Guild Wars 2

kostbabis.8791:

theres a thing or two you miss here.Engie has cc ,ele has heals and mobility to survive.
Sure its much more skillful to manage to disengage with engie in comparison to ele and imo engie has higher skill cap but lay back for a second and THINK.
Without rtl to disengage ele has nothing.Why does he have nothing?
He has nothing because his burst and his only chance to set up damage is throught the few ccs he has which are no match for engie.I need to use updraft or earth quake for burning speed or especially dt /phoenix ,i need the earth immobilise for drakes breath/ fire grab etc.
Ele doesnt have an abudance of ccs like engie and what he has is for setting up his damage.So remove rtl as escape mechanic and theres no escape for ele at all during a normal fight.People keep saying ele doesnt require skill since your heal is op etc etc..
The skill as an ele is not at surviving ..its actually at landing your skillshots and doing the most damage you can as well.
I dare you to play a s/d burst ele build with elem surge and arcanes..your opinion about what requires skills and what you need to do to do the most damage you can will change for sure..

The two most common engineer builds have 2 and 0 hard cc skills, respectively. Engies can get more cc by not taking a stunbreaker or condition removal. I’m not calling for buffs/nerfs, just clarifying.

There’s nothing wrong with sitting out when you’re in an impossible situation. I think you should tell your team in teamchat that you won’t be playing, though.

The original tournament system was unfortunately designed around 5-man premade groups. The way that rosters work, for example, is very good and flexible if you’ve got 5 people in your party, talking about which professions you want to take, etc. But it’s not helpful and very unintuitive for people queueing solo.

Two issues make the problem bad:
—hotjoin is not fun for a large group of semi-casual players due to constant zerging, farming, all glass cannon builds, etc. Thus, they queue for solo free tourneys, but:
—everyone is doing paid tournaments right now because they have a better format and matchmaking. So frees take so long to pop that the casual players often forget they’re in the queue or log off before the tournament starts.

This problem should get fixed when they redesign free tournaments as a solo-queue single match alternative to hotjoin.

There is one reason for gear treadmills—it makes choosing stats easier for new players. One of the tough things about GW2 is that as soon as you start, you have 70 trait points and a ton of stats to choose from.

Personally, I find it great that you immediately get all of that, but it can be a detriment. Hopefully that can be remedied with smoother learning curves and better matchmaking.

I’m okay with the fact that it’s just not possible to stack crit damage as high in PvP as you can in PvE. However, I do think there are some essential stat combinations that are being left out. Power/prec/toughness comes to mind as something that really should be included. I think that just adding that combination would do a lot to open up build variety in some of the professions that need it most, like warrior.

I’ve never understood why people would advertise “group lf 1more” in map chat if they only wanted people above a certain rank. There are some PvP guilds that accept anyone, though.

I would take either a stacking sigil or a swapping sigil, or both if you’re willing to give up sigil of rage. You could stack an extra 250 healing power, or just get more power. Sigil of battle = easy might stacks, which is good for hybrid power/condition weapons like pistol and elixir gun.

Do you ever trade an elixir for bomb kit? Since you already have 30 in inventions and cleric’s gear you would be a healing machine with elixir-infused bombs and elixir gun. Plus bombs do much better damage than pistol or elixir gun.

Vexor.3640:

Terrahero.9358:

25pts Alchemy: Minor trait.
Gives 1% more damage for every boon.

25pt Water: Minor trait (Elementalist)
Give 2% more damage for every boon.

Straigth up compareable traits, yet Elementalist’s is twice as strong.

That’s kind of subjective. I am not well versed in ele skills. I would ask can the ele apply as many different TYPES of boons as the engineer? Engineers can gain almost every boon in the game. Several of them can easily become perma. Does the ele have the same ability or access to as wide of a range?

Granted it would take us 6 boons to make up for 3 ele boons which is a pretty big disparity.

Question 2: Does 2 stacks of Might (or any boon) count as two boons or as one boon concerning that trait.

Food for thought.

In this example, unfortunately, the ele wins at every front. Might “stacks” only count as one boon, and the current 10/30/30 d/d ele build keeps at least as many different boons up as an elixir engineer—possibly more, although an elixir engi traited for protection and vigor and using healing turret would keep as many boons up.

