Guild Wars 2

Med Gyro:
- Reduce CD to 25s
- Reduce lifetime to 10s
- Reduce pulse interval from 3s to 1s (for 9 ticks maximum in its lifetime)
- Reduce pulse heal by 25%
(Now its like an AoE Troll ungent but weaker for allies and alright for yourself)

Reconstruction Field:
- Make it a stunbreaker

Purge Gyro:
- Make it a stunbreaker
- Reduce CD to 25s
- Increase lifetime to 25s
(For the most unreliable condition cleanse requires a just reward for having it alive. Realistically this will only last long enough to proc twice or just explode instantly as proven for the last 3 years with summons)

===

I did the maths for Med Gyro. Well, rough, so its probably off by like 10%.

But unfortunately, you’d have to boost Med Gyro’s healing numbers by basically 300% to make it heal as much as healing turret could do. And that is if the Med Gyro lives long enough to expire and you run Super Speed Regen + Gyro super speed on death traits.

I believe for healing over time the Med Gyro should be the best choice, hence the proposed changes, whereas for burst healing Healing Turret is still the best choice.

Over a run of 3 minutes, even with those changes, healing turret heals more. In fact, 30% more (mainly because of regeneration). The rest is balanced out by traits for the Med Gyro and other considerations and the protection applied by the toolbelt.

The V.8759:

Are.1326:

I’m pretty sure they said you could durring the live stream. At least they said you could double stomp.

Thank you, I must ve missed that I am also wondering: If the function Gyro gets knocked back, I assume it will return and try again?

They have said it will.

Looks like I was right

Not only that but they have limited time

Isn’t it already confirmed we are getting a multi leap (I think 3 in one) for the #3 skill called Rocket Charge?

Small note, but the 100% projectile finisher for mortar is working properly.

In your guy’s minds its not, but it is in fact working as a projectile finisher.

How do projectile finisher’s work? Anything the projectile touches when under a combo effect, gets affected. This does not include the explosion. Most projectiles that are a finisher are not AoE effects, so you really only notice it with the mokitten

oes it feel bad? Yea. Is it broken and not working properly? No.

Time to quit OP, rofl.

If that’s the reason to quit, the problem doesn’t lie in engineer getting new AI based stuff.

For anything mentioned here, keep in mind:

1) We have never seen a moving environmental object. Ever. Examples are turrets, arrow carts, banners, etc.

2) Anything that could move on its own was an NPC (meaning it had an HP bar).

There was a leaked picture somewhere on another site.

From what I speculated with the trailer, it seemed like the drones would not be AI based off of 2 assumptions:

1) The movement and positioning were unnatural for our current AI, but it could have been just cinematic magic.

2) We already have turrets

However, it seems its not the case.

1) In the leaked picture, drones weren’t around like you’d see in DotA2 Invoker or like in the trailer or how others have described. Some of the positioning is off and their facing direction is mostly toward where the engineer is facing, like a lot of AI do. This could indicate that they are in fact “AI”. We’ll see.

2) I think the spirit weapon theory is the best bet right now.

From someone that went full turrets for a long time it doesn’t bug me that much but to all of you here… oh dear.

Who knows though? We’ll see in a couple of days!

pepsis.5384:

Hey there, whats the point of taking Blood Magic-Blood bond? How do you plan to apply 4 bleeds ?

Ah right. For reaper you can get rid of it and get something else like the dagger trait.

In necromancer, dodge rolls / shroud 2/ staff 2 causes bleeding.

You taking the blood magic like is more for helping your allies.

Dawdler.8521:

WEXXES.2378:

3.6k toughness

At 3.6k toughness you would have something like 5k armor. Impressive. Impossible, but impressive.

Thanks for catching that. It’s 3.6k armor.

I used to run full turrets a long time ago as my main build.

It took a bit of practice to be able to pick up the healing turret as soon as it overcharged while on the move with swiftness, but it is possible.

Blasting it on the run is kitten easy.

KevinB.9643:

When completing the first episode “Gates of Maguuma” (not the replay) on an alt I unlocked both ascended nomad’s amulets afterwards. This thing happend to unbug this problem.

This is the current get-around AFAIK.

Friendliest community indeed. Some toxic comments here.

Some guilds do in fact do that as a joke but only to their most closest friends because they are just having a laugh and re-invite after and kitten. Jeez.

Hello all.

This is one of my most coveted builds, especially for PvP / WvW. Many have asked for it, but have failed to actually make it work the way I do.

