Guild Wars 2

What we need is the ability to force focus your turrets on an enemy. There is no reason why you can’t remote control your turrets to some extent.

Hmm. . .Why not a kit for remote controlling turrets. Let it have two melee attacks (to at least give it some direct attacks), three turret control attacks.

I’ll think up ideas for this kit. Help is welcomed.

In line with the slope idea, keep your camera as level as possible. If you are looking directly at your toon’s back instead of at the top his head, then your cone will cover more ground.

If you are looking down more, this will make your range significantly lower – up to only melee range or worse.

I think we should keep the blind, make it a bigger radius, and lower the CD.

. . .Maybe some damage. But if we add the first two I mentioned then, combined with the ability to activate while stunned, this would be a good #5.

Acid Bomb is an awesome power-based attack as well as an escape. Even without power it provides a good oomph. Use it on ranged enemies as they’ll dumbly sit in the pool and take all three high damage ticks.

Murf? Really? I’ll have to check that out, then! Thanks for the intel, Amadeus!

What would actually make Mortar helpful isn’t just a distance increase, but also a way to knock enemies back from you. Perhaps make some adjustments so that #5 causes a “fouled shot” to land right in front of you, knocking back enemies a good distance (800?) so you can effectively use the mortar on them.

That’s true. If I see another engineer bringing an FT out, I will swap my build to my more poison-bleed based method.

Sigil of Doom with Pistol and EG works well to apply poison to enemies. If you are tanky, you can also choose the “Acidic Coating” trait (Alchemy minor trait) to apply more poison to melee types.

I’d go for a combination. Rabid is only available as a trinket. If you go both, you’ll get precision and condition damage (which is a condition eng’s bread and butter) as well as some toughness and healing.

I currently use Apothecary Armor and pistols, and use Rabid Trinkets.

True, Apothecary isn’t cheap, but I also invested in rares to start, which range between 40-70s a piece in my server’s market.

@ Ink: If you are talking about Pistol Shot, catching an enemy just shy of the range limit of pistols (with coated bullets trait) allows you to hit the enemy not only with the bullet itself, but also with the explosion at the end of the range.

If you have an enemy directly in front or behind another enemy, then you will hit them with the AOE explosion of the bullet hitting the enemy nearby as well as the bullet hitting him/her/it.

That is the benefit of Might stacking through Sigil of Strength vs Sigil of Battle.

With a high enough crit chance (40 – 50%), you can fire and forget and get a reasonable damage increase.

Eventually both see a degradation in their “best scenario” development, as combat isn’t always a controlled environment. I swap in and out of my kits constantly, but that doesn’t mean I always stack might from the Battle sigil efficiently.

With Strength, I wasn’t hitting the sweet spot of getting the most might procs out because I wasn’t always in FT (the best way to get might-on-crit procs IMO).

Boiling down both in combat, you will go with what you feel is right. Your playstyle adapts to the situation, sometimes sliding away from the most efficient way to build Might.

Part of the reason Flame Jet’s coefficient was changed probably had to do with it being an AOE.

FJ has three strikes against it to be a power weapon, though: It’s ranged greater than melee, it’s an AOE effect (even though it only hits 3), and its damage is spread between 10 hits.

If you’re hitting 3 enemies with this weapon, your overall DPS skyrockets because with the last hit you get a tick of burn. If they would let proc GCDs work on individual targets, the FT would be a powerhouse.

I don’t like the idea of chugging elixirs just for HGH.

Like Ayestes said, it interrupts the flow of constant DPS. And another is that you are slowly forced into the mentality that you are using the elixirs only for might stacking. When the actual need for the elixir comes up, chances are it’s on CD because you used it to buff your power and condition damage by 70.

Choose other sources, like swapping in between kits or eating might on crit food. Chances are that your teammates have area might buffs. Let those along with the more passive items increase your might rather than interrupting DPS to chug an elixir for a trait buff.

Napalm was never designed as a constant source of burning itself. Napalm is more useful as a Combo Field.

You can always try to use net shots to immobilize folks in Napalm, but that’s more like a 25% chance to be successful.

I prefer to use Napalm to give area might and add burning to my bleed shots from Pistol and EG.

timidobserver.7925:

While it is a bit underpowered atm, you can deliver decent sustained damage if you go for power. You can do that at the same time as having a great deal of survivability.

On the other hand. Of all the ways to go about being condition based, using FT for it is the worst way possible.

