Guild Wars 2

On some rare occasions I’ve solo pushed mid if I believe I can keep 3 of them chasing my useless self around in circles. My theory being, sure they’ve capped it, but if I can keep 3 busy for 30 seconds or so, then that’s 3 people who aren’t at the other two points.

I am in platinum and am running paladin, holebrack, FT, EG, Elix B Mortar. With HGH, Scrapper, And Inventions. I have to be really really active in my defense to avoid being taken out, but I can contribute quite a lot if I pick the right time.

I do very well in teams where there’s someone who will draw attention in bunker. I do quite poorly when noone wants to stand on point.

I have run into some eles that basically can just infinitely play me to a draw. I have also met one warrior that embarassed me pretty badly twice. Necros are a fricken plauge if they land the umpteen million condtion well thing on me, even with HGHG and all my cleanse. So I’ve run into one or two I couldn’t 1 on 1.

So generally I’d say against equal skill opponents, I’m doing pretty well with the build. I’ve won a couple of 1 v 2’s but that’s really quite hard (as it should be), and an ele with equal skill and a bunker ish AOE CC build will keep me to a draw.

Solstace.2514:

I play scrapper and I have trouble in a 1v1. But then again, they can’t kill me either. I have same issue with warrior.

I find with Scrapper that if I get my CC just right, I can actually uncap the point…. it takes like 10 min…. not very exciting and a lot of work. Really just kinda exhausting.

Vagrant.7206:

shion.2084:

I’m in that range too, I’m not seeing too many trash players. Maybe folks with different non-coordinated strategies, but not a lot of insta kill fodder. I’ve also noted that eles seem annoyingly effective with their seemingly spammable area CC, then rock glidy mode then back to area CC thing. If one is speced into defence I literrally draw it on point and cannot take it out with my engi. I guess I could go marauder but then I’d be spike bait.

Even that is no guarantee. The only thing I’ve seen work is spammed, hard CC — which guardians used to provide with their traps. Power Revs can provide this as well.

If I had to provide a solution? Reduce ele self-healing. They would retain their usefulness in group fights, but would be unable to sit in the thick of things and soak up all the damage.

No my response was what they do, not what to do to them I wonder what happens when two of the AOE CC spamming eles run into each other on point…. that would be sort of amusing to watch. Haven’t seen it happen yet.

I am going to buy reading glasses to figure out what division folks are in

I’m in that range too, I’m not seeing too many trash players. Maybe folks with different non-coordinated strategies, but not a lot of insta kill fodder. I’ve also noted that eles seem annoyingly effective with their seemingly spammable area CC, then rock glidy mode then back to area CC thing. If one is speced into defence I literrally draw it on point and cannot take it out with my engi. I guess I could go marauder but then I’d be spike bait.

Honest John.4673:

Huskyboy.1053:

Honest John.4673:

It’s a measure of your ability to win games. Whether that’s because of your raw mechanical skill, or your ability to work well with a team, it all plays a role but the only constant is you, and your ability (or lack thereof) to win games.

Lol John I usually appreciate your answers, but this time you’re not thinking it all the way through. Let’s start from a simple premise: my team, through the quality of their play, has a 100% possibility of winning every game if each player performs at the top level. This is of course not a correct premise, but to simplify things let’s stick with it. As an individual, I represent 20% of the team. If I contribute 20% of the quality play necessary to win the game, and so does everyone else on my team, then we get a resultant 100% of the effort necessary to win.

I can, of course, contribute more; if I consistently win or at least stall 1v2s, decap far repeatedly then come back to help at mid, then i could possibly contribute up to 30% of the total effort necessary to win. I can never contribute more than that; no matter how good I am at fighting, I can never be in 2 places at once. If one of my teammates contributes 9%, I contribute 30%, and the other the contribute 20% each, we get 99%. That’s a loss.

So in reality, my win/loss ratio is an accurate measure of my teams’ ability to get a collective 100% effort necessary to win. That’s it. It is in no way a measure of my personal ability. You can carry 3 perfectly average teammates and one bad, but no more. And the bad must make at least half the contribution that the average players do in order to win, more often than not they do 9% or less.

What am I not thinking all the way through? Nothing in what you said conflicts with what you quoted.

