Guild Wars 2

MrForz.1953:

Been roaming between different profs. So far:

-Elementalists: They talk rather constructively and try very hard to do anything other than D/D builds due to popularity and possibly sickness.

-Guardians: Their conversations are often based about a few questions and many of them will make posts saying that they feel bad about many other classes.

-Thief: It’s the end of the world, they have 1 more second of Revealed, complains are posted 24/7, L2P’s are posted right after that, alot of arguments, even between Thieves themselves. A good number of people suggesting ninja/assassin-like weapon sets because they’ve played too much Hitman or watched too much anime.

-Mesmer: Refer to the first sentence on: Thief.

-Necromancer: Totally lost, trying to find out the reasons of recent nerfs rather than fixing bugs.

-Ranger: Looking for bug fixes, utterly negative, some try to crack their character stats open in order to pull anything decent against the FotM’s, others look like they’ve found the Holy Grail.

-Warrior: Desperate call to Anet about PvP, alot of small, informative questions asked, pretty much all.

And what I’m seeing on the Engineer forums are posts asking about HGH*409 now that it’s finally turned out to be popular, nobody knows if we’re OP or not, I’m seeing threads about how people love their class; negative threads, parodies, mixed feelings, and people frowning at Anet’s philosophy.

Yup. The engineer forum is one of the best, actually. Some negative threads are unjustified and some are just too whiny. Some are overrun by well-meaning people who feel they must correct everyone who finds engineers weak. There are a lot of positive threads as well.

Edit: forgot to mention the mesmer forum is obsessed with permanent swiftness.

1. Engineers were originally conceived as a third heavy armor profession. I think the devs were afraid they would get too hard to kill and changed that pre-beta.
2. Part of the design philosophy for engineers is that they would excel in “mid-range” fights, so I think the devs intentionally kept the long-range abilities to a minimum (1 kit). I originally thought I was signing on to a ranged dps profession as well, but I’ve come to love the quirky nature of the shotgun.
3. Engineers were the last profession designed and, as I mentioned, weren’t originally supposed to wear medium armor. Probably all that the artists designing medium armor got from the devs was the thing about medium armor professions being “adventurers” and that thieves and rangers would wear medium armor.
4. I’m no lore expert. My guess is that there just wasn’t time to create an engineer lore before launch. The profession was announced very late in development.

mursie.3681:

I’m sorry but I have to completely disagree with you. The experience I had last night very nearly has driven me to uninstall the game. I am a diehard solo que’er. Basically always have been. I admit that during certain times (like mid day or early day) the ques are somewhat decent and your chance of winning pug v pug feels about 50%.

But last night starting at 7pm i played 20 consecutive solo q matches against all premades. Multiple times i was 4v5. In all cases the premades were ranked…and i proceeded to lose 18 of the 20 matches… completely falling off the leaderboards. What was most disturbing was that I continued to face r30+ premades and would be given, at least one to two r11 to r19 players. If there is a matchmaking system…it was in no way demonstrated last night.

It is beyond frustrating to play organized comps that have bunkers for two points and roamers/dps to assist…. while you are grouped with guardians that are full dps dieing faster than a full zerker thief. Again, this is not a 1 or 2 matches thing. TWENTY straight matches…

I find time of day to be highly correlated with the frustration.. unfortunately the time of day during the week that this occurs is the only time after my day job that I can actually game. At this point… I am close to fully checking out.

Hmm, I’m sorry to hear that. I haven’t played much recently because I know I can only do one mode or the other (team or solo). I chose team, which means I only do PvP once a week or so when I’m on and four available people from my team are on as well.

The few times I did try solo queueing, I got some decent matches and even won a couple, but it took several matches of pure pain to get my mmr low enough for that to happen. Come to think of it, that was over a weekend, so there was probably a larger matchmaking pool to pull from so I got “lucky” in that regard.

This only confirms my belief that there is a certain window of time where instituting a solo queue is possible, and that window may close very soon. The last time I played was this past Saturday and tourneys were popping fast and there were a lot of people in hotjoin, so I think maybe there’s still enough of a population bubble to support it. Without fixing the structure of the game soon, though, the small population bubble we’re seeing will fade pretty quick.