Engineers have some advantages, but this is not one.

Are you a member of any of the open tournament guilds? All it takes to get in to most of them is a pm, and you can form pug groups for paids pretty easily from them.

I do agree to an extent, though—right now if you’re unable to form a 5-man team, PvP is pretty lackluster. Hotjoin is good enough for farming/zerging, but it’s not even a good practice area now since the real game is so much different. Pugging free tournaments has become a huge gamble—a while back you could solo queue and expect to get a decent match maybe two out of three times. Now it’s more like every other or one out of three…

When free tournaments get converted to solo/duo queue single match things will get much better.

Precision also does not affect condition damage, such as the burning skills from the flamethrower.

I don’t really mind when a profession has a few skills that include RNG, but I almost never use them. I wouldn’t be able to stand using elixirs on my engi.

The trouble is when you are forced to deal with RNG because your build absolutely needs elixirs (like if you’re depending on 409 for cleanses or if you’re running a glass cannon PvP build and don’t really have an option but to take elixir S).

Leveling with a main-hand pistol as your only damage source is pretty painful. If you do it, yes definitely go down firearms.

I agree with Penguin, putting 10 in tools is the best thing you’ll ever do as a leveling engi. The best thing is that you can use the perma swiftness for traveling, but switch to static discharge when fighting.

Ayestes.1273:

There aren’t really class fields, we have access to all of those except Dark. Dark is also one that a Thief can carry. Not that more fields wouldn’t be cool, it’s just the rationale is off.

Actually I believe eles have the only lightning field in the game, right?

Although I agree, it’s probably a bit much to ask for our own combo field. I’d be all right with getting in on the lightning field action though.

Thedenofsin.7340:

I’d suggest a renaming of this map:

Instead of Spirit Watch, name it ‘Elemental Watch’.

If you know apriori that a profession was going to dominate sPvP, you certainly wouldn’t ship the game. Why would you do differently for a new secondary objective?

They’ve probably been developing this map for several months, which means they’ve been working on it since the time everyone thought eles were free kills.

Awe.1096:

Skyro.3108:

They should really just remove hot join and have the hot joiners solo queue frees once they put matchmaking in for frees. This would solve 2 problems – the hot mess that is hot join and the long free tourney queues.

No. I like the hotjoin where it is, tyvm. It allows me to play few simple casual games when I feel like it. Without queues and all the drama. Just join and play.

As it stands now, free tourneys play looks like this:
Join, wait 4 minutes, get stomped by a premade
Join, wait 5 minutes, get stomped by a premade
Join, wait 4 minutes, get stomped by a premade
Join, wait 4 minutes, start 4v5, loose
Join, wait 6 minutes, get stomped by a premade
Join, wait 5 minutes, even match but you still lose becouse you are bad/whatever
Join, wait 4 minutes, this time they have 1-afker, we win

Meanwhile I could play 10 hotjoin matches and get roughly 50% win ratio and no downtime. Yes, its a bit random, but I take it over free spvp any day.

I used to think that hotjoins should just be removed, but recently I’m realizing that there are a lot of people who like being able to hop in/out at will. My hope is that they’ll convert free tourneys into solo queue single match and place it side-by-side with hotjoins. They don’t necessarily need to remove the farm/practice mode—it’s convenient—but having it be the “standard” first PvP experience for new players is a bad idea.

I saw a team win all three rounds 4v5 a few days back, it was pretty impressive.

But yes, it’s a problem. I’m not surprised at all that it happened five times in a row. I’m in several PvP guilds and usually have about 15 contacts on any given primetime, and it’s still hard to form a team sometimes. It would be nice if you didn’t absolutely have to form a 5-man just to be able to play 5v5.

Oareo.1604:

Or if “top” players soloqueued and tried to help the players they grouped with by helping them with strats, builds and maybe a few wins to cheer them up. Might even make some viewers along the way.

I’ve seen one player from a top-ten team run a non-meta build and pug with non-pro gamers. It was pretty cool, he’s a really good player. I wish that more people would do that. Honestly, I’m more impressed by someone who plays a creative build well than someone who has 1500 QP.

