Guild Wars 2

Solstice.1097:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Win/loss is the best reasonable factor for ranking. Good players will inevitably have a noticeable impact on their teams’ chances of success over long periods of time, and the better the player, the larger the impact.

true but the matchmaking ruins this because you get low rank players with huge volatility that the MMR has no idea how good they really are, but they put them on your team and the enemy teams, so their volatility makes everyone’s rating very volatile, and even after a thousand games played, you can still go up or down hundreds of ranks in just a few games.

Honestly, I don’t think hundreds of ranks is very volatile. Hundreds of ranks is likely less than one percentile. I agree that it’s sometimes frustrating when you have some less-skilled teammates on your team. But if someone’s rank fluctuates between 200 and 500 depending on how things go on a given day, that’s all right. There’s probably only a miniscule difference in MMR between rank 268 and rank 492.

The higher the population, the more volatile rankings become; and the lower the population, the more volatile the skill of your teammates becomes.

There’s no way to have a lot of other players who are just about exactly as good as you are, and yet somehow keep them from moving above or below you on the leaderboard.

Put another way, your rank can fluctuate by a few hundred in a few games because there are a few hundred other players who are essentially exactly as good as you are.

I’ve been duo-queuing in the normal team queues and it works great. If you’re in the top 25 on the leaderboard, you’d likely see your rank dip down for a few matches and then stabilize around 100. At that point team queue is essentially duo/trio queue as far as I’ve been able to tell, albeit with limited experience (been away from the game for a bit, but this is what I’ve seen in the last week or so on NA servers).

Win/loss is the best reasonable factor for ranking. Good players will inevitably have a noticeable impact on their teams’ chances of success over long periods of time, and the better the player, the larger the impact.

Here’s what I’ve found works best for preventing teammate frustration:

1. Always say hello at the start of the match. Sometimes, this can lead to working out a basic opening strategy with your team; if not, it at least lays the groundwork for you as a nice person if you feel you need to give advice later.
2. Take the most difficult/confusing job yourself. Avoid playing simple, narrowly-defined roles.
3. Carry your team.

I think the population is high enough that additional matchmaking parameters could potentially be added. However, there are a couple issues:

—it would potentially make matchmaking a little less even (as it searched for the “right” blend of professions),
—it would potentially make matchmaking a little slower (same reason),
—it would potentially allow people to rage more (“I did my job, idiots! I’m the home node defender here, why are we getting crushed across the rest of the map?”)

I think that the best thing to do is to stick to strong solo artist builds for solo queue.

Looks like a fun build! Here’s some thoughts for things you might want to consider:

—You probably want to change your heal skill to healing turret. This will help you survive vs. condition builds and also give you more support via water fields and group healing. Elixir H is honestly only a strong choice if you have several elixir traits.
—You might want to use a pistol off-hand, since your benefit from the firearms trait would double (four skills with reduced cooldown) and you really need a bit more burning in your build.
—You might want to consider using a stunbreaker. It’s your choice as to which utility to replace, and which stunbreaker to use.
—You might want to consider some different sigils. Both of your poison skills are already very long duration, so you don’t really need to increase it. Likewise, you only have one skill that inflicts burning, so that sigil only improves a single skill. There are a lot of really great sigils right now, which is exciting. Battle and Energy are the most popular, but if you want to keep your build unique there are a ton of other great choices: Doom, Geomancy, Hydromancy, Generosity, Leeching, and others are all worth using.

Great idea, there was some discussion about marking some players as tutors a year or so back but this is much more simple and streamlined than any of the ideas thrown around back then.

For better or worse, engineers rely on incendiary powder and skillshots for a large percentage of their damage in the most common builds.

While IP appears passive and easy to apply at first glance, in reality, it’s not so simple. If you throw grenades into a teamfight, you’re just as likely to apply burning to a clone or bone minion as an actual player. There’s not necessarily any good way to control IP in every situation, but it’s one reason why it can sometimes feel like we have no damage output.

