Guild Wars 2

Interesting build, but I have a few critiques for traits and gear.
1. Replace a sigil of blight with accuracy. Sigils of the same type don’t work together; in this case, only one sigil of blight will work, making the second one useless. If we replace one of the sigils with a sigil of accuracy, it brings us up to 90%.
2. Thanks to the second minor in firearms, hematic focus, we can look at this as pretty much a 10% Crit chance increase, since we got bleeds from our pistol AA, EG AA, and 33% chance on Crit.
3. Now that we have a 100% Crit chance, the extra 20% we get from fury is completely useless, so we can take HGH over stimulant supplier for extra might, reduced recharge on our elixirs, and more ticks from acid bomb (which hits like a truck) and super elixir. We also have the option to take either mecha legs or soothing detonation; I’d take either of those because turrets tend to get cleaved down too quickly for experimental turrets to be of much use.

Here’s the build reflecting my critiques: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalcThaqY7WwqKw6FLTGEY0veID3eyCrYzOQAA-TRCBABXvgQSK/YRPx6nYAaVCCwDAYH1fYw8nU7HQKgTVZB-e

Sneak gyro. Can’t hit what you can’t see, and Necro/reapers don’t have any reveal.

Where do you plan on using this? Roaming? Zerging?

This isn’t a good build for roaming, since mobility is key (getting to a point fast is key, so that if the tower or wherever the commander needs you to check out is in trouble, you have time to report it), and you’ve only got a 59% swiftness uptime, which isn’t a whole lot, and the boons provided by elixir b (and its tool belt) are valuable in a fight. And chances are, you’ll encounter enemies when the boons run out and the elixir is on cool down. Using swiftness from elixir gun 2 isn’t a good idea, since it requires a target, and will put you in combat.

If you’re using it for zerging, it would work; not perfect, but it would work. The Condi cleanse from EG 3, 4, 5, healing from EG 5 and healing turret, and blast finisher from EG 4 are good in a zerg of any size. The lightning field from hammer 5 is great for blasting swiftness.

As for the elite, I usually take sneak gyro. The stealth helps when stomping (enemies can’t hit what they can’t see), and provides a nice daze when it gets destroyed. Also, with elixir x, you’ve got a 50% chance of getting rampage, 50% chance of getting tornado, and 100% chance of getting the one you don’t want. Having the moa is nice, but situational at best. Also, it can be somewhat wasted if you’re in it, and you get hit below 25% health and self regulating defenses is off CD. Either of the other two traits would work better.

If you’re running a Condi build, run as far and fast as possible away from reapers. If you have to fight them, use cc, since their stun breaks are few and far between, and are on long cooldowns.

Take medic gyro if you have a source of Condi cleanse, such as an elixir build (though in that case you might as well take elixir H), sigil of cleansing (remove 1 Condi on weapon swap, 9s cool down) if you have a kit, or sigil of generosity (60% chance transfer one condition on Crit, 9s cool down) if you have a high Crit chance. Taking cleansing pulse (1st minor in inventions) removes one damaging condition on using a healing skill. Although the healing turret has two water fields, they are relatively short, with the tool belt lasting for a 1/4 second, and cleansing burst lasting for 1s. This is compared to the tool belt on the medic gyro, which pulses protection, is a water field that last 4s, and moves with you, allowing you to blast and leap in it. If you have rapid regeneration (I always take, unless I’m running a juggernaut build) and final salvo, you can get a lot of healing by detonating the gyro just before its duration is up.

The healing turret is better if you need more Condi cleanse, and has a shorter cool down than the medic gyro if picked up. The healing turret also provides some regeneration. Also, the healing turret has a knockback when detonated, which can be helpful when knocking enemies back, or interrupting big skills (if traited). Cleansing burst removes conditions and heals up to five allies simultaneously, where the medic gyro can only heal one at a time.

Infusion.7149:

If scrappers get nerfed I’d take a guess at:
Hammer 5 / thunderclap : damage or range
Hammer 4 / Shock shield : damage on a block skill , or it might be changed to aegis like well of precog…
Hammer 3 / Rocket charge’s triple leap finisher
Hammer 2 / Electro-whirl : recharge /damage maybe
Adaptive armor: armor or condi reduction
Stealth gyro interval and/or uptime
Bunker down cooldown (Core engi)
Recovery matrix’s protection duration
Rapid regen’s superspeed heals
Projection Injection uptime (core engi)
Medic gyro cast time 1/2 or 3/4s

They’re not going to give medic gyro a cast time. After BWE3, we were told scrapper would be getting a stun break, and we never got one. A few skills without a cast time can be used while cc’d, but nothing that breaks stun.

