Guild Wars 2

Imo the gear shield nerf hits (core) rifle builds the hardest because they rely the most on it and have the least amount of other defensive options. (hammer builds have block and evade on main weapon and condition engineers can choose to slot shield (+ tanky gear)). That is why i think that rifle is deserving of an evade frame on either #4 or #5 to keep its survivability in line with the other builds.

Dissapointing balance patch.

Dont they usually do a more serious/big balance patch once a year or is that just my imagination?

I find strong ressing mechanics way more annoying then strong stomping mechanics.

Sarahfull.4930:

Overcharged shot is my favourite skill in gw. I wouldn’t want to change anything on it, especially the self cc. If it really needs some kind of bluff I would either lower it’s cd or increase the cc on the enemy. ( counterplay would still be stunbreaks and reflects would hurt more)

Sarah

I like using overcharged shot to get out of entangle (ranger elite) or hunters ward (Dh bow #5) and stuff. If they ever gonna change this skill i hope they’ll let it keeps these functionalities. An acceptable change to me for overcharged shot would be adding an evade frame to the knockback (do a backwards roll or something) Its important to keep the knockback cuz if that got removed you wouldn’t be able to get out of hunters ward (or other skills you can’t dodge through) i think.

I think its called low skill floor and not high skill floor if something is easy to play and do well with.

You mean fumigate? fumigate only removes condies on allies (not yourself) you also have to hit your allies with it in order to work.

MethaneGas.8357:

What do you mean by stability after leaving transformations? Some transforms let you keep stab while others don’t?

It’s not that relevant to this topic but when i was trying to find a way to use tornado’s stability to stomp, my idea was to just w8 untill the transformation would end after 18s (traited elixir x) but for some strange reason the remaining stability duration is random (sometimes 3 sec other times about 1 sec). With some practice it might be possible to manually end the transformation in such a way that you end up with +2 sec stability possibly enough time to pull of a stomp (haven’t tested it yet and would probably take some practice).

Tornado cc’s downed bodies, it would be hard to stomp with it (if you could stomp with it). Also the duration of stability after you let the transformation run out is inconsistant (not a reliable source for stability for stomping (not that its a good idea to stay so long in that transformation anyway)).

Moaing already ressing/stomping enemies wont stop them, moa just prevents people from starting to res or stomp (unless anet changed it).

Miles Smiles.8951:

Stability, out of range, line of sight, immediate stun break.

Does stun break remove the tether even when hes not pulling yet?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar

If you want a WVW rifle/flamethrower hybrid roaming build use the one in my signature. (not for PVP) I wouldn’t recommend rocket boots over either elixir gun (condi cleans, stunbreaker, mobility) or tool kit (block, cc, condi + power damage). As an engineer you are not going to be (nearly) the fastest on the battlefield and taking rocket boots wont change that.

Napalm (flamethrower #4) is an instant cast skill but it can’t be used while stunned while all other instant cast engineer skills can be used while stunned.

PierPiero.9142:

I play scrapper and mesmer in spvp. Are you sure that rolling a condi chrono mesmer is so simple ? playing scrapper is quite trival … it is warrior 2.0 a melee weapon with a block … a range weapon (eg ) and some simple combos … nothing similar to old condition engineer.
Mesmer mechanic is much more difficult to play imho becouse for every thing you do you have to pay attention at your clones : heals come for clones, condi removal comes for clones and damage comes for clones . If you shatter when your clones are not at the right position you lose all your damage , even with condition chronomancer. If you waste your mobility skills you are easy to take down. I played engi since 2012, i really loved P/P engi but now scrapper is much stronger but also boring, so i switched to something different. I can assure you that at begin , kill someone of the same level in 1 vs 1 with mesmer is not easy at all. When you learn it … ok , it is really a strong strong class… but it is not immediate like scrapper or warrior or other classes. try it and tell me if i am wrong

WVW dire (condi dam, vit, though) perplexity condi mesmers are more forgiving/stronger then PVP condi mesmers builds. Bad players perform really well with them.

Have you also compared it with other 1200 range skills? maybe its the revs hammer #1 skill thats bugged.