I think you have a good thing going with this build—it’s easily the most creative flamethrower build I’ve seen. If you do give up HGH, I think you’ll find your options open up quite a bit.

Flamethrower used to have a very overpowered trait that made you immune to all stuns/knockdowns while using it. It was nerfed a time or two before the trait was finally removed, but unfortunately, the nerfs remained even after the offending trait was taken care of. So yes, it is mostly used for the visual effects/concept now, although there are still a few people who swear by flamethrower builds.

Churchill.8714:

The PVE crap in the zones also adds a great deal to the skill lag.

I find this to be the case, using an older PC. I doubt it would cause any problems server-side, but for a lot of us it makes things worse than they need to be client-side.

Right now, they’re kind of just there for sigil stacking and helping thieves.

That was actually a really cool story!

My personal rules for when I’m solo roaming: kill anyone who attacks me, don’t kill anyone running by. Duel anyone asking for one (bowing or jumping) but leave them downed afterward. Take camps and kill anyone who tries to gank me in the back while I’m doing it.

I figure if they don’t want to duel I won’t make them. If they’re out looking for easy kills I feel no remorse killing them. I’m also competitive so I want to play well for my server, but killing RPers doesn’t seem like it needs to be priority 1.

It’s important to note that matchmaking has gotten much better (remember when just getting a 5v5 was a 50/50 chance?) I’d say matchmaking is actually pretty decent right now—premades usually face premades, pugs usually face pugs. It’s just that you can’t switch from team to solo, or solo to team.

The reasons for splitting the queue is not necessarily that it would improve matchmaking, although it would probably do that. The reason is that it would allow people to queue both in teams and solo, as well as the other benefits/opportunities stated.

Regarding population: top teams did complain back when paid tournaments were 8-team. When 2-team paids were introduced they popped instantly. Good structure builds playerbase.

bhagwad.4281:

citizankane.5723:

Ya they were prolly wondering why the highest rank member on the team was asking them for a strategy

Lol does anyone think that high ranking members are gods or something? . That’s a polite way of saying “let’s collaborate and hammer out a strategy”. It’s more polite than “This is what you have to do”.

I’m all for collaboration but there is a point there. A lot of people don’t really want to think about things but don’t mind if you ask them to do something. Saying “can ranger get altar, and rest go mid?” in team chat is sometimes your best option.

uberkingkong.8041:

Anet’s leaderboard shouldn’t have taken that long, the rating system was in since tournaments existed. They pull that information to there website just like this guy pulling the information here to his website.

It’s a little discouraging that the website has a better leaderboard than Anet, but let’s not be too hard on them. Anet has had leaderboards in place for a couple months now, they were just waiting to make sure the boards were functioning properly before making them viewable.

I didn’t play GW1, but that does sound fun. It would be a little tricky to make sure it didn’t create a total monster for a month. Maybe if once a month, there were a few days with a “flux,” as opposed to an entire week/month…

I prefer condition damage in WvW because it has a simpler playstyle and can also be much tankier than a crit build (i.e. to do max direct damage, you need power, precision, and crit damage, which means you won’t have any toughness or vitality). Condition builds can max out condition damage while still having enough precision for procs as well as substantial toughness and vitality.

Also, most people in WvW haven’t figured out that their builds need some form of condition removal, so that helps.

For gear, make sure you do daily/monthly for laurels. Ascended stuff is just better, obviously, but doing 1 monthly and 20 dailies for an amulet will also save you the 3-6 gold you would have spent making or buying one. If you go conditions, the karma vendors in Orr sell rabid everything, which will save you a boatload of gold. Of course, you can also map complete/dungeon run for gear as well.

Ostricheggs.3742:

google.3709:

Ostricheggs.3742:

it IS actually OP. There are no rivals at what it does. It kills the kitten out of everything with no remorse.

In top tier tournaments I win 90% of all even fights and 1v1s. Team fighting is a breeze.

