Guild Wars 2

Anymras.5729:

What, precisely, is theorycrafting? Coming up with ideas for how things might work if used in conjunction with each other or something?

Yes, creating your build. Basically, if you’re a glass cannon thief you’re going to use essentially the same build as every other glass cannon thief, with maybe a couple different traits or runes or sigils here and there. They’re not hard to “theorycraft” because the viability/playstyle will be pretty much the same whether you’re using sigil of air or sigil of rage.

On the other hand, engineers are very difficult to “theorycraft.” Very skilled engies have put together some pretty sweet combinations of traits/runes/sigils/utilities, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Changing one utility can potentially change our entire playstyle, and thus might require a different set of runes to complement it.

Honestly, after watching your video of your 3-kit build I think your build is already pretty sweet. I do regularly run four kits though, with (I feel) good success in free tournaments.

I almost always use elixir gun and bombkit, and switch between flamethrower and toolkit for the third utility, depending on whether I’m planning to harass the far point (flamethrower for the extra knockback) or bunker the mid point (toolkit for cripples, block).

I do use cloaking device and find it helpful. Good players aren’t fooled, but it’s still worth it for the target loss and misdirection. When I’m using flamethrower, the blind helps a little when stunned. Protection on being cc’d is a must, of course.

I don’t think it would be a good idea to go 4-kit with a condition build—soldier’s amulet is the only thing that allows us 1 mistake instead of 0. I also like using runes of melandru when I’m playing without a stunbreaker.

Basically, though, I figure that engineers can take at most 1 stunbreaker, and no stability. If you get chain cc’d as an engi, you’ll die whether you have a stunbreaker or not. 4-kit engies have a lot of good tools for avoiding that opening combo, and after that, it’s pretty much an awesomely-ridiculous typewriter dance as you try to keep yourself alive.

Bottom line—go for it, you’ll be glad you did. Elixir R is pretty nice as a stunbreaker and self-rez, but I go 4-kit just because I love playing that way—no two fights are the same. You can definitely be viable going 4-kit, although you (of course) will have to work your fingers off to make that happen.

One last word of advice: don’t bother testing a 4-kit build in 8v8, it will give you a bad impression. It seems to shine in 1v1, 1v2, and 2v2 situations best. It can’t stop the zerg.

I think the engineer is already seen as “too hard” to theorycraft (although part of that is due to just not having some crucial abilities with which to theorycraft).

Something where you got to choose 3 out of 5 skills, or 5 out of 8 skills, might not be too confusing. In the current state, the ability to throw out our “trash” skills while keeping all the good ones would make us far too powerful.

daydream.2938:

one interesting thing about the meta, is it creates a tendency to play a certain way.
Sometimes, just playing outside that area takes people outside there comfort zones and you can get a suprise win. Even if your set up isnt objectively better.

So true. Some players from very respectable teams even seem lost when I they get stuck in 1v1s or 1v2s—I guess is that people have been working so hard at 4v4 and quickly 2v1ing a point away from a mesmer that there isn’t time to do the other stuff?

That said, these vids are impressive. As people have said, they’re winning because of communication and teamwork, not because a 2-ele/2-ranger/guard group is better than the competition. I do think the game is at a point where people are SO fast at winning 2v1s that the so-called “bunker meta” is practically disappearing…

Mrbig.8019:

can you understand how this makes no sense at all , yes ?

Again, i don’t care what they did, to make war stuff to hit, this is

1. ridicolous

2. senseless

3. gamebreaking, even more for low health characters

anet, fix it asap.

It’s merely a situation where a specific type of offensive cooldown negates a specific type of defensive cooldown. There are many situations like that (examples: pull>block, stealth>blind, hb/fast attacks>blind, ground-effect cc>dodge/block/blind, conditions>endure pain).

Tracking abilities>teleports, unless you teleport out of LoS.

No, I’m not sure it “makes sense” but let’s be honest—longbow rangers and warriors are not “gamebreaking.” They’re barely even usable in tournaments. So, let’s just add this to a list of things that should maybe be addressed at some point in the future, and call it good.

tl;dr—we’re over-reacting.

Seether.7285:

I would be happy to see them make channeled effects stop hitting stealth people the moment they make missing an attack while in stealth result in breaking stealth.

