Guild Wars 2

To be 100% sure of my claims that condition damage grenades weren’t as strong as power-crit grenades, I did a test. I did 5 attempts of a target dummy with each build for a total of ten attempts, the experiment went like this;

Traits were;

-30 in explosives, taking shrapnel (would take incendiary for power-crit build, but for the sake of testing, I didn’t), short fuse, which favours condition damage and grenadier.

-30 in firearms to max out condition damage, even if in a real build I wouldn’t, due to synergy between 10 alchemy and 10 tools. Vulnerability on crit wasn’t taken as it would favour power-crit build.

-10 points in alchemy avoiding the crit damage from tools.

This test is basically done in favour of condition damage, as I could squeeze some more damage (and I do in my actual builds) from the power-crit build, but again for the sake of testing I used this set-up.

Damage rotation consisted of: shrapnel grenade first, chill grenade, poison grenade (which doesn’t do much for a direct damage build), four ‘normal grenades’, if still not dead, shrapnel again followed by ‘normal grenades’ until golem’s death. This was all done on the highest armoured dummy (heavy golem).

Power-crit stats: 3,273 attack, 49% crit, 170% crit damage, 300 condition damage and 30% condition duration. Rune of the Ogre was used and Zerker amulet with Zerker jewel.

1. 7.8
2. 7.6
3. 7.7
4. 8.1
5. 7.5

Average time to kill. 7.74 seconds

Condition damage stats: 2,829, 18% crit, 150% crit damage, 1,405 condition damage, 30% condition duration. Rune of the afflicted was used, Carrion amulet with Carrion jewel.

1. 8.8
2. 8.6
3. 8.5
4. 8.3
5. 8.9

Average time to kill. 8.62 seconds.

As you can see the condition damage isn’t far behind, but considering the entire test was done in favour of condition damage to the point where I used runes I wouldn’t normally, traits I wouldn’t normally, attacked the heaviest dummy, used a rotation that favours conditions, it in reality would be a larger gap if you factor in grenade barrage as well. You do net an extra 3k Hp though.

This is by no-means conclusive, but it illustrates my point accurately. To build condition grenades effectively you have to sacrifice a lot, my condition build goes 10 points into that line normally, the amount you sacrifice is grave, detracting the actual damage my pistols do, this is why burning and daze synergise (~ 850 damage per skill use+) better with condition damage, but would be difficult to use under water and would have no direct condition damage application like you would on land with your pistols.

Basically I’d have to make a build specifically for Raid on the Capricorn if I wanted to run condition damage underwater and then camp the ruins, but running a similar build underwater would be better, which is the problem.

shedim.8504:

Grenade kit is awesome for undwater combat. The standard underwater weapon just sucks all across the board. There is no reason to pick it over the grenade kit.

As for the medkit, I don’t see why you consider it viable as it is at the moment. Without the tier 2 trait where you can throw the medipacks around, it is absolutely bad.

The flamethrower’s damage is way too low and the burning condition should be applied with every hit, #2 is completely useless, bugged, broken and has no synnergy with the kit in its current form. #5 should create a combo field and 4 is…I barely remember what it does, so it’s unimpressive.

The wrench kit, well, the autoattacks are way too slow, the cast times are way too slow and the kit does not offer enough advantages for justifying it in melee range. It should rather have more disorients, knockbacks and stuns, but honestly, the rifle has close range capabilities, the flamethrower has close range capabilities, the mine kit works in close range, the gnade kit works in close range…what’s the purpose of the wrench kit? Synnergy with the turrets, great, but nobody uses them since they are static, slow attacking, low damage, high cooldowns and generally useless. Eauipping the wrench kit sacrifices a turret. Not that smart, unless you could build turrets WITH the kit.

Med-kit: Spam one-three as you run forward and you get healed instantly, I actually find throwing them to be utterly useless in terms of self-preservation and wouldn’t touch that talent for money nor love. It heals the most of all the heals if you know how to kite and is awesome for proccing speedy kits and bandage-self resets at 25% with 15 into tools, it’s decent just has lag problems I think.