The other reason is that our damage scales with how many skills we land, obviously. If you throw shrapnel grenades at a thief and score a perfect hit (all three grenades), he will melt almost immediately. If you are off by a bit, and only hit with one of the grenades, it will deal 1/3 of the damage.

But even if you play perfectly, you won’t be pumping out deeps with a celestial build. Your job would probably be to 1v1 on homepoint for a bit when necessary, push far if necessary, and set up coordinated burst in teamfights using magnet, net shot, and overcharged shot.

Ryan.9387:

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

I have been into the top 1k, and then dropped out again. Over and over. It appears to me that the yoloQ matchmaking system is almost completely random…. matching players up based on a priority queue rather than an actual rating system.

I have played over 1k games so far, and if there was a rating system in place, you’d think I’d be encountering the same opponents/teammates on a fairly regular basis. Although there are one or two people I recognize… it seems to be different players every time.

Further evidence to this… if the game was calculating your rating and matching you against similarly rated players…. wouldn’t it make sense that you could see your leaderboard-rating in game, and not on a time-delayed website?

If I was a betting man… i’d say there’s no actual discrimination based on leaderboard ranking. The ‘improvement’ in your teammates is more likely an improvement in your own ability which you mistake for teammate competence (its easier for your teammates to rotate correctly if you’re winning most of your 2v1s and 1v1s…)

I play vs the same people all the time. There are usually some randoms, but always people I’ve played over and over again. My last four matches solo queue over a week have all had Toker and/or Cmc on the other team. It is enough that I change my build according to the players in the other team. Say you fight cruuk. Get your homepoint 1v1 build out, and wait for him to come every single time he spawns. Get your stunbreak ready for AK, because that guy runs burst every single time no matter the class.

It happens enough in Team Queue that I’ll even face the same team 3-4 times in a row with my premade.

Remember that the glicko2 ratings are more detailed than just the leaderboard positions, also. For example, the difference between the number 21 and number 22 players could be greater than the number 857 and 858 players (and very likely is greater).

In other words, the closer to the extremes your position on the leaderboard is, the more likely it is that you’ll see the same people, because there are fewer people with a very similar glicko2 rating to you. The high percentages are likely an extremely densely populated area. That means they should see a lot of volatility (because the rating difference between 85% and 90% is likely not that large), and they will see different people most matches, at least in primetime.

Looks like a fun build. I wouldn’t expect runes of Balthazar to last long in their current state though—IP and Balthazar are doing a significant percentage of your dps for you. If either of those get nerfed, you’ll probably need to go p/p.

Try some PvP arenas if you want to know how your build is. Perplexity isn’t quite total cheese any more since it got nerfed, but you’re still likely getting a lot of your damage by automatically proccing burn, confusion, and bleed. That’s fairly cheesy.

In WvW, autoattacking with condition procs is good enough to win 90% of your 1v1s, unfortunately. In hotjoin, that win rate will go down, and if you try solo/team arenas, it will go down much further.

So it’s not that your build is just so strong that it rolls over all competition, it’s just that a perplexity build requires a baseline level of competence to beat.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

oh come on, now, seriously, how is this a buff?

It’s a buff because it makes the skill better.

This doesn’t need to become a discussion about which profession is “the” best. I merely said that warrior is strong and stances are strong. Therefore, it wouldn’t be a great idea to buff a stance.

Imagine someone saying “Yeah, necros are pretty good right now, but come on—staff auto really needs to apply bleeding. It would fit with the rest of the staff skills.” You’d say, “nope, staff is already in a good place right now.” Because it is.

Changing skills just because it feels like they “should” be different is usually not a good idea. Warrior in general is very strong and stances specifically are some of their strongest utility skills.

Buffing one of the strongest utilities of one of the strongest professions is a bad idea, no matter how logical it seems.

Link didn’t work for me, but if you have bomb kit you have stealth. And if you open in stealth you can fight on your own terms.

