Guild Wars 2

DesertRose.2031:

My knowledge of Necro is limited but afaik the Engineer surpasses him in terms of direct damage but loses to him in terms of condition damage.

I don’t play a necro much myself, but from what I’ve seen, engineers are slightly inferior on single-target condition damage and better than them on AoE condition damage. What necros have that make them the undisputed master of conditions is that they can manipulate them. Necros can turn boons into conditions, remove all personal conditions, send personal conditions to an enemy, and transmit conditions from one enemy to others.

This is based on what I’ve seen of my play compared to that of others, not on hard math or anything like that.

1) Unlock every skill eventually; the only skill that I know and don’t regularly use is Elixir C.

2) Speedy Kits for perma-swiftness is great.

3) Bomb kit is amazing with traits, but is still pretty great without them. Grenade kit requires a Grandmaster traits to be good and flamethrower requires two Master traits to be good. Toolkit is great, but doesn’t deal amazing damage. Elixir gun is also wonderful for many things, but is awful for damage.

4) If you ever plan on doing jumping puzzles with your engineer, keep a rifle in your backpack. Rifle #5 lets you bypass a lot of difficult jumps.

5) Practice skill combos. While we don’t have rotations in the same way elementalists do, we have skill combos that work well together. For example: rifle 4 to knockdown, goggles to immediately get up and give yourself fury, rifle 2 while they’re down so they can’t avoid, rifle 5 onto them to deal damage, supply drop before the immobilize runs out, rifle 3 while they’re stunned, then rocket boot out to establish distance. Unless they used a stunbreak, you just dealt significant damage and reestablished a safe range. For a defensive combo, doubletap healing turret, hit f1, doubletap shield 4, swap to elixir gun, elixir gun 4. You’ve just restored a ton of health to you and 4 allies while retreating backwards a substantial distance.

I’ll have to do some personal testing. I feel that the ticks of the fields that the bombs leave behind shouldn’t proc Shrapnel. If they does, that explains a lot.
From a logical point of view, only the initial attack is an explosion; the rest is aftereffects. If they are considered to be explosions too, that changes quite a bit.

coglin.1867:

If more than half of what you’re doing is spamming 1 skill (Autoattack) then your doing it wrong. this is where I feel your going wrong to start. It might be “okay” for corner stacking PvE dungeons, but not WvW.

I am not trying to do anything, I am succeeding at doing 75% the same direct damage as you while also doing 50% of what you are doing in bleeds, to out damage your way by 25% with the same skill.

The math actually favor bombs for damage.

And why do you keep hand picking one particular bomb skil for one hand picked situation and try to pass that off as a representation of the entire game mode ?

How much damage are you doing in any aspect, be it WvW, PvP, or PvE with flash grenade or freeze grenade? Poison grenade? with a full condition build, even in PvE one skill used by a mob will do more damage with confusion from concussion bomb then all 3 of those grenade skills will.

Also I rreeaallllyy got to ask. Why is it every time someone is new here and ask a question, you guys always try to make it a “I use grenades there fore, bow to my ego” discussion?

I’ll concede that bomb spamming is not for small group battles. I was looking mainly at PvE, where incoming damage is easily mitigated. However, in large-scale zergfests where you can barely see the enemies from the lag/graphical effects, or against WvW structures, bomb #1 is a large damage tool.

What math favors bombs? I fail to see how it can compete in condition stacking with Grenades, simply due to the fact that grenades cause 3 explosions for every 1 bombs cause.

I concede with the flash and poison grenade. However, one small tidbit to take note of is that chill grenade deals greater direct damage than the autoattack. Not faulting your argument, just pointing that out.

I’m not trying to say that grenades are superior in every case, or that the best build for anything is always grenades. However, I fail to see how bombs are better for conditions than grenades. Since you’re hitting 3x as often with grenades, logic dictates that you’ll get 3x as many procs, and thus 3x as many bleeds.

coglin.1867:

Very literally one 1 bomb attack scales with power to any amount at all. That is the auto attack. If you sum up the entire kit as one attack, I cannot trust your logic to exclude the other skills. I can stack 10 bleeds very very easy with bombs. As smoke bomb, glue bomb, and fire bomb offer 4 opportunities a piece to add bleed ticks.

Burning only gets over written if your condition damage is low. But I do have to agree that this is certainly a weakness with conditions as a whole.

1) If more than half of what you’re doing is spamming 1 skill (Autoattack), then that skill is pretty significant for discussing the scaling of the kit. Especially since two of the 5 abilities deal no damage. I’d rather rely on a spammable attack for my damage than a pair of abilities with cooldowns.

2) Why are you trying to stack bleeds with Bomb Kit? If you have the traits to stack bomb bleeds, you have the traits to stack grenade bleeds. If you can stack grenade bleeds, you’ll get a lot more bleeds. You say you can stack 10 easily with bombs; I can stack 16+ easily with grenades while stacking at least twice as much vulnerability as bombs will.

For conditions, Bombs are inferior in almost every way to Grenades. Bombs have burning which grenades don’t, but in my experience that doesn’t do much in zergs. They also have confusion, but that isn’t particularly powerful in PvE. In contrast, Grenades can stack vuln and bleeds better, have better poison uptime than bombs have Burning uptime, and have chill.