4 on the thrower is the wall, it’s really good IMO.

@Cempa, I can, but I’m heading to bed soon [hopefully], so you might have to wait a bit as I haven’t made them in any sort of calculator. I have a few and experimenting with some at the moment any role in particular you’re after?

Casia.4281:

RapBreon.9836:

Adelai.6439:

One thing you have overlooked concerning Engineer underwater combat, Underwater Grenade Kit. The Grenade Kit underwater becomes easily the best underwater kit/weapon set we have, not only does it have condition damage for your pistol set-up but it ofc scales with power aswell meaning both Power and Condition builds do well with it, combine that with the fact grenades become hard targeting underwater and the incredibly short CD of skill 1 you can just AoE down a whole lot of mobs underwater in a very short time.

In fact I actually look forward to Capricorn as I can hold the Ruins against multiple opponents just with the grenade kit.

I don’t really think the bleed on the number two constitutes enough for it to be condition damage centric, yes it’s a long duration on a ‘relatively’ short cool-down, but without building for grenades specifically (aka steel-packed, short fuse and grenadier) you would never get a viable amount of bleeds on a target to pressure them, seeing as you are excluded from burning which our above ground condition damage has a implied importance.

Condition Engineers wouldn’t really build for grenades, bombs would be better daze/burning. A power build for the grenade kit would be vastly superior. Which brings me back to the fact there really is nothing for an underwater condition engineer. I guess the bomb kit could work, but solely relying on the bomb kit for damage is awkward enough on land let alone in three dimensions.

2 bleeds. aoe condition damage/duration.
3 aoe blind. condition duration.
4 aoe chill. condition duration.
5 aoe venom. condition damage/duration.

Traits. 33% chance to burn on crits is a good option. 6% chance to cause bleeding less so. but ok still.
firearms, 30% chance to bleed on crits. (50% crit chance with 30% means 15% on every hit) 66% Vul on crit. cond duration.

While yes crit and crit damage is very good for grenades as well. Cond grenades are very possible as well.
Explosives gives power and cond duration for a reason. And paired with firearms you get crit and cond damage.

The point was that you need to build for grenades for surface fighting to make them optimal for underwater fighting, condition damage grenades are not as strong in comparison to power grenades. Blind does no damage, neither does chill. Bleed and poison do, but you would never get high enough bleed stacks without a crazy amount of investment that would draw from your above ground fighting in a very meaningful way.

Some condition engineers (such as myself) do not build for crit. I have 9% crit chance, so all condition on crit is not useful. So I’m stuck with a chance to hit with three grenades every 5 seconds to apply a 1-3 15secondish bleed, with no guarantee all three will hit as my only source of reliable damage. Condition builds do not want vulnerability, or even condition duration very much, we want damage (as it is more effective against people who have removal).

So we’re back to square one, I would have to completely rework my build for it to viable underwater, which even then it would not optimal and I would completely destroy my above ground attrition build because I couldn’t get 20 in alch, 20 in firearms and 10 in tools.

Adelai.6439:

One thing you have overlooked concerning Engineer underwater combat, Underwater Grenade Kit. The Grenade Kit underwater becomes easily the best underwater kit/weapon set we have, not only does it have condition damage for your pistol set-up but it ofc scales with power aswell meaning both Power and Condition builds do well with it, combine that with the fact grenades become hard targeting underwater and the incredibly short CD of skill 1 you can just AoE down a whole lot of mobs underwater in a very short time.

In fact I actually look forward to Capricorn as I can hold the Ruins against multiple opponents just with the grenade kit.

I don’t really think the bleed on the number two constitutes enough for it to be condition damage centric, yes it’s a long duration on a ‘relatively’ short cool-down, but without building for grenades specifically (aka short fuse and grenadier, which is a substantial investment) you would never get a viable amount of bleeds on a target to pressure them, seeing as you are excluded from burning which our above ground condition damage has a implied importance.