Heheh, yeah, my first few games I blinded thieves before they backstabbed me. That worked real well.

I’m not sure it’s distorting time and space to turn around while charging toward someone, and charge the other way.

As I said, the intent of the “charge” skills seems to be that if you don’t dodge or break LoS, it will hit you.

Thief shortbow is pretty high if there’s another target to bounce off of (two hits per attack)—but I’m not sure if even that is as high as warrior axe.

Longbow rangers are game-breaking?

Bull’s rush appears to be working as intended, as ride the lightning works similarly. Both skills were updated to track moving targets more reliably. It seems that unless you dodge or break LoS you will get hit.

Actually, no one was calling for grenade nerfs. That was done because kits were doing more damage in PvP than in PvE, due to the fact that weapons don’t have stats on them in PvP (thus, the fact that weapon stats don’t affect kits is not an issue in PvP so grenades did more damage in PvP).

The general effect of the nerf was that an already-niche PvP build got a little bit worse. However, it wasn’t done because anyone was calling for the “nerf bat.”

It’s understandable that people don’t want to see their profession nerfed, but this is not a witch hunt. I’m not real concerned about it because I don’t do many paids, which is the only place TW is mandatory—that’s why I haven’t really said anything in this thread. I do think it’s important to be accurate, though. Right now, a lot of people are saying things that just haven’t actually happened.

That said, I do think elites should be game-changing. No one’s arguing about that. It’s the “mandatory” part that people dislike.

Ooh ooh I’ve got one!

“In 2012 a crack engineer unit was nerfed by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Tyrian underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Engi-Team!”

—The A-Team (1983)

Awesome! It will be great to not have to worry about this any more.

In other news, seeing people actually write out “kitten” instead of cursing is absolutely hilarious.

Actually, I thought the kicking/reconnecting issues had gotten much better. The update client seems to not prevent tourneys from continuing any more.

And yes, if you pug you will get much better at 1v5.

Also keep in mind this trait has a bugged interaction with the forceful explosives trait…so if you have that trait as well, your dodge roll will still leave a bomb, but it will probably not hit anything.

Alarox.4590:

tigirius.9014:

Forceful Explosives now is bugged reduces the radius instead of enlarging it. Causing the explosives like bombs to practically have to be inside the enemy to go off, possibly causing the same for mines, grenades and Elixir-Infused Bombs definitely affected. The splash radius is smaller then my thief’s dagger radius. Most noticeable underwater.

In my experience it does increase the radius of the bombs. At least in sPvP, the only place I’ve tested it.

Does noticeably increase the radius of bomb kit skills 1-5 and big ’ol bomb, although no one is sure what the numbers are for it. However, tigirius is right about the reduction for evasive powder keg—the bomb literally must be touching the enemy to hit. Same goes for the bomb generated from kit refinement on bomb kit.

FiftyTwoBears.5482:

Engineer- “ArenaNet?”
ArenaNet- “What?”
Engineer- “Where’s my Versatility?”
ArenaNet- “What?”
Engineer – “Where – is – my – Versatility?”
ArenaNet – “I, uh, might have nerfed you.”
(Elementalist swaps Elements next to them)
Engineer- “Where?”
ArenaNet- “Why do you need to know?”
Engineer- " I need Versatility!"
ArenaNet- “Uh-uh! Don’t you think about using Grenade Kits. I’ve been thinking about nerfing that for two months!”
Engineer- “My DPS is in danger!”
ArenaNet- “Sigils will be the danger!”
Engineer- “You tell me where my DPS is, woman! We are talking about the only kit that is good!”
ArenaNet- “Good? I am ArenaNet! I’m going to nerf you till you can’t walk!”

The Incredibles (2004)

ArenaNet- “Now it’s perfectly balanced…”
Engineer – “Balanced?! What do you KNOW about balanced?! What does ANY profession in this game know about balanced?!”
ArenaNet- “Now Wait a minute young Engy…”
Engineer- “WE act balanced ArenaNet!” We WANT to be Balanced! The only balanced one is the Assassin! And he’s not even toilet trained!
(Assassin spams HeartSeeker)

The Incredibles (2004)

ArenaNet- Your profession was designed to withstand enormous skill without ever being fixed or versatile, a useless feature. Your kit’s were tricky, but I finally created enough useless buggy abilities and traits that can be as useless as your entire class. Your Turrets can die as fast as you can, and still retain it’s uselessness. Your class is virtually impossible, yet it plays the most fun.

