Guild Wars 2

@Pyro, quick question for you re scepter/focus. Why not scepter/torch to get the extra 3 stacks of Confusion from #5 (PM)?

And yes, Thank You! These tips are a huge help to us uplevel mezmers. :-)

Fox.3562:

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I also think its safe to say that 4 Glamour Speced Mesmers were the reason AR wiped (that was the point of the video).
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I personally love watching videos like this, even if I’m not in them. Instead of complaining about getting outplayed, you should learn from it ….

^^^

Good stuff. Thanks to EZ et al for making the vid. Very well played! I wasn’t a part of it, but there’s a lot to learn from that vid (I’ve only been doing WvW for about 3 weeks so lots to learn!). And I agree w/ the video author’s note: 4 Glamour spec mezmers are freakin’ gnarly. :-O

-Thor

Aeros.2046:

We had Anvil Rock set up perfectly for 1st Place last week. They had a fully upgraded Stonemist with a Waypoint, no pressing on their borderlands. the Ebay Hills was in our hands and their Garrison and border towers were getting Wrecked.

All Anvil Rock had to have done to win that round was press the Ehmrybay Bay Keep and Lowlands and it would have been all over. Instead AR suddenly got a massive hard on for Overlook keep and the Borlis Hills Keep. That and my personal favorite, the Anvil Rock Pangloss rush. Ogrewatch, Mendons, portal. 10 minutes later, Ogrewatch, Mendons, portal. Rinse and repeat for 2 hours. I got so tired of hanging onto Ebay’s hills by our fingernails only to hear “Anvilrock is attacking our Garrison with golems XOXOXO”.

Its clear AR wanted our attention, so now they got it. Its also clear our efforts to fight Ebay were what was holding the flood back, since now that we have switched gears Ebay is just wrecking everything and AR can’t seem to do much to stop it and we just don’t care.

OK, I can’t just let that go. YOU set US up??? By trebbing the kitten out of SM constantly and capping supply to make sure we can’t repair? The N walls of SM were down much of the time we held it thanks to you “setting us up”. Meanwhile we lost pretty much our entire BL (to you) because we just don’t have the numbers to hold SM and do much else.

No we didn’t “want your attention”. We wanted to get you off SM so folks went to Overlook to try to silence your trebs, or at least focus them on Ogre. Good strategy? Not in my book. It was frustrating as all kitten watching it, but hey, the big guilds just do what they want.

Speaking of which…..please don’t say “AR did X”, because that’s just not the case. “Guild Y” may do “X”, but that doesn’t necessarily represent the will of AR as a whole.

-Thor

P.S. FWIW, I totally agree w/ another poster who said BP and AR should focus on EB. EB wins every round with ease. Working together we can make them earn it, and I for one don’t give a flying kitten who comes in 2nd, 3rd, etc…..I just hate seeing one server dominate week after week because they have the numbers. Let’s beat the kitten out of them, and if we can’t do that together, then EB deserves to move up and we need someone else in there.

Not sure if this helps ‘cause you already said you were using cats, but were you using a Jag and F2 to its fullest? An enemy that doesn’t see the pet coming and is getting hit for 7-8k from casper the hell-ghost is an enemy on the defensive. I’ve done this against players who have learned to target my pet and it’s worked very well. I use Jag F2 -> QZ -> Sick ’em then LB 3 (for the Vuln) just before kittie the ghost arrives with his opener for his can ’o whoop-kitten. Swap to SB to lay on the conditions and in 2-3 secs my foe is < 50% health and running around like his pants are on fire…….

-Thor

Nuking.4051:

Respectfully speaking many of us who don’t speak up are tired of feeling like we have a piano on our chest every week. Most of my friends either won’t wvw until this match up is over, or simply stopped logging in. There are no points for being “brave little” soldiers.

Looking forward to that day……..

-Thor

Zeldastep.5276:

Thorson.9218:

Happy to help.

If you set up your skills like he did, when you send your jag in to do it’s evil deed (start with Attack my Target, then F2 (stealth), then QZ followed by Sick ‘em…..Sick’em always needs to be last), you won’t even get a shot off w/ your bow before the target dies. Your cat will 2-crit and down goes the mob. The idea here is the same as a GC player build: Kill as quickly as you can. In this case though, the killer is your cat. You’re just there as the witness, LOL. I’m just now starting to practice “catsassination” (my new favorite word btw) in WvW, and in the conditions the author explains (primarily w/ an unsuspecting target), it’s golden if you pull it off right (if the player sees the cat coming you’re screwed, so Jag stealth is a MUST). The same is true for PvE. From long range, Attack, Stealth, QZ, then Sick’em. Boom. Move on.