FT, when used with EG and double pistols, provides the highest condition damage possible.

I start my rotation in FT to build up might stacks, preferably getting all 7 stacks (no +boon duration gear) in before going into combat. Then I switch to EG and use Fumigate. I swap to Pistols and toss Poison shot, Confusion, and Blowtorch. Then I head back to FT, hit them once with the FJ, then toss an Air Blast, Flame Blast, and Napalm. Then back to EG for bleeding. If I am doing PvE, I usually use Elixir U to give a burst of bleeding from EG at the end.

This nets you four different damaging conditions with three of them fairly easily maintained. More variance in damaging conditions means more damage from conditions overall. If you really need more burn you can always pop Incendiary Ammo and stay out of FT longer.

FT helps you maintain burn more easily than any other weapon, and also helps you sustain it longer without the use of condition duration buffs. Napalm and Air Blast are very good for adding conditions without staying in FT too long.

Just remember, the key to effective kit swapping lies not in waiting for the GCD of the kit to run down, but the tilde key. If you just want a quick swap from primary weapon to kit and back, use the kit button and then the tilde (weapon swap) button.

If you want to max your condition damage out at the sacrifice of some precision, then go Rampager or Apothecary for armor (and weapons), then choose Rabid for trinkets.

This nets you the most conditions without sacrificing too much precision. Rampager will add a bit more power and precision, but Apothecary will add some healing and toughness for survivability.

With my setup of Apothecary/Rabid (in rares, mind you) I have approximately 1200 condition and 37% crit chance (42% with Accuracy).

You can’t use battle and strength together because they are both CD-based sigils. When one activates, it resets the GCD for the other.

I like that build. Mine is more condition-based, with a 42% crit chance and 1250 conditions. I flip between FT, EG, and pistols to apply as many different conditions as possible, then switch back to FT to build up might stacks when my CDs are up on the others.

If I need no big CCs or don’t feel like turrets, I use Elixir U to put on hard amounts of bleed on an enemy, then follow up with Poison and finally Might myself up with FT.

I agree that FT should actually be defined as either a Power-based weapon or a Condition-based weapon.

Too many of our weapons are mixed and hodge-podged.

I think it would be wise if we make FT a purely condition-based weapon. Lower the damage from the flames to a miniscule amount and deal a good bit of burning: at least one second for every second it’s flaming, anyway.

And here I’m wrong for Apothecary’s. It provides Condition damage, not duration.

Still works for my build plan,so I’m not worried about it. I’ll probably have to spend a lot of money on it, though. >.<

Apothecary’s are supposed to provide Healing, Toughness, and Condition duration. My setup doesn’t have anything regarding Boon Duration. Giver’s Weapons provide Condition Duration, though.

Here’s the thing: Incendiary Powder’s CD affects only you. Only one enemy will get that burning.

If you want to spread burning more, I would suggest backing away slightly and using Pistol Shot #4 (Blowtorch).This affects multiple enemies, and gives you more chances for damage.

Kamahl.3621:

It’s not hard to figure out Battle > Strength. For engineers, you should be juggling kits anyway to maintain ideal damage output. 6 > 5.

I know, but sometimes people need pen laid to paper instead of just folks arguing “Strength is better!” and “Battle is better!”

The posters before me have laid their reasons out, and I’ve laid mine. Hopefully this makes readers decide which way they want to play.

I for one would choose Sigil of Battle over Sigil of Strength. Here’s my reasoning:

Flame Jet may be a continuous string of 10 hits over 2.25 seconds, but it’s a #1 auto-attack.

Auto-attacks are never meant to be spammed until someone dies. You have to intersperse other attacks between these auto attacks. These attacks can delay your auto-attack spam by anywhere from 1 second to 2 seconds.

FJ’s Strength building concept only works if you sit there and don’t do anything else but Auto-Attack.

Sigil of Strength stacks might extremely fast with this, but you won’t get the optimum damage. Your average damage WILL be lower regardless of these might stacks if you just sit and spam FJ.

Sigil of Strength also requires you to be in combat attacking AND hitting AND critting to maintain might stacks. Once you stop that, your stacks will start to dwindle quickly.

Sigil of Battle, however, requires only a button push to give you 3 stacks of might. No combat. No hitting. No Critting. However, it does require you to be on your toes and keeping conscious of when you can swap over.

Sigil of Strength is designed to be weaker than Sigil of Battle because Sigil of Strength doesn’t need manual application management. If a player plays his strategies right, he can get more stacks of Might through Battle than through Strength.