But yes, condi engi vs. condi necro is very difficult.

jolllly.1320:

There once was a dolyak-ranked engi
Who wanted to decap the Henge. He
Assaulted a necro
who was like “what the heck, bro?”
And fear locked him to death from revenge-y.

The necro then headed for Keep
While the engi respawned yelling, “Bleep!”
In the engi’s opinion
A few OP minions
Took him down—the necro was asleep!

Our brave engi then headed for Mine,
Vowing, “necro won’t take me this time!”
He called in supply drop,
Let turrets and bombs pop,
And laughed when the necro went flying.

[Loosely based on personal pvp experience, but artistic license has been taken as I can’t remember the last time I sent a necro flying. But an engi can dream… I’m in a similar situation as the original poster, though I should probably move from a condi to a power build, so thanks to you all for the tips.]

Hahaha. This is why I love the engineer forum/community!

styx.7294:

Notice how there are particular threads here with actual content besides just crucifying the devs? Maybe that is something you should think about it. Also, there are lots of complete sentences and rational suggestions. No, it’s not weird. It’s quite common and every day.

I know that he’s a programmer. I’m trying to communicate that I expect that level of engagement with the WvW community as well as other parts of the forums. I used that specific example to illustrate a larger trend at work. Not all of its specifics are relevant to the discussion.

Fair enough. I’m not trying to sound elitist like “The WvW community doesn’t deserve dev comments!”

However, posting in certain threads subforums really can be counterproductive. I know the devs spend a lot more time reading than posting; part of that is because they can’t afford to make specific statements much of the time. For any divisive or debatable issue, it’s often better for the devs to remain silent. If the community is split 50/50 on a certain issue, the devs are much better off staying silent than taking a side and upsetting 50% of their players.

Bohne.9084:

So separate the MMR class-dependently. We already have statistics sorted by classes.

Jasher.6580:

Then it could be separated by Profession then.

I could get behind separating MMR by profession. There would be some additional difficulty in programming, as they’d have to add a feature that prevented character swapping after a queue popped. But once that was in place it could be pretty cool.

But then what happens when you create a second necromancer just to crush new players? Sure, your MMR would settle after five games or so. But then you could just create another necro, and another and another…all in search of that lucky 20-game winning streak to hit #1 on the leaderboards…

We need more separation between experienced/pro players and new/casual players, not less separation.

styx.7294:

sPvP forums asks about pairing change and AreaNet programmer shows up and talks for 2 weeks about how there is no change.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Appropriate-Pairing/first

9 week long WvW tourney changes matching in WvW in a way that’s different from normal matching as well as season 1 matching. ArenaNet has nothing to talk about.

And this is typical.

Notice how that particular thread contains posts with actual content besides just crucifying the dev? Maybe that has something to do with it. Also, there are a lot of complete sentences and rational suggestions. I know, it’s weird.

Also, that particular guy is not a community representative, he’s a programmer. He’s basically posting on the forums in his spare time; he’s not required to at all.

Remember that longer queues also translate to more people forgetting they queued up, i.e. 4v5s.

Ideally, there could be a required click confirmation from all ten players before the match is created, combined with a longer average search period for matchmaking. Of course, both of those combined could make queues incredibly long (for example, if your match failed the manual confirmation and you had to keep waiting for another player with a very similar MMR to yours).

Master of Timespace.2548:

Balanced stance is different because it is the only balanced stance.

I see what you did there.

They used to post in the WvW forums, but unfortunately, this community is rather bad and tends to work itself up into a frenzy no matter what the dev post actually says. For example:

Dev: “Season two achievement track will be slightly easier to complete than season one.” Forums: “lol idiots…all the PvEers, noooo….Anet why…hire me morons…GvG GvG GvG”

Dev: “Season two achievement track will be slightly harder to complete than season one.” Forums: “lol idiots…do you think we all play 12 hours a day? Anet why…hire me morons…GvG GvG GvG.”