It’s not noted on the homepage, but the build editor we all know and love has (finally) been updated for the winter balance patch

bearshaman.3421:

I’m gonna piggyback on this thread real quick. Is Viper gear worth the added expense? Precision takes a good sized hit, and you lose some condi, to increase power (not your main focus for this build) and gain some condi duration. Since crits is how you proc alot of the bleeds and burn, isn’t this shooting yourself in the foot? Wouldn’t Sinister or Rampager or a mix of the two be better?

This is a question I’ve had for several condi builds, but especially for this one with two traits giving conditions on crits.

Also armor runes: Krait, Balthazar, Berserker, or Nightmare?

Thing is, condition duration food (what we used to use to get the condition duration up to the cap before HoT) was cut by 50%. So now, we have to use the condition duration gear to boost our condition duration.

Tiilimon.6094:

For super elixir you want to swap as soon as the projectile is in the air to get bonus for impact, for elixir shell you’re often utilizing the water field instead of the AOE hot itself. Elixir shell doesn’t have an impact heal component, only the heal on time ticks.

So if you’re actually in a fight where your allies are losing health in chunks, you stop caring about a little bit of HOT healing boost and instead swap to your shield/egun for a quick blast finisher.

Pretty much any encounter where you would rely on the 33% bonus for elixir shell ticks could be handled by spamming med blaster instead, 0 cooldown and full bonus, that would be optimizing

If your allies are losing health chunks, a better idea is to support them rather than losing DPS due to the pitiful healing of the med blaster.

Though, don’t forget that equipping the med kit (counts as using a healing skill for the purposes of traits and runes) removes one damaging condition from nearby allies, applies regeneration, and buffs your healing power by 250.

Edit: If you’re specced into inventions, which is probably a really good idea.

Yeah yeah yeah… Go back to playing your thief.

We got our nerfs. We’re very weak against conditions; any even moderately-good Necro can defeat us with condition spam. Mesmers are really strong against us.

Also, engineer/scrapper is by far the hardest class to play. If you spent an equal amount of time playing each class, you’d be the worst at engineer.

There is really no penalty for dying in Guild Wars 2. Well, the biggest penalty is the inconvenience of walking from the nearest WP to the anvil, and then back to the meta event you were participating in when you died. Even in groups that will be wiping a lot, some have multiple sets of armor which they swap out when armor gets broken.

So here’s some of the changes I’d like to see to make death actually seem like a penalty:
-When a piece of armor is damaged, it cannot be unequipped, its stats cannot be changed in the MF, upgrades cannot be added/removed/changed, it cannot be salvaged, and (for legendary armor when its released) its stats cannot be hot-swapped.
-When a piece of armor is broken, in addition to the penalties for being damaged, it loses all effectiveness

Also, I would like to see fixes which would promote you to actually play content to repair your gear, instead of returning to the nearest WP, or dessa’s lab for an anvil. In fact, remove repair anvil entirely. Instead, use essence of luck to repair gear. Here’s how I envision it works:
-When you have damaged armor, you can click and drag essence of luck onto it to repair it. That being said, you cannot repair gear with luck which is a lower rarity than the armor you’re repairing (eg. You can’t repair exotic armor with green luck). Also, it will take significantly more luck to repair broken armor than damaged armor.
-For ascended (and when it’s released, legendary) armor, damaged armor can be fixed with globs of ectoplasm, and broken armor must be repaired with dark matter. In these cases, one glob will fully repair one piece of armor.
-Alternatively, in PvE and WvW, you can commune with a place of power (the places you go to get a hero point or charge quartz crystals) to fully repair any armor, since these are usually off out of the way and require you to do some playing to get to them.

I feel that this overhaul would do a lot to improve the game, since now it would actually be beneficial to try to avoid dying.

Still waiting on gyro buffs, buffing med kit to actually be viable, balancing turrets so that they don’t get cleaved down immediately.

Thieves everywhere are rejoicing that they no longer have to deal with celestial engineers in PvP.

wharone.1809:

archmagus.7249:

Oh no! Now you have to use something besides your AA.

Oh sure, like the one where projectiles will fly off in all the wrong directions?

Or like the one where you have a 60% of the skill not actually working and a 30% chance to warp you into a wall?

Just go back to enjoying your Engineer before Anet realizes they forgot to give them their quarterly nerf.

We got our nerfs. Sneak gyro had its CD doubled because thieves and Mesmers were complaining about us having to much stealth, automated medical response now has a 120s ICD and still procs even when the healing skill is off CD, rocket charge had its CD increased, and perfectly weighted only gives 1 stack of stability.