10 seconds of Might x 30% from Alchemy traits =3 extra seconds = 1 extra might stack

20 seconds of Might x 30% from Alchemy traits = 6 extra seconds = 3 extra might stacks

In the end, you can get 6-9 stacks of might constantly from overlapping intervals with Sigil of Battle, where Sigil of Strength will only net you 5-6 stacks of might possible from overlapping intervals. IF you are constantly hitting and critting on something AND using FJ constantly. Very big if, especially for moving and dodging enemies.

Battle wins over Strength in the Might game, especially since experienced players usually don’t sit and spam #1 constantly.

Edit: However . .

With Juggernaut added in, you get another 6-7 stacks of might with about a 1 second overlapping interval. Most people who choose Sigil of Strength will also choose Juggernaut as it helps them get higher stacks.

If you choose Juggernaut and swap out constantly, you maintain probably closer to the 4-5 range (overlapping interval of about 2 seconds). I’m betting it’s closer to 3-4 stacks from Juggernaut, though.

With this added to my Strength vs Battle comparison, this buffs Strength-users to possibly 11-13 stacks in a 1-2 second overlap interval. Battle users get between 9 – 13 stacks with a 6 second overlap interval.

FT doesn’t need direct damage as it needs something else.

Burning is a good idea, but think about what’s happening to the enemy. He’s bathed in flames; he isn’t going to see so well. Why not apply a 1 second blind on the 5th and 10th hit to enemies?

This would help against people who are willing to sit in the weak flames and swing a sword.

FT can be either Power or Conditions.

If you want multiple conditions, your best bet is to add another kit to your utilities. Elixir gun gives you conditions and healing, while Toolkit gives you conditions, a pull and a block. You also want to stack condition damage and duration.

I’m thinking about grabbing some Apothecary’s gear, Rabid Trinkets (and crests), Giver’s Pistols. Runes: 2 x Lyssa, 2 x Rata Sum, 2 x Forge. Sigils: Smoldering/Agony, Doom

Trait Allocation: 10/30/10/20/0
Traits: Incendiary Powder, Hair Trigger/Infused Precision, Napalm Specialist, FireForged Trigger, Protective Shield, Acidic Coating/Protection Injection/Invigorating Speed/Backpack Regenerator/Self-Regulating Defenses

The idea behind this is to apply as many different conditions as possible and keep them up. Doom and pistol Poison Shot apply poison, FT and pistol Blowtorch deliver burning (Incendiary Powder’s a good plus to this!), while Bleeding is applied by Pistol’s Explosive Shot (and Sharpshooter trait or Elixir Gun or even Toolkit).

Your traits are pretty malleable, playing to your tastes. If you combine Acidic Coating with Protection Injection and Protective Shield, you can cause more Poison damage to enemies while still reducing damage to yourself. If you use Infused Precision, you might want Invigorating Speed for the swiftness/vigor effects that help in keep-away (EG’s Elixir F can help you a little with this).

I can’t remember who said it, but Condition Duration is the +Crit Damage for conditions. 10% from Explosives, Napalm Specialist, Runes, Sigils, and even food (Veggie Pizza!) will help your conditions last almost twice as long.

This isn’t as condition damage intensive as some are, but the idea is to see more conditions on an enemy and keep them away. Use FT’s Air Blast, Pistol’s Glue Gun as your mainstays, while also using Elixir Gun and Tool Kit to give you more defensive/healing capabilities.

Now. . .I haven’t put this together yet, but think it might work well. Has anyone thought about this build?

The nerf to Kit refinement was a minor setback, even though I don’t see the reason in changing the trait in this manner. People can still do the 100Nades attack; they just have to be more careful about how they do it. More setup if you will.

The food nerf was something that they’ve probably been intending to fix anyway. Everyone who had half a brain in the engineer group saw this as something that wasn’t intended yet would use it while it was available. No reason to complain about that.

The buffs and fixes in this patch were more a boon to us than a curse. Take it or leave it, we were improved.

I agree that Gadgets could be morphed into the Engineer version of signets. But I think devs didn’t want Engineers to have anything relating to signets (the reason is . . . I dunno).

I like the ideas you folks are suggesting. Keep it up!

I think the problem with having signets is we would have a tiny edge over the enemy in that we would have two activation skills and a passive skill related to the utility skill.

Developers would probably nerf either the toolbelt skill or the activation skill of the gadget in order to put a permanent bonus on that skill. That’s probably going to be the way the devs will think about this idea.