Here’s another thing to look at: While it doesn’t have to be your biggest damage skill, your autoattack is your main damage skill. Bomb AA scales much better with power than condition damage, regardless of traits supporting it.

TreeLady.1957:

Thank you, all.
I’ve started playing with the speedy kits option. It works, with lots of key pressing, as noted. I’m happy to have an option.

I’d recommend grabbing medkit, since medkit 5 offers more swiftness (so you don’t have to hit as many buttons). That and the fact that the heal is on the toolbelt rather than on the normal bar is what keeps it in a lot of my builds.

Varying the message doesn’t help once you’re suppressed, but prevents you from getting there. In Queen’s Gauntlet, when everyone was constantly rezzing one another, half of all competitors were suppressed due to too many "ty"s.

coglin.1867:

Sylentir.8913:

-Bomb Kit (Reduced Effectiveness in WvW or PvP)

This part caught my eye. The only difference is Concussion bomb, everything in all 3 game modes is the same, the only difference is the damage of the confusion. Just wanted to clarify that.

By reduced effectiveness, I mean that it’s far less likely to land hits with since targets can dodge, run away, and/or use ranged attacks.

coglin.1867:

Sylentir.8913:

Most dire builds will have >5% crit chance from the lack of precision. And what bunker builds scale well with condition damage? FT doesn’t well, bombs don’t well, toolkit doesn’t well. Pistol does crap damage regardless, whenever I have it equipped I spend most of my time in another kit, switching out only to use a single skill or two.

When you suggest bombs do not scale well with conditions, I have to question your logic here. And pistols actually do fairly decent damage, it may not be the best but (they really need to make P#1 3s beleed or even 4s like it was in beta)pistol #2 does really solid damage. Fire bomb will stack 12 stacks of burn. They can cleanse, but most only maintain one cleanse and in 8s I have all the conditions stacked right back. If not sooner.

Reason I say that bombs don’t scale well with conditions is that
1) They scale wonderfully with power
2) They only have 2 offensive conditions, Burning and Confusion
3) Confusion isn’t especially powerful in PvE
4) Burning quickly gets overwritten/overlapped in WvW, PvE
5) Both conditions have a cooldown, though admittedly not a long one

1) The weapons you use depend on your build, mostly. Almost any offensive power (Direct damage) based build will use rifle, while almost any offensive condition (Damage over time) build will use pistol/pistol or pistol/shield.

2) Rifle is good, pistol offhand is good, shield is good. The only weapon we have that most folks universally consider “meh” is the mainhand pistol, as it deals very little damage. A Grenade Kit rotation can deal 2 to 3 times the damage of a pistol MH rotation, often to more targets since the pistol #1 explosion is somewhat small.

3) All kits work the same way. While you have it on your skill bar, you can hit that ability at any time (Even while stunned, prone, feared, dazed, or otherwise disabled) to replace your weapon abilities with kit abilities until you hit that button again or use the tilde key.

4) Small side note about survivability: most engineer bunker builds (tanky, but not necessarily full tank) are as tough if not tougher than most other classes’ bunker builds. We have the hands-down best block skill in the game, some amazing heals, powerful CC, and can survive quite a bit of punishment. Heavy armor is more of an aesthetic statement than a gameplay statement.

5) Advice to you as an engineer: Grab your kit abilities first, but learn every ability. The engineer is somewhat unique (in my experience) in that we have so many equally viable abilities and traits, such that almost every ability you have will be used at some point during your engineering “career”. Furthermore, as a side effect of this, there aren’t any real big engineer cookie-cutter builds; everyone more or less makes their own stuff for the occasion.

@OP: I deeply sympathize with your position. That can’t be fun. If you’re getting derogatory comments, report and ignore is the best you can do. If they aren’t comments at a person, but rather people swearing at things in general and misusing the word, the best you can do is ignore it. It may be annoying, but that’s the genuine best course you could take. Shrug it off, laugh it off, ignore them, whatever you need.

As far as ignore not actually ignoring everything, I feel that it should. If you ignore someone, you shouldn’t anymore see anything they’ve said.

Here’s a build I just tossed together. It’s focusing on support, in particular healing. I decided to use the Elixir Gun because that’s what you indicated an interest in. I grabbed Healing Turret for the AoE heal, and as many blast finishers as I could for that AoE Water Field heal.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcUQJAqelIq6d3yyuF8LJxIFdmzhUYfDDqQdFpQ/WG-jQCB4hChkCAUDJMLqIasFhFRjVNjIqW1AzijIq2lATKgKGGB-e
4 Blast finishers, with 24s, 16s, 15s, and 14.5s cooldowns to exploit your water fields with. Pure support, pure and simple.

Here’s how I make a build.