And I agree, watching pro players’ streams would be way more interesting if they used creative comps and uploaded videos of close matches. No one wants to see the usual four builds beat another scrub 500-75.

I don’t feel such a major change should be implemented—balance is pretty decent (relatively speaking) and introducing a huge change would probably upset that.

I do appreciate when games actively reward other micro-tactics besides lockdown/burst. Maybe it’s because I don’t like playing burst specs in general. Long fights are more rewarding to me than knocking someone down and killing him before he can get up. I know there’s a lot of strategy in that as well, it’s just not for me.

Kardiamond.6952:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Chaith.8256:

@Durzilla, The fall dmg trait & kit refine are confirmed in the live build to share a cooldown. Only 2 barrages are possible.

Ah, did not realize that. That is good to know.

So when Chaith say it, it’s ok, but I say it I’m wrong?!

Be kitten you NevirSayDie!

(Don’t worry I would have done the same :P)

Lol sorry, somehow I didn’t even see that you had mentioned that already.

Chaith.8256:

@Durzilla, The fall dmg trait & kit refine are confirmed in the live build to share a cooldown. Only 2 barrages are possible.

Ah, did not realize that. That is good to know.

Kardiamond.6952:

So you are saying Chaitch “Five Gaugw” is carried?

By the way Durzlaa,

The fall grenade traits share the cooldown of refinement kit. So no, you can’t have 3 grenade barrage.

And OGDeadHead you just said you removed the duplicates, which are really easy to spot in your screen shot, but you still think he hit you with more then 16 grenades?

The fall trait had nothing to do with it.

There are some 100nades engies who run the fall damage trait, especially if they’re coming from WvW. You can sometimes get it to proc by using jump shot down an incline. Combine that with kit refinement hitting at the end of your jump and you have a pretty decent skillshot burst.

Edit: and of course, 5 gauge is not “carried” by anyone. The build is admittedly more effective in quickly ending a 2v1 or 3v2 than it is in a 1v1, though.

I’m looking forward to playing my tanky engi spec as an orb runner. It probably won’t be as good as an ele, though.

Definitely! Just take speedy kits when running from place to place and then switch for static discharge when you fight stuff.

Kit refinement with flamethrower does remove a condition (10 second cooldown) so that can be very useful since engineers don’t have much condition removal below level 40.

firebreathz.7692:

why not just join the 5v5 rooms?

boom fixed

There aren’t really any 5v5 rooms, but there are several rooms that fluctuate between 2v3, 3v4, 4v4, 5v4, and 5v5.

I agree with the OP, it would be great to be able to just log on and play for half an hour in something other than hotjoin. Random vs random single match would be most excellent.

Yes, frees will pop but by the time they do two of your teammates will have left…

Reuxvnoir.7431:

NevirSayDie.6235:

tigirius.9014:

Rezzet.3614:

well engineer pretty much sucks on every field for me except being a dungeon nurse .

It actually sucks there too. Most of our abilities don’t even get affected by the +healing on gear, I know I tried it, I pretty much keep the crit exotics on now exclusively. does the same amount of healing meh….

Healing turret now benefits from the healing stat, which is pretty significant. I would agree that there isn’t a huge benefit for super elixir or elixir infused bombs, our two main party healing abilities. They’re decent heals with or without healing power.

well if u use the trait were a kit creates a spell use #5 on it pop regen and on top of that u have bomb heal i dude that is a kitten load of regen if u ask me

Right, they’re both good heals, but they don’t get a ton better from healing power. That’s fine with me, I think it’s cool that we have decent regen even with zero healing power gear.

Ostricheggs.3742:

This is by far the largest hindrance to engis. Sacrificing utilities for our source of damage is just ridiculous.

One weapon set, purposefully nerfed, but we get another “weapon” to replace a utility. So we lose a utility for a one kittenty weapon and a weapon swap with no CD. LOL

I genuinely think that the devs never had PvP in mind when they made engis. We need a stun break, we need kits and we need condi cleanses or the build isn’t balanced enough. so we go 20 up alchemy for an elixir R or S stunbreak, elixir H for cleanses with 409 and then grab nades cuz they’re the only decent damage output. Grats, you have one utility to dick around with. Except turrets are useless and gadgets under performing.

