Guild Wars 2

Exhibit A. of why Rocket Boots needs to be a stun break: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPEHDfbSsAU

Also, Healing Turret could really cleanse more than 2 conditions. If you’re not running alchemy, you’re completely kittened for condi cleanse.

Hi. I’m looking for some constructive advice on how to deal with this roaming condi thief build as a rifle engi.

I’m not really sure what I could possibly be doing against this. I can’t even think of much I could do to escape aside from pop sneak gyro and run very very far away, but that still wouldn’t work if they got their steal+condi combo off.

It feels like it should have a stun break. I would gladly trade all the damage for that.

- especially since this takes up the slot on my skill-bar where elixir gun normally would be. Elixir gun comes with a stun break, a heal, damage, and an escape on similar cooldowns.

Rocket Boots is an escape. Its “pure” purpose is to get away or reposition. Therefore, it could use something like:

• more distance, faster travel speed
• evade during travel
• clear a condition at the end
• break stun

What it doesn’t need is damage. No engi is using Rocket Boots to intentionally damage opponents as part of a combo. If this is what anet want Rocket Boots to be used for, it’ll have to deal much much more damage than it currently does – like 250% more, not 25%.

Okay, but what are you supposed to do for defense if you’re running Rifle or P/P and not P/S?

They took away 1/3 of our main defensive skill and gave us nothing to replace it.

It’s not even particularly good damage though. It’s slightly more than an autoattack!

Like, if it was a Pry Bar or Blunderbuss level hit, I would seriously consider it as a damaging option in a fight. As it is, it’s actually detrimental a lot of the time if you’re trying to get away in stealth or get away without entering combat. + it doesn’t evade, so you can still get cc’d or damaged while travelling.

Preferably on 5 – Jump Shot, which is used to get in and out of combat, so is particularly vulnerable to damage and cc during travel.

Honestly? Post it on the gw2 subreddit. They actually read that.. unlike this forum.

The problem with Alchemy is that it then forces you to run elixirs, and I just don’t want to do that. The whole point of Engineer dating waaaaaaay back to the start of the game was that you had flexibility from switching kits and complicated skill rotations and skill-based gameplay.

Elixirs aren’t that. Hammer isn’t that.

Make Engi Great Again? .. Please? .. or at least stop nerfing things like Gear Shield?

My current build:

Rifle ( because I like ranged pew pew and rocket jump)

• Explosives (for grenade speed + damage)
• Tools ( for gear shield…RIP, + swiftness )
• Scrapper ( for sneak gyro + defense )

Skills:

• Healing Turret – takes too long to cast now, but it’s literally my only condi cleanse
• Grenades – sucks because of HoT projectile hate and retaliation damage
• Rocket Boots – I should be using Elixir Gun, but I like Rocket Boots even though they’re worse
• Toolkit – for defense.. but that’s nerfed now.
• Sneak Gyro – for defense/escape/surprise

This build has no stability, no stunbreak, only cleanses 2 condis per 20s, and now has practically no defense. What do I get for my trouble? Nothing. High risk. no reward.

Re: Rocket Boots. No one used this for damage anyway, and they still won’t. It takes you away from your target and you’re facing the wrong direction. It’s an escape, not an attack.

Re: Gear Shield. It needs to be 3s because there are lots of damaging skills that last about 3s – eg. Unrelenting Assault, Hundred Blades, Rapid Fire. 2s is not enough

I hate hate hate how they continue to balance Hammer’s dominance in pvp by nerfing base skills. Eg. Healing Turret cast time went from 0.5s to over 0.75s. Now they nerfed gear shield’s duration.

Just look at the engi numbers in pvp. It must be 95% Hammer Scrappers. Easy fix: Nerf Hammer and put base back where it was.

