Guild Wars 2

First of all. Engineer is one of the hardest profession to master so don’t worry. I played the game a lot in PvP and played around 1200 matches when i first started to play engineer. It took me around 100 games before I was really comfortable with it and really confident in me in 1vs1 fight. So don’t worry if you have some difficulty. It’s perfectly normal with the profession to started with.

Marauder Rifle engineer don’t give you much room for error. You are probably better off with a Soldier Rifle Engineer. It’s a better build overall and will be easier to survive at first.

For the magnet (Tool wrench pool). It’s unblockable, but you can still dodge it, it need a target, it can be out of range or the target can have stability/invulnerability, etc. So that probably because one of those 4 reasons that sometime it just don’t work and go on cooldown. It’s not a bug, it’s just how it work. Now if the target is knockdown instead of being pull, that seem to be a current bug of the skill.

Shiren.9532:

Defining “viable” as “possible” is such a disingenuous way to approach the discussion because it treats every build on the same level as the absolute worst builds.

I agree with your intend, but not that sentence. The definition of viable is ’’possible’’. That’s the actual definition of the word. People should stop using viable when in really they want to ask if their build is any good. Word have definition for a reason and their meaning evolve over time, but Viable isn’t near meaning good. Some people should stop simply saying that any build is viable and leave it at that, when they know that it wasn’t the real question. But people asking question, should also stop using the word Viable.

Sifu.9745:

Oh, well … So many options how to build your char but only ONE is optimal/recomended for Dungeons? What a great game … Why do we have different weapons then and different builds? Just for fun?
Anyway, thx for your replies, guys. I will stay on my Warrior for dungeons.

I don’t know what you want. Optimal mean the best option. By definition there will always be only one optimal solution, one optimal build. That doesn’t mean that you have one optimal build and everything else is bad. There is one optimal build, some great build, some good build, some bad build. It can be anywhere in there.

Rymer.4017:

I would like to know how the devs feel about this sense the topic of builds in PvE is build for damage and nothing else when the game offers 100’s if not 1000’s of build options. So the question here is are all build types viable in PvE or do you want us to play the meta?

Here’s my opinion.

All build are viable without exception.

Meta is the most optimal build, but there still some variation depending on the situation. For exemple, Radiant Fire or Retribution traits? It’s almost impossible to say which one is 100% meta.

Where the community have some issue is with great and good build (if you want to use the category of Metabattle. Especially in dungeon. Build that should have a wide acceptation because they do a really good job, receive some hate just because they ain’t meta.

On the other hand, a good majority of build options are just bad. They will allow you to do the job like any build. But they won’t be any good.

- Dungeons : You can do them all, but what kept me doing for a while was to get better at them and do them in near record time with a team of guildmates. After that, It was solo run that gave me a huge challenge to accomplish.

- Fractals : They are harder than dungeon and even if it’s a small randomness, it will disappear with the expansion anyway. Some really nice specific reward there, but it’s mostly because it’s fun to play. Trio fractal level 50 is a another challenge that you can give yourself later.

- Living Story : Season 1 and 2 were great. Not always, but I still have some great memory with my friends. It’s not really pay to play. Season 1 was completly free but can’t be accessed anymore. Season 2 was free if you played during their release. Is it worth buying? If you really like the game yes, if you try to find something to hook you up, no.

- Silverwaste : The main motivation there is gold. It’s great place for that and it can get old rather quickly if you farm a lot, I always have fun doing it from time to time. I like to lead chest farm. But again, that shouldn’t be what hook you up.

- Collection/Achivement : Not everybody like that but it can be really fun if you are a completionist. Even if you are not, some achivement are very cool to do. Like the jumping puzzle, the mini dungeons, etc. Personnally, that was always a great background motivation for me. I like to complete things.

- World Bosses : You need at least to do them all once. After that a lot of people like to farm them or just do some each day, Teq and Karka Queen being the two most popular. And of course Triple Trouble is awesome but hard to get into.

- Cosmetic : Some skin are hard to get, but I always had fun to gear up my characters with different thematics. My main changed looks a couple of times.

- WvW : I roamed alone for a long time before I joined a zerg bursting guild and it’s one of the 3 most fun I had in gw2. Having your team setup and organized to kill zerg twice as big as you can create some epic situation.

- sPvP : I went through different phase in the last 3 years and for the last one, sPvP was the main focus. Most of my friends didn’t want to get into that, but when you really taste it in a team, it’s hard to leave.