The build (minus the gear stats):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhZakjG6sxKbw2G4vxB0QNn5aeDkNQAss0WoHeBA-TJxHwAILDY4UAEb/BAPBAA

PvP amulet: Cleric or Sentinels, recommend Clerics
WvW Stats: Nomads, Sentinel, Clerics, Apothecary. Nomads recommended, if not possible do Sentinel.

Reaper Variant (what this build is actually designed for):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhFakjG6sxKbw2G4vxS3gNlx2YBg4H4E8CSNBGBVAA-TJxHwAILDY4UAEb/BAPBAA

Sigil of Cleansing instead of Purity is, IMO, better.

Greatsword is optional. Recommend greatsword though for the AoE blind and pulls.

Dagger is also optional. Replacement can be Axe or Scepter. Obviously recommend dagger.

If you are aiming for max selfish mitigation only swap Blood Magic to Spite for traits 2/2/3, which focus on self boon generation.

Unholy Sanctuary Vs Corrupter’s Fervor depends on if you have healing power or not. No healing power? Corrupter’s Fervor.

How the build works:

1) A combination of all these skills focus on life force generation while in death shroud. So you aren’t completely useless when they aren’t attacking you, you have blood magic to help your allies. In reaper, this is even better. As a necromancer, you can average about 20% life force a second when in the heat. As a reaper, this can be bumped up to 44% on average, the maximum (but unrealistic) scenario of 80% life force a second while in deathshroud. Absurd? Rarely happens though. 44% happens normally though.

2) You can kill people, but only if they are condi based and they are doing it on you. In WvW fights, this is super easy and you can 1 shot people this way. Take 20 stacks of burning and the wrath of the enemy zerg and toss it on the victim of your choice. Observe minimap for confirmed kill 1 second later. The others need to be really squishy or neither of you will budge.

3) Because you are a necromancer, you will naturally attract the hate of players. I don’t know why. It’s easier as a necromancer from my observations. That’s a good thing though!

4) In sPvP you don’t get access to nomads stats. Sentinels is risky because you can’t recover your health bar (the one that matters the most) as well, and since you have high health and low heals you will often be at half health or lower. As clerics you can almost always regenerate all of your health easily which is why I prefer clerics. Also your team presence is stronger with clerics.

The Playstyle:

1) When taking minimal heat (player focus or what not) that is manageable, you flash death shroud. Flashing death shroud means pressing it twice to toggle it on and off quickly, putting it on cool down. Doing this procs all your death shroud traits such as protection, healing when exiting death shroud, stability, etc. Take like 3-4k damage, flash, back to 100% with boons.

2) Don’t waste life force. It’s okay to flash and put it on cool down since we have reduced cool down duration. What I mean is to not sit in it auto attacking when you aren’t being focused or when not in the heat. Leave it and start working on life force generation / healing yourself. Most people sit in death shroud while taking minimal damage which gets them killed because they don’t have enough life force by the time they need it.

“But Sir, what if they start bursting me as I leave death shroud?”

In most cases, you would have died anyway. This is why we take locust signet as our emergency reset button.

3) If you are going to heal allies with #4 DS, do it only after you enter death shroud. Don’t be in death shroud for 5 seconds then decide to do it. Chances are it will be wasted.

4) Proper use of said mechanics allows you to take on 3-4 people on a point in sPvP long enough for allies to come to your aid.

5) Moa is the death of all necromancers. Knowing how to avoid it comes with experience. In most cases in WvW though moa has never really gotten me killed because I’m already so tanky without death shroud.

Combos:

Before entering death shroud, you must gauge the incoming heat wave. 3 Players? 10 Players? Are you going to be alone?

The response for each question can be gauged on how much life force generation you want for the next 10-15 seconds:

Never start with death shroud. You want your heal / locust signet on CD first to maximize your rotation. You usually want to be in death shroud when those 2 skills are on CD, and you want to be out of death shroud as long as your heal and such are available. Failure to do so means entering death… with no shroud.

When your health bar needs a break, Spectral Armor is activated first. This grants high life force generation regardless of enemy amount, so its good against 1-2 players on its own.

Locust Swarm is activated next for larger groups. This is best done against 4-5+ players.

When leaving death shroud for any reason, try your best to leave at least 10-15% left. If you are in incredibly heat this won’t happen, which is fine.

Keep track of your conditions. If you have only like 3 conditions don’t waste your plague signet. You always want to save your plague signet for the most damaging conditions. Typically, you will get the most damaging conditions while you are in death shroud (as when you are out of it you have your heal to clear all of it).

