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PvE+WvW+Dungeon Engineer Request

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

0/30/0/10/30 Rifle/FT with Static Discharge traited does pretty good damage and gives you a bit more survivability. Use Rifle Turret and Toolkit along side it for higher damage toolbelt/SD abilities. I was surprised with its damage but you have to hit all your damaging cooldowns. Rifle 3&5, TK3 and your toolbelt abilities to achieve good dps. Mix Knights, Zerker and Soldiers to your preference.

GL
Blood~

What are the traits that you use in firearms, reason I ask is if you could potentially drop 10 points from there to put in elixirs to get either deadly mixture or protection injection or self regulating defenses. I am of the opinion that the range increase on rifle is not always needed since it really only helps you with the auto and slightly with jumpshot distance… which is best used up close anyway to get both jump and land and net shot gets dodge a lot if you try to use it at max distance if the player is not half braindead and paying attention. You would of course lose out on the 5% damage against bleeding targets, but the increase in survivability against the knockdown fest can be well worth it. Largely personal preference I guess, and this is of course from a WvW perspective.

WvW Grenadier Build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

So pretty much a standard hgh nade build, can’t go wrong with it decent condi removal decent might application all around solid build. The one thing to consider is incendiary powder, is only effective versus a single target. Also of course retal, in a organized group is going to ruin your day if you are not extremely careful. Consider getting a pistol shield combo as well, I know you mentioned the immobilize from the rifle but as you said conditions don’t last all that long at times and to do any kind of damage with the rifle you really need to be up close. At least with the pistol shield you get a second sigil a additional source of poison (not for the damage but for the -33% heal on target) and have some additional defensive options in the form of block/daze/interupt, reflect/kb, a additional blind. It is of course largely user preference I realize and doesn’t change much with the build. Just my 2c happy, engineering!

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

[PvE] Dungeon Speedrun Zerk Build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

That damage in the screen was with 25 stacks of might on you and 25 of vulnerability on your foe right?

Because without them I can barely reach 3,5k of crit with bombs…
EDIT: even with the boons and conditions said above I can’t surpass 5,5k scit, I had food too… that quite strange.

Did you have a banner of discipline? 25 bloodlust? all exotic zerker gear, ascended jewlery so on and so forth? And most importantly did you actually test against the same target?

That’s why I asked xD.
I have exotic zerker and ascended trinkets (some of them are power-toughness-crit), I have bloodlust. I didn’t had the banner of discipline and I tested it not with the same target but with a wide range of tharget with different levels (veteran, champ, legendary) but still even without that a difference of 2,5k damage sounds a little too much. But maybe I’m wrong.
I noticed I also have 100 attack less than your build but still….

Heh it’s not my build rozbuska is the op, but I have been using a build similar to it for quite awhile. Anyhow, the actual target can have a huge impact on how much damage your attacks will do. Combine that with losing out on the warrior banner which is a 15% crit damage increase, and any other small incidentals that may change from your testing to the example shown here and you will definitely get fairly significant variance in actual performance. I will have to go run a coe and see if I can replicate his results there.

Are these builds still viable?

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Yes and yes, if anything the rifle sd build is even more “viable” than it was in the video due to changes in jumpshot animation and changing rocket boots to a foward leap without self cc. Just be aware, even though in the video he rarely got hit if you take any kind of focused fire you will find yourself in a tough spot. Also conditions are that build’s achilles heel and well, they are everywhere now. If you run it you better have lemongrass and pray you don’t come across a serious condi user that you can’t just burst down in 2 seconds. It is extremely high risk, with the payout being that you can completely devastate someone in the right situation.

PSA: Don't use Super Elixer randomly in WvW

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I am quite sure guardians are causing more light fields than engineers, which are the rarest profession in WvWvW. I often see 10 times more guardians in a large group, compared to the sole lone engineer. But I of course understand why good commanders do not want light fields messing up their area healing.

However the combo field things are way too over the top in WvWvW and one of the main reasons why zergs are so powerful and can even counter concentrated enemy siege fire etc.

These combo fields need their effect to be toned in a WvWvW setting:
water (reduce its healing by 33%)
fire (2 stacks of might, instead of 3)
lightning (50% less swiftness duration)
smoke (cap total consecutive duration of stealth to 8 seconds max, then 4 s revealed)

This would pretty much destroy their usefulness in pve, so unless anet plans to balance for even a third split instead of just spvp/other, then simply no.

A Female players perspective

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Not a single white knight? I am impressed! Seriously OP, noone cares what gender you are anymore it’s 2013, stand on your merits not your gender. Your opening statement almost appears that you are trying to draw a causal relationship between being female and being casual, I don’t know if this was your intention or not but if it was it’s quite frankly insulting. That isn’t to say that being casual is insulting, it’s just that to make an implication that you are casual simply because you are female, well it discredits any validity of female gamers as being able to actually be “competitive”

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

3 words story -guild wars 2 version-

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Quaggan too strong!

Ranger bad main?

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Seriously. Lemme perma-stow my pet and I’d be so happy therefore busy playing you’d never see me on the forums again (except during downtime at work) complaining about any aspect of the Ranger… I guess that’s because the pet is the only aspect I don’t like.

I hear ya, and from a amount of work standpoint I don’t know which would seem like the easiest solution? Stow the pet and get a % damage buff to make up for not using it, though I am not sure how to address losing the f2 functionality, unless they just still let you somehow use the f2 with maybe a different utility depending on the pets you had selected. Or they can figure out a way to make pets negate damage so that they are not basically fire and forget weapons. All the “pet” ai suffers from this though, mesmer phantasms and necro minions (of course both of those have vastly shorter cooldowns). Maybe that should be looked at, lowering cooldowns on the ranger pet’s “downstate”. Being able to stow the pet and getting some kind of compensation for the loss of damage still seems like the ideal solution to me.

[PvE] Dungeon Speedrun Zerk Build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

That damage in the screen was with 25 stacks of might on you and 25 of vulnerability on your foe right?

Because without them I can barely reach 3,5k of crit with bombs…
EDIT: even with the boons and conditions said above I can’t surpass 5,5k scit, I had food too… that quite strange.

Did you have a banner of discipline? 25 bloodlust? all exotic zerker gear, ascended jewlery so on and so forth? And most importantly did you actually test against the same target?

