Guild Wars 2

VIVorcha.7853:

As a warning, people are more likely to not want you in their group if you are an Engineer.

Maybe I’ve been really lucky, but I’ve yet to experience this. I’ve actually multiple times recently found myself in a group with another engie, which should be statistically unlikely.

@OP: I don’t really have a necro to compare, but I love my engie. I feel useful regardless of which of my preferred builds I use, and depending on what my build and gear are I could be doing any number of things. Rabid gear with condi nades deals pretty strong damage for the offensively inclined, and engineers have a ton of group healing potential with bombkit and elixir gun for the defensively inclined.

For engineers, typically toughness > vitality and precision > power. There are edge cases, but normally there’s no reason for an engineer to opt for carrion over rabid.

1) While levelling, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the specific numerical values of things, other than to compare “this gives me more condition damage” or “this has a higher toughness bonus”. I doubt that there is much data on lower-level scalings of stats, though I may be wrong.

2) Flamethrower works with everything. I personally find it most fun with raw damage builds, which have a stat priority of power > precision > critical damage > else. However, it is a highly versatile kit in terms of stats.

3) Flamethrower shines most at higher levels. Putting 20 points into Firearms for the Juggernaut trait will provide it a massive power jump, as it now grants you significant amounts of power and condition damage while you have it out, and 20 points in Alchemy gives you the Deadly Mixture trait which makes it deal 15% more direct damage. Right now, your most damaging kit will be Bomb Kit, which has amazing power scaling without any traits whatsoever. Flamethrower’s greatest virtue at lower level would be its autoattack being such a large AoE. Its number 2 skill is highly damaging, and its blind is handy as well.

4) Once you get the 0/20/0/20/0 start to your build, elixirs (Especially will be the most synergistic with flamethrower. Until then, there really isn’t a best or worst.

5) FT Toolbelt should be used just before you start attacking with your FT, it’ll apply the three stacks rather quickly and give the rest of your FT attack the 10% damage buff.

Some general advice: your dodge roll is your best friend. Use it and abuse it. You should be able to easily solo any normal mob (and most veteran mobs) your level through dodging their attacks and generally keeping out of reach. You can attack and use abilities while moving, so it’s possible to circlekite with any non-melee weapon. FT is rather odd in that it has greater range than melee but shorter range than any other ranged weapon, so if you have swiftness you can easily circlekite any melee mob to death without taking any damage.

Outside of professional level players, any class will perform roughly equally well. Yes, pro-level players can push DPS to the max and find a true optimal class, but outside of them, you’ll be fine. And no offense intended, but chances are you aren’t a pro player.

I actually like it on Nades in WvW, either for zerg-v-zerg or defending/assaulting a structure. In ZvZ, you don’t have a single nonmoving enemy, but the overall cluster of enemies should be large enough that you don’t miss, and assault/defense allows you to bombard a point and let anyone at that point die.

Basically, all kits are considered to have the same sigils as your weapons. Furthermore, switching kits is considered weapon swapping. Therefore, they will proc all on swap sigils.

1) There is a level of skill required to fully use a build. Many of the better-performing builds out there require a deeper understanding of the game than “roll face on keyboard.”

2) PvP in particular requires skill. You need to learn your class, but you also need to learn your opponent’s class. I am currently build to demolish anyone melee without stability (Mostly thieves and some warriors) but anyone with good stability demolishes me. However, I have counterplay to stability, and those without stability have various mechanics (dodges, clones, stealth) to counter my CC. With one build, I fight a thief differently from a greatsword warrior differently from a mace guardian, and I have to quickly recognize what type of enemy I’m facing and how to best defeat them. If I treat a ranger the same as a thief, no matter how bad the ranger is, I’ll likely lose the fight.

3) Building and counter-building takes some skill. Sure, you can copy someone else’s build, but that doesn’t mean you’ll understand it. I don’t run the HGH-Nades build that gives Engineers their maximum obtainable DPS, because it doesn’t fit my playstyle and I wouldn’t be effective with it. Instead, I run a mobile, hit-and-run specializing grenades build. Its similar enough that most other nades users could pick it up relatively quickly, but that would be because of their experience with grenades. If I just gave it to a random joe, he wouldn’t do too well because he wouldn’t understand how to make it effective. Furthermore, even if they could use it properly in 1v1 situations, they wouldn’t know how to best use it in a team setting. There are specific maps, team compositions, and strategies it excels on/in, and others in which it’s worse than subpar.