Fight and CC as you wish. I generally chase the ranged fighters while kiting their melee. This means their ranged will have their attention on me in addition to their melee. If I’m fighting their melee only I have less potential hit targets and their ranged is free to do whatever. Unacceptable!

I haven’t mentioned it yet but we take Rune of Svanir because its absolutely perfect for this build. Every once in a while you will turn invulnerable. In most builds, this screws you over. In this build, its the best thing ever. Need to leave early? Death shroud is a stun break and will remove the ice when you wish. Have too many conditions on you? Turn that invulnerability into a 2 second invulnerability and plague signet someone. You can manipulate that rune in so many ways its awesome.

Also chances are if you are that low on health you won’t have that many conditions on you to begin with since your heal and signet would have cleared it beforehand.

You also have -50% chill duration applied to you while gaining chill duration. With reaper, you are almost immune to chill, period. This is huge as you have high CD’s and this will make sure you never have to worry about it again. Also as a reaper that extra chill duration for yourself is a blessing.

It also gives toughness which is nice. Wish it gave vitality though.

Let’s not forget plague form. This is a very, very nice filler for taking on a huge amount of people. The best time to use this is at the start of a huge heat wave (as mentioned before): you don’t want to pop death shroud so early, you want to use your health first, heal up, then death shroud to maximize life time. If you use plague form, your health will drop much more slowly thereby increasing your life time.

The Tanks Stats
I generally have 29k health, 3.6k toughness, and 1,100 healing power. The best part about having blood magic is when I’m low (which is like, what, 8000 HP? lmao) my healing power gets boosted like crazy, making my heals even stronger.

As a reaper, I was able to take the wrath of a 10 man coordinated group by myself for 30 seconds, then began to flee for another 10 seconds before escaping into a tower. No other ally was present. Other classes would have melted without the use of prolonged invulnerabilities. Blocks wouldn’t have worked because they had a lot of unblockable attacks and interrupts thrown.

The Use of such a build
This build can serve 2 important functions:

For WvW, a scapegoat. An actual tank. You are taking the focus and skill CD’s of enemies onto yourself rather than your team mates. To do what I did above is only done to test stats. You are useless without a team. Period. When people are slamming on you, they are not slamming on your DPS oriented friends and thus makes their job incredibly easy.

For PvP, bunker or team support. You have high healing power and can do some nasty burst heals. As a bunker you can contest a point for long periods of time while fearing people out.

For PvE…. uh… healer? At the moment, doesn’t really offer anything except the success of even the worst pug groups.

Questions?

Keep in mind I have done extensive testing (4+ months) for this build specifically so suggestions on using different traits have probably already been done.

Skill lag shouldn’t matter. Going into shroud is an instant cast, so as soon as you press shroud it’s going to happen no matter what, regardless of skill queue. Don’t spam it.

This is especially true for reaper when you can’t flash toggle it at all as there is a delay.

At very VERY MOST if it were to be buffed it would be 1 per enemy per second. But even then that’s very overdoing it…

I have a healing power engineer. All I can say is that if you focused or had a mindset that was all about healing / support only you’re going to have a bad time, elixir bombs or not.

If you’re running this trait, chances are (and by chance I mean 1000000% sure you are running) inventions. This pretty much means you will be having regeneration boons on you almost all the time which procs this GM trait pretty much 99% of the time.

Normally people exaggerate about a trait being the worst in the game but this is in fact the worst, most useless trait in the game.

Here’s the trait so you don’t have to look it up:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Medical_Dispersion_Field

A percentage of healing you receive is shared with your allies.
Healing: 12%
Radius: 240
ICD: 5s

Even if it didn’t work off regeneration that still makes it a terrible GM. Your strongest self heal is A.E.D. for about 14,000 (with healing power) and proccing this GM will heal allies for 1680 for a total HPS of 42 (because at this point it is limited by A.E.D.’s CD).

But when it does proc off regeneration it is usually about 350 ticks so that means you will be healing allies for 42 every 5 seconds for a total HPS of around 8.

EIGHT HEALING PER SECOND WITH HIGH HEALING POWER. This is definitely grandmaster worthy…

There are plenty of better alternatives than this trait. In fact, just removing the ICD and bumping up the healing % a tiny bit is good enough. These don’t even require huge overhauls.

Some simple, almost accurate math using high healing power (numbers are probably a bit lower than they should be):

What if the healing was 15% with no ICD?

Regeneration would proc for 52 every second

Healing turret heals an additional 1050 around you to allies every 15-20 seconds

Using my own build I can get at most 2,000 healing per second for like 4 seconds. With this GM that’s 300 extra healing per second for those 4 seconds in which it tapers off significantly afterwards. Even then that’s still less than the old trait for elixir bombs.