TC's Cursed Shore being choked by Ember farm.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Exploit
1. to utilize, esp. for profit; turn to practical account: to exploit a business opportunity.
2. to take advantage of; promote.
3. to use selfishly for one’s own ends.
(source Webster’s dictionary)

I would say that this current farm meta falls into at least one of those three definitions, often times all three. I know the argument can be made that it is available for everyone to do therefore it is not selfish, and that holds true until the farm zerg berates people for attempting to actually play the game in a “normal” manner. Unless you want to make the case that you intentionally play to lose simply for the sake of losing, you can’t really argue for this not being exploitive.

According to the quoted definition any event completion, heart completion, map completion, killing a mob, anything that provides a reward for doing something, would constitute exploiting.

Purposefully failing does not seem likely to have been the intended means of earning rewards from an event, but it is not an exploit. When it is changed (and I hope and expect that to be sooner rather than later) this will not be an indication that the activity was an exploit, only that ANet wants the game to play differently.

I am not trying to pass judgment to be honest, it is for each person to decide their “morality” (I put it in quotes because well it’s a video game and all and not real life). But by a definition, the event and all the examples you provided can be considered exploits. Now here is the important part of that statement, there is different connotations associated with each of those definitions, but what most people actually argue about is only the negative connotation. I just wanted to provide a definition of what the word means, people can decide for themselves whether or not it is negatively impactful. Personally for me, I don’t find the game style choice to be entertaining in the slightest, so I refrain…but my personal needs are fulfilled since I have already acquired most of everything I could ever possibly want just through playing the game. I don’t think Anet intended things to be this way, but I also don’t think anyone should be banned for it either. In the end Anet will decide, they will either change it or they won’t. However for someone who does legitimately want to complete events in the manner they were intended, to be berated for playing that way is simply not cool (I know some people do intentionally try to disrupt things just to be kittens) the problem is the mass mob mentality does not try to distinguish the difference. People make the arguments that they have no other spot to farm, no other way to make as much money so on and so forth, but if that is people’s sole goal is to make money in a game they might as well just play a stock market sim. Let’s be honest you can get anything in the game you need to be successful simply with time, the wants of having it faster well, it does not excuse certain behaviors. Keep up with the Jonse’s but try not to trample on too many people along the way.
p.s yes I know this was rambling but I am mostly just bored at the moment lol

[PvE] Dungeon Speedrun Zerk Build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Will it do more than Pry Bar, Confusion, Throw Wrench and SD?

On a 2600 armor target for me Pry Bar crits for ~3.9k on a 12 second CD plus ~750 in Confusion per activaton for ~6.5 seconds. Throw Wrench crits twice for ~2k and SD crits ~1.2k on a ~15.5 sec CD. IIRC… This should add around 850 DPS to your rotation given you activate on cooldown and the confusion ticks 3x times.

I haven’t tested EG personally but I’d like to see what it can do.

Blood~

… Anyone seeing any values that don’t look right, please feel free to help me correct them.

I think eg will actually do more damage in total, but it is dependent upon as knox said the target being stationary in the field the entire time and the field allowed to expire. So against high health mobs that don’t move around much it would be more productive, against lower health or very mobile mobs the faster burst potential from the sd build I think would win out in terms of efficacy. I think this is what I mean when I say it can become so difficult to actually predict what your given actual damage output will be. It can be so closely tied to what your group does/specific encounter mechanics( or lack thereof) that goes beyond just simply how much might and how much vuln you can stack on the target. This is true for every class and not just engineer.

TC's Cursed Shore being choked by Ember farm.

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I am sure others have mentioned, the economic impact having such a sudden influx of gold becoming available could possibly create. But hey whatever let’s just get dat loot yo cuz yolo. FARMWARS! represent!

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

TC's Cursed Shore being choked by Ember farm.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Exploit
1. to utilize, esp. for profit; turn to practical account: to exploit a business opportunity.
2. to take advantage of; promote.
3. to use selfishly for one’s own ends.

I must be exploiting then by cornering a market on the TP, farming in the Pavillion or playing any part of this game that makes me money with the sole purpose of making money.

edit: I’m not disagreeing that this is an exploit, but using the dictionary to define this as an exploit is… yeah.

Well now this is where connotation becomes important, and is actually what most people are arguing about without even realizing it. The word has both a positive and negative connotation to it, certainly it is not a bad thing to capitalize on a business endeavor, but if that business endeavor happens to involve ill gotten gains through a shady practice…Actually never mind I won’t turn this into a morality issue. The definition is there, it is provided by a dictionary because it gives a clear understanding of what the word means, it is the best tool we have for clearing up differences in the meanings of words.

TC's Cursed Shore being choked by Ember farm.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Exploit
1. to utilize, esp. for profit; turn to practical account: to exploit a business opportunity.
2. to take advantage of; promote.
3. to use selfishly for one’s own ends.
(source Webster’s dictionary)

I would say that this current farm meta falls into at least one of those three definitions, often times all three. I know the argument can be made that it is available for everyone to do therefore it is not selfish, and that holds true until the farm zerg berates people for attempting to actually play the game in a “normal” manner. Unless you want to make the case that you intentionally play to lose simply for the sake of losing, you can’t really argue for this not being exploitive.

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

Overall engi help

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Okay, thanks alot.
So ill just turtle to 80 and then pick full dps grenades i think (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/82395-guide-to-grenades-in-pve/)

Also in advance, im planning to do alot of wvw, how to deal with retal there?

Don’t zerg A more serious answer would be, if you do run in zerg vs zerg combat, you can try and target the rear spread of players since it is usually up front where the majority of the retal is going to be. Sadly the current popular “strategy” of everyone blobbing in with the melee pain train does not favor using grenades or ft auto on said blob. Your other option is of course to use slower (less individual chances to proc retal) harder hitting skills, but they will come with their own set of problems. I generally just avoid the zerg and retal is never a problem for me, but then again I find solo or small team more entertaining anyway since it’s easier to measure individual contribution.

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

[PvE] Dungeon Speedrun Zerk Build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

It’s 5% additional crit damage. Your crits go from about 2.6x normal damage up to 2.65x normal damage.

2.65/2.6 = 1.019 = 1.9% increase.

All direct damage multipliers are multiplicatively scaling so 5% from a force sigil is exactly 5% more direct damage.

