Guild Wars 2

It sounds like people can really only choose to do one or the other. If you play in a 5-man for a week and then solo queue a few games, you’re likely to face similar opponents to when you were in your own premade. The reverse would also hold true, I suppose.

I hear there’s a completely different rating for 3-round and 1-round tournaments, though. Perhaps a solution is to only join 3-round tourneys with your team and only join 1-round tourneys solo?

If that’s really the best option, is there anything preventing Anet from just separating the queues?

I have no problem with grenades being nerfed again. Then I could once again be the only engineer I’d see for several hours in PvP. It was fun while it lasted.

I would recommend a bomb build for the engi and a staff build for the ele. The engineer can tank and the ele can stay at range and out of trouble.

It’s not hard to tank as a bomb engineer because of smoke bomb. It’s a very simple build to play and there’s a lot of flexibility with traits. Forceful explosions is the only really necessary trait (adept from explosives traitline).

The other utilities could be elixirs or turrets. Traits could be anything that looks fun, although I’d probably recommend 30 points in alchemy and 3 elixirs eventually.

I would look for other ways to survive crowd control besides stability. Throw elixir S is 50/50 and mortar is not a good way to survive a melee beating.

Shield 4 only blocks projectiles, so it’s useful against rifle engineers’ cc but that’s about it.

Make sure you have a stunbreak (elixir S and elixir R being our better ones) and use it when you think you’re going to get locked down and focused. Or, use flamethrower 5 while you are stunned. Or, take a bunch of knockbacks of your own and fight fire with fire. Try to predict when people are going to lock you down and dodge, or try to learn the animations of some crowd control skills that give you trouble.

tigirius.9014:

Vuh.1328:

The juggernaut nerf was justified atleast, on demand stability with no cd.. i mean come on, was fun as long as it lasted though..

what you mean in a class that may or may not get stability have the time with regular abilities? yeah that was poetic justice when we could use it CD or not.

He’s right, it was blatantly overpowered in PvP. Stomp any time you want, rez any time you want, bunker as long as you want. It was fun but no other profession could even get close to that kind of stability.

Apollo.7389:

I would suggest not to read that piece of garbage. There are way too man variables to ever say one class is higher or lower tier without including what map its on, what comp you are running., etc. Right now the strongest comp I have seen is Engi, ele, neco, ranger, guardian. Condi and AOE are way too strong. They said they would fix the OP AOEs but they didnt touch them.

Good engi…i won’t say so I don’t offend anyone. just trust me you will know when you see them.

Okay, I understand. I agree that there are a lot of variables when it comes to how strong each profession is overall. You seem to have your own list, though, so I didn’t think you’d mind if I referenced a list put together by other players. I’ve just never met anyone with your opinion so I was wondering if there was anyone else who thought the same way.

Larynx.2453:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I think what happened was they wanted to be very innovative with their match mechanic at launch. They came out of the gate with an FPS style hotjoin mode and an 8-team bracket single elimination tournament.

Hindsight is 20/20. Many of their other innovative features paid off and made the game very popular and liked, especially in PvE. These PvP ideas might have worked if there had just been a “normal” mode at the beginning. Every patch brings us closer to the ultimate goal of being able to play a regular match. This patch was important in that it removed the barrier to being able to queue for a single match, but unfortunately the population is already too low for solo vs. solo/team vs. team.

One of the biggest complaints about PvP from beta to now was the lack of matchmatching. If the game released with MMR, it would be dramatically different. Ladder/MMR is the single most important feature anyone can include in PvP, and ArenaNet didn’t.

Who knows, their little tournament system might have actually worked.

True. I just find it interesting how the devs are slowly introducing regular PvP matches to the game.

I’ve done this before on an engineer. Yes, it’s as simple as reflecting projectiles. It’s pretty weird when it happens.

Apollo.7389:

I will address this point by point starting by saying if all classes are not TOP-TIER they won’t be picked when you can beat everyone with the top-tier classes. There are only 8 classes and they ALL need to be top-tier. You take 2 or 3 classes out of top tier you have one comp to run if you want to win 95% of the time. All the good teams run 95% of the same stuff or they are the 1% that is exceptional with a lower tier class which it stupid to talk about because 99% of us are not that 1%. Don’t argue the percentages they are just for examples. If this game had ~100 classes then 2-3 or even 10-15 classes not being top-tier is ok but that is NOT the case. We have 8 and I have played the SHIZ out of those 8. I wouldn’t be as bored if I could use more than 1-2 builds viably.