Cynz.9437:

1. don’t play thief, it can’t 1v1 atm and one of the hardest professions in game

There are some builds that are complete cheese in 1v1, making it virtually unkillable.

You guys have to remember that elite specializations will, for the most part, never be finished. We will get more in the future. When you have to start choosing between lets say Reaper, Defiler, Wraith or some crap like that then it starts to seem a lot more balanced.

Oh My God.8423:

It is indeed a fair bit of a grind. There should be something rewarding along the way in between each level of mastery.

Like… a MASTERY?

If your in zerker gear, you will get 1 shot by a lot of things. That’s expected. If you have high toughness/vitality, you won’t be. The different between getting 1 shot and 2 shot is huge, because one allows ‘mistakes’ and one doesn’t.

If its dumbed down again, we are going to repeat history and thats going to look really, really bad for the next expansion. Hell, if that happens again there might not even be a next expansion.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

PS:

if NPC’s are allowed to knock players off a cliff… players should be able to do the same thing to NPC’s. i’m so tired of NOT being allowed to use knockbacks to the fullest extent against NPCs…

That would require a huge overhaul of some systems.

Enemies cannot be identified as “in the air”. Proof? Glitched floating mobs. If what you want were possible, mobs could never float. Get stuck in cliffs, maybe.

More proof? Flying bird enemies and NPCs. Animation wise they leave the ground, but the actual object is on the ground.

Only players so far are the only things that can actually be in the air and thus suffer fall damage.

The reasons for this, I think, is for 2 reasons:

1) The obvious one, cheesing some bosses. New tactics for all bosses for record clear time is mass CC, push to cliff, and spartan kick. 15 minute boss fight? 15 second boss fight.

2) Server reasons. Now you have to keep track of all the physics of all NPCs, enemies, and ambient creatures because they are susceptible to fall damage and can actually fall.

Combat pretty much makes up most of an MMO’s or most online games playtime. To not have events or mechanics built around it is silly.

This sounds like a personal problem rather than an actual problem. Yea, we’ve been killing and killing mobs for 3 years but put a little bit of thought into it and you’d expect the same types of things for the next 3 years.

All of this is fine. What wasn’t fine was that the mobs themselves were painfully easy to kill. Everything was faceroll, no challenge, no danger. It was a chore. Now its going to get harder, and I welcome that.

I agree there could be different kinds of events. Maybe even a rush event where players are racing to one area without WPing or gliding would be fun.

There are things called Adventures though…

A lockdown engineer with gadgets can be quite strong. Definitely not what people expect but it was strong none-the-less. I used it a couple times in queues and some people were surprised to see a full gadget engineer.

AED, Slick Shoes, Battering Ram, Throw Mine. You have a lot of burst damage (especially minefield, that hits really, really hard if you land a lot of them on a single person), tons of boon removal, a launch(rifle) knockback daze stun knockdown. Because of the gadgeteer trait, AED lasts for 8 seconds before it goes off and you get screwed.

Other than that, not much it offers. Gadgets are definitely not something you take in a full build, they are more like skills that complement your setup. Kits are strong because they are basically unique weapons. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if we got new kits in later specializations which is fine because they are basically new, unique weapons only engineers can get.

Don’t forget HGH traits also increase the duration of acid bomb (for more damage) and the healing field (lasts 2 seconds longer).

For builds that use healing power or want support, this kit only got buffed, ranged aside.

Updated. It’s super good for stronghold so far.

I don’t know why but the link just shoes me hoelbrak runes and sentinel amulet, no class is even chosen.

Regardless:

Elixir Gun is something you might want to consider taking. Your #4 and #5 actually give might (#4 is self only) in addition to the toolbelt, giving 3 procs instead of 2 like most elixirs in addition to a lot more skills to work around with.

I think it should be like those traits where you give like 150 power to nearby allies or 150 precision, toughness, etc, but with this trait, its increased healing received by 15% to allies nearby.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Lupanic.6502:

Elixir C should be a stunbreaker

Is Elixir C locked out when you get feared?

Yes

Stalwart Coat, no other way to get other than main story.

Pants are Marauder, might be same situation.

Both of the above items may not be there anymore. I don’t know what they did with the story. Someone confirm or debunk please.

Shoulders is Outlaw, can buy from TP

Source: Fashion Wars 2 Addict

Sagramor.7395:

shion.2084:

you really just can’t make everyone happy

Actually you can. If they had just put in a toggle in the first place instead of removing them wholesale we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

It’s not as easy as it sounds to just simply make it a toggle.