Black Cat.1024:

SNIP

Got it, thanks!
From your experience, how much uptime on swiftness and dodges in\out of combat? (With speedy kits)

With speedy kits and out of combat: 100% swiftness
With vigor-on-swiftness and out of combat: 100% vigor means twice as much as a warrior, 1.5 times as much as most rangers, but no clue how it compares to a thief with your “endurance refund” trait.

In combat it depends entirely on the build. I’ve got a grenadier build that has base ~40% crit chance and gets swiftness on crit, so it gets 100% uptime or at least very close. My bombmedic build, on the other hand, basically spends its entire time in bombkit for the AoE heals, and has no swiftness generating abilities aside from speedy kits, so it has much lower uptime. I could bring it up higher if I paid attention, but I don’t usually need the extra mobility so I don’t.

Sir Roland Karloseth.3798:

I completed almost all of Frost and Flame. Enjoyed it, even. I was saddened when I remembered that the only thing I missed was the ceremony at the very end. I thought “You know, that was a very unique thing that they just did, and I enjoyed it. I hope they do more of these from time to time.”

Except the whole point of Flame and Frost was to lead into their 2-week release schedule. It wasn’t designed to be a really special 1-time event, it was designed to be a show of what they plan on doing normally.

The best way to jump back in is to enjoy what you can and ignore/avoid what you can’t. Don’t dwell on the living story parts you missed. Play the parts of the game you like, there are enough to cater to a wide variety of people and personalities. If you don’t think the game’s for you anymore, then don’t play it anymore. Anet has expressly stated that this is the direction they want to take, so if that direction doesn’t interest you, you aren’t likely to enjoy the game’s future either.

I’m sorry if I come off as being callous, but the fact of the matter is that this is the direction Anet is heading, and they have been heading it for some time now. Flame and Frost was just an introduction to it.

EDIT:

I’d see things like more fractals or an updated Super Adventure Box.

You’re in luck! 3 new fractals are in development, and the community seems pretty sure that SAB is the next living story patch.

Vol.5241:

mojowalker.3798:

Vol.5241:

Making lots of gold.

And then sharing it, this one would hope …

Last month I gave out 100g, 1g to every new player in Queensdale. I may be a rich snob, but I’m also a philanthropist.

If you want to have fun, make up contests. Do a hide-and-seek in Lion’s Arch, or a race in Queensdale, or an unofficial jumping puzzle. People like feeling that they worked toward their rewards, and it gives you something fun to do/watch!

Atherakhia.4086:

Sylentir.8913:

SNIP

Right.

But take 2 blowtorches. Which engineer gets the credit for burning? The first one to apply burning and then the other just helps maintain his burn debuff? Does the one with more condition damage overlay their burn over the other and the roles reverse? That’s what my original question was trying to ask.

Sorry, I realized I didn’t answer that at first, and then edited my previous post to answer. I guess you responded while I was editing :P Each deals full damage, no more, no less.

What is innovation?

If its coming up with something completely and wholly new, almost nothing modern is innovative. Everything borrows from something else, or several things else. Almost all RPGs borrow heavily from Dungeons and Dragons, which borrows from tactical fantasy board games, which borrow from tactical historic board games, which borrow from history. Nothing’s new.

If taking already existing material and spinning it in a new direction is innovative, the GW2 is innovative. Dynamic events in other games were the sideshows, GW2 made them the main shows. Worldwide events, like the living story invasions or the Karka before it, were part of WoW expansion releases, GW2 just made them more frequent. Downed state may have been used in many FPS games, but this is the first I know of it being used in an RPG. Other games may have the lack of a trinity, but GW2 took it and made it so you can have combat roles without traditional combat roles. Platformers may have jumping puzzles, but GW2 put them in an MMO. They may not have anything that’s completely and utterly new, but they took material and made it theirs, in their own way.

I like everything in moderation. I PvP every now and then, occaisonally hop on WvW with guildies, use my commander tag to help lead LS events, do occasional dungeons, run some fractals, and in general just try to do everything. Which probably explains why I’ve got nearly 4k achievement points :P

Heck, I’ve recently been running contests in LA where the first person to successfully reach me wins 5 gold! It’s fun seeing people fall to their doom jumping on rooftops to get to me

Lokki.1092:

Atherakhia.4086:

I’m curious how Burn works… if I start the debuff and other people apply burn it increases the duration. But will it always be the person who put up the first one that gets the damage (based off their condition)?