The Incredibles (2004)

“Oh, I’m versatile. Versatile enough to defeat you! And I did it without your precious kits, your oh-so-special toolbelts. I’ll give them viability! I’ll give all the professions the most amazing abilities Kryta has ever seen! And when I’m old and I’ve had my fun, I’ll sell my designs so that EVERYONE can have kits. EVERYONE can be versatile! And when everyone’s versatile…..

No one will be…."

The Incredibles (2004)

Such a great movie…I was trying to think of more quotes about engineers from it, but couldn’t come up with much. Very nice.

Leo.7942:

Many times though, I’ve been rooted and I’ve tried to use overcharged shot to break free, only to have it fizzle and go on cooldown. I would prefer to risk a skill going on full cooldown if it meant I could save my life with an overcharged shot.

Yup. I hate that feeling.

Every once in a while one of my bandages from med kit will fail to cast and go on a 4-sec cooldown, so I’m not sure what the issue is. I think it may have something to do with camera angle more than line of sight?

Excellent. I found myself wondering how you had done enough damage to get your opponent down several times, then noticed the burns. It’s enough to make me start wanting to use flamethrower over elixir gun.

This build does work, I’ve played against the 5-engi team a time or two and seen a video with Voz using this build in it. They do pretty darn good for a team made up entirely of the least-played profession in PvP!

Seren.6850:

I don’t think anyone just wanting to try pvp with their friends wants to start out in a tournament, maybe I’m reading it out of context but it sounds like from a league of legends point of view, you can’t play normals with friends only ranked?

As Kline pointed out, the “structure” part of PvP is not friendly to new players. You can actually play with your friends in pick-up games, but you aren’t guaranteed to be on the same team all the time. Also, you can’t just form a party and join—you have to manually join your friend’s game, or choose the same PvP room number as him from the server list.

As for tournaments—they’re actually better for new players than hotjoin, since hotjoin has a high population of people just looking for noobs to farm. Tournaments guarantee that you can play with your friends on the same team. Unfortunately, tournaments don’t have any matchmaking either, so it’s pretty hit and miss. No matter how you do PvP, you can expect to do a lot of dying for a long time before you play a close match.

Some good suggestions. I chuckled a little bit when you suggested an engi’s turrets, though.

I think the beef people have with this skill is that no team will join a paid tourney without it. It’s not really a big deal outside paids. Sure, there are ways to survive it, but nobody likes mandatory.

“Lady, I never walk into a place I don’t know how to slick shoes out of.”

—Ronin (1998)

Lord Aargadon.4135:

^Starfox? If so, fantastic job to you and everyone else posting here

Ah, that reminds me…

“Never give up, fox. Trust your slick shoes.”

Me: bunker engineer
Most feared: shatter mesmer and trap ranger
Least feared: warrior

If you use any kits, a sigil of battle is a good second sigil. Phuriocity is right, you can only use one sigil of each “type” at a time—so don’t take two “on weapon swap” sigils or two “chance on crit” sigils, only one would work.

Let’s get political:

“It’s the versatility, stupid!”
—Clinton campaign

“Where’s the buff?”
—Wendy’s advertisement and Mondale campaign

“I voted for engineers, before I voted against them”
—Kerry campaign

I like cookies.

Our kits have some problems, but I think kit builds are our best:

Bombs are probably our best kit. Unfortunately, they only really fit tanky builds because they require you to be taking a defensive role (i.e. defending a point in PvP)—they won’t hit anything unless you are being attacked. I use bomb kit as the staple of my bunker build for PvP. The autoattack scales very well with power, burning and confusion are excellent, smoke bomb is a good defensive skill even after being seriously nerfed, and the #5 is lame but useful every once in a while. Big ’ol bomb is also a good toolbelt skill.

Toolkit: also good. The only drawback to this kit is that the autoattack just isn’t strong enough to build a melee dps engi around the toolkit. Box of nails is useful mostly for the cripple. Prybar is great. Shield is great. Pull is great. Throw wrench is a decent toolbelt skill as well. This kit is good for PvP, but not as great for PvE/dungeons.