Actually I think its kind of impossible to do at this point. We already don’t have the ability to tone down ally/enemy spell effects in huge groups: it only happens when there are too much to load. Think about that for a second.

And yes, the hobosacks are probably “spell effects”. Want to test this? If you zoom into FPS mode you can still see your weapons despite weapon models being disabled in that mode. That might be why they removed it in the first place: because you can’t do FPS with the packs on.

Either way, I’d rather have them as backpack skins because then other classes can have the joy of hobosack.

But seriously, like 5 laurels or something, please…

myself.2143:

People say they want hardcore content but quickly choose the easiest way to complete said content. baffling!

True. But in properly designed hard content, even the easiest way is hard.

You need to follow the news on HoT, sounds like you totally forgot about precursors and masteries removing the RNG element.

There is no reason for them to NOT use it for raids.

I used to do full turrets, even way back when everyone said they were bad. Made it to top 500 in PvP rather easily.

Having deployable turrets made a huge difference between dead, useless turrets in bad spots vs the opposite. I could have turrets on walls, being unreachable by melee users and cover more area as they weren’t LOSed. I could throw turrets onto people far away to get a heal or water field or smoke field or a huge launch, you name it. I could chain CC with rifle by #4, #2, then proceed to turret juggle them to death.

Removing that trait killed it. Everything above I mentioned is now unpractical or impossible to do. It takes time to set up turrets in good spots, and by that time the good spot has changed.

I think med kit’s resistance potion thing needs to last much longer, at least 5 seconds. Med kit is already weak and needs some loving.

….as a backpack skin.

They were alright as a weapon effect IMO, but a lot of people didn’t like them. Some did. Most don’t care. But what a waste to just remove them entirely! They make perfect backpack skins!

But how would you put them back in?

- Laurels
- Unlocking the skill to each backpack skin on engineer (get the healing backpack upon unlocking med pack, etc). Will it be fair for other classes? Probably not, but to even get the multitool pack you had to roll engineer anyway. Also, its a form of compensation for something removed from the class, so guardians and elementalists shouldn’t complain about getting a skin that was REMOVED from the class.

That’s pretty much it. I want my flamethrower backpack back ;_;

Escapist Absolution is actually strong (when used a certain way) and is a good trait choice.

Condition cleanses clean the last conditions applied to you ( I think ). There can be a lot of filler conditions on you such as cripple and stuff. If you use the dash dodge, that means you will always cure cripple and chill and if you evade something in that dodge, no matter what you will not waste a condition cleanse on a cripple or chill. If you run acrobatics its kind of the same deal but add in immobilize (if you run that trait). If you have the trait where you remove vul/weak/slow while over 90%, add that to the list. This basically leaves only damaging conditions to be removed: the ones that can kill you easily in a dodge based build.

In a dodge heavy build, you are looking at an average of 1 cleanse every 3 seconds with a peak of 1 every second. That’s crazy good when you consider the above: you might as well be invulnerable to conditions.

The tradeoff? Interrupt damage, which is also amazing.

Decisions, decisions…

Now, if you swapped the heal on evade with this trait, it becomes an easier trade because the heal doesn’t do that much for people who do damage and can be ignored.

Truth be told, I think the DD was very well planned. The trait with weakness on crit, IMO, needs a look at and should be weakness when interrupting (same CD, durations, etc). This favors builds with low crit (such as condi, support) and is still good for power based builds. As a DD you get access to a lot of interrupts (staff 1 stealth, utilities for sure) and even if you don’t use those you still have plenty of other ways (on steal, other utilities, sword, pistol, etc).

Answering some questions:

Shadow Refuge knock outs are rare. If you combine them with a weapon swap, you’ll be able to dodge knockbacks and stay in SR.

Sorry about the sigils, it should be x1 agony and x1 energy on each set.

P/D can work, but the point is to stay in stealth 24/7. Even been seen for a second is dangerous as you can get locked down by mesmers and such. Rangers running Sic Em and Engineer Analyze require a target to reveal you.

Most of my testing IS in sPvP. You may see me running around in this build killing people without them even reacting. Most of the time, they get away with 25% of their health, which is impressive for not even leaving stealth.

People who run high condi cleanse can be a problem, obviously. This applies regardless of what condi build you run though, so IDK.

Because you are invisible 24/7, you can stalk people. One thing I do often is steal to them and dodge immediately. This applies bleeds (at least 2-3 stacks) and cripple. This lets me set up a second dodge roll on them. Most of the time, they dodge roll the first time, wasting it. I repeat it, keeping a steady few stacks of bleed.