You said “its a measure of your ability to win games.” The contradiction is that it is not a measure of your ability to win games. It is a measure of whether your team won or not.

I could not play engineer effectively without my logitech gaming mouse. I use this…. https://www.amazon.ca/Logitech-Proteus-Tunable-Customizable-910-004074/dp/B00IRHE892

I told myself since all the youngins have the reflexes, I will rely on what us older folks have… finances to win

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

It can be frustrating. I, 1 v 2’d two people on far and we actually were all in down state. My teammate ran over and tried to stomp rather than rez me. He got CC’d away and I died. They both got up and killed him before I respawned. We lost the match not too horribly.

Point being, I was a far better player than the opposing team members I directly played against, whom in turn wiped the floor with my team. We lost by a little bit, but to the match making system this is identical to me having been creamed by the other team. Even if I’d been he sole person responsible for my teams loss due to my utterly horrible playing the result would be the same.

Essentially some of my best performance in the evening and my MMR goes down for it. Applying MMR based on team output and expecting it to represent an indviduals skill is flawed because there is only a loose correlation between those things.

The skill adjustment doesn’t take into account how well you actually do indivdiually, or how close you are to winning. As far as I know. It only counts a win a win and assumes you are individually responsible for the outcome.

MMR isn’t concerned with representing individual skill since it’s a team game. It’s more reflective of how well you work with a team. If you typed in /s “res” that’s putting forth more team effort.

I don’t believe it is tightly correlated to how well you work with a team, as it doesn’t say, well this team would have “really really lost”, but because of how well you worked with it, it only “really lost”. So I’m going to up your works with a team well rating. that would be a tight correlation.

If you loose you could have sorta worked with your team, not worked at all with your team, or really worked with your team, and your rating will go down all the same. So it is not directly reflective of individual contribution to the team.

Kinda see what I mean?

And the person who’s consistently winning (and consistently gaining higher rating) is the one who’s been consistently putting in their 20% (or more, to cover).

Putting in the exact same effort with a different team might see them lose. There is not a strong correlation. Conversely a person who won may just by freak of statistics be being paired with wonderful teammates and under performing. Outliers will do that to you and there’s always going to be some.

I don’t think you’ve effectively argued that the result has a tight correlation.

Now if I was going to take your side of the argument, I’d say that in aggregate, if the averages treat you averagely, your effort in play may end up on average affecting your outcome. So there isn’t No correlation, its simply a weak one, and unfortunately your not given a rating as a team but as an individual.

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

It can be frustrating. I, 1 v 2’d two people on far and we actually were all in down state. My teammate ran over and tried to stomp rather than rez me. He got CC’d away and I died. They both got up and killed him before I respawned. We lost the match not too horribly.

Point being, I was a far better player than the opposing team members I directly played against, whom in turn wiped the floor with my team. We lost by a little bit, but to the match making system this is identical to me having been creamed by the other team. Even if I’d been he sole person responsible for my teams loss due to my utterly horrible playing the result would be the same.

Essentially some of my best performance in the evening and my MMR goes down for it. Applying MMR based on team output and expecting it to represent an indviduals skill is flawed because there is only a loose correlation between those things.

The skill adjustment doesn’t take into account how well you actually do indivdiually, or how close you are to winning. As far as I know. It only counts a win a win and assumes you are individually responsible for the outcome.

MMR isn’t concerned with representing individual skill since it’s a team game. It’s more reflective of how well you work with a team. If you typed in /s “res” that’s putting forth more team effort.

I don’t believe it is tightly correlated to how well you work with a team, as it doesn’t say, well this team would have “really really lost”, but because of how well you worked with it, it only “really lost”. So I’m going to up your works with a team well rating. that would be a tight correlation.

If you loose you could have sorta worked with your team, not worked at all with your team, or really worked with your team, and your rating will go down all the same. So it is not directly reflective of individual contribution to the team.

Kinda see what I mean?

Honest John.4673:

shion.2084:

It can be frustrating. I, 1 v 2’d two people on far and we actually were all in down state. My teammate ran over and tried to stomp rather than rez me. He got CC’d away and I died. They both got up and killed him before I respawned. We lost the match not too horribly.