Flamethrower: our hardest-nerfed kit. The auto-attack is weak even when it hits. The #2 skill is strong but extremely difficult (read: requires perfectly suited terrain/distance) to land. The pushback is the only really good skill in the flamethrower—aoe so it can interrupt stealth stomps/rezzes, etc. The fourth skill is only useful if you need a fire field for combos. The blind is useful since it is instant—you can use it to safely stomp or to save your hide while cc’d.

Elixir gun: a decent kit for support builds. You’ll want this one if you go dungeon support. The autoattack inflicts weakness, i.e. you can drastically debuff a single boss’s damage. The 2 and 4 skills scale pretty well with power, and 4 is a decent escape skill in PvP. Super elixir, the 5 skill, is a good aoe healing and condition removal, and a huge light field. Very useful.

Med kit: my favorite healing skill. It’s viable for any kind of build you run—if you’re tanky, you’ll get a lot out of mileage out of those three bandages and if you’re dps, you get 10sec of fury from your healing skill! Drawbacks: bad condition removal compared to 409/elixir H; bad party support compared to healing turret.

Last but not least: grenade kit—our best PvE damage and excellent for WvW as well. Requires a grandmaster trait to be useful. Can work in PvP as support dps, but it’s very situational. The auto-attack got nerfed bad but it’s still a solid kit overall, just more difficult to use as a main weapon.

Hope the text wall helps somewhat—our kits are indeed underwhelming compared to most weapon sets of other professions, but are super fun and somewhat viable for PvE/dungeons as well as WvW/PvP in certain builds. Builds that incorporate multiple kits are usually tanky/supportive in nature.

One last thing: the Kit refinement trait works well with elixir gun, toolkit, and grenade kit. It’s bugged/lame with bomb kit, flamethrower, and med kit.

I would join this guild.

Was going to reply to that but Ostricheggs hit all the main points. Also, loss of endurance would be the thief debuff, not the ranger debuff. No worries, grenade kit can apply bleed, chill, blind, and poison.

In fairness, when people see yet another thread about nerfing their favorite class they get upset about it. However, this thread is about nerfing one skill in one game mode (tournaments). We understand mesmers aren’t OP in dungeons or WvW. This is just a meaningful adjustment to one game mode in which two specific support skills are absolutely mandatory for every serious tournament team.

Mr. engi: “What are you waiting for?”
Kid: “I don’t know. Something amazing, I guess.”
Mr. engi: (sighs) “Me too, kid.”
—The incredibles

FiftyTwoBears.5482:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I feel guilty about continually bashing my favorite profession, but it’s so fun…..

“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this guardian”
—Opening line of The Legend of Zelda (1986)

We ain’t bashin, we’re being honest. These were famous quotes throughout the history of the Engineer! Be proud!

Haha, true enough!

How about:

“Engineer used flamethrower! …it’s not very effective…”
—Pokemon

“Engineer? I thought I nerfed you already.”
“I get that sometimes.”
—Live Free or Die Hard

“No grenades.”
“No grenades?!?”
—Serenity

I’m not sure if hotjoin needs to go completely away—it functions nicely as a glory farm for people that want to glory farm.

Let’s have two browsers—one labeled “practice,” which is hotjoin. The other is a random vs random ranked single match, or 3v3 random arena, or…anything where you start at the beginning of a match and play to the end of a match against the same opponents.

I feel guilty about continually bashing my favorite profession, but it’s so fun…..

“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this guardian”
—Opening line of The Legend of Zelda (1986)

This thread is too hilarious to not post in…

“I told you, I don’t shoot to kill.” — The Lone Ranger, unmodified

“So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s gonna be really hard. We’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want turrets. I want turrets, forever, turrets and me, every day…” — The Notebook

“Please understand…It was all balance, it wasn’t personal.”
“It was personal to me!”
— Taken

Darnis.4056:

Skype it’s free, there’s no setup and there’s no kitten check like in mumble.
public voip is terrible, I don’t want to deal with that when pugging.

I think the point here is that even with public voip, most people wouldn’t want to use it. It would be kinda nice to have the option, but most pugs would just have one or two people talking.