1) Pick a Role
Roles are direct damage, condition damage, bunkering, control and pure support. (Note: Almost all non pure-support builds have some support elements)

2) Pick a Primary Theme, based on Role
Primary themes are your means of filling your role. This is where you will dump a lot of traits. Most often, the theme will be a kit.
Direct Damage Themes:
-Rifle (Not Recommended as standalone, but good with others)
-Bomb Kit (Reduced Effectiveness in WvW or PvP)
-Grenade Kit
-Flamethrower
-Toolkit (Not Recommended)
-Static Discharge (Not possible as a standalone)
Condition Damage Themes:
-Pistol(s) (Not Recommended as standalone, but acceptable with others)
-Flamethrower (Not Recommended)
-Grenade Kit
-Elixir Gun (Not Recommended)
Bunker Themes:
-Flamethrower
-Bomb Kit
-Tool Kit
-Shield (Not Recommended as standalone, but very good with others)
Control Themes
-Rifle (Not Recommended as standalone, but good with others)
-Shield (Not Recommended as standalone, but very good with others)
-Bomb Kit
-Tool Kit
-Turrets (Your Mileage May Vary)
Pure Support Themes:
-Bomb Kit
-Elixir Gun

3) Pick synergistic extra options
Chances are, you aren’t using all 3 utilities and all 70 trait points on your Primary Theme. Use the leftovers to grab things that might be useful to your build. For example, Control builds might like Throw Mine, and Direct Damage builds will love Elixir B.

4) Pick a gear choice that emphasizes your “good stats”.
Every role and major theme will scale with certain stats. Pick whichever gear choice seems to best fit those stats.

coglin.1867:

Every build you can use dire for is better with soldiers or rabid, really ?? A condition bunker ? Hardly……….Soldiers is very limited in value for a lot of build for the engineer, it is worthless for pistols. Thats half our available weapons.

In many WvW situations, you will get much much more value in survivability then the weak damage added by some crits. You can easily get enough crits to proc your on crit conditions with dire.

Most dire builds will have >5% crit chance from the lack of precision. And what bunker builds scale well with condition damage? FT doesn’t well, bombs don’t well, toolkit doesn’t well. Pistol does crap damage regardless, whenever I have it equipped I spend most of my time in another kit, switching out only to use a single skill or two.

coglin.1867:

If your going to mention rabid and PVT, why not mention Dire as well. Its very solid for one who likes condition for bombs over power for a bunker build.

IMO, Dire is slightly overrated for engineers. Almost any build you can use Dire with would be better with Rabid or with Soldier’s. There are builds for it, but they aren’t nearly as common.

I personally like it. Yes, the ability to customize/change it would be nice, but I like that all interaction is through F. It means that I can reflexively hit 1 key to do almost anything. Repair? F. Siege? F. Talk? F. Build? F. Pick stuff up? F. Rez? F. I don’t have to worry about remembering which key to hit or hitting the wrong key, because there’s only one key.

My current three (Read: only 3) problems with turrets are:
1) They are a pain to relocate with their lengthy cooldowns.
2) Their traits are very spread out (Really, the main offender is Accelerant-Packed-Turrets. I don’t want to go 20 into explosives for a turret build ><)
3) They have lots of bugs.

I actually don’t find their squishyness to be that bad, since they can be put out of range of most attacks through smart throwing. Also, if their cooldowns were significantly reduced, it would be a ton easier to deal with their being destroyed easily by bosses.

Engineers are very capable almost anywhere.

The three gear types I’d recommend most are Rabid, PVT, and Berserker’s for conditions and/or semibunker, PVT for full bunker, and Zerker’s for full glass cannon. Good results come from Celestial, but I personally am not a huge fan.

As far as build goes, pick a kit, figure out what synergizes with it, and wear appropriate gear. One of the engineer’s strengths is that almost every ability is highly useful, and as a result almost all engineers have individualized/personalized builds.

It’s always worked like this. Not saying it isn’t a bug, or that it is intended, but it’s always been this way.

Human female engineer, Talia Gallowglass. First name is completely arbitrary, second is from a book (The Warlock in Spite of Himself) which in turn comes from a olden type of elite Scottish mercenaries. I feel that the last name has a suitable tech feel, while still feeling like an actually possible real name.

Using mouse to turn is highly recommended in most areas. When I watch a friend who’s new to the game, the first thing I notice is how slowly they respond to things and how inaccurately they move. The second thing I notice is that it’s because they’re keyboard turning.

Account bound.

Obsidian.1328:

^

Well “or” doesn’t just mean a link to an alternative, it also means “introducing a synonym or explanation of a preceding word or phrase.” Which is how you used it there.

No, I used it as “this or that”. Which is a link to an alternative.

Regardless, I think you’re now clear on what I meant, and we can stop arguing semantics.

The Toolkit shield is the hands-down best block in the game, p/s gives another block, soldier’s or even better sentinel’s makes you tough as kitten, Bomb 4 means “whoops, no more melee damage for a few seconds”.

If I had infinite spending money and a reliable zerg, here’s how I’d build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqaZ38SyF17IxIFdW0hUYfDL6h+tsjB-jECBIjChkDAUIJMnrIaslNFRjVZDT9iIq2guIa1SBIryI-w
28k HP, 3333 Armor, two blocks, a good heal, and plenty of CC. Plus, take drastically reduced damage while CC’d.
However, this build is pretty kitten expensive, and has almost no killing power in a 1v1. Staying power, sure, but not killing power.

I actually run something similar from time to time. I go 10/0/30/20/10, getting radius increase, 20% reduced damage while disabled, improved elites, healing bombs, 20% reduced elixir cooldown, backpac regenerator, and speedy kits. I run rifle, bomb kit, and whatever 2 elixirs are most useful to the party at the time (Default B and R).