Thief – read what I said in the last paragraph…make thief Top-tier and stop them from spamming 1 button. Most likely need a rework to accomplish this.

Ranger – Still not enough. With how limiting this game ALREADY is they need to expand it WAY more to keep people interested.

Necro – I barely touched the ave necro and I’m sure you are right but back to what they said they need work with all classes.

Mesmer – I never would hit 5 with it but the fact that they spent the time to nerf that and not work to make other classes better is beyond me. As far as obstruct what do you mean, because I am not obstructed by other players. In your setting you can check a box to walk through people. You must not have seen the new comp that consists of necro/engi/ranger/guard/ele of course they have to be good at the game but once you face that you will understand why I wouldn’t chose a mesmer over these.

Guardian – Allowing them to move while casting is not a bug fix its a rework of the skill because they didn’t like them stopping movement while casting staff 5 and they others were buffs. One of the only bug fixes was the staff heal which I didn’t player till now so I never ran into the bug.

Engi – I can tell you have not faced any decent engis in tournies. I can stream for you if you want to show you the good engis in the higher rated ques.

Ele – I wouldn’t say they are considered the best but the most diverse. They are great at tanking, dps, healing, CC, etc.

Fair enough. I was speaking from a strict balance perspective—i.e. rangers have 2 great builds so they’re “top-tier.” Certainly, it would be much better if all professions had 6 really great builds. But again, I was only referring to balance. I also agree thieves need more interesting and varied gameplay, but again, I was referring only to balance.

Which top engies would you like me to see? I’ve never crossed over to EU so I’ve never played against Teldo, but I believe I’ve at least seen most other top engies. They mostly agree that HGH/nades condi is a better build than 100nades, though. Also, I agree with you that they are better than the 7th best profession, but it seems you find them clearly the strongest profession. I’ve never met anyone who thinks that, so I was wondering why.

I’ll agree with you about build diversity, but I don’t think this was supposed to be a big build diversity patch.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/sPvP-Class-Tier-List/1467369

These are some pretty odd expectations for balance changes. Warriors need changes, I’ll give you that, but I’m not sure where you’re going with any of the other professions:

—Thieves are sitting good as a mid-tier profession in tournaments and are still way too much of a noobstomp profession in hotjoins and WvW to consider buffing. They’re still used by good tournament teams as well.
—Rangers are still sitting great as a top-tier profession in tournaments and have at least two tournament-viable builds.
—Necro axe has needed a huge buff for a long time and this probably wasn’t enough.
—Players can’t obstruct other players, so portal is unaffected by that. I’m impressed that you expect to hit more than three targets with mind stab in PvP. Mesmers are still top-tier in tournaments.
—Guardians received some bugfixes.
—You seem to have trouble fighting engineers. They’re generally considered one of the worst three professions, although I’ll agree that they’re better than most people give them credit for. I haven’t seen them called OP since last August.
—Ele sustain was nerfed pretty directly. Eles will still be very good and will probably maintain their position as the widely-accepted “best” profession.

The rifle is better as a stand-alone leveling weapon than p/p or p/s for most level ranges. You’ll probably find yourself wanting to use at least one kit, though. Bomb kit is probably our best leveling kit, and flamethrower may make a good leveling kit now since its high-damage ability can now hit since the last patch. Grenades are good after level 60.

I think what happened was they wanted to be very innovative with their match mechanic at launch. They came out of the gate with an FPS style hotjoin mode and an 8-team bracket single elimination tournament.

Hindsight is 20/20. Many of their other innovative features paid off and made the game very popular and liked, especially in PvE. These PvP ideas might have worked if there had just been a “normal” mode at the beginning. Every patch brings us closer to the ultimate goal of being able to play a regular match. This patch was important in that it removed the barrier to being able to queue for a single match, but unfortunately the population is already too low for solo vs. solo/team vs. team.