It’s not that they don’t want to post here, it’s just they’ve observed that the playerbase is happier when they don’t say anything.

tl;dr Forums: the only winning move is not to play.

sorrow.2364:

Engineer’s sustain wasn’t even close as it is now, which is relevant since we are considering a bunker build running on cleric most the times.
Elixir-Infused bombs got a quite good buff to healing power scaling.

Accelerant-Packed Turrets was moved to adept, which is an insane buff to decap bunker engis since you couldn’t take it before along with Elixir-Infused Bombs and Automated Response.

No actually he’s right—engineers have lost a lot of survivability since launch. The EIB buff was changing HP scaling from 10% to 15%.

The accelerant-packed turret trait being moved to adept was a buff, but a lot of decap engineers either don’t take the trait or don’t have any turrets.

I haven’t run decap engi for a long time but last year I used to run it as a niche build, back when I never saw another NA engineer doing it. Trust me, we were more survivable with the old smoke bomb, the old auto-elixir S, the old flamethrower kit refinement, and the old double super elixir.

But that was back when everyone was obsessed with HGH nades. People laughed at me for saying things like, “the best builds haven’t even been discovered yet.”

style.6173:

I know a lot of people say that skyhammer isn’t a good competitive map, but spirit watch is just as bad. It is not balanced. Right now certain classes are way too good at running orbs.

So, two options:
1. Remove this from solo queue
2. Remove all skill usage from the person who is carrying the orb.

I personally like #2. Even though the map itself isn’t a lot of fun, at least this will force teams to defend the orb carrier.

But if you go with #2…

Then warriors are instantly the best orb carrier by miles. Passive health regen without skill use, best armor and health pool.

Although I think you could normalize health, armor, and nullify regen and movement speed passives for the orb carrier too. You’re right, it’s probably the best option, just would require complete normalization.

Liewec.2896:

Vuh.1328:

Conditions are affected by Dodge, blind, block, invulnerability, condition immunties, evade the same way power damage is.

yeah sure!

your warrior is dying? shield block!
“nope!” sorry you’re getting 3k damage a second from burn, poison and bleeds that the necro caused with his auto attack.

If you get hit by a 10 ranger longbow auto attacks and then press block after that, it won’t help you either. The only difference is that vs. the necro, you get hit by 10 auto attacks before your health starts to get really low.

Conditions are a really interesting mechanic. As the OP said, they’re not that different from power attacks. One other difference is regen/healing—regen is more effective vs. condition damage than direct/burst damage. For example, healing signet and adrenal health more or less “keeps up” with burning. If you hit a warrior with a 5-second burn, his health will stand still; but if you hit a warrior with a 2500 damage power attack, his health will go down by 2500 (and then come back up, of course).

It’s generally not a solid strategy to “bunker” your home point in solo queue anyway. Especially as a thief. In a solo queue, thief is the perfect choice to quickly cap home at the start and then either decap far (if empty) or join teamfight (if far is being bunkered).

If far is empty, your team gains an advantage. If far has someone twiddling their thumbs on it, your team gains a huge advantage. The only way to be at a disadvantage is to sit on your close point.

I’m assuming you’re using shortbow for mobility. If not, I tip my hat to you for running a very non-meta build. But seriously, don’t waste your time bunkering when your build excels at moving.

hooma.9642:

JinDaVikk.7291:

K stop making up random builds.

Toolkit 2 makes blinding me impossible
Throw mine > bomb kit (I have 6 boon rip 20s cd LOL at your stability)
healing turret is crap for the build med kit is far superior.

Lol.

thats what i always dont understand if ppl tell that healing turret is the best skill cause removing condis.. well yeah healing turret places a water field but med kit has a complete condiremoval on 20sec cooldown.

The med kit antidote only removes one condition, so…

I think med kit is considered superior for this build because the ~1.5k bandages can keep you alive and under 25% health pretty well. And if I were a dev, I would nerf AR to get this build in line, not any of the kit skills. AR is basically “low-hanging fruit” as everyone hates it. Might even open up the possibility of seeing engineer condition removal become less horrible.

