Flame Throwing

Guild Wars 2 has been out for almost 2 months now. The initial leveling and crafting rush is over. It's hilarious to see people brag about "being here since the beginning". It IS the beginning. Right now. But it is far enough in to start thinking about the long term.

I'm still having a blast in GW2, especially WvW. It's the best WvW/RvR I've experienced in a long, long time. So this is not a whine post or a "Guild Wars didn't live up to my expectations" post. It's just too things I think GW2 needs to maintain longevity.

What does GW2 need (now)?

sPvP rank matching. A full ladder system would be awesome, but they at least need to get in some simple "average rank of the team" matching going. The paid/free tournament system is broken and here is why: You need tickets to play in the paid ones. You get tickets from free ones. This just encourages the best teams to go stomp the bad teams. Then they go play in paid. If they don't win, they are forced to go stomp some noobs again.

The random levels of play my group faces in Free Tournaments is horrible. And it gets old. People can talk all they want about Private Arenas and the monthly tournaments but these things are far less important than matching skill level to skill level. It's the one thing that will benefit hardcore l33t "professional" gamers and the first timer who is checking out sPvP. It needs to be done quickly.

Threat mechanics I know this probably won't happen. And I'm not talking about Holy Trinity here. I'm talking about some skill that each profession can have to draw aggro or give it away temporarily. As it is, no one really understands exactly how the threat is working. (It'd be nice if A.net would just tell us.) I think some skills where you draw attention automatically for 4 seconds would really make dungeons a lot more fun. Expert Dungeons just feel like chaos right now. Even with a good group that has a "tank" there's a lack of control in the fights. For me it's fun to do each one once, but I have no interest in repeating them for fun or for the gear.

These two things would make sPvP and PvE a lot more fun for me, and I think everyone.

Most of you probably already know that Engineers have emerged as an excellent Bunker profession, something I figured would happen after first playing with the shield and turrets. What I didn't expect was that the best bunker build wouldn't use turrets at all (imho).

I've spent the last week playing a bunker build and pretty much not dying. It's not perfect, as I can't really kill anyone else, but at least I don't lose a node before my team can catch up.

Here's a link to the build I'm running.

A couple of points:

• I don't take Self Regulating Defenses because you can't control when it happens, and using Elixir S takes you out of the node ticks. Meaning if you use it, your presence doesn't count for defending or taking a node.
• Going high on toughness instead of Vitality allows me to put less into + healing and get the same bang for the buck. Unfortunately this means your only real condition defense is to remove them, which is why I have Cleansing 409, Elixir C, and 20% elixir CD reduction.
• The medkit skill 5 is your only source of swiftness. However if you are playing Bunker right, you shouldn't need it that often. I mostly use it in the beginning to get to my node.
• Generally speaking, Big Ole Bomb is you clearing push back and your Shield is your "OMG save my downed friend" push back, although I have been known to use both to get people off my node.

All in all, there's a lot of personal choice in a bunker build. I've had a lot of fun playing it in tournaments but not so much in Hot Join. For Hot Join I think I will stick to killing stuff.

So GW2 Armor is getting a lot of buzz. It's a great site and it makes it really easy to pick out exotic armor based on how it looks. But I'm more of the player that picks on stats first, looks second.

So to make it easy, I've made this spreadsheet of all the Exotic Armor, how to get it, and what the stats are. Not just Primary stat: Power, Secondary: Precisions. But the actual stat numbers.

The chart is color coded by sets that have the same stats. It's amazing how many choices you get of style once you pick the stats you want.

The Spreadsheet!

Keep in mind that you can mix and match any of these to get the stats you really want. Let's say you want Precision, Critcal Damage, and Toughness. Well you are out of luck. But you could get Power/Pre/Critical Dmg/Toughness by mixing Berserker's and Knight's. I won't judge the way you look, especially if you use some Transmutation stones.

Today I begin my quest for The Predator, the Guild Wars 2 Legendary Rifle. It is likely to be a long journey filled with spoilers so take heed.

The only thing I know is that I first need the Rifle called "The Hunter" and as far as I know, you can get this by paying someone a whole lot of gold or by joining four high level items in the Mystic Forge and getting lucky.

So here goes, tonight I start farming rifles and throwing them to the wind. I will document everything here.

I've been running these numbers for a long time now. Guild Wars 2 has been particularly challenging for two reasons. 1) No one has really figured out the damage formula. 2) Every skill has its own scaling factor. And while the factor is linear, some skills will fair better from Power while some won't. So numbers are easier to crunch for one skill, but it gets tedious for all of them.

I've been running off a damage formula that I believe is correct. It only computes raw damage and does not take into account Armor/Toughness or glancing blows and misses. It is simply "How much damage will a hit do on zero armor?"

At its most simplest form it is:

(Attack)(Scale)(1 - Crit % + (1.5 + Crit Damage) ( Crit %))

SAI, a member of my guild, Gaiscioch, plugged this formula into a gradient vector. Gradient vectors are basically used to measure rate of growth of each variable in a formula. We can use this to compare growth between Power, Precision, and Crit Damage and decide which one to add to most increase our damage. Pretty cool.