I do think we could use better map pinging and hotkey commands. Public voip would be nice too, but probably harder to implement and not used by pugs very much.

Darnis.4056:

Chi Malady.2015:

That’s why nobody plays tournaments anymore.

False, Tournament ques have never been faster.

Despite the naysayers, I think PvP population has actually managed to increase a bit recently even with all the problems. Tourney queues are pretty quick and I think hotjoin population may be rising a bit as well. Of course, we’re talking anecdotal evidence—I’d be interested to see some numbers from Anet on how things are doing PvP-wise.

You probably know this, but may I present: tips for players of games with no matchmaking!

—Weekends: guilds are on in force and casual players are joining solo. If you solo-join a tournament on Saturday night, your chances of a fair fight are low.
—Weekdays/mornings: a few guilds are on, and a lot of partial guilds are on. Your chances of a fair fight are slightly higher.
—Weeknights: best chances of success. Short queue times mean fewer people leave before the match starts so you have a low probability of having to play 4v5. There are some guilds on, but also a lot of partial guild groups that you can tag along with.

Or, to save time, you could just tell your friends not to bother yet—matchmaking is high on the priority list (so we hear) so with luck things will improve. Right now, tournament matches that are closer than 500-300 are rare, unfortunately.

5v5 hotjoin is also a decent option, but there are usually only a few games going of that type and hotjoin is plagued by uneven numbers on teams and people coming/leaving too quickly for it to feel like a real match.

Engi shield 5 right before thief tries BV combo. never gets old.

Sprawl.3891:

lol you could pay people to play hot join and they would quit after being zerged by insta kill thief and mesmers. this game had tons of pvpers already and they quit, bringing more wont change anything without a major overhaul.

A bit more pessimistic than I’d phrase it, but there’s truth here. GW2 PvP is still a few patches away from being ready for a major influx of new players. I would say at the bare minimum we’d need matchmaking for single matches of team vs team and random vs random. It would probably be smart to wait until a new game mode or two can be added as well.

+1 but I’m not sure it’s ready for that yet. Still needs matchmaking and something besides hotjoin for random vs random. I think it would be smarter to wait until some other important features are in before going F2P.

On the other hand, maybe they should just do it to try to bring numbers up so they can better implement matchmaking.

For PvE leveling, either way is fine. There are several advantages/disadvantages to each:

—Grenades aren’t anything impressive until level 60. The toolbelt skill is our best damage skill at any level, however.
—Bombs scale very nicely all the way through, and don’t really have any “mandatory” traits, although forceful explosions is pretty nice.
—Flamethrower is good for leveling. The damage isn’t real impressive in high-level builds, but you can stack might pretty easily and get lifesteal food for a flame-tank build after level 60.

Hope that helps!

The point isn’t necessarily that we shouldn’t allow teams to queue together, it’s that right now, there are more players who would enjoy solo-queue than who are in teams. The OP is right—even the PvP playerbase is casual by a huge margin (let’s say 30:1, casual:hardcore?).

I’d be fine with leaving tourneys as-is and adding a random vs random single-match mode. Or, splitting tourneys into random vs random and premade vs premade.

Let’s clear some things up:

1. That was not a random game—those guys sometimes do tournaments with 5-engineer teams.

2. Engies have 2 glass cannon builds, neither of which have stealth (although other engi builds can blast a smoke field, and they have one trait that gives stealth on being immobilized). Both have 1-2 gapclosers, 1 stunbreak and 1-2 escape skills.

3. Some thieves apparently feel awkward that no one likes them? This one confuses me.

4. Thieves are the best profession for farming glory because they excel at killing first-time PvPers quickly and can move around the map fast.

5. Hotjoin games in general have 2-4 times as many thieves as engineers.

That is all.

We’ve seen several of the standard “who’s the top player of each profession?” threads. I want to know: which team/guild is the most fun to play against?

Who runs creative comps instead of supercheese? Who uses map chat for cracking jokes and friendly banter, not just boasting, insulting pugs and qq? Who says “well played” when they lose, and “gg” when they win?

