Guild Wars 2

Thank you for all the details and constructive feedback! Well–thought–out posts are always a joy to read.

clint.5681:

This falls on a bad day. Hopefully you guys will upload the recording to youtube after it is over.

You should be able to watch the broadcast from the archives here http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/profile/pastBroadcasts .

Ryn.6459:

1) I somehow tend to fail to trigger area healing with healing tuurret. Has the water fiel a delay or something. If heal-heal looks like instant wheras if I heal-pause-heal seems to be delayed. Is like this or am I missing something?

Previous posters are correct. I made a gif some days ago demonstrating water blast finishers and it also shows when the water field is triggered if you place the turret down and overcharge right away: http://i.minus.com/iU8Nfq7A7ROgQ.gif .

I am an asura fan myself because I love their animations and voice lines.

Hobosacks looks good on them and I am using the default starter engie backpack for each stat combo. I like them that much.

Don’t go Asura tho if you want to run around with big shiny legendaries. Asura engineers are probably the worst race/profession combo to have legendaries for as they are tiny and as an engineer you are using kits pretty often.

selan.8354:

sry op but i dont believe u that u are a main mesmer. i think u are the thief that got mind wracked for 3k because u were pure glass.

Yes, OP is an evil thief player who was posting on mesmer forums for months (see his previous posts) just to make people believe he has a mesmer main.

Coenraad.8302:

Last night i had my first boss fight. Some big fire elemental type of thing in the 1-15 zone of the tiny race (i forgot their name). I didn’t manage to do any damage i think. I got killed allot and had my rifle equiped but for range i expect the pistols and grenades would have been a way better option.

That Fire Elemental boss used to be a LOT more difficult before.

Be aware that pistols are most condition damage weapon and they have even shorter range than the rifle, so if you are stacking power stat then stay with rifle. Grenades are pretty fine.

What you need in the first place is get more experience playing engineer and you won’t have any issues participating in that fight without dying in the future. Just watch attacks on the elementals and move out of the way and dodge. Getting good at dodging is pretty important in GW2.

Coenraad.8302:

Btw is it tue that engi is one of the harder classes to play?

Yes, that is true. But if you stay with it you will be able to do a lot of cool things and it press a lot of buttons during that.

Part of the magic when using grenades are having the “feel” where to throw the grenades based on the movement and behavior pattern of the target. You need to get more experience and your grenade throwing skills will get better. What help is using Freeze Grenade at the beginning of your grenade fun session to make next hits a lot easier to connect.

Bombs are easier to connect with the enemy, but still helps using Glue Bomb or combining with Freeze Grenade to get more hits if they are running around. Usually it is a good idea to find out who has the aggro and go near him so you won’t have to chase your mobs with bombs as they are pretty bad for that.

I guess by PvP you mean WvW. For WvW there is no dedicated gear. As a low level I would focus more on controling the enemies as you can cripple/chill/immob/knockdown/etc players in WvW with same success than level 80, but your damage will be lower.

So when I was leveling engineer in WvW I liked to run Rifle, Bomb Kit (Grenade for sieging), Mine, Net Turret and stuff like that just to control people and do a bit of damage while the rest of people were killing them. But that was me and do what you enjoy the most.

For PvP itself you will get automatically leveled to 80 with all skills and traits and there is a ton of builds you can practice and choose from. Also going into mists is a good idea if you want to check some traits/skills and figure out what you like the most and want to focus on during levelling.

Encanis.4031:

So, in the end, the main aspect of mastering engineer gameplay is to decide what to spend the blast finishers on. Heal, might, stealth, retal… xD
Could be fun

Yeah, engineer has a ton of blast finishers and a lot of combo field types so one of the important aspects is learn to use combos well. Other aspect is being a GW2 version of the virtuoso piano players especially when running multi-kit setups and having a lot of experience to “feel” when to use which of the ton of skills you have available in most builds.

Just watch more experienced engineers play when running 2-3 kit setups – it is a league on its own (Teldo, SirKoroshi, Wolfineer, etc).

Encanis.4031:

So, you both suggest to just insta-use it with 1-3 blasts as a ~20s cd (group) heal.

Mhm. So the “original” idea of turrets standing around and buffing cannot be effectively applied in realistic scenarios? Thats kind of… huh. Bad designed.

Yes, turrets are very weak in most situations and have lot of bugs associated to them making them even weaker than they should be when traited. People are complaning all the time about them and I hope developers are well aware and are going to do something with it in the span of next few years.

Fortunately Healing Turret is very very strong even without having it up for a long period of time and yes – in 95% of the scenarios you would much rather just use it for burst than let it stay.