I haven’t actually done these vs. an organized team running a decap engi, but in theory they should work as counters: full cheese phantasm mesmer; 100% fear duration condi necro (save it for ~35% health); full zerker longbow ranger. Haven’t played any proper team queues for a while so I could be wrong, but it would be really cool to see a team actually try something different and crazy instead of all top teams just running whatever’s easiest at the moment.

This can work well, but you have to be willing to let your MMR fall to a level that your group size can support. If you usually play as a group of five, you’ll lose a lot of matches before your MMR gets low enough that your 2-3 man team can win ~50% of the matches.

Even then, team queue population is low enough that the good teams have a far, far higher win% than 50%. So you’ll probably still get them every once in a while.

I haven’t been able to play much for a while, but when I do, I solo all three of those and find them enjoyable. Hotjoin is kind of ridiculous but I’ve become accustomed to just using it to get “warmed up” for a real match or for playing an absurd build.

macon.4065:

So I am looking for a build that can do max damage and keep me alive in a PVE environment.

There is only one max damage build for each profession. For engineer, I think it’s 30/30/0/0/10 with bombs, nades, and a third utility, maybe elixir gun? Take static discharge in tools and then all the traits that give extra damage in the other lines. Rotate between grenade skills and bomb skills to do damage and other things like stacking up might, vulnerability, or laying down a smoke bomb to clear trash mobs easily. Max dps gear is always zerker and runes I think are usually scholar runes or ruby orbs, not sure though.

I don’t play PvE much and I’ve never used a build like that, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

There are quite a few bruisers now. Bomb/nade engineer, any warrior build that uses healing signet, non-settler’s spirit ranger—they’re all pretty much bruisers. Even s/d thief is a type of sustained damage evasion-based bruiser. (d/p, obviously, is not.)

One of the glassiest builds being run currently is terror necro…heheh.

I agree that there were no middle-ground builds at launch, and a lot of people asked for them. I’m glad that there’s not a bunker/burst dichotomy any more. However, I don’t think hambow is special just because it’s a bruiser-type build.

Chaith.8256:

Zirith.6429:

engies have and will always be the most op class for pvp, they have more sustain than warriors(turret spam on cd + toolbelt skill with blast finisher is 100 more hps than heal sig), take less damage than wars(more armor because rabid ammy and high prot uptime), can go invis, have a longer invuln than warriors, have a stronger version of dhuumfire, and have so many spammable condi spells.

I have to say that Engineers have always been the most OP profession for PvP until the massive power creep of June-July 2013. More Engineers are mastering the profession and realizing all there is to offer.

However, the tables really turned during the June-July 2013 legendary power creep. Rangers, Warriors, and Necros were pretty much overhauled.

Don’t forget that the meta Engineer builds can remove 6-8 conditions in a minute, whereas a warrior can remove about 30-40 when utilizing Lyssa and or Signet of Stamina under condi-burst conditions, and nullify all incoming conditions for 8 seconds.

Engies are much more counterable than Warriors are, right now. There’s not really much a soldier’s amulet hambow Warrior has to worry about.

Engies have the worst condition removal in the game – perhaps on par with Mesmers. Engineers still rely on kite-or-die strategies. There are definitely things you can do to shut down an Engineer.

Truth here.

isolatedchimp.2510:

I just won’t need precision now.

Pretty much this.

Zirith.6429:

engies have and will always be the most op class for pvp, they have more sustain than warriors(turret spam on cd + toolbelt skill with blast finisher is 100 more hps than heal sig), take less damage than wars(more armor because rabid ammy and high prot uptime), can go invis, have a longer invuln than warriors, have a stronger version of dhuumfire, and have so many spammable condi spells.

And the ability to remove up to three conditions every 20 seconds total and even have up to one stunbreak! On only a 40+ second cooldown! Hehe we should duel again on our main builds, gs/lb double stance is very hard for engineer builds to deal with and I need practice.