Mesmer isn’t the best dps for dungeon to begin with and from what I heard condi mesmer is a bit less dps than assassin or zerker mesmer. So it’s probably not a good idea. I wouldn’t go near as far as saying that you gonna make other people live hell.

In reality a lot lot lot of people just don’t know what exactly is the dps of a mesmer condi including myself. I didn’t found anything anywhere on the net, so maybe only a couple of people out there did the actual math/testing.

Phineas Poe.3018:

This is really a solo queue-only issue, though. In organized team fights you’ll have elementalists, guardians, or soon enough revenants to support you. There’s plenty of counters to condition builds, which is why most teams don’t really run them.

True. I’m the most efficient when I’m backing up Eles and Guardian on points. They bunk, we support each other, I can take their place for a moment when they need it, and Engineer is great addition for stomp/rez.

Ya if they are 120g on the first day, the price will probably drop between 60 and 90gold in 2 weeks.

If we talk about PvE. Sinister is pretty close to Bezerker, but it depend on the situation. I don’t have definitive information on all profession but

- Guardian in sinister is as good and even better than Bezerker in solo situation. In party, Sinister guardian are a little behind bezerker by around 8-10%.

- Engineer sinister are better than bezerker if fight last 14sec or more. In record run that mean around 1/3 of dungeons, in speed run it’s probably like half, while in pugs it’s almost all of them.

- Ranger sinister is better than berzerker.

You just need to keep in mind that in all situation Sinister have two disadvantage over bezerker. They have some problem against object (CoF path 1 door, burrow from AC, etc) and don’t work as well in a party that use Icebow a lot.

Basically. If you run pugs, you can run either Sinister/Berserker/Assassin on pretty much all profession and it will be good. If you run pugs, but want to optimize yourself sinister is good better only for some professions. If you run in organized speed run, then it depend on a lot of variable, but Berserker usually win.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Blows my mind that Chaith just won the WTS on Saturday and people are still saying engineer is struggling in PvP. We’re weaker than we were pre-patch, but we still slot well into most group compositions.

We just aren’t the solo queue carry we used to be.

Well I think that most of it was adaptation. With limited condition removal the improvement of condition hit us hard. But I think that most of it was in our mind. I’m one of the guys that freak out with the drop of engineer after the patch to be honest. But I restarted to play it after a couple of weeks and it’s not too bad really. We are actually still pretty decent.

Radiant Fire is better DPS than Retribution when you use a torch. Retribution is better when you use a focus. Metabattle wasn’t updated really well after the patch and said that Torch is better than Focus only in fight longer than 30s. But that was pre-patch and don’t work anymore. Radiant Fire + Torch is always better than Retribution + Focus. But Focus can still be nice when you need the block/blind. And the difference in dps isn’t that high for short fight.

For Amplified Wrath vs Perfect Inscription, i’m not sure. Quick math say that AW will give you around 300 DPS, while Perfect Inscription will give you around 120 DPS. So AW will both be superior and more pratical since you will want to swap Bane for a utility from time to time. But that’s with a build that use Supreme Justice, Randiant Fire and in a full buffed party. Meaning that in that situation you give more burning that AW improve and you have so much power already that Signet of Bane improvement is smaller.

When you are in a pug that don’t have as much power improvement (might, banner, EA) and you take Absolute Resolution instead of Supreme Justice and Retribution instead of Radiant Fire. Then the two will get closer in term of additional dps. At that point i’m not sure which is better. Personally, since the difference is so small, I always keep AW because that way I never have to swap it, when I take another skill instead of Signet of Bane in the middle of a dungeon.

NineLives.8725:

Ah, I spoke as a 100% pvp engineer.
Btw, we now know how there is still some happy guys here : pve is ok !

Ok. But still. In PvE we were a beast for so long. It’s just recently that we had a rough road and it’s not that dramatic. I think the condition situation was just harder to adapt to for engineer and the situation is stabilizing these days.

Odokuro.5049:

And I am guessing that Skill Points are roughly the same, as I learn the skills by purchasing them with the points I have as I level?

Skill points were divided in two.

Hero Points : You gain them by leveling up to 80. (Past 80 you don’t gain them anymore) or by doing hero challenge (aka skill challenge). You use them to unlock specialisation (aka trait line) and skills. You can unlock them in the training tab in the Hero panel.

