53 replies to this topic

[Silvernis]

I tried the turret last night, and the jury's still out. It's definitely useful, but at the same time, it definitely feels clumsier than just popping the elixir. I dunno. I guess I'll stick with it for a while and see if I can get the hang of it.

[Raven]

Slein Jinn, on 01 August 2014 - 08:51 AM, said:

You should actually be getting more healing out of Healing Turret than you do out of Elixir H provided you're actually using all of its features, not to mention the 5s shorter cooldown.

2520 (Dropping the Turret) + 2520 (Overloading the Turret) + 1320 (Detonating the Turret) = 6360 > 5560 (Elixir H)

And that's without accounting for the possibility of using additional blast finishers on either of the two water fields it provides.

That's true.  I never really counted the dropping of the turret, but the overload and detonating heal.  I stand corrected.

[Slein Jinn]

It's probably worth mentioning in this discussion that many--very likely even most--players use their healing skills badly.  The natural instinct for most players is to use their healing skill very reactively as an "oh shit!" button.  They hold onto their healing skill until they have to use it or die.  But this is very inefficient, and gives you much less sustained survivability over the course of a protracted engagement.  What you need to force yourself into the habit of doing is using your healing skill much more proactively.  Any time you've taken enough damage that you can use your healing skill and still not be at full health, you need to use your healing skill.  (e.g. Suppose you've got 20k HP and your healing skill heals you for 5k.  As soon as you fall below 15k Health, you should be using your healing skill; don't fall into the common trap of holding it for when you're under 10k or even lower.)  There's a bit more nuance to it for certain classes/builds, but the general principle of it holds overwhelmingly (the only genuine exception being builds that utilise passive healing skills--notably Warriors), and yet a staggering number of players fail to follow it.  

There are multiple reasons for this.  The foremost--or at least the most concrete--is that using your healing skill sooner means your healing skill comes off cooldown sooner, which in turn allows you to use your healing skill more times over the course of a fight.  That's very important, especially in longer fights.  But perhaps equally important is that waiting longer to use your healing skill leaves you more vulnerable to something going wrong.  You could miss a dodge, eat an Eviscerate, and end up on the floor.  You could get stunlocked and go down before you can get your heal off.  A gank thief could join the fight and down you before you even know he's there.  Etc.  Using your healing skill sooner ensures that you've got more of a buffer for all of the things that can go wrong.  And that's also very important, regardless of the length of the fight.  

The reason I bring this up now is that A.E.D. and Healing Turret epitomise those two extremes perhaps more than any other two heals in the game.  Healing Turret is an incredibly strong healing skill, but it's not a very good "oh shit!" button.  It produces quite a lot of healing, but it delivers that healing in stages over the course of a second or three.  Furthermore, it does a lot of things other than just heal, which means you need to have those other things in mind when determining the optimal time to use it.  In addition to being your staple personal heal, Healing Turret can also be used to heal and remove conditions from your allies, and with Accelerant-packed Turrets (which there's very little reason not to run), it can also be used for clutch CC to prevent a stomp or rez or to break an opponent's combo.  If you try to save Healing Turret for an "oh shit!" button, then you may be disappointed in it, but the skill simply does too many good things to be restricted to that kind of use in the first place.  

A.E.D., in contrast, forces you to use it as a last-ditch panic button, which is to say that it forces you to play badly.  In order to have a reasonable chance of getting the full value out of A.E.D., you have to hold onto it until the last possible moment, which not only means you're using a lot fewer healing skills over the course of the fight than you could be using, but moreover it means that you're walking an extremely thin line between using it too early and using it too late.  Except that, in practical terms, you're more or less walking that line during an earthquake.  And even if you do manage to time your A.E.D. just so, such that you manage to get it off without dying, but also with very little health left, good players will recognise you using it, and they'll adjust their play accordingly to let it expire for the measly ~4k heal, and then they'll kill you while you wait the interminable 40 seconds for your healing skill to come off cooldown.

TL;DR - Healing Turret is an incredibly strong healing skill that will help you to develop into a better player.  A.E.D. is a rather poor healing skill that reinforces bad habits and ultimately encourages you to become a worse player.