SaskiaElite.8132:

Battledoll.1803:

More grindy. Harder to earn gold (dungeons were nerfed). Good places to earn gold via PvE nowadays is: Tequatl (2 gold daily) and fractals.

They keep nerfing things since years as far as I know,

thanks for all answers, no reason to download 25GB then- shame this game deserves better devs if you ask me…nerfing every single thing, removing story content and full focus on pvp is disgusting. I’m a mostly solo player in MMOs, and there’s literally nothing solo in GW2 and also income resources ruined by developers, which forces us to buy Gems. Doesn’t matter, I’m not going to spend a penny to them

thanks again

Um… Maybe you missed the M(assively)M(ultiplayer)O(nline) portion of the genre.

Oh no! Now you have to use something besides your AA.

Silverwastes are still very profitable; 2-3g per cycle for vinewrath, up to 4g per loop from chest trains if you sell everything (I salvage and keep almost everything). If you’ve got fractal mastery trained, 3g or so from running the daily fractals.

kybraga.7103:

Mesmers are not stationary; can evade attacks. Turrets can’t.

As for applying the boons in the first place, at least let them be useful boons, like protection, aegis, regeneration, and retaliation.

Honestly, if we started giving Turrets boons like Retaliation, we’d have people crying again. [Example: “I died from taking kittens of 261 retaliation! That’s OP!”] And honestly, I was thinking more. And thought about the boon traits for turrets, make it they just apply the boons to each other… [As in the turrets.] To give boons.
[/quote]

Turrets are affected by condition damage, which isn’t reflected by retaliation, and the returned damage from retaliation is reduced by 33% in PvP.

Insane ICD on Automated Medical Response is unwarranted. 120s? In that time, I can use AED 3 times before the ICD is over. And, it will trigger even when the healing skill is off CD, so most of the time it’s a wasted trait.

Btw, it is 30s longer than any other ICD in the game, with necromancer and revenant traits tying for 2nd at 90s.

They should have reduced the ICD to 60s. That would be a much better balance.

kybraga.7103:

archmagus.7249:

Now why would we waste boons on something which gets cleaved down in seconds?

Why does Boon mesmer exist my friend?

Mesmers are not stationary; can evade attacks. Turrets can’t.

As for applying the boons in the first place, at least let them be useful boons, like protection, aegis, regeneration, and retaliation.

Now why would we waste boons on something which gets cleaved down in seconds?

Xyonon.3987:

Rapid regen changes, it’s a tooltip bug. Btw careful with those question marks, they might be extinct soon if everyone uses as many as you.

Rapid is not affected by healing power. However, it is affected by the Power of the Mists bonus you get from WvW.

I really want to hear the reasoning behind the nerf. The ICD on it is now more than 4x the CD of our longest heal skill (AED). It is also the longest ICD of any trait in the game. The only other two are Jade Echo on the revenant, and Fear of Death on the Necromancer. The adept level isn’t that great unless you run with a shield, or are crazy enough to use the medkit (which still isn’t made any more viable).

Edit: It’s 3x that of AED. I usually play with gadgeteer, which skewed my numbers a bit.

It basically causes your glider to collapse as if you ran out of stamina. And they don’t go all the way down, so you can still re-deploy it before you fall to your death. After all these years, they finally found a way to remove fall damage as a mechanic.

UltraTown.5683:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

A full gyro build is unlikely to work well due to each of the gyro’s having a very different purpose.

However each fits quite well for a build that it was designed for, just mix it with other class skills that suit that role.

I can tell you from experience, the full gyro build is very unlikely to work well

I do agree that mixing is a much better build plan, but the gyros are a bit weak nonetheless. There are very rare circumstances in which anyone would want any of the gyros over some of the kits, elixirs, and gadgets available.
I am very optimistic about this upcoming balance patch though. I’d like to see gyros become a bit more viable and contribute to a better scrapper identity/feel.

They won’t. At least not in this patch. They said they’re going to be nerfing the Scrapper, not buffing it.

I don’t get why people complain about wasting skills when blinded. That’s kind of the point of the condition.

Salamander.2504:

Pre HoT classes with a CC as an elite:
Thief

HoT elite specs with CC as an elite:
Mesmer
Thief
Necro
Warrior
Guardian

The game is already experiencing an overabundance of CC and power creep. And you want to make it worse by making CTTB require zero thought to use?

Pre-HoT:
You forgot engineer; stun on Supply Crate, All kinds of CC with Elixir X (By extension, Ele too, since one of the outcomes is the ele elite.)

Post HoT:
stealth gyro dazes on death.