-Thor

Just to clarify.. Are you saying to attack w/ pet first (my F1), then before the pet gets to target F2 to stealth, then QZ before gets to target, then Sick’em before gets to target?

Or…

Would I wait to use QZ/Sick’em till pet has begun attacking?

I F1, wait for him to get close, then F2 -> QZ -> Sick ‘em before his first attack. Note this is for PvE. For PvP I F2, then F1, then QZ -> Sick ’em because I don’t want the player to see the cat coming. NPC’s in PvE don’t know any better (dodge, RUN!, etc), so I just use the F2 to gain the 100% crit rating that it provides.

So with stealth you get 6 sec of 100% crit chance, with QZ the cat’s attacking faster (for 5 sec), and WS I is adding 30% more damage on crit….BOOOM! Note this is in addition to Sick’em which adds another 40% to damage whether it’s a crit or not. For PvP, QZ also helps to keep the cat on the player because if they happen to see it before the cat stealthed, or if they’ve been catsassinated before, they’ll start dodging and running as fast as they can to avoid the burst damage.

What I don’t know, and maybe someone will chime in and clear up, is if WS I is adding 30% to the crit damage, or 30% to normal damage on crit. In other words, if a normal attack does 500 damage and a crit does 2000 damage, is the additional damage 30% of 500 or 30% of 2000??? Either way it’s a lot of damage very fast. :-)

Good hunting!

-Thor

EDIT: One other point I forgot. If you carry a GS (highly recommended for a BM spec), your pet does an extra 50% damage on its next attack with GS 5, whether GS 5 hits anything or not. So for full catsassination effect, just after you hit Sick’em, do GS 5. The first attack the cat does should be HUGE (upwards of 200% of crit damage, depending on how WS I, Sick’em, and GS 5 are calculated).

lordkrall.7241:

Thorson.9218:

@Lordkrall, you are reading what you want of the rules, and ignoring what you don’t want to see. What part of this allows room for spying:

“This also includes disrupting other people’s game experience by not actively participating in matches in good faith”

A spy is NOT “actively participating in matches in good faith” and is most definitely “disrupting other people’s game experience”. A scout, on the other hand, is doing exactly what a scout should be doing, which is following and reporting on enemy activity to HELP THEIR TEAM. A spy is someone who is on your team that is using chat, etc. to report what’s going on FOR THE OTHER TEAM. You don’t know who they are, you can’t kill them…….this is plainly NOT “actively participating in matches in good faith”.

If Anet ever decides to enforce these rules, all of you who spy are going to be in for a rude awakening…..

-Thor

That does of course depend on how the spy works.
It is quite possible for a spy to actively participating in the match without disrupting people’s game experience. A good spy actually would make sure to do just that, since some commanders, at least on my server, uses the /say channel to talk about plans and spies that simply sits around in spawn would miss this information.

A good spy does after all work for both sides, directly by helping server X with fighting and indirectly by helping server Y (the spies homeserver) with intel.

Another thing to think about is HOW would it in anyway be possible for ArenaNet to decide who is a spy and who is not?
Unless they are stupid enough to use the ingame chats to give information getting proofs is completely impossible.

Spying by it’s vary nature would disrupt other people’s game experience, because the spy is actually playing for the other team, thereby taking a slot on the server that could be taken by a bona fide team member. This was MUCH more of an issue when there were WvW queues (hence why the rule states “leeching”, because people would log in and just run around, filling up slots to prevent players for that team from getting in), but it’s still the same dynamic.

So…..at least now we’ve moved from “spying is OK” to an acknowledgement that spying is indeed against the rules, and now we’re down to “how would one prove a person is a spy”. :-) And you’re right, it would be incredibly difficult to prove, assuming the spy was smart enough to not just stand around (or run and hide) during fights and actually made a valid effort to defeat the other team. But then Anet never subscribed to the “incredibly difficult to prove” philosophy……. ;-)

-Thor

lordkrall.7241:

Darek.1836:

Here’s what you’re missing.
If there was a way to counter spies on your own server I think I’d be fine with it, but ATM they cant die because you can’t attack them, and they can’t be forced to leave. It’s not hard to understand at all and I’m wondering if you even have an argument anymore.

There are ways to counter them.
A rather good way is to not shout out in map-chat where you are going with your zerg for one (many leaders tends to use the /say channel for that.)