Gah, kitten moment for me…thanks for the clarification (seems like I knew that already but the caffeine has not kicked in yet, can’t brain I got the dumb :P )

Overall engi help

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Rifle sd is more than a perfectly “viable” (hate that word but it fits here) alternative to either grenades/bombs or ft/eg for open world pve. I will say that if you are farming zerg events (like pavillion) you may struggle a bit with getting as many tags. You could try something like 30/10/x/20/10 (which isn’t possible til 80) as a baseline for such a hybrid with ft/grenades. It will allow you to get the grenadier trait, the cd trait for ft, deadly mixture for more damage for ft/eg and permanent swiftness and vigor. It certainly won’t produce the most possible damage as a more focused build would, but it should earn you plenty of tags. Unfortunately both the gk and the ft/eg combo really need certain traits to be truly effective in terms of maximizing their damage potential, so until you can get all the traits you need you will likely struggle in those zergs with all the level 80’s running around champion farming. As far as retaliation goes, I am assuming the largest issue is with that centaur archer guy, people just need to kill his darn spirits and strip boons (I think), not a lot you can do with it, other than be mindful when he has the retal boon on him and maybe switch up to your main hand weapon.

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

PSA: Don't use Super Elixer randomly in WvW

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I was under the impression that when multiple fields were dropped it went in order of oldest to newest (at least that is what the wiki says, but I often see it being the other way around). I don’t think the issue is with light vs water specifically, as much as people not understanding the order for the fields, hell I have been playing since beta and can’t even tell you the overwrite priorities because of the chaotic conditions that often times are associated with having multiple fields lumped up. But yes as a general rule you don’t want water fields overwritten by any other fields, though most likely it is simply unintentional given the hectic nature of combat.

[PvE] Dungeon Speedrun Zerk Build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

you will be close enough to 100% crit chance the entire time for just the extra +5% crit damage to = roughly a +5% increase to damage. If you are worried about losing the 10% bonus from not having full endurance I think it would be better to trade away 5 points from firearms to get the 5 points in tools for faster endurance regen.

5% additional crit damage in the type of setup you are talking about is worth about 2% damage, not 5%. The overall damage numbers come out to be nearly identical with either split assuming a 50% uptime on the max endurance. Anything higher than that favors the points in tools.

Would you mind explaining to me the math behind your statement? I am not saying your math is wrong but I just wish to clarify for my own understanding. If you have 100% crit chance, how is 5% more crit damage not actually 5% more damage done?

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

Ranger bad main?

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to a pro team of 3 wars and mes to run with every time to melt alpha. I end up bringing my warrior if we only have one on the team, and that happens much much more often than me bringing my ranger. So, I can do everything right, but Alpha will still not melt and my pets still die 90%+ of the time because I don’t run in optimal groups because they are simply unavailable.

In my BM build I can keep my pet up for 80% of the Alpha fight pretty easily, and I don’t run wih any warriors or mesmers unless we find a pug, my group comp (friends) is a guardian (rerolled to ranger now) and 2 thieves, and then me as a ranger (currently leveling my engineer) and we pug the last one.

Yeah, I can see that in a BM build with people who are good at the professions they play. I usually end up with at least one or two necros or engineers cause we don’t discriminate in the guildie runs. It’s all about how fast you can get Alpha down vs pet survival.

I have to laugh at the part about engineers being a detriment to how fast you can kill something, especially like in coe. A bomb sd build is absolutely bananas there. This illustrates the issue for this game, people simply don’t know how to play effectively most of the time, they pick one build or use one weapon and stick with it and then make proclamations that this class or that class is bad (including ranger). A engineer is capable of putting out every bit as much damage as any other class (with the exception of abusing certain mechanics like with a elementalist’s fgs and pushing a mob to the wall). The problem is with the players not the classes, people just don’t want to admit to themselves that they are anything less than “pro”. That is not to say that there are not certain imbalances in degrees of ease of use or certain encounters or group compositions that favor some classes over others, but literally every class is effective if the people know what to do and how to adapt accordingly to the situation at hand.

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

Now that "everyone" has access to portals

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I dont know about engis, dont play them nor ever seen them.

Engy can use a single Adept Major trait to get perma swiftness. They don’t have much of anything else that helps them move faster, but 100% uptime is 100% uptime, which is a hell of a lot better than what Mesmer gets.

cough cough rocket boots + slickshoes

Improving Engineer's Main Hand Weapon choices

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Arena net dev’s are reading this right now and going “We need to nerf kits”. In all seriousness though I agree with the assessment, it’s nice to read a post that actually includes some thought on the forums. +1 to both you and Aegael for both bringing up very valid points and sound reasoning.

[PvE] Dungeon Speedrun Zerk Build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Im not a fan of 25 in tools especially when u are in melee range for this build. For this build I feel 25/25/0/0/20 would be better as +5% dmg vs. bleeding will always be there. Precise Sights duration is far too short to be useful. It will last 1.8 seconds about vs. bosses, and thats a 50% chance of your crit chance of happening. You are better off with sitting duck especially with rifle/bomb. In general firearms traits are pretty weak and the minors are the only good ones.

EDIT: Stupid forum filters, I can’t do “as” followed by a space and 5 because of the langauage filter..

Personally, I would not trade away a potential 15% damage increase for a guaranteed 5%. In a group with a warrior and ranger, you will be close enough to 100% crit chance the entire time for just the extra +5% crit damage to = roughly a +5% increase to damage. If you are worried about losing the 10% bonus from not having full endurance I think it would be better to trade away 5 points from firearms to get the 5 points in tools for faster endurance regen. This is of course assuming that your party can meet the 25 vuln requirment still so that you can drop precise sights or sitting duck but still keep fireforged trigger. That is the thing about this build, it needs a fairly specific group scenario to be as effective as it can be, so I don’t really think I would consider it to be as pug friendly as other potential builds available to engineer, but in a group of players you are used to playing with and that know the encounters well, it’s simply devastating.

Remake Elixir X to make engis viable in WvW

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ShadowPuppet.3746

I wasn’t aware that engineer was not “viable” in w3 or pve, must have missed the memo. I know I know, the zerg bots don’t think engi has any place in the current knockdown/ retal fest. But you know there is plenty of other cool kid stuff to do I promise! On a serious note, having more reliable stability is never a bad thing, but not viable? Are we playing the same game?

I don’t think we are… I know my engi build (mainly gadgets) has CC out the kitten , so we totally fit into the CC fest lol, not to mention slick shoes is hilarious in the Zerg battles!!