The build is insane, but also takes a lot of practice. I am pretty sure it will get nerfed next patch, so have fun while you can!

Just wondering, since you’re 1 of the main persons behind the HGH build. what will you do if they do in fact nerf it ? what’s your backup build ? will you still play the class ? etc :]

I was honestly thinking about that earlier, and the depressing answer is that there are no other viable builds that don’t rely on HGH.

After kit refinement was gutted I have no others. I’ve tried so hard to find anything, literally anything, to replace or rival the efficacy of HGH and I have been since I discovered the build. Last patch both of the substitutes I “found” (hundred nades with elixir C/might stacking instead of toolkit and bunker with tookit/e-gun) depended on kit refinement as a main part of the build.

So really, I have no idea what I’d play. Obviously there needs to be some buffs to a LOT of underperforming traits and utilities. Right now we’re in the same boat as eles. We only have one spec that’s anywhere near decent, but that spec is overpowered. How can you nerf the only spec a class has? A-net has a depressing record of nerfing classes into the ground, beyond the point of unplayability, for months and months at a time.

I’d prefer that not to happen to us AGAIN. In a perfect world I would like to see HGH get a nerf and far, far more viable builds created via buffs to kittenty stuff

I’ve been trying as well. As you say, most of the time I just hit a wall and realize it’s not possible. I think I hit on a bunker build that’s more or less viable, though. I tried it for the first time yesterday and did pretty well vs. some good teams. If eles get nerfed, it may even be a competitive bunker build. So I believe a non-HGH build is possible, just maybe not yet.

These are the reasons that the next 1-2 months is the best time to implement a split solo/team queue:

1. The population is slightly higher now than it has been over the last several months due to some features people have waited for. As we all know, in order for things like matchmaking and split queues to function, there’s a certain minimum concurrent population.
2. Leaderboards (except for the top ~100 spots) are currently tracking only two things: wins and games you joined solo. Over time, this reality will sink in and the excitement of leaderboards will fade. Thus, quick action making leaderboards more meaningful will help Anet retain playerbase.
3. Hotjoin population has expanded due to people unable to have a full premade 24/7, but also being unwilling to solo queue. It’s not because people actually like hotjoins, although some do. These are the people who would be in a solo queue, if there were one.
4. Currently, every time someone plays in a full team, their MMR goes up by huge margins. Then, when they join solo, the experience is bad for about ten games until their MMR goes back down to pug level. This is leading people to choose only one or the other (team or solo). Even people who don’t care about the rating know matches just won’t be close and fun if they switch back and forth between team matches and pugs. Thus, puggers aren’t finding teams, because playing with a team means they have to lose all their pug matches for a while. Also, people in established teams are just logging off or hotjoining when their team’s not on, since they know they’d face the same teams pugging as they do with their full team. Both groups of people are playing less and making concurrent population even lower than it actually should be.

These are the reasons the time is now. There is a real possibility that this opportunity for Anet won’t exist 6 months from now.

Take the pugger every time. He’s probably a better player than some on good teams because he doesn’t have people peeling for him every time he makes a mistake, etc.

I love playing tournaments but don’t play a lot. I would probably be very frustrated with some of the issues if I did tourneys every day. I hate hotjoins.

CrassBippy.4619:

If you dont feel like confusion is a little too strong, then youre delusional, and likely main a confusion character. I remember trying a hundred blades frenzy warrior in Spvp back in the day and I knew it was OP, and i main a warrior.

Go fight a good mesmer, see how you do vs their confusion build with WvW buffs and stats. Then with a straight face try to say its working as intended.

I do feel confusion is a little too frustrating in some situations, and should be changed by either a damage reduction or not proccing off of utilities/attunement changes/dodge rolls.

Frenzy/hb warriors have been awful for a long time.

I main a condition engineer with two confusion attacks. I’ve been enjoying WvW recently (I usually play tournaments) because there are more viable builds in WvW. In tournaments, engineers have only 1 build used by good or even decent teams. I was excited to find there were other alternatives in WvW. That’s it.

