Guild Wars 2

The ascended weapons only really shine in builds where the weapon damage modifier really, REALLY matters.

Let me give you a few examples:

I have an Engineer who received my first ascended weapon, in this case, a rifle. It was primarily for 2 reasons, one-I leveled huntsman first, so I could process leather, metal and wood daily for the ascended mats, and two-it’s so pretty. When I go into kits, I don’t get the ascended damage bonus, so this rifle is mostly for situations where high ranged auto-attack damage is nice. Which frankly, isn’t that often.

My Guardian got a Sword & Hammer, and I am working on a focus (slowly), it is a flat increase to DPS for your weapon skills in a crit/zerk build. The weapon damage is one of the multipliers.

My Ele got a scepter and a staff, both zerk, for direct damage and crit damage builds. The staff is an anti-siege weapon (as is the scepter to a lesser degree), but since I use a LH build, most of my DPS is set at exotic weapon damage.

My Theif got a dagger from the Valk chest that dropped in wvw, mostly for a burst build that I play in small groups or when I want to bait people away from targets to chase me.

I did build one rabid pistol for my engineer, and immediately realized the problem, it just isn’t enough extra damage to warrant any more gold spent on it for ANY condition build except maybe rampager or celestial.

I would advise waiting for the armor, and upgrading your trinkets in the mean time for condition builds. Save your gold and bloodstone dust for those tasty, tasty toxic utility buffs.

Happened to me last night, I do NOT have blasting staff traited, but still got the same Out of Range error after laying a static field and using burning retreat.

Shouldn’t these function like necro marks? Has anyone noticed the same issues with any other AoEs from the staff?

Use the scepter/dagger might rotation, switch to lightning hammer and start smacking. Let your party know that any fire fields will be blasted automatically by the third swing on the hammer.

It’s actually quite a lot of damage, and a whole lot of fun. And if you get bored > Fiery Great Sword!

Forestnator.6298:

I think engis shine in fractals to bring this on the table. Fractals are also a kind of dungon.

Agreed, I do mid-30s fractals with mine, and she is quite excellent at them.

That being said, my guard is usually more useful in the various fights, especially where reflects are needed (so most of PvE).

Merendel.7128:

lunyboy.8672:

Couldn’t anyone do this with a watchwork portal device, in theory?

Last I checked those were on the list of items that you couldnt use in WvW.

Just checked it, and you are correct. Thanks.

Just put it in the interface.

Reset Countdown: ~2:54

Zaxares.5419:

durend.6237:

I had a guard in my party that used scepter on those things once. His reply to my “you know they reflect projectiles right?” was “special tactics”. When I asked what those “tactics” were he replied with “I have retaliation”

I could probably use some clarification about that. (Don’t have any classes that really use Retaliation, so I’m not too familiar with it.) So if you have Retal up, you get your projectiles reflected and take damage from it, you trigger your OWN Retaliation on yourself?

And is it possible to double reflect projectiles? (i.e. you use a projectile, he reflects it, you also pop a reflect skill. What happens then?)

I think you hit the maximum number of reflections at 1, which is to say, you can’t reliably re-reflect projectiles. I do not, however, know whether they just pass through a barrier or get absorbed as non-entities.

Projectile ownership is quite interesting in this game some times as well.

On another note, “I have retaliation!” will be my battle cry from now on.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

What’s funny is…

1. We have a bunch of “what if we had to kill all the mobs / we should be forced to kill all the mobs” threads.

2. We have a bunch of threads complaining about how excruciating the Dredge fractal is.

None of the people who are responsible for #1 understand that the consequence is #2.

QFT.

Look guys, if you are mashing one button while stacking, you are doing it wrong. There is this thing called auto-attack….

Kurieg.4158:

NevirSayDie.6235:

-condition duration is applied after +condition duration and thus is much, much more powerful.

That’s not true, though. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-duration-vs-Condition-duration/first

Or did they change it?

TL;DC – +Duration and -Duration are added together and THEN the condition duration is calculated. So +40% and -40% cancel each other out… and you can go over +100% duration to mitigate the -duration effects completely.

Blinds are particularly effective against Warriors, noted.

Couldn’t anyone do this with a watchwork portal device, in theory?

Insyder.3871:

How is this still not fixed? After running into ele who destroyed my AC on top of thick keep gate with dragon tooth that even firestorm coud not reach I ran to next tower and placed AC inside the tower. After zerg capped that keep they went for next tower where I was waiting on AC. Didn’t matter that AC was inside the tower, that ele still was able to kill it…

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2673/fx7k.jpg

Lol. Do you see what I see?