Hammer in general doesn’t fit “purity of purpose”:

• Autoattack chain – give you might, applies vuln, deals damage
• Rocket Charge – Evades, high damage, leap combo
• Shock Shield – Deals damage while blocking

Actually. Many of the new HoT skills don’t.
* Daredevil – evade + high damage in one skill
* Revenant – evade + high damage + cc in one skill
* Dragonhunter + Druid get – mobility + heal in one skill

etc.

That’s not going to save you from a Procession of Blades and Test of Faith trap when you get jumped. It’s not going to save you when a ranger is pewpewing you from 1500 range. It’s not going to save you from Unrelenting Assault, etc. etc.

Glass cannon damage builds, need all the defense they can get. Nerfing Gear Shield makes a dps build less playable, not more.

Hammer / Scrapper is meta. Base Engi – especially with Rifle or Shield isn’t. They didn’t touch rifle, and the buffs to shield aren’t enough to make it useful. Plus they nerfed Gear Shield – primarily used by vanilla engis… kitten that.

If you think 3s is too long for a block, you clearly don’t pvp or wvw much.

Procession of Blades – >3s
Rapid Fire – 2.5s
Hundred Blades – 3.5s
Unrelenting Assault – >3s

Fire Arrow Cart – >3s

Not to mention it makes blocking shorter attacks much harder because you don’t have a block buffer. You now need to time the block exactly at the right time. You almost need to be telepathic to time your gear shield correctly.

3s is necessary in WvW for surviving while passing through AoE. It’s also necessary for surviving skills like Revenant’s Unrelenting Assault, or Ranger pew pew, or Hundred Blades, or Traps, or any number of other high damage skills that last more than 3 seconds.

Now we need to block for 2 seconds, then burn a dodge or two (which are already stretched thin, considering they’re our ONLY other defense – unless you’re running Elixir S)

Re: Rocket Boots + Healing Turret combo – It’s not enough. I can post a video later showing the problem, but basically: Heal Turret takes too long to go off – It actually takes more than the listed 0.75s to go off, so it’s often interrupted or comes too late. Rocket Boots also provides no evades, so you’re vulnerable to aoe, direct damage, and cc’s while travelling. Sometimes you’re taking so much fire that Rocket Boots is a death sentence, but a longer block would save you.

Gear Shield

There was NOTHING wrong with it. It’s just a giant kitten YOU to the players that actually still try and run toolkit + vanilla rather than the standard hammer scrapper that they’re shoving down everyone’s throats.

I would also be fine with it if they nerfed blocks and defense across the board – especially the ones that let players block while dealing damage, or particularly long blocks – but they kittening didn’t.

Bump. On the off chance any devs read this forum, please read this thread.

Edit: before the balance patch please. I don’t want rifle to suck for another 3 months.

Hmm. yep. That’s it. What’s the ICD on that? Seems to happen every single time I try and pull a DH.

What’s going on here? Is it a trait? Is it just bugged? It’s been bugged in various forms since launch, so I wouldn’t be surprised.

Here’s a quick video of it happening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMVLyXwVbQ4

Pull at 6 seconds in

Conditions won’t fix rifle. They might help even up the damage, but IMO, the core issues with rifle are Overcharged Shot and Jump Shot being far too risky for their effects.

Jump shot needs evades or a LOT more damage. Overcharged shot needs to not completely wreck you if your opponent has stability, block, aegis, projectile nullification, or any defense at all.

Eh, not really. It’s difficult to gear for hybrid builds, and they tend to not have a place in PvE, PvP, etc. Rifle has only ever had 1 damaging condition on it. If anything, I’d rather that be removed and replaced with more damage.

Regardless of the type of damage though, I think Rifle’s current flaws are that its skills are outdated. HoT skills just do more things at once and counter its strengths. It was a good weapon, though one that required risk. After HoT power creep, you just can’t afford that risk any more and it pays off much less than it used to. (see: Overcharged Shot, Jump Shot)

I guess if you consider zerging to be a good strategy…

As it is now, I think it favours classes with mobility like thief and mesmer a little too much in that they can jump between points quickly whereas others need to run all the way around.