Part of this problem could be solved by implementing a separate ladder for solo-queue matches. Right now, very few good players are pugging because they know good and well that it’s ladder suicide. So it makes sense that there are no experienced players solo queueing to fill your party of four.

I’m fine with retaliation as a counter to specific fast-hitting aoe skills, but it doesn’t make sense as the damage add it currently is. Either let it be a damage add that dishes out a few hundred dps to whoever’s attacking you, or a counter skill that you have to choose when to use.

I suppose it would be too much to ask for a sticky?

Ostricheggs.3742:

People have been getting so off topic in this thread after its main question was answered by J sharp.

This isn’t a thread to suggest balance changes just because a dev replied. This is a thread to discuss the pros and cons of splitting balance across the 3 different game types guild was is split into.

Although honestly, what are the cons?

There are possible cons, such as things becoming so different that players who play several different areas of the game would suffer. Especially since PvE and WvW use the same gear/traits—what if you wanted to do a dungeon Saturday morning and WvW in the evening? Would you have to equip a different gear set and re-trait?

That’s an extreme example, of course, but in general it’s good that the devs aren’t going crazy with splits. It sounds like they’re going to be careful. Hopefully that means more builds are viable in more places, instead of fewer.

Rieselle.5079:

That might be true in the current crop of games, but it’s not true in theory. Proof: Take GW2 and spinoff its pvp into a seperate game without any mmo.

There, equal complexity, zero mmo.

Not financially viable, though. Arenanet spent a lot of money developing GW2, and that wouldn’t have been possible without a huge base of PvE players waiting to buy the game.

HGH engineers are very good at the top level of tournaments, maybe the best couple hundred players in the world. In a top-tier team, everyone is on voice chat, so as soon as the engi starts getting focused he will call for a “peel.” Also, top-tier teams have depended heavily on bunker guardians and eles for a long time, and HGH engineers are particularly good at killing people who think they can live through anything.

So it’s mostly top players who find it OP. For good reason—it’s a very strong damage build—but it’s certainly much better at the top tier than anywhere else. Top teams are able to compensate for the weaknesses while utilizing the strength of the build, which is countering bunkers.

Just want to clarify a couple things:

1. Condition removals always remove the most recently applied condition.
2. Power/precision/critical damage specs are much weaker in PvP than in WvW.

I agree that people looking for a perfect game will never find it.

I can answer your question, though. It’s the complexity. You’re not going to get even close to the dizzying number of choices GW2 has in a MOBA. Even though there are a relatively small number of top-tier viable builds, each one is made up of hundreds of pieces of information.

I’m trying to come up with a top-tier meta viable spec that doesn’t need grenades or HGH. I haven’t succeeded since the patch, but I believe it is possible and will keep trying.

Immolator.5640:

What I don’t understand is how people can think this is completely fine?

Lets see – it proccs when you dodge, it proccs when you attack, it proccs when you heal it proccs when you change attunement it proccs when you do pretty much anything. Sitting still and doing nothing is a completely stupid and illogical solution when you’re in the midst of combat and fighting for your life, you can not sit still and do nothing for 10 seconds. I fight many 1vs3 or 1vs5 fights, if one of them is a confusion Mesmer/engineer I have by default lost that fight, by the same token if 2+ are backstab bursts thieves then I’ve probably lost the fight, but that’s acceptable because no one can win against 2 or more thieves unless they’re really bad, pretty much because they’re impossible to finish, shadow refuge from both of them makes it even more so.

Confusion needs changing.

I agree that confusion would be less frustrating if it didn’t proc on dodge skills, and eles have it particularly bad in some scenarios. For example, tornado procs confusion way too much. Attunement changes seem to get hit too hard as well, but I haven’t been able to test that. Things like that should certainly be changed. Let’s start with the obvious.

As an experienced engineer, I do win a majority of my 1v1s. Part of that is because I’ve practiced and refined my spec a lot, and part of it is because I’m built almost completely for small fights. Part of it is because I have all exotic/ascended gear. I’ve also spent a lot of time in tournaments, so I know every profession’s mechanics, weapon skills, common utilities, and attack animations. But I would never in my life dream of taking on three or five people at once and succeeding, no matter what specs they had or didn’t have. Which build is OP again?

