Guild Wars 2

Holo’s got some potential, but feels like it’s being held back by a few things.

[This is mostly from a WvW group perspective, where engi sorely needs a way to get at least somewhat closer to the meta. Some of the below is not going to be relevant to PvE]

UI

• The heat gauge needs to be much larger and more centrally displayed. This gauge is arguably more vital to keep track of than any other class mechanic, because the consequences of not doing so are severe. A vertical gauge right of screen-center would be ideal, but failing that at least place it above the toolbelt and make it take up the full skill-bar width.
• Prime Light Beam needs a line target indicator showing where it’s going to go, similar to the DH’s Deflecting Shot – it’s currently hard to see exactly where it’s going to fire.

Overbalancing

• We already have a penalty for taking kits with holosmith – the 6s no-kit period on entering forge. So it’s a bit harsh to also have kits kick you out of the forge when you swap to them – in particular this is making sigil of energy awkward to use, which would otherwise have been a sensible option to take if you’re running Thermal Release Valve.
• Prime Light Beam is powerful, so it needs some sort of drawback to balance it, fair enough. A long cast time would be OK. Rooting you while you fire it would be OK. But a long cast time and a root is excessive – and in particular it means there’s a good chance the group you were firing at have either run out of range or run over you by the time you fire. Please, get rid of the root – there’s already a very obvious tell to the skill and standing still in WvW is usually fatal.
• Cauterize definitely needs a shorter cast time, and ideally needs a shorter CD – it’s already got a disadvantage in that it sets you on fire.
• Radiant Arc’s got a big pre- and after-cast which is limiting its use as a melee gap-closer.
• Photon Blitz’s range is very short – so much so that it’s easier to just holo-leap and auto-attack, which will do similar damage without risking death-by-reflect. Feels like it ought to be 900 range.

QoL

• In WvW at least, Prime Light Beam would work better if it were manually targetted, rather than firing at whatever your current target is. You want to position it to split enemy groups and force people to run through the fire field, and you can’t reliably do that when tracking a target.
• I was hoping when I saw the weapon-swap icon that we’d be able to swap between sword/shield and forge weapons while keeping the forge running – that way we could use sword-3 quickness (or shield CC chain) combos with our forge skills without incurring the 6s forge lock-in.
• It would be nice if we could shut off the forge (or have it auto shut-off) when gliding.

Still bugged, just had it happen twice in a row

Latest path *caused* the bug for me - it was fine before then

Same - happens irrespective of whether you try to go through the portal or talk to the NPC.

NapTooN.6283:

tyrellian.3706:

NapTooN.6283:

Yes they have Perma Stealth now:

• Duration of 30 Seconds, Cooldown of 45
• after the 30 Seconds, you still have 14s of Stealth left and 15s Cooldown.

Technically you would be visible for 1s but you can bridge that gap with the Stealth from Elixir S. with the right traits, Elixir S is off cooldown when you need it the next time, over and over again.

You won’t have 14s left at the end. That would only occur if you could have more than 5 stacks of stealth, and you can’t. In practice, what will happen is your later stacks will override your earlier ones.

I think what you’ll end up with is 4 stacks with 1s on them and 1 stack with 4s on it, so 8s in total.

So if you want permastealth, you’ll need to blast/leap smoke bomb 3 times while the gyro’s on CD, ideally getting your first combo off when you’ve 1-2s of stealth left.

You Start with 1 Stack of 4s. After 3s you get a second Stack with 4s (5s now). After 6s your first Stack ran out and you get a New 4s Stack (6s now), etc. You will never reach the Limit of 5 Stacks because you only get a 4s Stack every 3s.

According to the wiki, your highest duration stack gets used up first.

So:

• You start with 1 stack of 4s
• At t=3, you have 1 stack of 1s and 1 stack of 4s
• At t=6, you have 1 stack of 1s, 1 stack of 1s, and 1 stack of 4s
• At t=9, 1 + 1 + 1 + 4
• At t=12, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 4
• At t=15, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 (can’t apply any more stacks)
• At t=18, 1 + 1 + 4 (3 stacks lost, 1 added)
• At t=21, 1 + 1 + 1 + 4
• At t=24, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 4
• At t=27, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1
• At t=30, 1 + 1 + 4

So it seems you’ll actually only end up with 6s left. You could theoretically get 8s by revealing yourself just before t=15, as that will reset all the stacks and cause the sequence to start again at t=18.

NapTooN.6283:

Yes they have Perma Stealth now:

• Duration of 30 Seconds, Cooldown of 45
• after the 30 Seconds, you still have 14s of Stealth left and 15s Cooldown.