Consider checking the TP for the most expensive Ori-imbued inscription, then searching out which dungeons have that on their weapons.

Right now the one inscription you can get out of dungeons that is the highest price on the TP is (surprise surprise) Berserker’s. So run CoF, CoE or Arah, buy Exotic Berserker’s Focii from the Vendor and then salvage with the Mystic or Master’s kit. You won’t get guaranteed dark matter every time, but you will get some with this process, as well as zerk inscriptions that you can use to make Zojja’s weapons or sell for 7+ gold apiece.

Check here for prices: http://www.gw2spidy.com/search/orichalcum%20imbued%20inscription?sort_max_offer_unit_price=desc&rarity_filter=-1

And here for acquisition by stats: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

This is, of course, only one method, you can run Fractals and salvage those exos, or do the champ train, and salvage or use the gold to buy cheap exos.

Edit: You can use the Black Lion Kit, but it will most likely not return your investment in the gold exchange to buy it. You will, however, still get dark matter globs.

Edit #2: OK, I just did the math on the Black Lion Kit. Right now, it is a little over 20 gold to buy a black lion kit, and assuming the “rarer materials” in the description are the Ori inscriptions (which I doubt, but it is worth researching), then you would recover 12.5 inscriptions per kit or around 75 gold after TP tax for salvaging Focii.

Subtract the initial investment of 20 gold, and you end with a profit of 55 gold from 25 salvages. All of this is assuming a return of 50% on the inscriptions from the salvage which may or may not be the case.

The break-even point would be around a 20% recovery of inscriptions (not including other recovered materials), and the dark matter would be a bonus for dungeon runs.

Phineas Poe.3018:

So your guild speaks for the general perception of Engineers across the entire game? OK.

Of course not, the original post asked for opinion. We have one and shared it.

coglin.1867:

Phineas is correct. You do not post in terms of opinion or concept, you put all of your post in the form of definitive statements.

Once again, the ENTIRE post was asking for OPINIONS.

And dungeon runners who play multiple characters agree with those of us who rank engineer lower. Besides, you guys overlooked what was said about the list when it was posted, there isn’t a huge gap between the top and the bottom, and I have been trying to explain that I run AS or WITH an engineer basically every day. I agree that it’s a good, versatile class that has an abundance of hard CC, but just happens to be not uniquely useful in dungeons the way they are currently designed.

Maybe instead of just reacting to someone attacking your favorite profession, you could actually read what is being written and objectively argue it without personal attacks.

MokoToko.6890:

Brother Grimm.5176:

All content in the is game CAN be played with Green items.

Anyone attempting to be a viable part of WvW using all greens should just quit while they’re ahead.

Unless they’re a guardian or warrior… which might just be OK.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

lunyboy.8672:

I have 2k hours on my engineer, and run with Infamous. ^This guy’s got it right. Just because an engineer CAN do all those things across various builds and skills, doesn’t mean he can do that and output those mystical 8k auto attacks from the bomb kit.

Believe me. I’ve tried.

Building synergy with the rest of the group is easier for certain professions, the sooner we all agree on that and admit we are happier playing engineer than say, playing Guardian, the sooner we can all agree Engies need PvE buffs.

Period.

With an objective look at the profession, we could provide Anet devs unbiased feedback about “balance” and changes they make while trying to explain what we want out of the profession.

Like I said before, I typically don’t agree with Spoj about things, but despite what you may think about his posts, he has been politely disagreeing and countering the points made here without bias. And he is correct.

ellesee.8297:

firstly infamous darkness, i wasn’t talking about you unless it really was you which would explain why you got so defensive. nobody wants to hear a snooty lecture every time they log on. keep that in mind.

second you’re just listing everything every class can do. who is going to take a venomshare thief or a terrormancer into a nerdy, sweaty speedrun that unfortunately so many people here think is the only way to play this game?

based on the post I just quoted above yours I believe my assumption was pretty accurate(also me and lunyboy are in the same guild and there are only 3 ppl who play engineer regularly in our guild including him and me). I am not attempting to give a snooty lecture, OP asked for list of usefulness(in dungeons) as we (engineers) don’t have anything that is truly unique in group support, that is not to say engineer aren’t fun to play or that they aren’t good, I just don’t rank them highly on usefulness for dungeons. You also pointed out terrormancer and venomshare thieves which I left at the bottom with engineers lumping them all together because of their lack of unique group buffs.

personally I feel like we(engineers) are very useful as wvw roamers and in zergs, and we are also good in spvp but those are outside of the scope of this thread. I also think we are good in open world pve as we are very self sufficient.