Deal decent damage from all the power, while healing in a rather large AoE for ~270 every attack. I run a weapon with a Superior Sigil of Life, so I routinely get up to ~350 HP/auto per target. My armor has Altruism runes as a catch-all for any cleric’s build; if I were to tailor to this build I would likely use the runes that improve rezzing since that’s the main point of having an anchor.

That said, this isn’t a “tank” spec. It’s a defensive spec, sure, but by no means a tank.

DocHolliday.5921:

You’re the only person who’s said that in quite some time. Many people are pointing out that they see lots of people leaving. Yeah, you’re most likely wrong.

I see more people on forums saying that everybody’s leaving, but I see more people in game demonstrating otherwise.

What are you, on their legal team? This isn’t a trial, you know. Yes, they most certainly advertised the game before release as being “A lot like GW, only better!!” Again, they had to, to keep the GW1 fanbase around.

I guess I’ll concede on that point.

And most of those posts from many different people say exactly the same things. Sure, there’s a few outliers that are different, but you’re always going to have those, even in a game that is successful beyond belief.

The two main complains are:

A. People don’t want a gear treadmill
B. People don’t want the meaningless garbage content every 2 weeks; where’s the type of 6-month and 1-year content updates that GW1 had?

Most of the complaints are simply subsets of those. Not all, no, but most.

There’s also people wanting the trinity back, people complaining about lack of PvP type diversity, and a bunch of other complaints.

Obsidian.1328:

Sylentir.8913:

It was about how everyone seems to have an idea about how GW2 is so awful, and could be better by making it like GW1 or WoW or another popular game

This line really grabbed my attention. I find it very humorous you associate GW1 and WoW together. GW2 is, relatively speaking, a lot more like WoW than GW1 that you’d have to be blind not to see that.

I have no idea how you came to that conclusion.

I didn’t say “GW2 and WoW”, I said “GW2 or WoW”. People that come here from GW1 tend to want the game to be more like GW1, people who come from WoW tend to like it more like WoW. This game’s playerbase has large amounts of both, given that one’s the prequel in name and the other is (I think, might be wrong) the biggest MMO currently.
I realize that GW2 is more like WoW than GW1. I never made any claim otherwise.

Shield has:
-Individual reflect
-AoE knockback/blast finisher
-Block
-Daze

These can be pretty handy.

Also, don’t discount the use of “anchors” who use bunker or support builds to help keep their party members up. Sometimes, I use healing to help, sometimes I use CC and defensive conditions to help, and sometimes I help by being tanky as kitten so I can rez allies with relative impunity.

Engineers don’t have popular “builds”. In general, each engineer will pick a small set of things and between them come up with a supporting build that also works with their playstyle. For example, take grenades. To use them well, put 30 points in explosives. You have 40 points left over. You can use gadgets to add to your utility and/or mobility. You can use HGH/elixirs to add more raw damage. You can put points in Firearms for better bleed and vuln stacking. You can use P/P for easy burn, or P/S for more utility/cc.

I’d recommend just messing around with builds in Heart of the Mists until you find something you’re satisfied with. A good starting point is 30/0/0/30/0, plus 10 points in Tools for speedy kits or 10 in Firearms for additional bleed/vuln. This works with either Berserker or Rabid gear.

Just posted this somewhere else, it might be useful to you.

Below, I’ll list a handful of build themes that I have used at some point in either PvP, WvW, or PvE. None of these are actual builds; they’re in general a primary mechanic plus a gear type.

Standard build types include:
-Berserker Grenades
-Berserker Flamethrower (Not recommended for PvP)
-Berserker Bombs (Not recommended for PvP)
-Berserker Static Discharge (Not recommended for PvE)
-Berserker Rifle (Sub-par unless used with another theme)
-Berserker HGH (Mix with another build, this is just a large set of traits/skills)
-Rabid Grenades (Not recommended for WvW and Open-World)
-Rabid Perplexity (Not possible in PvP, Not recommended in PvE)
-Rabid Pistol(s) (Sub-par unless used with another theme, Not recommended for WvW and Open-World)
-Rabid Turrets (Bugged out the wazoo but still fun)
-Rabid HGH (Mix with another build, this is just a large set of traits/skills)
-Dire Perplexity (Not possible in PvP, Not recommended in PvE)
-Dire Turrets (Bugged out the wazoo but still fun)
-Soldier’s Toolkit (Not recommended in PvE)
-Soldier’s Flamethrower (Not recommended in PvE)
-Soldier’s Bombkit
-Soldier’s Turrets (Bugged out the wazoo but still fun)
-Sentinel’s Toolkit (Not possible in PvP, Not recommended in PvE)
-Sentinel’s Turrets (Bugged out the wazoo but still fun)
-Cleric’s Bombkit
-Cleric’s Elixir Gun
-Apothecary’s Elixir Gun

Catharsis.8571:

well considering that 2 supply adds more than 8k hp to a buildsite, surely 10 hp per toolkit melee is small enough?

I’m not entirely sure which idea you’re supporting here.

If you’re saying this about engineers bypassing supply:
You’re missing the point. Supply is “the big limiter” on WvW. Without it, a single engineer anywhere can assemble a treb easily within a minute, depending on both health and healing power. They don’t need to worry about supply trains, camps, or accessibility. They don’t have to rely on other people to make it in a timely fashion. They can indefinitely maintain a keep’s door easily, since they no longer have to worry about dolyaks making it or people doing supply runs.

