Harbinger Pistol is everything that the engineer pistol should be

[Stalima.5490]

On 8/25/2021 at 10:44 AM, Amadeus.5687 said:

 

Again I have to disagree, main hand pistol is decent weapon, but in no way is it pretty strong on itself; For several reason:

 #1 auto attack have a slow projectile travel time and while the bleeding duration is ok, it's just a weak auto attack outclashed by anything else we could be doing. If they made it travel a bit faster I could live with it.

If you compare it to the harbringer pistol that can bounce, gives torment which is better and felt like it did travel faster. It's not strong agan

#2 having a cast time of 1 3/4 second is just asking for trouble and while the dmg + poison is acceptable, it really could use have the cast time lowered. But if you compare it to the Necro #2 that gives torment + vulnerability and it shoots it ½ second faster on top of it and with a 2 second lower CD. 
Again ours loose out

#Skill 3 I actually feel overall is still a super solid skill and have always  been one of my fav. but it's only really good if there is more then one enemy cause of the bounce 
Vs a AoE 1 second stun that gives poison and weakness on the same CD? I mean, you see where this is going already.

And this is coming from someone that kittening loves Pistol/Pistol on Engineer and loved in since I played it in the beta.
I used rocket boots when they still were a stunbreak that knocked you backwards and stunned you again.  I know how to make a core condition setup as Engineer.
But we are lacking behind. I didn't really feel that the Harbinger pistol were OP and I don't mind a elite spec weapon having more punch then our core weapon. But our core weapon is in a serious need of a brush up.
I'm tired off condi engineer not really being a thing in PvP anymore and I'm tired of condi engineer in PvE locks you into the piano build we have played for most of the games life time where we have to spam around in the kits for the best skills to swap out of it again

 

You didn't mention the durations of the conditions though because engineer does have extremely long lasting conditions on that pistol.

[Amadeus.5687]

5 minutes ago, Stalima.5490 said:

 

You didn't mention the durations of the conditions though because engineer does have extremely long lasting conditions on that pistol.

Fair enough it goes like this:

Engineer Pistol #1: 6 seconds of bleeding vs Harbinger Pistol #1 3 seconds of torments (But got the bounce).
Also keep in mind that Pistol #1 on Engineer; Contrary to the description, the skill has an activation time of 0.8275s , which results in approximately 1.2086 attacks per second. (Wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fragmentation_Shot)

On top of that Engineer #1 does 147 power dmg with a 0.4 PC and Harbringer does 220 with a 0.6 PC

Engineer Pistol #2 9 seconds of poison vs Harbinger 5 seconds of torment and 6 vulnerbility. 
But keep in mind Engineer #2 does 5 hits vs Harbringer 6 hits.
And again it have higher PC  Engineer #2  is 735 (2.0) vs  Harbringer #2  (6x): 882 (2.4)
And again the Harbringer pistol will fire it's 6 shots ½ second faster then the Engineer his 5 hits. 

 

Engineer Pistol #3 is 3 seconds blind and 5 seconds of confusion vs Harbringer #3 6 seconds of poison and 5 seconds of weakness
and again it have a higher PC; Engineer #3  Damage: 147 (0.4) vs Harbringer #3 Damage: 367 (1.0).

So overall I still feel like Harbringer Pistol is a clear winner 

[Stalima.5490]

31 minutes ago, Amadeus.5687 said:

Fair enough it goes like this:

Engineer Pistol #1: 6 seconds of bleeding vs Harbinger Pistol #1 3 seconds of torments (But got the bounce).
Also keep in mind that Pistol #1 on Engineer; Contrary to the description, the skill has an activation time of 0.8275s , which results in approximately 1.2086 attacks per second. (Wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fragmentation_Shot)

On top of that Engineer #1 does 147 power dmg with a 0.4 PC and Harbringer does 220 with a 0.6 PC

Engineer Pistol #2 9 seconds of poison vs Harbinger 5 seconds of torment and 6 vulnerbility. 
But keep in mind Engineer #2 does 5 hits vs Harbringer 6 hits.
And again it have higher PC  Engineer #2  is 735 (2.0) vs  Harbringer #2  (6x): 882 (2.4)
And again the Harbringer pistol will fire it's 6 shots ½ second faster then the Engineer his 5 hits. 