I don’t know man, that Nerdy, Sweaty speedrun sound awfully tempting…

ellesee.8297:

it’s evident some nerds just know how to suck the fun out of everything. can we just agree that whiners join the zerk heavies only party and everyone else just enjoy the game? i recall this one time i was doing a guild fractal 48 run and i was running a melee tool kit build because pve so why not. someone had to leave and then i guess we invited lunyboy’s buddy because he was one of these guys that likes telling everybody how to play their class. hey why aren’t you going grenades? hey run zerk armor because here is some math. god i could just hear that nasally voice and that nyah after everything he said.

The original question was usefulness, some opinions were put forth, some people took great offense and started up with the pitchforks and torches.

I have fun on whatever toon I play, but I have tried to not limit myself to just engineer recently, and it’s like playing a different game. With the overview of different professions, things seem a lot clearer, and engineer is not in a good place with regard to PvE. It is a passable profession, with decent utility that mostly isn’t used in dungeons.

In the end, there is a reason more people agree with Spoj about their status, and there is nothing more I want to do than to elevate that status, but the first step is to not live in the fantasy land where engineers are near the top of the usefulness list. We must all agree that asking for buffs for certain things is worth protesting in LA, and we aren’t close to PvE balanced now.

Phineas Poe.3018:

lunyboy.8672:

I’ve read it, and the results are not repeatable most dungeons

Is this real life?

Obviously you’re not going to hit for 8K in most dungeons. That has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the kit so much as that running a dungeon like Ascalon Catacombs explorable maxes you out with the stats of someone at level 35.

And you call me misguided. Wow.

Gee, really? I didn’t notice that I was down-leveled in most dungeons.

Be sure and don’t show your math. Feel free to call me rude if that makes you feel better, that does nothing to further your argument.

Singer.8740:

EDIT; Forgot to mention that Poe is completely right, my build here has 4828 atk. I get around 7k auto as a matter of course and thats because i choose to might up my team. If i was selfish and took power/crit runes like scholar it would be higher. its pretty easy to get high DPS on an engineer if you know what your doing.

ATK is not a useful metric in determining DPS. What matters is your primary skills calculation in what you consider an ideal rotation.

Mostly, this is your 1 skill coefficent on your bomb kit using the standard weapon (non-ascended). All buffs being equal, how does it stand up to other professions with just these basic numbers in mind.

At no point did I say they weren’t utilitarian, just that other professions could manage these tasks easier. But the cost of being a generalist is not being quite as good as the specific professions you emulate. Engies could conceivably be a wild card in a party where specific things are needed, but there aren’t that many things that need covered in most dungeons, where stacking and smacking are norm.

PS. Stacking might is not super useful if you are going to be knocking back mobs while stacking or jumping out of range. So if you could outline a might stacking scenario that didn’t involve knockbacks, that would be useful.

Singer.8740:

indeed :[
wonder when was the last time i saw a ret mob pack in dungeons was.
ive seen some very good FT dungeon builds

Both HotW and CoE have retaliation on bosses, gee, I didn’t even have to look at the wiki to know. Hey look, those are both level 80 dungeons, learn something new every day.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Cool story, bro?

He runs his engineer, glass cannon, and we have discussed the shortcomings at length, since I have also run my engineer in dungeons with Roz’s spec. We are both acutely aware of an engineer’s limitations.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I can do all of these things with one build. It only takes swapping out a couple utilities for a certain situation. I hope you don’t take this too personally, but just because you can’t do something, that doesn’t mean others can’t either.

I’ve written two guides to how I play my Engineer and get the results exactly to what I claim the Flamethrower and the Bomb Kit can do. I think I’ve been pretty transparent about this.

And with a pure glass cannon, full Zerker setup, you can get 8K auto-attacks. There’s nothing mythical about it. Rozbuska wrote a thread about it, even though the setup has been around quite a long time.

I’ve read it, and the results are not repeatable most dungeons, as I said, the highest bomb auto I have found has been ~6k. And I am not saying it can’t be done under certain circumstances, but they are the exception and not the rule. Nor am I saying that I am a top-notch pro engineer, obviously, if I re-rolled several other toons to make dungeons both more fun and easier to blast through, then I must have been doing it wrong the whole time.

But to be frank, your claiming that the Flamethrower is good for anything other than a torch for dark jumping puzzles or a utility kit that helps you die from retaliation is misguided at best, and leads me to take the rest of your comments with a very large grain of salt.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I think this could be said in direct response to what you just wrote. Who cares if S/D Elementalists can stack 25 Might by themselves? There’s 5 people to a party. The specificity of roles is absolutely not necessary.