A couple months ago SE was bugged and gave the impact heal value every pulse. I remember pulsing for over 500/second then, even without much healing power to speak of. This was definitely a buff to SE, perhaps to offset the hidden cooldown management necessary to get it with kit refinement if you’re also running flamethrower.

google.3709:

their intention was encourage the players to stay longer in kits and make builds around a certain kit and discourage kit swamping

I think this may be pretty accurate. It seems like they’re trying to bring the skill floor and skill ceiling for the profession down a bit by buffing each individual kit up to a decent level—as good as a second weapon swap for a different profession—but make it less desirable to constantly swap kits every 1-5 seconds like true kitmasters do

Unfortunately, engineers have become attached to using a lot of weak tools to great effect. Just look at our most successful/boring tournament build—P/P, 3 elixirs and grenades—and you’ll see why engineers are less than enthusiastic about this patch.

Arimahn.3568:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I agree that the forum in general needs more reasonableness. Unfortunately, the patch notes were undeniably inaccurate again—most of the frustration is over stuff that wasn’t actually nerfed, just sounds like it was in the patch notes.

On the other hand, engineers should do research to be effective. It’s kind of a nice immersion experience, actually. Here I am, late at night, doing research so that I can be effective tomorrow…the life of an engineer.

The meta-game of our class shouldn’t be “How do I best protect myself from ArenaNet and their patches?” however. I researched a nice build. It worked. I liked it. Then this patch hit and now I gotta find workarounds AGAIN.

I was being a bit sarcastic, sorry. It does feel like our builds are built on odd workarounds/hidden cooldown management/knowing the bugs inside and out. I was just trying to put a positive spin on it

nakoda.4213:

im not speaking about other classes, im speaking about engineer, the question as it is put is this: do you honestly think it was intended to be able to use: box of nails, grenade barrage, heal kit (twice! a bug often bragged about), and a full condition cleanse all within less than 3 seconds?

The only full condition cleanse engineers have is drink Elixir C; flamethrower and elixir gun KR is one condition each. I’m pretty sure it was intended originally as a reward for taking multiple kits that were less powerful individually since they could not all be traited well. That said, it seems that the patch notes were incorrect and it’s actually a pretty small change; the only build that took a big hit is elixir gun/flamethrower.

Only an engineer must do research to be effective.

Only an engineer has invisible cooldowns on their invisible cooldowns.

Only an engineer is still fun enough to play that it’s worth the extra work.

I agree that the forum in general needs more reasonableness. Unfortunately, the patch notes were undeniably inaccurate again—most of the frustration is over stuff that wasn’t actually nerfed, just sounds like it was in the patch notes.

On the other hand, engineers should do research to be effective. It’s kind of a nice immersion experience, actually. Here I am, late at night, doing research so that I can be effective tomorrow…the life of an engineer.

Chaith.8256:

Hello, Engineer community.

The first and foremost thing I would like to say in response to the patch of February 26th is to not despair, or lament over what you perceive as the loss of kit refinement.

While at the current time, I do not understand the direction that Arenanet has envisioned for the kit refinement trait – I’ll explain why.

“Kit Refinement: This trait now has an internal cooldown of 10 seconds globally for Flamethrower, Elixir Gun, Grenade Kit, and Tool Kit.”

In the current live build, only Elixir Gun and Flamethrower kits induce the documented 10 second global. Every kit refinement proc respects ie, won’t activate, when the cooldown is induced, even Medkit.

Now what this means for Engineers is that a price is being paid for using any other kits along with FT or EG. Why?

Rationalization #1: This change could be put in place to bring multi-kit builds that include the FT and EG in line after the buffs.

Rationalization #2: This change could be put in place to limit the condi cleansing potential of using EG and FT together (both kit refinements cure 1 condition).

Rationalization #3: This change could be put in place to provide an incentive to take only ONE kit (if those kits were EG or FT.)

Rationalization #4: This change is totally unintended! Changes to come to either the live build, or a revision of the patch notes.

I feel the Engineer community as a whole would very much interested in some insight to the direction this trait is taking, and when corrections to either the documentation or the live build will happen, if at all. Developer clarification would be greatly appreciated.

-Five Gauge Chaith

Thanks for as always being accurate and levelheaded. I wish I had read this full explanation before piecing together the actual changes from information on multiple other threads.

It’s good to know that dropping a (usually) useless box of nails won’t hinder my ability to cleanse a condition, which was the main thing I was concerned about. To my knowledge, the only refinement effects anyone actually wants are condition cleanse and grenade barrage. Since those are rarely in the same build, effectiveness shouldn’t change too much.