 

Engineer Pistol #3 is 3 seconds blind and 5 seconds of confusion vs Harbringer #3 6 seconds of poison and 5 seconds of weakness
and again it have a higher PC; Engineer #3  Damage: 147 (0.4) vs Harbringer #3 Damage: 367 (1.0).

So overall I still feel like Harbringer Pistol is a clear winner 

 

ok, but does necromancer get a 33% base duration to all of its pistol conditions with the pistol trait?  if not then add 33% to the engineer ones. (this is outside of the normal limit for condition duration)

Edited August 26, 2021 by Stalima.5490

[Amadeus.5687]

Spoiler

39 minutes ago, Stalima.5490 said:

 

ok, but does necromancer get a 33% base duration to all of its pistol conditions with the pistol trait?  if not then add 33% to the engineer ones. (this is outside of the normal limit for condition duration)

 

I mean if we have to start taking in traits the discussion get's super complicated:
But they have a trait that does the following trait I guess would be as close as it comes, but they are also able to get 25% more condition dmg from 25 blight stacks so ehhh 

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/b/b8/Expertise_attribute.png/20px-Expertise_attribute.png Gain Expertise Based on a Percentage of Vitality: 13%

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/f/f7/Count_Recharge.png/20px-Count_Recharge.png Recharge Reduced: 20%

 

Necromancers overall have several other traits they could pick up to enchant their condition dmg, spread over multiple traitlines, but I feel that moves the conversion off topic.
As a side note I don't care that much about duration, but that's coming from a PvP perspective where most people will cleanse the conditions way before duration expire.
But I agree it's a valid discussion to have from a PvE perspective 


Also I forgot to mention earlier; Their pistol #2 have Pierce build into it, so they have AoE dmg on all 3 skills making their Pistol very valid in dungeon.
The pistol is also a quite decent life force builder, which I haven't spoken much about, but there is that aswell

[Ragebru.1397]

4 hours ago, Stalima.5490 said:

 

ok, but does necromancer get a 33% base duration to all of its pistol conditions with the pistol trait?  if not then add 33% to the engineer ones. (this is outside of the normal limit for condition duration)

bleed is substantially weaker though. With the higher base damage from harbingers pistol, they can build either power OR condi. Look at traits which capitalize its performance. 

Necro gets Barbed Precision which allows for a flat increase in bleed duration, regardless of where it is applied. 

Engineer, which piano's through kits doesn't get the benefit of Chemical Rounds. String that together with Shrapnel and Incendiary Powder (10 sec icd) and you get a lackluster spew of condi damage that is spread out and lacks burst or even sustain for that matter. Incendiary should have no icd to begin with. Barbed precision should allow all sources of bleed to be increased. The bleeding from shrapnel doesn't contribute to it at all in its current state. 

 

 

edit: 

Quote

ok, but does necromancer get a 33% base duration to all of its pistol conditions with the pistol trait?  if not then add 33% to the engineer ones. (this is outside of the normal limit for condition duration)

So technically they gain an even larger base duration increase in general. Gunslinger , Septic Corruption, and Doom Approaches all add into pistols arsenal. 

Edited August 26, 2021 by jwhite.7012

[Stalima.5490]

Ok I'm looking through harbinger while writing this so:

 

I'm not sure if you are aware but the 1 skill on the engineer does more condition damage than the necromancer's 1 skill before any modifiers, the engineer's base hit strikes 5 targets as opposed to the 3 targets of the necromancer, I believe the radius of the engineer explosion could be slightly increased (180?) to make this more defined as it is a little low on range in my opinion, in general the engineer has a substantially higher condition damage ratio than the necromancer on this first ability.

For the 1 skills, the engineer absolutely destroys the necromancer in terms of condition damage which is the entire focus of their pistol, especially when you have increased the engineers pistol twice over on bleeding duration and pistol duration with the firearms line (which I will use as the direct comparison) this being said, the necromancer may win at 2 targets if the ability can bounce back to the first tho I believe it would just make it equal.