You CAN run the daze trait in steal instead of confusion. This way, when they try to heal or something you can cancel it causing some panic. It’s also especially useful when you do your condi trap burst then steal right after so they have to use a stun break to cleanse it immediately. It takes 3-4 seconds to ramp up the damage to a good 2-3k per second, and these bleeds last a long time.

This is not a full trapper build. You only have 1 trap on your bar, or should. Caltrops (the utility skill) applies a ton of long duration bleeds and the trap keeps them inside it.

You can run rune of the trapper but you lose the bleed duration and extra conditions. You don’t need that extra stealth too much, but its safer.

Another note about P/D is that you tend to stay at range or have a little distance. This means you can’t use your dodge rolls for bleeds AND CRIPPLE. The cripple is very important as it makes people stay in the bleeding AoE for a little bit longer and this stuff adds up.

In group fights your incredibly long immobilize duration can really screw people over. Sometimes they throw up blocks, which is funny because it does nothing for them against you. You can also stomp/rez people pretty safely because they don’t even know if you are there or not (as far as they know, your team is missing a person).

Against roamers, this build is NOT that good. This is because they are kind of built for these encounters and usually have escapes. In group fights, you can be quite deadly. Simply waltz over to the back of their group and assassinate someone not paying attention, rinse repeat.

And yes, the point is to NEVER come out of stealth. Never. They should never see your name tag. As soon as they do, they know your location. When they see AoEs pop out they don’t know if you are there or not. You get benefits while you stay in stealth.

To the guy who posted his build:

Your bleeds are weaker than mine. Your caltrops has a higher CD than your trap. In my build your caltrops and trap come off CD at the same time every time. No matter what you do you will have lower damage than me, considering you never leave stealth. And you are using 40% condition duration food, whereas I’m not (cuz I’m an idiot and forgot about it lol). If I do use it, my bleeds (from trap) do 7865 damage total and yours does 5718 which is a huge difference when there’s supposed to be 2 of them.

And a small bonus, but using caltrops with the trickster trait removes 1 condition, which is a bonus I guess.

I agree with shadow trap though, mainly because it also grants might, applies more vulnerability, and breaks stuns. And if they teleport, you can follow EZ. Also utility. I liked SR because I can do it wherever and stealth allies for some support.

Update 1: Tried this build in Stronghold. I’m almost positive this will be the meta for thief in this mode. Holy kitten its so strong.

To anyone who had to face me in this build on BWE2 Friday: I’m sorry, but testing is testing. No need for the name calling.

Here’s what it offers for Stronghold:
-Kill all guards on the map quickly without any real opposition, even if enemies are throwing AoEs at you. This puts your team at a huge point lead.
-Assassinate enemy treb users. You will always land your condi burst and immobilize and they can’t react as fast, causing them to, most of the time, leave the treb or die.
-Assassinate the lord. Yes, you can solo the lord even with all 4 guards there (kill the guards first for points though). Often times if they don’t have a dedicated healer they STILL can’t do anything about the lord. I’ve had 2 enemy players running around lord’s room trying to stop me and it doesn’t work. All enemy NPCs have no combat regen. Guess what that means?
-Not really an offer, but still worth a mention: stealing from guards sometimes gives you the stealth item. In this build, you can use it twice. Makes it much easier to perma stealth.
-Kill all gate guards before the door breakers get wrekt. The first set is super easy and they die within 10 seconds. The second set you must have all your condi burst skills ready including steal. The last set you need to hit asap, but at this point I have observed enemies killing the doorbreakers so clear the last set of gate guards anyway.
-No map presence to the enemy. As far as they know, its a 4v5 and that last person can be ANYWHERE.
-Because of how this work, once inner is open on the enemy side it becomes a 4v3 or they pretty much lose. With proper condi application (sometimes you have to apply little bits at a time) their lord will slowly die out. It takes about 2 people to stop this completely. If it comes to it, just kill them instead which works as well. This allows your entire team to focus on defense only, making your points secured and 24/7 pressure on the lord. When it is time, your team rushes the lord who has like 10% health left. If the enemy team is crap, often times you’ll be taking out the lord yourself and finishing him.
-A side note: stronghold does not end until all lords are out of combat. This means you need to leave the room when it goes into overtime to secure the win with the point lead.
-If it comes to it, just leave and help your team. No one knows if you have really left or not. lol.

Anyway, original post:

Hi all.

This idea isn’t particularly new but I’ve gotten the build and play style down quite well now. To many this is just a troll build, but when you actually see the numbers and the build in action when done correctly it can be very effective for its niche style of game play.