Absolutely, you can mix and match all you like, but the point trying to be made is, other professions have access to these various utilities easier without having an engineer in the party.

Playing Engineer is not easy, and getting big numbers is even more difficult than with most other professions, so where you might choose an average player on Warrior or Guardian, you have to be looking for the 1% on Engineer to get the same quality of play due primarily to the shortcomings in the profession.

Singer.8740:

snip

Engineers dont need PvE buffs what we need is QOL fixes, a rework of traits to do with gadgets and turrets and condi Cleansing that is NOT in the alchemy tree.

Edit; i have close to 4k hours logged on my engineer alone since were playing the measuring game :/

And you wouldn’t consider those things “buffs” in relation to the engineer’s current status?

Really?

spoj.9672:

Im a physicist and a scumbag so ive got that covered.

So you like… read the future?

hybrid.5027:

Flamethrower is so enjoyable to use. I’m pretty upset that it’s so awful

Couldn’t agree more.

Especially against Retaliation in WvW.

Hope to see it soon, thanks so much for what you are doing.

Redball.7236:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Please show me how many classes actually contribute to #1-6 as I listed equally as well as an Engineer can.

Please show me how many classes can give 15 stacks of Might, 15 seconds of Stealth, a ton of Vulnerability, condition removal, and a Water field all under one build.

I just can’t fathom how you can establish that Engineers do in one slot what it takes 2-3 classes to achieve and say we’re at the bottom of the totem pole. That just makes absolutely zero sense to me.

You guys obsess over what the ideal setup is when you fail to recognize that taking an Engineer fills any hole in the group regardless of what the other 4 players build themselves around. I consider that the ideal class to play. But I guess I’m alone in that.

Missing the point by a mile here.

Just for the record, I have 1000 hours on my engineer so far, and every class at level 80 so I’ve had plenty of experience with them all.

Engineers can provide a bit of everything, great.

But why is that needed? It isn’t. Dungeons are done with a full group, the entire group should be contributing to fulfilling these roles. Maybe an ele can do the might stacks, guardians the reflects and condition removal, mesmers can help there too, and 25 vuln can be achieved as a sum of the entire party, only single class doesn’t need to cap it.

Plus while all of these things might be accessible in one build, you certainly can’t do it at once. If you want to stack might you have to carry out an akward combo, during which you aren’t dpsing. If you want reflects, you’re probably going to have to drop a blast finisher in order to get elixir U.

Engineer is versatile yeah but I wouldn’t say they outshine other classes in each specific area, just that they can do all of them.

I have 2k hours on my engineer, and run with Infamous. ^This guy’s got it right. Just because an engineer CAN do all those things across various builds and skills, doesn’t mean he can do that and output those mystical 8k auto attacks from the bomb kit.

Believe me. I’ve tried.

Building synergy with the rest of the group is easier for certain professions, the sooner we all agree on that and admit we are happier playing engineer than say, playing Guardian, the sooner we can all agree Engies need PvE buffs.

Period.

With an objective look at the profession, we could provide Anet devs unbiased feedback about “balance” and changes they make while trying to explain what we want out of the profession.

Like I said before, I typically don’t agree with Spoj about things, but despite what you may think about his posts, he has been politely disagreeing and countering the points made here without bias. And he is correct.

I stopped running my Engineer (2k hours) in dungeons because Ele is a higher DPS and a more fun class.

I run my Ele in zergs where staff is useful, and anti-siege is necessary. When I roam, I run engineer, specifically a condition-tank build, because it’s more my style for small scale pvp.

You guys wanna make comparisons, specify the game mode, and try to create a productive conversation about it, instead of just hyperbole.

I think everything is relative, and with all the available foods and other buffs in wvw, there are some professions that are a bit over-powered or hard to counter relative to the others.

Also, some are judging professions by their usefulness to the individual, and not the usefulness to the server. A solo thief ganking every doly s/he comes across is pretty useful for slowing or stopping upgrades. A mesmer porting golems to a keep door is very VERY useful.

It’s kinda about perspective.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

It’s a lot more useful if you can combine it with another weapon skill that already provides torment, like mesmer scepter 2. I have a sigil of malice on my off hand weapon and use condition dmg artificer potions.

It does nice dmg against AoE zerg attacks.

Seconded, this is the sleeper hit of the patch for wvw, especially for condition spam professions, as it provides an AoE cover condition that is basically perma with good condition duration.