Encanis.4031:

that gif is really well done, ty ^^
how many blasts is that? 7, 8?

Thank you. I wanted to learn how to make animated gifs from game, so it was a little exercise.

It is 7 blast finishers – 3 from Thumper Turret (overcharge, blast, toolbelt), Healing Turret (blast), Big Ol’ Bomb, Shield #4, Rocket Boots. Also extra Healing Turret toolbelt because I didn’t want to miss blasts and spammed keys (read “to maximize healing”).

I agree that getting overcharged effects on turrets immediately after overcharging would be great, but until that is implemented there are still some “tricks” to bypass this shortcoming of the Healing Turret.

As stated above immediately overcharging the turret after dropping it will get you the overcharge effect right away with the water field and all the fun. You can combo this with detonating the turret which will blast it and provide extra AoE heal on top of that. If you need more heal you can add extra blast finishers into the 3s window when water field is up like Shield #4, Elixir Gun #4, etc.

I made a animated gif just to demonstrate engineer’s ability to use a lot of blast finishers in a window of single Healing Turret overcharge. It is more or less for demonstration only as you won’t run the exact utilities most of the time and requires preparation. It also shows that you can get the water field almost immediately after dropping the Healing Turret.

Leaving Healing Turret “alive” for a longer period of time is not done that often. Usually only during static fights nonspread fights without AoE when damage received is low and you are basically stacking regeneration and overcharging for smaller heals.

In most situations: when on move or need a big heal you are using the drop -> overcharge -> blast (most of the time) / pickup (don’t need much heal, wants shorted cooldown).

Xyonon.3987:

Those vids simply show what field triggers what effect, wich is basic knowledge. But yea everyone was new one day.

If you are talking about 3 videos from my post then those videos were linked because Qaelyn asked for more details about fields and finishers. Here is the quote from him just for you so you don’t have to scroll:

I’ll admit it.. I’m pretty new to engi and still trying to get the hang of these fields/finishers. I’d be grateful for more “newbie-friendly” explanations of how to take advantage of them.

Also your “quiz” was already answered. When participating in a discussion it is often a good idea to read previous posts completely.

Qaelyn.7612:

I’m particularly confused by some people talking of laying down water and fire fields over each other as I thought a finisher only worked on the oldest field.

You are correct. If you lay down fire over water, then as long as the water field is present using blast finishers will produce AoE heals.

For some more details about blast finishers check Teldo’s recent video and Wolfineer’s vidoes here and here .

I think that SirKoroshi is preparing video discussing combos at the moment too so check his youtube channel from time to time.

chungiee.8764:

1) Swap in FT
2) Use Napalm and Incendiary Ammo
3) Swap FT back to whatever you use.

That is a nice tip.

Few days ago I watched a condi roaming engie stream and seen him swap to FT just to get Incendiary Ammo right before the fight and then switched back to his Tool Kit. That is a lot of extra damage for a bit of effort I never used and had no idea about. Should be like 7K+ worth of burning in high condi builds if all hits connect if I am not mistaken.

Here is a animated gif I created to demonstrate 7 blast finishers on a water field. I can showcase fire and smoke field if anyone wants .

http://i.minus.com/iU8Nfq7A7ROgQ.gif

Phineas Poe.3018:

FYI: Outside of combat, you can “prime” the thumper turret by overcharging it. And when you detonate it, you get both blast finishers. There is no timing involved.

Yeah, that is exactly what I am listed (if I understand). I thought that when you activate Thumper you should wait until next time the turret goes through the “cycle” but it looks like when I detonate it after activating overcharge I get immediately 2 blast finishers. Is it a lucky timming or it is a known feature that detonating turret will activate overcharge right before it goes kaboom?

Phineas Poe.3018:

I also suggest using Toss Elixir S over another blast finisher, as it provides 5 seconds versus a blast finisher’s 3. With that rotation you can give your group 15-17 seconds of stealth, depending how good you are. It’s no Smoke Screen + Cluster spam + Shadow Refuge, but it’s still really good.

Thanks for the helpful tips!

maciora.9542:

I would like to get this on water field 10k+5k healing hehe.

It is possible to get a ton of blast finishers on water field. I got 7 of them by just dropping Healing Turret and activating overcharge right before the Big Ol’ Bomb would go off and executed all the blast finishers on that water field instead of the fire/smoke field.

maciora.9542:

Maybe it should be increased to 5? I mean Ele has 2 waterfield skills, eng should have this 5 sec, would be great for support.

Disclaimer: I haven’t played elementalist in a while, so correct me if I am wrong.