[Raven]

I drop my turret at 80-90% life, and I explode it if I'm below 60% or below, or need to clear some nasty conditions.  If anything I use my heals too soon.  But it depends on the fight.  Same with elixir, I generally never wait till I get low, because one burst or CC means I'll be dead.  And dead people can't cap.

I'm eyeballing the A.E.D. after the living stream change goes in effect because I run perplexity runes and it would give me another interrupt option without traits.  At the moment I have supply drop, shield skills, and a mine for interrupts.  The mine is a short cooldown blast finisher and is a ranged knockback.  I can also hide it under my siege to knock people away who attack me.  It has many uses and I really like.  I've knocked people off cannons, downed players, enemy siege, friendly siege, and cliffs.  It's much faster than the big bomb, but smaller radius.  I am considering popping the trait that gives turrets knock back, but I'll have to take a look at my traits and see what I'd like to remove.

Sometimes I wish I ran a flame thrower build or something with high damage and not condition related, but my grenades just seem far to versatile.  The only time I feel useless is taking out enemy siege, and we generally have some hard hitting players that can take out enemy siege while I provide knock backs and support.

[Slein Jinn]

The only Engineer build that really contributes anything at all of value in a zerg setting is an elixir build, but for roaming, havocs, etc., condition Engineers are really strong.  If you want to try something different, though, Static Discharge is also a really strong roaming/havoc build, and it's very different from conditions--very high burst.  Whether you're running Static Discharge or Conditions, though, there's really no reason not to take Accelerant-packed Turrets; there's nothing else particularly strong there for that adept.  

Regardless of what kind of build you're running, relying too heavily on Grenades is never a good thing.  Grenades are pressure, and that's basically about it.  Now pressure can be important, but you need more than just pressure.  In a roaming/havoc build, they're well worth having, but you need to pair them with another kit that offers more burst.  Bombs are a staple, but Fumigate on the Elixir Gun is a really strong skill, too, especially for bunker-busting.  On a condition Engineer, you should always be cycling 2-3 kits.  In a zerg build, however, Grenades really aren't even worth running, because that pressure gets so diluted that all you're really doing is bag farming, which might be nice for you, but it does barely more than nothing to help your team win.

[apollo]

Slein Jinn, on 01 August 2014 - 04:27 PM, said:

The only Engineer build that really contributes anything at all of value in a zerg setting is an elixir build, but for roaming, havocs, etc., condition Engineers are really strong.  If you want to try something different, though, Static Discharge is also a really strong roaming/havoc build, and it's very different from conditions--very high burst.  Whether you're running Static Discharge or Conditions, though, there's really no reason not to take Accelerant-packed Turrets; there's nothing else particularly strong there for that adept.  

Regardless of what kind of build you're running, relying too heavily on Grenades is never a good thing.  Grenades are pressure, and that's basically about it.  Now pressure can be important, but you need more than just pressure.  In a roaming/havoc build, they're well worth having, but you need to pair them with another kit that offers more burst.  Bombs are a staple, but Fumigate on the Elixir Gun is a really strong skill, too, especially for bunker-busting.  On a condition Engineer, you should always be cycling 2-3 kits.  In a zerg build, however, Grenades really aren't even worth running, because that pressure gets so diluted that all you're really doing is bag farming, which might be nice for you, but it does barely more than nothing to help your team win.

Slein, could you elaborate on why that elixir build is the most valuable (or least non-valuable) engi build in a zerg setting?

[Slein Jinn]

Boon stripping, condi clearing, and boon sharing are all things that you need to fight a zerg.  The elixir build provides all those things, and a reasonable amount of them at that.  It's also got a couple sources of burst damage, which is one of the major problems with most Engineer builds in a zerg-context.  Most Engineer builds offer good attritional "chip" damage (i.e. pressure), but little to no real burst damage.  You don't kill an organised zerg without burst damage.  Your group collectively needs to be able to deal a large amount of concentrated damage at once when the commander calls for a bomb.  Most Engineer builds contribute neither the spike damage to make an impact on the bombs nor the support to shape the fight in other ways.  And on top of that, many Engineer builds--especially those relying Flamethrowers or Grenades--are extremely susceptible to Retaliation, which any decent zerg will have a very high uptime on.  

You'd still ultimately be better off bringing another Necromancer or Mesmer instead, but if you have to have an Engineer in the comp, that's the best way to utilise them.  The skills that make Engineers great for havocs/roaming simply do not translate to zergs well at all.

