Fungling.5742

Thanks so much for your feedback! I really appreciate it. Runes: Yeah, I left out the runes (and sigils and upgrades) because the way I see it that's one of the potential gaps that I need to fill. Currently I've got 6 Divinity runes going -- I felt like I needed something in there, but wasn't sure what, so I figured I couldn't go wrong with the extra health at least. Going to celestial gear: I've been considering this. The only thing holding me back from it is that I want to run at least something with full healing power, even if it's a secondary gear set + template. At some point I'll have to do a math breakdown and figure out what I'm gaining by going full healing instead of celestial, but for right now I was mostly wondering what I could leverage from either a cleric's set or an apothecary set. From your point of view, is bomb kit not worth it if your character never really crits? If that's the case, would switching from power to condi and then going flamethrower for supply camps make more sense? ("making more sense" being relative, of course, since what I'm trying to do is pretty silly) EDIT: Sorry, just saw your edit. Where does one get those numbers from? I was looking around the wiki for it and couldn't find it, but maybe I was looking in the wrong spots...?

Hey guys, so after being intimidated by the reputation for complexity engineers have, I finally said "screw it" and started one, and I wish I'd done it sooner, because this thing is a blast to play. I'd love some insight on how to complete this specific character, as it's almost there but not quite. Here's the build in its current state. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PeQAQlNgZxCZp44/8n+A-zVIUfUwDA-w You'll notice a few things are missing, and that's where I'd like to get some help. Basically, I'm not looking to be a frontline god or to go out roaming in search of duels and whatnot. I want to run around zerg skirmishes healing people (hence the medkit and cleric's gear), and when there's a disengage switch to the mortar kit. The Elixir U and Rocketboots are mostly just to save my butt in a pinch, although the toolbelt Elixir U is nice for buffing allies as well. No idea what runes or weapon sigils to go with, although boosting healing further would be nice. Here's the thing that I'd also like to be able to do, and that's where the problems come in. From time to time a supply camp might open up and I'd like to be able to go solo it quickly and efficiently. I'm open to running a second set of gear and specializations if it'll help me do this, but for some reason I think it would be ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS if I could fill the gaps in the current build to accomplish that. (Like, if I'm just going to be swapping that sort of stuff, I could probably do a healing <--> condi guardian build of some sort instead, but then I wouldn't have so many fun engineering toys to play with) So, given that, here's the challenge. I want to be a tanky healer build that can also take down a solo camp and run away if needed. Currently with Cleric's I've got above-average power, but in trying to run the Bomb Kit I'm not overly thrilled with the results. I feel like the flamethrower ought to be better in taking a camp down, but I don't know if that means I should switch to condi or hybrid or celestial or whatnot, and if I do THAT, I don't know what it does to the effectiveness of the mortar kit (although, while fun, it doesn't seem to be doing as much work with cleric's gear). I also don't know if grenades are better, or if I should be relying on the default weapon, or if I need to switch to the supply crate for the camp anyway, or what... Any advice?

Just one suggestion that might allow for more flexible balancing of WVW-specific things... WVW-only food that can be bought in base. Take away the stat gain and add a utility to it, and design that utility to deal with one or more OP problems that tend to crop up as the WVW meta evolves. Maybe put the utility on a high cooldown, or have the food effect be fully consumed on use (or both). Maybe to discourage its use in blobs or zergs, have the food give off a nova effect that disables that same food for other characters. Rather than worry about tinkering with classes and risking taking away their identity, add counterplay to something OP within the food. If the food itself becomes meta, change it or discontinue selling it. Here is purely an example: Let's say that there is a complaint that roamers are able to one-shot you with a rotation of their abilities. Possible solution: anytime you take 10% of your health in damage in one hit, you gain a stack of "desperate escape". At five stacks, you lose the ability to auto-attack but gain stability and superspeed for five seconds (ie: you can run the hell away). Food has the cancellation food-fart nova described above so that it can't be abused by zergs in a large engagement. The numbers suggested are arbitrary, and could be buffed or nerfed from week to week. It'd be academic to keep track of what food is being bought and/or triggered, so you could look at stats at the end of the month and figure out what's being used too much or what's not being used enough. This could conceivably be anything. Let's say some soulbeast build is out of control. There could be a food that provides damage mitigation against soulbeasts. Maybe there's a build that gets might stacks too quickly. You could proc a fast regeneration of health once per fight if you take three hits from somebody with 20+ stacks of might. Maybe stealth is too much of a problem. There could be a thorns effect for attacks that come from out of stealth. And the big thing is that in the end it's just food. If it isn't working out, discontinue it.

Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure your refrigerator killed me in the BL ruins three times this afternoon. That said, after fitting out a condi mirage build, seeking out 1v1s and losing almost two dozen straight, I finally got my first straight-up roaming kill.

Ok, so, for the moment, here's the plan... I've already started making changes to the core necro taking some of thehipone's advice into account. I'm going to try to change the berserker into a Spellbreaker in line with what Spellofiniquity and Shadowpass suggested, although it might take a while to get the full set of armor going. I've got one character slot open so I'm going to use it to try out the holo engi suggested by Doug. And finally, since so many people recommended it, I'm going to change my existing mesmer into a condi mirage. I'm all ears for any build suggestions.

Is there a specific build you'd recommend? I'm looking at this one right now... https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mirage_-_Ineptitude_Roamer Not gonna lie, it had me at "ineptitude".

Incidentally, just a huge thank you for all the responses thus far. I'm learning tons here.

Just out of curiosity, is it you're typically getting one-shotted because you are not paying attention or you are actively engaged in the fight and they still manage to "blow you up"? On the necro, what usually happens is one of the following 2... 1) I last about around 10-15 seconds in the fight, their health might be anywhere from 25% to near-full, and then I'm suddenly stuck without cooldowns or life-force with which to shroud. At that point I'm usually dead within another 10-15 seconds. The way I see it, if I've got an enemy down to 25% and I can't finish them off, I'm garbage and need something more braindead easy. 2) I get killed or lose 75% of my health in one rotation. This is a bit less frequent but it does happen sometimes. These ones concern me less -- if I'm outclassed then I'm outclassed, no big deal. It's the fights that I should win but still lose that really eat my lunch. I will admit that usually I go a bit all-in with my abilities, and that means I'm not really in a position to suss out exactly what the enemy is bringing to the fight.

Like, I understand that for a game like GW2 (and specifically WvW) there's so much complexity that it's hard to achieve good balance, so I'm not going to complain about getting destroyed by somebody's cheese holo engineer build. That's fine. I'm just looking to get incrementally better and right now it feels like doing that requires simplifying things, or else I'm just going to be trying to learn too much stuff at once.

Nah, write all you like, this sort of stuff is perfect. I'd found a very similar core necro build in a few places and was trying it out before committing to Scourge. The theory was that I wanted to have longer fights where I could give the condition damage a chance to do its job. So, dire stats and bleed stacking. Unfortunately it's hard for me to know in the middle of a duel how well any of that is actually working. The only thing I can say is that so far it's been giving me longer and more competitive fights than anything else I've tried, but in the end the result is usually the same, and I don't feel like I've learned enough to know how to get better.

Oh, you should see some of the defeats I've snatched from the jaws of victory lately. That said, I've long put off Engineers, but maybe it's time. Thanks!

While I do understand your point, right now I need something with simple mechanics. I can live with it not being an OP build, just so long as the fights last longer than they are now. That's an awesome offer, and I may have to take you up on that. I'm on Mag server if that helps at all.

Right now I swap back and forth between a Berserker and a core Necro. The Berserker is for when we need some full tank engage: Sentinel's gear + hammer, I don't do much damage but I can cause a lot of backline havoc and I'm pretty hard to kill. The Necro is for when we need some range damage (sieges and stuff): Dire stats + Staff / Scepter+Horn. This one I'm less confident in -- it seemed promising when I last played heavily (almost two years ago?) but the condi damage I come up with pales in comparison to what others do to me.

So, I love WvW, and I can be somewhat useful in larger engagements, but I'm just terrible at 1v1s when I'm roaming. I've got a thief and a mesmer so running away is always an option, but I'd like to get better at fighting. There's been some times that I've been able to get to one of our camps that the enemy roamer was taking, and I had the element of surprise and a couple of our NPCs there, and I'll still consistently get killed. So, I'd like to put my energy and resources into a single build that I can roam with. If possible, I'd like it to be something that doesn't require a ton of crazy mechanics like swapping and timings and whacky skill rotations to pull off, so that I can also develop my fundamentals (getting better at dodging and basic endurance-management, or knowing what to expect from the enemies, for example). I've been looking at some of the things on metabattle and I'm honestly just not confident enough in my abilities to even know how to use an OP build if somebody gave me one gift-wrapped. I'm a dummy so I need to start with something dummyproof, and I'm not even smart enough to know which ones would qualify. Any help?