cat.8975

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And that right there is the problem. You'll need a minimum of two utility gyros, so you'd have to give up elixir gun for the turret. Elixir gun is more or less required on heal engi. They can't change HGH away from might either, as that makes up a decent chunk of your output. Part of me wonders if giving Super Elixir 1s fury pulses would be broken in WvW or PvP, as it would be a decent way to squeeze it into the PvE scene. Perhaps one of the medkit skills? A mortar skill? I'm not sure. The turret trait is definitely a dead end though.

From the update post:

By giving it access to aoe quickness, they are turning it into a support spec. If they want it to be a viable alternative to the existing supports, it'll just need a tiny extra push.

Currently our only real options are rifle turret with the trait and pack runes. Rifle turret is out of the question if we need 2 gyros + elixir gun (not to mention how clunky that turret can be). Pack runes don't even maintain fury at 100% BD. If you want quick/heal scrapper to be a viable replacement for quick/heal firebrand, it needs to bring some fury.

It definitely needs to be bumped up to 3s if they want quickness engi to be a thing in PvE. The existing numbers do not work at 2s.

Could the new engineer quickness trait be increased from 2 to 3 seconds for PvE? We've run the numbers and 2s isn't enough to create any viable alternatives to firebrand/chrono. If it's bumped up to 3s, this opens the gates a little for a damage+quickness build and a healing+quickness+might build. If 3s is somehow overtuned, just hotfix it within the following week or two, but 2s is definitely not enough with the current traits+cooldowns.

It's simple, really. Play cfb in pugs, cqb in pugs that don't want a hfb (and have garbage dps somehow), and pqb in statics (and rarely in pugs that have good dps).

Strongly disagree with power being easier to play. Condi rotation is just axe-camping until tome is up, then swapping to scepter, pressing 2, and going into the tome. Scepter 2/Torch 5/Sword of Justice until you can weapon swap back to axe. Camp axe until tome is up again, etc. Weapon swaps on power are much tighter usually.

You're acting as if it's some nebulous ordeal to come up with these "meta" builds. It's really not. The trait system in this game makes it hilariously easy to work out which traits are optimal, and after that you only have a few types of gear to consider for the most damage output. In regards to boon duration, I haven't seen any support builds on their site that rely on super short phases. They're all aimed at permanent boon uptime, so they have enough BD to accomplish that. One healer is still optimal even on longer fights (as they can heal indefinitely), but it requires everyone to know the fight. It's true that most pugs will run an off-healer, but that doesn't make it meta. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with people running off-healers though. Most of the issues people have in this game could be solved if they just read what their traits and skills actually do.

They ran Druid+Chrono back then, they run HB+Alacren now. If they nerf HB, they'll end up buffing some other support and that will become the new meta. How about we skip the nerfs and just buff the currently underperforming support specs instead? The biggest issue with FB at the moment is the fact that you only need ~24% BD for permanent quickness. While you lose some of your damage output with the trait swaps and util changes, the damage output is still too high for something that also maintains such a strong boon on their party. In a raid scenario, cqb ends up contributing something silly like >60k squad dps. Regarding quickness, there are a few simple options to play around with:This first one is probably mandatory: Rebalance Firebrand runes. When quickness is the only boon you care about, these runes offer unparalleled stat value. 40% duration is the equivalent of 600 points of concentration, and then you have to consider the +175 condition damage on top. While it's nice that the rune set named after the specialization synergizes with it, it's just too good at the moment. Mix-and-match these tweaks to get whatever desired result. Nerf heal and quickness mantra recharges from 12s to 15s. Has a minimal effect on other builds, but mandates a much higher boon duration number.Nerf the quickness mantra base duration from 2.5s to 2s.Remove the quickness from the Stalwart Speed trait (i.e. give it a different boon, or rework it into something else entirely).Don't do all three, as that would push the required BD number to 118%, and people would just start running whatever the most efficient combination of two quickness givers is for 100%. Role compression is actually a very good thing for casual PvE play, as you spend less time waiting around for a specific class.

https://dps.report/nBSP-20200920-204947_skor Here's an ok-ish Skorvald log if you want to see burst burn potential (check phase 1). Average burn stacks are going to be highly dependent on whether or not you can use the mistlock reset for aotj precasting, and how long a given fight (and its phases) lasts.

I'm a little late to this thread, but... I've been running core guard in raids for the last 2-3 years now (I was sorta the guy that pioneered the build, actually). Keeping aegis up ranges from "impossible, play something else", to "moderately difficult but doable", to "hilariously easy lol" depending on the boss. For easy bosses you have: Gorseval, Cairn, Mursaat Overseer, Samarog, Dhuum, and Adina. Difficult but doable: Vale Guardian, Sloth, Keep Construct, Deimos, Statues, Conjured Amalgamate, Qadim1 Masochist tier (it's possible but you'll hate yourself): Sabetha, Soulless Horror, Sabir (his autos don't strip aegis) I don't recommend it anywhere else. That being said, I'd still like to see a small buff to core/dh burn output though. It's a shame FB is leagues ahead of the other two specs in the condi department, and that's before you even factor in tome resets. (Also wish they'd rework torch 4 and the trait but that's a different topic entirely.)

As others have said, play cqb in average CM/T4 pug groups, and pqb in the 1st percentile groups that can do stuff like phase Skorvald p1 in ~5s. Most pug groups will be better off with a cqb or hqb, with pqb being a mostly statics-only build.

680 breakbar per person is incredible easy to achieve when you factor in how much a rev can do and how much time you have to break the bar. Stop trying to break at the first wall for smooth runs.

The breakbars are fine. Consumables help but are not necessary. Swap out a utility for more CC if you need to.

I'm getting code=7:0:0:1026:101 trying to play on EU from NA (midwest).

You're a snail without swiftness in combat, and TDR doesn't hit anyone with a brain (and you also don't really have any viable CC setups to use with it to ensure that it hits). Streamlined also gives you access to an immob trail or drop gunk, both pretty strong in PvP situations IMO.

Thematically, Golemancer sounds cool. Realistically, do we really want another spec built around AI? We have turrets and gyros already, do we need a third?

For meta PvE scenarios with a good mesmer, I'd just run valk instead. The radiance line gives you 60% crit chance, spotter+banner is 15.238%, fury for 20%, and 5% base. You can hit crit chance cap in full valk on guardian so long as you have retal/spotter/banners.