Ele has water fields with staff and in water attumenent where engie has it as a healing skill and is not depending on a weapon/kit equipped.

Toolbelt skill is adding 1s water field on top of 3 seconds from the turret, so you are at 4s water field from 1 skill.

Also Healing Turret water field is on 15s cooldown and alone (not counting blast finishers) is provides very good up front heal.

I am fine with staff elementalist getting longer water field and a bigger radius as they have their niche in group support and they are giving up other things. Each profession is different and I am sure elementalists would love to have some skills tuned up to be on the power-level of engineers.

SoliSnake.9457:

do all of then in that kitten 3 second is a challenge ahah

Yeah. Took me quite a few tries to stop fat-fingering everything and start immediately after the field was up to have enough time for all the combos. But it is doable .

The most blast finishers I got on a combo field is 7 – it was on the fire and smoke fields.

The key to a ton of blast finishers is Thumper Turret, but outside of providing 3 blast finishers that turret is not that useful in most scenarios.

To get 7 blast finishers:
1) Switch to Bomb Kit.
2) Thumper Turret.
3) Big Ol’ Bomb
4) Healing Turret
5) Fire Bomb / Smoke Bomb
6) Big Ol’ Bomb Explodes (blast #1)
7) Thump (blast #2)
8) Detonate Thumper Turret (blast #3)
9) Rumble (blast #4)
10) Detonate Healing Turret (blast #5)
11) Magnetic Shield -> Magnetic Inversion (blast #6)
12) Rocket Boots (blast #7)

For 12) you can use whatever skill with blast finisher you want, of course – another turret, mine.

It is a nice warm-up for the fingers to get all the blast finishers in time .

Make sure to post in the balance forum and that is the place where devs are looking most of the time now.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

Here’s a fun way to stop the melee trains in WvW…
implement ‘friendly fire.’

It is an evil proposal, but it would make the performance lag in WvW a lot worse as the server would have to process a lot more data.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Just wanted to let everyone know that the guide has been successfully formatted and uploaded by Fay, and can be found here:

http://mesmerguides.com/supcutie.html

Awesometastic work! This way it is lot more accessible.

Can you add link to Supcutie’s Shatter Guide into the PvP section, Chaos Archangel?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Supcutie-s-Comprehensive-PvP-Shatter-Guide/first#post3461238

Thanks!

Absolutely awesome guide!

Thanks, Supcutie.

Autoattack: Heal, damage, boost toughness and provide blast finisher. Not OP at all.
Skill #2: Already on Banner of Tactics.
Skill #4: Charging forward when you want to cleans conditions is a strange mechanic.
Skill #5: Fun “and you’re dead” when used with Endure Pain or just with a bunker build.

Tad bit overpowered when used for example by defensively built point holders, don’t you think?

Also the skills on the banners are very guardian-ish in their nature and not in sync with the skill design of all other banners warriors have.

Very solid editing skill. I hope to see more videos like this from you in the future.

I hope you will have a lot of opportunities in the future to join us. We need to make sunday events really a regular thing so guildies learn about them and start participating.

Alissah.9281:

So, how did it go c:?

Without me :’(

We were just sitting in the circle and talking about how cool you are and how we miss you.

To get to the tower you need to be able to get to south of Kessex Hills and the way to the tower entrance is guarded by some mobs and I think there are some elites there. If it will be too dangerous I would recommend asking guildies for the escort to the tower (mass invisibility, veils).

BTW: I have Guild Puzzle and Guild Challenge with my guild at given time, so I will be able to join 30-45 minutes later.

Med.6150:

In my opinion Combustive Shot simply did/does too much damage, so that actually reducing the “burst damage it deals in 10 seconds” is fine with me, but I really don’t know why you are saying this ability is/was able to easily restore all of the adrenaline lost, when in reality not only do the pulses not “easily restore all of your adrenaline” but they do in fact not restore ANY adrenaline at all.

Maybe he is talking about the effectivness of Longbow burst with the Furious trait? That is the only possible explanation I have :-/ .

Can leaders update the MotD in the [OMFG] guild with the information about this weekend event?

fadeaway.2807:

Can’t seem to attach two pics in one post.

You can attach multiple pictures in the post.

Attach first picture, click on Preview and you will see another “Choose File” button, use it to attach 2nd picture.

Ys, NA/EU overflows are separated.

I am on NA, so I won’t be able to join this event.

If there will be enough interest from US players then I will join too even though I finished all the achievements 14 hours ago (hidden brag?).

I like the video!

I remember this fight from the stream. You had a lot of great fights that day.