CrassBippy.4619:

Confusion isnt OP in itself, its the fact that there is a tier for conditional removals and they get removed in order of “importance,” Confusion is at the bottom of the list, so you can only remove it with a remove all, or if no other condition is on you

Condition removal skills actually remove the most recent condition applied to you. It’s a pretty decent system because it allows for a highly skilled opponent to “cover” his most important conditions with weaker ones, while still allowing the other player to know which of his conditions will be removed. For example, any large stack of bleeding will almost always be removed first because it is constantly being refreshed; it is almost always the most recent one applied. Something like a long poison can be hard to get rid of.

It’s also a good system because it usually prevents a condition removal skill being wasted on a condition that was about to expire naturally, since there was probably something else applied more recently.

Archaon.6245:

Yeah let’s put an Healing-Tough-Vit amulet and let’s make pvp die once and for all.

I don’t want to be mean, but we really, really need to stop saying stuff like this. This will NEVER HAPPEN. Anet knows good and well that would be a disaster and they will never, ever, ever, ever consider letting this happen. It’s not even possible in PvE.

On the other hand, a power/precision/toughness amulet might really help warriors and necros.

Having more customizable stats would also help to prevent bad balance decisions being made because “it would upset WvW/PvE balance.” Example: thieves in tournaments compared to thieves in WvW.

Eles are pretty easy, it’s 0/0/0/30/30, with the extra ten either in air or earth. Just take all the traits that look like they heal you or remove conditions, and then use d/d or s/d with three cantrips.

No bunker engi builds have really surfaced since the last patch. There are some engies bunkering with their own personal builds, but there’s not a standard “bunker engi” build that I’m aware of.

I believe there are at least two separate issues:

1. Magnet has problems with anything besides completely flat terrain.
2. There are some odd rendering issues that sometimes make the target appear to be in front of you when they are actually not.

Also, stability, protect me, “on-cc” traits, etc.

I recently started solo roaming as an explosives engineer and have found it very fun. Going full condition damage and taking either toolkit or bomb kit with your grenades actually works very well. Toolkit is excellent for 1v1 fights, and bomb kit is amazing for taking supply camps solo or in a very small group.

For traits, you’ll probably want incendiary powder instead of shrapnel. You might want to look at getting some condition removal, which either means taking elixir C, or traiting into alchemy for 409 and taking a different elixir.

jpnova.4572:

Guidly told me that Bomb Kit is rubbish for condition damage, I should get cleric’s but already invested in Apothecary, anyway to salvage this?

I’d say cleric’s would be better for dungeons but apothecary should be okay-ish in WvW. Confusion is very good in WvW, burn is good everywhere, and the other bombs except for bomb 1 all have good effects.

The real trouble is that to use bombs primarily for healing, you need to spam them constantly. That means using bomb 1 over and over. That kind of works for some dungeons in a power build, but in WvW spamming bombs is not always possible. If you’re careful about the situations you get in and the role you want to fill, you can make it work.

jcbroe.4329:

Hmm? I thought it was being run with Carrion, not rabid. I have only watched Teldo play engy though, so I can’t really speak from an area of knowing anything about it.

Edit: whoops, meant rampagers.

It can be run with rampager’s as well, but it’s not a great choice because you actually lose over 200 condition damage in addition to then having base toughness. So the extra couple hundred power and precision is cool but just not worth it unless you plan on never getting hit. Teldo can do that because he’s Teldo.

mursie.3681:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Raptured.9307:

It is pretty clear this is getting nerfed. Engineers right now make the best point defenders/ point oriented support right now with ridiculous dmg/control/ good survivability. With the ridiculous amount of buffs last patch, They are bound to be toned down- the question being, by how much?

Just putting out another reminder for those who haven’t actually played the spec—HGH condi engies have zero interrupts (outside an elite skill) and very little support. They do have a huge amount of sustained damage, as well as plenty of single condition removals and a three second invuln, so they aren’t completely glassy.

