Guild Wars 2

Hi mesmer forums! My name is zaragoz and i’ve played an engineer since headstart, and have finally decided to get another character to 80, and want it to be a mesmer. For speed leveling, what do you guys suggest I spec for to make it as easy as possible? Thanks!

30/0/0/10/30 is the best burst build I’ve ran, static discharge is okay, but I feel grenades are superior. You can get around 120% crit damage with full ascended in WvW so a toolkit pull/grenade barrage/blunderbuss combo can hit for over 18k… then overcharged shot, and shrapnel and its pretty much gg. I don’t think its necessary at all to go into the firearms tree as I feel that you get more burst from the crit damage tree. 10% damage bonus on full endurance is sweet.

Basically its not a bad build, but were I you, I would drop melandru pick up perplexity, adds tons more pressure. Drop sigil of energy and pick up geomancy again more aoe spike pressure. Drop grenades and pick up bombs. You will then have amazing defense, access to smokefields for stealth, great aoe condition burst while maintaining a great amount of survivability. Also I would drop speedy kits, and medkit for power shoes and healing turret. Grats you now get an extra heal at 25% health and only lose 8% movement speed with rocket boots you won’t notice this.

Do these things and PROFIT!! I run this build alot and it is just devastating in smallman. Me and my guardian buddy can 2v5-7 on a very regular basis due to the smokefield blinds and high condition burst while maintaining great sustain via BR, and dire gear.

P.s why on earth are you running -condi food get the + duration food its your best option, condi necro’s are you hardcounter anyway, if you see them just rocketboots on your merry way.

I personally run geomancy, have thought about torment as well, although since I only use bombs toolkit, basically I’m going to be in melee anyway. If you do change let me know the outcome.

Thanks,

Zaragoz

Just wanted to bump this and see if anyone else is running anything unique in WvW regarding power. If so throw it up and let us have a peek.

Thanks,

Zaragoz.

P.s Been playing alot of burst rifle the last few days, same traits as outlined in the first post, except I traded the toolkit trait for the endurance regen to basically give me extra endurance regen when vigor wasn’t proced. Still feel really weak, although it is fun to drop someone from 90% health to zero with one attack.

The problem I have with not running at least 10 into alchemy is the fact that you cannot override switftness, basically with the 10% boon duration you get from the trait it allows you just to weapon swap right when swiftness is almost down and it guarantee’s you permanent swiftness. Without boon duration you actually have to let it run out to reuse it. Also I just take static discharge because it is just an added damage on my pull/grenade barrage, and mainly because I don’t feel there is anything a whole lot better to take.

Hello engineering community! So after trying to return back to a bursty power build after once again playing conditions I find myself somewhat disappointed. In terms of both damage output and most certainly in terms of survivability. For those who are curious I ran this build for 2-3 months before the last balance patch which seen us nerfed in terms of trait diversity and the effectiveness of our vigor regeneration.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIqicHxy3F17IyoHdGpJaiKkffeQftFEC-jkBBYfBhsIIZmFRjtNoIas6aYKXER1SBExwI-w

Now I find myself just getting absolutely frustrated after taking a hiatus from it, and coming back to a condition build. The biggest issue is of course the survivability, while it hits hard it literally dies in 2-3 hits from any other classes main attacks. Ranger autos, mesmer illusionary berserker, you name it and it goes down. Another huge problem is the difficulty in landing the main damage, classes like thieves have steal, CnD backstab, Mesmers have illusions that do 99% of the work for them. Whereas engineers to land burst we have toolkit pull, which is totally unreliable, the shoddy rifle root which again is a bit hard to land, but our most effective in my opinion is overcharged shot, which still cc’s us for a moment before we can land it. And sadly even if I burst someone I find that I have an almost impossible time taking on multiple foes, whereas with a condi build I routinely can pull out 1 v 2’s or 3’s.

So engineer community I ask you what power builds are you running? Do you find them lacking in anyway or do you think they are fine? Do you routinely win when outnumbered, or do you find you are a one trick pony much like my burst build? If not what are you doing to survive against other burst classes such as mesmers and thieves?

On and ending note this discussion is ONLY about WvW I do not care for pvp, nor do I care about pve I know zerkers wins pve hands down. I also realize I’m using as much glass cannon as I can, and that definitely hurts my survivability, but I found even with some toughness I still did not do as well as I did on condi builds.

Finally thanks to everyone who partakes in this discussion,

Zaragoz

For pve berserker’s hands down. For WvW it depends if you want to roam, or run with the zerg basically. For smallscale roaming you cannot go wrong with rabid armor, and running conditions.