Condition Engineers wouldn’t really build for grenades, bombs would be better daze/burning for above water battles. A power build for the grenade kit is vastly superior. Which brings me back to the fact there really is nothing for an underwater condition engineer. I guess the bomb kit could work, but solely relying on the bomb kit for damage is awkward enough on land let alone in three dimensions.

Still regarding all that, it’s the best a condition Engineer has at the moment, I won’t dispute that. Funnily enough grenades functions so much smoother underwater and seem to attack heaps faster too, it’s really weird, makes me kind of wish the number one on the grenade kit was just a target-able auto attack with a splash range above water.kittenthat would be sweeeeeeeeet.

Wallach.7291:

I’m pretty sure Elixir R removes one condition per field tick, not all at once.

I’ve seen it remove two on throw without 409. So I’m confused and didn’t see it remove more per tick, I guess I’ll test it again, still the tool-tip is ambiguous and I can’t tell.

He’s a Mesmer, don’t listen to him, he’s trying to ‘misdirect’ you (hur hur). I am Aussie though.

Um I kind of actually enjoy the randomness, because often the buffs are longer than they usually would be. That and it’s fun IMO.

Agree with ultimates, I completely forgot because supply drop so good, which is a problem, because I didn’t even consider the others. Rampage is terrible even if it wasn’t random anyway.

Conclusion and TL;DR list

This about brings me to all of the ‘issues’ I can think of currently and feel that addressing some of these issues would go a long way to improving the ‘quality of gameplay’ the class has to offer, as the concepts and theme of the class are absolutely brillant and fun to play. Onto the TL;DR.

Rifle: Blunderbuss occasionally misses due to extremely close proximity, making it feel clunky due to the requirement to get that close. Jump shot feels slow, unwieldy and overly difficult to use.

Pistol: Explosive shot ‘feels’ weak, blowtorch suffers from a similar problem that blunderbuss suffers from.

Harpoon Gun: Direct damage weapon, people running condition build land engi’s have no weapon choice underwater.

Grenade Kit: Reliance of the grenadier trait to be effective at which point it becomes super-effective (pun intended).

Bomb Kit: Big Ol’ Bomb doesn’t seem to combo finish with any of the bomb combo fields (haven’t tested with other types of combo fields).

Med-kit: Skills one – five, feels clunky sometimes, suspect latency issues.

Flame-thrower: Skill two is clunky (sometimes just disappearing) and hard to hit with, doesn’t have the amount range manipulation the rifle has to make it justify the effort. Skill five is on a tad too long of a cooldown, IMO. Incendiary ammo uses up a charge even if shooting into thin air (not sure if intentional) and doesn’t really seem to justify a minute cooldown.

Tool kit: Auto attack feels weak, slow and hard to hit with, box of nails long cast, low duration and the magnet is clunky.

Kits in general: No ‘on swap’ sigil choices, no auto attack.

Healing turret: When removed the regeneration buff only heals for five instead of appropriate amount ~130 (unsure if intended). Tool-belt skill is lacklustre, cleansing burst doesn’t seem to remove ‘all’ conditions from me or my allies, if any.

Elixir S: Doesn’t work with fast acting elixirs, tool-tip says 48 seconds, still goes into a 60 second cooldown.

Elixir R: Ambiguous tool-tip on the tool-belt skill, unsure if supposed to wipe all conditions or some, either way only wipes two at most.

Mine: Tool-belt skill acting as five blast finishers, potentially op. Mine skill itself, small blast radius, very lacklustre.

Turrets in general: Immobile pets that I feel don’t compensate for their immobility and just die in fights, especially fights on points.

Amulets: More choices please, not enough, in my opinion.

~The End~

Sorry for saying clunky so much, it’s just the word that describes what I’m trying to communicate perfectly. Happy Di?