[apollo]

Slein Jinn, on 07 August 2014 - 05:00 PM, said:

Boon stripping, condi clearing, and boon sharing are all things that you need to fight a zerg.  The elixir build provides all those things, and a reasonable amount of them at that.

Yes, all of those things are great. My problem with thrown elixirs is that the radius is only 180, which is rather small, so it's difficult to maximize the potential of thrown elixirs, unless the friendly zerg and enemy zerg are standing still on top of each other.

  

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It's also got a couple sources of burst damage, which is one of the major problems with most Engineer builds in a zerg-context.  Most Engineer builds offer good attritional "chip" damage (i.e. pressure), but little to no real burst damage.  You don't kill an organised zerg without burst damage.

Yes, it has decent burst damage, but not awesome burst damage, and not awesome range. The max range this build can run is 1000 yards (or whatever measuring system they use), and that's only for two of the rifle skills. A traditional grenade build has 50% longer range, so it's very easy to stay clear of the pain train.

Speaking of which, the elixir build has very little survivability other than solid condition removal and one stun break. The grenade build has minor condition removal, but it has two blocks, a stun break, and a reflect mechanism that can be used as a knockback and blast finisher (great for healing turret spiking).

  

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Your group collectively needs to be able to deal a large amount of concentrated damage at once when the commander calls for a bomb.  Most Engineer builds contribute neither the spike damage to make an impact on the bombs nor the support to shape the fight in other ways.

True, but I argue that a grenade build is still very useful in a zerg setting. The grenade build throws out massive amounts of conditions, which like you said, keeps pressure on the zerg, forcing them to steadily use their condition removals. Which hopefully will reduce the amount of condition removals available when hard cc's/immobilizes are used. I think that constant pressure on the zerg is more useful than a decent damage/limited target burst build.

  

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And on top of that, many Engineer builds--especially those relying Flamethrowers or Grenades--are extremely susceptible to Retaliation, which any decent zerg will have a very high uptime on.

Yeah, retaliation sucks, but as long as you stay away from the zerg (which is pretty easy with the long-range grenade build), you can easily heal through retaliation.

[Slein Jinn]

Not trying to be a dick, but Grenade Engineers are just about the single most useless thing you can bring to a zerg fight.  Your arguments in favour of the build are all self-directed, but a zerg fight isn't about your character; it's about the group.  Yeah, it may be easier to play a Grenade Engineer, but you're basically just taking up space.  You offer almost nothing that a zerg needs, and certainly nothing that isn't provided much more effectively by something else.  A good zerg build has to have a lot more than just personal survivability--it's no different than Stances Warriors being useless compared to Shout Heals or Phalanx Strength.  

An Elixir Engineer has quite a lot of personal survivability tools for a backliner--loads of condition removal, a stunbreak, and two repositions--so sure, you could build for even more personal survivability, but what's the point of living forever if you're not going to contribute anything useful while alive?  You could try that same line of argument to justify Nomad's gear, but we all (hopefully) recognise how obviously useless Nomad's is, too.  An Elixir Engineer has survivability at least equal to that of other backliners, and it actually does bring useful functions on top of that.  

The Elixir build has non-negligible burst damage for bombs--Acidic Elixirs, Static Discharge, Blunderbuss, and even Jump Shot do add up nicely--but that burst damage isn't the main purpose of the build any more than Whirling Wrath is the main reason for bringing an AH/GS Guardian.  The primary function of an Elixir build is the 23 second cooldown for clearing 4 conditions, stripping 3 boons, sharing 3 stacks of Might, sharing 5.25s of Stability, and sharing three further random boons.  While a 180 radius isn't huge, it's plenty big enough that, given the 5-target limit of AoE skills anyway, you should easily be able to get full value for your Elixirs if your zerg is anywhere near as tight as it ought to be.  The fact that you can bring that much support while still contributing a fair bit of burst damage and having more than sufficient personal survivability is what makes an Elixir Engineer useful.  

A Grenade Engineer, by contrast, has neither support nor spike damage.  Condition builds perform very poorly in zergs for reasons previously detailed in this thread, but if you're going to run a condition Engineer, you still need to be running other kits with stronger condition damage like Bombs--Grenades are a secondary kit in a good condition build--and relying on something like bombs negates all your arguments about personal survival anyway.  If you compare a Grenade Engineer with something like a GS/LB Ranger with Barrage, Entangle, and Muddy Terrain, there's just no contest.