Technically you would be visible for 1s but you can bridge that gap with the Stealth from Elixir S. with the right traits, Elixir S is off cooldown when you need it the next time, over and over again.

You won’t have 14s left at the end. That would only occur if you could have more than 5 stacks of stealth, and you can’t. In practice, what will happen is your later stacks will override your earlier ones.

I think what you’ll end up with is 4 stacks with 1s on them and 1 stack with 4s on it, so 8s in total.

So if you want permastealth, you’ll need to blast/leap smoke bomb 3 times while the gyro’s on CD, ideally getting your first combo off when you’ve 1-2s of stealth left.

I think the funniest rage I’ve met was a condi thief (yeah...) ranting that I was an ’AOE spamer’ (his spelling). Presumably he thought the only honourable engis exclusively use rifle/TK/EG autos...

I’m afraid the gyro’s still worse.

Assuming:

• You manage to keep the gyro alive for its entire duration (unrealistic, I know)
• The gyro’s AOE heal ticks immediately and then every 3s (so you get 5 pulses in total)
• You’re running the tools traitline (ie. have the -15% toolbelt CD). If you’re not, the gyro loses out more than the HT does.
• You can leap combo regenerating mist at most once, and reconstruction field three times.
• You pick up the HT immediately after overcharging it, so have 15s CD and get a single application of regen from the HT and its overcharge.

Medic gyro:

• Gyro heal = (4510 + 0.7H + 5 * (820 + 0.6H)) / 35s
• Reconstruction field + 3x leap combo = 3 * (1300 + 0.5H) / 21.25s
• Total: 429.5 + 0.176H hp per second

Healing turret:

• Base heal: (2520 + 0.5H + 3 * (130 + 0.125H)) / 15s
• Cleansing burst: (2520 + 0.5H + 5 *(130 + 0.125H)) / 15s
• Regenerating mist + 1x leap combo = (6 * (130 + 0.125H) + 1300 + 0.5H) / 17.85s
• Total: 521.9 + 0.203H hp per second

The MG is worse than the HT at 0 healing power, and furthermore it scales worse than the HT with healing power. And that’s with several assumptions stacked in the MG’s favour!

Other factors:

• If you take tools and alchemy, going with the MG gives you 35% protection uptime and the HT gives you 0%. Point in the MG’s favour, but it’s almost completely cancelled out if you run with the recovery matrix trait. With that, MG gives you 52% protection uptime, HT gives you 50% uptime. That said, the MG’s base 35% protection is AOE whereas the HT’s prot is all selfish.

• At 0 healing power, 27% of the MG’s healing affects your allies, while 54% of the HT’s healing affects your allies. With healing power, 49% of the extra healing from healing power affects allies with the MG; 70% of the extra healing affects allies with the HT. The HT is much less selfish when it comes to healing.

• Should you choose to blow them up, the MG gives you a 1s stun and ~400 damage in a 240 radius every 35s. The HT gives you a blast finisher and ~1200 damage in a 120 radius every 20s. Traiting can give you a lightning field + superspeed, or knockback respectively. The HT hits harder and its lower CD gives it more CC (when traited). It’s possible you might see more benefit from the lightning field + superspeed, depending on traits and what you’re trying to achieve.

• Both the MG and its toolbelt have 0 cast time, and thus can be used instantly, even when stunned. This is perhaps the only solid point in the MG’s favor – it’ll allow you to fend off a burst quite well.

• The healing turret can cure 2 conditions every 15s. The MG cures exactly 0 conditions. IMO, this is pretty much the most critical factor, and why people just aren’t going to take the MG even if its healing is improved. The HT is one of engineers’ very few active condi cleanses; if you’re not running alchemy or EG then it’s likely your only condi cleanse. With engineers having so little access to condi clear generally, this is utterly critical to maintain.

A few issues:

• I’ve not even managed to get the gyro stomp to work once. Every time I deploy it, it just drifts away from the target and looks confused.
• It just doesn’t res at all either. I’ve tried it off CD on dead allies in range, and there’s no prompt to deploy it. Does this only work on downed allies?
• Healing turret interrupts hammer skills. This is really annoying for the orbital strike → hammer 5 → HT blast swiftness combo – get the timing off and your HT interrupts the hammer.
• There’s quite a heavy aftercast on rocket charge that makes it rather unwieldy.

I’d just be happy if it remembered what kit we were in before entering elixir S, and returned us to that when we left. This seems to be an issue with all transformations though, so I guess it’s more of an engine problem.

A theorycrafted build for the scrapper, with immense survivability, plenty of CC, and decent damage. Designed for a WvW skirmish/havok/roaming build (not zerging), but could probably be modified for use in PvP.