First off I was not talking pve of course for pve berserkers and power wins out, that is a given.

Secondly I ran a power burst build for 2 months straight utilizing full berserkers genades and toolkit and either EG slick shoes or rocketboots depending on the situtation. Let me tell you power does in no way compare to conditions, your lack of survivability and overall damage output isn’t even close. Landing those grenades/static discharge bursts while trying to stay alive is the biggest issue, and unlike theives and mesmers we do not have the constant entrance into stealth. Like others have said a burst static discharge engineer is a poor man’s thief without stealth, and longer cooldowns on our burst.

Btw I see you talking about power bomb builds, and it baffles me how on earth you land that against any competent opponent, then again I assume you are one of the engineers I see running around spamming bombs while wearing full clerics and healing for 500 while taking 6k from my confusion stacks each time and then coming to the forums to give input on how power is so great. Yeah…. just yeah…

Well, if your taking enhance performance, then you are losing out on burning, which is hands down one of the strongest conditions in the game. Also look into runes of the noble, since your using might stacking and celestial your pretty heavy on hybrid damage. I would personally go for backpack regen as it just has amazing sustain. Where is your movement going to come from if you dont’ dip into tools btw? Speedykits is just about a must for me, but from what I see you have no movement speed at all. The hybrid build I ran utilzing grenades was something along the lines of 30/10/0/20/10.

If you are level 80, berserkers i the way to go. Something along the lines of 30/30/x/x/x depending on if you want bombs or nades. Bottom line is that conditions just don’t do well in the endgame pve content, most people prefer you to run zerkers. Will also help with tagging mobs.

Goodluck

They are going to get the opening that’s just how it goes. After that it comes down to blocking or blinding the Cloak and Dagger that you KNOW is coming. Gearshield it or use the shield 5 skill either works great, if you can stop the cloak and dagger you will beat 95% of thieves, its all about anticipating it, because they need to land it effectively to keep stealth up. If your running shield offhand try and anticipate their heal and use the sheild throw to block it, if they use shadow refuge double tap shield 4 to knock them out. I find pistol shield just rocks for taking on thieves as it really disrupts some of their main abilities. Goodluck

P.s if you see them coming off in the distance and they use basilisk venom, go ahead and throw up gear shield as most will use steal to close on you and then set you up for a steal/ cloak and dagger backstab combo, gearshield or dodge the inital steal and it messes up their whole momentum.

I find myself sometimes trying to run power, and while it can be successful, I feel that it just pales in comparison to condition builds. Especially where survive-ability is concerned. I think one of the main reasons for this is that to do really good damage power builds have to utilize more stats than condition damage, which leaves condition damage to have better toughness and overall survive-ability.

Needless to say I really want to play power, but I just seem to do so much better when running conditions.

Question says it all, what do you the engineering community consider the best current condition runeset, and why? What are you currently using, and what advantages do you think it offers over the other condition runesets available. All input and insight is welcome, and thanks for taking part in this discussion.

I currently run perplexity, and think they add a lot of dps to offhand shield, turning it from a defensive weapon into a great offensive tool.

I’ve also been trying to decide if scavenger runes are worth it. If anyone is currently running them I would love to know how it works for you.

Thanks,

Zaragoz

So if you did take sigil of energy and speedy kits, what would you second sigil most likely be?

borrok.9267:

zaragoz.6351:

The food does not need to be toned down at all, it works just how it was intended, however consumables as a whole just need to be completely removed from WvW, that alone would go quite a long way with helping with the supposed condition problem people are complaining about. It would be really unfair to all condi players to nerf that condi duration food while leaving all the power and anti condition food in play. A simple and effective way to do it is simply disable consumables in all of WvW, not only would that save WvW players money, it would also help reduce stupid complaint posts like this.

I think it all should be left as is personally. The only way they will stop complaining is if they are playing a class that dominates everything without challenge. Let them complain and the rest of us can have fun roaming or doing whatever.

Well honestly I am going to agree with you, by the tone of the thread most of these people won’t be happy until conditions do absolutely nothing, they seem to want conditions to be 100% counterable… which would just be unfair. It would be the equivalent of condition classes being able to get traits that reduce physical damage by 100%. Since release we have seen more and more condition removal added to the game, on multiple classes, just last patch both mesmer and elementalists received anti-condition buffs and before that we saw warriors get some of the best condition removal ever.