Spirit Shards : You gain them dropping them from various source or by using a tome of knowledge (level up past 80 without using a tome of knowledge won’t give you a spirit shard). You can use them like the skills points for mystic forge recipe and buying stuff at Myani.

Basically, they divided between the two major role of skill points. Unlocking stuff on your character and doing Mystic Forge.

NineLives.8725:

Realistics engineers left faster than every other classes since all our cool toys got broken so bad. Only the greatest dreamers and stubborns stays and looks positive at first, but deep in their hearth they are mainly desperates and frustated.

?? I don’t see that at all. Engineer improved in PvE from a unwanted profession to one of the top dps of the game. In PvP we had a drawback with the last big patch, but we seem to get around that and get back some good build. The profession is in a good place overall.

Engineer was my first profession back when the game launched, but I stopped playing it rather quickly. Now, it’s the profession that I play the most.

Like Jaxom said.

The Tether have more damage on single target than the passive. But the active then go into a cooldown. It’s better to use the tether against bosses or champion.

You don’t have pts anymore. You choose 3 trait lines from your 5 cores trait lines and then you can choose one adept, one master and one grandmaster trait for all 3 of those trait line (which are now renamed Core Specialisation).

I think that’s a good summary of Engineer’s state of mind.

Marukeru.8746:

When I play Guardian, I am thinking Paladin. I don’t play for DPS, I play for Longevity and Support.

Guardian =/= Paladin.

Guardian have a low HP pool, but he’s king of active defense. Don’t be fool by the gear. Gear don’t help you support. Gear can provide you two main thing. DPS or Personnal Surviability. Thing of it as a slider. At one extreme you have Sinister or Berzerker, which are full dps but don’t have as much survivability or safety net. At the other end you have stuff like Nomad that have super high survivability but at no damage. Since defensive stats is so poor in GW2 and active defense is so powerful, there is no reason to get anything else than Zerker/Sinister/Assassin unless you need some training wheel, like playing more tanking, or don’t want/don’t have the time to improve your game.

The only exception for that is healing power which is the only support stats. But it’s not really that powerful in PvE. A Zealot guardian (Power/Precision/Healing Power) can be decent in making the run easier. But most group don’t the babysitting of healing.

The real power of the guardian is active support, like I said Guardian is the king of that. Blind, Aegis, Condi Removal, Protection, Reflection, etc Guardian have a ton of all that. But that never come from gear, it come from trait, skills, etc. That’s why most build will have a full DPS gear, but still bring a lot of support.

Skills
Skills like Retreat, Wall of Reflection, Purging Flames and Shield of Avenger are some of the most powerful support skill of the guardian. Stand your ground and Hallowed Ground are also good in specific situation.

Weapons
- Mace is a good sustain weapon to keep your team high hp.
- GS is good for dps, but for Binding Blades which is one of the two best PvE CC.
- Hammer auto-attack combine with the Trait Writ of Persistance allow high protection uptime.

Trait
- Zealous Blade give some healing on GS. On a GS + Mace/Torch build that mean that you alway heal a bit your team whatever weapon you are in at the moment.
- Justice is Blind + Renewed Justice allow you to blind like crazy against pack of trash.
- Invigorated Bulwark give you more Healing Power on mace when you block. Pratical on a weapon that heal on both skill 1 and 2.
- Selfless Daring heal on dodge, in a game where dodge is very important
- Writ of Persistence allow your symbol to last longer and to heal. This make the hammer a very powerful support weapon since you gonna have perma symbol under your team.
- Master of Consecreation reduce cooldown and longer time on Wall of Reflection mostly, which is one of the most important support the guardian bring.
- Absolute Resolution + Battle Presence give about 1/3 of the regen from the Warrior Healing signet to the whole team.

Gear
- Bezerker or Sinister are the best choice for Guardian since gear stats don’t really affect support
- Zealot is the second best choice. Not really needed, but it won’t really affect your speed that much in a good team. In a pug team either you keep them alive or if a good portion of your team don’t have better dps the run will be slow and painful (IMO).
- Cleric is really not a good idea. It can make a duo or trio run easier, but should never be used in a full party of 5. For now, the only good exemple of Cleric that I saw is this group of 3 people doing fractal 50 with a cleric guardian. But they are good players, in pugs the same setup would be terrible.

People say that after 1 month of every single MMO. People are saying that from GW2 from almost day 1 and still I always have people to play, maps are full at all World Boss I go, my guild have a hard time keeping below the 500 limit, etc.