To the OP: yes, there is that potential. Engineers have been strong for a while. However, meta engineer builds are not even close to the best duelists, it’s just that they also have good teamfight/node control at the same time, contrary to other duelists. Teams may start bringing a dedicated sidepoint duelist to counter good all-around sidepoint builds like engineer. Or more likely, the nerfs will not change that much and comps will remain the same, and engineers will remain in essentially the same position as they are now.

Guys—this thread comes up every few days in the WvW forum, except the other way around. It’s not a sign of a healthy community. Don’t become the WvW community.

wads.5730:

I’ve never really played spvp at all, but I was really close to next achievement chest, so I wanted to get the spvp daily done. I noticed there was some dueling servers, i say hey, why not.

I joined as warrior, dueled for a good 4 hours, had a good time, fought 30+ different players, beat or drawn every single one except for one person. and over half the people i beat started calling me bad and that i was using a bad build, after i had won. if my build is so terrible, then how did i win? i don’t understand. i mean i never once claimed i was good, or bragged about winning, and yet ..

i was using axe/shield + LB, with shout heals. is this some sort of taboo forbidden build to use in spvp? i mean i was able to easily beat condi necros, , spirit rangers, mm necros, condi warriors, phantasm, pu/condi mesmers, every single thief and guardian, i mean you name it. are they just mad that their fotm builds lost? i don’t understand.

why do people get so mad after they lose duels? i’m glad atleast one person was able to consistently destroy me.

is this usually how duels go in spvp? just trash talk after losing? if that’s the case i guess i better think again before goign back l0l

You wanted to do daily achievements so you joined a dueling server? Heheh.

GW2 wasn’t designed for 1v1s. The dueling community is a little weird because only certain builds really allow for fun, even duels. There are currently a few too many hardcounters and pure duel/troll specs but useless for any kind of real fight in the actual game. That’s not a big deal anywhere except dueling servers.

Because of that, dueling servers sometimes attract some…characters. The PvP community isn’t amazing, but it’s actually better than most of WvW and PvE from what I’ve seen. I think the portion you experienced could be compared to the zerk only CoE farming community in PvE.

Whoah. This thread was good enough to maybe warrant the massive necro, but…that was a long, long time ago.

I think frenzy/hb meta was only around because 99.9% of the playerbase was quite literally awful. Even with no balance changes made, it never would have survived more than a few months, after people figured out juggernaut engineer, staff ele (with all those blast finishers, lol), BM rangers, etc.

It’s necessarily a bit strict. It was more lax for a while and 4v5 was more common. Now it’s a bit stricter and it occasionally punishes someone in your position, but also prevents more 4v5s from happening.

Also, each individual stack lasts for 3 days. So if you get one stack on Jan. 26, and then another stack on Jan. 28, on the 29th the first stack will fall off. So you generally don’t have to stop playing for 3 days unless you get 3 stacks back-to-back-to-back on the same day. If you get 2 stacks in one day, you could stop pvping for a few days to avoid the ban, but it would be no different than to continue—if you hit your third stack, the ban will last only until your first stack falls off, no longer.

I disagree with merging queues. I know some games operate fine with a merged queue, but I don’t think it would be good for GW2. Without artificially raising the MMR of premades/lowering the MMR of solo players, a merged queue is a nightmare. And if GW2 did use a a system similar to those that make merged queues work in other games, it would likely be easily exploitable due to a low population.

The only way to make things even worse for newer/casual teams would be to pit them against a team of “solo” players in voip together beating the system…

mini.6018:

Most condition attacks in this game are ranged and spammable while power dps is mainly based on melee range and 130 point blank.Also conditions are not mitigated by weakness,armor,or protection,can be easily covered for not being removed and a few of them even counter direct use of skills or movement.

Okay I thought you were talking about a warrior build but that’s cool. I still don’t really understand what you mean.

mini.6018:

NevirSayDie.6235:

mini.6018:

NevirSayDie.6235:

mini.6018:

.Rampager is by far a better choice already to my berserker warrior because it allows damage even when normally kiting.