TL; DR: It’s a heavy melee brawler that can burst-heal to refill its entire health bar, or keep a sustained healing rate over 1k per second

Build
Take http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdQQFAUlUUhOvY9VwkLQ7FKTGk4zOQAGXfFiAA-TFCEABvphghLAgTK/4SJYiq/Q++DtpDAgHAAZAYWAA-w
Swap the rifle for the hammer.
In the scrapper traitline, take recovery matrix, rapid regeneration and reactive armour (3/1/1)

Healing

• Healing turret: 5.2k direct heal + 0.9k regen, every 15s (you generally don’t want to blast the turret with this build).
• Runes: 4.0k on block, every 30s
• Rocket charge + elixir shell combo: 4.1k from the combo, plus 0.4-1.6k from the shell’s effect (depending on how long you hang around in the field after the combo), every 24s.
• Orbital strike + regenerating mist combo: 1.4k from the combo + 0.9k regen, every 35s
• Superspeed (7s total from slicky toolbelt and toolkit refinement) + rapid regeneration: 3.4k every 20s.
• Passive healing: 125hp/s from BPR, assuming the same amount from rapid regeneration + swiftness.

Add it all up, that comes to a burst heal of 21.5k HP, or a sustained healing rate of 1260 HP/s. This doesn’t include any extra regen you get as a result of blocking people with rune of the defender.

Direct damage defence
Your in-combat toughness is over 3k, you have ~50% protection uptime (more if someone tries to stun you) and on top of that you’ve got blinds, blocks, reflects, evades, invuln, stealth and aegis. You could also combo frost armour too, though since it was just nerfed to prevent duration stacking, that’s less useful.

Condi damage defence
The weakest point of this build, such as it is. You’re still taking 20% reduced condi damage, 40% reduced duration, and have all the passives from the alchemy traitline as well as your HT for active clearing.

It might be possible to burst-clear by dropping flash shell on someone and using electro-whirl right on top of them. Since they’re unlikely to be feeling cooperative, using stun/pull/knockdown first is advised.

CC defence
You’ve got 3 stun breaks on 50/40/20s CDs which ought to be enough. This build doesn’t use the scrapper stability options as they’re either too situational or too short duration.

Offense
This is a melee power build – your aim is to get in close and smack away with the hammer. The mortar’s available as a ranged option, but you should aim to get to melee wherever possible. Fortunately, this build has a lot of mobility, so getting into melee should be easy and kiting not an issue.

Disadvantages
You don’t have the burst damage output of the meta soldier rifle build. Your sustained damage is also likely to be somewhat lower (assuming hammer is worse than nades).
Cripple and chill can be overcome with superspeed, but immobilizes may be an issue as you don’t have OCS to clear them.

insanemaniac.2456:

tyrellian.3706:

Pretty easily, actually – just apply the finisher effect to a single target within the aoe impact. If there are multiple targets, pick one at random.

rng is complained about and is not a solution
also, that doesnt stop the single target situation of someone being condi immune by an engi spamming 1

RNG is complained about when you’re unsure as to what skill you’re going to get. The most common case is not knowing whether you’ll get rampage or tornado from elixir X.

Randomly selecting which target takes an effect is much less of an issue and not generally complained about. There are no threads complaining about which target static shot will bounce to. Nor are there any about air sigil only striking one target from an AOE that hits 5.

You can’t seriously make a target ‘condi immune’ with this:

• Your target would have to stay within the extremely small 150 radius of an enemy in order to benefit from each condi clear.
• Whoever they’re fighting would have to completely ignore the engi firing away at them.
• With aftercast, you’re looking at clearing ~1.2 condis/s off a target, and condi bursting classes can apply them way faster than that.

I’d say it just needs to be got rid of, period. If one side’s dominating enough that they can T3 stonemist, they really don’t need any stealth buff, of any duration, because this will ensure they keep their T3 stonemist.

This will just open the gap further between whoever’s leading and the other two.

Something far more reasonable would be to put this mechanic on the EB keeps instead of SMC.

Ricky Rouse.1583:

insanemaniac.2456:

Light fields don’t work like that.

The “remove condition” projectile has to hit an enemy, then it clears conditions in a 150 radius around the enemy.

Condition immunity my kitten .

youre right, they dont work like that right now. but to change the finisher to being an aoe, it would have to work like that, because if it worked as it does now, instead of 1 hit cleansing 1 condi… 1 hit would cleanse 1 condi per enemy hit. which would be obscene.

how would you reconcile those things? there isnt a way for you to do it without certain finishers being absolutely bonkers.