It’s not because ppl on internet say stuff that it’s true. Does Anet lost a good portion of ppl from lauch? Ya for sure. A lot of people play only for a couple of days or months. But imo it’s normal. A lot of people play MMO like a single player game. They go through the big stuff and go to another game.

Thorp.7982:

- Account bound raw ascended materials in wallet (lowest level of them, dust/fragments/etc.)

Disagree. It’s a material not a currency. If it’s in the wallet you can’t put them in the mystic forge, craft, use it on your princess/mawdry2, etc.

They will have to change how the wallet work for that to work. I know why you want that and I agree, but the wallet isn’t the right too.

Rozbuska.5263:

I have full asc sinister and in my usual run with regular party (me, war, guard, 2x ele) I experienced few problems with that low power dps simply. Ofc its nothing major its just not as comfortable as it should be. Also if your party is builded around 4 IB is lower power output bad idea.
Best idea will be switched sets and builds as necessary

Yup, exactly it depend on the situation. Condition still need some work on anet part anyway.

Necro : Excellent in WvW (part of the Meta), Great to Good in PvP, decent in PvE but the dead last profession.

Mesmer : Excellent in PvP (one of the best profession at the moment), Great to good in WvW (awesome but at very specific task, you won’t be effective as much if not in a half organized zerg), PvE good

Obtena.7952:

There are are few builds that compete for high damage. The one using torch is just one of them. Therefore the OP thinking torch is ‘meta’ is not correct. If he doesn’t want to use torch and still get a high damage build to satisfy PPUG zerkers or whoever, he can.

Like I said, if he doesn’t want to be in the top 1%, he doesn’t need to run torch. Very few people require that when teaming. If he did want to be in that top 1%, he wouldn’t CARE about PVE builds that don’t use specific weapons.

Meta is only one build and it include Torch. Now there is a lot of great build that don’t use torch, but that doesn’t make them meta. Now, there is a very very very limited amount of build in the Top 1%. Pretty much just the meta. Now if you are ready to sacrifice 5-10% you can get 2-3 builds (a lot more if you cound just changing one thing as a new build).

If he was just asking a build with no torch, it would have build easy and you would be totally right. But the fact he asked for both mace and torch to not be part of the build, reduce the option if he still want to have 85-90% of the dps of the meta.

Rozbuska.5263:

Condi dps is best now if you use it on training golem but in real enviroment it have lots of disadvantages. Lots of bosses like Alpha in CoE periodicly clear condis. Condis are useless on stuff like burrows in AC. Not mention that majority of bosses are long down before that 14s theshold if you run with good party. For soloing are condi great but personaly I will stick with zerk to HoT release and then we will see.

Sinister have a good amount of power so yes you gonna kill stuff like burrow a little bit slower, but it will never be an issue in a group. The only thing is maybe not volunteer for the door at CoF path 1. But other than that, it will never be a problem. It’s not like object are hard to kill. Of course if you run Rabid, it’s another story.

Boss ain’t long down before the 14s. If you do the list, there is 19 bosses that die under 14 second and 23 bosses that die in more than 14 second. And those numbers come from record runs. Something that even most good party can’t achieve. In a good party you probably only gonna kill under 14sec for 8-9 bosses. In normal pug, almost no bosses die under 14sec.

So Zerker will be better in some situation, but Sinister will be better in other. In a good group sinister will be good in Arah, HotW, CoF path 3, SE, TA Aetherpath. Zerker will be better in AC, TA, CoF path 1/2. While the rest will be pretty close either way. In most pugs, Sinister will mostly always be better.

But you are absolutely right about the bosses that clear condi. Which is a mistake in my opinion. They should modify that.

Condi Engie have the best normal dps in figh that last 14second or more. It’s better than Thief and Ele if you don’t take into account Icebow burst.

Hammer GS Zeal/Honor/Virtue is around 15% les dps than the meta.

GS + Sw/Focus Zeal/Radiance/Virtue is around 10% less dps than the meta.

Otherwise all other build use either Mace or Torch or have even less dps.

Champ farming don’t work anymore on starting maps, but they work on other map. But most people that were doing that do Silverwaste now. World boss train still exist but there are different. Now world boss are on a timer (you can google it to find a timer). So everybody regroup at the right time. You don,t need a commander and link wp to chat to make sure everybody follow.

Guys. Remember it’s specific PvP Legendary back item. You don’t need to do PvP to get all Legendary Back Item, just the one unique to PvP.