Pretty much sums it up. I chose to circumvent the problem by PvPing with no stunbreaker. I know it’s less effective but I’d rather be an average PvPer playing the way I want than a slightly above average PvPer playing with nades, pull, and stunbreak.

I feel that power rifle/bombs is our best PvE leveling spec. The problem with grenades is that they don’t hit very hard until you reach level 60, and they lack the utility to make up for it. Bomb 1 hits very hard in a power spec, 2 and 3 are good even in power specs, and 4 will allow you to facetank multiple trash mobs like a guardian. 5 is useful every once in a while.

I would also recommend putting your first ten points in the “tools” traitline. Use speedy kits for permanent swiftness, and then change it to static discharge when you fight. If you take a couple of the utilities with short cooldowns on their toolbelt skills (rifle turret, toolkit, rocket boots, etc) you’ll be able to spit out a static discharge every few seconds.

General strategy—I would consider engineer a melee profession when it comes to PvE. We have some ranged attacks but in general, just let them come to you and blow them up.

I haven’t seen a bunker engineer for a long time. I’m sure there’s still a few out there somewhere, but I’m afraid your chances of getting multiple responses are pretty slim.

I use a rifle/kits crowd control based “bunker” build. It’s not really a true bunker build like guardian or ele, but it does all right. It’s more of a “point control” build than a bunker, since engies lack the sheer volume of healing/stunbreaks/cleanses that true damage-soakers need—but it does pretty well at neutralizing an enemy point and can usually stand in for a bunker fairly well.

tigirius.9014:

Rezzet.3614:

well engineer pretty much sucks on every field for me except being a dungeon nurse .

It actually sucks there too. Most of our abilities don’t even get affected by the +healing on gear, I know I tried it, I pretty much keep the crit exotics on now exclusively. does the same amount of healing meh….

Healing turret now benefits from the healing stat, which is pretty significant. I would agree that there isn’t a huge benefit for super elixir or elixir infused bombs, our two main party healing abilities. They’re decent heals with or without healing power.

It’s true, the devs very rarely post in any of the profession forums. When they do, it’s usually a profession that is drawing a lot of qq (like thieves).

Honestly their time is probably better spent posting in high-traffic forums like dungeons and PvP rather than dividing their resources between eight individual profession subforums. Besides, there’s nothing they could really say in any of the forums, except “we’re fixing the bugs and we’re working on small balance changes.”

I think it could work if it was an either/or thing. You can still only earn 1 laurel a day, but you can get it for completing the PvE or the PvP daily. If it’s 2 laurels/day I think a lot of PvE-only people will be upset.

1. Transmute

2. Kit refinement

3. Cloaking device

(Favorite, not most effective/important)

I support this thread. The PvP in GW2 is good, but unfortunately there’s not an easy way for people to try it for the first time.

Sorry if this is unnecessary, but…

“1-2 r40/45+ players” is about as ambiguous as it is possible to be.

That is all.

It is separated by region, but all the servers from each region play together (NA and EU). Actually it would probably be good if the regions could somehow be combined as well.

After thinking it over, I’m convinced it should be an actual boon. Engineers have too much secret-hidden “effective if you know what it actually does” stuff already. Either that or make it remove a condition and say so on the tooltip.

Edit: “actual boon” meaning protection or regen.

Free tournaments don’t have any matchmaking yet. As soon as 8 teams sign up, the tournament starts.

As an added problem, most average players are forming groups and doing paid tournaments now, since they have matchmaking and 1team vs 1team. So free tournaments are mostly populated by very new players and very experienced players who don’t want to do a paid until they have the exact 5-man team they want.

If Anet tried to push balance changes out super fast, eles and rangers would have been buffed early (they are now considered two of the best professions). That would have been…ill-advised.

So it’s basically like old paids, except instead of beating two scrubs before playing one of the other top three teams you just wait, and then play one of the other top three teams?

Sorry, matchmaking can’t fix that. If anything, over a period of time, matchmaking will help it tremendously because new players will stick around instead of leaving.

The Bleu Elite.3127:

This is going to sound bad but… there is a check box in the inventory section on your backpack. If you uncheck, it hides your backpack from view while still having it equipped.