Yeah, it seems like fights are constantly getting +1’d, which happens in PvP, but especially on this map. It just doesn’t really feel good to be winning a 1v1 on point, then get jumped by 2 enemies that just ran over from mid in 2 seconds. This happens ALL THE TIME, on Coliseum because it’s a short distance from mid point and you can’t see +1’s coming due to walls.

Coliseum would be best as just straight deathmatch with 5 or 6 different spawns.

The current map is fairly zergy and does not lead to enjoyable fights. It’d be fun as a casual 1v1v1v1v1v…. though.

Try going up against a DH or Guardian and finding a window to use OC shot where your opponent doesn’t have block, stability, or aegis. Meanwhile, try not to get Spear of Justice’d right through your gear shield block.

I like the self-knockback on Overcharged Shot too, but I have to admit it’s a liability. The reward is no longer enough to make up for the risk.

Maybe if OC shot was unblockable? The problem is, there’s so much block and reflect in the game that if you don’t land OC shot (and there’s a solid chance you won’t), you’ve hurt yourself more than your enemy.

Edit: Alternatively, if the self-knockback was faster – like if it granted quickness or something, that’d be acceptable. As it is now, I am hesitant to use it sometimes if I’m not sure if an enemy I just quickly targeted (like a War or Mes or Guard) will be reflecting or blocking.

Edit: And stability! So many classes can get tons of stability for a long time now. Warrior, Guard, Ranger, Rev, etc. Trading a kinda long self-cc to remove 1 stack of stab feels bad.

Victory in Stronghold is determined by a few gimmicky mechanics that aren’t possible unless your class can exploit them.

• stack stability and channel a hero uninterrupted
• heal door breakers with ele (there is WAAAAAAY too much outgoing healing to npc’s)

It’s a fun map, but it’s not a fair fight if one team is comped for it and the other isn’t.

Kits aren’t reliable damage. Grenades take too much damage from retaliation and are reflected by everything in the current meta. Bomb kit is awkward to use and easy to evade. Elixir Gun and Toolkit are utility kits.

On top of this, Hammer does deal good damage while also being defensive, which is why 95% of all engineers in pvp run it. Rifle (and others) need to be brought up to the same level, or the HoT power creep needs to be nerfed across the board.

As others have said, Rifle was great before HoT power creep.

If Rifle had been designed for HoT:

• Hip Shot: Higher damage, grants might every third shot.
• Net Shot: Unblockable, reflects projectiles
• Blunderbuss: Higher damage
• Overcharged Shot: No self-cc, or trait that grants stability on use
• Jump Shot: Higher damage, lower cooldown, evades during travel

Despite the word-salad title, I’m guessing you are complaining about function gyro stomps being unfair.

Yes. they are a little bit unfair in that they let the scrapper do two things at once.

However.

• This is Scrapper’s Elite Mechanic. You know, like Druid’s Astral form, or Reaper Shroud, or Chrono CS. If you take that away, Scrapper has literally nothing as an elite mechanic. I would gladly trade the gyro for any other class’ elite mechanic.

• Other classes have better stomps. Stealth/Tele stomps and Invuln stomps are more reliable. Function gyro dies to aoe or focus and gets lost if the target teleports.

Rocket Boots is my favourite skill in the game, but it has some glaring flaws:

1. It doesn’t go far enough. – ~a year or so ago, you could give yourself swiftness or superspeed, then use Rocket Boots and go ~1200 range. Maybe more? I can’t remember, but it was enough to cross the gap in HotM.

2. It doesn’t evade anything. Think of all new HoT movement skills from Daredevil, Scrapper, Etc. They all have built-in evades. Rocket Boots doesn’t. It’s worse than dodging sometimes because if you’re under heavy fire, you’ll just get hit with cc mid-rocket boots.