If you’re saying this about engineers repairing siege:
It should require supply, but then heal for a bit more than just 10. The reason why it should need supply is above. Also, if that happens, other classes would need to have some special features too so engineers aren’t the only ones with special WvW stuff.

Engineers being able to repair siege would be, in my opinion, a better addition. We’d still have something cool and unique, but not nearly as powerful. Supply is a big limiter, so bypassing it is not wise.

Raghnu.1049:

Why not make your own build and test things out for yourself? See what works and doesnt work for your play-style.

This is likely the best solution.
Go to the Heart of the Mists, grab a handful of different amulets and runes, and go to town on the Golems.

Below, I’ll list a handful of build themes that I have used at some point in either PvP, WvW, or PvE. None of these are actual builds; they’re in general a primary damage source plus a gear type.

Standard build types include:
-Berserker Grenades
-Berserker Flamethrower (Not recommended for PvP)
-Berserker Bombs (Not recommended for PvP)
-Berserker Static Discharge (Not recommended for PvE)
-Berserker Rifle (Sub-par unless used with another theme)
-Rabid Grenades (Not recommended for WvW and Open-World)
-Rabid Perplexity (Not possible in PvP, Not recommended in PvE)
-Rabid Pistol(s) (Sub-par unless used with another theme, Not recommended for WvW and Open-World)
-Rabid Turrets (Bugged out the wazoo but still fun)
-Dire Perplexity (Not possible in PvP, Not recommended in PvE)
-Dire Turrets (Bugged out the wazoo but still fun)
-Soldier’s Toolkit (Not recommended in PvE)
-Soldier’s Flamethrower (Not recommended in PvE)
-Soldier’s Bombkit
-Soldier’s Turrets (Bugged out the wazoo but still fun)
-Sentinel’s Toolkit (Not possible in PvP, Not recommended in PvE)
-Sentinel’s Turrets (Bugged out the wazoo but still fun)
-Cleric’s Bombkit
-Cleric’s Elixir Gun
-Apothecary’s Elixir Gun

Casia.4281:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0piYnuSeF17IyoHd2EuZiKkffe8WPIEC-jwxAYOAqAQisIasVuioxqWw0rER1+kioVHEwoA-e

Classic 30/0/0/10/30. exotic assassins. with opals. prec food. no oil.
2075 power +140 4 stacks of might.
2012 prec for 56% crit chance.
101% crit damage. (crits will deal 151% more damage then normal.)
This setup allows for 4stacks of might with 100% uptime self. without aide from party members. with 5 or 6 stacks limited possible.

grenade 1 scales at .33 per grenade. .8s cast time. 927 average weapon kit damage.
2215p*.33*927/2600 heavy armor= 261 average hit. 654 average crit. 481 average damage

We’ll ignore proc on crit favorably with some sigils, or getting sharpshooter, etc.
Many flat % bonuses effect each the same. 5% force, 5% bonus on might uptime.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0piYnuSeF17IyoHd2EuZiKkffe8WPIEC-jwxAYLAqAQyrIasVuioxqWwUlER1ejioVHFQEB-e
Same with zerkers, ruby and power food.
2473 power +140 from 4 might.
1614 prec for 37% crit chance.
101% crit damage.

2613p*.33*927/2600= 307/hit 772/crit. 480 average damage.

Ok, Ill admit I expected that to come out better for Assassins then 1 point..
But of note, its very easy to get more then 4 stacks of might. free power essentially.
100% uptime on FURY however, is not easy to get.
There is scope however, which would devalue stating crit a bit, as well as target the weak in firearms.

Keep in mind, crit is a wasted stat against structures and some bosses. Power is never wasted.

1) Engineers tend to get use out of all of their abilities. What I did was play a particular playstyle for a bunch of levels, then switch.

2) Zerker for flat DPS (Grenade Kit, Bomb Kit, Flamethrower), Rabid for condi DPS (Grenade Kit), PVT/Soldier’s/Invader’s for some bunker builds (Flamethrower, Toolkit, Bomb Kit), Cleric’s for other bunker builds and support builds (Elixir Gun, Bomb Kit).

3) Highest possible DPS from range belongs to Grenade Kit with either type of gear. Rabid means you’ll be tougher and will deal condition damage, which might be impractical due to the 25 condition cap. Berserker is direct damage, which always works. I personally favor condition builds, but I am aware that they aren’t in a good spot right now. Highest DPS period might belong to Bomb Kit with Berserker’s, I’m not entirely sure.

4) Regardless of your build, grab 10 points in Tools for speedy kits. It lets you get 5s of swiftness on kitten cooldown, which more or less means perma swiftness.

DocHolliday.5921:

SNIP

A) I’ve seen far more people coming in than going out. I could be wrong, but you could be too. There aren’t any official numbers, and so this really boils down to a “He said, she said” argument.

B) GW2 was never stated to be anything like GW1.

C) The “ruining the game” quip wasn’t about complaining threads. It was about how everyone seems to have an idea about how GW2 is so awful, and could be better by making it like GW1 or WoW or another popular game. Some people think living story should be scrapped, and expansions made instead. Some people think that since everyone’s running zerker, the best way to increase diversity is to put a dedicated tank and healer back into the game. I won’t get all melodramatic and say that I’d quit if those happened, but I would definitely end up playing a good bit less.