My only recommendation is to keep the text in the video just maybe 1 or 2 seconds longer so viewers that are not reading english that fast don’t have to pause the video.

Yes, it was infinite retaliation before.

Here is the old form of the trait: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Vengeful_Images&oldid=553262 .

I miss it!

Me Games Ma.8426:

Most time in arah i just brainafk spawn my 3 iDuelists and hit autoattack+dodges :P

AFAIK some other professions with DPS builds need to only press #1 as every other skill is a DPS loss, so compared to them you are basically a piano virtuoso.

Soul.5947:

I understand that running around with 3 summoned phantasms would be way to op and that was not what i wanted to suggest. I am sorry if i didn’t explain my ideea properly. Do you still think it would be OP with stationary summons ?

I think it would be still OP in small scale encounters – like when you are fighting on/near a node in PvP. It also sounds unintuitive. To me it looks like a buffed version of engineering turrets basically and I am sure most of engineer would be a lot more happy having our proposed version. Also there is still the issue with targetting – your phantasm may go for a target you don’t really want. That is how turrets are behaving even now after a ton of fixes.

Anet shouldn’t balance profession based on the leveling experience, because that is very easy even on mesmer and especially currently, when you can get your mesmer alt immediately to level 20 and get him a lot of skill points by using certain items.

It would be OP if it worked in its current form – you won’t need any build up and will have insane burst at the start of the fight. Think about initating fights with 3 swordsmen .

If they changed it as proposed – that the cooldown of a illusion skill starts after the death of illusion that would make those skill underpowered in scenarios when you would normally have multiple copies of the same phantasm up (boss encounters). Also some of your skills where summoning illusion is not the only effect (GS #2, Staff #2, etc) will be blocked and that won’t be nice.

They would have to rebalance the skills to make up for that and that would introduce balance issues, bugs and even targetting issues – like in the case of engineer turrets.

I would be much happier if developers focused on ironing out bugs and rebalancing skills/traits that the out of line instead of stuff like this. I am fine with the current implementation. If you really want to have phantasms as pets you can always try other professions that is supporting them.

I am watching BlackDevil’s stream pretty often and you should really check it out. He is winning 1v3+ all the time like it was absolutely normal and that makes me feel really incompetent :/.

http://www.twitch.tv/doiidrg/profile/pastBroadcasts

@Kirec: I am in love with Traveler runes and I am saving money for my 3rd set to put it on a condi gear. I don’t care about legendaries, I just want moar Traveler runes.

( This post is from WvW perspective )

I don’t think Portal/Veil/Time Warp are everything we have to offer, but those are the uniquess skills that make us very important in certain situations.

Yes, we can be considered Veil and Portal bots, but basically that is our unique role allowing the group to gain tactical advantage when used correctly. When well placed and timed they can win the fights when heavily outnumbered. In big fights different professions have different primary roles and I think it is absolutely fine.

When you are helping to chain portal 15+ golems accros enemy borderland while the main part of the force is providing a distraction on the other side of map, you will really feel important. Non-obvious portal bombing can win the battles as can initiation using a veil.

Yes, all those tactics require people that know what they are doing and in a “random pug zerg” mesmer will feel lot less useful. I personally have the pleasure to be a part of alliance raids that is heavily utilizing mesmers so I have always something to do outside of trying to tag everything frantically.

Very good episode, gentlemen!

Regular featured build segment would be great.

Some things I have on mind:

1. PvP corner – What are weaknesses of other professions and their builds and how to exploit them on your mesmers. What builds/utilities are well suited for that, etc. What should be a mindset of a less experienced mesmers when fighting them. Something like one enemy “build” a episode, for example: hammer/longbow warrior, dagger/pistol tieves, spirit rangers, etc.
2. PvE corner – Each episode go through a specific encounter and describe how to fight it from the mesmer’s point of view. What are the tips & tricks, what weapon to use, what utilities, etc. You can discuss dungeon encounters, fractal ones, Tequatl, some farming techniques and places (Orr?). We have a host with a lot of PvE experience and we should put it to use.
3. Featured forum topic(s) – What were the topics to read, if there were any, of course. Just a few people should really not pass. They may be only recent ones or a older gems you have bookmarked. Maybe there is not much to discuss on the show itself about them, but at least putting them into shownotes would be great for people who don’t have time to read forums daily.
4. Community highlight – Each episode you will select a mesmer streamer/blog writer/youtube channel owner/forum poster that should people check and why. It will support them and also help to build the community. This can be also part of show notes without a lot of text in case there won’t be space for it in the podcast itself.