 

For the next skill, poison dart volley vs weeping shots, Poison dart volley again does substantially more condition damage per use while having lower power, so all this skill has going for it is damage per use and healing reduction, perhaps one of the less interesting skills to look at, however the necromancer's combination of pierce, vulnerability with a higher power ratio and lower cooldown and faster cast results in perhaps a much stronger skill overall, it may be weaker per individual use but it can be used a lot more often, making the necromancer a clear winner on the base ability, that being said poison dart volley is still a very powerful ability with some condition duration like a thorns set.

 

The 3 ability is a little harder with static shot and vile blast, with 2 targets the engineer will do better but with 1 or more than 2 then the necromancer is likely better, assuming the enemy triggers confusion at least once per use, in truth it is difficult to really compare the 2 abilities.

 

For the 4 skill blowtorch I will compare it to the necromancer 5 abilities (as their 4's are utility and the engineer 5 is utility) and to put it quite plainly, the necromancer gets absolutely, totally and utterly obliterated in terms of raw damage output regardless of what they choose, while the necromancer may have a longer range, the engineer's blowtorch ability simply can't even be compared in how much damage it deals,this is a long lasting burn that more or less destroys the necromancer when it comes to offhand  capabilities, to put this into context, with an exotic rabid set with thorns runes and firearms traits, blowtorch at close range is able to deal over 18000 burning with zero stacks of might, at this level of damage on a 12 second cooldown, you cannot even compare the necromancers final 2 abilities in a condition build.

 

I will instead compare glue shot #5 to the necromancer as the necromancer has no only utility 4 abilities, the necromancer has 3 options, however, in terms of damage, neither profession will win because it would be better to just fire a 1 on either profession if you want damage which would make the engineer better due to their stronger 1, the utility aspects of the skills are simply situational.

 

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Stalima.5490

[ThrakathNar.4537]

30 minutes ago, Stalima.5490 said:

I'm not sure if you are aware but the 1 skill on the engineer does more condition damage than the necromancer's 1 skill before any modifiers, the engineer's base hit strikes 5 targets as opposed to the 3 targets of the necromancer

The engineer only does condition damage on one target, it's the power damage that has a 5 target cap, so while harbinger can land torment on three targets, engineer can land bleeding on only one.

 

36 minutes ago, Stalima.5490 said:

For the next skill, poison dart volley vs weeping shots, Poison dart volley again does substantially more condition damage per use while having lower power, so all this skill has going for it is damage per use and healing reduction, perhaps one of the less interesting skills to look at, however the necromancer's combination of pierce, vulnerability with a higher power ratio and lower cooldown and faster cast results in perhaps a much stronger skill overall, it may be weaker per individual use but it can be used a lot more often, making the necromancer a clear winner on the base ability, that being said poison dart volley is still a very powerful ability with some condition duration like a thorns set.

 

Also worth mentioning that weeping shots is a life force builder, but there isn't really a good way of comparing that between classes. Also, not sure if it's an issue on weeping shots, but the bullets from poison dart volley still have some random spread on them, making it possible to miss their target even when the engineer is not blinded.

 

41 minutes ago, Stalima.5490 said:

The 3 ability is a little harder with static shot and vile blast, with 2 targets the engineer will do better but with 1 or more than 2 then the necromancer is likely better, assuming the enemy triggers confusion at least once per use, in truth it is difficult to really compare the 2 abilities.

That is fair, these two abilities do actually do different things (ANet not ripping off skills lol). However, vile blast is an AoE poison, weakness, and stun, as well as building life force. Comparatively, static shot is a bouncing confusion and blind. While static shot theoretically does more damage, vile blast is much more effective for providing "peel" potential in PvP (weakness and stun is so much better than just blind), and for doing breakbar damage in PvE. It's actually a pretty significant stun (1.25s on a 15s cd in PvP), so I would rate it much higher (it's also less counterplayable, since an AoE cannot be reflected as easily as a bouncing projectile, but that's a pretty minor detail).