It’s too bad the elixir gun/flamethrower build took a hit, though. I didn’t personally use it much but it was fun to have near complete, instant control over conditions. I suppose with the decent buffs to each individual kit it’s possible Anet decided to preemptively nerf the combination.

google.3709:

Kit refinement, what is it was.. it was reliable you either had a short snare, small burn or heal/condition removal that you knew you could count one, and the internal cooldowns kept it balanced but now if you use one you lose the others, so now players r ether forced to bring less kits or switch less often or simply submit to the fact that they just made us even more random…

@Daigle.8497
lol you’re totally right…wtf fix gadgets and turents instead of nerfing the few good things we have

Agree with you here. It seems the best way to deal with the change is to simply use fewer kits. For example, in my current build, flamethrower kit refinement is my only condi removal apart from antidote. But if I happen to use toolkit BEFORE cleansing a condition instead of after, my cleansing drops to zero because I used my kits in the wrong order. Best to give up prybar, block, pull, and throw wrench, because as good as those are, I’d rather have a condition removal.

I haven’t done enough theorycrafting/testing/practicing to know how hard of a hit our kitmaster builds took. My initial guess is that they can still be effective but have become infinitely harder to play (they were already the hardest build in the game…) A while ago, there was a thread asking if engineers were for “elite players only.” I disagreed then, but now, I’m not so sure.

daydream.2938:

Want to point out that kit refinement from engineers does NOT appear to have a cooldown of 10 seconds. So this change isnt working right it seems.

I haven’t got the patch downloaded yet, but in looking over the patch notes it appears the change applies only to elixir gun, toolkit, grenade kit, and flamethrower.

This is good because the refinement from the other two kits are broken and don’t usually do anything at all. It was kind of like a wink from the devs saying “we won’t nerf the things that are also bugged…”

One of the other forum posters reported the 10sec global cooldown working in addition to the individual cooldowns. Yay, hidden cooldowns! Very anxious to test this as it has a huge impact on practically every viable PvP build we have.

I understand that Anet believes the population is too small to split solo a team queues completely. Of course, separate is always better, but hopefully this is better than the old system. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m hoping at the least to expect to have four teammates present. That alone will make it a huge, huge improvement.

I don’t mind constantly fighting bad premades as a solo player (which is what most players near the top of the solo queue pile should expect in a good matchmaking system). It sounds like there aren’t even enough people queueing right now for that, though, and the solo queuers are being put against good premades because there’s just no one else to put them against. Ah well. It was a small step in the right direction.

The best part is that the stuff everyone has finally agreed that the game needs amounts to basically giving the game a normal PvP mode. Single match ranked games is usually the baseline, and other creative modes get added on from there. It’s unfortunate that GW2 started with weird modes (FPS style hotjoin, 8-team tourneys) before there was ever a normal mode.

Can’t blame them, they wanted to do something original and unfortunately, it turned out that the tried and true is just better. Some of their other gambles, especially gameplay mechanics, really paid off. So we can’t be too upset.

Rezzet.3614:

google.3709:

Get speedy kits traits on… elixir gun adds 2 condition removal and flame thrower 1 just by switching to the kit ( it has no casting time as well ).. engi have the most condition removals

i think the projectile finishers dont work on the player shooting but rather on those who are in the projectile’s trajectory also just because a class has the most removals doesnt necesarily mean its the most effective

for example a player with 8 1 condition removers will be outdone by a player with 3 all condition removals specially if they have less cooldowns. also the condition removals are the opposite of smart they are all like: “oh you have a 20 bleed stack here lemme remove your weakness or cripple wich has 1s left anyway” .

Single condition removals always cleanse the last condition applied (or last stack updated). So very often a smart condition player will “cover” the conditions he’s putting on you by stopping his bleed attacks after a bit and using a cripple or chill or vulnerability, so that it will be harder for you to remove them.

The key is to not blow your condition removal cooldowns at bad times. Either be fast and get rid of bleeds before they stack up and get covered, or wait a second for that cripple to run out and then cleanse.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

The list is from the community. He is just organizing it.

Exactly, the OP contributed his own list at the beginning but after that he averaged out all the responses. So the reason eles are at the top of his list is because they’ve been at the top of almost every response, not because the OP is lobbying for ele nerfs.