Burning seems to stack just like bleeds but for some reason the information is invisable to the player.

I’ll try to illustrate.
3 skills
The Prestige Burningx1: 3 s (984 damage)
Drake’s Breath Burningx4: 3 s (3936 damage)
Blowtorch Burningx3: 2 s (1968 damage)

If these three skills are applied at the same time (and used as often as possible) the understanding is this will happen.

• Burning icon on target for 11 seconds
• Drakes breath damage at the top of the stack. dealing 3936 damage over the first 3 seconds.
• Blowtorch second in the stack. dealing 1968 damage over the seconds 4 and 5.
• At five seconds drakes breath reapplied and set to the top of the stack again. dealing 3936 damage over seconds 6 – 8.
• The Prestige burns for 3 seconds dealing 984 damage.
• Burning Icon falls off target

Literally speaking it’s 12 stacks of burning
((0.25 * Condition Damage) + (4 * Level) + 8 ) multiplier
For some reason they don’t let us see that in the UI though.

Incorrect. When something has 4x Burning, it doesn’t mean you apply a burn that does 4 times damage, it means you apply that 3s of burning for separate times. If all of those skills were used at the same moment, once all had stopped channeling, it would have applied 21 seconds of burning.

This is easily testable with Blowtorch: use it, and see how long the burning debuff lasts. It sure isn’t 2 seconds.

@OP: 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.

Equipment, particularly armor and weapons, I feel should not be limited much, if at all. While I can understand seasonal/annual events having recurring skins, they should be the only cases of that.

However, I do feel that non-equipment items/effects, such as minis, titles, or vanity items (Tonics, musical instruments, kites, ect.) are perfectly fine being limited.

Oxstar.7643:

Sylentir.8913:

1v1 should be 50% build, 50% skill (But some, such as I, consider proper building to be a form of skill :P). For example, I can build my engineer to hardcounter thieves unless they vastly outskill me, but then a guardian wrecks me unless I vastly outskill them. This type of balance should be maintained: you should have good matchups, bad matchups, and the ability to discern which is which.

Isn’t this rock paper scissor system something ANet said they want to avoid?

It shouldn’t be pure rock-paper-scissors. As I said, there should be an element of skill to it. My quadturret build trumps most thieves, but I’ve met a number who know how to successfully beat it (lots of stealth and/or thieves guild, destroy turrets, kill the now-exposed engie). They have an uphill battle, but they still can win. Likewise, while most guardians know how to make use of stability to survive my quadturret easily, those that don’t get easily shoved around.

I personally think 50/50 is a good number, because there should be good and bad matchups. No aspect of the game is designed to be 1v1 PvP: roaming is best done with a small group; zergfighting is done with well, a zerg; and sPvP is done with four other teammates. Skill is just as much knowing how to fight as it is knowing who to fight. You see someone who’ll likely stomp your face, and you ask a teammate to deal with them for you.

1v1 should be 50% build, 50% skill (But some, such as I, consider proper building to be a form of skill :P). For example, I can build my engineer to hardcounter thieves unless they vastly outskill me, but then a guardian wrecks me unless I vastly outskill them. This type of balance should be maintained: you should have good matchups, bad matchups, and the ability to discern which is which.

Penguin is right 1-3. More has been nerfed and more has been buffed, but it’s too much to want to recount here. And once again, right on 6, but that’s because of game mechanics (not engineer ones).

Generally, for me, the process of achieving an extrinsic reward is at the same time an intrinsic reward to me. While the intrinsic is a greater reward, I also need that extrinsic reward to push me towards it.

Poor Tybalt… I wear my Whispers Armor not out of respect of the order, but out of respect for its lost members. If only the Appleseller’s Lucky Cog used stats I actually wanted…

Why not both?

This last content patch was great: casual events and hardcore events released side-by-side. Gives the skilled players a chance to show off, while the casuals don’t get left behind.

Skill should only unlock cosmetics: armor sets, weapon skins, minis, or titles. However, I feel that there should be some way to show off ingame and say, “I was there; I did that.”