I honestly dont’ know why people try to build away from bombs and nades, sadly for pvp they are go to kits, and while elixir gun does have its uses, an amazing stunbreak with regen, the 4 ability for movement, and fumigate to help with condi cleansing allies, it simply is not a damage weapon. And while this build might be great for trolling, it simply put lacks heavy condi pressure. You have 1 way to apply burning, confusion, and poison, and that sadly is not enough with all the condition removal currently floating around. I understand if you want to play this way, that is fine, however you would be better served in WvW dropping elixir b and picking up bombs and forceful explosives.

The food does not need to be toned down at all, it works just how it was intended, however consumables as a whole just need to be completely removed from WvW, that alone would go quite a long way with helping with the supposed condition problem people are complaining about. It would be really unfair to all condi players to nerf that condi duration food while leaving all the power and anti condition food in play. A simple and effective way to do it is simply disable consumables in all of WvW, not only would that save WvW players money, it would also help reduce stupid complaint posts like this.

Just remove consumables from WvW problem solved.

So do you think they should be playing less than optimal condition application kits? Whenever the entire purpose of the thread was asking about the best sources of condi application. The only true answer to the question is simply grenade kit and bomb kit hands down. P/P toolkit builds work as well, but that is due to their increased damage due to mightstacking, as well as the boons they give. For raw condi output toolkit, EG, and flamethrower do not even compete with bombkit and grenade kit, although they all have there other uses, such as interrupts, shields, and stunbreaks. For raw condi output we are going to recommend the best available options.

No, coglin is 100% correct it only cleanses things in its path. So unless you are right on top of them it will not work man, I just tested it. Also even if what you said is correct look at what kind of work you are talking about doing for 1 condition removal…. I mean seriously. Take a look at necromancers 100% condition cleanse on heal and then means of transferring them back, while having the ability to put out crazy condition pressure just like engineers.
Take a look at warriors the ability to spec so that any build they use has the ability to cleanse up to 3 conditions every 10-12 seconds just by using an ability they would use anyway. My point is we would have to waste a utility slot for condi removal that is better used for taking kits to supplement our otherwise subpar damage. Unfortunatley that is what happens when you have no weapon swap.

So I have played engineer since head start and do fairly well with it, however one of my biggest gripes on this class is simply the fact that to have any sort of okay condition removal we are forced to take either elixir c or run a full elixir build that utilizes cleaning formula 409. I for one would like to see other options made available to us other than those 2. While healing turret is okay atm I feel like med kit condi removal is a joke and would like to see it buffed to remove between 2-3 conditions at least. Make a few of the gadgets have some sort of condition removal on them, because as it stands they are the least used of our utilities.

Any other engineers who wish to chime in with good ideas are more than welcome to, I just hate the fact that currently we are forced into elixirs to do any sort of okay condition removal, and even then unless you take C it still is by no means great.

Agreed out of that list only IP is a viable ranged burn that you are pretty much guaranteed to get.

K U T M.4539:

JonPeters.5630:

Invogorating Speed

Incendiary Powder

The only reason everyone took IP is because our DPS is kitten without the burning. We can get burning from other ways, but most of them are NOT viable at all. Fix them and maybe it might be alright.

Invigorating Speed is pretty much what keeps engineers alive. Nerfing it because of the trait line it’s in is a stupid reason. Move it, don’t nerf it.

As other people in this thread, and Ostrich Eggs somewhere (Maybe this thread?) Nade+Bomb build will probably be the only viable build.

Such diversity.

Yeah totally agree, I honestly don’t think that most engineers realize that over a prolonged fight that IP is most likely somewhere between 33% and 35% of their overall damage. Also just like you stated its only going to pigeon hole engineers further into the explosives tree.

And although vigor itself isn’t being nerfed the changed to speedy kits is going to hurt us, although I will still most likely use the same combination. Having to time your speedy kits to get the most out of vigor is just going to suck.

So I just finished getting applied fortitude, and guard leech today, and I am now wondering what to start on next. I roam 90% of the time, however I will sometimes join the zerg if none of my buddies are on.

So my question GuildWars 2 WvW community where do you guys think I should begin pouring my shiny new advancement points?

Thanks in advance,

Zaragoz

I do not mind the projective deflection wall, and it is somewhat useful, however having a stun-break that actually makes you more susceptible to being killed makes no sense to me…..

So why is it that conditions that are applied with siege scale, yet it doesn’t scale what-so-ever with power?