The ICD on foods were bound to be applied. It sucks, but it was only a matter of time.

Agreed, FT is fun because you’re spreading damage using fire. FIRE! FIREFIRE!

I love to see enemies being roasted!

I would say replace our Mortar with a Megaturret.

240 second cooldown. Lasts 1 minute. Tossable with the Deploy Turrets trait.

This turret launches rockets and nets at the enemy, alternating between the two at the speed and range of the Rifle Turret.

The Overcharge is actually a detonation device for the turret, launching the turret into the air to explode and send shrapnel in a 240 radius which causes a little damage and 5 stacks of bleeding for 10 seconds.

How does this sound?

Piercing shots pistols with FT make for a good CQC combination as both now deal damage multiple enemies anywhere in the range of either weapon’s #1 shot.

I like the use of that trait, Kimbald!

Amadeus.5687:

I roll with 100% longer condition duration, I simply love the duration on confusion I can give! Mine from prybar goes to allmost 10 seconds! Also burning is still a 500+ hard hitter we can drop, so confusion ain’t our only damage dealer in the build!

But yeah, I have actually tested it vs D/D elementalist, and gonna do more duels today! bad ones drops like a fly, but bause palyers like Initgo it’s no good, they can still remove all our condition without really loosing life, it’s a serious pain to fight such a good D/D elementalist in duels!

Also, in duels I’m testing netturrent with sitting duck atm, because with my condition duration we can immobilze people for up to 10 seconds, and give 20 stacks vulner for about 14-15 seconds!

If you like vulnerability, then you can swap out your Bomb kit for Net Turret and also use goggles. this gives you a chance to keep large stacks of vulnerability up for quite a while in addition to immoblizing them.

I still like the idea behind this setup, though. It looks great!

I’ve been trying out EG with Rifle, and I like how I can bounce in and out of range with the two.

But you’re right that Pistol/Shield can do the same and works better for a condition build. Retal is a great addition to any build. Remember that if you have Retal up, zap’em with pistol’s Static Shot to add confusion and rack up more damage when they attack you.

Phineas Poe.3018:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

4) Super Elixir buff

No. It’s not twice as powerful. The way they wrote it is very misleading. It just scales a little better with healing power. If you are using this with grenade kit, just think about what you really need (With kit refinement spells). Generally, if you have elixir gun equipped, you should be using the Elixir Gun’s kit refinement. If you aren’t, why even keep Elixir Gun around?

Well there’s more to the EG than that. Fumigate removes conditions and Elixir F is a great cripple skill.

Also you can now buff your groups with Retaliation doing Super Elixir -> Acid Bomb, now that Acid Bomb is a Blast Finisher.

If you use rifle with EG (a strange setup, yes) you can give two applications of retaliation with Jump Shot and Acid Pool.

Terrahero.9358:

Same thing with the flamethrower. Why cant it just detonate on impact? Why must i be the one that presses the button? Why must Airblast add 2sec burn but only if they are already burning, but Napalm is still a 1sec burn?

I like the way they’ve fixed Flame Blast. Being able to control when you want the blast to happen is a lot better. It allows you to strategically place the explosion to catch the most targets.

The 2 second burn with Air Blast is a bonus, an upgrade from what it originally did; accept it.

Napalm? I agree with you there. At least give some damage with the 1 second burn, or make it a 2 second burn each time they pass through it.

I would actually appreciate devs if they made “Kit Refinement” also have a stunbreaker. This could possibly be a good makeup for the 10 second ICD of this trait.

In order to maintain the medium range that people say FT is good at, you need ways to stay at that medium range.

FT already has Air Blast, which not only pushes opponents back and adds 2 seconds of burn to burning enemies, but also sets you up for Flame Blast.

Rifle is a good complement for the FT not only because you can attack enemies out of range with #1, but you can also net them with Net Shot, knock them back with Overcharged Shot, or close the distance with Jump Shot.

Net Turret adds more FT effectiveness with 2 more net attacks and even a stun attack.

By itself FT is sub par, but when combined with other items it can be a very effective tool.

If you have the tools trait line maxed out, then it reduces the tool belt skill for slick shoes considerably. However, there have been reports that people haven’t seen the actual 200% speed buff isn’t any faster than swiftness.

If that gets fixed, then you could use this for quicker travel in addition to speedy kits!

