

FOTM doesn’t just happen for no reason. Word of mouth and hype are the same thing.

I’d say warriors are FOTM because they’re incredibly forgiving, easy to get kills with and just a little too powerful overall. The worst thing is that it makes them horribly imbalanced at entry-level PvP, because the starting builds can’t even do enough damage to keep up with the regen.

Coulter.2315:

The Primary.6371:

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

At the moment warriors can just equip their passive regen signet and be unable to be killed. When a warrior is 4v1 and not dropping below 50% health and able to kill the other 4 players, it simply makes PVP unfun. Just had two games where it was impossible to kill any of the opposing team because it was all passive regen warriors.

Have you ever heard of poison?

Very nice condition supposed to reduce healing amount by 33%.

For Poison to have an equal effect on Heal Sig to any active heal cast through it you require 100% up time.

Right—more specifically, a full condi profession who keeps poison up 100% of the time will reduce the warrior’s healing to about 3000 over 30 seconds, after factoring in the damage from the poison. A non-condi profession that manages 100% uptime over 30 seconds will still allow the warrior to heal for 6000.

In other words, perma-poison from a non-condi build will still allow the warrior to heal about as much as another profession can without any poison ever being applied to them.

Sensotix.4106:

Added:
Episode 9 -“Hungover Sensotix!” (Engineer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6BB-q5BDfM

Heheh that one was pretty hilarious! The build you’re using is extremely different from meta builds but you made it work well. You’ll like playing around with engineers more, there are a ton of builds waiting to be discovered.

True, EG 3 is underused. It’s much harder to use well than guardian shouts, since it’s a long channel and doesn’t put out significant damage/conditions or help the engineer at all. But it’s an amazing skill in the right hands.

Guard still has more overall teamfight potential. I could see a team using an engineer as a guardian replacement, though. My point was that engineers are great at point assault (which guardians are awful at), so you’ll usually see teams using those two in their strongest roles.

Sylentir.8913:

coglin.1867:

Every build you can use dire for is better with soldiers or rabid, really ?? A condition bunker ? Hardly……….Soldiers is very limited in value for a lot of build for the engineer, it is worthless for pistols. Thats half our available weapons.

In many WvW situations, you will get much much more value in survivability then the weak damage added by some crits. You can easily get enough crits to proc your on crit conditions with dire.

Most dire builds will have >5% crit chance from the lack of precision. And what bunker builds scale well with condition damage? FT doesn’t well, bombs don’t well, toolkit doesn’t well. Pistol does crap damage regardless, whenever I have it equipped I spend most of my time in another kit, switching out only to use a single skill or two.

Dire is a great choice for tanky condition builds in WvW. There are lots of ways to minmax the stats you need. Toss on noble runes and medkit and you’ve got powerful self-heals, fury to proc IP, and enough might to end almost any fight (except vs. a necro, of course, since they are very close to a hard counter to condi engineer).

Yup, keep building up your friends list. Feel free to hit me up in the game if you want…