Yeah, I must have spent the first week after the RB change just using myself as a charr bowling ball with slickshoes for the lawls, oh good times… maybe we can organize a all engi bowling league or something, that would be pretty awesome to sneak around and just hit into the side of some zergs with! I could see the qq now, “They came out of nowhere, those cruel harbingers of mayhem. Like a flash they were upon us, their intent shown in their beady little eyes, five by five we fell, and for every five there were five more. It was a slaughter, chaos….madness!!!! the foul unviable demons of slippery death stopped our zerg cold! It left me feeling quite bowled over to say the least”

PvE+WvW+Dungeon Engineer Request

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ShadowPuppet.3746

To be perfectly honest, you won’t be doing high damage without running the glass cannon “crap” as you called it and there are many players that will tell you that zerker or bust in pve is the way to go (I don’t always agree to this philosophy for every player but it is in fact how I play). Grenade kit, bomb kit, healing turret, and eg is some of the best team support/damage you can offer with 30 in explosives (I often run 30/5/0/10/25 if I need permanent vigor for lots of dodges or 30/15/0/0/25 if I don’t and just want to increase my damage potential further), provided a couple of conditions are true for you.

1.) You learn how to utilize combo fields and all the blast finishers available and their timings. This is because you will be able to stack lots of might on the team and vulnerability on the target increasing party damage significantly or in your water field from the healing turret overcharge for lot’s of aoe healing.

2.) You can get comfortable still being in close to melee range even with grenade kit. This is for multiple reasons, primarily being if you are at max range and you have melee party members then you will be too spread out to coordinate buffs with your team and either you will miss their buffs or vice versa. Also the flight time on grenades at long range means you have a probability of missing a target that moves.

But the simple answer is, you basically want what is the equivalent of a unicorn, a mythical creature that does not exist. In order to deal high damage you have to give up survivability stats (at least in pve which does include dungeons, since pure condition builds are pretty meh there). I bolded the word stats because, you can be extremely survivable in pve, using the active mitigation tools at your disposal ie, blinds, blocks, stealth from the bombkit smoke field if blasted in, knowing how to position yourself, using terrain/line of sight, and most importantly dodges etc etc. For WvW you could still use a similar build as I posted, and simply change your gear to go ahead and add some survival stats, but there probably are better options to use if you are not comfortable with the class yet. I hope this post does not come across as criticism because it certainly is not my intention, it’s just that if you are new to the game or the class in general it really just takes time for it to all come together. Head to the mists and test some builds and test some build ideas and gear choices there and see what works for you, but most of all welcome to the class and happy engineering!.

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

Remake Elixir X to make engis viable in WvW

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I wasn’t aware that engineer was not “viable” in w3 or pve, must have missed the memo. I know I know, the zerg bots don’t think engi has any place in the current knockdown/ retal fest. But you know there is plenty of other cool kid stuff to do I promise! On a serious note, having more reliable stability is never a bad thing, but not viable? Are we playing the same game?

Starting an engineer...advice?

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ShadowPuppet.3746

I disagree. With Rabid builds you are very tanky while still dishing out a lot of damage via conditions. I don’t think Condition Engis are as rare as you might think.

This is true, but condition damage builds have an achilles heel in certain scenarios in pve that power based builds do not (condition cap/overwrite, damage against static objects etc etc) . For leveling however you are not likely to encounter too many of those situations so it is probably a moot point, but I think it is worth mentioning since in certain zones there are still very much DE farms in progress (I’m looking at you queensdale). The argument for zerker> all else in pve has been pretty much been talked about ad nauseum, but just the fact that having multiple condition users can lower your performance where as multiple power users is not a decrease in performance, makes power precision crit damage the far better choice for versatility in most situations in my opinion.

Okay, at first I thought you were saying condition damage was mostly pointless, but this I can agree with. In fact I used to run 2k condition damage a lot and never had my conditions overridden by anyone, but it still had too many downsides for me to use anymore. Namely damage against objects and burst capability. I have since moved to a hybrid build that still has about 1k condition damage so I can get a lot in there, but also about 1600 power. I think that a hybrid build for an Engineer is very strong because we can take full advantage of both the power and the conditions, neither is really “going to waste”.

Yeah I would never say that any one particular build or gear choice is pointless, each will have it’s own distinct advantages or disadvantages. As you said you can be extremely “tanky” using rabid gear while still dishing out respectable damage via the conditions which translates into a fantastic soloing set where you want to win a battle of attrition. However for group play having more than one person specced for condition damage becomes problematic, sadly because of the way conditions work those types of builds end up competing with one another instead of complementing, take burning for example it does not increase in intensity only duration, so having more than one person applying burning in a party is actually a detriment to party wide damage potential since only one member will get credit for the burning damage, or put a grenade engi and a necro in the same party and they will compete for bleed stacks so on and so forth. Mathematically speaking from a group damage potential it has been proven by others much more inclined towards theorycrafting than even I am that power/precision/crit damage is the way to go in terms of group damage potential. Toughness and vitality at a certain level become even less desirable in group play simply because there are certain attacks that no amount of those stats will keep you from being downed (this is mostly true in high level fractals), the caveat is that if a individual player is not comfortable with a certain encounter then having some of those stats is not a bad idea because as we all know dead dps is no dps same holds true however for the enemy. So there is a point to having multiple different types of gear choices even in pve, but certain sets will far outstrip others in terms of their potential usefulness in the widest range of scenarios possible. Of course there is always personal choice, some people just like to feel like they can stand and facetank tons of trash mobs all day, that high defense slow kill speed that is so familiar for anyone who played a traditional tank type in many other mmo’s and who would I be to dictate that their personal preference is incorrect even if it differs from my own.

Does Anet not like engineers?

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I love reading the dungeon forums themselves, the quote on quote “elite” groups have finally figured out that literally every class in the game is more than perfectly viable to be able to effectively get fast clears in dungeons. The keyword is class, not every player is capable of that, the point is yes engineer does have stricter requirements for achieving similar results as other classes, but to me that is precisely why I play it. It means nothing that you can do fantastic damage on a warrior because it is built into a few skills. Math has been done, examples have been shown and pound for pound a well played engineer is every bit as effective as any other class, it is up to the individual player to discover how to best utilize this. The only real shortcomings of a engineer is lack of easy and reliable stability or group reflection, but this is not unique to just engineer. It seems to me that there are many players that just repeat ad nauseum, what they have read or heard without really trying to break the mold for themselves. These players run up against a personal barrier that they have difficulty in circumventing, and then blame the class or the devs for it. That is not to say that this game is perfectly balanced in every way possible or that it doesn’t still have far too many bugs left in from release, but the kind of equality that most people ask for is a pipedream and the only way to achieve it is by making every class a homogeneous and indistinguishable copy.