DocHolliday.5921:

Vayne.8563:

Yep. Guild Wars 1 kept YOU busy for X number of hours. What does that mean? It means a guy with your likes and dislikes happens to find more variety in that game than this game and that’s fine. In my opinion you represent a pretty small minority and don’t even realize it.

Guild Wars 1 was never really mainstream. It was almost a cult game. It drew a lot of people in that direction. Again, so?

All this says is that you personally find Guild Wars 1 to be more engaging and entertaining than Guild Wars 2. Well I personally find Guild Wars 2 more engaging and entertaining than Guild Wars 1.

And you know what that means? Nothing at all, because I’m one guy with one opinion. Time will tell which game was more successful or more popular.

Meanwhile, GW2 is bleeding away users like there’s no tomorrow. ArenaNet knows it. Most players know it. The only players still arguing against it are fanbois. Do you really want to play in a game that’s deserted? Do you really want to play in a game that’s got less resources than it could have to get improvements, because players are leaving in droves? Because by making the arguments you’ve been making, in an indirect route that’s exactly what you’re arguing for.

Where are you getting your numbers? Last I checked, GW2 subs were growing, not shrinking.

GW2 is the first MMO to get me to spend hours on end playing it. WoW engaged me until I got to level 60ish, at which point I more or less ran dungeons til max level then scrapped that character and restarted anew. GW1 has gotten a total of maybe 40 hours of my time. Different people have different interests, it appears.

If you prefer GW1, great for you. Go play it. Please don’t ruin the game I enjoy, because you don’t like it too.

DesertRose.2031:

Sylentir.8913:

-Rabid gear is your optimal condition-based damage gear. (…) it works amazingly with grenades due to the Shrapnel trait.

Can it be you mean the trait Sharpshooter? Because the trait Shrapnel does proc on normal hits, not only critical hits.

Many thanks. I can’t believe I did that ><
There are just so many things that apply bleeds on crit, I guess I thought shrapnel was one too.

Here’s an edit of what I posted to a similar thread a while back:

-PVT gear, also known a Soldier’s or Invader’s, is a good defensive option. If you are looking to survive melee combat, this is the best option. It synergizes most with the Flamethrower, Bomb Kit, and Tool Kit.

-Rabid gear is your optimal condition-based damage gear. Also, for engineers, there is no excuse to ever pick Carrion instead of Rabid, for a number of reasons. If you’re interested in the reasons, I can explain further. Rabid synergizes somewhat with the Flamethrower if you focus on a crit and proc based build, but it works amazingly with grenades due to the Shrapnel trait. While using pistols for DPS isn’t as effective as other damage sources, if you wanted to do it, you’d use Rabid.

-Berserker gear is your optimal direct damage gear. It is the absolute highest damage output available. Unlike any gear aside from Rampager’s, it has only offensive stats. Furthermore, unlike Rampager’s, its offensive stats are all completely synergistical with each other. Berserker gear is decent with any offensive kits.

-Celestial gear, only available through crafting, provides every stat, and is actually quite valuable to engineers. I personally do not like or use it for a number of reasons, but I will not deny that it works well for some people. It would work equally well with almost any build.

-A recent addition is Dire gear. Basically, Dire gear is like PVT, except for condition builds instead of direct damage ones. Some engineer builds work well with this, but for the most part PVT will be better.

Overall, I would steer you towards PVT, unless you are extremely confident in your ability to dodge incoming damage. The defensive stats give you something to fall back on, and the damage isn’t too poor either (though it certainly is less). The current meta in sPvP relies heavily on conditions, but because there are limits on the number of conditions you can apply to a target, large-scale fights (such as open world and WvW) strongly discourage condition damage builds. As such, I would not recommend Rabid gear. If you just hit 80, chances are you won’t have the capacity to create Celestial gear, so that’s also out. Finally, as I said, Berserker gear is extremely risky, so I wouldn’t advocate it for a fresh 80.

TL;DR: Go PVT.

There are other gear types out there that are good (I think Valk is one of them, not too familiar though), but the ones above are the main ones you’ll hear people recommend on the engineer forums.

TBH, I feel like the introduction of a “Shadow Knight” class would not be good. It would need to be thematically distinct, and I feel that as a “Shadow Knight”, it couldn’t. Necromancers cover the unholy angle, Rogues cover the shadowy angle, Warriors cover the uber-martial angle, and Guardians cover the spellsword angle. I honestly don’t think a “Shadow Knight” could be introduced without weakening the themes of those classes.

That said, I feel like a dark hero type class could work. Specifically setting it up as a Death Knight or a Shadow Knight or a Dark Knight or an Anti-Paladin or whatnot won’t make it interesting, because in each of those cases it either is a variation of another class or an inverse of another class. A Witch-Hunter, that is based around seeking out enemies (Mobile combat, single-target) and punishing magic (Interrupts, damage on interrupts) could work. Just not a “Shadow Knight”.

Yes. Which is why FT is also going to be better in groups: once you have enough people applying burning, even if they don’t do much damage, it is always up so you always do extra damage.

Person 1 applies 15 seconds of strong, and person 2 applies 5 seconds of weak:
It goes through 15 seconds of strong damage, and 5 seconds of weak damage. You will always do the same amount of damage with a condition that your tooltip says.