All bitterness aside, I think mesmers are a pretty much a perfect counter to engineers in general, especially bunker engineers. They can usually just stay out of range of our AoE/cc and nuke us down. My advice:

—As difficult as it is, wait for the illusions to be right on top of you before you dodge. If you dodge before they hit you, they’ll just hit you one second later.
—Don’t try to compete with their ranged pressure. Pistol is useful but doesn’t really hurt anything. Come off the node and either get them to walk onto your bombs or get in their face with supply drop/bombs/prybar.

These are just desperation tactics. I’ll admit that I rarely kill a mesmer 1v1 as a bunker engi.

I think this is the right approach to take when discussing engi buffs. Anet’s obviously not going to hand out a nuclear bomb kit or a gatling gun turret, so it’s a good idea to focus on small, reasonable buffs aimed at increasing build variety.

1. The ability to select toolbelt skills: my personal favorite. Alternatively:

2. Improve toolbelt skills to buff certain builds: I would suggest things like:
—Kit toolbelt skills now include a condition removal and a stunbreaker
—Turret toolbelt skills now include a projectile reflect (and turrets get reduced CD on pickup)
—Elixir toolbelt skills’ stability and protection are reliable, not RNG
—Gadget toolbelt skills have reduced cooldowns

Penguin.5197:

I knew that when making this thread people would use it to make fun of ourselves and had that in mind when I did it (a guide to beating an underpowered class lawl). But I ended up posting what I think is some good information that can actually help play against an engie better. Or just learn more about them in general.

Certainly! It’s a great thread.

On mesmers: I’ve found that mesmers excel at just the right range to be a perfect “counter” (as if we needed one) to engies. Don’t feel bad if you’re losing 1v1 to mesmers. I’m not saying they’re OP or crying nerf, just saying that 1v1, engi vs mesmer is not a favorable matchup.

aydenunited.5729:

FiftyTwoBears.5482:

aydenunited.5729:

Esrever.8613:

don’t forget fighting a naked engy:

he probably got tired of paying all his repair fees and you should just end his misery.

Please don’t turn this thread into another whine thread, there are plenty of you doing that already on basically the entire Engineer forum.

it’s the only time we can enjoy ourselves honestly, im having more fun in other threads coming up with funny kitten nerfs for Engineers and reading stuff like this then actually playing

it’s way to much work to even keep up in PvP and higher level fractals anymore, and it’s just boring to have people glaze over me in pity

i’m having fun on the forums whining cause it’s actually fun to make fun of ourselves haha

Some of us aren’t having nearly the amount of heartache and suffering the rest of you are, and we would like to have at least a few threads where we can talk strategy, tactics, etc.

You can have your fun complaining since that’s what makes you happy, but please leave at least a few threads for the rest of us.

I have no problem (in theory) with creating threads to poke fun at the problems of the engineer profession, but I agree that it’s over-reaching to actively devolve all the threads into that.

On the other hand, this topic lends itself perfectly to making fun of ourselves. I mean, the game has been out for four months and no one even posted any counter-engi strategies until this estimable engi did (yes, there were a few threads about countering juggernaut/stability before it got nerfed, but nothing about the current engi profession). The OP is right on with his assessments but it’s still kind of funny, when you think about it.

leashmaygoss.2140:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Looks like a fun build overall. A couple of questions:

—When you in range-pressure mode, are you rifle autoattacking or chucking nades?
—How do you feel about 1v1s using this build?
—Do you feel the raw damage+vuln stacking makes up for lack of fury and might, or is your playstyle more half-glass?

Depends on the situation. Nades for cleaving if they are close to each other.

The 1v1s are decent vs about anything, not having much trouble with anything on honorable 1 on 1’s.

The raw damage and vuln stacking do compensate as I can instagib any squishies. Obviously there are ways to negate my damage, I am not saying it is the ultimate instagib(lol). Also, I play with a d/d ele that can give me fury on aura share which is great. Using utility goggles instead of Tool Kit isn’t a bad choice either, I just prefer Tool Kit for the block when I get focused alot.

The playstyle isn’t half glass, just hard-to-break glass.

Sounds good, thanks!

Looks like a fun build overall. A couple of questions:

—When you in range-pressure mode, are you rifle autoattacking or chucking nades?
—How do you feel about 1v1s using this build?
—Do you feel the raw damage+vuln stacking makes up for lack of fury and might, or is your playstyle more half-glass?