Pretty easily, actually – just apply the finisher effect to a single target within the aoe impact. If there are multiple targets, pick one at random.

It’s the 3s daze (4 with mesmer runes!) on a 5 second CD that really gets me...

Depends a lot on what utilities you’re running I guess. From my POV as power rifle:

• If you’re caught completely unawares (and you shouldn’t be), that’s what elixir S is for.
• When you see a D/P thief starting his blinding powder/heartseeker combo, try interrupting it with OCS or a well-timed magnet.
• Something that catches a lot of thieves out is flash shell (mortar 4). When you see a D/P going into stealth, toss this at your feet. Most of the time thieves seem to assume they can ignore/out-damage your fields and will start their attack sequence. They’ll do you no damage; unload your full barrage/jump-shot/etc.
• For permastealth thieves, I just drop a stealth disruptor. If they’re going to use a cheesy troll build, I’m going to use a cheesy counter.

Yes, it’s bugged, and has been for a while now. Try firing through the poison field from #2 and you’ll see the same result - no poison applied to target.

In theory (what was said in the original ready-up), all you need to do is have the mortar #1 projectile pass through any part of the combo field, and then it will trigger the combo effect on whoever it hits.

In practice, you’ll see the combo popup appear on-screen when you do this, but get no effect applied. It turns out that the only way to get the effect to apply is for the actual physical mortar projectile (you know, the thing that’s ground-targetted, slow moving, arcing, and about 5 units wide) to pass directly through a target after entering the combo field and before it hits the ground. Good luck with that...

Thanks for your hard work Irenio!

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Function Gyro requires a target. It appears at the target’s location when summoned so long as you have line of sight to create more gameplay options (across gaps or around obstacles). This summon happens nearly instantly so that you can be more reactive in resurrection situations and proactive in stomping situations. I am reviewing the recharge and duration currently.

The LoS requirement sounds like it might create a few QoL related issues to do with existing bugs – all engineers know magnet’s very buggy at the moment and fails to pull most of the time. Other classes have similar issues with shadowsteps giving ‘no path to target’ a lot.

There’s speculation that this is due to minor bumps in the terrain and an overly-sensitive LoS algorithm (which got made worse in the last major patch). If function gyro uses the same system (ie. determine LoS directly from player, instead of from camera location), then I suspect we’re going to be in for a lot of disappointment.

More generally, does there need to be an LoS restriction at all? There’s already plenty of defense/restrictions against the gyro (interrupt/cleave/stealth, the engi has to be within 750 range, and the engi has to have them targetted). The one case the LoS restriction stops is stomping an ele who dies outside a tower and vapor-forms inside to save themself – but IMO this is something for which counter-play is long overdue.

No no no!
No no no!
</koptev>

I’m looking forward to finally being able to have a viable power build that doesn’t punish me out of stealth for dodging near anything.

If you want damage on dodge, go take Explosives and Evasive Powder Keg. Please don’t taint another traitline with a trait that does that. Same goes for damage on superspeed - I don’t want to get ripped out of stealth for switching to toolkit.

Some things about self-destructs were unclear from the livestream:

• When a gyro runs out of fuel, does it apply its detonation effect (daze, damage)? Or does that only happen if you manually explode it?
• Similarly, does the detonation effect occur if it’s destroyed by enemy fire?
• The tooltips for the detonate effects all indicate a 10s cooldown. Presumably that’s not a CD on the detonation itself – does that extend the cooldown of the gyro skill instead? If so, that seems particularly harsh in the case of the medic drone (40s CD, plus you’re getting less heal because you blew it up early).

If I understand the gyro cooldowns correctly, they only start when the gyro is destroyed. So this is not only a poor heal, it’s a poor heal on an up to 44 second CD (I guess you could detonate it early, but unlike the HT the up-front heal isn’t particularly great, so you lose a lot of healing).

As for synergy with hammer 3, I think HT actually does that better too - remember its toolbelt skill is a 1s water field (which you can probably just about get all three leaps to combo), and it’s on a slightly shorter CD (21s vs. 25s, untraited in both cases).

What the medic gyro does have going for it is the protection on the toolbelt skill and daze on detonation. But IMO, those are nowhere near enough to make up for the worse heal, lack of blast finisher, lack of condi clear, and risk of being destroyed well before a full heal, compared to the HT.

In order to make this more competitive with the HT, I’d say it needs the heal rate increased (apply healing every 1-2 seconds, not ~3s) and a reduction in the cooldown (20s sounds not-unreasonable).

Kodama.6453:

I want to discuss this one specific skill of the scrapper.