Kits deal independant damage of weapons, but all weapon stats (ie. power, precision, and crit damage on a zerker weapon) stay the same equipping or unequipping a kit.

Furthermore, sigils do work with kits.

With engies, the general rule of thumb is that if you can justify your choices logically and run the build acceptably, it’s a viable build. There aren’t any engie skills considered worthless, and its very easy to put together a build suiting any particular skillset.

In general, I advocate focusing yourself on one area: choose between bunker, support, cc, crit damage, or condi damage. Pick a weapon that is applicable to your role (shield is amazing for bunker, pistols pack a punch with condis, rifle is godly for cc or crits) and in general, you’ll also want at least one kit that fills a similar or synergistic function. Toolkit is the canonical bunker kit, bombs function well with bunker and support if you take Elixir-Infused Bombs in the invention line, elixir gun works well with support, flamethrower works well with bunker or crits, and grenades work ok with crit or amazing with condis.

Once you’ve got that, you’re half done. Pick your utilities to complement your function: gadgets give cc and mobility, elixirs give damage buffs and support, turrets give CC and meh damage, and an all-kit build has crazy versatility but might not use a kit as well as a more specialized user.

Your elite skill, 90% of the time, will be supply drop. It’s too good of a skill to pass up, and is a really wonderful elite. Elixir X is unreliable, and the mortar, while a lovely idea, is extremely bugged (don’t use it).

Got this far? Now you’re in the home stretch! Choose traits to complement the big parts of your build. Focus on damage with grenades? Take explosive traits. Focus on damage with anything else? You’ll want firearms. Use elixirs? That’s what alchemy’s for. If you do WvW, I’ll strongly strongly recommend that you put 10 points into tools and take Speedy Kits, since it allows you to keep 100% swiftness on yourself.

As far as gear goes, see the same guidelines as the traits. Take what most enhances your primary focus.

Here’s what I post in response to “How do I build my 80”. Individualized response below:

-Bomb kit requires practically nothing traitwise to be fully functional. It hits hard, provides utility, and lets you learn to self-combo effectively. It is primarily a power weapon, but does have condition damage routes as well.
-Flamethrower is more trait dependant, but not extremely so. It requires both t2 firearms and t2 alchemy to be optimal, but is viable without. It’s also fun, and works well as both a direct damage and a crit-procced condition damage weapon.
-Grenades, while the optimal level 80 damage kit, are poor until you can get explosives t3 at level 60. However, at 80, the shrapnel trait makes grenades godly at condi damage.
-Toolkit requires nothing to be good. Bop some stuff with a wrench.
-Elixir gun requires little to be good, but is mainly useful in group play. It’s very much worth having available to you, but I’d only recommend pulling it out in group events. It could do condi damage if you built for it, but that’s like going to McDonalds for a salad: it isn’t that great, and you could get it a heck of a lot better elsewhere.
-Turrets are weird. One alone is useless, but a certain two (rocket and net) together plus the right weapon (rifle) can permalock a single target. In general, you won’t want them, but they’re not worthless. They are functional with conditions.
-Speedy Kits (10 points in Tools) is a must: it provides permanent swiftness uptime.
-Rocket Boots are extraordinarily useful, as your movespeed when using them increases the distance traveled. With swiftness or Super Speed, you go far!
-Elixirs are primarily powerful when they have full trait support. At lower levels, they’re good, but they don’t have that extra oomph that HGH brings.

Keep in mind that a levelling engineer, due to trait limitations, won’t likely be able to fully specialize in one area the same way a level 80 can. At 80, condition builds are both easy to make and powerful to use, but before then, they are usually somewhat lackluster.

I personally actually like not having inspect, it makes it feel less critical to check your party members and their gear, and makes you more likely to trust them.

Go to any home instance, and talk to one of the belcher’s bluff people (I think they’re still there). They can send you infinite mail, I probably had 60+ in my inbox from spamming that button.

Currently, in most open world and dungeons (Not high-end PvE like fractals), DPS is all there is. However, people frequently ignore that Fractals generally have support characters at higher levels. Furthermore, in WvW, which is largely an extension of PvE, zergs without some support are zergs that get chewed up alive by siege and/or other zergs.

Overland autoattack wouldn’t be the best idea and here’s why:

Grenades are SLOOOOOW.