No, just no…. nerfing grenades again is a terrible idea, they have nerfed them several times since release. Bombs really just came into their own with the last patch, as they now actually have an okay radius, and are still not the easiest thing to land against competent players who know what your up to.

I think he was referring to the rifle auto-attack coglin.

I see a ton of talk about buffing the pistol auto, and I tend to agree. However how do you guys feel about the rifle autoattack? It also seems a bit sub-par to me to be personally honest.

JonPeters.5630:

zaragoz.6351:

pheroth.5306:

JonPeters.5630:

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

I would say this is not what you are accomplishing

I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.

If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.

IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.

Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.

Agreed 100% you are taking the best adept trait in the explosives line where there aren’t any other great traits and moving it up to master tier where there are great traits, and justifying it by moving down accelerant packed turrets which is useless as turrets are basically in a really bad place right now. And as ostricheggs has already said you are only hurting fringe builds by doing this such as hybrid users who have limited access to burning. Bomb builds will just grab forceful explosives and IP in the master trait and lose nothing for it, further making people want to run it. So please do tell how this helps build diversity which was your reasoning for moving it in the first place?

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

Well kitten I guess you got me there >:/
Although shrapnel is much better than empowering adrenaline as it stands due to the need to actually lose endurance to receive a very minor damage boost.

However I would also like to say are you not ultimately creating the same problem in the master tier that you currently have in the adept tier. As it currently stands I also don’t think any of the master traits beats out IP…. I don’t have the math on it, but at least from what I’ve seen it would be the trait of choice I chose at least for WvW and Spvp so aren’t you guys just doing the same thing on a different level?

pheroth.5306:

JonPeters.5630:

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

I would say this is not what you are accomplishing

I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.

If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.

IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.

Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.

Agreed 100% you are taking the best adept trait in the explosives line where there aren’t any other great traits and moving it up to master tier where there are great traits, and justifying it by moving down accelerant packed turrets which is useless as turrets are basically in a really bad place right now. And as ostricheggs has already said you are only hurting fringe builds by doing this such as hybrid users who have limited access to burning. Bomb builds will just grab forceful explosives and IP in the master trait and lose nothing for it, further making people want to run it. So please do tell how this helps build diversity which was your reasoning for moving it in the first place?

coglin.1867:

titanlectro.5029:

• Fumigate cleanses self and allies (also decrease to 3 ticks and increase the cooldown

I have asked for this in sooooo many post. Alas, the devs seem to avoid talk of condition removal all to often.

That would be awesome, and really throw some love to people who prefer not to use elixirs. As it currently stands if you want decent condi removal elixirs are the only way to go.

If its in WvW could possibly be a static discharge build running nades. The fact that you can get 120% crit damage is where that comes from. I routinely one shot thieves and elementalists with magnet/grenade barrage combo.

Yeah, my huge question is how is this going to help build diversity? Your taking a good choice trait that is useful across a spectrum of different builds including power, conditions, and hybrids and making it harder to get, which in most cases people will of course then be pigeon holed into taking it, at which point they are going to invest 30 pts into explosives. And to be frank it is the only decent pick we have in the adept line. The others are just not good.

Even after the nerf champ farming is still one of the better way to make money, however it is still not great. Even if you get lucky at best you might make 10g an hour and thats selling everything… Not to mention most people farming them as stated above are keeping the t6 mats for their legionaries. I’m on board with most people here I currently see no problem with people farming champs as it is really boring to do. If people want to spend 3 hours a day to make 15-20 gold then so be it. However I do wish they would improve dungeons and world events to make them the best for gold farming as dungeons do actually require players to be competent while completing.

I’m also of the same mind as many posters here and think that they want us to buy gems to supplement our gold income hence the nerfs to things that give a good return per hour.

I think the changes are bad, because most of those builds they are running are currently using the vigor trait to supplement our otherwise poor survivability. Now once it is changed, I have a feeling we’re going to be a lot worse off. I feel like on my full gc build that is where at least 50% of my survivability comes from. Maybe that is a bit overstated, but after the changes we will see.

If your running a physical damage build without grenades, I feel sorry for you and have no idea why you wouldn’t. It benefits from SD plus has equally great burst while giving you the ability to lay out aoe hurt and great downed pressure while staying far far away when necessary. For condi builds that don’t use it I understand, but full dps not so much. Anyway I still don’t understand how you do not see this as a nerf as that is what we were talking about. You saying oh, put 10 more points in firearms doesn’t change the fact that to keep the mobility we have now + having permanent vigor we will have to take 2 traits instead of 1. I cannot begin to fathom how you do not see that as a nerf. My biggest concern however isn’t even the vigor so much as the IP change, the lack of decent adept traits is horrible and the fact that they are moving IP to such an already competitive trait choice disturbs me.