This is also important because it allows players/devs to track changes over time. For example, if 10/30/30 ele gets nerfed this patch and immediately all the responses start putting ele at the bottom, the devs know they did something horribly wrong. More likely, after the patch eles will still be at the top of everyone’s list, and the devs will know some other professions need minor buffs/fixes (like trap rangers got) to make them as powerful as the current S and A professions.

As others have said, hotjoin has unfortunately become more of a practice/glory farm than a match. It’s unfortunate because hotjoins were great in the betas, back before people figured out how much glory you could get by going full glass/full zerg.

I’m hoping a better “standard” PvP mode will be introduced tomorrow.

Chaith.8256:

MIrra.3604:

Seriously, there’s no internal CD on this thing?

I immob this engi 2-3 times in a row and each time he stealth. Put a 10-20 sec CD on this please.

This is the worst stealth in the game! The stealth only lasts as long as the immob does. In a tPvP setting where people understand how cloaking device works, it’s only going to help your survivability if you get immob’d from long range and they are trying to hit a targetable ability.

Between classes with AOE abilties and melee skills (does anyone not fit this category?), you are still getting hammered into the ground while you’re exactly where you went stealth – engis are not fooling anyone.

Giving up 3-4 seconds of protection on crit trait for this is a hard sell, heh. PvE trait is balanced for PvE.

Hehe yeah, but I still use it in PvP sometimes just for the 8% chance that I transmute the immobilize at the same time… Effectiveness: 0, fun: 10.

The Eternal Grace.3157:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Grenade kit is a part of almost every functional build we have.

Is this coming from a PvE or PvP perspective? Because I play mainly PvE, and during those long boss fights or mobs of enemies, I hate spamming my 1 key to death. I don’t think it’s fair at all to say that grenade kit is part of almost every functional build, because it definitely isn’t. Flamethrowers also have nice builds, I developed a fun and good bomb kit build, and even more. Grenade kit has so much more potential but it’s boring, annoying, and unnecessary to keep hitting the same button over and over. Arenanet even said when they announced this game that they didn’t want a game where players hit one button over and over. I feel like this is what I’m doing when I use the grenade kit.

Definitely, that’s why I also don’t use grenade kit. That’s also why I said ALMOST every functional build uses grenades.

There’s no reason to make yourself use a kit you don’t like, especially if you’re doing PvE. “Functional” was a poor choice of words on my part. The point was that grenade kit already does its job—damage—while many of our other options are bugged or ineffective.

I respect other engineers who have gotten the profession to work for them. While I agree with you that engineers have a lot of potential in skilled hands, “stop whining” threads usually do more harm than good.

If you are rank 36 in pvp, 50 FotM, and have also apparently done a lot of WvW and leveled several other professions, you probably have at least 600 hours of experience (maybe twice that). That puts you in a great position to give helpful advice to people leveling an engineer or struggling to put together a good tournament build. The other engineers you’re beating in hotjoin have literally 3-5% of your experience. Literally. Some probably less. Of course they’re not as good as you.

Edit: the trait you are referencing is actually “kit refinement.” Also, the bomb from switching kits does not hit unless you’re playing without forceful explosives.

Grenade kit is a part of almost every functional build we have. I don’t think we should ask to change it, especially since we have so many other things that need so much more work.

I’m not saying grenades are great or that they’re well-designed, just I’d rather see a fix to something that currently isn’t viable than a change to our viable (but uninspired) build.

Agree, kit refinement is better vs conditions than 409. The simple fact is that unless you are literally 4 pots in your utilities, you’re going to get more long-term removal with the 1 per 10 seconds from elixir gun or flamethrower.

We have less condition removal (possible to fit into reasonable builds) than most professions except warrior, however we have excellent control over our condition removal. A ranger running Empathic Bond gets a full condition cleanse every 10 seconds, i.e. the best condition removal in the game—and yet they can’t insta-cleanse an immoblize like we can just by swapping to flamethrower.

The key is to remove only the really dangerous conditions. For example, wait for a really ugly stack of bleeds and then remove, or let a couple conditions wear off and then get rid of the pesky poison that was underneath everything.

I also don’t know if it’s intentional. It’s quite effective for 100naders. I use the auto-elixir S trait and usually get off 1-2 bandages before coming back out.