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

entitled players vs skilled players

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I think another issue at hand here is that “skill” in this game is different from tradtitional mmorpg content. Having relatively tight timers to perform a dodge or some other means to negate the damage or die is completely different from the kind of skill required in other games, it is much more action based and requires reaction timing. Any of the forum goers that actually read through them have probably seen the argument for using berserker stats in pve since mitigation in this game actually refers more to completely negating damage versus allowing damage to hit but be reduced as in other games. I think what happens is that people come here expecting the same types of rules to apply to this mmorpg as it does in other less action based versions and they simply don’t translate well. The only way to really improve here is by memorizing patterns and knowing when to press that dodge button or drop a reflect etc etc to completely negate the damage. You don’t improve your bag of tricks very much beyond level 30 in this game, whereas in other games you continue to receive new skills throughout the entirety of the leveling process, some of those skills can be complete game changers if used in the correct timing or against the correct mob, here the only skills that fall into that category are ways to completely negate incoming damage the primary being dodge and that is available from level 1. Some people simply don’t have the reflexes or computer rigs that allow them to play competitively for this type of environment and they don’t wan’t to be left out because there is simply no other way to improve your game than those basic requirements. There is no strategy needed, just dodge and then do as much damage to your target as you can before needing to again negate your incoming potential damage completely in some way, it makes for very one dimensional game play, and it won’t be a perfect fit for everyone.

What's up with the communitys impatience?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Because time = money.
The quicker you get over a dungeon, the more things you can do, the more rewards you can get, thus the more productive your game time is..

If you follow that reasoning, then you should never play a game ever, because you miss out on the money you could be making in a real job.

What if the game is their job? I think I have unraveled the mystery, they are all secret Anet employees. Seriously though find yourself a good group of peeps you can play with and you will be much happier for it. Lot’s of guilds advertising right here on these very forums. Not all of them will be a good fit and so be it, nothing ventured nothing gained.

What's up with the communitys impatience?

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Don’t confuse the community’s patience with the patience of speed farmers. Speed runners represent a small portion of the community. You might think they’re prevalent if you run a lot of CoF, but there’s a big wide community out there that’s nothing like that.

It isn’t just CoF, it’s Arah, it’s TA, it’s fractals (you sure are kittened if you’re new), it’s anything and everything.

I am usually the only person who bothers to revive people during world boss fights when it’s feasible, or even in the gauntlet, or even in OS.

I used to think WoW had a bad community, but the people there are saints in comparison.

So my guild isn’t part of the community. There’s 115 people in my guild who don’t act like that. There’s a very VISIBLE percentage of the community that do and I still believe they’re the minority.

If you go onto LFG.com and put an add up for a casual dungeon group, you’ll get casual players. There are more of them than you think. If you join a casual guild, you’ll find casual players. Why does it seem there are so many speed runners?

Because these guys run dungeons over and over and over again, where as my guild runs this one once, that one once, the other one once. In other words, in the time these guys do 12 dungeon runs, we’ve done one or two. So it seems like there are a lot of them. But it’s the same few elitists over and over again, who by percentage don’t make up the bulk of the community.

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if more than half the players in this game have never done a dungeon.

I would be careful equating speedrunning to elitism, surely there are more than a few individuals like myself and the people I run with that enjoy fast clears but not at the expense of everything else. Sure maybe we don’t set time clear records, but then again most of the people looking to pug are not going to either. It’s a case of correlation rather than causation, in regards to speedruns and elitist type behaviors. Are there speedrunners who have a holier than though type behavior, for sure…but wanting a fast clear time does not automatically make you a elitist, we do just fine in our groups with any class in the game, we do use zerker gear but that is simply because it does provide us with the best results for what we want to achieve. The elitist people are those that think there is only one way to do things and it’s their way or the highway even going so far as making insults if you don’t fall in line with their ideas.

What's up with the communitys impatience?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

best suggestion I can make and I know it’s a bit cliche on these forums, is to find a group of like minded players as yourself and run with them.

I don’t buy that. If you read everything he dont’ want to wait for people, but other people should wait for him.

THat is the real mentality of people.

I think you are misconstruing his words, or are intentionally twisting them if I must be honest with you. His comment about it taking five minutes to find a group didn’t come across as a criticism, as much as a observation about time it takes to find a group. Either way what I said is still sound advice, if people play with others that have similar expectations from what they want from a game then problem solved. It took me some time before I found a guild that was a good fit for me, but eventually I did and I couldn’t be happier, best part is I don’t have to pug.

What's up with the communitys impatience?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I can certainly understand people wanting to do things as efficiently as possible, but not to the point that it becomes for some people, nitpicking over a few wasted seconds or even gasp a whole full minute. I remember before this game went live it seemed like it was going to be a haven away from this type of mentality that many players seem to hold, I often ask myself what those types find enjoyable about such behavior but the answer eludes me. I think it is just a difference in mentality that is not likely to ever be solved, there are simply just some people that will always only care about the destination and how quickly they can get there, where as others are able to truly enjoy the journey. I wouldn’t make any claim that one of those ways is truly correct, they are just different from one another. I like to figure out builds, I like to get runs to go smoothly and quickly, but if I am not having fun with the people I am running with then what is the point of playing a mmorpg? To the OP, I wouldn’t expect it to change or expect Anet to do anything about it (even if they could why should they, because who are we to dictate how someone plays even if we don’t understand it), best suggestion I can make and I know it’s a bit cliche on these forums, is to find a group of like minded players as yourself and run with them.

Starting an engineer...advice?

in Engineer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I’ve just started the class, but it seems rather lacking of any real burst damage ability.

This comes later I promise. Using a Zerker Static Discharge build, you can easily drop 30k damage in a couple seconds even without the best available gear.

From what I understand, the SD build is based around a trait spec that is considered the “glass cannon” build. I would hope the class has some core abilities that would provide some of that aspect without the need of specialization that would lock out other builds.
~snip~

For all of engineer’s versatility you still need to specialize in some capacity to make it work. Trust the advice being given, if you use damage stat gear you can pretty much run any build and be able to down enemies in no time flat. If you load up on vit tough and still expect to be able to kill things in a timely manner that is not a fault of the engineer class to be honest. Just don’t base engineer damage capability off of the pistol autoattack heh. Also with engineer they don’t have a 1 button burst skill like say a 100b, but that skill takes 3.5 seconds to execute, a engi is quite capable of doing as much or more damage in that timeframe it’s just not done with pressing 1 button. When people say engineer has a higher skill floor than other classes it’s for a reason, the nice thing about that is it also gives a higher skill ceiling which allows for lot’s of personal growth with getting better with the class.