 

47 minutes ago, Stalima.5490 said:

For the 4 skill blowtorch I will compare it to the necromancer 5 abilities (as their 4's are utility and the engineer 5 is utility) and to put it quite plainly, the necromancer gets absolutely, totally and utterly obliterated in terms of raw damage output regardless of what they choose, while the necromancer may have a longer range, the engineer's blowtorch ability simply can't even be compared in how much damage it deals,this is a long lasting burn that more or less destroys the necromancer when it comes to offhand  capabilities, to put this into context, with an exotic rabid set with thorns runes and firearms traits, blowtorch at close range is able to deal over 18000 burning with zero stacks of might, at this level of damage on a 12 second cooldown, you cannot even compare the necromancers final 2 abilities in a condition build.

On a golem sure, blowtorch has much higher theoretical DPS than any offhand on necro (with the potential exception of Scourge's torch), but that ignores a lot of the intricacies of the skill. Quite frankly, the skill sucks to use, because it has difficulty actually landing on your target if they even slightly move, for whatever reason. Sometimes I've even managed to miss the skill point blank range on a stationary target, because of the fact that it just can't track on their hitboxes. Also, it's worth noting that in a competetive environment, long duration low stacking conditions are far far weaker than short duration high stacking conditions (even if they both would have the same overall DPS) because the opponent has condi cleanses that they can use.

But looking at this skill in particular anyway is sort of beyond the scope of the topic, as it's comparing pistol to pistol (and harbinger doesn't have an offhand pistol).

[Amadeus.5687]

1 hour ago, Stalima.5490 said:

Ok I'm looking through harbinger while writing this so:

 

I'm not sure if you are aware but the 1 skill on the engineer does more condition damage than the necromancer's 1 skill before any modifiers, the engineer's base hit strikes 5 targets as opposed to the 3 targets of the necromancer, I believe the radius of the engineer explosion could be slightly increased (180?) to make this more defined as it is a little low on range in my opinion, in general the engineer has a substantially higher condition damage ratio than the necromancer on this first ability.

For the 1 skills, the engineer absolutely destroys the necromancer in terms of condition damage which is the entire focus of their pistol, especially when you have increased the engineers pistol twice over on bleeding duration and pistol duration with the firearms line (which I will use as the direct comparison) this being said, the necromancer may win at 2 targets if the ability can bounce back to the first tho I believe it would just make it equal.

Okay mostly I discuss from a PvP standpoint, so keep that in mind, and there Duration don't equal more dmg always. We rather want lots of stacks on a low duration, then few stacks and long duration cause of cleanse
With that said:

Our pistol one only deals it's power dmg in AoE, it does not apply bleeding in AoE.

Again you also need to take stuff like cast time + projectile travel time in comparison to actually get an idea about the dmg overall.
Harbringer pistol auto attack will deal far more dmg then our auto attack, both in PvE and PvP

Harbringer Pistol #2 is just far better in any scenario beside maybe single target damage vs boss in raids? and even then I'm not sure it will loose out there, 
Our Pistol #2 just suffers massively from it's long as casting time and random spreading out.

and about the skill #3's I agree they are hard to compare, but I feel like a short CD AoE stun just wins both in PvE for breakbar and in PvP cause it's soo good. Stastic shot might get close in PvP when vs 2 players, but that's really the only scanario?

and I don't really wanna get into the entire off hand discussion, I just wanna say that Blowtorch is a decent ability, but it feels clunky on a ranged kit to get into melee and it suffers from missing a lot like Flamethrower #1.


@ThrakathNar.4537 Well said, I agree with you 100%

Edited August 28, 2021 by Amadeus.5687

[Jaruselka.5943]

9 hours ago, ThrakathNar.4537 said:

...

On a golem sure, blowtorch has much higher theoretical DPS than any offhand on necro (with the potential exception of Scourge's torch), but that ignores a lot of the intricacies of the skill. Quite frankly, the skill sucks to use, because it has difficulty actually landing on your target if they even slightly move, for whatever reason. Sometimes I've even managed to miss the skill point blank range on a stationary target, because of the fact that it just can't track on their hitboxes. Also, it's worth noting that in a competetive environment, long duration low stacking conditions are far far weaker than short duration high stacking conditions (even if they both would have the same overall DPS) because the opponent has condi cleanses that they can use.