How does rampager amulet allow you to deal more damage while kiting?

We are not discussing l2p issues here.

It wasn’t a l2p comment. I’ve just never seen anyone use rampager’s before, except for Teldo a long time ago. I was curious.

But seriously, what’s the connection between amulet choice and kiting?

Basicly it looks like this

power damage = chase the target and dps – in conclusion you get kited your dps is lowered because avoided etc

condi damage = run away from target and still apply dps – you are allowed to still apply presure even while you are playing defensively and wait for your cooldowns of your power skills to reset.

Do you mean your condi attacks are ranged and your power attacks are melee?

If you mean that you can kite around while your conditions do damage, I think that’s no different from power attacks. If you land a 3k damage condition attack and then kite, that’s the same as landing a 3k power attack and then kiting.

mini.6018:

NevirSayDie.6235:

mini.6018:

.Rampager is by far a better choice already to my berserker warrior because it allows damage even when normally kiting.

How does rampager amulet allow you to deal more damage while kiting?

We are not discussing l2p issues here.

It wasn’t a l2p comment. I’ve just never seen anyone use rampager’s before, except for Teldo a long time ago. I was curious.

But seriously, what’s the connection between amulet choice and kiting?

Edit: sorry, just saw your edit. That’s interesting, I’m not sure I understand what you mean but if it works for you, go for it.

mini.6018:

.Rampager is by far a better choice already to my berserker warrior because it allows damage even when normally kiting.

How does rampager amulet allow you to deal more damage while kiting?

Louk Tsoup.2108:

I made an engineer just 2 days ago and have played with him for about 12 hours, and i freaking love it.
I main a guardian and also have a warrior/elementalist/mesmer/thief, but the feeling that i get from an engineer is amazing! Its so much fun, its what i’ve been looking for!

So I want you veteran engineers to enlighten me about this class and clarify some questions that i have.

1. condition vs power/crit : this is for wvw/pvp, i really like playing with conditions cause its so much more fun than the classic other classes builds, with power/crit.
I also love confusion and want to figure out how to apply it correctly.
So my question is this: are conditions viable or should i switch to another build?

2.grenades vs bombs : i run bomb/grenade/tool kit for the little pvp i played, am i doing it right? I really like how the grenades work with 30 in explosives, but can’t seem to land many of them, but then again i can’t seem to work well with bombs either, any tips?tricks? should i focus on one of these kits and master it?

3. which healing skill? : i usually work with elixir H for easy heal, i really like the med kit but i haven’t figured out how to use it correctly, and the healling turret doesn’t seem that good to me when i don’t have many blast finishers on me.
I’d really like to make the med kit work, but is it really as good as it seems? should i focus on learning to cope with turret?

4.how can i use the supply crate correctly? it seems like a decent skill, but i can’t find the right moment to put it out. any tips?

5. perplexity or undead? i really like confusion but perplexity requires a lot of interrupts, how can i maximize my interrupting skills with kits? or should i work with undead?

6. rabid or celestial? it seems that most of you guys use rabid,but since engineers use all of their stats i thought i’ll try out a celestial build and these two came out:

• http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqOlIq6ZH5i6lEZUhODUh8Ski8zy+8QuYLIE-j0xAItASLAIPg5wioxWNLiGr6GTHTEVLFAMzBA-w
• http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqel0p6ZH5SiF1LJyoCdGoC5lIF5nl95hcxWQIA-j0BBoeBkiAg8AM5rIasVTFRjVVjIqWlETKAYmAA-w

celestial seems to have some decent healing power , while also having great critical damage. what do you guys think?

7. rotations? what is ideal/ what do you suggest, any tips are welcome

bonus!
8. how can i position my skills on my keyboard to help me get better?

Edit: any tips and tricks will be appreciated, give me as much info/feedback as you can!

1. Either is fine, although our condition builds are more common in tournaments. There are some nice celestial builds for WvW.