Ayrilana.1396:

lunyboy.8672:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rainshine.5493:

… condi duration + condi damage is “niche”?

I stated it would be for niche builds because while condition duration is great, you’re sacrificing a lot of damage. So if you were using these, you’d likely be using them for a specific purpose rather than in a normal condition build.

If you want to see what I’m getting at, test your damage with Undead runes then compare it using the Nightmare runes. The on top of that, consider how often your conditions get cleansed before they’ve reached their full duration.

Very few skills in the game wipe all conditions at once, so if you are extending your duration of all conditions you have access to, you are providing better cover for your “key” conditions, bleeds, burning, or torment, for instance.

I was referring to when you’re in groups against players. In WvW, 85% of players just zerg and use the condition duration reduction food. They also throw out a ton of condition removal so you’ll likely get a tick or two before its cleansed. Things may be different in a 1v1 scenario but you’ll only encounter those a small percentage of the time as most people run in zergs or groups.

Now against NPC’s, I can see the runes being useful as they never cleanse conditions.

I am using this sigil in WvW at the moment, as well as the toxic crystal (imho the only ones worth crafting), and I am sitting at +100% condition duration, and about 1300 condition damage.

I can apply ~7 conditions at 1500 range and even targets with -duration food will still receive over 100% duration. With reapplication every 8-15 seconds for the slowest of the cool downs. The fastest are almost instant depending on the grenade flight time.

6+ conditions AoE requires more cleansing than most wvw players have access to, even in a mid-sized zerg. The funniest thing is when someone with confusion and poison uses their heal skill.

Ostricheggs.3742:

JonPeters.5630:

Yes, as we start running out of easy changes we can start addressing those that are more difficult. I will say the notes we posted are balance changes and there are bug fixes coming both Nov 26th and Dec 10th that hopefully address some other concerns. We will not get to every bug but we are focusing on ones we think have the most detrimental impact to gameplay.

Jon

I assume you mean difficult as in the changes to engi are just like a medicine that we need to swallow to help the game as a whole.

But for the twentieth time, you’re substantially limiting build diversity and not actually reducing the one spec that is arguably in need of a reduction (bomb nade) because of the incendiary powder change.

In other words, instead of helping the game you’re actually detracting from engineers without limiting our efficacy outside of basically removing any sort of build diversity.

All of this just for the sake of having a “strong” trait be moved to where it’s more difficult to grab. It’s an honorable thing to do, but listen when your player base when they tell you that reality is simply far different from what looks good on paper. You’re nerfing builds that don’t need a nerf and leaving untouched the one monster build that engis have.

Which is still bottom-tier in PvE instanced combat.

It might be worth while to consider instead of a straight up “glow” effect, to have some type of high-low multiplier, so upper value colors “glow” and lower value colors create a dark haze around themselves, without going to deeply into particle effects.

So if your armor was in front of something white, and it was dyed dark purple, the white object behind would be dimmed a bit around the armor.

Is there any way of making a “Box of Celestial” armor using the chest piece and the mystic forge recipe used for other boxes of armor?

Ayrilana.1396:

Rainshine.5493:

… condi duration + condi damage is “niche”?

I stated it would be for niche builds because while condition duration is great, you’re sacrificing a lot of damage. So if you were using these, you’d likely be using them for a specific purpose rather than in a normal condition build.

If you want to see what I’m getting at, test your damage with Undead runes then compare it using the Nightmare runes. The on top of that, consider how often your conditions get cleansed before they’ve reached their full duration.

Very few skills in the game wipe all conditions at once, so if you are extending your duration of all conditions you have access to, you are providing better cover for your “key” conditions, bleeds, burning, or torment, for instance.

coglin.1867:

Yo make a good point. The fact that there is a boon, and always getting the condition removed immediately is indeed something. As well as always being immune to the first condition tossed on you in a fight will prove handy. As mostly this s some type of immobilize, which would be turned to swiftness, it will prove to be much better then I originally saw it.

Thanks for putting that into perspective.

It isn’t a solution to a low-cleanse build, but it would be somewhat helpful unless you face a necro, or a ranger, who are applying bleeds one or two at a time. So it converts the first one, and then it’s done for the next 15 seconds, and you need other cleanses pretty quickly. And necro’s who have condition transfer or corrupt boon available are itching to find some engineers with more than 5 points in alchemy.

Don’t pop that Elixir C too quickly.

Engie is only reasonably viable in tourneys because of their ability to condition spam at range. This “Balance patch” is based on the misguided notion that Engineers are “balanced” somewhat to start with, and any traits that are perceived as stronger compared to other dev-admitted lackluster traits are shifted into increasingly difficult to spec to places.