Blowtorch is notorious for this. I main a P/P core engie in WvW (yes, I know..) and it misses at least 20% of the time when it shouldn't. I'm sure there are quite a few bug reports about this over the years; has Anet ever explained why this happens? And your comment about how long duration conditions suck in competitive modes is spot on. This is especially true in WvW, where even ambient critters seems to have a cleanse or two. This all reinforces the need for a major reexamination of the Engineer pistols at least in competitive modes.

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Jaruselka.5943

[Ghos.1326]

On 8/28/2021 at 7:52 PM, Jaruselka.5943 said:

Blowtorch is notorious for this. I main a P/P core engie in WvW (yes, I know..) and it misses at least 20% of the time when it shouldn't. I'm sure there are quite a few bug reports about this over the years; has Anet ever explained why this happens? And your comment about how long duration conditions suck in competitive modes is spot on. This is especially true in WvW, where even ambient critters seems to have a cleanse or two. This all reinforces the need for a major reexamination of the Engineer pistols at least in competitive modes.

 

I don't exactly agree with the one whom you were responding to. long lasting but smaller stack conditions are not bad at all. We're honestly just all well-trained to think that stacking 5-6 stacks of 3 conditions at a time is what makes conditions good. It makes them bursty sure but conditions were never designed to be burst style damage sources. They're meant to chip away and slowly deteriorate your health over time. This is why burning and poison were capped at 1 stack in the past: burning because at max condition damage you can chunk 500-600 health per second off of that one stack, coupled with the bleeding, torment, and the other conditions you could also place on players, poison because it has the added utility of lowering your healing received by 33% which is HUGE and very powerful.

Also, the other reason why conditions seem like they do better when they burst people is because currently, the things dominating the meta have insane amounts of condition clear at much smaller intervals when compared to their counterparts that may have either longer cooldowns on their condition cleanses, very few condition cleanses, or none at all.

The answer is simple: tone down the cleanses on the things that can frequently clear, and stop the whole burst aspect of conditions. Not only will this make conditions feel better to use, but a whole lot of build variety can open up where you won't absolutely NEED to take at least one massive cleanse on your loadout.

[Amadeus.5687]

58 minutes ago, Ghos.1326 said:

I don't exactly agree with the one whom you were responding to. long lasting but smaller stack conditions are not bad at all. We're honestly just all well-trained to think that stacking 5-6 stacks of 3 conditions at a time is what makes conditions good. It makes them bursty sure but conditions were never designed to be burst style damage sources. They're meant to chip away and slowly deteriorate your health over time. This is why burning and poison were capped at 1 stack in the past: burning because at max condition damage you can chunk 500-600 health per second off of that one stack, coupled with the bleeding, torment, and the other conditions you could also place on players, poison because it has the added utility of lowering your healing received by 33% which is HUGE and very powerful.

Also, the other reason why conditions seem like they do better when they burst people is because currently, the things dominating the meta have insane amounts of condition clear at much smaller intervals when compared to their counterparts that may have either longer cooldowns on their condition cleanses, very few condition cleanses, or none at all.

The answer is simple: tone down the cleanses on the things that can frequently clear, and stop the whole burst aspect of conditions. Not only will this make conditions feel better to use, but a whole lot of build variety can open up where you won't absolutely NEED to take at least one massive cleanse on your loadout.

 

I actually agree with what your saying and it it's how I feel about the condition meta currently aswell.

The condition gameplay of core GW2 were far better in my opinion and I preferred the old burning that stacked duration.
I also loved the old confusion that punished spamming skills, but it had issues with it trigger on trait activation that the player did not control.
Conditions have mostly been messed up ever since the big condition dmg rework and the only winners were the specs that had plenty of spamable bursty condition or the ones with even more spamable condition removal..

My problem currently is that many of our skills, not just pistol skills fit in the category of not having spamable bursty condition dmg and hence just ain't functioning in the current game state. 

Would I wish they changed it all up again? Yes! But do I think they are gonna do that? Not really.
So if the condition gameplay in this game is gonna center around several short duration burst condition, then I want my skills to actually do that.