Point being, I was a far better player than the opposing team members I directly played against, whom in turn wiped the floor with my team. We lost by a little bit, but to the match making system this is identical to me having been creamed by the other team. Even if I’d been he sole person responsible for my teams loss due to my utterly horrible playing the result would be the same.

Essentially some of my best performance in the evening and my MMR goes down for it. Applying MMR based on team output and expecting it to represent an indviduals skill is flawed because there is only a loose correlation between those things.

The skill adjustment doesn’t take into account how well you actually do indivdiually, or how close you are to winning. As far as I know. It only counts a win a win and assumes you are individually responsible for the outcome.

MMR isn’t concerned with representing individual skill since it’s a team game. It’s more reflective of how well you work with a team. If you typed in /s “res” that’s putting forth more team effort.

By the time he moved past me to stomp, typing res would have resulted in me being dead if he’d changed his mind. My only chance was that his stomp worked. Plus hard to type res when your mashing the stay alive button

shion.2084:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Well now that we will have visible ratings, we will start talking to the community about averages, ranges, deltas, everything MMR. Average/starting rating is 1200, and has a bell curve distribution.

Hi Evan, 2 things.

First a Hypothesis. The 50/50 hate may be generated by the perception that the following can happen.
1) I am winning several matches in a row.
2) There is a small population of players queueing.
3) My reward for doing well is to be placed with worse and worse players to average out for my relatively high MMR. So with 10 players in queue my reward might be Me (MMR1) and MMR7 – MMR10 vs. MMR2 -MMR6. (where MMR1 is the highest of the 10 in the match)

Essentially the perception that rather than teaming me up with better allies and against better quality opponents (which less people would object to as its more thrilling matches) , my reward for doing well could end up being matches where I’m teamed with crappier and crappier teammates to account for my doing well. Essentially seeing how far I can carry worse and worse people until I break. (Un-fun).

Is the above possible given certain populations of player queues?

NEXT:

You are starting new players at 1200, an expected average rating? So if I really am 1200, I’ll be more likely to be teamed with new folks, and play against new unknown folks? (assuming a healthy dose of new folks keep coming in through out the season). Does this not seem somewhat problematic to you?

Now lets say you get teamed with 4 random blokes and the other 5 rando new blokes at 1200 are better, so you sink in MMR and will play with folks whom also happened to randomly lose. Would that not be frustrating if the bulk of people you keep getting teamed with are totally random unknown players and you keep getting 1 or 2 who sink things for you? Lets say you manage to climb back to 1200…. do you not then get the rando lottery of being likely to be paired with a bunch of untried folks again?

Evan, I wouldn’t mind a response to how your algorithm handles this. You never know I could actually be potentially helpful with ideas, I have a career in working out cognitive solutions to a myriad of problems with more complex interactions.

It can be frustrating. I, 1 v 2’d two people on far and we actually were all in down state. My teammate ran over and tried to stomp rather than rez me. He got CC’d away and I died. They both got up and killed him before I respawned. We lost the match not too horribly.

Point being, I was a far better player than the opposing team members I directly played against, whom in turn wiped the floor with my team. We lost by a little bit, but to the match making system this is identical to me having been creamed by the other team. Even if I’d been he sole person responsible for my teams loss due to my utterly horrible playing the result would be the same.

Essentially some of my best performance in the evening and my MMR goes down for it. Applying MMR based on team output and expecting it to represent an indviduals skill is flawed because there is only a loose correlation between those things.

The skill adjustment doesn’t take into account how well you actually do indivdiually, or how close you are to winning. As far as I know. It only counts a win a win and assumes you are individually responsible for the outcome.

My engi relies primarily on running 15 – 22 or so might stacks. You have HGH but limited potions, and no fire field. Do you do alright without it?

Ah I watched. So you do a lot more AA with your hammer than I do, which I suppose is a source of might. In general your fights take longer, but with your gyro help your sustainier than my build so you can wait it out.

Do you find their are classes that can just permanently draw you however?

Evan Lesh.3295:

Well now that we will have visible ratings, we will start talking to the community about averages, ranges, deltas, everything MMR. Average/starting rating is 1200, and has a bell curve distribution.

Hi Evan, 2 things.