Engineer already has lot of access to reflection:
all turrets (including: healing, rifle, thumper, net, rocket, flame, supply crate)
shield OH 4
med kit (traited: magnet aura)
flamethrower 3

Scrapper even gets another reflection for his hammer (skill 2).

So, do we really need this reflection skill?
The icon looks more like a block/aegis shield to me and I would like to have access for aegis as an engineer.
Or maybe it can be reflec AND give all allies in the orb aegis a single time?

Discuss please.

The vast majority of the reflects you mentioned are either short duration or tied to something bad/impractical:

• Turrets require you to take turrets, which right now melt when sneezed on; you’d be using up a whole slot for a long-cooldown reflect. You’ve also got to choose advanced turrets over the much better bunker down trait.
• Shield 4 – yep, this the one solid, reliable reflect we currently have. Note that it’s not really compatible with a power build (as that would require the rifle).
• Med kit+kit refinement: You’ve got to be running with the med kit (which is terrible compared to the healing turret); you’ve also got to have your kit refinement off its 20s cooldown at the point you need the reflect.
• Flamethrower 3: A half-second reflect. Very much a skill-shot to use this to reflect something significant.
• There’s also Elixir U toolbelt: A very nice reflect indeed when you get it, but you’re relying on the RNG to give you the WoR.

FWIW, I’d definitely take reflection over aegis any day – aegis blocks a single hit, reflection stops all ranged attacks for the duration and returns them to sender.

What’s particularly great about this skill is that it’s an instacast toolbelt skill – this means:

1. You can use it while disabled.
2. If it’s off cooldown, you can use it at any time, no matter what kit/weapon you’re currnently in.
3. It benefits from the tools line mechanized deployment trait, reducing its CD to 21.25s.

You can make enemy rangers/engineers weep with this skill, if they’re running an appropriate build.

Of course they will.

You just need to complete Yakslapper to get it...

It’s bugged. You can’t get the finisher combo to actually occur (ignore the heart popup, look at your buff bar) with an AOE hit through the combo field, contrary to what was said in the Ready Up before the patch.

The MK has a lot of potential, but until/unless finishers are fixed, it will remain quite limited.

Aim-Assisted Rocket’s great. Not just for the damage – which is nice – but for its tracking ability. It tracks enemies through stealth.

Wondering where that annoying D/P thief went? Rocket says ‘that way!’.

Same applies to Orbital Strike – there’s 3 or 4 identical blue beams coming down around a fight and you can’t tell while ones you need to dodge.

1) The 900 range thing isn’t really hitting home yet – right now the most obvious strategy is to unload at point-blank.

As for mortar, it’s not really getting much more use than ‘I may as well because I’ve got nothing else at that range’ – the finisher’s bugged and doesn’t combo properly, the damage got nerfed into oblivion, OS is too well telegraphed to connect and so slow to combo, and the slow projectile speed makes it miss a lot. Fixing both the damage and the finisher would make this more viable; I can live with the proj. speed and OS’s downsides.

2) As I play WvW, it’s mortar – as mentioned above, I’ve got nothing else that can hit at range. From a WvW perspective, I’d say elixir X is still the bottom of the pile (RNG pain, and the moa duration is negligible), and then crate and mortar are tied – mortar gives you something that hits (albeit like a wet noodle) at range, while crate gives you stun and a bit more heal.

3) I initially swapped nades out for bombs, hoping for more field combo options with the mortar. But short fuse is underwhelmingly, well, long – I was expecting, you know, instant boom! – yet with swiftness I’m still completely outside the radius when the bombs go off. Meanwhile, the blast combos just take too long to complete (OS takes ages, and short fuse doesn’t seem to affect BoB), and kinetic charge was too awkward to use for extra blasts. When you have an angry zerg running at you, you haven’t the luxury of waiting 3-4s for all your blasts to go off in a smoke field.

So I swapped back to nades. The whole 100 nades thing’s also kind of compelling, for now…

4) I’m right back with pretty much the same build I had before the patch – only real difference is mortar instead of crate. I’m running cele rifle (elixir S variant). It’s sad really, I had all sorts of ideas for interesting new builds, and they all collapsed due to bugs, nerfs, or unwieldy mechanics.

5) I’m forced into using the med kit + centaur runes. It’s either that or take streamlined kits and risk the unwanted mine yanking you out of stealth at a really bad time. So I’ve got kind of crazy swiftness uptime at the moment (over 200%). I only use F1 and skill 4 (4’s only for swiftness, and I only use it out of combat) – I can’t affort the extra kit swap time in combat.

6) I’d like to say I’m using mortar 5 and blasting, but as mentioned above, my available blasts are just too slow.