Tarreth.8914:

I am not looking for stricte tank build. I already know that bombs are most likely used for something like that – when I was yet leveling I have defeated a group event boss all by myself, only throwing bombs and running around. Really fun xD

What is purpose of that burning-on-crit if flamethrower by itself provides burning? O.o I mean – I still don’t understand conditions in this game. I know that duration is stacked, but what about damage? Is it like.. the highest is on, or it stacks too?

A) FT doesn’t provide 100% uptime by itself, but the autoattack deals bonus damage if the target is burning. Thus, its best to add some more burning in somewhere.

B)

Applying burning to a target deals exactly as much damage as your tooltip says. Here’s how it works:

Bob applies 10 seconds of burning, and his burning deals 3000 damage (300 damage per second). After 5 seconds, Bob’s dealt 1500 damage, and there are 5 seconds of burning left on the target. However, at that point, Dave applies 5 seconds of burning, and since he has a ton of condition damage, his 5 seconds deal 3000 damage (600 damage per second). There are 10 seconds of burn on the target. Because Dave’s burn deals more damage, during the next five seconds, the target takes 600 damage per second. After those five seconds are up, Dave’s burn has worn off. Five seconds are left on the target, and as per Bob’s burning, the target takes 300 damage per second.

Or, if Bob dealt more damage than Dave:

Bob applies 10 seconds of burning, and his burning deals 6000 damage (600 damage per second). After 5 seconds, Bob’s dealt 3000 damage, and there are 5 seconds of burning left on the target. However, at that point, Dave applies 5 seconds of burning, and since he has very little condition damage, his 5 seconds deal 1500 damage (300 damage per second). There are 10 seconds of burn on the target. Because Bob’s burn deals more damage, during the next five seconds, the target takes 600 damage per second. After those five seconds are up, Bob’s burn has worn off. Five seconds are left on the target, and as per Dave’s burning, the target takes 300 damage per second.

1) Dodge roll is your bff! While rolling, you’re (mostly) invincible. As an ex-WoW player, think of how powerful it would to be able to avoid all incoming damage for even a half-second.
2) Watch the world! Environmental effects, creature attacks, and all sorts of other things have giant graphical tells for “Get out of the way, stupid!” When an ettin’s club starts glowing, you either get ready to dodge, get ready to be out of range, or be ready to eat dirt.
3) Enjoy! This game is all about playing however you want and having fun, There’s tons of stuff to do, and more is constantly being added. Take advantage of everything going on.

Tarreth.8914:

So, flamethrower is used as “tank”?

Not quite. If you come from WoW, a FT user is like a non-tank DK or Warrior in a PvP setting: Not a true tank in any sense, but beefy and with some tanky abilities.
The toolkit is closer to a tank, but still, GW2 has no real tanks.

For an FT built, 0/20/0/20/0 is your mandatory base. You can’t do FT reasonably without Juggernaut and Deadly Mixture. I like having 10 in Explosives for the burning-on-crit trait, but you get pretty good burning as it is. If you do WvW, you need 10 in tools for Speedy Kits, but it isn’t critical anywhere else (Nice to have, though). An extra 5 in Firearms is helpful, and another 5 after that can get you even better burning uptime. An extra 10 in Alchemy is not critical, but helps a kitten lot by letting you stack might far easier.
As far as gear goes, Soldiers is the usual best for FT.

Tarreth.8914:

I see. Yes, I have noticed, that pistols are highly utility weapons and I work them that way.

I have a question… What do you mean by “bunker” term? As I am working on my grenade build (I just discovered that 30/30/0/0/10 isn’t good) I am interested in flamethrower one too. Yet, I have no clue, how it should look like.

Bunker in GW2 is akin (but not quite the same) to tank in other games. Tough, hard to kill, offers more utility/control than damage. I’m right now not able to post a good bunker FT build, but I’ll try to get back to that as soon as I can.

1) Flamethrower has the benefits of having a very large AoE autoattack that ignores terrain/bodyblocking and has a high attack rate. Because of this, blinds are largely useless against you, and any on-hit or on-crit procs will have near 100% uptime. Furthermore, its great against large groups, and can be used extremely powerfully in both attacking and defending large WvW structures.

2) Big one here. Keep in mind, support and healing are like rectangles and squares: All healing is support, but not all support is healing.
a) All elixirs give you an ability to throw them to benefit allies. This can include massive things like stealth and stability.
b) Healing Turret with multiple blast finishers has the potential to be one of the best healing abilities ingame. Spam your 6 button, hit f1, and use as many blast finishers as you can before the field ends. Congratulations, all allies around you are back up to full health.
c) Elixir Gun allows you to heal allies remove their conditions, and apply yet another blast.
d) Medkit allows you to drop bandages that heal for a pretty decent amount, as well as drop a condition-removing item, and drop an item that grants Fury and Swiftness.
e) Engineers’ main elite, Supply Drop, also drops bandages.
f) Engineers have the best condition access ingame (Not necessarily most condition damage, but most access to various conditions). These include a number of “support conditions”, such as Blind, Weakness, Cripple, Chill, and the like.
g) Engineers have the hands-down most crowd control in game, as well as around 50% of all launching skills available to players. Almost any engie build will have a significant amount of CC. EDIT: 14 Launch skills exist, but two are Thief steal, so it’s more like 13. Engies have exclusive access to 5, and shared access to a 6th. So less than 50%, but still a lot. EDIT 2: After looking at the actual skills, I’m noticing the Wiki is wrong. Throw Mine adds a 6th to the engie repertoire, but if its missing there might be others as well.
h) Engineers can have some of the most blast finishers available ingame, depending on build.
I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the specifics of Elementalists, but from what I’ve seen Engineers have some of the best support ingame when properly built.