Excellent thread. It’s the best of this kind I’ve seen so far.

Rezzet.3614:

NevirSayDie.6235:

The flamethrower used to have an area pull back before it was nerfed several times. I think the original idea was for engineers to completely dominate an area with turrets and weapons. Unfortunately, that proved to be too overpowered in tournament maps so those abilities were nerfed, but that left us with very few gap-closers/mobility skills.

So yes, it would be good. I’d actually rather see the old flamethrower pull come back in some way. The ability to pull people into bombs would be great—even if we had a mobility gap-closer, it’s still nearly 2 seconds from when you press a bomb ability to when it explodes.

we need all the good old skills everyone got buffed sky high so it makes no sense we get to stay nerfed. that and massive bug fix

I agree—I think the engineer was kind of designed around the idea that we’d have access to a lot of our weapon kits at the baseline, in addition to some other utilities. Don’t get me wrong, engineer is already in a pretty decent place, but so many essential abilities can only be gained one way, i.e. no stunbreaks without elixirs (or gadgets, lol), no condition removal without elixirs or kit refinement, no gap closers without magnet, etc. There’s a reason so many of our builds are grenades, 1 elixir, 1 other kit/elixir.

Black Scoutsman.5830:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Important note: tournaments are filled from all servers in a region (NA or EU). So there’s no advantage to being on a high population/low population server when it comes to getting tournaments to pop.

Your options are to join as a solo player or join an open PvP guild. There are still a couple guilds with no rank requirement that regularly use guild chat to form groups. Also, at the next patch there could be some important changes that would raise the population and make things pop faster. For example, if free tournaments take on the same format the paid tournaments have (single match + matchmaking) they would pop almost instantly. Also if Anet introduces a dedicated solo queue format—but the population may not be high enough to support that yet, we’ll have to see what happens in a couple days.

what guilds are these? been trying to find one

tPvP and iPug, although I haven’t used iPug for a while. I’m not sure if it’s still very active. tPvP is, though. There may be some others.

I don’t like hotjoins but there are a few decent tourney teams that are big into verbal abuse. No biggie, click block and done.

I believe this is the first qq thread about an engineer trait since juggernaut (as in, august 2012 juggernaut). Could be wrong, though.

Edit: the revealed mechanic works as normal with cloaking device so there’s already a short internal cooldown. I’d be okay with increasing the duration of revealed, though

The flamethrower used to have an area pull back before it was nerfed several times. I think the original idea was for engineers to completely dominate an area with turrets and weapons. Unfortunately, that proved to be too overpowered in tournament maps so those abilities were nerfed, but that left us with very few gap-closers/mobility skills.

So yes, it would be good. I’d actually rather see the old flamethrower pull come back in some way. The ability to pull people into bombs would be great—even if we had a mobility gap-closer, it’s still nearly 2 seconds from when you press a bomb ability to when it explodes.

Engineers are not as good at bunkering as guardians or eles anymore, but we can do pretty well at it while having more control over a point. Most defensive builds are kit heavy (3-4 kits), while a couple use turrets/knockbacks. Engineers lack sheer volume of evades, blinds, and blocks, so engineer bunker basically means using a lot of cc to stay alive.

There is no standard engineer bunker build anymore. There are still a few people who regularly run a defensive engineer in tournaments. Most use a completely unique build.

Lolicia.6502:

A very simple, effective build for dungeons is a grenades/elixirs build. I have run fractals through 30 and dungeon master, and I’ve never had any complaints with this build. I am traited 30/0/0/30/10 and usually run elixirs B and R, switching in U and S, depending on the situation. I am in a combination of knight’s and berserker gear. Your job is to provide decent damage, vulnerability, and condition removal for the group; blind is also useful. You can use rifle (for better single target control and moving target damage) or pistol/shield (for the extra sigil if you’re usually in grenades, and for more blinds and daze).

That’s a very solid template to start from. Of course you may choose to switch in a turret, second kit, change a couple of traits, go p/p, etc., but I’d say this is as close to a “standard build” as engineers have.

Important note: tournaments are filled from all servers in a region (NA or EU). So there’s no advantage to being on a high population/low population server when it comes to getting tournaments to pop.