This thread is actually about the “backpacks” that appear when you are using a kit. Those don’t go away when you click the “hide back armor” button.

jportell.2197:

Blakey.5670:

jportell how come you always belittle everyone beside just stating “the facts” and walking away?

You know, not every post has to end with a dagger… jeez.

Making points and valid ones. And its true an engi can have a higher uptime on confusion with a pistol and a tool kit than your “OP” shatter mesmer. And about ele’s my honest opinion. If this is truly their only VIABLE build then don’t nerf it until they get some sort of buff in other areas. But then again the meta is evolving always. How many buffs did the ranger get before traps became viable? zero How many buffs did engi get before the 100nades took off zero. So the constant OP calling is just a little beyond ridiculous because we determine the counters to things not the devs and if D/D bunker ele’s have no counter then it needs handled BUT if they are there because they have no other real options then don’t nerf it until something else is made viable to them.

And also I was being sincere when I was thanking Never Say Die for his input on engi. I don’t play mine enough to fully know it so someone giving good advice or sharing knowledge about a class without being condescending is something I will welcome and not be facetious about. However I can be facetious with the best of em. :P

Nothing wrong with voicing your opinions! Although if you feel you don’t know much about engineers, it may not be a good idea to use them as examples. For example, the two confusion skills you mention (pistol and prybar) do 2 stacks/3 seconds and 3 stacks/4 seconds, respectively, both on 15 second cooldowns. I don’t think we’ve stolen your profession’s condition Just doin’ my forum job!

(There is also a bomb that does confusion, but it is very difficult to get bombs, toolkit, and pistol all in the same build.)

Actually, engineers got sigils on kits (HUGE fix) after the grenade damage was nerfed, creating a slow trickle of players returning to their engineers. They also got a couple of mild straight-up buffs to toolkit, which is a key component in most 100nades builds. Trap rangers also got fixes to pet AI and a big fix to entangle before they started finding a place on so many tournament teams.

I do agree that it’s bad to nerf one build before the profession has any other serious contenders for a viable build. I also appreciate that Anet moves slowly when doing balance changes (I said somewhere before that if Anet gave buffs/nerfs quickly, we certainly would have seen several big ele buffs by now, since they were considered so weak at launch…and I think it’s good that didn’t happen).

tl;dr—play that glass cannon ranger or tanky rifle engi. They might get better after a while. Unless you like playing the current best spec, then just play that.

Free tournaments are in a bit of a bad spot right now because the recent paid tournament changes have been so popular. Most of the “average” level players are doing paid tournaments with a group, leaving a bunch of new players to pug and a few really good groups of three or four players who are waiting for a fifth person to do paids with.

I think they’ll get a lot better in the next couple of months.

I find teams that mix large norns and very small asuras are pretty effective. No, it’s not hard to click a target, but teamfights are very confusing if you literally lose sight of one opponent even for a split second.

That said, it is a relatively small issue. If Anet ever hosts a special cash prize tournament, they’ll probably want to limit players to a single race.

Aristio.2784:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Trouble is, torch is usually close-range burning (hmm…sounds like offhand pistol), hammer is usually melee control (hmm…sounds like rifle) and mace is usually melee tanky (hmm…sounds like toolkit).

We’re Engineers! Think outside the box and something crazy!

Torch:
#4. Liquid Nitro
Blow a blue flame in front of you, freezing enemies and curing allies.
#5. Combust-> Detonate
Throw down a fire in front of you, allowing you to detonate it to damage and weaken foes. Blast Finisher.

Mace:

1. Shock Hit (AoE)-> Static Hit (AoE)-> Explosive Hit (AoE Blind)
2. Sudden Pulse
   A sudden burst of electricity that stuns foes around you.
3. Grounding Rod
   Creates a barrier in front of you that stuns and damages foes that cross it. Lightning Field.

Hammer:

1. Hit 1(AoE)-> Hit 2(AoE)-> Hit 3(AoE Weakness)
2. Rocket Hammer
   Shoots a rocket from your hammer. 900 range. Projectile 100%.
3. Big Bomb Hit
   Smash your hammer down with exploding force. Damaging foes around you.
4. Forceful Rush
   Rush forward with a secret button from your hammer, damaging all foes in it’s path.
5. Shielding Explosion->Magnetic Inversion (Channeled)
   Counter the next attack, blasting foes away.
   or
   Draw in all foes towards your location. 600 diameter.