Other Issues and Amulets

Healing turret: This is an odd one, and I can’t really tell if it’s bug or not, but when I place the turret, let it apply regeneration then either pick it up or detonate it for the healing area effect, the regeneration that is applied begins to only tick for five health, this occurs both at 80 in sPvP (all forms) and PvE (around level 50 when I tested it).

This leads me to believe it’s a bug, whilst the turret is up however it still ticks for the appropriate amount ~ 130ish in sPvP. It also, sometimes gives me regeneration before ‘firing’ and I end up with 16ish seconds of five health per second.

Cleansing burst is supposed to remove conditions also doesn’t seem to work, it often doesn’t remove one, let alone all conditions. Finally, the tool-belt skill is very lacklustre in comparison to elixir H and the med-kits active effects. Potentially justified by the fact you can self-detonate it for an extra 1.3k area heal and the cleansing burst (if it worked for me).

Elixir S: The trait that allows you to reduce elixir cooldowns by 20% (fast acting elixirs) doesn’t work for at very least me, the tool-tip is updated to reflect it does bring it down to 48 seconds, but when actually used it starts counting down from 60 seconds.

Elixir R: The tool-belt skill stats that it ‘cures conditions’ and I’ve read reports from people stating ‘all’ conditions, but I’ve noticed that it does not removing ‘all’ conditions for me, thus I am unsure if it is bugged or not.

Mine: Tool-belt skill acting as five blast finishers, potentially OP as it equates to a 7k heal with the healing turret AoE. The mine move itself is lacklustre with a tiny blast radius.

Turrets in general: Feel kind of useless (minus net turret), I have never been compelled to take a single turret in PvP besides the net turret, I feel like they don’t do anything. Compared to ‘other’ pets, they don’t seem to offer anything to compensate for their lack mobility (I know I said I wouldn’t do this, but felt it was semi-relevant due to almost every class having some kind of pet, minus warriors).

Amulets: I would like to see more types of amulets included, I resent wanting to make a tanky condition engineer but being forced into either Rabid, Carrion, or Shaman when I want none of them. I want power, not precision, I want toughness, not vitality, but it leaves me in the awkward position of taking one non optimal stat as I have no other choices (the gem doesn’t account for much), I would love to see more choices. I suspect there may be balance reasons behind this, but I’ve yet to figure out the rationality behind it and would be open to explanation.

Med-kit: This kit is also in a decent position at the moment and have no real comments on it, it feels viable and is decently strong when specced into the tool tree. My only concern is at times – not always – feels a tad clunky to use, this may be a latency issue though, as I’m from Australia.

Flame-thrower: My experience with it was limited to the old juggernaut talent and have not really experimented with it since. My impressions of it felt as if the damage was a ‘bit’ low (nothing major) and hard to judge the distance of which the auto attack would hit at, especially when trying to land the last burn applying tick.

Flame-blast (two) is…very clunky, I feel is the only way to describe it, often I shoot it and it just disappears, on-top of the fact it’s slow, hard to hit with and goes through targets before exploding, meaning you have to create range to use it properly even though the auto attack demands getting just outside of melee’s reach to ensure most ticks hit. Unlike the rifle, which has the tools to manipulate range, allowing it to pull the shotgunesque play-style off.

Skill five or smoke vent…is a decent skill, a tad boring but very useful if used correctly. The ability to use it while stunned is incredibly useful, but I don’t feel it justifies the 20 second cooldown on it, maybe making it a smoke field for a VERY short duration (and possibly increase the cooldown) or lowering the cooldown would help make it a bit better and possibly more exciting. Currently though the ability to switch to the flame-thrower whilst stunned and blind has proven useful in many situations.

Incendiary ammo doesn’t feel that great, it’s on a very long cooldown, occasionally doesn’t apply all three stacks and finally it goes missing after three attacks even if I don’t hit a target, to which I’m not sure if that’s supposed to happen or not. Ultimately it just doesn’t feel like it justifies its cooldown of one minute, considering I rarely get all three stacks on a player.