I also want to chime in and say that at least as far as wvw is concerned I do not care where you move any of the turret traits, until you fix turrets themselves and take into account the absurdly long cooldowns some of them have for their low hp and the fact that they can pretty much be one shotted, force the user into staying in one place, and are completely worthless in large scale fights, not many people are going to use them. Even in small scale fights I feel like they are lacklaster and there are much better options available via gadgets/kits/elixirs. Its actually sad that one of the things that is supposed to make us unique is so worthless.

Coglin, you tell me how it isn’t a nerf? We would have to dump an additional 10 points somewhere we never would have had to before. Let us be clear, that means taking 10 points from the tools line on my zerker build, and putting it into firearms, not to mention if I want to keep great open field mobility in WVW I’m still going to have to run speedy kits. So yeah dude having to take an extra trait just to accomplish what we can currently ALREADY do. Yes I would define that as a nerf in any situation.

Well, I’m not going to lie to me this feels like huge nerfs across a spectrum of our builds. I don’t know how it will all play out, but I feel like currently one of the only reasons we can run berserker builds and be effective is because of the permanent vigor+speedy kits combination. Also them moving Incendiary Powder up to master really causes problems, because that means that basically your going to have to either give up the 10% damage bonus to explosives, short fuse, or enhanced performance. The main problem with it being the complete lack of decent adept traits in the explosives line, and much like others have already said, if they expect us to use them then they need to completely redefine what the traits do. For a while now our three most stellar lines in my opinion have been alchemy, explosives, and tools its good to see them bringing other lines up, but there is no doubt in my mind this is really going to hurt the build that I play in WvW because I depend a ton on my dodges to keep me up due to my low ac. Anyway we will see how this pans out and hope they have some idea of what they are doing.

So I am burnt out on the champ spawn running, and am kind of a dungeon noob, I have been currently running AC P1 and P3 daily, and am looking to add some other dungeons into my rotation, what do you experienced dungeon runners find to be the fastest and most profitable dungeons to do?

Thanks,

Zaragoz

All in all I just thought I would say this has been a kitten close match, good job to everyone who’s stayed up and been involved. Oh and GO FC!!! I’m at work, but for those of you at home don’t stop trying!

If you play wvw, you can still put out amazing burst using grenade barrage with a full zerker set-up I have one shotted many a level 80’s with it, but the old kit refinement is gone so one shotting a 25k hp warrior isn’t happening anymore. Sorry I miss it to.

The question is will this be replacing elixir h, med-kit, or healing turret on your bar?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQFAUl0picHxy3F17IyoHdGpJaiKkffewWtFEC-j0xAY/gQWCSyrIasthioxqrxUuER127ioVLFwoCjA-w

This has been what I’ve ran the past 2-3 months now. Its not the traditional static discharge build, but it doesn’t have to be with 120% crit damage you can basically magnet/grenade barrage/blunderbuss people for 90% of their health. Not only that, but the grenades really allow you to put out a ton of ranged pressure without getting close, also works great for keeping pressure on walls at least in WvW. Jumpshot will routinely hit anywhere from 7-10k on lower armored targets. I either play it with rocket boots or slick shoes, slick shoes being an idea I took from Chaith, and it really works great for locking people down. Downside to it is the longer CD.

SD is cool, but its a little to easy to dodge imo. Throw in nades and it seems to get a little bit better at least imo.

Yep, speedy kits and the vigor on swiftness traits are a must. Also I really only WvW so I use med-kit 99% of the time for the additional swiftness.

I see people posting that warriors who are mobile don’t do much damage.. WTF are you smoking? Warriors are more mobile than most classes simply by equipping a greatsword…. Leaving them free to equip endure pain or any other utilities they want to equip and just get free movement of a weapon. On my engineer if I want to get away I actually have to waste a freaking utility slot on it as well as make sure I have it traited to get the most out of the leap. On a warrior it comes standard on one of the highest damage weapon sets they have. It needs to be the same way as elementalists RTL was done and require a target. You want to flee? You need to be wasting a utility slot just like everyone else.

Sounds to me more like they will be adding it in some type of pve content other than fractals. Especially considering this “not necessarily a WvW focused solution..” and that is kind of ridiculous considering this has been a almost a year long thing where the majority of wvw players would be much happier if they just added it to the laurel vendor and had done with it.