7) The problem isn’t the trait, it’s the gadgets. Slick shoes is much less OP in WvW, and gadgets really don’t compare to kits.

My ’on heal’ swiftness from runes of the centaur triggers just fine on swapping to medkit.

Well, if you take mortar kit, bomb kit, thumper and healing turret, run 66006, and bring siege rounds and kinetic charge, then you’ve got access to 9 blasts (and still have a utility slot spare!).

So what we will be able to provide groups?

• 21s of continuous stealth (smoke bomb + 5xblast, elixir S)
• Burst of 24 stacks of might for 20s (fire bomb/napalm + 8xblast), 24s if you go 60066 instead.
• Pulsing blind fields for 9.6s burst, or 57% sustained uptime. (mortar 3 then smoke bomb, with appropriate traits).
• The usual good DPS and full stack of vulnerability if you bring nades in your spare slot.

Damaging, yes, but there’s a delay before firing and it’s the most obviously telegraphed skill in all of GW2 - if you want to hit someone with it, you’ll need to have both good timing and an immob/stun/launch.

The actual details from the livestream, including cast times, cooldowns, etc.

I assume you mean ‘is engineer becoming a thing in the zerg?’ – engies are already a thing in roaming.

Possibly, but not in any of the existing roles.

Engies will not become frontliners – 1 stack of stability every 3 seconds will melt painfully on the first push. You’ll be running into multiple CC fields and separated from the train pretty fast.

As for backliners, engies with mortar kit are theoretically very powerful all of a sudden – they can now drop and blast water and pulsing ice fields with long duration and short cooldown, from long range. That’s huge. They’ll also now not get killed as hard by retaliation – the mortar kit hits a lot less frequently than nades.

There is, however, solid counterplay. Mortar engies differ from the current necro and ele backline in one important detail – they have to use a projectile to deploy their fields. This can be blocked or reflected – it won’t take long before guards in zergs run with WoR, and revenants (which presumably will be able to frontline) will use their mobile projectile-destroying-wall-thing.

So the game with engies will be sneak around to the side and either find an angle that allows them to get past the walls to deploy fields on the pin, or attack the opposing side’s backliners.

Similarly, commanders will be looking to bait out walls and regroup in positions where the opposing side can’t deploy reflects.

• Added an option to lock the ground target marker at maximum skill range, preventing the marker from being placed out of range.

That’s a wonderful QoL change

Healing:
In the first instance, use bandage self and medkit #2. This plus your backpack regenarator can take care of light damage. If in need of greater healing:

• Drop that 8.25s water field and blast away. For extra safety, immediately drop a smoke bomb after the water field – you’ll still blast water, but anyone nearby will be kept blinded while you do it. Note that if you have an enemy in melee range, you can also fire at them with mortar #1 for regen, though blasts should take priority.
• Spam the rest of your medkit. This is a last-resort – you want to keep the condi clear available if possible.

Zerg backlining:
Besides firepower, there are three (maybe four) things you can give to a zerg:

• Healing: Drop that long, long water field on wherever the pin is and quad-blast it with OS. You don’t even have to be nearby.
• Might: BoB->fire bomb->OS->OS (kinetic)->toss elixir S will grant 18 stacks of long-lasting might (24s). This will only work prior to contact – you need to be in melee range to do it and this build is not suited to being in the zerg frontline.
• Ice: Drop this on the contact point and blast – your zerg gets the very useful ice armour, enemy zerg gets constantly reapplying chill.
• Reveal: We don’t know exactly how lock on works yet – it may only reveal a single target (in which case, not so useful here), or it may reveal whoever’kitten by the attack – in which case you can bring 5 people out of veil stealth.

Weaknesses:
The main weaknesses of this build are:

• CC chains – both your stun breaks have long CDs and you have no stability, so concentrated CC will lock you down.
• Reflects – a lot of this build involves using the mortar kit at range; if you encounter a WoR then you’ll have to wait it out, close to melee range, or go around.
• Mobility – you should be able to get permaswift (and then some) from your runes, but you’ve only got one leap, and not an especially quick one at that.

Fun things to watch out for

• Reapers being unable to get close to you because of chill (IRONY) – their adept duration-reducing trait won’t help because you’re constantly reapplying it.
• Revenants traiting Eye for an Eye. It’s supposed to mess you up by taunting you when you try to magnet or OCS them, but what it will actually do is trigger transmute (and possibly also reactive lenses) and give you stability instead.
• The salty, salty thief tears.

