95 replies to this topic

[BZeeB]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 16 December 2012 - 06:47 PM, said:

I can maintain 25 stacks easily with grenade spam and Sigil of Earth now.  I don't see how this can be considered a nerf in any way.

Do you only need one sigil to hit that?  Been wondering if it'd be worth utilizing dual sigils of strength or earth respectively.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

BZeeB, on 17 December 2012 - 06:06 AM, said:

Do you only need one sigil to hit that?  Been wondering if it'd be worth utilizing dual sigils of strength or earth respectively.

I only have one sigil, yeah.  I have Accuracy on the off-hand but I don't think it changes all that much.  It's only an extra 3% chance to proc the sigil overall.

[Phineas Poe]

Desert Rose, on 15 December 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

Come on, guys, we had the Grenade Kit damage nerf coming. Just take a quick look at this thread, the Grenade Kit which grants weapon skills that hit up to 5 foes for full damage dealt against each single foe more damage than most or even any other option the Engineer had.

Agreed.

I think it was telling enough when most users on this sub-forum would shut down any opportunity for an alternate build simply because the Grenade Kit outpaced anything else in terms of damage. It was overpowered, and deep down I think most of us knew that. It's why I tried to find good alternatives to it, because knowing how cookie cutter builds got handled in Guild Wars 1, the Grenade Kit's days as it was were numbered.

I stopped building my Engineer around the Grenade Kit a long time ago.

[Evans]

I've only started engineer again, this time loving it, but I have to say I do at least like the sigils. Running with 2 pistols (i'm only lv20 so i cant do anything fancy yet) I got a minor sigil of air and a minor sigil of fire on my pistols and I'm seeing lots of lightning bolts and fire bursts on my grenades.

[Budzasty]

For a skill shot that works 100% only in melee range(which looks awesome on target dummies but not in reality when you and mobs move), that is mainly decent offensive condition utility now(poison, chill, blind and bleed), going 30 points for grenades is imho simply not worth it and they suck as base kit. Might be nice condi damage for bossfight, but then we all know about condition limitations. For general PvP any skilled opponent will simply run sideways unless you toss it at melee range.

Edited by Budzasty, 17 December 2012 - 11:21 AM.

[Calebrus]

Evans, on 17 December 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

I've only started engineer again, this time loving it, but I have to say I do at least like the sigils. Running with 2 pistols (i'm only lv20 so i cant do anything fancy yet) I got a minor sigil of air and a minor sigil of fire on my pistols and I'm seeing lots of lightning bolts and fire bursts on my grenades.

Try off hand shield rather than pistol. The Engineer's shield is so much better than a pistol it's borderline ridiculous. That goes double for PvP play.

Consider:
Off hand pistol offers a close range burn and a tiny amount of CC.
Off hand shield offers better defense, a 2s block, projectile reflection, an AoE knockback, a stun (or multiple dazes instead), a blast finisher, and a projectile finisher. All on two skills. In my opinion, an Engy's shield is one of the best skill sets on a weapon in the entire game.  This is especially true if you have 20+ points in Inventions and take the cooldown reduction trait.

[Evans]

I see, I'll give it a go. I have to admit that I haven't even unlocked any shield skills so far.
I did invest in 2 peacekeeper pistols so that's gonna suck

[Coren]

Personally I'm glad the grenade kit has finally got the conditions feel to it. I always wanted to make grenades condition based, as opposed to FT and tool kit using power. Bombs are still my tanky kit

With blind and poison grenades offering damage on hit, if offsets it a bit. I can finally make a couple of exotic pistols and not.feel like it's a waste of time compared to my previous rifle/grenades setup. Now it's gonna be p/P and grenades, along with ft and rifle.

[justOneWord]

Quote

The Engineer's shield is so much better than a pistol it's borderline ridiculous

If you play with grenades you have no way of applying burning without the pistol. You lose the best condition in the game (by far). If you play tanky or with a heal, fine, shield is great. But in regards to condition damage builds the shield doesn't stand a chance in terms of DPS.

[Phineas Poe]

justOneWord, on 17 December 2012 - 04:21 PM, said:

If you play with grenades you have no way of applying burning without the pistol.

You don't use Incendiary Powder? With Grenadier you pretty much get a Burn proc every other toss.