Aeolus.3615:

If i recal, since this game dont have colision detection systemu dont need to get in the back of the DH, i thin you can clip with DH body and still hit on its back, while your not in is back, so has much he traied to rotate or move if u mantain yout position (supose u can maintain same movement) u will be alwas hitting the other 180ªº degree arc w/o F3.

Tested it out, seems to work (melee attack assist off) but only if the dragonhunter is kind enough to stand still otherwise it’s near impossible to pull off.

Aeolus.3615:

ZeftheWicked.3076:

There’s blocking. I’m fine with blocking. It has counterplay, it has it’s role and price. Take a look at warrior or engi blocks. These are fine and healthy – a block is channeled leaving room for conterplay (unblockable interrupt) or at least doing what it should do – blocking damage while at the same time nor allowing for excessive damage from the character which is blocking – if you’re defending, then you’re defending.

And there’s the dragon hunter F3 cancer.

Is it channeled? Nope.
Does it respect proper counterplay? (unblockable interrupt) – Nope.
Can you prevent it’s casting, given you can’t kill it when it’s already up? – Nope.
Does it in some way limit dps loadout options, given you’re supposed to be blocking at that time? – nope.
.

Actually DH F2 & F3 are easilly disrupted, and only blocks frontal damage.

What do you mean with disrupt? When i use magnet and pull the guardian (no stability) the block doesn’t go away.

After yet another thread of some1 with an idea to dumb down and ruin the in combat flexibility of our profession. Go read it here: Re-imagining-Kits
I think it’s time to discuss a possibly simple fix to the under-usage of certain skill types/utility skills.

Since we don’t have a weapon swap and 3 of 5 skills we get on our toolbelt are determined by what we put in our utility slots, the 3 utility slots have quite a large impact (more so then on many other classes) on the build diversity of our profession. People tend to fill most of the utility slots with kits because they bring so much more utilities (with separate cooldowns) compared to most other utility skills.

Due to kits being such a strong contender for the utility slots players who do not like the reliance on kits/the kit swapping playstyle often call for kit nerfs and profession overhauls (which would ruin the profession for people like me in the unlikely event that their ideas would ever be implemented).

Why not allow utility skills to be sloted in the elite skill slot? that way you can put something in it that synergizes beter with your build then the limited choses we have now. (blocks, stunbreakers, good condi cleanses, certain skill type, something with a toolbelt skill that works with static discharge, …) which would lessen the influence of the 3 utility slots on our build diversity.

Would it simply increase build diversity or would it make certain playstyles unfixably overpowered? Should all utility skills qualify or just the ones that anet decides which wouldn’t be gamebreaking? Or should general rules be upheld like no (extra) stunbreakers in the elite slot? What do you think? (I made this post thinking only about the engineer but if you have ideas that benefit other professions as well id be happy to read them)

Personally i would like to see all the damage from “Flame Blast” transfered to “Detonate Flame Blast” that would be a serious buff, because how often does the napalm ball actually fly through an enemy? not often enough (about half the time?) because its slow and people tend to move alot. Making the napalm ball detonate automatically on touch is actually a nerf imo since it can hit pets, npc’s (WvW), clones,…. possibly leaving the enemy player unharmed and even if it would detonate automatically on touch since its way to often unlikely to touch the enemy you are still either going to detonate it manually or fire and forget (let it detonate at the end of its trajectory).

The bug of hitting obstacles and not (being able to) detonate should have been fixed years ago already.

Flamethrower needs some compensation for the removal of “fireforged trigger” (EG and FT skill cooldown reduction) EG got alchemical tinctures and HGH but flamethrower was never compensated.

I have the same things checked plus I also have:

ground targeting : instant (speeds up your combat)

and

lock ground target at maximum skill range checked (that way i always know i wont get an out of range warning and get the farrest leap distance possible when needed (with rifle jump shot))

and

checked Use Free Camera: that way i can change the camera direction (with left mouse button) to look behind me without the camera aligning automatically behind my character again when i release the LMB (not so important)

unchecked because:

Double tap evade : jumping puzzles
Disable area of effect rings: doesn’t mather (i thought this one would hide the green circle for ground targeting skills with ground targeting on non instant but apparently it doesn’t so i dont know what it does)
Autotargeting: I prefer selecting my enemy manually but maybe its beter to check this as long as you do it in combination with “promote skill target” to avoid getting unwanted retargeting (i dont know if there are drawbacks)
Promote skill target: see above
Melee attack assist: sometimes i just want to walk through my enemy and if i have him selected thats a problem with this checked
Snap ground target to current target: if i want to kite and forget to deselect my enemy, jump shot will transport me to the place i least want to be. (still have to be carefull with rampage #3 and tornado #5)
Allow skill retargeting: i don’t know if this one mathers much or how i can use it to my advantage (edit: its actually quite usefull, too often i use rampage #4 without having a selected target but with this checked i can still correct my mistake)

Dislike to fight: Condi mesmers and perma stealth condi trapper thieves (if those still exist).
The last build doesn’t give me much trouble since I have reveal but lets be honest, these 2 builds take cheesy to the next level.

EG is good as it is. #2 just needs a bug fix/change (it doesn’t bounce 3 times in a 1vs1) and a speed buff. A range increase to #1 would also be nice.

Not happy with the alchemical tinctures nerf, you’ll have to drop protection injection if you want elixirs to cleans condies. Core engie is already having enough troubles surviving the numbers p*** elite spec power builds put out.

Straegen.2938:

The Mist Form issue has complete counter play but few ever learn it. You can Immobilize them and they cannot go anywhere. That is L2P.

i have a 2.25 sec immob on my rifle and i have to hit the ele before he goes into vapor form (or it misses if i remember correctly wiki says its susceptible to controll effects but i dont remember it that way (i should do some test)), so even if i immob him when the immob wears off they often make it to the door anyway. Not that it bothers me much but i do wonder why they decided to make certain classes easier to stomp then others.

edit: wiki says immob is not a control effect , but im eager to test out my hard cc on vapor form now.

edit2: just tried overcharged shot (launch) 2 times on vapor form and it simply gets evaded.

Wolfineer Condition Engineer vs Fresh Air Elementalist

Its an old video + hes not using a powerbuild but the tips might still be helpfull. Even with his high toughness + fumble hes struggeling. I dont know either how to fight them but they are pretty rare in wvw.

nvm
/15 characters

hmmm … dunno if i can still dodge a reflected net shot.

elixir x got buffed

Tornado: The stability stacks per pulse have been increased from 1 to 2. This transform now has new abilities on skills 4 and 5.

Tornado—Elemental Requiem: Launch missiles in multiple directions, based on the current tornado type (air, dust, debris).
Tornado—Dust Charge: Move at a rapid rate, knocking back foes.

Swarm of Bats flying around you as a cool backpack/glider skin.

Kinda Looks like the Nightfury Skin (I dont use nightfury because its a shoulder skin + bats are cooler)

Personally i would make the grenadiers radius increase baseline and let the trait keep the velocity increase. It would make the nade kit more usable when not using the explosives traitline (bigger area for 3 nades to still hit).

I think most hammer roamers use power gear because its allows you to burst more which is important for a build that does most of his damage in close range (to utilize the few oportunities you get to burst your enemies hard (which cele isn’t all that great for) or into downstate which is important against certain builds that can kite well and basically heal up again)(also the hammer is a power weapon)

At the beginning when it had a 20s cooldown with an instant cast it was absurdly cheesy but now its nothing special anymore with a rather meh toolbelt skill. Personally i wouldn’t mind having its recharge time increased but with a reworked toolbelt skill (more usefull, less niche) to make things more intresting. (I never actually used sneak gyro but this is my opinion after fighting a fair amount of scrappers)

Tekoneiric.6817:

santenal.1054:

Removing mobility, leapfinisher and non projectile damage skill from rifle in exchange for just a damage skill? no thanks

Kits are easily activated and deactivated with little recharge time as anyone that uses the flamethrower knows.

What has that to do with anything i said?

You are asking for/suggesting a rifle nerf.

Removing mobility, leapfinisher and non projectile damage skill from rifle in exchange for just a projectile damage skill? no thanks

RNG should be removed from elixir H Or at least make the regen a boon that you’ll always get so this heal skill can compete with the healing turret but granting all 3 boons + might from hgh might be a bit over the top.