Melee:
You’ve got several options if someone comes into melee range:

• Drop a poison field and blast it for weakness.
• Drop a smoke bomb for blinds.
• DPS them – you’ve got Rifle 3+5 and most of your bomb kit to dish out damage. Try to get a prybar in too.
• Use BoB or OCS to put them back at range.
• Stealth and reengage at range

Ambushing:
Toss elixir S and close, then magnet from stealth. You could also blast a smoke bomb for stealth, though it’ll be a bit more obvious. Once you’ve magneted your foe, use prybar->net shot->jump shot->orbital strike (use twice if available)->glue bomb->blunderbuss->confusion bomb.

Enemies quick on their condi clear/stun break will be able to break this combo – follow up with OCS and move to the ice-at-range strategy. Don’t use orbital strike unless you’re reasonably sure it will connect – the blast finishers are too useful to waste.

Defense and disengage:
So many options:

• The ice field can be used to stop enemies getting close and/or delay pursuers. Similarly, glue bomb, box of nails and net shot when they’re at closer range.
• The ever-trusty gear shield is as good as ever.
• You’ve got 2 stun-breaks – 1 from reactive lenses, 1 from elixir S. Don’t use the latter unless you have to.
• You’ve got tons and tons of condi clear:
  • Transmute, as always, is your first line of condi defense.
  • Med kit 5 will clear any condition and give you resistance, 2-4 will clear specific types.
  • Mortar 5 clears 1 condition
  • You’ll get a condi clear for free at 75% health from hidden flask
  • Drink or throw elixir S to clear a condi.
  • Drop the light field under your feet and use mortar 1/throw wrench on melee range attackers to clear pretty much anything you have on you.
• Lots of stealth:
  • 6s from toss elixir S (possibly 12 with kinetic charge) every 42 seconds
  • 12s from comboing smoke bomb (BoB->Smoke->OS->Jump shot); you can follow this with another 6s of stealth 20s later with Bob->Smoke->Jump shot.
• You can blind at melee range with the smoke bomb, or combo it with mortar 1 to blind at range.
• You can blast the poison field for weakness.
• All your usual CC goodness from BoB and OCS to launch people away.

This is a versatile build that’s keyed around using fields. This is designed from a WvW perspective (in which case it suits both roaming and zerg backline), but could probably be adapted for PvP.

Skills: Rifle + Med kit/Bomb Kit/Elixir S/Tool kit/Mortar Kit.
You could replace Elixir S with rocket boots for better mobility, though beware you’ll only have 1 stun-break if you take this path.

Traits: 60066:
Explosives: Glass cannon/Short fuse/Siege rounds
Alchemy: Invigorating speed/Backpack regenerator/HGH
Tools: Reactive lenses/Lock on/Kinetic charge

Equipment: I’m going to cautiously say celestial, though power-oriented may well suit it better depending on mortar kit’s damage mix.

Sigils: Pretty much any sensible combination will work; I think I’ll take bloodlust + battle.

Runes: Centaur. You need the swiftness, and relying just on the medkit’s accelerant will be too cumbersome in the middle of battle.

Strategy:
This is all very much guidelines rather than rules – there’s a lot of space to mix and match and improvise.

On approach:
You should always make sure you have kinetic charge ready before entering combat. There are plenty of NPCs around who will happily charge it for you.
If you’ve got time when approaching enemies, use medkit 3+4, then BoB->fire bomb->Orbital strike->Jump shot->toss elixir S. You now have stealth, swiftness, fury and 14 stacks of might. Alternatively, leave BoB out of that rotation to have orbital strike ready (with KC) for later, at the cost of 3 might.

Engaging:
Against most enemies, you want to start by dropping the ice field under your feet – yes, under you, not the enemy. Now just fire through it with mortar #1. Every hit will chill them, keeping them at range where you want them. If melee-oriented classes start to close, blast your ice field (BoB or OS) then move out of it (once you’ve blasted it, there are better fields for melee).

If you’re fighting a ranger, then you’re better off opening with a poison field on them (and immediately blast it with OS) for weakness. Then charge into the field, using gear shield if necessary.

If you’re fighting a warrior, start off with a poison field under you and fire through it for poison to shut down healing, then blast when they close for weakness.

If you’re fighting a necro, you want to stealth (use your smoke bomb for this – you don’t want to spend elixir S’s condi clear early) and get in close. Drop the light field under you in melee range, then keep firing mortar #1 – this will clear most of what he can throw at you. Keep the necro in your field with your immobs and magnet.

Nooooooooooooooo!

We have become the new mesmers

I’m sure we’re all excited about the upcoming mortar kit changes, but I’m somewhat cautious as to how much of an improvement we’re going to see – and how viable it will become.