Necromancers constantly complain about their staff #1, guardians used to complain about their sceptre #1. Grenades are slower. They are very powerful, they have amazing AoE damage, they can work with both conditions and direct damage, but are slow. If you autoattacked, you’d never be able to hit a moving target.

I’ve got two sets I use: Magitech and Whispers. While I’d like to have put my whispers on my Rabid set and my magitech on my Cleric’s set, I unfortunately did the opposite and don’t think I have an easy means of fixing it -_-

azhri.7926:

Love my engineer but I hate kit swapping.

I really love the style and gameplay of pistol/shield and am trying to make it work. Alas the DPS appears to be just kitten poor compared to grenades or bombs.

This is what I am using, pistol/shield with an HGH. Auto only ends up hitting for about 700 on a crit with the short bleed. That just isn’t enough. I tried rifle, and while really fun I am not convinced it’s viable without kit swapping.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelspSXHvSfF17ISoCSIoHAWexXie8YQ2kB-jwxAYLhQqgQYyrIasthioxqWwUlER1ejioVHCgJ-e

Suggestions, or without kit swapping should I just figure out something else to play?

I’d advise focusing on making that bleed more potent through condi damage and duration. It isn’t the best bleed ingame, but keep in mind that the autoattack is capable of dealing full damage to up to 25 targets (Bullet pierces to hit 5 targets, each explosion hits an additional 4)

Another thing worth noting is that the shield gives two interrupts for the purpose of the new confusion runes, and you could easily swap one of your utilities for one of the knockbacking gadgets if you needed more interrupts.

Alternately, if you do smaller fights, turrets become viable as it is possible to stunlock individual targets through a combo of net turret, rocket turret, and the CC on whatever weapon you might be holding. Rifle works better for quadturret builds, but that doesn’t mean P/S isn’t also an option.

However, you are correct that without kits, you are hindering yourself outside of extremely niche builds.

Arkham Creed.7358:

A lot (most) people are going to instantly disagree with me here, but I actually recommend the flamethrower. Its base damage isn’t particularly impressive, true, but it is a native AOE so that can be forgiven. It simply isn’t a spike damage weapon (-gasp- You mean there is a way to do damage that isn’t based on just hitting like a truck and moving on? Sacrilege!), instead it is better suited to keeping pressure on groups and with high crit chance is pretty much the best weapon in the game (in my experience) for triggering on crit procs.

I suggest taking Precise Sights near constant stacks of vulnerability on multiple foes, and Juggernaut for a completely free stack of might (averages about seven stacks, but can be easily pushed higher with other traits, skills, runes, and sigils. I typically run with fifteen to twenty stacks in combat, and can hit the max twenty five stacks easily enough against tough bosses). I prefer to run with Superior Sigil of Strength to get some extra might on crits, but you could also take Superior Sigil of Frailty for more vulnerability instead.

I agree and disagree. While it certainly works as a proc-based weapon, I actually prefer it as a zerker weapon that just so happens to also proc a lot of things. It doesn’t deal spike damage well, but does deal high and consistent damage. Because it passes through walls, it is extremely easy to abuse terrain with.

colesy.8490:

Both classes are top tier for dungeons (in fact it’s better to stack eles rather than warriors), but eles are far more useful in WvW due to being able to drop the most commonly used combo fields by commanders (lightning, water and fire).

…unless engineers can too in which case take back what I said, they’re both good.

Engineers can have reliable access to every combo field but ethereal, lightning and dark.

@OP: From what I gather, the biggest difference between elementalists and engineers is that elementalist skills frequently follow a “rotation” of sorts, while engineer skills are used on a more spur-of-the-moment basis. I do not play an elementalist myself, but I play an engineer. I am never unhappy with my class, and whenever I create a new character for any purpose, I find some aspect of engineers that I miss.

Ursan.7846:

Servers like Northern Shiverpeaks do daily runs of Karka Queen at reset. They often do Orr temples first, then move onto the Karka Queen maybe ~1hr to 1:30 hrs after the reset.

We don’t do it every night, but this guy is on the money. NSP frequently clears the Karka with our temple zerg.

We’re all engies here, so let’s enjoy our shared interests with a game!