Rezzet.3614:

as far as projectile hate though i tihnk blunderbuss and overcharged shot shouldnt count as Projectiles

Blunderbuss can’t be reflected. (im pretty sure about this) or do you mean it gets destroyed by dh bow #3/druids staff #5 or something? (i dont know if it does, never thought about it)

Perplexity runes need a big nerf (to much confusion spam). Im fine with dire or condition builds in general. (power builds can just be as cheesy). I also liked the confusion that only did damage on skill use beter (now you get punished no mather what you do).

Engineer is pretty good for roaming/small scale fights.

Kodama.6453:

santenal.1054:

Kodama.6453:

It isn’t supposed to be a strong self heal.

Thats quite a statement. Did anet say they wanted it to be that way?

Healing turret is pretty good at both, why shouldn’t med kit be like that?

Maybe I misunderstood you here, but you said we move the heal from the skills 2-5 to self heal. That means just skill 2 heals (per regeneration) and skills 3-5 wouldn’t heal at all. Basically that would mean to sacrifice almost all team healing (except little regeneration and AA) for the self healing.

Or did you mean keeping the ally heal on the skills and just increase the self heal with the same amount?

You understood me correctly.

edit: my suggestion is not a completely worked out concept, i just want it to also be a good selfheal if anet decides to rework it. But i doubt they will ever do a big overhaul like your suggestion due to it being a bit to much coding work. I think the best we can expect is some changes to the numbers and throwing mechanic like suggestion B from the OP.

Kodama.6453:

santenal.1054:

Kodama.6453:

It isn’t supposed to be a strong self heal.

Thats quite a statement. Did anet say they wanted it to be that way?

Healing turret is pretty good at both, why shouldn’t med kit be like that?

Maybe I misunderstood you here, but you said we move the heal from the skills 2-5 to self heal. That means just skill 2 heals (per regeneration) and skills 3-5 wouldn’t heal at all. Basically that would mean to sacrifice almost all team healing (except little regeneration and AA) for the self healing.

Or did you mean keeping the ally heal on the skills and just increase the self heal with the same amount?

You understood me correctly.

edit: my suggestion is not a completely worked out concept, i just want it to also be a good selfheal if anet decides to rework it. But i doubt they will ever do a big overhaul like your suggestion due to it being a bit to much coding work. I think the best we can expect is some changes to the numbers and throwing mechanic like suggestion B.

Kodama.6453:

It isn’t supposed to be a strong self heal.

Thats quite a statement. Did anet say they wanted it to be that way?

Healing turret is pretty good at both, why shouldn’t med kit be like that?

santenal.1054:

ellesee.8297:

My suggestion doesn’t turn it into a niche healing kit. It gives a lot of self buffs with the possibility of healing and supporting your team if you build and trait for it.

I didn’t say it does, just to be clear. But wouldn’t you want “Throw Bandages” to be a beter heal with a longer cooldown?

I totally forgot #2 was a condi cleans. So increasing the #2 cooldown would nerf the med kit. Instead i would suggest moving all the healing from #2-#5 to bandage self (4920 +4*505=6940) and keep the regen on #2 (910). That way its competitive with healing turret as a self heal.

ellesee.8297:

My suggestion doesn’t turn it into a niche healing kit. It gives a lot of self buffs with the possibility of healing and supporting your team if you build and trait for it.

I didn’t say it does, just to be clear. But wouldn’t you want “Throw Bandages” to be a beter heal with a longer cooldown?

Tiilimon.6094:

But why would you self heal with a kit that’s only purpose seems to be healing others :P

Just doesn’t make much sense to me to take it for solo play instead of the other options.

Med kit used to be/is a strong selfheal on par with healing turret (theoretically). I just want what med kit always was (a good self heal) but practically usable this time (not having to spend so much time in it) and dont want med kit to turn in some niche thing only healing builds really benefit from. The whole reason they did a med kit overhaul was because med kit saw so little use and they messed it up hard, I bet it sees even less use now then before. I even used to roam with it to proc runes with med kit swap, but that got removed also.