I’m seeing Engineers electrifying their Mace attacks, while using Explosions to augment their Hammers.

That’s…actually pretty much what I said in the rest of my post

My only point was that these things are probably not going to happen next month, because it’s going to have to be more creative than “1 deals damage, 2 is a leap/damage, 3 is a cripple/immobilize, 4 is a knockback…” Good ideas on the torch—making it a chilling weapon would be hilarious and exactly like engineers.

CriSPeH.8512:

When using Kit Refinement it can be tricky to keep track of when the swap effect is on CD.
If you jump and change your kit you will not activate Kit Refinement.
So if you want to ensure you don’t waste your KR Barrage(or any KR effect), jump and switch kits in the air.
Speedy Kits will still activate when swapping in the air.

Wow, that’s really useful for 100nades builds.

Overcharged shot will knock you out of a guardian’s hammer 5 circle.

BoB + smoke bomb = great rez ability.

Bob + smoke bomb + jump shot = great escape.

InfamousBrad.5879:

Aristio.2784:

Mace, Torch, and Hammer are the only ones I can see them adding. …

I hadn’t thought of Torch. As someone who also has an axe & torch ranger, I immediately went “Oo-oo-oo-oo-ooh….”

I think torch would be a great offhand. I don’t mind mace or hammer, either.

Trouble is, torch is usually close-range burning (hmm…sounds like offhand pistol), hammer is usually melee control (hmm…sounds like rifle) and mace is usually melee tanky (hmm…sounds like toolkit).

I would still love to see some additional weapon choices, just because I’ve gotten used to being able to the complete build customization of the engineer in every area EXCEPT your weapon. There, you’re basically power=rifle, condi=pistol.

All I’m saying is, it’s gonna take some time and it’s gonna have to be very creative. Otherwise, it will just feel redundant and poorly-designed. Electrically-charged torch? Magnetic mace? Mobility hammer? Something outside the box—to fit with all our other outside the box stuff—is what I’d like to see.

You can target an enemy player to stomp, and I’m pretty sure you can do the same to revive (when both are together, I’m usually going for the stomp/rally, not the rez…) I’m not sure about portals. I still think it’s a good idea though, I know I have definitely rezzed a completely defeated teammate when I meant to stomp.

jportell.2197:

Yah but the 100nades revolves around the grenade kit right? Every grenade has conditions except the number 1? Or does that have bleeds to it? I will never understand though how is it that they made it so the grenade can be thrown farther than the rifle can shoot.

I’ve found my forum calling! Some people talk about balance, meta, build variety…I just log on and explain to people what engineers do, now that people have actually encountered engies and are curious as to how they work

Grenade kit has a bleed grenade and a poison grenade, but the 1 skill is only direct damage. There is a trait that gives all explosions a 15% chance to cause bleeding, which translates to somewhere around a 38% chance to get at least one bleed on any perfect grenade hit (perfect hit = close range or target is hit while standing exactly in the middle of the circle, so all three nades hit). There’s also a bleed on crit trait and a burn on crit trait with an ICD. If the gods of RNG are favorable, and if you have good aim, you can stack damaging conditions quite well with grenades.

The 100nades build won’t really do any of that, though, since it’s all traits/gear.

Try power rifle for point neutralizing! The low cooldown on overcharged shot means that even if it’s a good bunker that teleports back on to the point, you’ll get another shot at him soon. Or bring flamethrower as well so you can just knock him off twice in a row. Net shot is also invaluable.

Most bunkers have no problem blocking or dodging BoB, so it’s really become just a bait for me. Lay it down —> wait for bunker to use his defensive cooldown —> actually go to work with rifle and flamethrower. As an added bonus, drop bomb 5 after BoB is down to try to get them to use a really good defensive cooldown instead of just dodging.

Of course, it can be done with pistol/shield as well, but rifle is just fun. Give it a try, you’ll be glad you did.

I’d support making it a single condition removal with an internal cooldown or a small heal or regen, preferably the condition removal. The condition cleanses on elixir gun and flamethrower are currently the only non-elixir condition removal (practically).