3. It breaks immob, but only in the direction you’re facing. If you get snared by that druid trait (on a ridiculously low cooldown…) and you’re facing into a group of enemies, you can’t use it to break stun because it will launch you into a worse position than you are currently stuck in.

Edit:
4. Torment. You take kittentons of torment damage if you use rocket boots while you have torment

Rifle and Pistol have a place in WvW, but I don’t think they’re better than Hammer. They’re useful for finishing a half-health player that is running away, or bursting someone down, but they aren’t defensive enough to survive any focus. If you’re in a skirmish and 2 or 3 players decide to target you, you must disengage if you’re running rifle/pistol or else you will just die.

A good hammer scrapper can survive 3v1 while still dealing good damage thanks to combo offensive/defensive skills like hammer’s reflect and evade leaps, while not giving up any of the engineer’s defensive or heal skills like elixir gun, toolkit, bulwark gyro, etc.

Rifle and Pistol both require you to be close to deal good damage, but they don’t offer any defense. Hammer does.

Retal is also a problem for grenades. I’ll be up on a hill throwing a grenade barrage at a zerg and watch my health immediately drop ~25%.

I wonder if they have stats on what weapons people use in pvp. If they looked, they’d probably see that no one – ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, uses shield in pvp ever. They’d find that pistol sees a small amount of play, and rifle is farther behind that. Maybe.. just maybe this is indicative of a balance/meta problem in the game.

I hate the boring warrior-like hammer playstyle, but I have to admit, it’s just better for pvp right now by a long shot.

Honestly, P, S, and R are just worse for PvP/WvW than Hammer. Rifle, Pistol, and especially Shield were balanced around the old meta where you could actually shoot projectiles at people and expect them to hit.

Just a theory: Rifle/Pistol/Shield were meant as a complement to other kits where you’d switch between them to make up for the individual weapons not being that great. Hammer was meant to be used with Gyros, not kits, so Hammer itself is a better weapon than the other options.

IMO, either the HoT power creep needs to be toned waaaay down, or Rifle/Pistol/Shield need to be brought up to HoT level.

Well, unless you’re also playing thief, you can’t catch them if they decide to run away. That alone makes it a pretty boring ‘fight’ if you can call it that. They can cover 3,000 range in the time most classes would take to go 900 or so.

You need them to commit to killing you, then turn the tables and burst them before they have the chance to run.

My favourite thing to do as an Engi is Detection Pulse a Thief that just used Shadow Refuge, then 1-shot them with Grenade Barrage. The majority of them have no idea what happened and you can just burst them down where they stand.

I still wouldn’t run it. You’d get hit by a 9k+ CoR at 1200 range, or a 9k vault, or any other big attack and just immediately die.

Same. I liked rifle back before the HoT power creep. Since then, there is so much projectile hate and the other options are SO much better, you’re at a serious disadvantage playing rifle.

Part of the problem is that rifle requires you to risk a lot. Its damage skills are short-range and provide no defensive options.

• Jump Shot is a death sentence if you don’t have stability or your opponent has cc’s up. The damage is not good considering the risk you take to use it.
• Overcharged shot is even more of a death sentence if your opponent has any kind of defense up, but especially reflect (and reflect is everywhere now).
• Net shot doesn’t do enough (2s immob? Druids immob for like 10s+ at longer range)
• Blunderbuss is okay, but needs more damage up close.
• Autoattack is good, but lacks damage

In general:

• Rifle attacks are mitigated by all defense (protection, blind, weakness, reflect, projectile nullification, block, stability)
• Other weapons and classes (especially HoT powercreep) outperform it now.

insanemaniac has it exactly right. You can play vanilla, but you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

Meta/HoT builds attack while defending. Vanilla builds don’t.

Eg. Compare Gear Shield to Shield of Courage. One is a 3 second block that does nothing else. The other is a 5 second block (of a ~75% forward cone) for 5 seconds that lets you attack.