[apollo]

Slein Jinn, on 08 August 2014 - 03:54 AM, said:

Not trying to be a dick, but Grenade Engineers are just about the single most useless thing you can bring to a zerg fight.

Oh, I can point out *plenty* more useless things to bring to a zerg fight.

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An Elixir Engineer has quite a lot of personal survivability tools for a backliner--loads of condition removal, a stunbreak, and two repositions--so sure, you could build for even more personal survivability, but what's the point of living forever if you're not going to contribute anything useful while alive?

Maybe for a backliner, but this build isn't a backline build. It's a midline build. Like I said earlier, your longest ranged attacks are only 1000 yards, and that's only for your autoshot and the Net Shot. Your elixir throws are 900 yards and your good burst damage is melee range.

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While a 180 radius isn't huge, it's plenty big enough that, given the 5-target limit of AoE skills anyway, you should easily be able to get full value for your Elixirs if your zerg is anywhere near as tight as it ought to be.  The fact that you can bring that much support while still contributing a fair bit of burst damage and having more than sufficient personal survivability is what makes an Elixir Engineer useful.

I think you're overestimating the radius of 180. Not to mention that zergs are constantly moving, so you're trying to throw an elixir on a moving zerg that's fighting a moving zerg. Unless you're in the middle of both (which is not a good idea with your "backline" survivability), I doubt you'd maximize the boon-stripping, boon-giving, condition-removing potential that you give praise to.

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Bombs

Yeah, no. First, bombs are melee range. Second, each bomb only hits five players (not counting lingering effects). Grenades, on the other hand, dispense three grenades per throw, which hit five players per grenade (as far as I recall). The purpose for a condition build in a zerg setting is, like has been said before, to provide pressure. The fact that a grenade build can hit (up to) 15 players per throw, and apply massive amounts of conditions, makes it more viable as a condition build for a zerg setting than a bomb build.

With all that being said, I will try out the elixir build for reset tonight and see where my opinions lie.

[Raven]

I used run an elixir, grenade, might stacking build.  It was nice.  I could get 17 stacks of might on my own, more if I pushed myself a little.  That's always nice.

As for opinions one what's best for a zerg, well if we want go that route, engineer would most likely be one of the classes you just don't bring.  While it can perform a lot of roles (and thus why I like it because I can do a little of everything), it doesn't really bring anything special to the table, and other classes do it better.  I do run mine in zergs occasionally, but if it's a proper zerg I often bring my guardian instead.  While I won't have any ranged pressure, it's a support shout build, and we are often short on front liners when it comes to PUG groups.  So I spend the whole time healing, dropping symbols, and clearing conditions.  With this new build I'm running also pooping out extra retaliation.

But grenades are nice as each grenade can crit and proc conditions on their own, which means a engineer pouring onto a group can easily stack up a lot of vulnerability, bleeds, and burns.  Most zergs run a condition clears, but engineer can stack them up pretty fast.  We also have those handy dandy poison field grenades.

That said, play what you enjoy.

I can say I've though about running a elixir infused bomb, and elixir gun build, mostly for giggles but my guardian does it better.

[Slein Jinn]

apollo, on 08 August 2014 - 08:03 AM, said:

Oh, I can point out *plenty* more useless things to bring to a zerg fight.

As far as things that are real builds, and not just stuff you could concoct for the sole purpose of demonstrating uselessness, I'm hard pressed to name one.  Meditations Guardians are terrible in zergs, but they still fit in a lot better than Grenade Engineers.  

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Maybe for a backliner, but this build isn't a backline build. It's a midline build. Like I said earlier, your longest ranged attacks are only 1000 yards, and that's only for your autoshot and the Net Shot. Your elixir throws are 900 yards and your good burst damage is melee range.

It plays as a backliner; 900 range is plenty sufficient to be considered backline.  It is sturdy enough to step into the midline briefly for damage bombs--you can even Rifle 5, Rifle 3, Elixir Gun 4 to quickly deliver a burst of damage and retreat without exposing yourself too much--but as I've mentioned, it's also very possible to hybridise your role between backline support and harassing the enemy backline with CC's (Rifle 2, Elixir Gun 2) and burst damage (Rifle 5 & 3), which is not at all dissimilar to what a good Necromancer does.  