Sure the spy can still see the tag, but it is quite easy to confuse them by running back and forth a bit and taking weird ways to the goal, and a scout can still get the very same information by simply following the zerg.
Do you think we should ban scouts as well?

@Lordkrall, you are reading what you want of the rules, and ignoring what you don’t want to see. What part of this allows room for spying:

“This also includes disrupting other people’s game experience by not actively participating in matches in good faith”

A spy is NOT “actively participating in matches in good faith” and is most definitely “disrupting other people’s game experience”. A scout, on the other hand, is doing exactly what a scout should be doing, which is following and reporting on enemy activity to HELP THEIR TEAM. A spy is someone who is on your team that is using chat, etc. to report what’s going on FOR THE OTHER TEAM. You don’t know who they are, you can’t kill them…….this is plainly NOT “actively participating in matches in good faith”.

If Anet ever decides to enforce these rules, all of you who spy are going to be in for a rude awakening…..

-Thor

Tallis.5607:

On TC, we have reported persons over and over and over for sabotaging, such as building useless siege in EB, wasting supplies in keeps and taking golems from our keep and jump them off a cliff to destroy them, one by one.

We have sent screenshots, testimonies, videos…

ANet never did anything. Nothing. None. Nada.

I wish you all the best in your effort to make ANet do somthing about spies, when they don’t even do something about proven saboteurs.

This ^ should absolutely be bannable. It just sucks, because there is NOTHING that can be done to stop them. At least in other MMO’s if you see this behavior you can group kick them, but WvW isn’t set up to allow that…..sadly. >:(

Thor

AsmallChicken.9634:

This community is pretty dead at this point.

+1

I’m amazed at the lack of engi’s I see in-game, PvE or PvP (WvW).

:`o(

-Thor

Sumusikoo.1360:

Any links for the builds? And what build would you recommend me to use when I hit 80 with 1 or 2 exotic parts?

Check out this thread. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Introducing-the-Phantom-Catmaster

You will be able to kill just fine in WvW with this build if you follow the tips on how to use it (i.e. use a Jag for stealth so the unsuspecting victim doesn’t see the cat coming…..you get ONE chance to land the catsassination, after that all your real damage is on CD).

-Thor

Happy to help.

Your build is looking good. Mine will also end up 0,20,20,0,30 when I’m done (not there yet!). What you put in Skirmishing and WS at Master is totally play-style dependent, so VII and VIII there respectively is fine. What I would suggest though is changing up your skills. Even though we’re talking PvE and not PvP (WvW, etc), I’ve still found the info in this post to be invaluable: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Introducing-the-Phantom-Catmaster. If you set up your skills like he did, when you send your jag in to do it’s evil deed (start with Attack my Target, then F2 (stealth), then QZ followed by Sick ‘em…..Sick’em always needs to be last), you won’t even get a shot off w/ your bow before the target dies. Your cat will 2-crit and down goes the mob. The idea here is the same as a GC player build: Kill as quickly as you can. In this case though, the killer is your cat. You’re just there as the witness, LOL. I’m just now starting to practice “catsassination” (my new favorite word btw) in WvW, and in the conditions the author explains (primarily w/ an unsuspecting target), it’s golden if you pull it off right (if the player sees the cat coming you’re screwed, so Jag stealth is a MUST). The same is true for PvE. From long range, Attack, Stealth, QZ, then Sick’em. Boom. Move on.

A word of caution. Where this WON’T work in PvE is in large encounters which Anet seems to LOVE to throw at you, especially in your personal story (where they throw 5-10 mobs at you at once). For those, I highly recommend swapping to a Bear/Dog combo as they are both much more durable, and swap to full-on melee mode w/ GS and/or Sword/Torch, Sword/Dagger, etc. With 20 in WS you’ll have some decent Toughness, and switch in WS X to make your GS more of a beast. You’ll be amazed at how good a melee’er a Ranger is.

One last thing. Swap out Healing Spring for Heal as One unless the encounter is with something that lays on heavy cond damage (frogs, etc). Always remember with a BM build that your pet is your primary damage dealer, not you, so keeping them alive is key to your success.

-Thor

I’ve mainly done PvE and you can level easily with lots of builds, but I found either going GC (all power/precision) with a bunker pet (bear), or bunker(ish) w/ a GC pet (cat) to work best. At lower levels, NOTHING you can wear, equip, shoot, or swing will add to your overall damage like the pet though, so if you want to solo Champs with ease (not Group Event Champs, normal ones), I can highly recommend going w/ a BM build (30 in BM, at least10 in Skirmishing for Pet’s Prowess, the rest is personal choice but WS is never a bad idea, SotH, Sick’em, and QZ for skills) and swap between 2 cats, mainly jaguar and lynx. You’ll rip kitten up and level quickly.