Dimes.6024:

Darknicrofia.2604:

you’re so right, the entire gyro area should just be a walking fire field.

that apply 7 stacks of burn every second, yea

Yay! Let’s raise hell on the warrior forums, as well… and the ele.

Oh, and it pulses out a boon which makes our attacks unblockable.

I think I know what the next Gem store addition will be…

You’re in the wrong forum

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief

All 3 of those ascended mats need to have their drop rate reduced. I got well over 3k of each, I think almost 4k of the EF. I have to farm the SW for crests every now and then to get the obsidian shards to refine them so I don’t fill more than 1 bank tab.

Raxzor.5946:

The smaller events that just happen, that have no relation to the meta is what I am talking about.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_event

I think you’re missing the point of what dynamic events are supposed to be. They designed events to chain together and interact with each other. That’s how it’s been since launch.

Serious Thought.5394:

How would the new build look? I’m still learning fields+finishers, but I did find out that F1+Hammer3= around 6k hp. Was nice Killed my protection, but it was nice.

Gw2 Skills actually has a really nice guide under the combo section.

Rym.1469:

Barbed Precision going up to 66% chance on crit again would be a good change.

I think it’s fine where it’s at. Having 100% Crit chance with one of the fastest AA chains in the game already makes for some really nice bleed stacks. It would be insanely broken if it was 66%.

I’ve found using blinds and weakness does wonders against power builds. Also, don’t forget about retaliation. Blasting in a light field gets you AoE retaliation, and leaping through one gives light aura, which gives you retaliation and applies vulnerability to them when struck. Hammer 4 is also a 2s block.

That’s a really cool idea. Along the same lines, the mortar kit could shoot cans of pop.

“Our focus for the engineer has been to improve less used traits and to rework some functionality for scrapper traits”

Less used traits… Hm… Health Insurance, automated medical response, experimental turrets (they don’t usually last long enough to get any benefit out of it), thermobaric detonation… Did I miss any?

Why take the rune of speed? You don’t get a whole lot out of the bonuses for the rune, since you’re taking mecha legs, and if you take HGH you have more swiftness uptime and more elixir H’s because of the reduced cool down and increased duration. And bunker down? Your Crit chance is only 4%, so bunker down will only proc once in a blue moon. I think either of the other two traits would be better. Also, AMR has an astronomically long ICD, so you’re probably better off taking overshield for the extra protection. I’m also a fan of expert examination because of damage mitigation from the weakness.

Dang. You’d think that someone who has an entire channel based on GW2 would know better than to cheat.

Kanto.1659:

I’m condi viper and I mock HoT maps. I blame Rise though. Don’t leave home without it.

(That and I know about the dodge key).

“Rise” needs a nerf. It’s borderline game-breaking, especially when going into death magic and blood magic. Once I fully unlock it, I’m going to see about soloing some dungeons with it.

Turrets really do need a buff. Though, I’d be happy if they changed advanced turrets to make them immune to crits and condis. Then I might be tempted to take inventions more often; it just seems to me like most of the traits there are a bit lackluster.

HollowDean.5134:

What build would you recommend for HoT and fractals?

I haven’t done a whole lot of necro/reaper (I main engineer, but I’ve been playing more reaper recently) in HoT, but fractals are a lot different than HoT. Carrion is probably going to be the best for HoT maps; yes you lose a good chunk of damage, but you still do more damage standing up than downed, and the amount health we have in shroud scales with our regular health, so we end up with more survivability. Mobs in HoT hit a lot harder than those in fractals, and a lot of mobs are either completely immune or highly resistant to normal damage. Extra toughness helps, but not as much as extra vitality.

Beldin.5498:

Yeah .. i also bought the 100 € version, and have spent maybe 4-5 hours max in the
new areas, and have absolutely no interest to go there ever again.

So what did i got for that ? A (not even full skilled) Reaper and Dragonhunter and
Tyria mastery. Heck .. not even some new armor skins, and that in a skin based
game. Oh forgot .. its now all about raiding like in every other MMO.

Yeah stuff on HoT does take a while to get. It’s unfortunate that you actually have to WORK for the things you want. People have been complaining for a long time that the game is too easy and that GW2 lacks any kind of end-game content. But, now that content is here, they complain that it’s too hard because they can’t grind it out in the first week.

I’ve been playing somewhat regularly since launch, and I still don’t have scrapper fully unlocked, I haven’t trained any of my mysteries all the way, and I got two alts (which I actually care about leveling) where I haven’t even begun to unlock their elite specs.

Stars.2179:

Vayne.8563:

If the stats are the same, then yes, it’s not a new tier. Stop making up definitions to suit your argument.