Take Zerker invulns like 8 seconds of endure pain and 18(!!!) seconds of resistance + every minute. In that time they get free reign to kill and survive virtually unopposed. The only counter is to moa them, or pop invulns of your own and run very far away. Compare that to Elixir S, which is 3-6 seconds of invuln every minute and you might die to condis while it’s active if you’re not careful. Oh, and you can’t do damage.

Obviously, there are differences between classes, but in general, meta builds deal damage while safely defending or healing. Older non-HoT specs weren’t designed that way, and they deal less damage as well. Other than novelty, there’s no reason to choose them.

I should say, I do love fighting a good non-stance/invuln Warrior. Rifle Engi vs Warrior is an awesome duel – trading cc’s and damage and blocks and dodges. It’s what the game should be about rather than condi cheese and invulns for days.

It’s not that thieves are particularly overpowered. They’re not. It’s just an unfair fight.

If I screw up and take too much damage, I will die. The thief can catch up because their mobility is 3x as good as any other class. If the thief screws up and takes too much damage, they stealth or escape out of range. In order for me to win, I need to kill the thief in one burst. The thief can just keep resetting until they eventually catch me off guard.

Mostly roaming:

• condi mesmer – My build (power rifle engi) only has 1 condi cleanse on a 20s cd; cannot compete at all. Furthermore, my defense is mostly mobility and using lots of active skills, so I am especially screwed by confusion and torment.

• thieves – balanced, but unfair. They can always get away 1v1, so they’re no fun. If they know what they’re doing, you cannot win because they’ll always escape to 20000 range and reset the fight if it’s going badly for them. Also, basilisk venom being unblockable is a huge pain because I rely on gear shield to block, so even if I see them coming with venoms up, I can’t do kitten about it.

• Invuln zerkers – 0 0 0 0 0 invuln invuln invuln block block block 0 0 0 0 resistance for ~15 seconds. Meanwhile, they’re faster than you, do more damage, and have like an hour of stability. You have to wait a LOOOOONG time for an opening. It’s just no fun to play against. I basically have to run away for a full minute before finally turning around to attack them and by that point some of their invuln cooldowns are up again.

• activation time on aed is too long. When you’re playing chicken with your life total, you need it to work and not be interrupted. 0.75 seconds is a LONG time in pvp.
• range on the toolbelt skill makes it really difficult to land and it’s not that great if you do land it. At least it works well with SD…
• as mentioned, it’s a nonbo with Recovery Matrix. The other two traits in that tier are bad unless you’re using hammer scrapper.

I do think it’d be fun to try a build with AED and Toss Elixir R – so that’s roughly 3-4 revives every minute. I assume you’d run full dps with as low hp as possible to get the most out of your AED revives. I think it’d be generally good against condi bombs, but bad against unblockable venom thief burst and warrior stun/burst chains.

I don’t think that will work. You see, it is still theoretically possible to play pistol or rifle in pvp. I know no one has done it in about a year, but bear with me here. If you are playing a ranged weapon/playstyle, you want static discharge to hit a ranged target when using a ranged toolbelt skill (eg. throw wrench).

We really need some improvements to the non-hammer weapons or some massive nerfs to the projectile hate that is EVERYWHERE now

When was the last time you saw a non-hammer engi in ranked. I saw exactly 1 last season, and it was really bad. I miss the rifle gameplay from pre-HoT and pre-June patch before that.

S/F Ele (and other classes like that) are just anet’s way of telling you that you can’t play base engi any more.. No projectiles allowed in pvp.

You’ll just have to switch to that stupid hammer build like 99.9% of all the other engineers in pvp.

#MakeRifleGreatAgain

Rocket Boots: either make this a stun break, or increase the range to 1200+. It is my favourite skill in the game, but it is so inferior to other things I could be running in that slot that I feel kind of bad for playing with it.