3) Grenade kit is best overall DPS, Bombkit has highest direct damage. Furthermore, you can use FT as a semi-bunker-semi-attacker. You won’t be dealing terrible, terrible damage, but you won’t be squishy either. Finally, in my experience, bunker engineers have more killing power than other bunkers. That may not be true overall, though.

4) Nyes. They aren’t used for damage. They’re really useful, but shouldn’t be your DPS tool. Look at it: Pistol MH gives you an on-demand blind; pistol OH gives you an AoE immobilize/cripple field; shield OH gives you a reflect, a blast finisher, a knockback, a block, and a stun; rifle gives you an immobilize, a knockback, and a reposition (as well as two high-damaging attacks). They aren’t DPS tools, they’re utility tools.
That said, zerker rifle/SD builds can be effective. As far as I know, there are no effective builds that use pistol DPS only.

I’m personally fond of builds using net turret, rocket turret, and the rifle to juggle opponents. Generally, I take rifle turret as my last skill for a low-cd turret, but sometimes I trade it out for the additional CC of thumper turret. I generally like 0/x/30/x/10, with the only mandatory traits being the 3 turret traits in Inventions and the one in Tools. The rest of the points are allocated between Firearms (Offense) and Alchemy (Defense).

This build is very strong against anyone without access to stability, but Guardians and Warriors are typically difficult to beat.

Here’s an edit of what I posted to a similar thread a while back:

-PVT gear, also known a Soldier’s or Invader’s, is a good defensive option. If you are looking to survive melee combat, this is the best option. It synergizes most with the Flamethrower, Bomb Kit, and Tool Kit.

-Rabid gear is your optimal condition-based damage gear. Also, for engineers, there is no excuse to ever pick Carrion instead of Rabid, for a number of reasons. If you’re interested in the reasons, I can explain further. Rabid synergizes somewhat with the Flamethrower if you focus on a crit and proc based build, but it works amazingly with grenades due to the Shrapnel trait. While using pistols for DPS isn’t as effective as other damage sources, if you wanted to do it, you’d use Rabid.

-Berserker gear is your optimal direct damage gear. It is the absolute highest damage output available. Unlike any gear aside from Rampager’s, it has only offensive stats. Furthermore, unlike Rampager’s, its offensive stats are all completely synergistical with each other. Berserker gear is decent with any offensive kits.

-Celestial gear, only available through crafting, provides every stat, and is actually quite valuable to engineers. I personally do not like or use it for a number of reasons, but I will not deny that it works well for some people. It would work equally well with almost any build.

Overall, I would steer you towards PVT, unless you are extremely confident in your ability to dodge incoming damage. The defensive stats give you something to fall back on, and the damage isn’t too poor either (though it certainly is less). The current meta in sPvP relies heavily on conditions, but because there are limits on the number of conditions you can apply to a target, large-scale fights (such as open world and WvW) strongly discourage condition damage builds. As such, I would not recommend Rabid gear. If you just hit 80, chances are you won’t have the capacity to create Celestial gear, so that’s also out. Finally, as I said, Berserker gear is extremely risky, so I wouldn’t advocate it for a fresh 80.

TL;DR: Go PVT.

Westwood.1043:

Okie doke, I switched to a grenade build. Try that for a bit. Now I have to come up with something that I should be doing. Just run dungeons I guess?

I’d encourage doing Fractals. The lower level ones are good for learning and testing new builds, while the higher level ones are mechanically challenging and fun to do.

Lightsbane.9012:

Sylentir.8913:

P/P Condition damage isn’t as good as grenade condition damage, unfortunately. You’ll survive, but you could be dealing a lot more damage. You’ve got a good stat combo, it just happens that pistol bleed stacking is very lackluster when compared to grenade bleed stacking.

If you already have the gear, here’s the builds I would suggest:
This is great in dungeons, with very high sustained DPS. However, it has lackluster mobility and is easily caught out, which is why I also like to use this from time to time.

Overall, the first will be better in dungeons while the second will be better in open-world PvE or WvW.

this is of course ignoring the fact that grenade kit is a kit and not a weapon trait. he could easily just equip grenade kit and your answer is pointless.

If someone asks for a P/P build, I assume that they’re basing their build around dual pistols, not just that they have them equipped. Likewise, if they ask for a FT build, I’m assuming that they’re spending most of their time in FT kit, not that they just use it for skills 2 and 5. Both the two builds I linked use dual pistols, but I wouldn’t consider either of them to be pistol builds.

The OP asked if pistol builds are good. They aren’t. Having the pistol equipped as a weapon is often good, but pistol builds aren’t.

I think this would be fair. If an enemy is at the condition cap, hitting them with a condition deals instant damage equal to 75% of the DoT damage.