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

Starting an engineer...advice?

in Engineer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I disagree. With Rabid builds you are very tanky while still dishing out a lot of damage via conditions. I don’t think Condition Engis are as rare as you might think.

This is true, but condition damage builds have an achilles heel in certain scenarios in pve that power based builds do not (condition cap/overwrite, damage against static objects etc etc) . For leveling however you are not likely to encounter too many of those situations so it is probably a moot point, but I think it is worth mentioning since in certain zones there are still very much DE farms in progress (I’m looking at you queensdale). The argument for zerker> all else in pve has been pretty much been talked about ad nauseum, but just the fact that having multiple condition users can lower your performance where as multiple power users is not a decrease in performance, makes power precision crit damage the far better choice for versatility in most situations in my opinion.

[PvE] Dungeon Speedrun Zerk Build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

You will do more direct damage by using nade2 nade4 and grenade Barrage on cooldown.

You should not lose any time with the kit swaps if you are doing it correctly.

On top of doing more direct damage, you’ll also add bonus condition damage for “free”

Using the 8k Damage bombs as a reference, you’ll do the following damage with the other kits:

B1 – 8,000
B2 – 5,120 + 10s burning @ 585
B3 – 3200 + 1420/attack for 6.5s – this becomes worthwhile @ 4 attacks

G2 – 10560 + 3×15s bleeding @ 94 damage per tick (4230 if it ticks through completely)
G4 – 9600
Barrage – 19200
G5 – 3840 + 3×5×6s poison @ 187/tick (about 17k damage on anything that lives long enough)

EG4 – 27200/1.1 since it isn’t an explosion = 24727

You are ignoring the rifle attacks, prybar, toss wrench, surprise shot and last but certainly not least sd which doesn’t work with the kit loadout you have selected. The two builds fundamentally do damage in different ways. Without the ability to actually parse damage on a given encounter it becomes almost impossible to accurately represent what either of the builds is capable of. By now I am certain you still won’t agree and will just continue to argue the superiority of your particular build example and you are more than welcome to do so. My whole point is that there are many variables that will impact actual performance of either build, I just think there are far less variables with Roz’s given it’s intent…Happy engineering!

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

[PvE] Dungeon Speedrun Zerk Build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

When you account for the number of ticks and cast times, I don’t see how the numbers don’t support the claim.

Bomb1 is your baseline number at 1.25/0.9s = 1.389
Bomb2 would be 4×0.2/0.9 = 0.889 + 10s of burning @ 585 per tick.
Bomb3 is borderline depending on the attack rate of the mob, but is 0.556 + 1420 per attack.

G2 is 3×0.55/1 = 1.65 + 3×15s bleeding @ 94 damage per tick
G4 is 3×0.5/1 = 1.5
G5 is marginal on short fights, but the poison duration is so absurdly long that you should use it for long fights.
Grenade Barrage is 8×0.375/1 = 3

EG4 is 0.85×5/1 = 4.25

All of those should be significantly better than bomb1 spamming.

That is assuming that you are able to actually keep your timing so that there is no lapse on using the skills on cd, plus the additional time needed to either animation cancel (acid bomb) or switch between kits more frequently to maintain that rotation, your example is also much more reliant on the target staying in those fields for their entire duration. So it is clear, I am not saying that your example is demonstrably inferior in any capacity, but I do feel it is more prone to variance because of the potential for user error versus the much more simple rotation of roz’s build and because of the ability to have much of it’s damage overwritten by other classes who apply conditions such as guardians with burning every 5th attack. This is why I stated that it can be difficult to actually factor in condition damage because it is largely reliant on what other classes are being brought into the party. For certain grenade kit reigns supreme at applying vulnerability which is a consideration if you have a ele lh heavy party since then a engi is pretty much used as the only vuln stacker. I have a suspicion that both builds are actually much closer in performance than people realize but without some serious effort to test it in practical application it is simply too difficult to state which one will pull ahead. In the end I think it is going to largely be user preference, and whether or not a individual is comfortable staying entirely in melee range to do their damage.

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

Starting an engineer...advice?

in Engineer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Hi,
So I think Im going to start an engineer. Reading some threads…yah itd be a nice change of pace.

-What races and genders do you think would look the least…goofy with the packs and guns that an engineer utilizes?

-What specs for leveling do you recommend and what stats to stack? I was thinking of a grenade engineer, or flamethrower/elixir gun thingy..

-Any general advice?

For pve, you really can’t go wrong with berserker type stats…. Grenades really are not overly effective until you can get the grandmaster trait for them, that isn’t to say you can’t use them but perhaps not your best choice. A rifle sd build is pretty effective even at low levels once you can get the static discharge trait. Bombkit is pretty amazing at all levels. I think the best advice to give is simply to say just mess around with the kits and playstyle you like, they will all only become more effective with traits. As for animations well that is entirely subjective, I find charr to feel less “cartoony” than other choices but they have their own set of problems to contend with, from a lore perspective they do make a fair amount of sense being engineers (Iron legion ftw!)

[PvE] Dungeon Speedrun Zerk Build

in Engineer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

From a full zerker perspective, you should be able to crank out more damage as 30/15/0/0/25 using grenades, bombs and EG.

You’d basically use grenade 2, 5, 4 when available (no poison on the target for 5), EG 4, Bombs 2, 3, 1.

It’s certainly more involved than just using the bomb Auto, but it should be the best possible damage you can get with 25 might stacks.

Rifle
R1= 0.650
R2= 0.000
R3-Close=1.600
R3-Long=1.000
R4= 1.000
R5-Leap=0.900
R5-Land=1.800

Grenade Kit
GK1 = 0.330 (per grenade)
GK2 = 0.550 (per grenade)
GK3 = 0.100 (per grenade)
GK4 = 0.500 (per grenade)
GK5 = 0.200 (per grenade)
GK (Toolbelt) = 0.375 (per grenade)

Bomb Kit
BK1 = 1.25
BK2 = 0.20
BK3 = 0.50
BK (Toolbelt) = 1.70

Elixir Gun
EG1 = 0.40
EG2 = 0.75
EG3 = 0.40 (over kittens)
EG4 = 0.85

From a pure power damage perspective the skill coefficients don’t support your claim, it however does become difficult to factor in how much condition damage contributes in a zerker build with 25 might. It will vary greatly depending on the group comp and if other people are laying down conditionss that overwrite yours. The reason his build works well for a melee zerker type group is because of the playstyle, they burst a ton of damage into the target on open and then again when the target is low on health, most things will be dead before the condition damage really has a chance to overtake the raw power burst damage in efficacy. So while certain skills are close with your example, others are far behind in terms of raw damage. You have to also factor in ease of use as you said, the rotation you provided is more complex and also takes longer to run through, which provides more opportunity for mistakes. I really wish they would just give us a personal dps meter of some sort in this game, I know it could create even more “elitism” than currently exists in this game, but it would be nice to actually be able to measure real performance in a given situation.