The buffs of the last patch were almost all to turrets, which are still virtually unused in tournaments. The HGH condi build received zero changes.

Lastly, I would like to remind people that the HGH build is a hard counter to pure bunker team compositions. Removing a counter is a dangerous decision. I thought a few weeks ago we wanted a profession that could reliably kill a bunker after a reasonable amount of time? If teams literally stop taking eles and guards because HGH engies counter them too hard, then we know it’s time to nerf.

aren’t completely glassy? lol. You have around 1700 toughness and 18.5K hp with rabid amulet. plus the boons from elixir H…plus the condi removal from elixir drinks…plus elixir S and thrown elixir S… plus your elite.

you are, no where even close to near, the definition of glassy.

1485 toughness (916+569) with base toughness, rabid amulet and carrion jewel, actually, but I agree, not glassy. The point is that whenever people encounter a powerful spec they feel it can do everything and has no downsides. That’s not true. HGH nades engineers are good because they have great sustained damage, period.

Raptured.9307:

It is pretty clear this is getting nerfed. Engineers right now make the best point defenders/ point oriented support right now with ridiculous dmg/control/ good survivability. With the ridiculous amount of buffs last patch, They are bound to be toned down- the question being, by how much?

Just putting out another reminder for those who haven’t actually played the spec—HGH condi engies have zero interrupts (outside an elite skill) and very little support. They do have a huge amount of sustained damage, as well as plenty of single condition removals and a three second invuln, so they aren’t completely glassy.

The buffs of the last patch were almost all to turrets, which are still virtually unused in tournaments. The HGH condi build received zero changes.

Lastly, I would like to remind people that the HGH build is a hard counter to pure bunker team compositions. Removing a counter is a dangerous decision. I thought a few weeks ago we wanted a profession that could reliably kill a bunker after a reasonable amount of time? If teams literally stop taking eles and guards because HGH engies counter them too hard, then we know it’s time to nerf.

Bailey.6892:

Hello,
New to the engineer and had some questions, and well the info I have may be just flat wrong so hoping to get some help with it.

In this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Elixirs-have-it-all-the-rest-has-little

they say a self rez from elixir line although I have not been able to figure this out…and I have died plenty so was looking at the traits. I may have missed something.

Also had some one say we could get perma swiftness and was wondering how we do this?

Also was wondering on the trait that has an %8 chance to convert conditions to boons. Is this only calculated when the condition is first put on or for every tick of the condition. Also if it triggers for one does it convert all or just one?

The “transmute” trait triggers only when a condition is applied to you. It only converts a single stack of the condition even if it succeeds. For example, if a necro hits you with mark of blood for three stacks of bleeding, transmute gets three 8% chances to turn each of them to a boon (I believe bleeding changes to might). It’s still good for a minor trait.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I’ll try to respond to some of the comments since my last post…

Yes, I do play this build in tournaments. I’ve used it for my last 30ish matches. I generally solo queue and I’m currently rank 289 NA. I’m playing this build because I prefer to use my own special blends, rather than flavor of the month builds. Would I be higher ranked if I was playing HGH? It’s entirely possible, but maybe not. At any rate I’m still winning more than I lose and having fun in the process. Part of the reason I play unpopular builds is to see how far off they are, and look for areas that we can improve to get them up to a similar level as the stronger builds.

Kit Refinement works in my build for a couple of reasons. First, I’m often bunkering a point. So my refinement is cooling down while I’m waiting for an opponent to show up, unless I’m preemptively dropping bandages and antidotes. It depends on who I expect to show up. The other reason is because my fights tend to last a long time, so even if it isn’t off cooldown at the very beginning of the fight, I’ll often still get multiple uses out of it before I fight is concluded.

Yes, sometimes rocket turret targeting does not end in my favor. However, the overcharge aoe is pretty big, and my build still works even if my rocket turret is missing my primary target. However, when the rockets are hitting, my build suddenly becomes lethal, rather than just tanky. And it provides some extra AoE CC through the overcharge knockdown and the detonate.