Basing my information off Dulfy’s summary, we only know of two certain and two probable improvements:

• We’ll definitely be able to move about with it.
• It can be traited so that #1 is a blast finisher.
• It’ll probably drop more fields than it currently does.
• As a ‘kit-like skill’, we’ll probably be able to swap into/out of it more freely (ideally, as easily as any other kit – but that’s not guaranteed).

Things which haven’t been mentioned at all, but currently severely restrict mortar:

• Using one skill puts all the others on a short cooldown.
• The slow projectile speed.
• The lacklustre damage.
• The minimum range.

Likely nerfs:

• No more stability while in mortar kit.

Anyone care to offer corrections, or speculation on the above?

With the engi trait changes, reserve mines is being got rid of.

This is a good thing, because a trait that telegraphs when you’re low on health and pulls you out of stealth does more harm than good.

But its evil twin, evasive powder keg, still remains. Now, I’m aware it has its uses – a bit of extra dps in PvE specifically – but in PvP/WvW it’s a liability: it brings you out of stealth and puts you in combat, in situations where you want neither. And because its a minor trait, you can’t get rid of it without dumping the entire explosives line.

Given that traits are being reworked, please could this one be adept, and thus optional?

From today’s patch notes:

• Fixed an issue in which players could take repeated falling damage when running down steep inclines

The new borderlands map is designed to break up zergs, and it achieves this by adding in a whole lot of CC:

• New CC siege
• At least two of the keep lords and their rooms are absolutely filled with CC
• Air keep has those turrets around it.
• Charr tower lords is CC-heavy.

Where it doesn’t use CC, it uses conditions:

• Fire keep is, obviously, full of things that set you on fire.
• Earth keep has crippling turrets.
• Mage tower lord chills/burns.
• Lich tower lord dumps all sorts of conditions on you.

I main an engi on EU bronze tier. As an engi I can’t run in a zerg due to my poor stability, but do quite well in havoc and roaming groups.

Having looked at the new BL, I’d like to say:

HELP!

Even without opposing players, it’s going to be a nightmare getting around with all the CC and condis flying about from the PvE effects. Engis are very weak against both. I expect Necros are also in the same boat regarding CC (though they obviously fare better with the conditions).

Are we going to get some balance changes that will actually make this viable to play in with all classes?

I don’t particularly want to have to run around with a guard as a crutch – it rather restricts solo roaming and on bronze tier you often can’t find a guard (let alone one who wants to babysit you) much of the time.

It’s a shame.

When I started GW2, I thought ‘WvW isn’t for me, I’m not going to do that!’.

Then I did some WvW because I needed to for world completion, found I actually quite enjoyed it, and now do so regularly.

But if it hadn’t been required for WvW completion, I’d never have got into it in the first place.

A trap that triggers the social awkwardness debuff on all enemies in 1200 radius.

Downloaded latest patch. Got as far as loading screen for Arcana Obscura instance. Client hung.

Killed client, restarted GW2.

This time, got into the instance and as far as attacking the enemy ghosts. Client hung.

Killed client, restarted GW2.

Same again. Start killing enemy ghosts, client hangs.

Killed client, rebooted system, restarted GW2.

Now GW2 consistently hangs at the character-select screen – I can’t get in to do anything at all.

Not quite the point of no return I was looking for.

The art on the front of the heroic edition shows Zojja with 4 fingers per hand, yet in-game asura only have 3.

Which is correct?

Did Zojja invent a gauntlet with an extra mechanical finger?

Or did all in-game asura make the same mistake with the fractal-slicer?

The worst thing about this is that the refreshes don’t preserve the order. Previously, once a party was listed, it kept its slot (even if other parties came and went).

Now you can go to click on a SW party and find that between pressing and releasing the mouse button, the slot’s changed to a Tequatl run, a coil train, or (depressingly commonly) a mis-filed AC path 3.

Same - whenever any member joins/leaves any LFG party, the whole set blinks back in. Makes it really hard to read, especially for large LFG categories (eg. open world).

Getting this a lot now when transitioning between LA and the mad king’s realm.

Finally figured it out - there’s a ’show rarity’ option in the inventory tab that I must have mis-clicked at some point.

Yesterday all the coloured borders around my inventory items disappeared – ie. the ones that make it obvious whether the thing you’re about to salvage is common/rare/exotic/etc.

No amount of fiddling with graphics options has made them return, nor has rebooting, nor even a full reinstall. Everything has been working fine for several months prior to this, and I wasn’t doing anything unusual when they vanished (in a fractal at the time).

Anyone encountered this before? Anyone know how to fix it?