Good hunting!

-Thor

Do our pets stay on the “real” player or do they get confused by the clones? In WvW there’s so many bodies (groups, zergs, etc.) I can’t tell what I’M hitting let alone what my insane pet is doing…..

-Thor

achensherd.2735:

Leo G.4501:

Now that does look funny, guess they aren’t paying attention to a cat mauling their legs off

But didn’t they recently update it so pets can’t scale walls?

Yeah, but the “I’m getting mauled by thin air!” part still applies. :P

Just to be clear on this point, pets can no longer go up or DOWN walls. So, if I’m standing on the wall of a keep and pew pew’ing with my little lvl 40 bow, I can’t send my Raven, Owl, Eagle, etc (which, last time I checked, can FLY) to attack my enemy. I can target the ground just fine w/ Guard, but my bird just sits there and does nothing. :’o(

-Thor

Seras.5702:

Thorson.9218:

Engineers are “masters of mechanical mayhem” right? Well…..I vote for a Mech that we can summon and jump into that lasts for 10 seconds and we can just tear kitten up. Midi-gun, rockets…..yeah, a Mech would be “Elite”. ;-)

-Thor

I already got that…my Asura racial golem suit. And it sucks. So if they do a mech suit (an idea I actually like) it needs to be miles better than the Asura suit. I’m thinking a battle suit like the one Tony Stark made in the cave in the movie…big, clunky, covered in weapons. But steam powered.

Sorry, didn’t know Asura got a racial golem suit.

I do like your Tony Stark cave suit idea though. Would fit well in the overall mechanical environment. +1 !!!!

-Thor

Engineers are “masters of mechanical mayhem” right? Well…..I vote for a Mech that we can summon and jump into that lasts for 10 seconds (or until it gets destroyed) and we can just tear kitten up. Arm it with a midi-gun, rockets…..yeah, a Mech would be “Elite”. ;-)

-Thor

I just hit 80 on my engie, and changed my build as I went along based on what I learned and how the game changes in PVE. Early on (up to lvl 20), I ran P/P and grabbed every bit of power/cond gear I could…total GC. I grabbed EG and FT and swapped constantly to put max conditions on mobs. From 20-40, more mobs get added to events/quests, so I migrated to P/S for some added survivability, but this still wasn’t terrific as I was a slightly thicker paper bag. 40-60 I started moving towards blowing kitten up, and 60-80 I went power/toughness grenadier and that was eye-opening. At that point I could easily aggro a good number of mobs and switch between nades/bombs for blinds and AOE blast/condition goodness. Yes, spamming nade 1 gave me carpel tunnel (WT kitten devs??? Fix this already and at least give us the OPTION to auto ‘nade 1), but nothing else came close PVE for mowing down all the mobs in higher level events. Also, for tough solo fights (Vets, Champs….again this is all PVE), give the previously useless Thumper a go…..it now does it’s job at holding aggro……at least some of the time. :-/

-Thor

Rfreak.6591:

@Thorson.9218

You’re wrong, even if they did separate PvP from PvE they’d break WvW even more than it is now

So you think it’s better to swing the nerf bat and kitten-up all game play in one swat? They will never balance game play by forcing all play styles (macro styles, those being PvP and PvE) to use the same stats while tailoring those stats to only one style (PvP, which WvW is a subset of).

It’s a moot point since they’ll never do it (too big of a code change), but maybe it’s brain fodder for the next MMO that comes along. ;-)

-Thor

Rfreak.6591:

Patch after patch we get small bug fixes (which we deserved since the first weeks), slight buffs (that never seem to be enough, only to cover…), HUGE nerfs (which seem to go completely unnoticed by the rest of the community except for engineers, do you ever check general community section? People will say no1 got nerfed, it seems they don’t even consider us).

So… are you happy with the way engineers are being changed?

Even as a “new” engineer, I’m not that happy with the changes, and I don’t PVP (yet). It seems the devs “balance” for PVP, and aren’t really concerned about the effects in PVE, which is what I play (again, for now). Two cases in point: Flamethrower now might as well shoot mewling kittens, and our weakest weapon is still…..wait for it….our main hand weapon!?!?! How messed up is that? In addition to Engie I play a Ranger, Guardian, Mesmer, and Ele, and if my main hand weapon was as weak as the Engie pistol I would have quit them long ago. Thankfully we have kits, but the FT nerfage just made me remove it from my bar. sigh ATM, my hardest hitting weapon is my wrench!