I don’t think IP is over-powered in any way as an adept trait, before the nerf, yes, but now? No.

My reasoning is as follows, there are 2 primary types of build in the game, condition, and direct damage. For direct damage builds, assuming the spec is either bombs or grenades, an extra 5-6 seconds of 380 pt burning per second is negligible, and is mostly taken because as others have stated, there are no other decent adept traits. So while this does up your DPS a smidgen, in a Power/direct damage line it is definitely an adept trait amount of damage.

For condition builds, things are a bit stickier. Primarily conditions are for pvp-type environments, because PvE conditions are broken. And in PvP, burning is an engineer’s best condition, not because it’s the best damage condition, but because engies have decent access to it through various means, and more importantly, we can’t generate a constant barrage of bleeds through traits and skills alone. The one kit that synergizes with Shrapnel to give us decent bleeds is grenades, which is 30 points in explosives, gives us IP and then Grenadier.

Here the IP cool down allows us to keep bleeding up on 1 target to a maximum of 80% of the time, if we can hit them. Once again, not overpowered, because we went 30 points into the POWER line to get 2 sources of condition damage and the grenadier trait. But we could have CHOSEN to do this before.

I understand where Ostricheggs is coming from saying it’s powerful where it is now, but he is playing at the top of of his profession, and is using might stacking to push the limits of condition damage, but that isn’t the case for everyone in the profession. Engies were required to take this trait not because it was OP, because it was the only option.

So what “build diversity” has been gained by moving a reasonable trait to a more difficult spot?

Anymras.5729:

A typo is entirely possible, but I also can’t help but wonder if there’s a footnote hidden somewhere; just how I work, that’s all.

Also: I’m not sure adding anything to Accelerant-Packed Turrets would be a good idea, especially if it’s being dropped from a 20-point to a 10-point; it’s one of the best traits available for Turrets as it is, in my opinion.
Autotool Installation, though, even after it’s been improved…well, let’s just wait and see how effective it really is, but if it’s not good enough even after the change, then it’d certainly be a good place to cram some secondary Turret improvement effects, I think.

Larger range, 120 isn’t doing it for a Master Tier trait.

Re: IP – The first nerf was bad, but this nerf has me considering running my guardian exclusively in pvp and wvw. Why should I invest time in playing a profession that has such a high skill ceiling and such a low pay off in any game mode at the moment?

spoj.9672:

Just because that build is pretty good doesn mean it bumps engi to 3rd place lol. Its still 6/7th place.

I typically don’t agree with spoj (at least on the dungeon forum), but after having run several of the professions on the list, this is spot on, as is Infamous’ list, who I run with regularly on my Ele.

I believe someone at one point did the calculation for max DPS on all professions, given equal gear and best DPS builds and Engineer was last or second to last. It really, really shows when you run an engineer for months, pushing the limits of what it can reliably do with gear, sigils, pots, food, etc. and then playing any profession higher on the list.

Balance PvE PLEASE. Split from pvp if you have to, so we can examine without confusion the pve ranking of different professions.

I have said before, and I will say it again. I think ANet is under the impression that Engineers are “balanced” on par with other professions at the moment, and are basing their patches on that fact.

This is incorrect.

Engies are one of the lowest, if not the lowest DPS output profession in PvE, and that fact is overshadowed in part by the condition spam they are capable of at range (while in a bunker build) in PvP situations, and the over-powered position of conditions in game.

While being Jack-of-all-trades, and master of none, Engies are subject to most blanket nerfs in game mechanics, and perma-vigor is just the latest example of that.

Instead of looking at the traits and skills for “build diversity” the devs need to consider “profession diversity” and why certain professions are so under-represented in certain game modes.

Buffing Rangers, which in the recent infographic was listed as one of the most popular professions, while nerfing 2 traits that 90% of engineers take because the other traits aren’t up to par, isn’t a solution, it is a clear misunderstanding of the profession.

Tree.3916:

You guys make my work day that much more bearBOWable :P

Fixed that for ya.

I would like to see some larger group dungeons, forcing people who are running them to talk to one another and coordinate attacks.

Also, maybe my favorite thing in the game right now is running new content with people I trust and figuring out the mechanics before reading how to cheese it on certain blogs/yerterb. Maybe some transform style dungeons, where when you enter, you have a limited set of skills from a non-existent profession and have to use them in certain fights, or throughout. A bit like Dolphin-path, but instead of all evade skills, you have combat skills as well. With 5 different types of transform, you could always have something new to learn, and figure out a fight with new skills as well as encounter mechanics.