In this thread, post a partial engineer build. Include weapon, healing skill, utilities, and either Elixir X or Supply Drop for an elite (No mortar, folks!) and try to “answer” the post above you with traits designed to make it viable (Or as close as you can get), and why its viable. For bonus points, post a video of you using the build

I’ll start: Pistol/Shield, Elixir H, Thumper turret, Elixir Gun, Elixir C, and Supply Drop.

With engies, the general rule of thumb is that if you can justify your choices logically and run the build acceptably, it’s a viable build. There aren’t any engie skills considered worthless, and its very easy to put together a build suiting any particular skillset.

In general, I advocate focusing yourself on one area: choose between bunker, support, cc, crit damage, or condi damage. Pick a weapon that is applicable to your role (shield is amazing for bunker, pistols pack a punch with condis, rifle is godly for cc or crits) and in general, you’ll also want at least one kit that fills a similar or synergistic function. Toolkit is the canonical bunker kit, bombs function well with bunker and support if you take Elixir-Infused Bombs in the invention line, elixir gun works well with support, flamethrower works well with bunker or crits, and grenades work ok with crit or amazing with condis.

Once you’ve got that, you’re half done. Pick your utilities to complement your function: gadgets give cc and mobility, elixirs give damage buffs and support, turrets give CC and meh damage, and an all-kit build has crazy versatility but might not use a kit as well as a more specialized user.

Your elite skill, 90% of the time, will be supply drop. It’s too good of a skill to pass up, and is a really wonderful elite. Elixir X is unreliable, and the mortar, while a lovely idea, is extremely bugged (don’t use it).

Got this far? Now you’re in the home stretch! Choose traits to complement the big parts of your build. Focus on damage with grenades? Take explosive traits. Focus on damage with anything else? You’ll want firearms. Use elixirs? That’s what alchemy’s for. If you do WvW, I’ll strongly strongly recommend that you put 10 points into tools and take Speedy Kits, since it allows you to keep 100% swiftness on yourself.

As far as gear goes, see the same guidelines as the traits. Take what most enhances your primary focus.

Here’s my stock response to “How do I build?” Individualized help below.

OK, so you don’t want explosive kits. Flamethrower can be good for a very wide variety of builds. Toolkit is a great tank kit, though its use in damage builds is somewhat limited. Elixir gun is amazing at support.

All stat combos have a name to them, the full listing is here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

-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 Toolkit, as it is one of the most defensive gears available.

-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 acceptably with the Flamethrower if you focus on a crit and proc based build, but is primarily used with Pistol/Pistol or Pistol/Shield builds and condition-grenades builds.

-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 a lot of kits, but shines with the Flamethrower and SD-Rifle builds. Keep in mind, however, that if you use it with the flamethrower, you’re putting yourself in significant risk of death, since you’re in extremely close combat using the least defensive gear possible. SD rifle builds are builds using the Static Discharge trait in the Tools traitline to deal heavy burst damage before the opponent can react.

-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 your two weapon kits. However, getting it is both a chore and a bore.

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, or aren’t 80 yet, 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 strongly.

TL;DR: Go Soldier’s/Invader’s until you have a better understanding of how your engineer plays and what you want out of it.

Moving isn’t as important as dodging is. Also, a mentality very common in GW2 is “The best defense is a good offense,” since a dead mob offers no threat. To that effect, guardians using greatsword and elementalists using dagger/dagger or dagger/focus are great.

That said, it is possible to build a character to withstand significant punishment. Guardians using a hammer, mace/shield, or mace/focus are capable of surviving significant damage through active mitigation, through blocks and regeneration. Elementalists require more traits to do similar feats, but through water attunement have access to powerful healing abilities.

There is no means of being a healer per se, but that doesn’t mean support isn’t viable. Guardian shouts apply powerful boons to nearby allies, and their staff skill Empower (I want to say it’s 3 or 4) applies 12 stacks of might to nearby allies. For frame of reference, might caps out at 25, and most might-stacking characters only manage up to 15 solo. Elementalists with the staff can perform other means of utility, however I am not terribly well-versed in them so I can’t do them justice. Simply put, I am much happier when my guild leader is fighting beside me on his elementalist.