I have a story that happen to me yesterday, but the bad pugs was my 2 friends lol. I don’t do fractal as much as I’m used to, but now I do daily to get some pristine before the expansion. So yesterday I wanted to do a fractal for the daily and 3 friends wanted to join. I’m setting up for a fractal 50, but one of my friend said he only have 40 AR. I’m a little disappointed, but he’s a friend so we do a level 38 (39 is fun, but I did too many time with the exploding corpse). We get a pug for the 5th.

Everything go bad from the start. 1 of my friend is level 50 and good, but the 2 other are lower fractal level, don’t really play much these day and have some difficulty. They just die 3 times when doing the wisps, then even with 2 guards we wipe about 4 times trying to do the harpies. Then we wipe at Old Tom because one step on the floor while we are still running and start the fight. We then wipe again because the guys that start the fan do it before the poison start so it doesn’t work. Me and my friend that is level 50 try to duo it, but we die because we were already half health after trying to rez people. Finally, one of my friend say oh kitten I need to go and quit, we need to get another pug and finish the fractal. At Volcanoe we lose one villager and wipe 1 time at the shaman. Partially, my fault. It been a while and wasn’t great with Binding Blades and reflect position, but I notice that one of my friend die like a lot. Finally we get to Mai trin and we see that the friend don’t have enough AR and he said oups I had the wrong gear. Faceplam.

To the pugs that did the fractal with us yesterday I say sorry. Even guildmates can be worst than pug sometime.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

I know its a safety thing in case rewards are badly unbalanced, they don’t want to crash the economy, but knowing I’m volunteering to not get to keep “anything” for my time spent makes it hard to justify spending the whole weekend in beta, which I would have preferred to do.

Your time spend is to experience part of the expansion and to give feedback. It’s a freaking beta. No beta give reward for a game, why this one should. Remember that they give you infinite amount of exotic to gear up immediately your beta character how you want. If you could keep the reward it would be like giving almost infinite precursor to everybody with the beta. Especially since the beta is behind a pay wall (pre-order the expansion), it would be a pay to win settup, which is pretty bad.

Yes. Specialization, Mastery, Legendary quest, new maps, storyline, Fractals, etc. The vast majority of new content will be for level 80. Lower level stuff will probably have some new stuff, but nothing really big.

I guess Adventures will be accessible for low levels. PvP and WvW will also be accessible to low levels, but that’s pretty much it.

PvE
- GS + Mace/Torch (or Focus) with a Zeal/Radiance/Virtue (Best DPS)
- Hammer + Mace/Torch (or Focus) with Zeal/Radiance/Honor (3-4% less DPS)
- GS + Mace/Torch (or Focus) with a Zeal/Radiance/Honor (6-8% less DPS)

Those three build are similar in DPS and pretty much the best. Choose which one you prefer.

- GS + Mace/Torch (Scepter) with Zeal/Radiance/Virtue in sinister gear is also a pretty decent build. It’s equal to zerker build in solo. In group it’s about 8-10% less dps against single target, but it have highest dps against group of mobs.

PvP

3 Main family of Build : Bunker, Medi Guard or Burn Burst. Which with some variation. Bunker is the most popular right now. Medi dropped with the last path, but it’s still decent. Burn Burst is powerful, but a one trick pony so it not always work well against good players.

- Bunker : Mace/Focus + Staff with Valor/Honor/Virtue
- Medi : GS + Scepter/Focus with Zeal/Valor/Virtue
- Burn Burst : Sword/Focus + Scepter/Torch with Radiance/Valor/Virtue

But a lot of modification can be done on each of those to adept them to your need.

WvW

You can use Medi or Condi Burst to roam in WvW. For Zerging, it’s the good old AH frontliner as always.

Staff + Hammer (or GS) with Valor/Honor/Virtue.

That’s just the most popular right now.

Doom is still used. It’s just that right now sigil of Leeching is more popular.

Doom does about 536 dmg over 8 second and limit the healing capability. It’s probably a better sigil against profession with a good amount of healing like Guardian, Warrior, Engineer. But Guardian have a good amount of condi removal so.

Leeching does around 975 dmg and heal for around the same amount. It’s probably better against squishy profession like Thief and Mesmer.

Right now, you see a lot more Thief/Mesmer than Engineer/Warrior/Guardian and that’s probably why Leeching is more popular right now. But I don’t think there is a clear winner here, it all depend on how you play and what you prefer.