Bread.7516:

…
until there’s a clean strategy for that holoroom i don’t think we’ll be interested in doing it very often.
…

We just go to the lift pads counter-clockwise and kill the holos that come to us, this takes out two holo-generators at a time, and allows for easy rez/rally if anyone is having difficulty tanking the charges. Huge cleaves and PbAoEs are really useful for that part.

I hope they fix the really crappy geometry from the busted generators, though, that is kitten frustrating.

You can skip stuff in TA/TA?

Can someone link a vid? We do full clears, and it’s fun, but time consuming.

a t s e.9614:

What? You don’t believe me right ? It’s the truth im sorry . Damage dosen’t matters , the most important thing is to heal your party and play how you want. I will get my buddies from living story , we will raise our voices to stop this berserker non-sense .

Are you like… a Steven-Colbert-level troll? Or are you serious?

People don’t just need heals in there, you have to do condition damage as well.

#ApothecaryMeta2014

kiba.2768:

Infamous Darkness.3284:

legendary Frenzy is 1000g

moljnir requires 350 charged lodestones (2.2g*350=770g) 250 bolts of gossamer (0.0892g*250=22.3g) 250 orichalcum ingots (0.0105*250=26.875g) 100 mystic coins (0.0167*100=1.67g) total current cost to craft 820.845g disclaimer all prices were taken from current highest buy offer on the Trading Post

I will come back later and try to add together the total current cost of crafting the cheapest legendary

i find this argumentation laughable.

1. you choose the cheapest legendary
and
2. you compare it to the most expensive exotic

it’s like comparing string cheese to an hermes bag; it doesn’t make sense at all. none!

if you want an apples to apples comparison, let’s do this instead:

juggernaut vs mjolnir+ascended hammer(stats of your choice)

the cost of an exotic skin does not even come CLOSE to a legendary.

[edit]
i take that back. you chose the second cheapest legendary-by 55g. lol.

I don’t understand what you are trying to say to him. Are you mad that he got prices off the TP to compare an expensive named exotic to an inexpensive Legendary and the Legendary was still more expensive?

There are all kinds of “named exotics” that are WAYYY cheaper than the one posted. And there are all kinds of Legendary weapons that are WayWAY*WAY* more expensive (Eternity, I’m looking at you), so what’s your point, exactly?

The very fact that ANet has already said that they want Lgnd weapons to be Best In Slot always leads me to think that they are supposed to be Capstone Weapons, and therefore, should have access to some limited swapping re: sigils.

Heck, I don’t even have one, but the time, effort and money that goes into legendary creation should benefit the holder at least through some type of ooc sigil swapping.

I personally think an easier solution would be to have a sigil slot in the equipment pane of the Hero interface, allowing people to drop in a sigil for each weapon, and then being able to swap them out when not in combat just like weapons.

This would fix the stacking sigil problem, fix the Legendary sigil issue raised here, and provide a way of bringing extremely high sigil prices down, when they leave the meta.

Once we have legendary armor available, it may be worth revisiting runes as addenda to armor as well, with slots that could be used to hold runes, and then the breather wouldn’t be a 7th rune, and jerry-rigging a 2×4x rune set or a 2×2×2x swap set wouldn’t require multiple full sets of armor because the crit damage bonus was a higher percentage of over all stats on certain key pieces. (I could explain this further, but it would require charts).

This would render the un-transmuter thing only useful for armor aesthetics, but that was the implicit promise from the inception of the game, that there was no gem story pay to win; yet here we are with power creep, perhaps these changes would be a way to minimize the impact on mid-tier players.

Protip: If you are a downed Ele, you can just mistform in the direction of your loot bags and grab them that way.

Totally fair.

Jakare.6807:

lunyboy.8672:

Otherwise, they would just go into the actual pvp game mode and disregard the capture points there.

Lol lets go to Tpvp and have a 5 minute 500-0 game where we try to chase the other team around the map to get them to fight us, and one of their team caps all 3 points and sits on them. Sounds like some competitive, fun #esports gameplay right there.

You think [BS] are the noob ones, I heard this asuran Ele in some Nicholas cage guild runs lightning hammer when roaming. That’s like, crazy man.

Literally NOTHING funnier than pulling out the LH at a choke point and laying down the 5 skill then the 2 skill.

Sometimes you have to break the rules to innovate, baby.

Attached – How I feel when I use my LH WvW build…

Good for you guys. I, however refuse to predict where you will fail, but you need 5 for a few of the puzzles in a few paths, so consider grooming some folks from your friends list for the fifth wheel in your runs.