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

How are Mesmers for PvE?

in Mesmer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

For open world pve, mesmer’s damage seems incredibly high (especially if you run shatter) the reason for this is simply because of the lower health pools of mobs and the way that shatter can burst them down. It does lose some steam in easily sustainable dps in dungeons against targets with large hp pools though (unless of course whatever you are fighting can have it’s damage reflected, I am looking at you lupi, slave driver, effigy)

PVE Build: Bomb kit or Grenade?

in Engineer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I think it will depend primarily on the group setup you run and whether or not you are comfortable in melee range in zerker gear. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/PvE-Dungeon-Speedrun-Zerk-Build/first#post2605725 this build puts out fantastic damage, it’s only realy weak area is condi removal and lack of perma vigor. I suppose you could drop 10 out of firearms (dropping precise sights) to add into elixirs for vigor on demand without losing too much in terms of damage potential (slightly less vuln stacking for more dodges). If you have a warrior with a banner or ranger with spotter or both you will hardly notice the loss in crit chance from losing the 100 precision. Personally I much prefer the bomb build over the grenades, a lot of grenade damage is tied up into conditions and kitten having to spam pressing 1 hurts my fingers just thinking about it. Grenades with hgh does do really good damage as well, though I find having to stop dpsing to build might to be a bit of a pain in the kitten. I know many people will swear by grenades being the better choice for damage potential and maybe it is, but roz’s build definitely is not lacking in the damage department by any stretch of the imagination, though it really does need a melee focused group to truly shine.

I was looking at running something like this. I would run a primary rifle build, I would have a variety of weapons with different sigils, bloodlust for stacking up initially, and a night sigil for certain dungeons, when not running that, maybe either a fire sigil, or force sigil.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VV;4sPVg0l6gSkp2;9;4T9;0T46A4;615Be;9;2o-kr0;5VOVTWYXcYi3o_530C-2HV8;2ac0-3c00;9;9;9;0kkkkkk;9;0VR-6K

A quick note about incendiary powder A.) it’s single target, and B.) if you have anyone else in the group applying burning it becomes almost useless (guardians apply frequent burning…every 5th attack without their virtue even being activated). Also by primary rifle I assume you just mean to open with blunderbuss and jumpshot then switching into nade? As far as fire sigil goes, if it didn’t have a icd and a skill coefficient of 1.0 I would say it’s worth using, but engi is definitely not lacking in the aoe department, I feel like night and force are the better options getting the guaranteed always on damage increase, and of course a weapon for stacking sigils as you said (I actually have 4 rifles, 1 night, 1 force, 1 bloodlust, and 1 perception). I generally use perception stacks when soloing and bloodlust when grouping since the group I run with provides plenty of fury and group damage buffs like what I mentioned in my other post (warrior banner, spotter/frost).

Engineer Auto Attack

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Viparix, you should be hitting considerably harder than a 1k crit with rifle auto. I generally am seeing closer to 2k without any vuln on the target, then again I use entirely zerker gear and trinkets and ruby orbs (because I am too poor to afford scholar runes heh). @OP thing to get used to with rifle sd is that it is actually much more effective in close distance than in range, you can absolutely devastate a target with blunderbuss and both the jump and land of jumpshot combined with bursting your toolbelt skills.

PVE Build: Bomb kit or Grenade?

in Engineer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I think it will depend primarily on the group setup you run and whether or not you are comfortable in melee range in zerker gear. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/PvE-Dungeon-Speedrun-Zerk-Build/first#post2605725 this build puts out fantastic damage, it’s only realy weak area is condi removal and lack of perma vigor. I suppose you could drop 10 out of firearms (dropping precise sights) to add into elixirs for vigor on demand without losing too much in terms of damage potential (slightly less vuln stacking for more dodges). If you have a warrior with a banner or ranger with spotter or both you will hardly notice the loss in crit chance from losing the 100 precision. Personally I much prefer the bomb build over the grenades, a lot of grenade damage is tied up into conditions and kitten having to spam pressing 1 hurts my fingers just thinking about it. Grenades with hgh does do really good damage as well, though I find having to stop dpsing to build might to be a bit of a pain in the kitten. I know many people will swear by grenades being the better choice for damage potential and maybe it is, but roz’s build definitely is not lacking in the damage department by any stretch of the imagination, though it really does need a melee focused group to truly shine.

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

[PvE] Dungeon Speedrun Zerk Build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I thought this thread was going to be cheesy, but I commend you sir on teaching me something. I would have never thought that Bomb Kit would hit that hard, I thought everyone used grenades for zerker farming.

I don’t full zerk (if that’s not already clear), but you have impressed me and now I know the best way wasn’t what I had thought.

Question: Why the Sigil of Night? As you noted it’s completely worthless in certain dungeons and fractals (I’d say the tougher ones). Why not something like Sigil of Fire or Air with all the crit you have?

Basically you want the flat % damage increase (much more reliable damage than having a chance to do a skill with a coefficient of 1.0 and then goes on cooldown and also doesn’t crit), I use four different rifles 1 with sigil of night, 1 with sigil of force, 1 with bloodlust and 1 with perception, to switch around depending on the situation and group composition. When soloing I stack perception and then switch to the rifle with force unless it’s nighttimr, in my dungeon group I use bloodlust (since we run with a warrior with banner and a ranger with spotter frost spirit). Of course the stacking sigils only work if you can keep from getting downed all the time. Same with scholar runes, if you can’t stay above 90% health most of the time then ruby orbs are the better choice (also cheaper by a large margin).