Fox.3469:

People get so worked up over nothing, these new legendary’s mean actual content, not just crafting like the old ones. But actual things you need to do.

They announced the legendary for the end of 2013. I understand that the concept changed over time, but 2 freaking years to only get 3. The new collection/scavenger hunt is content only if we make one. 3 weapons our of 19, there is a great chance that people won’t want any of those 3 just because they don’t use them in their character.

Fox.3469:

It’s been known for a long time not all would be in the release og HoT.

It was a disappointment when they announced that too. I was sure at that time that they would only focus on Legendary for weapon use by specialisation so around 6-7 new legendary, not 3.

Fox.3469:

But in terms of content this is already far more then the old legendary’s combined. I love the idea of a weapon meaning more then “hey look i can farm/buy about 3 k gold.”

Again, only if you make them. If that content need 2 years to put all new legendary in the game so that most people only do 1 or 2. Maybe their concept at the base is just bad. Too much wait and work for a content that people will only do in a very partial way.

Fox.3469:

Every class has 1 legendairy now, and i am ok with them dropping in skins on a more regular timeframe, and just release them when a certain track is ready, instead of waiting, and i also am excited to see these things tied to the story more, if at all possible. I believe a gradual release of skins suggests that tough.

It depend. If they announce that each month after the expansion they will give us another legendary weapon, then I can be ok with that. But we have zero information and if we look at what Anet did in the past, we probably won’t have that. We probably gonna wait 3-6 months after the expansion, got 3-4 legendary, wait a couple of months, then 3-4 other legendary, etc.

Ya it’s very disappointing. I remember that they announced new legendary for the end of 2013 in a post long long time ago and we’ll get only 3 by the end of 2015. My only hope at this point is that each month after the expansion, they will introduce a new legendary weapon. But even if they do that, they will probably only start like 3-4 months after the expansion because you know anet and breaks.

I already bought the expansion and I’m sure I’ll have fun with my guild and friends for a couple of months. But overall the expansion is kind of disappointing. They could still surprise us, but …

Kageseigi.2150:

That makes more sense, thank you!
I think I was applying the formula for heals instead of the one for damage.

Do you know if there’s any documentation of DPS for each skill somewhere? That seems like it would be quite interesting.

On the wiki, most skill have their Coefficient in parenthesis. For the actual attack speed, one a small portion of them have something on the wiki. You can’t really count on the cast time because this doesn’t include the aftercast. But if you try to calculate dps that way, it’s the best way to get weird numbers. It’s hard to time perfectly 1 skill and a small error of 0.25 second when they add up over a period of 30sec.

People usually time a rotation to include swapping and cooldown and limit the errors. You just fight a mob or a golem in spvp and time your complete rotation with a video capture. That way you know all the skill you use during your rotation and you have a very good estimate of the time needed to complete that rotation.

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

After many fractal runs, I find no need in spamming icebow 5’s tbh.
-Headshot is a SEVERE waste of DPS. Especially when running with a class that gives quickness like guardian/mesmer.. a full line of initiative gives.. like 4-5 headshots? that’s also 4-5 pistol whips in around 4-7 seconds..
-You’re looking at.. lets say 2000-3000 damage (from the 4-5 Headshots) and 80,000-100,000k+ from pistolwhips (4-5 of them).

Also as someone stated, ele Freezes, you remove defiance with PW spams for DPS, Pick up icebow, then Icebow 5 again if you want. Poof.

The thing that you missed is that you never do 4-5 H. You only need to stay in D/P for 2-3 second. Steal + Basilik Venom + 1-2 HS is really quick and after you can do the rest of the fight in D/D.

You lose some DPS during a couple of second by using D/P rather than S/P, but you’ll gain far more dps since you gonna switch to D/D very quicly. Especialy since the kind of fight when you want to double Icebow are fight against single target bosses where S/P can’t really compete in term of dps to D/D.

But at this point, the difference isn’t much really. Both method work great. It really depend which one you prefer to play and in which group.

Because they plan to introduce a lot of achivement in the future. Recently with living story season 2 they calm down, but they older living story update use to gave use between 200 and 400 AP that could be done in 2 weeks usually.

Not too hard to speculate that Anet could add maybe 10k new AP with the expansion.

baroi.3264:

Darknicrofia.2604:

the reason more guards play honor instead of zeal isn’t because shattered aegis’ damage is low, its because they’re playing bunker instead of medi.