I would also like to see all the healing removed from skills #3 #4 #5 and added to #2 (with an increased cooldown) to make it worth your time swapping to med kit for self healing. edit: see other suggestion
The old med kit had the same problem (to much time spend in med kit for selfhealing)

question: With the old med kit I could use “Drop Antidote” (condi cleans) to instantly get out of fear. Can you do that with elixir b (+alchemical trinctures) and with toss elixir b?

Tiilimon.6094:

I think they could change 2 and 5 to AOEs, and leave fury and swiftness as throwables because it would be a bit silly to get 20% crit for the whole crew

Then #3 and #4 would still have the crappy throwing mechanic. They could also make these skills drop infront of your feet (no targeting) just like the old med kit used to work.

The throwing mechanics of skills #2-5 need to either work like toss elixirs or just made a self cast. It’s beyond me why they haven’t done this already, its such a small tweak with a huge impact of the usability of the med kit.

Last time a pull catapulted me in the air was when the enemy was standing at the top of a Inclined plane/ramp. (it was only 8 meters or so slightly higher then the ceiling of the bay keep lords room )

Magical Things.8465:

You have zero condi duration in your build so any condi dmg will tickle at 675 condi dmg with 0 duration. So please explain to me how you categorize this as a “hybrid build”. Because it looks like pretty much “carry me” gear and a medi dragon hunter would eat you for breakfast because of such low effective power.

+10 condi duration from traveler runes
+33% burning duration from incendiary powder
+33% bleeding duration from serrated steel

Dont go staring yourself blind on the damage stats, due to the many damage sources you can put out some nice burst combos.

Magical Things.8465:

I asked for suggestions for gear. Not a build critique. I never asked you to run my build. But make sure if you suggest one…..that it’s superior.

I pointed out (just like others before me) that your build isn’t using the condition damage stat that much (it uses all the other stats from cele pretty well by the way) so temporarily slotting a gear with condition damage stats wouldn’t make much sense (other then cele gear). I didn’t even know it was your build lol (you said you ran across that build so i thought it wasn’t yours) and i didn’t/ain’t planning to suggest a build , all i suggested was that you should try to theorycraft a beter build then the one you presented here (be it a major overhaul or just some minor tweaks).

Have fun roaming, im done putting energy in responding to your comments.

Magical Things.8465:

santenal.1054:

A celestial build not using incendiary powder is not poperly using his condition damage stats (imo). You should try to theorycraft some beter build, its fun. At what im seeing currently i would not even recommend an armor containing the condition damage stat(other then celestial).

BTW the build you have in your signature isn’t very optimized either imo. No one uses traveler runes any more when there are traits available to get swiftness easily. Why would I take 25% movement speed when I can get 33%?

I chose traveler runes so i can still switch between damage (long fused powder pack (though unreliable)) and utility (lock on) and dont have to kitswap all the time to be mobile plus the +25% movementspeed can’t be boonstripped. Hidden flask also gives it almost 50% swiftness uptime during fights. Being 6.4/8.7% faster is hardly gonna mather on a build with good range pressure, reliable far reach (1200) and lots of cc. the stats combined with the +10% condition duration and 15% boon duration also makes it a pretty good rune damage/survivability wise compared to other rune sets (on this hybrid build).

Magical Things.8465:

Also for the + stats, leadership runes would be far superior

They have the same stats. the difference is:+25% speed + 10% condi duration + 15% boon duration vs +30% boon duration + 2 condi conversions on elite use.

Magical Things.8465:

and greatly increase boon duration at the same time.

What is so great about 150% boon duration compared to 135%?

On 11 or 12 mai I removed the following suggestion from the mettabatle build page "If you decide to use other runes then the Superior runes of the traveler then “Lock on” has to be replaced by “Streamlined kits” to keep the build mobile. " You can check the history from the page. There are lots of good rune choices but if i were to add them all the wiki page would get too crowdy. It might be a good idea re-add the tip and make people aware that many runes would work reasonably well with the build.

I stand by my comment, while you dont have (much?) celestial gear yet and gonna use scrapper, tools and alchemy traitlines (with the weapons currently slotted), i would use power gear instead of hybrid gear.

Josh XT.6053:

This build is pretty solid for roaming, it is what one of my guys in my guild uses for roaming. http://asphyxia.tv/wvw-roaming-engineer/

The scrapper traitline is not filled in completely (maybe you forgot).