[Diet]

What kind of cond dmg are you guys getting per tick? what are you stacking? im trying to figure out a good mix since i dont have a lot of money to spend on a full suit to test things

[justOneWord]

Phineas_Poe, on 17 December 2012 - 05:26 PM, said:

You don't use Incendiary Powder? With Grenadier you pretty much get a Burn proc every other toss.

That's actually impossible as it has a 3 second internal cooldown.

Edited by justOneWord, 17 December 2012 - 09:07 PM.

[Phineas Poe]

justOneWord, on 17 December 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

That's actually impossible as it has a 3 second internal cooldown.

I didn't mean that to be taken so literally.

The point is that Grenade Kit builds don't need the pistol off-hand to consistently apply burning.

Edited by Phineas_Poe, 17 December 2012 - 10:22 PM.

[Calebrus]

Phineas_Poe, on 17 December 2012 - 10:21 PM, said:

The point is that Grenade Kit builds don't need the pistol off-hand to consistently apply burning.

Exactly.  The use of one utility slot for grenades hardly requires an off hand pistol to get some burns into the mix.
Flamethrower.  Excellent with Elixir Gun for shared traits (and EGun is by far my favorite kit)
Rocket Boots.  One of the best utility skills Engy has IMO.  Offense, defense/mobility, stun breaker, blast finisher, and 5s burn on base 20s toolbelt skill.
Incendiary Powder.  Nuff said.
There are quite a few more ways, but you get the idea.

Edited by Calebrus, 17 December 2012 - 11:57 PM.

[Isti]

Just a note, to make sure we're all on the same page, Incendiary Powder and Incendiary Ammo each hit one (and only one) target every time they proc.  Even if the skill that benefits hits multiple targets, only one of those targets will be burned.  Blowtorch, on the other hand, will burn 3 targets (at least, that's the max I could set on fire in a crowd).  It'll hit 5, but 3 will burn.

[Calebrus]

All of that is true.
But none of that changes the fact that this:
"If you play with grenades you have no way of applying burning without the pistol"
is completely false.

Heck, you need a stun breaker anyway, so again I call upon Rocket Boots.  With 20 points in Tools the CD of the toolbelt skill is only one second longer than that of the pistol's burn, and it only lasts for one second less.
But it comes with a stun break, mobility, a blast finisher, damage, and that one second less burn at one second longer cooldown.
And that's just the RBoots.  There are many upon many other ways to get burns into your build.

So my statement stands.
The Engineer's shield is so much better than a pistol it's borderline ridiculous.

Edited by Calebrus, 18 December 2012 - 01:35 AM.

[Ragnadaam]

The real question is now, with the Grenade Kit being turned into a good AoE condition kit and not much else, where does that leave the Bomb Kit? I'd say the Bomb Kit is now pretty damned obsolete, though BoB is still awesome.

[coglin]

Ragnadaam, on 18 December 2012 - 01:47 AM, said:

The real question is now, with the Grenade Kit being turned into a good AoE condition kit and not much else, where does that leave the Bomb Kit? I'd say the Bomb Kit is now pretty damned obsolete, though BoB is still awesome.

Not really. Bombs have burning and a fire field. I love to drop it real quick then swap back to my firearm to stack burning with projectiles, the direct burning damage from the bomb itself, and the direct damage as well.

The bomb kit also offers AoE confusion to the tune of 5 stacks.

[ZCKS]

Been using sigil of blood & sigil of fire with health steal of crit food and the flame thrower since the change.

I must say the amount of health I can steal is insanely high.

On most fights anymore I don't even have to bother cleansing conditions off myself as I can just steal enough health to off set them.

Calebrus, on 18 December 2012 - 01:29 AM, said:

"If you play with grenades you have no way of applying burning without the pistol"
is completely false.

This is completely false.

Just go into the explosives tree enough to get "Incendiary powder" then stack a decent amount of crit. With that trait, 50% crit and grenades you can keep up burning almost indefinitely by yourself.

[chuckles79]

nerf engineers because they are difficult to balance, buff thieves because they like stealthy, high crit crap.

Anyone really suprised given ANet's track record?

[Phineas Poe]

Isti, on 18 December 2012 - 12:44 AM, said:

Just a note, to make sure we're all on the same page, Incendiary Powder and Incendiary Ammo each hit one (and only one) target every time they proc.  Even if the skill that benefits hits multiple targets, only one of those targets will be burned.  Blowtorch, on the other hand, will burn 3 targets (at least, that's the max I could set on fire in a crowd).  It'll hit 5, but 3 will burn.