Can this be a real build? Maybe, maybe not. It’s quite effective at what it does, I’m sure of that.

Build in question (Use Carrion in sPvP):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAoa4alsMhmnYbTw7Jw/EHIFl/FCi5j3ABwCofyTYxA-T1RAABA8CAUU/Aqq/MpSQPOKA9s/wYK/IEwk1A-w

So what does this build do?

-Stay in stealth permanently. There may be down times of 1-2 seconds of being visible if you mess up or mismanage.

-Staying in stealth permanently isn’t that much of a feat. It’s staying in stealth permanently, downing players and defeating them without even being seen like ghost aids.

-High survival rate. Staying in stealth permanently in this build will remove harmful conditions once every 3 seconds, heal about 300 HP a second, and take 25% less damage. Also throw in a couple of evades to add to that.

-High condition damage. In PvE, it’s easy to go 30 stacks of bleeding alone. In PvP, its common to have 7-15 stacks of bleeding with ease. Also throw in confusion, 10+ stacks of vulnerability, poison stacks and really long immobilize duration (6s+)

-Unblockable. All your condition damage from this build cannot be blocked.

-Because you should be in stealth almost 24/7, you pretty much always get first strike. You also get the advantage of stereotypical thief encounters where they expect a backstab. I don’t think they will be expecting no thief coming out of stealth at all while still dying to him or her.

-When you need it, you can always backstab / basilisk venom for extra oomph.

Cons?

- Absolutely no focus in PvP. This is good for you, but not for your team mates. One of the helpful things with thieves is that they can pull heat off of your allies for a few seconds, allowing your allies some breathing space. With this build, you won’t be.

- Massive condition removal will hurt your ability to kill (obviously). Condition transfers to you aren’t as bad because you are in stealth all the time.

- People who can remove immobilize easily and have a lot of mobility. You can still kill these people but its much harder for obvious reasons.

Notes

- You will notice I have a dual set, in this case, D/P and D/P. You can have no substitute. You need to swap weapons every time you can for endurance regeneration and you need access to BP and HS no matter what. You may try a D/D variant or something but when they put up blocks and stuff or if they teleport you lack the ability to chase and stealth without a target.

- By the time your immobilize is done (about 4-6s usually(, you can apply 17 stacks of bleeding, 5 stacks of confusion, 4 stacks of poison, 10 stacks of vulnerability and cripple for life. You also gain 10 might for even more damage. To people who stand still in everything, your maximum amount of bleed stacks is about 30. By chance this can be increased tremendously with improvisation trait by resetting for another trap or caltrops.

- You have a very diverse set of skill types, missing only signets. Improvisation will almost always recharge something useful.

The Works

1) Find victim

2) BP HS for about 6-8 seconds of stealth if you know how to do the x4 HS

3) Toss shadow refuge on yourself. You want to have high amounts of stealth for as long as possible in the beginning so you can escape if things turn sour, returning later for the prize.

4) Do damage combo. See below.

5) When initiative is high or running low on stealth, back off and HS BP somewhere safe. Do not return to the fight. Keep doing this (as you get bonus initiative regen in stealth) until cool downs are back up. You can steal into enemies for extra stealth and a chance to reset Shadow Refuge or whatever. At the same time, you can use your dodge rolls to keep damaging and harassing.

6) Claim prize. You do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

The Damages

1) Never steal first without SR on cool down.

2) When on the enemy, use your heal and try to get the trap to land on them. If you know how to cancel, it will place the trap immediately. It won’t matter if you do it or not because, well, no one sees you anyway. Plus you will be using it after this combo anyway. Only use the fast version when you need it. The trap is the most important part of the initiation and is the key to killing people quickly.

3) Caltrops > Needle Trap (Utility) > Dodge roll back. Watch for a bit. Sometimes people have amazing reflexes or anticipated this shenanigans. If proceeding as normal, use Basilisk Venom to proc your Krait Runes.

4) Continue to dodge roll on them. When below 50% endurance, swap weapons. Doesn’t matter what you are doing unless mid heartseeker.

5) Repeat till tango down.

Tricks

Common thief tricks that isn’t just for this build:

- Canceling shadow shot. The first shot will blind, is unblockable, and teleports you to the enemy. Spam cancel skill to stop the 2nd strike, allowing you to blind enemies and teleport around while staying hidden.

- Using steal on nothing. This will proc your stealth on steal. Just in case.