I don’t think you understand how the game works. Equal amount of stats does not equate in equal effectiveness. Hence the ability to change the stat FREELY makes Legendary a completely separate tier from Ascended tier.

Here is a specific example:

In this picture. It clearly demonstrates that being in full berserker has effective power of 10159.12 while 4th column demonstrate a different scenario with Zerker/Assassin mix having only 9822.72 effective power. That is quite a big difference right? Now this is assuming you have all buffs.

You’re pointing to spreadsheet calculations here, not what you’ll realistically see in-game. There’s a lot of things which can affect DPS; weakness, chill, slow, just to name a few. Also, with a glassy build like that, chances are you’ll be using heal skills, and/or getting downed; those will also affect your ‘effective power’.

Some classes have traits which provide bonuses to Crit chance and damage as well, or provide a stat bonus based on another stat. This means you don’t have to run full zerker to get the max DPS

Also, power isn’t the only stat to look at when it comes to damage. I main a sinister engineer, and I really don’t plan on changing my gear, which means that the ability to quickly swap stats isn’t worth all that much to me. Maybe viper’s at some point if I see fights taking long enough where the increased condition duration has any real effect on it. But that’s not going to incentivize me to go and get a legendary weapon so I can swap one set out for another. If I wanted to do that on my ascended gear, I’d get the mats to swap it in the mystic forge.

You guys really don’t read the description for the tomes, do you? If used by a level 80, they give spirit shards. With masteries, you no longer get them by leveling up, making them the only reliable way to get spirit shards. You also get tomes from the login rewards.

Is this tanky enough for you?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQJAWinnNWNSyJrJRNl/ksoygS4U5QJIscrkFalg9duXN4YZtaLE-TRiRABNpEc0DBQhHBADV/Bg9HoU5njXAgcfAgOAc0EEA4A493T+5Ds8yLv8yL3yLv8yLvcpAYSrF-e

After the launch of HoT, precursors in general went down in price.

The day before HoT launched, it was going for 600g for the buy price, 700g for the sell price. Now, the buy price is 480g, and the sell price is just over 560g. It may have been less expensive when they announced the precursor crafting, but now the price has dropped so it may not be.
Source: https://www.gw2tp.com/item/29175-the-hunter

Rares have gone down, as well. I used to get 40s a piece easy for a rare, and 1g for an exotic. Now, I’m lucky if I get half that. I usually just end up salvaging them for ectos, and banking those to put towards my ascended gear.

I think you’re getting shrapnel confused with sharpshooter. Sharpshooter has a 50/50 chance to cause 1 stack of bleed for 3 seconds(base, but that always gets bumped up to 4 seconds thanks to serrated steel; both of those are minors in firearms). Between those two traits, sinister gear, and a rune of the krait, I can easily stack 20-something stacks of bleed on an enemy.

Let’s take a count of how many skills we have:
5 tool belt skills
+5 weapon skills
+5 skills from med kit
+Up to 15 skills from 3 kits in Utility
+5 skills from mortal kit in our elite
=35 skills, which we can swap to WITHOUT A(ny appreciable) COOLDOWN
Elementalist has the most with 40 skills (5 weapon + 1 heal + 3 utility + 1 elite) * 4 attunements. Though they can raise that even further with conjured weapons, but those have limited charges, expire after a limited amount of time, and have cooldowns. Tempest can add 4 more by overloading their attunements.

If you’re going to kill dungeons, at least give us a way to get the tokens, stat combos, etc. From them. Since the gold Nerf, nobody wants to run dungeons anymore, finding a party is incredibly difficult (I was in LFG for over an hour and a half looking for a party for CM), unless you want to solo them.

Maybe remove the dungeons completely, then roll them into fractals? Maybe adding new fractals to replace the dungeons, and move the rewards to the fractal vendors?

Chris Cleary.8017:

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

Please provide more details. A list would be fantastic <3

MTX Combat Boosters – Speed, Might, Regen, Swim Speed (ect)
Food/Utility with +%Damage vs Monster Type – These will not have any benefit
Pet Consumables – Ogre Pet Whistle, Fire Elemental Powder (ect) will be disabled
Sigils of +%Damage vs Monster Type- These will not have any benefit
Sigils of Night – This will not have any benefit
Costume Brawl – Costume Brawl Pet summons will be disabled

I might have missed some things here, but you get the picture. Feel free to ask about specific items, however if they are likely to add a edge to combat, they are likely disabled.

If we have a food/utility which still has some time left on it (the duration was boosted by a primer, and we still got a few hours on it) will the timer on the buff keep counting down, or would the timer be suspended until we leave the raid?

So far, I’m liking my sinister p/p engineer better. Though, that’s just me being a big fan of conditions.