A guardian would fit nicely, provide some reflects to make a few things easier, and generally make any melee you have to do a bit more survivable with a bit of extra offensive support. But since you are running ad hoc, just make sure it’s someone you CAN fail with, without a subsequent freak out.

Craig.2403:

lunyboy.8672:

Jeknar.6184:

Yada yada yada…

I have been stomped quite a bit by [BS], so I am empirically aware of their objectives. Gank solo roamers, uplevels, and 2-person teams with 5+ person gank groups and then corpse jump and spam laugh. It’s quite cute, really.

The difference between xPvP and WvW as far as objectives is irrelevant, so we can move past that point. If you TAKE an objective, someone will come to take it back or defend it from you, in wvw or in pvp.

It isn’t about team size either, because without fail, in the match-up threads, the QQ about zerging and the lack of “small teams” and “good fights” chokes out other discussion, leading inevitably to the “whip it out and measure it” portion of the discussion, where each ostensible pvp team brags about how they run with fewer than the others.

These groups move intentionally to lower rank servers with little or no queue times, and then only work on objectives for PPT when that leads to baiting pugs into fights where the better coordination and FotM builds will stomp the opposition.

What is it exactly that these “small teams” want then? It seems like they want their own little playground of pugs, uplevels, and guards to gank (for the buffs), because they can’t play xPvP without their OP food, OP buffs, and OP builds. Otherwise, they would just go into the actual pvp game mode and disregard the capture points there.

Attached – Me fighting [BS]

These small teams want fights with other small teams that are a challenge and have nothing to do with pointless ppt. At the end of the day, winning for us is fighting a fun hard fight and coming out on top. However, some people like you choose to believe that ppt is the end-all-be-all even though it’s not. All ppt is is a representation of numbers and coverage, something that we can easily see with or without it. What people like us want is a good fun fight in PvP (which, if you didn’t know, stands for player vs player, not player vs objective). What people have been saying is true: people avoid fights in order to cap points, xPvP or WvW. Right now ANet does not have the game mode that we want so we make due with the best we can get, which is taking WvW objectives to draw fights. The reason they don’t do this in PvP is because 1. It’s really hard to get on the same team outside of team arena where you can’t play for fights. 2. Even if you do happen to do team arena for fights, you’re only allowed 5 people and there’s a very slim chance the other team is there for the fights as well. 3. There’s less stat variety in PvP meaning you can’t run a mix of 3 stats, only 2, and you can’t balance it as well. This makes it harder to transfer your WvW build over to PvP, and it’s harder to coordinate builds to work together.

So why corpse jump and laugh when you gank singles and zerg smaller teams? That certainly undermines your assertion that “small teams” are there for “good fights” but more like griefing and ganking, which you can’t do as well in xPvP, where the stats, team size, and ability is a bit more equitable, or am I misunderstanding your comment?

Attached – My typical play style.

Dub.1273:

Anierna.6918:

Well, technically the meta is 30/10/10/20/0 S/D + LH, since that’s max damage and superior might stacking, and I did include that spec.

That is neither max damage nor “meta”. Usually you don’t need an elementalist buffing fury in an organized group.
Also you’ve got quite some faults in your gear setup.
S/F is better than S/D anyway, allowing you to stack 18-21 might permanently (without/with persisting flames) aswell as yieling a little better dps/time ratio.

Soooo, you want to share the alternative

Jeknar.6184:

Yada yada yada…

I have been stomped quite a bit by [BS], so I am empirically aware of their objectives. Gank solo roamers, uplevels, and 2-person teams with 5+ person gank groups and then corpse jump and spam laugh. It’s quite cute, really.

The difference between xPvP and WvW as far as objectives is irrelevant, so we can move past that point. If you TAKE an objective, someone will come to take it back or defend it from you, in wvw or in pvp.

It isn’t about team size either, because without fail, in the match-up threads, the QQ about zerging and the lack of “small teams” and “good fights” chokes out other discussion, leading inevitably to the “whip it out and measure it” portion of the discussion, where each ostensible pvp team brags about how they run with fewer than the others.

These groups move intentionally to lower rank servers with little or no queue times, and then only work on objectives for PPT when that leads to baiting pugs into fights where the better coordination and FotM builds will stomp the opposition.

What is it exactly that these “small teams” want then? It seems like they want their own little playground of pugs, uplevels, and guards to gank (for the buffs), because they can’t play xPvP without their OP food, OP buffs, and OP builds. Otherwise, they would just go into the actual pvp game mode and disregard the capture points there.

Attached – Me fighting [BS]