Tool kit: I don’t like it all. The auto attacks feel slow, clunky and weak. The magnet pull (five) is clunky and annoying to hit with, box of nails (two) doesn’t last that long and the cast feels like it takes forever. Gear shield is decent and so is_Pry-bar,_ but the kit as a whole is completely unviable and I can’t kill akittenthing with it.

Admittedly, I haven’t tried that hard however. So I’m open to any people who have had some great success with it, where they can actually brawl another melee class and not get murdered.

Elixir gun: No experience with it in PvP as I rarely support, I am curious to hear other people’s experiences with it however.

Kits in general: I know this has been mentioned, but the kits not having their auto-attack automatically turned on is very painful and puts me off using kits in PvE and the flame-thrower in PvP because switching is such a chore. Also picking up an environmental weapon or being downed then reviving or switching back ‘unequips’ the kit, which is a minor annoyance.

The Engineer not making use of ‘on swap’ sigils as a whole even when using kits in combat, limits my options quite a bit, I want leeching! Ideally swapping to a kit should allow me a sigil choice, or at least a forced switch effect. Eg. Switching to Flame-thrower makes my next attack apply burn.

Pistol: The pistol all-round is ‘ok’, poison dart volley does its job, though each application is very short and static shot is strong, these two skills are decent and good at what they do (IMO).

My main problem is the main-hand pistol doesn’t do enough damage without the off-hand pistol or a kit supplementing the damage. The auto attack, explosive shot feels very, very weak with such a short-duration bleed and average direct damage portion, as such I can’t seem to justify running a shield for a condition based pistol build as I absolutely ‘need’ blowtorch for any meaningful condition damage.

Blowtorch seems to be a classic ‘high risk – high reward’ skill, but like blunderbuss it requires you to get very close and doesn’t really do ‘that’ much damage for the cooldown and what it requires you to do (especially the punishment if you use it incorrectly). However it is still the main reason I run an off-hand pistol as it provides the biggest damage out of the five skills. Like skills two and three, it does its job, it just likes to punish you occasionally if you aren’t directly in their face and facing them, having very similar issues to blunderbuss with it missing.

Glue shot is pretty good and there isn’t much more to say about it.

Shield: I have a whole 5 minutes of experience with the shield; I can’t really comment on it, I couldn’t kill anything without my off-hand pistol with my condition build.

Harpoon Gun: I consider this to be a real problem, due to Engineers only having one underwater weapon set only rifle engineers get to go underwater. Harpoon gun does direct damage, rifle does direct damage, so they both draw from the same stats, if you are a condition based pistol engineer, underwater is off-limits. The harpoon gun does not do enough condition damage to make use of +condition damage stats and because as previously mentioned we only have one weapon set, it leaves condition engineers in an odd position.

I hate Raid on the Capricorn for this reason, I’m pigeon-holed into running between the beach and docks all game if I’m not playing a rifle set-up. Engineers need another underwater weapon set they can pre-equip or the harpoon gun needs to be more eclectic, with maybe bleed on auto attack or something along those lines.

Kits

The kits I’ve had experience using in PvP are; the bomb kit, grenade kit, flame-thrower (until stability change), med-kit and tool-kit. I will go through each kit systematically, giving my opinion of each and conclude with a general opinion on kits as a whole.

Grenade Kit: I feel the of all our kits currently, the grenade kit is the most useful, the application of hard to get conditions with long durations (up to 8 seconds of chill is very strong), good damage and absurd range makes it easily the best kit in a multi-target situation and even in 1v1’s.

I feel the difficulty of landing grenades at max range is justifiable due to the absolute raw power of the kit and in any meaningful PvP setting is still relatively easy to hit with as people are usually fighting on a point, which leads to their inevitable demise (I regularly wipe whole teams if I’m allowed to grenadier to my heart’s content).