Here's a spreadsheet where you can plug in different values. You can either choose different armor or just type your values directly in on the Total row.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsXyRg8kOHUXdG5IdHBWRVhuX1pNV3MtWEo4S29FX1E#gid=0

The armor sets in there are PvE/WvW armor so they have stats built right on. For sPvP, it's easier to enter your own values and see what you need. Then go get the runes and amulet to match.

What does is mean?

This is only useful for direct damage builds, as condition damage uses its own stats and mixing them will actually end up making your build worse. But if you are going for direct damage, we can find points along the way where it makes sense to choose stats.

For example, Power is always the most important until you hit 1326 Power. This isn't a lot of Power but it's worth noting that even if you are going for a Crit build, you need this level of Power.

And even more useful, Precision is still the worst stat to increase until you add at least 36 crit damage. At that point if you add just 10 Precision, you can see crit damage important rise to the top again. So basically, stack crit damage. Once you hit 1326, stack crit damage. Of course at this point, I only know how to get to 40 crit damage, at least for an engineer. (Rune of Air, Golemancer, or Rage and +30 from Tools)

So if you're going for a crit build, get 1326 Power and 40 crit damage before you even look at Precision. Then Precision is your best bet until the end.

What's wrong with this?

It's boring. Now I have numbers that are pretty much set for a direct damage build. Good thing I like condition damage so much!

Not much else to say. It's a PvP guide but also covers generally weaponry and skills. A lot of the "when to use" info translates to PvE easily.

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/professions/engineer/Engineer-In-Depth-PvP-Guide-Tips-and-Tricks

Another week, another build.

Last week I played a Glass Rifle build and although it was fun blasting people, if I got caught outnumbered at all I was immediately downed.

This week I opted for survivability and it sure worked. Going into Hot Join sPvP with 1900 toughness and tons of power was really fun and effective. If I have to choose a name for my builds, I might call this Tough Bomber.

Here's the build: Tough Bomber

The playstyle is very simple. Grenades at range, bombs at melee, survive. I frequently use Elixir S in combination with my heal to ensure there is no interupt and that I won't be downed too soon.

The trait Inertial Converter ensures that when your health is low you at least get to use the Elixir S toolbelt skill to hide yo'self.

Speedy Kits ensures I can have swiftness up whenever I want! by simply swapping kits.

Using this I can wreak havoc and survive a long time. It has much less burst than previous builds I've run but that's not what I was after at all. I was able to hold point against three opponents (knowing I had no chance of killing them all) long enough to get some teammates to help out.

The Bad

There are two things I don't like about this build.

1. The points into Tools adds condition damage, which is awesome, but I didn't boost precision at all so it feels wasted. I went into tools for the recharge and the swiftness but it still feels bad.
2. There is no reliable condition removal. To make up for this a little I used a Sigil of Purity which removes conditions on criticals. But again, low Precision.

Keeping in mind the good and the bad from this, I may try a pistol build converting the grenade kit into an Elixir and putting 30 points in Firearms instead of Explosives. In that case I would also look for a critical proc sigil as well.

I'm pretty busy being an Asuran Engineer right now, but I thought I'd share a few builds I've been running these first nine days of Guild Wars 2.

Today's build is the Glass Rifle. I've been using this in random sPvP. It's served me really well in one on one situations or when I come across a one on one fight and I need to help a teammate.

Glass Rifle Build

EDIT: Hikmet pointed out that I don't have an Elixir to trigger Acidic Elixirs. True! It's because I originally ran this build with Elixir B instead of Net Turret and forgot to swap it out: oops. I'm still on the fence about which one I like better. Elixir B gives great buffs, swiftness, and gives you that explosion. I've updated the build link to use Empowering Adrenaline.

Here's the strategy: kill your opponent before you die. :) In my build I take a little more toughness than other builds I've seen, but you really can't take too much of a beating so you control the fight with nets, knockdowns and damage.

Almost all the damage comes from the Rifle. You must take Hair Trigger and Rifle Mod. I also take Acidic Elixirs so that I can still do damage when my Rifle is on cooldown. I generally use Analyze when available and let my crits stack even more vulnerability. You've got THREE nets to control the fight, one knockback and in the case of a melee opponent slick shoes will keep you alive.

The goal here is to stay ahead of your target, keep vuln on them, move in to blunderbuss and jump shot, move out when they are on CD or your opponent is doing something nasty. Try to save a net to get two hits from Jump Shot and try to save Overcharged Shot to interrupt their heals. There's no AoE to help you with Mesmer illusions so make sure you mark the Mesmer as your target.

I leave you with this word of caution: Rangers. ugh.

Oh, and I left 10 traits out because I don't feel strongly about them boosting power or vitality.

It's better than you think.

And worse than you think.

I say this because (in most builds) Vulnerability has taken a back seat to Might. They basically do the same thing right, except Might does it better? ;)

The main difference however, is that Vulnerability is like a low powered AoE Might that everyone in your group continually spams on themselves.

Vulnerability now does +1% damage per stack and maxes out at 25 stacks for 25% damage.

Might gives you +35 Power at level 80 and also stacks up to 25 for +875 Power.