Meditation with Honor, you should try…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAS7dlsAhqhY3QwcIwPEHNEVO+uv8DPBRQXeH2tMAA-TZBFwANuAAEOIA42foaZAAPBAA

don’t stay locked in builds of meta battle website, they are only one way for those who do not know the class, builds are chosen by your role and team composition.

Ya that’s pretty much the build that I used to play when the patch came out. It was decent enough and I had fun, but I eventually changed because of the following reason.

Hammer just don’t have enough burst without Glacial Heart, and the lack of chill + lack of mobility (no GS #3) made it more difficult to keep up with my targets.

Also even with Will of Force I just didn’t have as much hp as the meta with Marauder amulet. This wouldn’t be a big deal pre-patch, but with the power of burning right now, it’s more of a issue. Not in all game, but some game are very hard against a bunch of condition build.

Phineas Poe.3018:

As usual, people around here are just looking to lash out and not read carefully.

…

I have never once implied that taking an engineer directly slows down a run. What I said was that taking an engineer over a thief means weaker stealth runs.

Well you said :

And completing stuff slower or killing trash is more entertaining for you?

Maybe a bit of miscommunication here or maybe it’s me that didn’t understood well enough what you wanted to say. No biggie.

Most of the fights don’t need a second Icebow. For the small number of fight that do need it here my strategy.

I replace my shortbow with D/P since I usually don’t need to blast anything. Start the fight in D/P, use the Icebow, drop the Icebow, strip quicky 3-4 Defiant (depending on the rest of the team), then switch immediatly to D/D for the rest of the fight. That way I lose dps only in a small window, while still stripping boons. It is probably more efficient if everybody participate in the stripping, but it can be hard to coordinate so that you don’t overstrip.

Anyway, In guild run I usually run with D/D – D/P and almost never bring Shortbow because I use Black Powder and my group blast in it. I usually only take shortbow for a moment when we need to make 2 stealth in less than 30sec.

Phineas Poe.3018:

And completing stuff slower or killing trash is more entertaining for you? Engineers don’t have trouble finding a spot. It’s just not their role to replace a thief.

The purpose of this thread is to establish where engineer lies in the current meta..

WTF lol. Ya taking an engineer make stuff so much slower. Keep stuff in perceptive man. No the purpose of this thread is to answer to the OP, which was which engineer build are good.

When list all the trait that people run in popular build you get a list of trait that none of them use. I use the following build : Meta PvE, Hammer PvE, Bunker Guardian, WvW Frontliner AH, Medi Guardian, Sinister Condi PvE and PvP Burst Burning. Here is the list of unused trait.

Zeal : Wrathful Spirit, Blinding Jeopardy, Expeditious Spirit
Radiance : Healer’s Retribution, Wrath of Justice, Radiant Retaliation
Valor : Strength of the Fallen, Stalwart Defender, Retributive Armor
Honor : Protector’s Impact, Honorable Staff, Force of Will
Virtue : Glacial Hearts

So there is something wrong with those trait IMO. It can be because they need a buff, because they need to be placed somewhere else, but it can also be because they just don’t fill any role.

It already exist : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLItHwWS_nY

Best exemple you can find. They are 3, one of them is a healing guardian and they still do fractal faster than most pugs. Not saying that it’s the best way to do it, but it’s an easier way to do it and the speed is still more than decent.

It is a viable option. Even in record run, on average uplevel boss die in 10-15sec and level 80 bosses die in 20-30sec. And that’s for record run, in pugs run almost all the bosses die after 14second with some exception. The main weakness of a condi engineer would be the Icebow. But againt, in most pug you rarely have 4 icebow and even when you do half the team left them on the ground.

Yes and no. In a condi build bomb auto-attack do less dmg because of Shrapnel. On a direct damage build it’s the kit overall that is not worth taking unless you want to stealth.

But like you said. Bomb would use some buff to be more worth using. IMO it should give more DPS than the grenade kit since Grenade can hit from range and give a lot more vulnerability.

Shattered Aegis : You would be surprise of it’s efficiency in PvP. It’s part of the meta right now for the medi guardian. Maybe a small buff would be nice, but it’s a good trait right now.

Symbolic Avenger : I agree. It’s not like 10% dmg modifier is rare and most profession have a less restrictive trigger than that. It’s not like the guardian is OP right now, making it to 20% would push for a high risk high reward gameplay where it’s gonna be hard to pull a WW on someone while being on your symbol, but when you do, it’s gonna hit like a truck.