The biggest problem with the kit is the grenadier trait, the trait is simply to good, it’s not even a choice if one intends to run with the grenade kit. The grenade kit without the trait is… lacklustre, due the extra grenade applying an extra portion of condition duration/stack, plus damage and range. Whilst I understand grandmaster traits are supposed to be very good, it also the reason for the grenade kit being so effective, it validates the whole kit.

Bomb kit: This kit is fabulous at controlling points, especially in a condition-centric build, I feel the bomb kit is in a good position besides being a little difficult to use outside of point control. My only issue with the kit is that Big Ol’ Bomb doesn’t seem to act a combo finisher with the other bomb combo fields, I’m unsure if this is a bug, intentional or the interface isn’t simply showing up properly.

Introduction

Hey guys! First, I’d like to open by stating; I personally love both the game and the Engineer as a class. The objective of this post is to help improve the class’ playability and effectiveness, not to induce hate-mongering, whining or any other form of unproductive communication.

Currently I’ve been mostly playing PvP on my Engineer, I’m rank 28, level 52 and I have 117 tournament games won out of 125 games (92% win rate) on my engineer – no match-making inflates this substantially – this should give you an idea of how I divide my playtime and my experience with the class. As such most of my critiquing will revolve around PvP issues and ‘bugs’.

I’ll go through each major portion of the class, such as kits, weapons and some but not all utilities in a categorised form. I will also avoid comparing Engineer abilities with those from another class even if they are similar in nature as I find this to be often taking the skills out of context of their appropriately designed situations. This will be a long post, but it will have a summary (TL;DR) at the end. Skip to the last post for TL;DR

Weapons

Rifle: The rifle is currently my favourite set of skills in the game, the versatility and sheer usefulness of the rifle is amazing, it fits thematically with the class perfectly and is so much fun to play with, it does however have some ‘issues’.

Hip-shot is as standard as they come the only ‘niggly’ problem I have with it, at very close ranges (this is very notable in PvE) the bullet seems to zig-zag over the target rather than go through them, not a ‘real problem’, but it’s odd and I want to know why!

Net-shot is perfect, it’s on a low cooldown, but can be difficult to hit with, especially at max range, really well balanced if not a tiny bit too strong.

Blunderbuss, this move, I love this move, probably my favourite move but it’s also reallykittenclunky at times. Firstly, the move requires you, for maximum damage, to get absurdly close to your target – closer than melee range – which leads to the real problem with it, once you do get that close, because of the large amount of movement in PvP, it misses often, if a target passes your 180 field of vision (at extremely close range) as you fire it seems to just fire off into nothingness and miss. It’s odd because most other skills are either cancelled – which sometimes does happen – or follow through and still hit.

I’ve theorised that this is probably due to its cast time and your character won’t twist further than 90% from centre to hit a target, which means I have to ‘aim’ at the target to hit them, which is fine, but due to needing to be at extremely close range, it still makes it ‘feel’ very clunky to hit with at times when I want to use it to its maximum effectiveness. Not really a problem I’ve noticed on any other class mechanics wise, but that is probably due to the unique set-up of the Engineer ‘rifle’ being a close-range-ranged-hybrid gun.

Overcharged shot, this move is crazy and I’ve heard multiple complaints about it and how ‘annoying’ it is to fight a rifle engineer as you spend most of the fight ‘laboriously getting back to your feet’, strongest move on the rifle by far considering the enemy knock-back is a 2-3 second CC and its short cooldown.

Jump shot, I like the concept of this move and how hard it is to hit for the ‘difficulty’ involved, but it’s annoyingly hard to hit even at the best of times with as the landing circle being so tiny and the animation taking so long to complete, on-top of it semi-immobilising you (making it very average for mobility, which is fine). This makes it feel very clunky to use and its only problem is it just needs to ‘feel’ smoother in general IMO.