Thanks, excellent explanations. Props again for making the build work. Now just slot those runes of melandru and you’ll be the best bunker turret kit refinement engi in the world!

I’m playing an off engineer build that uses some confusion. Confusion is definitely strong, but there are some bugs/issues that should be addressed before talking about an across-the-board nerf.

For example, an elementalist in tornado will take three tics of confusion damage every second. They are also severely punished for changing attunements. “On dodge” effects proccing confusion is unnecessary and frustrating. Confusion currently tics damage as you activate a skill but before it gives the effect, so if you use a condition removal skill to get rid of confusion, you’ll take damage from that.

So before we completely nerf confusion, it would be best to fix some of the bugs/unnecessary elements.

shimmerless.4560:

No need to be so rude… my point is that if there’s such a “significant difference [in] the numbers”, then why is the HGH build such a big deal?

Because it counters pure bunker teams.

You can improve this build by straightening out the stats. You have some condition damage, healing, and crit damage—you’ll get better results if you focus on one or two things. You seem to be using a lot of PTV gear, which is great for WvW, but you’ll get more damage if you choose either condition damage or power/precision. I’d avoid taking any healing power.

The traitline choices are solid, but incendiary power is about 6x better than shrapnel in the explosives line. You’ll probably want to either use elixir H and boon duration runes to make HGH more effective, or keep using med kit but drop elixir B, HGH and elixir recharge. You could slot some great control instead of elixir B, especially toolkit or net turret. There are also some great traits you could grab, like protection injection, vigor/swiftness combinations, etc.

Ostricheggs.3742:

It’s bad cuz it’s an unstoppable killing machine with unrivaled potential that hasn’t been reached by any player to date. It does have its weaknesses and right now I think a-net should work on bringing sub-par classes, utilities and trait lines up to par, but in the current meta it’s hard not to consider an HGH engi OP.

You’re correct, as usual, but my point was that it is only good at one thing (damage). Zero interrupts, zero support.

My other point is that even though HGH engies are good, teams still rely on guardians and eles as the backbone of their composition. How many eles would each team bring if HGH nades was removed?

I’d say we need more builds that can’t be “stopped”—i.e. bunkers can’t sustain through their damage indefinitely. Eles are still amazing, even though they have a counter now. It’s a bad idea to just nerf a counter-build while the thing it was supposed to counter is still very strong.

Pinko.2076:

We’re doing a fight club while 2nd in ppt/score vs the 3rd place in ppt/score while the 1st goes all tryhard. We just like to pvp. Maybe CD will have fun one day~

saiyr.3071:

Probably when they start winning!

kerona.3465:

Didn’t you know that giving people fair fights with equal numbers and a chance to win instead of repeated zergsmashes is a distraction tactic to increase the gap in our PPT?

Lol, back to back to back mag posts…in the sos/sbi/cd matchup thread. We get it, you guys are best forum warriors. Grats.

blurps.2340:

There are two problems with the HGH condi build:

1. It’s too well rounded, you don’t have to sacrifice anything. Ironically enough virtually all the other Engineer builds have the exact opposite issue, you have to specialize to even do kinda ok at the thing you’re specializing in yet still retain considerable weaknesses thanks to the hybrid tax.

The conclusion is pretty simple: To adjust the build, ANet need to target it very specifically rather than carpet bombing the class again like they love to do if anyone comes up with a way to build around the inbuilt deficiencies.

2. The build can overwhelm even dedicated condition cleansers without too much trouble. This is a meta game problem and will have to be solved accordingly.

Unfortunately we’ll probably see another blanket nerf, hurting other builds much more than HGH…Remember that there are other way to stack might as Engineer for example and that users of Enhanced Performance or AoE might stacking through bombs and FT would be completely destroyed by nerfs to might duration runes.

Actually, HGH nades is a hyper-specialized build that’s not rounded at all. It has:

—zero interrupts
—zero support
—a ton of conditions.