First a Hypothesis. The 50/50 hate may be generated by the perception that the following can happen.
1) I am winning several matches in a row.
2) There is a small population of players queueing.
3) My reward for doing well is to be placed with worse and worse players to average out for my relatively high MMR. So with 10 players in queue my reward might be Me (MMR1) and MMR7 – MMR10 vs. MMR2 -MMR6. (where MMR1 is the highest of the 10 in the match)

Essentially the perception that rather than teaming me up with better allies and against better quality opponents (which less people would object to as its more thrilling matches) , my reward for doing well could end up being matches where I’m teamed with crappier and crappier teammates to account for my doing well. Essentially seeing how far I can carry worse and worse people until I break. (Un-fun).

Is the above possible given certain populations of player queues?

NEXT:

You are starting new players at 1200, an expected average rating? So if I really am 1200, I’ll be more likely to be teamed with new folks, and play against new unknown folks? (assuming a healthy dose of new folks keep coming in through out the season). Does this not seem somewhat problematic to you?

Now lets say you get teamed with 4 random blokes and the other 5 rando new blokes at 1200 are better, so you sink in MMR and will play with folks whom also happened to randomly lose. Would that not be frustrating if the bulk of people you keep getting teamed with are totally random unknown players and you keep getting 1 or 2 who sink things for you? Lets say you manage to climb back to 1200…. do you not then get the rando lottery of being likely to be paired with a bunch of untried folks again?

Phineas Poe.3018:

Rolisteel.1375:

100% damage avoiding skills ( also high mobility 100% damage avoiding ) have to be nerfed to give damage mitigation instead 30% 50% etc. and balance the damage of the classes/builds from there.

Thats what required for fun fights. Atm all we face in every match is invu invu, block block block, evadee evadee, 00000, dodge dodge + high mobility teleports etc spamm.

Its OP lazy mechanic that carry bad/good players alot that can have 100% damage avoiding while also have high burst damage output. Block/evade spam builds have always existed.

While also not fun to fight against almost every match full of damage avoiding spam.

i eat the burst as they are attacking while also avoiding damage lol.

We had “bunker meta” before, we have now “100% damage avoiding tanky burst meta”

How is this any different from engineers having perma vigor with double Elixir S (utility+trait) and Tool Kit builds pre-HoT?

In fact, blinds and smoke fields were across the board substantially stronger in the past compared to how they are today.

Well
1) I can’t get nuked by an engi using elixir S to mitigate incoming damage.
2) In fact if I’ve hit them with condis, they might die while in it.
3) In a 1v1 if I’m an engi and they are and we are contesting point, it is to my advantage for them to go into elix S, as my cooldowns start ticking and I can actively use healing.

I think a team of coordinated folks would be particularly over powered against equally skilled but not pre-made folks in this gank meta. I feel there should be an option for teams to go team each other if they want, but it should be sperated from those who want to solo/duo queue.

I’m not much liking the feel of the meta these days. It kind of has a gank / zerg feel to it. Pretty much who can land their combo first after the ridiculous number of invulns, infi-dodging, and blocks run out. Things snowball a lot more, and there are a lot of what I would term “bully” builds out there in PvP. They work great if your on the better team, but loose horribly if your slightly weaker. The folks that play them tend then to turn on everyone on their team because they had terrific results when they were bully rolling their opponents, and so it must be their team that is the problem when they get utterly stomped. Hence AFK. There seem to be fewer close matches when people play more glass.

They shouldn’t be a definitive reference for balance because their team composition rules differ from ours, and so what is balanced with their added limitations is not balanced when those limitations are removed. I don’t think there is any arguing this, its almost self-evident. They can be an indicator for balance though.

Incidentally that build is glass as hell, but can remove a LOT of conditions, Can do this for the group, Can happily keep 20 might or so stacked all by itself and share most of it with nearby folks… Pack is obviously not optimal, choose a favourite ammulet, I might go with Holenbrack for condition duration mitigation and to be able to easily self generate 25 might stacks.

I’d be surprised if there is any (non-raid) content you can’t do in a power hammer setup. This would have you running at 99.8% crit rate without external help if:

1) your foe is bleeding (which you cause on crit along with skills),
2) you have fury which you gain on crit, which you can upkeep with ease.
3) You are within 240 of an enemy.