It doesn’t take 3rd party apps/databases to figure out combos; each ability that starts a combo lists the field they create in the skill tooltip, and each ability that ends a combo lists the finisher type. There is no reason not to use combos when you can, unless you’re specifically saving the finishers for a different combo. In general, any time your character launches an object of some sort its a projectile finisher, any time you spin its a whirl finisher, any time you move/change location its a leap finisher, and any time you cause an explosion its a blast finisher. Leaps tend to apply a beneficial effect to you, blasts apply the same in an AoE, projectiles usually apply a negative effect, and whirls apply the same in an AoE.

Finally, if you two do end up leaving for another game, have fun! You realized that this game isn’t for you, and reacted in a much more responsible manner than many of the residents of these forums who feel in a similar manner.

Look up SD builds; many of them use rifle as their main damage source.

Also, you say you’re new to engineer; how about kits? 90% of engineer builds use at least one kit. Grenade kit, in particular, is the single most damaging skillset an engineer has access to, while each other kit fills its own niche.

Elixir gun creates a Light combo field with its number 5 skill, Super Elixir. To me, the skill feels as though it should be a Water field instead, given that it’s caused by a liquid elixir and is used for healing purposes. Here’s 2 questions to the engineer community:

1) Would changing the Super Elixir be either too powerful or too weak? Water fields tend to be rare, as they provide powerful healing potential. However, light fields provide easy access to condition removal and retaliation. In your opinion, would this change unbalance the weapon in either direction?

2) Ignoring balance, would you rather the skill be a Water field or a Light field? I personally like Water better in general, but I hardly represent the entire engineer community. Different people generally have different playstyles and preferences.

Justdeifyme.9387:

NO, I DON’T WANT A FOOD-TREADMILL!

Better watch your weight, then. You’ve gotta burn those calories somehow…

I’d be willing to wager 5gold that there isn’t. For starters, how the kitten would it be implemented? “For every attack taken in x seconds, attacks taken in the next y seconds take z% less damage”? It just doesn’t work.

They don’t want to limit direct damage the way condition damage is limited, but instead want to find a means of letting condition damage be as unrestricted as direct damage.

For whatever reason, 5-man parties are a staple feature of RPG’s. Most games that trace their ancestry back to D&D (ie, pretty much all non-asian RPGs) have party sizes of 4 to 6. MMOs in particular seem to be fond of 5 and multiples thereof.

I used 30/20/0/10/10, grenade kit, rabid gear. Run around throwing grenades behind you with perma-swiftness and perma-vigor.

With engies, the general rule of thumb is that if you can justify your choices logically and run the build acceptably, it’s a viable build. There aren’t any engie skills considered worthless, and its very easy to put together a build suiting any particular skillset.

In general, I advocate focusing yourself on one area: choose between bunker, support, cc, crit damage, or condi damage. Pick a weapon that is applicable to your role (shield is amazing for bunker, pistols pack a punch with condis, rifle is godly for cc or crits) and in general, you’ll also want at least one kit that fills a similar or synergistic function. Toolkit is the canonical bunker kit, bombs function well with bunker and support if you take Elixir-Infused Bombs in the invention line, elixir gun works well with support, flamethrower works well with bunker or crits, and grenades work ok with crit or amazing with condis.

Once you’ve got that, you’re half done. Pick your utilities to complement your function: gadgets give cc and mobility, elixirs give damage buffs and support, turrets give CC and meh damage, and an all-kit build has crazy versatility but might not use a kit as well as a more specialized user.

Your elite skill, 90% of the time, will be supply drop. It’s too good of a skill to pass up, and is a really wonderful elite. Elixir X is unreliable, and the mortar, while a lovely idea, is extremely bugged (don’t use it).

Got this far? Now you’re in the home stretch! Choose traits to complement the big parts of your build. Focus on damage with grenades? Take explosive traits. Focus on damage with anything else? You’ll want firearms. Use elixirs? That’s what alchemy’s for. If you do WvW, I’ll strongly strongly recommend that you put 10 points into tools and take Speedy Kits, since it allows you to keep 100% swiftness on yourself.
As far as gear goes, see the same guidelines as the traits. Take what most enhances your primary focus.