Expeditious Spirit: The trait isn’ the problem. Until they make the spirits weapon viable, the trait will always be lackluster.

Healer’s Retribution : There is two role that this trait can achieve. The first is in a pve build to trigger Retribution. But right now it will never compete with RHS even if you boost it to like 20 second or something like that so you can keep Retribution uptime very high. For this trait to work in this kind of build it would need to be a master Virtue trait or a adept/master honor trait to work with a Hammer build. The second role is in WvW zerg or sPvP Bunker. Both of those just don’t use Radiance, but if you put Healer’s retribution as a adept in honor then suddently it could be a good option. So in the end, they should put it as an adept in Honor. That way it will be usefull to hammer guardian in PvE and to bunker guardian in sPvP and Frontliner in WvW.

Stalwart Defender : Again, it’s not the trait the problem, but the weapon. The shield need to be good first.

Retaliatory Subconscious : This trait is fine. It’s already used on medi guardian. They could add 2 second, but the trait is ok like it is.

Mace : The weapon is good right now. It’s one of the most popular weapon in PvE right now. No need to that really.

Hallowed Ground : I rather want a lower cooldown. 80sec is just insane.

Other than that I agree.

The revenant will probably gonna get the shield with the specialisation and 2 underwater weapons. This give him 11 weapon combinaison and 37 weapons skills total.

Thats 1 weapon combination more than the thief, but 5 weapon skills less than the thief. But if the revenant will get 25 skills for heal/utility/elite while the thief will have 33 plus the Steal mechanic. The revenant is also more limited in the combination of those skill.

So In my opinion, the Revevant shouldn’t have a bit more option than the thief not a equal number. IMO they should add a 5th core Legend+weapon set to balance things out.

Well i woudn’t mind if Bomb auto-attack was buff to be better than nade auto-attack. That would be a better balance IMO.

Black Power + HS + Backstab = 9 initiative. Against a 100%hp target this is 3.4 dmg coefficient, against a 25% hp target it’s 4.4 dmg coefficient. This mean between 0.48 and 0.37 dmg coefficient per initiative. If you count that Black powder hit it’s between 0.4 and 0.51 dmg coefficient per initiative.

Shadow shot is 4 initiative for a dmg coefficient of 1.31 for 0.32 dmg coefficient per initiative. So no if your HS and Backstab hit, shadow shot will never be more efficient even if the target is at 100% hp.

Flanking strike/Larcenous Strike = 2.25 dmg coefficient for 5 initiative for 0.45 dmg coefficient per initiative. It’s equal to a BP+HS+Backstab against a target at 50% hp.

Pistol Whip is equal to 0.66 dmg coefficient.

Your result were a bit flawed, but you get the general idea. But D/D have a 0.61 dmg coefficient per initiative. But that number don’t really help you much. It only tell you which have the most dmg per initiative.

Pistole Whip does that dmg over a 2.2 second period, way longer than HS+Backstab, it root you in place, you won’t be able to Pistol Whip non-stop and the Dagger auto-attack is stronger and D/P give you a lot more utilities than S/P. That’s why S/P is view as a noobish build. It have a high damage with constant stun that work wonder on a inexperienced player or someone cut off-guard. But against more experienced players you are a one trick pony.

For the HS spamming. It’s easy to waste all your initiative by doing that. If the guy can just block or dodge 2 of those, you will end up close to him with no initiative. That would basically put you in a corner where you probably not gonna be able to finish the guy, may gonna die or need to use a long cooldown utility to get out off a situation you didn’t need to put yourself into.

Casia.4281:

so.. 30%? of the skills.
FT skills used 2. Inc ammo, napalm.
Bomb skills used 2. firebomb, conc bomb.
Pistol skills used 3. PDV, static, blowtorch
Grenade skills used 5. barrage, sharpnel, grenade, freeze grenade, poison grenade.
so thats 42% of total skills.

actual cast.
59 skills cast.
34 of them grenade skills 58% of the skills uses are grenade skills.
Grenade 1 18 times. 30%.

ANET you have a serious problem with grenades being the best weapon in all situations.

When grenades are the best condition AND the best direct damage weapon for 3 years after multiple balance patches. What are you doing?

What is your point? Do you want to do the same exercise with the GS on Guardian, the GS on Warrior, the Staff on Elementalist, the Dagger on Thief, the Sword on Mesmer, the Sword on Ranger?