Note: You do not require hammer for this…. rifle would do it to with this setup.

This is with all zerk trinkets…. if your willing to swap to a precision one you can do better if that really matters, or keep the crit rate but use the leeway to add some toughness in…..

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlcThatY7Ww6KQ7FLTGFY1ldhk4zcABA9fn37NA-ThBFABFq+TN7PAwFA4KlgE8AAQS5XAgDArv+6rv+6N8wDP8wDXKgRlZB-e

Sazdek.6830:

GhandiBot.6257:

shion.2084:

With vitality at 560, no toughness and no increase from your runes, will they not focus you before your heal is effective? I would consider smoke bomb potentially for anti-gank surviveability over the 120 second reset on the heal skill. I might consider mortar so you can drop another water field and a blind field.

Have you played Scrapper at all? Blocks and evades on a short CD, protection up, Bulwark Gyro and Adaptive Armor make up for the lack of toughness, not to mention traited Elixir S, you have so many utilities to easily survive. You have a stun break and a source of stability as well. Maybe you’re just bad at Scrapper.

I think your head is in the right place, but in practice this wouldn’t do well in higher ranks due to the potential of just being bursted or CC’d away from your team, or to death. Only 1 reliable source of stability will be what eats you alive. Block only being from hammer, same with the evades, isn’t going to cut it in any form of actual pressure. Furthermore wholesale condi clear would require you use elixir C and lose out on your B (most likely choice) or Bulwark (situational if there aren’t many DHs or Druids).

The reason the standard meta scrapper has generally done so well, and always had a place in competitive teams this last season, is because it already has some support built in as well as maintaining bruiser status. While you would still need an actual support in the form of a druid/tempest/etc, scrapper was a compliment to it. Stealth rezzing, elixir S rezzing, gyro+manual rez, etc etc etc were all features that were sought after from the class, as well as still being a menace to the enemy team with CC, condi cleansing, team healing, stealth, etc. I’d like to see a competitive support scrapper build emerge, but it’s just not likely going to happen without a major shift in the meta and some trait or skill reworks.

I’m agreeing with your agreeing with me

Maybe…. If you say you don’t get spiked with no toughness and that much vitality and one source of stability, while being able to stand in the fray and heal your companions then more power to you. As I’ve never played you I’ll refrain from commenting on your skill or the likelihood that you’ve played scrapper. It was a legitimate question though, if standing with team mates in fray how do you deal with all the CC that comes your way?

If you do fractals, Ascended gear won’t seem so worthless to you.

Since you don’t have stab on gyro, and you don’t have stab on doge roll, your only stab source is your elix b…. will be hard to stay close to your team mates if there is moderate CC in the area.

With vitality at 560, no toughness and no increase from your runes, will they not focus you before your heal is effective? I would consider smoke bomb potentially for anti-gank surviveability over the 120 second reset on the heal skill. I might consider mortar so you can drop another water field and a blind field.

With theives I find AOE works relatiely well. So you start dumping your Mortar fields onto your relative location, and your napalm, time your acid bomb to open distance and repeat. Bunkerdown starts triggering mortars. An interesting choice is the AA for flamethrower, it can track them and will tick hits when the thief lands since it has continuous and many hits. When they are just about to land near me I jump back with acid bomb. Then I turn on flame thrower, as they get closer I do mortar again. Eventually you can get them with air blast or perhaps your overload shot. Also the EG poison spray has the same effect as FT in doing many hits. Flame throwers ball o fire detonation is useful to, and it can be blasting your own water field while getting them.

You know I bet bombs would be greatly amusing as well come to think of it…. all those fields….

What about sigil of earth that triggers on hit and causes bleed?

I doubt the key stroke timings would work. I believe good mouse macros allow you to inject randomized time offsets between actions being run in the macro.

Did you take the trait that lets engi’s auto attack with rifle faster?