I think all the ideas can be supported by a forum topic where can people put down their ideas and after the show provide a feedback.

So we will have:

1. Topic where can people advertise their mesmer streams, youtube channels, sites, blogs, etc.
2. Topic for interesting discussions/posts in the mesmer (or other) forums. If somebody found something interesting (builds, dungeon tactics, ..) they can put it there.
3. Topic discussing upcoming PvP corner episode. Let’s say you want to discuss D/P thieves so you will create the topic days before the show and people can provide their knowledge.
4. Same thing as above but for the PvE corner.

Thank you Josh (and skcamow) and congratz Chaos!

This topic is so sticky now, it is all over mah body!

That update is great and I am happy to see that developers are really changing things based on the feedback.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

SO HYPE! Thanks for the suggestion of posting it in the original thread kubetz. I had typed that reply from my phone, so I wouldn’t have thought to do so if you didn’t suggest it.

Haha, my pleasure!

I am up for regular [OMFG] events and I would love if they can start at 5PM PDT if it is possible.

For Tequatl Takedown event we should probably use different server than last time because the turnout from the [OMFG] guild was atrocious (only 3 of us) and there were like 3 other people in the zone. Unless we don’t want to spend our time killing normal and veteran spawns like the last time there then we are going to need some help.

Other proposed events sound great!

Yeah, sticky please!

I would report your guide to ask the mod to sticky it, but I am afraid they may not read the text of the report and just ban you or something.

KStudios.2850:

I wasn’t going to bring it up, but if we’re gonna make a huge kitten of this DB <snip>

I want to clarify that I am the poster you were replying to and I am from Crystal Desert. Sorry for any misunderstanding I may have caused.

KStudios.2850:

All that said, I wish you luck in your endeavor of tracking down our gate assailant. Even if it isn’t a ban-able offense (and wrongfully so I might add). Frankly, we’re better than that and this person needs weeded out and ostracized as the bad that he/she is.

That was very well said. I definitely share your opinion if the same thing happened on our side.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

A witch hunt is unnecessary when people already have reports with photographic and video proof being mailed in to exploits@arena.net. Anything more than that is redundant.

I hope you are right. I was just expecting that if we provide only a video proof without the account/character name then Anet may simply ignore it as finding the player probably is not that easy. Thanks!

RazGerb.6173:

I know who that is, but I’m not saying it publicly.
Before you say “EBay is full of hackers”, remember its just a few certain people who do it, so don’t be all whining about the server.

Before you ask people not to consider whole server of being hackers, you should make sure that player of that server won’t be ignoring this kind of behavior and instead would give us his name and kindly ask him to stop doing that. If the server population is doing nothing about players like that then it looks like they are fine with it with it which casts a shadow of the integrity of the server itself.

I am sure EB doesn’t need people abusing strategies like these to end up doing really well.

If you don’t want to say his name publicly, then write a private message, send an in-game mail and/or ask him to stop it. Commander abusing stuff like that is really really sad.

Thank you!

Time to log back into the game and have some fun. See you in WvW!

Andrea.4251:

I’ve managed to play this build for a few days and I have a lot of problems when I have a fight with D/P Thief, the current most played build with condition removal on stealth and hard hitting Backstab. Do you guys have any hints besides running away?
Thanks in advance!

Just some minor notes. I have played thief more than a mesmer, so I will spare you of my mesmer know-how.

D/P got nerfed by nerfing the condition removal on stealth and will get nerfed some more by not returning initiative for each stealth application, so fighting it will get bit easier.

Interrupting their 1/2s cast Black Powder or 3/4s cast Hearthseeker is a big blow for them as you deny them their spike and they lost of lot of initiative.

Also if they are going for multiple leaps inside their Black Powder for extra stealth then try to position yourself in their way after their 1st leap. If they hit you they will get revealed and cannot Backstab you or easily run away. Of course don’t do that when low on health.

Sensotix.4106:

No i was kidding about that hopefully people didn’t take it too serious I should have sounded more sarcastic i think^^ There was a guy who actually texted me ingame asking me if i was being serious…haha

Haha, I knew you were joking, but that is some awesome feedback you are getting for that part. Maybe you should try saying in the next video with a sad voice that you don’t have a cute intelligent girlfriend and then wait for proposals.

Looking forward to your new idea.

Intigo, a very experienced D/D elementalist, uploaded today a dueling video against a PU mesmer running a build that looks to be pretty close to a Blackwater except using sword/pistol instead of a staff.

In case you want to see it from the other side to have an idea how messy that fight may look for the enemy when all your clones are up.