At this point the community doesn't know the exact damage formula (contact me if you do!), but most people agree that it includes a ratio of Attack to Defense. Attack is made up of Power and Weapon Strength while Defense is made up of Toughness and Armor.

This means that the percent damage gained from Might depends on your base values and begins to be less effective than vulnerability as this Attack to Defense Ratio goes up. Unfortunately since we don't know the exact formula I can't tell you the point at which Vulnerability surpasses Might. It may even be out of the range of feasible values for launch characters.

In general, vulnerability gets better as your opponents Toughness goes down and your Weapon Damage/Power goes up.

Also, keep in mind that vulnerability is a debuff on a player and therefore damage from other players is also increased. At level 80 base PvP weapons and Power ranges, just having two players will make vulnerability better than might. So having 5 players able to focus one target has the potential to do +25% damage per player. That's a lot better than just you having might.

And my last point about vulnerability, and why it's worse than you think, is that it can easily be removed by every profession, unlike Might which requires certain skills that only some professions have. Everyone can remove conditions but not everyone can strip boons. So if you are going to run on vuln, make sure you can stack it all the time.

The Engineer

We have two ways to stack Might. Elixir B and HGH. Even if all of our skills are elixirs, stacking Might is tough.

On the other hand, using Utility Goggles and Steel Packed Powder, Engineers can stack vulnerability pretty quickly onto one target.

So even though Might is going to be better for 1v1 or small groups where you know Vulnerability will be removed, I don't think we'll see any Might builds for Engineers. We will however see Grenadier Vulnerability builds.

Disclaimer: I'm not a ranked eSport arena master. And I've never made a dime beating people at a video games. But there are a few things I have learned both from experience and from talking to world class competitive PvP players. If you are willing to admit that someone knows more than you, and you are willing to listen, you can learn a great deal and improve your own game.

When making a build for sPvP, keep in mind which role you are fulfilling. On a team you need predefined roles to be effective. You also need to communicate with your team, perform your role, and trust your teammates to perform theirs.

Roles

Guild Wars 2 will release in just about 2 weeks. The first three months (or more) in sPvP will be about exploration of tactics, team makeup and builds. But during the Beta events there have been a few common team makeups and roles.

• Duelist A player that excels at 1v1 combat. This role it used to solo take an objective. Usually the closest or farthest objective depending on your tactics.

• Roamer This player is used to support the other roles. Quick movement is a must as this role must listen to teammates to support them quickly and turn the tide of a fight.

• Point holder Traditionally this role was a player that could take a beating without dying. The goal was to stay alive solo at an objective until support could arrive, like the roamer or the team. Guild Wars 2 makes this role difficult as surviving a 2v1 is more difficult than in other games.

• Team Fight This role is designed to work in synergy with 1, 2, or even 3 other players to form a team (within your team). This team is usually used to capture and hold the most contested objective such as the middle objective on most maps.

All these roles can combine in many ways for different tactics and maps. For example:

A team with a Duelist, 2 Roamers, and a 2 man team may start a match by sending the Duelist to the closest point to take and hold it while the other 4 head to the center to capture. When the battle in the center looks one, the two roamers either peel off to help the duelist, or if clear, they move to the far objective to either take it or apply pressure close to the other team's respawn.

The rest of the match for the roamers is determined by the enemy's movement and success.

Engineer sPvP builds

When you start a build, keep your role in mind. Having your skills and traits limited means you are not going to be able to fulfill them all.

To start, let's think about a Roaming build for an Engineer. Primarily you need swiftness, condition removal, control. After you fulfill those, then you can think about damage.

Why?

Well, you need swiftness to respond to team calls quickly or you can't perform your role. Condition removal and control are needed to support the person or group you are reinforcing. Chances are a solo duelist or point holder will need conditions removed. They may be close to death and need enemies peeled off with your control. When you are running to support your duelist, the duelist is likely going to still be the main source of damage, you are there to make sure he still can.

As for damage, right now the Engineer is stronger with conditions than direct damage. Engineers can apply conditions very swiftly and have a lot of access to bleeds, burning and confusion.

A bomb build

We could use a Bomb build for this. There is plenty of conditions and control in a bomb build.

So I will choose a Pistol for Confusion, Poison and Bleed.

Slick Shoes for for Super Speed.

Bomb Kit of course, it's a bomb build.

Elixir R to support teammates with revive and condition removal.

Let's choose the Med Kit for even more swiftness. (Practice using that one!)

For traits we want to go 30 into Explosives to support our bombs. Grab Forceful Explosives, Incendiary Powder, and Short Fuse.

You also want to go deep into Tools, like 20 or so so that you can get those Tool belt recharge rates down. You will be using them often.

The remaining points can go into Firearms or Alchemy depending on if you want damage or survivability. I would opt for survivability.

So there's some thoughts behind a roaming build. When filling a role, think about what you need and build around that. For a team build, you need to know how to complement your teammates with combos and filling their gaps. As a duelist you absolutely need to win your 1v1s. As an Engineer you need damage, additional survivability and some tricks. If only we could drop a Supply Crate every 10 seconds. :)