Rezzet, if you have nothing good to add to the thread, then don’t step in and whine. I’d mail you a quarter, but I think anyone you called wouldn’t care.

Back to the the thread:

I personally would like to see traitlines more devoted to the fields of your class. This would allow you to specialize and receive benefits related to your favorite fields of play, like Gadgets, Signets, and Pets (yes, I’m also adding things related to other classes).

Sagramor.7395:

Sporadicus.1028:

FT #3 Air Blast for area might (and possible +2 seconds burning)

I cross my fingers every patch that they’ll make Air BLAST a blast finisher, but sadly we’re not there yet.

Grr. I mixed up FT’s Air Blast with EG’s Acid Pool, which does have a blast finisher.

On nakoda’s build (mentioned in page 2 near the middle):

Have you ever thought about putting Net Turret in your build for two immobilization attacks?

Rifle #3 Blunderbuss
Flamethrower #4 Napalm on an enemy
Rifle #2 Net Shot
Rifle #5 Jump shot for damage and fire armor
FT #3 Air Blast to push away (and possible +2 seconds burning)
FT #2 Flame Blast and detonate
Rifle #4 Overcharged Shot
Net Turret toolbelt skill
Rifle#3 Blunderbuss
FT Flame Jet

I swap out EG and Charr Surprise Shot for more in and out of range fun. I’m not saying this all works. I just like doing it because it’s cool to leap around and push people a lot.

Edit: I was wrong about Jump Shot giving Might, it gives leap. . .and only one stack of Fire Armor

That could be the end of a joke. Since the engineer is the butt of most jokes. Ba-dum-dum-“pistol shot”.

Did anyone notice that EG’s #4 Acid Pool became a Blast Finisher? It might have been something I haven’t noticed from the last mini-patch.

They fixed the bug from Med Kit by making sure it now swaps out instead of just reapplying the kit. This means that there’s a 2-second CD on the Med Kit KR effect. This puts it in line with Bomb Kit.

We are supposed to be versatile, and the ICD addition to Kit Refinement is an affront to our versatility. There are other ways to nerf accordingly. Reduce the damage of the Grenade Kit KR’s Barrage, for example.

I’m still a little confused by the KR effect of Med Kit. Why not make it drop a bandage or antidote rather than an explosion? Perhaps make the explosion an AOE heal effect.

Goloith.6349:

Sporadicus.1028:

I guess it’s time to start eating Veggie Pizzas now. FT conditions ho!

Your kidding right? Lol condition duration on a weapon that has infinite burning?…..I think I missed your joke haha.

FT doesn’t have infinite burning. It has a 1 second burning at the end, which means it burns for half your next Flame Jet. You need +Duration to do constant burning damage, which means eating Pizzas, adding a sigil, and putting points into Explosives.

As for your ha ha, I give you Mandark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZl-kQ3JFNI

I agree that it’s strange that you don’t get a constant burn effect. Most people wonder about this since it’s supposed to be a Flamethrower.

I would actually like a constant burn applied while under attack by Flame Jet, with a 1 second burn applied at the end. I don’t know how hard it would be to adjust the mechanics so that the burn is applied.

I guess it’s time to start eating Veggie Pizzas now. FT conditions ho!

I like how the FT played beforehand in PvE. If you trait for 10 in Explosives and get the burn-on-crit proc, then you increase your chances of keeping an enemy burning.

P/P engineers can make use of this a lot better than any other engineers.

I just wish they would make the burning trait up to 50% from 20%. That trait deserves an increase.

Rfreak.6591:

From what I tested:

1st- super elixir doesn’t scale anywhere close to 100% healing power

Read the notes.

“Super Elixir: Increased impact base healing as well as scaling with healing power by 100%. Increased base heal multiplier by 50% and healing power scaling by 100%.”

This means you get double the pre-change effect for your healing stats for Super Elixir, not a change to a flat 1:1 ratio of healing stat add to your Super Elixir.

You also get 1.5x the pre-change base heal .

Nothing said you would get 100% of your healing power added to Super Elixir.

I agree that the 10 second GCD of Kit Refinement is a step backwards. That should never have been implemented, and plenty of people have given the reasons for it. I won’t beat a dead horse, so this is won’t be explained.

I do like that they’ve increased FT abilities. It’s good to see that they’re adding much needed synergies to this kit’s abilities. You can now at least have a reason for using Air Blast after setting someone on fire with FJ and then following up with Flame Blast.

Now let’s see if they have fixed the obstruction problem with Flame Blast.