Your second point is technically correct. This is a build that can finally counterbalance bunker eles and guards. Why is that a bad thing, again?

Not everyone cares about leaderboards, but those who don’t may now have fewer opportunities to play against each other, since there will be fewer people willing to queue without a 5-man.

Nilix.2170:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Punkins.2087:

HGH is OP in the condition damage context. Should be nerfed.

I think HGH is greatly overrated.

It’s good enough for people to complain about it on the Structured PvP forums.

HGH counters bunker eles and guards. Of course people are complaining, since 2-4 of those professions are in practically every tournament team. It’s kind of funny, actually. I wonder what complainers expect to happen if HGH is nerfed? I see a lot of total bunker comps in that future.

hackks.3687:

2.) Shrapnel grenade Bleed duration – reduce it by half. It’s obscenely long atm for a 5 stack of bleeds than can be reapplied twice more before the initial 5 bleeds wear off.

It’s actually a 3-stack of bleed (2 without the grandmaster trait.)

I agree that the hgh/nades build is powerful. I’d be happy to see it nerfed sometime in the next couple years, but the meta is not ready for an HGH nerf yet.

Warriors have fallen off of the bottom of the viability list and thieves aren’t that far behind any more. Rangers were really really good for a while until EB got fixed. Necros are good but lack the condition variety needed to reliably take down an ele or guard. Mesmers are still very good but tend to lose duels in higher skill tiers.

So, unless we really want eles/guards to make up an even higher percentage of top-tier fights, HGH should remain as it is for the time being. HGH condi is basically a hard counter to pure bunker guards/eles, and yet almost every top-tier match still has a guard and ele per team. What would matches look like if their hard counter were nerfed?

Kimbald.2697:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Go turrets! Someone asked me to post my turret build, so this seemed like a good place for it:
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.4.8.0.0.0.33.0.0.0.80.94.85.86.102.8.8.12.228.234.0.0.0.0.256.0.0.276.271.0.289.291.0.20.0.10.20.20

I used to think the devs weren’t good at PvP. Now my theory is that they’re just asked to use niche builds to demonstrate their viability. I tip my hat to you for not only using two turrets but also taking kit refinement in the same build. It’s…not easy to make those work.

It is a bit suspicious, isn’t it

The one time we get a dev posting an engineer build, it has Turrets AND Kit refinement, after the patch and all…

But that’s also us being too tangled up in conspiracy theories. In all fairness: that was my thought as well when I saw the build.
Let’s hope he just likes to play that.

I wouldn’t say it’s a conspiracy theory. I think it’s great to sit down and say “is it possible to make a working build that includes two turrets and kit refinement?” and then take it from there. Even if the answer is only “almost,” it’s worth it and creates fun new builds.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Go turrets! Someone asked me to post my turret build, so this seemed like a good place for it:
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.4.8.0.0.0.33.0.0.0.80.94.85.86.102.8.8.12.228.234.0.0.0.0.256.0.0.276.271.0.289.291.0.20.0.10.20.20

I used to think the devs weren’t good at PvP. Now my theory is that they’re just asked to use niche builds to demonstrate their viability. I tip my hat to you for not only using two turrets but also taking kit refinement in the same build. It’s…not easy to make those work.

Do you find the lack of targeting an issue? Of course, thumper turret is fine without it, but do you ever find your rocket overcharge hitting a clone or pet or minion? That’s been the major thing preventing me from using turrets.

Also, I’d grab runes of melandru since this build doesn’t have condi removal outside of drop antidote, and no stunbreaks.

If you are using p/p or p/s, the stats from both weapons are taken into account for your kit attacks. So yes, using a pistol/shield combination with zerker stats would give you 180 power compared to 179 from the rifle. They are essentially the same.

Also, yes, if you use PVT gear, your kit attacks will have reduced critical chance. You will keep the extra defense while using a kit, of course.

The real benefit of using two weapons as opposed to a rifle, if you are planning to use mainly kits, is that you will get two sigils to work with instead of one. Other than that, rifle vs. pistol does not significantly impact your kits’ effectiveness.