Wait… how do you see that death analysis screen? Never knew that existed.

shion.2084:

FT AA can be used in PvP meaningfully.
When my opponent pops projectile hate and is running around, I can use it’s AA to tag them from a decent range.
When my opponent uses a pillar to LOS me, I shoot right through it with FT.
When engi does bulwark group protect projectile hate and several stand in it… FT AA whacks the lot of them on point.
When I want to trigger my sig of air, the faster quicker hits of FT make it come off and ensure I’m getting my once per 3 seconds efficiently. It is by no means an entirely useless AA.
When a theif is bouncing around like a jack in the box over my head FT will more likely catch them in their vulnerable frames.
And Hey, free burn on occasion.

Ardid.7203:

I love FT and I can understand its AA just isn’t meant to be used on some places (Like PvP or WvW, two whole modes…). After all, FT is only one of your 3 utility skills, and it is a multi skill kit on top of everything.

On the contrary, Rifle is a whole 25% of ALL the alternatives you have for a weapon as an Engie. Since it is not the less viable, because pistol/shield, that 1/4 of the total becomes even more important. And it is incredibly underwhelming.

I’m ok with weapons not being optimal for everything. But first, there should be enough alternatives. Balance.

Rifle is not underwhelming because a planned and intelligent opportunity-cost design. It is bad because Anet has not made its job balancing it.

FT AA can be used in PvP meaningfully. When my opponent pops projectile hate and is running around, I can use it’s AA to tag them from a decent range. When my opponent uses a pillar to LOS me, I shoot right through it with FT. When engi does bulwark group protect projectile hate and several stand in it… FT AA whacks the lot of them on point. When I want to trigger my sig of air, the faster quicker hits of FT make it come off and ensure I’m getting my once per 3 seconds efficiently. It is by no means an entirely useless AA.

Ardid.7203:

I love FT and I can understand its AA just isn’t meant to be used on some places (Like PvP or WvW, two whole modes…). After all, FT is only one of your 3 utility skills, and it is a multi skill kit on top of everything.

On the contrary, Rifle is a whole 25% of ALL the alternatives you have for a weapon as an Engie. Since it is not the less viable, because pistol/shield, that 1/4 of the total becomes even more important. And it is incredibly underwhelming.

I’m ok with weapons not being optimal for everything. But first, there should be enough alternatives. Balance.

Rifle is not underwhelming because a planned and intelligent opportunity-cost design. It is bad because Anet has not made its job balancing it.

Yeah can’t log in… not resolved.

You know two of them might work well in tandem as a ganking team….

What build by the way? Using Balthazar, FT, EG, and S?

I’ve only really played one very good condi engi. The rest were quite easy to manage with my power engi. There is a lot of projectile hate out there…. and condi engis tend to go down quite quickly, or have to scamper off thus conceding point.

The one very good one would bait reflects, worked with another condi giver to see when you’d used your cleanses and was invisible for portions of time. Essentially he/she played a theif’s +1 role very well.

I suppose you were worried that Paladin’s Amulet would make someone too tanky… Can’t see a very good option for a power engi given no access to hammer and the amulet choices. I guess a kiting/stealthing Burn dual pistol is going to be the only seriously viable option.

Hmm Elixr X is banned, but mesmer can moa? I guess the concern wasn’t the moa then?

You know with trait abilities that proc on hit you can make use of those multi little hits. From a PvP perspective….

With firearms you can take the heavy armor exploit to stack more vuln with more hits, and get more swiftness chances. (is there a cooldown even on the trait?) By default with firearms you apply bleeds on critical (again no cooldown mentioned). I suppose you could do sigil of earth, and you have much greater probability of stacking the bleed every 2 seconds if your hitting more in those two seconds. Plus with aforementioned firearms it lasts longer.

You can get a hybrid power / condi to work with the pinpoint distribution trait.

I always take IP over juggernaut, because with it, plus the FT tool belt, plus napalm and air blast, I can pretty much keep them burning for quite some time.

My personal build uses high might, and not much in condi damage, but still when I run I’ve got about 800 ish condi which is enough to mean the burning will impact those whom are better against my power leaning but weak against condi.

For PvP for fun try Rabid and Undead with firearms, elixr and scrapper. Then use FT, EG, elix B., and Mortar. Sigil Earth, And one of your choice (doom? Torment? Blood?)