Your options are to join as a solo player or join an open PvP guild. There are still a couple guilds with no rank requirement that regularly use guild chat to form groups. Also, at the next patch there could be some important changes that would raise the population and make things pop faster. For example, if free tournaments take on the same format the paid tournaments have (single match + matchmaking) they would pop almost instantly. Also if Anet introduces a dedicated solo queue format—but the population may not be high enough to support that yet, we’ll have to see what happens in a couple days.

Oozo.7856:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Larynx.2453:

As another example, engineers have a low skill floor, but a high skill ceiling. The two aren’t dependent on each other.

Interesting you say that. I did not think people considered engi easy to pick up initially.

This is all highly dependent on the build. A pistol/pistol engineer that doesn’t run any kits is probably one of the easiest builds to play in the game.

That’s true, and pistols/pots engies aren’t too bad at WvW. They get eaten alive in tournaments, though.

Arken.3725:

Love the sarcasm, let me know if you need an extra

Haha will do!

Arken.3725:

I’ve been looking for a team for a while And it seems like there’s fewer and fewer teams to tryout for.

Naw, decent teams advertise for tryouts all the time. Most of them don’t really have time to “train” a newer player, so you have to be r40+, able to practice every day for 3-4 hours, able to fill any role asked of you, with top-tier experience in previous MMOs, a great person, humble, between the ages of 21 and 26, able to beat all 4 other team members in a duel, but still be willing to take advice/follow orders from them, without being able to give advice to them, and pass a grueling 24-hour marathon tryout, in which you’ll be playing on a 7-inch netbook.

But yeah, all the good teams died off. It’s weird.

(If this offends anyone, I’m deeply sorry. I’m not usually this sarcastic. I don’t even want to be on a top-tier team, I just find all the advertisement threads absolutely hilarious. To make it up to you, I’ll let you beat my pug 5v3 in round 1 frees any time.)

I’d start him with bombs and grenades and see how he does. I don’t think it matters too much what profession you choose. I would level a new one with him, since your high level professions will blow starter level stuff in a couple hits.

Lists like this are important because they are a good reference for newer players testing builds. Sure, it’s impossible to account for all the possible builds/comps/matchups, but that’s not the point. If it were possible, the game would be boring.

A common problem in the profession forums is for people to say, “yeah, we can’t do anything half as well as a warrior”—which is pretty ridiculous unless you’re talking about standing in one place and using your 1-5 weapon skills in PvE.

Davinci.8027:

Razor.6392:

Ya

low skill floor: thief, but they also have a high skill ceiling.

high skill floor: elementalist, I’d say this is the most accurate example for not-so-high skill ceiling. Basically once you learn how to use elementalist (once you overcome the high skill floor) you are golden. There’s little to improve once you reach that point (doesn’t mean it’s easy to get there).

Elementalists have a low skill floor but very high skill ceiling. You have a ton of Elementalists playing the class fairly well, but very few playing it excedingly well.
Guardian is another example of a low skill-floor, high skill ceiling class.

Do you feel that’s because of the profession, or just because of how forgiving 10/30/30 d/d is? I realize attunement swapping isn’t that hard but I think eles are tougher for first-time players to catch on to—unless they just copy/paste the meta build, of course.

In other words, is it easier to learn or just better?

True, pistols and pots would be maybe the closest thing to what the OP is looking for. It will only really work in WvW, though.

I run a tanky 4-kit rifle build that does well against thieves in tournaments. Flamethrower’s blind is nice since you can use it even when cc’d (partially making up for lack of stunbreak) and then of course you can push them back. Bombs hit pretty hard, especially if you magnet them into box of nails/BoB. It’s not too tough to catch them with a good cc at about 40% health right before they’d usually run away, either.

I think the key to actually killing a thief 1v1 is to AoE bait them into going melee too soon, and then to always have at least 1 cc left for when their health gets low and you know they want to run…Or just glass vs glass, which means whoever misses a dodge (or wastes one) first loses.

Don’t have a build to link you to, but for leveling with grenades you’ll probably want rifle, healing turret or kit, and switch the other utilities based on what you need. Elixir B and S would be good, maybe Bomb kit.

For traits, probably get at least 10 in tools for swiftness…swap that out for kit refinement or static discharge for fights if you feel like you need more power. You’ll obviously want 30 in explosives when you reach level 60. The remaining points would fit best in firearms, alchemy, or tools.