I don't disagree with you that the off-hand pistol is probably our most consistent measure for applying burning on groups when traiting for the Grenade Kit; I just disagreed with one user's assertion that it was our only one.

Edited by Phineas_Poe, 18 December 2012 - 06:52 PM.

[Ragnadaam]

coglin, on 18 December 2012 - 02:40 AM, said:

Not really. Bombs have burning and a fire field. I love to drop it real quick then swap back to my firearm to stack burning with projectiles, the direct burning damage from the bomb itself, and the direct damage as well.

The bomb kit also offers AoE confusion to the tune of 5 stacks.

I shouldn't have said obsolete, but rather redundant. But then again I had pvp on the brain when I made that statement anyhow, where bombs are just insanely easy to avoid for even semi-competent players. In pve though, bombs are still awesome.

[FoxBat]

Ragnadaam, on 18 December 2012 - 10:52 PM, said:

I shouldn't have said obsolete, but rather redundant. But then again I had pvp on the brain when I made that statement anyhow, where bombs are just insanely easy to avoid for even semi-competent players

Same for grenades unless you are firing at point blank? Bombs are all about point defense anyway, and I'd rather have smoke field, confusion etc. in that role, not to mention BoB.

[SpelignErrir]

I don't use grenades...hate them, in fact, but I don't agree with this update. Should have buffed turrets or made other kits more functional so that they would be on par with nades instead of just nerfing them.

[Lilie Mae]

I play a granade build with berserker gear mixed with valkyrie and knight pieces, so I don't have full berserker spec. Before the nerf I used to deal avarage 900dmg per crit on each granade (so total 2700 dmg if all granades land as crit). Now its around 650 per granade on crit (so 1800-ish). Although I'm not happy with the nerf, I can see why they nerfed it. 2700 is insane spammable damage and that's from non full 'zerker build... However, I still want the stats from weapon to be counted as well.. I hope they can do that without nerfing granades even more. It would be a fine compensation.

[DreadlockrastaGW]

Engies nerfed and Thieves buffed. Lol Anet. I respect engies, just got mine to 80, and it is IMO the hardest class to be good at.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Burn, good, what.

Burn is the worst condition in the game atm.  The damage it does at base is negligible and it scales like crap.  There's a reason why no one ever runs burn builds, even though guardians and elementalists can keep it up 100% easily without even trying.  In fact, that's as good a reason as any not to ever use burn, since it'll be up all the time anyway if you're in a party.

[Calebrus]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 31 December 2012 - 12:23 AM, said:

Burn, good, what.

Burn is the worst condition in the game atm.  The damage it does at base is negligible and it scales like crap.  There's a reason why no one ever runs burn builds, even though guardians and elementalists can keep it up 100% easily without even trying.  In fact, that's as good a reason as any not to ever use burn, since it'll be up all the time anyway if you're in a party.

Yeah, I was just going to let that one go.
He's right that it's the single best condition.... IF you're playing in a vacuum and no one else is around.  Ever.
As soon as one other player shows up (a Guard, an Ele, a Ranger, a two year old with matches) then it becomes redundant because it's already on the mob at all times.
I think he was speaking from a tPvP point of view, in which case I wasn't going to argue because that's usually a 1v1 or 2v1 situation where it is *that* good.  But we're in the PvE forums, so it's nowhere near as good as he said.

Edited by Calebrus, 31 December 2012 - 06:22 AM.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Calebrus, on 31 December 2012 - 06:19 AM, said:

Yeah, I was just going to let that one go.
He's right that it's the single best condition.... IF you're playing in a vacuum and no one else is around.  Ever.
As soon as one other player shows up (a Guard, an Ele, a Ranger, a two year old with matches) then it becomes redundant because it's already on the mob at all times.
I think he was speaking from a tPvP point of view, in which case I wasn't going to argue because that's usually a 1v1 or 2v1 situation where it is *that* good.  But we're in the PvE forums, so it's nowhere near as good as he said.

Even in tPvP it's not great.  At best it's around 600 damage per tick, which is, like, six stacks of bleed.  You know what else applies six stacks of bleed?  Everything.

[xxMOxx]

agree
playa mesmer

Edited by xxMOxx, 16 February 2013 - 11:22 AM.