If you want more power based build (which I think works better) do the above with leadership and Paladin. The leadership will keep your might at 25 or so, and your regen and protection will last a long time. Sigils change to blood and lightning probably. (your base damage without might is 300 or so due to the firearms precision trait, but normally will be running at 800)

I find getting a hard beat is often a game I can learn a lot from. When one jerk gives up, you can still seek out some good 1 v 2 fights to get involved in and practice holding 2 folks off. You can search out some 1 v1’s, you can work on extricating yourself from fights and resetting. There’s a lot of practice that I can do against better opponents.

For mesmer’s, spot the suspicious non clone and stay on it. Stick to a mez.

Slide AOE in behind their directional block, (I use mortar and make them run through the fields), thunderclap when they get off their block, air blast to knock them off point. When they drop traps doge roll out and pelt them with range again. But be unpredictable, just when they think they know your pattern stand in the trap, drop your water fields, put up shock shield and lay down a fire field for them to stand in.

For theives, time the CC when they land, and AOE so they jump around in it. The hammer reflect and a constant flame thrower AA, will make them go away pretty quick. remember to doge roll on occasion

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlcThatY7Ww6KQ7FLTGF9fn37t4zcABw469eRAA-TJBFAB/XGo99HI4BAAwFAAA

I have posted builds here before. My FT builds got no nerfs and saw an ever so slight improvement from the air blast change.

I’ve found though that since everyone seems to be running more bursty builds now, that it is impacting my survive-ability as I kind of skated the just enough defense line before.

Before patch I was able to beat most meta engineers I met in 1 v 1’s. After odds are more in my favour. I was told by folks whom I beat and asked me for my build, then eagerly tried it, that it did not work for them however. I think playing meta puts you in a slightly different play style mindset.

NOTE: you don’t play the same role, you are an in and out sort of player when you use this builds.

Shadowstep.6049:

Buran.3796:

Cringe factor x1000000000. This is what happens when you overtune class beyond comparison and then bring bit back to normality levels – players suddenly don’t know what to do (sup turret engis).

Ok turret engis were not over tuned. They were not seriously competitive, they were just easy to play and whack noobs with, but couldn’t make it out of mid level competitive games.

Show me one competitive game in that era with a turret engi for crying out loud.

I am fine with the change, I didn’t like scrappers being pigeon holed into rez-bots anyway. Now if you’re in a team fight its unlikely have a scrapper trying to rez on point vs say a guard doing it is going to be much advantage. However in 2 v 2’s you can potentially get the rez off, or work at denying it and it becomes a skill thing.

Of course, while I didn’t like scrappers being forced into a rez-bot role, I kinda got the evil genie version of my wish. Exactly what is their role now? Not a CC spammer, not a rezzer, forced more into hammer with gear shield nerf, … Kind of an identity crisis.

Josh Davis.6015:

The first poll will ask “do you want to trial solo/duo queue in season 5?” and will require a majority vote. If that passes, the second poll will ask, “Do you want to make solo/duo queue a permanent feature?” and will require a supermajority (75%). In the scenario that Season 5 as solo/duo goes well and the community decides to keep it long-term, the PvP team will look at ways to accommodate competitive team-based play.

-Josh

You realize a lot of the people in ranked who would vote for the solo / duo queue do not read this forum. My money would be on the fact that someone who reads this forum is actually much more likely to have the sort of interest that would have them in a 5 man team. Whereas a lot of the people turned off ranked having been up against 3+ teams when they solo queue will not be here to vote at all. I would be surprised if you can get a majority, but even then it won’t be an accurate reflection given your biased sample space if you know what I mean?

Ok but to be fair the reason the Necro is also picked is because it can be focused. Many other classes have access to some sort of invuln, so that if the entire team focused on them, it would be a complete waste of the burst. With a necro you know they can’t simply do the block,block,block, imune,imue,0,0,0,block thing. Which everyone else either has, or has a convincing escape to waste a focused burst.

Part of the reason you are picked is because of the consequences of not picking you. And of course PTSD from last season To be fair, maybe some better escape options?

Take the time to figure out which one is the actual mesmer

learn to use fast cast

understand the proper cast and after cast of your skills so that you don’t successively cancel each previous skill while attempting to do the next one. (which then gets canceled by the next). There is also the situation where because you are in the middle of a skill, hitting a key for something like heal won’t actually activate it.