Here’s what I post in response to “How do I build my 80”. If you want levelling stuff as well, then here’s some tips:

-Bomb kit requires practically nothing traitwise to be fully functional. It hits hard, provides utility, and lets you learn to self-combo effectively.
-Flamethrower is more trait dependant, but not extremely so. It requires both t2 firearms and t2 alchemy to be optimal, but is viable without. It’s also fun.
-Grenades, while the optimal level 80 damage kit, are poor until you can get explosives t3 at level 60.
-Toolkit requires nothing to be good. Bop some stuff with a wrench.
-Elixir gun requires little to be good, but is mainly useful in group play. It’s very much worth having available to you, but I’d only recommend pulling it out in group events.
-Turrets are weird. One alone is useless, but a certain two (rocket and net) together plus the right weapon (rifle) can permalock a single target. In general, you won’t want them, but they’re not worthless.
-Speedy Kits (10 points in Tools) is a must: it provides permanent swiftness uptime.
-Rocket Boots are extraordinarily useful, as your movespeed when using them increases the distance traveled. With swiftness or Super Speed, you go far!
-Elixirs are primarily powerful when they have full trait support. At lower levels, they’re good, but they don’t have that extra oomph that HGH brings.

You want a non-HGH and non-squishy build? Damage and squishyness go hand in hand, so I’m guessing that means you want a support/bunker build. My current one is 10/0/30/20/10 : Bomb kit and two utilities of your choice, this build can fit any. I personally like slick shoes stunbreak and rocketboots. Trait healing bombs, larger AoE bombs, HP regen while using a kit, and use Cleric’s gear. You’ll have as much healing and regeneration going on as any guardian on the block.

If you don’t like close ranges, grab Elixir Gun instead of Bomb Kit. It isn’t as trait dependant when you’re using it to support, so it gives significantly more flexibility.

Foefaller.1082:

It’s usually a bad idea to be so specific in suggestions, unless they are asked for by the developers, because copyright law means Anet’s lawyers won’t let them touch this with a 100-foot pole.

That being said, I would love to see crossbows in the game.

I’m pretty sure that anything posted on their forums they have full rights to. Not entirely sure on that, but wouldn’t be surprised.

You really don’t want a build with both flamethrowers and grenades. Each is wonderful in its own right, but they are fairly subpar put together due to prohibitive stat combos. FT requires 20 points in firearms and another 20 in alchemy to be optimal, while grenades require 30 in explosives to be good.

That said, you have a number of options:

-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, and the defensive stats are somewhat wasted since the range of grenades keeps you safe.

-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 acceptably with the Flamethrower if you focus on a crit and proc based build, but it synergizes amazingly with grenades due to the Shrapnel trait.

-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 grenades, but shines with the Flamethrower. Keep in mind, however, that if you use it with the flamethrower, you’re putting yourself in significant risk of death.

-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 your two weapon kits.

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 Invader’s.

I just got a commander tag after saving for a while, and was wondering how best to effectively lead. For example, I recall reading that commanders tend to be best as characters capable of surviving inside the enemy WvW/NPC zerg, so their allies can have a point to rally towards. While I would not have come up with this myself, it makes perfect sense. Are there other useful tips to commanding that wouldn’t be initially obvious?

Sawnic.6795:

Shpongle.6025:

I say, give easy mode and hard mode.

Easy mode: Liadri has 75% less HP, does 75% less damage, and does not have a cripple skill. No rifts spawn and once phase 2 starts, the aoe 1shot kills stop. Remove all 1 shot kills.

Hard mode: The way it is now.

Rewards for easy mode: both achievements and the miniature
Rewards for hard mode: botch achievements, the miniature and 10gold

EDIT: oh, and people don’t spawn DEAD outside the dome on the catwalk. We spawn alive and well.

Translation:

“Give me a free mini.”

Swap the rewards and I’ll support it. Easymode and hardmode both get 10g, while hardmode only gives the mini.

The whole point of the mini is for the hardmode players to have some form of representation that they are indeed hardmode. There is currently no other means ingame (Sorry legendary users, I respect you but have no proof of skill).

A, or if it gets really really painful, E. I don’t mind leaving, but leaving a player sitting there dead just feels wrong to me.

Handin.4032:

The guantlet is permanent. It will be like the other minigames, so they should nerf the farming sooner rather than later. Or else there will be weeks when the minigame is picked that people will just farm it for massive amounts of money.

If the content was entirely temporary, it wouldn’t be as big of an issue.

Um, last I checked the gauntlet was an annual, temporary event. It’ll come back, but it isn’t permanent.

Just leaving this here.