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

Looking for a Dungeon/Fractals build

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Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

30 explosive, take grenade range , 20% cd for gren and bombs and incinidary poweder
10 in fire arms, pistol CD
20 alchemy invigorating speed, and backpack regen
10 in tools for speedy kits.
kits you should use – elixir gun, bomb and gren (u can change explosive from grenede range to bomb radius increase whenever u want , just a perk of this build)
the elixir gun u can replace to what ever, heal should be healing turret (i suppose i dont need to teach you how to use it)
and thats about it, this build is everything, and its a god in pvp and with the gren range it owns wvw

A note on incendiary powder, A.) It’s single target, and B.) if you have another class that applies burning alot (looking at you guardian) it becomes more or less worthless, probably a better option would be 10% more damage from explosions or even shrapnel if you really want to bleed the hell out of stuff (and it’s aoe). Everyone seems to discount the bombkit as en effective way to deal damage, but with 25 might and 25 vuln + a warrior banner and proper food and trait setup it’s easy to get 8k+ auto’s from bombkit, it’s why I like to pair the kit with sd, and run toolkit and then any of the other standard sd utilities you find useful. You still have perma swiftness and vigor for lots of dodges and then toolkit for the 3 second block, or even using the toolkit pull to yank a single target to you if someone is going to go down and you want to give them a shot by pulling the mob away. The disadvantage of course is that you have very limited condi removal in that setup.

Looking for a Dungeon/Fractals build

in Engineer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I tend to run either bomb with sd or ft/eg builds, most people still seem to prefer grenades though because they don’t like being that close to stuff I guess (I basically refuse to use them because carpal tunnel is not high on my priority list). If going the bomb route or really the ft/eg wear as much zerker as you can handle, for grenades either zerker or rampager (still on the fence which one is better). Mostly though it’s really going to depend on your team composition what is going to be successful for you since you are only one member of the team.

Mesmer low on the spvp tier list

in Mesmer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

Unfortunately our best condi removal (on shatter) is the GM trait on a line devoted almost entirely to Phantasm buffs… aka not shattering!
Talk about build synergy..

This is something I never understand eather. Why put a grandmaster focused on shattering in a tree where you first have to take 15% more dmg to phantasm and not to forget same tree where most phantasm madatory abilitys are found.

Its like hey had put the dmg buffs to phantasm as a GM in Illusion tree.

/Osicat

Well due to the IC nerf, shatter builds can summon phantasms faster than phantasm builds (unless the phantasm specs heavily into illusions which means missing out on a lot of useful traits)…

Very balanced….

On paper that sorta makes sense that you would want the ability to summon faster for shatter since well you know more fuel for shatters. I think their thought was that phantasm builds want to leave their phantasms out so the reduced cooldown time for illusions wasn’t needed, but they didn’t factor in things like defensive abilities like blink or situations like multi mobs where if whatever you target dies after your phantasms first attack then you are stuck with fairly pitiful damage while waiting for the cd to end if you don’t take that trait, or that they put pHaste in the same line. I mean why would anyone want to haste their phantasms if they are just gonna blow them up lol.

Agreed, on paper it seems ok but it has such a deep effect on the class and so many utility skills. Not to mention the changes to phantasm HP and signet of illusions.

IC would be more balanced as a 15 point trait in illusions so a mesmer could take the haste trait if they wanted – having to drop 20 from dueling lowers the actual spike phantasms have but gives more sustain and pressure. If only haste worked properly…

Yeah, pHaste is pretty lackluster
Illusionary Mariner 8.03s 8.03s
Illusionary Whaler 7.1s 5.27s
Phantasmal Berserker 5.57s 5.17s
Phantasmal Defender kitten 3.6s
Phantasmal Disenchanter 3.3s 2.6s
Phantasmal Duelist 5.4s 4.4s
Phantasmal Mage 6.3s 5.27s
Phantasmal Swordsman 3.2s 3.2s
Phantasmal Warden 8.07s 6.77s
Phantasmal Warlock 5.57s 4.13s

Seems like for warden it could actually be useful if you want to increase how much uptime you have for reflects with them, but I am like you.. I definitely don’t see the loss of the precision and crit damage being made up for in the decreased attack time.

Engineer's in PVE - do they exist?

in Engineer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

100b damage dps is calculated to the amount of damage done over 11.5 seconds, 3.5 for the channel time + 8 second cooldown, their axe auto is much better for sustained dps than 100b, but they are meant to fulfill two entirely different roles. Having said that I present you this bomb sd build example, keep in mind that every aa after the first has no aftercast and is on a .5 interval, the blunderbuss, jumpshot prybar and the toolbelt skills can be repeated every 15 seconds (if you want to save them all for a burst combo to use at one time or faster if used individually) in the same time it takes for the 100b channel with being able to add a bob every other rotation (provided the mobs won’t be knocked back). So yes engi is capable of 15-30k every 6 seconds quite easily just usin bomb aa. Also since the bomb aa is actually a 240 (need to check the actual radius on this) radius full aoe versus cleave, mob positioning is a bit less of a concern. If you like here are some included skill coefficients
Rifle
R1=0.650
R2=0.000
R3 Close=1.600
R3 Long=1.000
R4=1.000
R5-Leap 0.900
R5-Land 1.800

Tool Kit
TK1-a = 0.80
TK1-b = 1.75
TK3 = 2.00
TK (Toolbelt) = 0.75

Bomb Kit
BK1 = 1.25
BK2 = 0.20
BK3 = 0.50
BK (Toolbelt) = 1.70

So few people are really proficient with the high apm needed to make engi competitive and then complain that it’s damage is subpar compared to every other class. Yes it takes work, no it’s not a faceroll class and yes since it take such a higher level of “skill” to get all your damage on target since you are pressing so many more buttons the chance to mess up is fairly significant, but it is doable.

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(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

Dungeon selling.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

As I said in another similar thread, I don’t see the fault in the seller as much as I see the fault in the buyer. If they are not capable enough to get through the content then they don’t deserve to complete the content (whatever happened to try harder next time or actually trying to figure out how to overcome your own personal shortcomings in a particular area?), the sense of everyone needs to be included in everything or it’s simply not fair has gone on long enough. I blame the public school system and participation rewards!

(edited by ShadowPuppet.3746)

Help O.o

in Engineer

Posted by: ShadowPuppet.3746

ShadowPuppet.3746

I dunno to be honest, if you switch to that m/s + gs build won’t you be lacking stability? if they are using only pistols then yeah it won’t be a problem but a engi running rifle and ft/eg is going to really ruin your day. I guess then you could just switch zerker for endure pain. So many balances and counter balances in this game, really makes it exciting!