2. Grenades and bombs together are very strong for PvP. It is pretty difficult to land them; most of that is just practice. Make sure you have fast ground targeting on and then get used to staying at around 300-500 units of range, as that’s where engineers are most effective.

3. Healing turret is actually our best healing skill at the moment, hands down. Make sure you overcharge it as soon as you lay it down; after that you should usually quickly pick it up or blast it.

4. Supply crate is an awesome skill. Use it at short range. You don’t want to miss with the initial stun.

5. Perplexity doesn’t exist in PvP, thankfully. It’s the strongest runeset for a condition engineer in WvW, but that doesn’t mean you have to run it.

6. In PvP, celestial is kitten. In WvW, both are good.

7. I don’t think there is an ideal rotation.

8. Make your three utility skills the easiest keys for you to reach. You’ll likely use the (7, 8, 9) default buttons more than any other key.

And yet we continue to insist that balance changes are made too small and too slow.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that changed in the middle of 2013 was that Anet listened to us when we said that warriors and necros needed massive buffs, and that we were tired of waiting on the slow stream of small buffs they had been getting before that (especially warriors).

Geff.1930:

The real reason we have a condi meta is due to client limitations. Condition damage calculation is very easy to calculate by the client because it does not have to take into consideration whether the condi tick was blocked or dodged or gained invulnerability from or avoided due to projectile speed vs. sideways movement. Furthermore, the client does not have to calculate whether it was a crit or a non-crit, and there is no RNG to the damage per tick. As a result of all this condi damage calculation is very reliable from the client’s end.

The condi meta was thought of from the game’s inception in order to counter the client’s limitations due to desync, lag and other issues.

Consider that everything you said (block, dodge, invuln, projectile speed, and crit check) is exactly the same for power-based attacks and for condition-based attacks. Then, after all those checks, the server does additional calculations for the damage-over-time component of conditions.

Please, please, please remember that you can dodge condition attacks. No, you can’t dodge a bleed tick. That would be like getting hit by eviscerate and then dodging and expecting the damage to be removed. If there are conditions on you, it’s because you already got hit.

The community is hanging on by a thread here fellas. We are inches away from becoming equally as inane and bitter as the WvW forum.

Ameno.6813:

Are bunkers supposed to be on their home or enemy home? I always go to enemy home.

It depends. Bunkers should be in teamfights providing support, or contesting a point alone. I can’t think of any other useful place for them to be.

If your team controls home and mid, it’s sometimes useful to wait to see where the enemy will attack. If your team does not control two points, I don’t think you should ever wait on the one point you do control.

Another engi main who agrees to this. Engineers have been pretty good for a while now—their condi removal outside of AR (or an elixir build) is somewhat low, but we can stand on our own two feet.

Ameno.6813:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Ameno.6813:

Not just toolbelt, also applies to medkit.

Also, I’d play proper SPvP, but sadly I don’t have any friends to queue with.

You don’t need friends to play ranked matches. You can join team arena as a solo player (which a ton of people do now), and of course solo arena is randoms vs. randoms.

Yes, you can use any skill from any kit out of combat and then switch to something else with no waiting. That’s useful for fields sometimes in WvW. It’s useful for bandages if you’re playing hotjoins really seriously, maybe, although waiting on a point is very rarely a good strategy.

Not to derail the topic, but what’s the school of thought on just sitting on a point? If you move somewhere else roamers can decap, whereas if you don’t budge an inch and manage to keep yourself a live you’re ensuring your team a steady stream of points all game. Of course, maps with objectives outside of points you wouldn’t want to sit in a single spot all game.

Well it’s different depending on the skill level of people you’re facing. If you’re facing bad players, they might keep throwing themselves at your point without being able to kill you or decap. That would really help your team. If you’re playing vs. good players, they’ll leave you alone on your homepoint and focus on the other two points. The steady stream of points doesn’t matter too much when your four teammates are outnumbered on the rest of the map and they eventually all die.