I wish the devs would bite the bullet and make 2 stat tables, one that is active for PVE, and the other that’s active when you switch to PVP. That way they could “balance” PVP all they want to address all the kitten-kissing QQ’ers (“WHHHAAAAA…..I just got 100 ’Naded by an ENGIE….OMG!!!! NERFNERFNERF NOOOOOOW!!!!”) without borking the game for those of us still wanting to kill marauding herds of minotaurs.

-Thor

Oglethorpe.5369:

Hello!

I just picked up my Engineer over the weekend, and I honestly had the time of my life running around setting kitten on fire and blowing kitten up! I’ve leveled 5 other classes (Mesmer, Guardian, Thief, Necro, Ele) to 80, and they all had their “fun” moments, but Engi has been (pardon the pun) a blast so far.

I’m nowhere close to needing final build advice, but I’m currently having a lot of fun with Pistol/Pistol, with Grenade/Flamethrower/Bomb Kits for skills – is there a good build out there I can aim towards?

Thanks for anything you can provide, Engi is awesome so far!

I’ve rolled an engineer (now level 55) after leveling a Guardian to 75 (will push him to 80 soon but engi is way more fun). What I like best about the class is the flexibility. Yes, for X or Y or Z, A or B or C build might be best, but to me (admittedly still new to the game), what makes Engineer so much fun is there are SO many different ways to successfully play the class (note I’m just talking PVE here).

I roll with FT, EG, wrench, and attitude (LOL). I’ve tried the grenade kit, and it hits harder than pretty much anything else, but I’ve yet to master the run/ground target/fire combo. No clue how people do it without major re-mapping of keys and/or mouse buttons, or they have 3 hands. :-) Regardless, spamming 1 on grenades makes me crazy, so I just go w/ guns….and wrench! Don’t forget the wrench! OMG does that thing hit like a truck. EG 1,2,3 then FT 3,2,1 then finish w/ a big ‘ole Pry Bar (wrench 3) to the noggin’. I go w/ pistol/shield to be a little bit less squishie when 3+ mobs decide to pound on me.

For traits I’m Master level Firearms/Inventions and working up in Alchemy since I’m more “Conditioneer” in my play style. For big fights (Champions), I go w/ rifle and rocket turrets, keep EG around to pile on conditions and give me and my allies a nice AOE heal (EG 5), and drop Elite Supply crate when it’s up. Good times. :-)

I hope some of that newbie rambling helps you.

-Thor

Phineas Poe.3018:

drrobotnic.9387:

I wouldn’t mind a few suggestions though, I was using the full firearm and alchemy that you guys suggested and it’s very nice but i can’t help but think turrets do a lot of damage.

Turrets are fine in open world, but they fall to pieces in seconds when you’re playing in dungeons, even with traits.

The fix to Deploy-able Turrets is a welcome relief, but they need to be buffed—by like 100%—like they did with the Guardian’s Spirit Weapons. Tool Kit + Turrets should be a totally viable PvE setup but right now it just isn’t.

I’m still relatively new as well (74 Guard, 33 Engi), and as drrobotnic said, I too find that w/ elixirs, I’m good up to about 3 mobs on me, then I’m in trouble. With turrets, sheesh……I can take on 5-6 mobs easily. This game (I too came from WoW) seems to like to overwhelm you with mobs. Every event, your personal story, dungeons…..they throw lots of mobs at you at once. Sure, turrets are made of paper, but after a few shots from my pistols the mobs are all aggro’ing me anyway so I just run around like a nutter (staying inside my healing turret range!) and let the rifle and rocket turrets add to the carnage. Good fun, and less cost at the repair merchant. ;-) For dungeons I just try to stay behind the meat shields…..

Of course, there’s nothing like popping an Elixir B, hitting the racial Battle Roar (I’m Charr), and opening a can of whoop-kitten with Wrench 3. :-D I really like the flexibility of this class!

I must be doing it wrong, LOL. I started w/ Firearms to get VI (faster recharge) and grabbed the Elixir Gun and Flamethrower. Going into Explosives next to increase condition duration. Mobs just melt from from all the condition damage. Poison/burn/acid jump then stand back and watch ‘em die. Only lvl 22 on this toon so far and it’s been pretty painless. Going with all Power/Precision gear that I find as I level to burn Mobs down faster. PVE only.

FWIW, I tried ’nade kits, but I totally suck at running/ground targeting/firing…..I need 3 hands! :-)