- x4 HS. Bit tricky, but it requires the use of turning your camera facing the ground (so its top down view). This shortens your heartseeker range so you can spam it faster without changing directions. This will get you 2 more seconds of stealth and is a lot safer as you will have less chances of hitting stuff outside of the smoke field.

- Backstabbing to remove aegis / blind. You can still miss traps and stuff.

Enemies and Experiences

This build is not as easy as it sounds. Despite being in stealth all the time you still need to be able to perform your job of… something. Positioning is always key. At this point, people have dealt with high stealth (though not as high as this) upkeep builds and can stun, push, etc you. Survival first. You need to be a ghost.

Trap rangers can be bad news. Though it will remove the painful burn rather quickly, you can get stuck. Hopefully they don’t notice.

Rangers in general using taunt. You can avoid it by staying out of range, but getting taunted means you are out of stealth.

Avoid using power damage. Most of the times I died in this build was because I left stealth to attempt finishing someone off. Stay ghosty for the greater good.

To deal damage in this build is a bit difficult as you rely on dodges and what not. Try to save your abilities for a burst of conditions and you will succeed.

Many times, people don’t equip themselves with the right defensive abilities (block is useless engineers!) so they end up walking around a bit, get ganked by you, and die without even doing a single point of damage, then get stomped by air. This has happened to pretty much all classes except thieves for obvious reasons.

Even necromancers have trouble. Their tankiness comes from deathshroud. Since you are invisible the entire time, they can’t really get enough life force and since all your damage is non-hit based spectral abilities don’t do anything either. If they hit you with staff 4 you’ll live. Often times they miss it because I’m dodging into them a lot.

Try not to waste skills.

Thanks to Mr. Skeltal for good bones and calcium. Let me know how it turns out.

People who spectate in hotjoins and then join the game can see players regardless of stealth or invis.

Edit: Was talking about rewards and how masteries should be a huge part of it and not just needed to do it. It’s confirmed there will be masteries for raids. Yus.

Zalladi.4652:

at least until we have a larger selection of Specializations to choose from.

If you played the beta weekends or just even looked at how traits are done right now, it will basically stay only 3 lines and you can only pick 1 elite specialization as it can only be changed on the 3rd line.

Both of the sounds suck. The old one was like an old man failing to raise the spirits of his comrades. The new one doesn’t even sound like a warhorn.

So many examples of better warhorn sounds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBb_aO5lLZA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVMiZAqTWQ0
(of course they would have to be shorter duration but yea)

PvE or PvP? WvW? Solo? Group?

No attempted build link?

You’re not gonna get very good answers because it could literally be anything and it might not be the thing you are looking for. At this stage you are better off googling “Engineer condi build” and working off with that.

Eponet.4829:

Why is it more skillful to dodge at the last moment, and thus being in your dodge animation when they arrive, rather than say, predicting your opponent’s gap closing attack at range, and dodging out of its reach early so that you’re free to attack while they’re animation locked?

Or predicting 100 blades, and dodging to get them before the first strike occurs, to maximise the time in which you can attack while they’re channeling.

When you’re dodging your not attacking. If you can get out of the line of attack early and retaliate while they’re caught in it, it’s better than simply dodging through it.

A dodge IS more skillful when done at the last moment, because if they have multi hit abilities you will evade more of them.

There is dodging in mobility especially when playing mind games with AoE placement and projectile manipulation. You going out of range using a dodge to miss the leap can be achieved by hitting “about face” and running in that direction, because its less skillful to waste a dodge when you could have just stepped to the side.

There is no argument when it comes to that. There are almost no cases where you would have moved out of range fast enough and not proc an evade yet avoid the attack but impossible to avoid an attack by simply running.

Using it to predict generally comes from attempting to dodge instant cast abilities.

Also with the daredevil specialization they made some dodge roll choices where you ARE attacking while dodge rolling… so there.

The trap ones are a definite must, or have their AoE like rangers.

From what we’ve seen, its most likely because of a future elite spec.

Atherakhia.4086:

As the above poster said, just make it work exactly like whirlwind attack and attach an evade to it.

It already blocks projectiles.

And to the others, like I said, its a gap closer. You don’t magically appear next to the enemy every fight, and other classes have some form of mobility. This lets you enter fights or catch up to enemies, and if you use it this way you blind them.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Hmmmm…considering it can’t stack like other condis, maybe make it so below 50% it deals near old burning damage?

Nope!

The reason why is because chill is not supposed to do damage in the first place and only does so because of a trait. Necromancers get access to 2 more additional damaging conditions no one else can get. Also take into the fact there are a lot of runes / sigils that make chill application easier.