If you really want to press the "midliner" route, though, another option would be to swap the Elixir Gun for a Tool Kit, Scope for Power Wrench, and add a bit more beef in the gear, and then play as a true midliner.  

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I think you're overestimating the radius of 180. Not to mention that zergs are constantly moving, so you're trying to throw an elixir on a moving zerg that's fighting a moving zerg. Unless you're in the middle of both (which is not a good idea with your "backline" survivability), I doubt you'd maximize the boon-stripping, boon-giving, condition-removing potential that you give praise to.

Zergs move, but it's not just 20+ people running around like chickens with their heads cut off.  A decent commander should be calling fixed locations for damage bombs and regroups.  Fights take on natural focal points as they develop, and choke points force zergs to move through confined spaces.  If you're just spamming skills as they come off cooldown, sure, you might fail to get full value for your Elixirs--although even if they only hit 3-4 targets, they're still contributing more value than anything else you can do with an Engineer--but if you use them intelligently, a 180 radius is plenty to get full value.  And it also bears mention that having a huge radius is actually a detriment to an AoE skill, because with the target cap, it makes it more likely that each skill will be hitting a different set of targets; a more compact radius makes it more likely that you'll hit the same targets with each skill, and also that you'll hit the same targets as other players bombing the same location, which in turn makes it more likely that your zerg will actually be able to kill some of those targets.  

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Yeah, no. First, bombs are melee range. Second, each bomb only hits five players (not counting lingering effects).

I didn't say you should use Bombs in a zerg; I said you need Bombs to have an effective condition build, and the fact that you can't really utilise Bombs in a zerg is another reason (among many) to not use a condition build in a zerg.  

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Grenades, on the other hand, dispense three grenades per throw, which hit five players per grenade (as far as I recall). The purpose for a condition build in a zerg setting is, like has been said before, to provide pressure. The fact that a grenade build can hit (up to) 15 players per throw, and apply massive amounts of conditions, makes it more viable as a condition build for a zerg setting than a bomb build.

Only the #1 and #4 skills hit five players; the other three hit three players each.  But the fact that each Grenade skill fires multiple projectiles, and each of those projectiles selects its targets independently, is not a blessing.  It's one of the major problems with Grenades for large-scale WvW.  It's the same reason that people tend to over-value Meteor Shower on Elementalists.  You don't actually want to be hitting everyone at once.  That dilutes your damage to the point where it simply becomes trivial to heal through it.  A big part of an effective zerg is being able to concentrate as much of the collective damage as possible on as few targets as possible so that you can actually get kills reliably.  (Also, where's the consistency in scoffing at 180 radius Elixirs hitting five targets, yet defending 120-150 radius Grenades by praising the number of targets they can hit?)

And Grenades really don't apply "massive amounts of conditions" at all.  They apply conditions, but there's a reason why they're always a secondary kit in any good condition build.  Only the #4 and #5 skills are really bringing strong conditions.  The #1 has no native conditions, the #2 has just one stack of Bleed, and the #3 has a single application of Blind; you're mostly depending on Sharpshooter and Precise Sights for condition application.  But Bleed and Vulnerability are hardly the most valuable conditions to be spamming on a zerg.  

Raven, on 08 August 2014 - 09:22 AM, said:

As for opinions one what's best for a zerg, well if we want go that route, engineer would most likely be one of the classes you just don't bring.  

I don't disagree.  It's a bit like roaming builds for a Guardian.  If you want to have a truly optimal zerg composition, there is always a better profession to bring.  But though not ultimately optimal, an Elixir Engineer does contribute quite meaningfully to a zerg, bringing several things that a zerg absolutely needs.  Since, outside [Seek], I can't stop people from bringing Engineers to large-scale WvW engagements, I'd much rather have them running a build that contributes meaningfully.  It's a lot to ask of PuG's to change professions for the sake of a balanced comp, but it should be perfectly reasonable to expect them to switch to a zerg-friendly build when running with a larger group.  

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But grenades are nice as each grenade can crit and proc conditions on their own, which means a engineer pouring onto a group can easily stack up a lot of vulnerability, bleeds, and burns.  

Bleed and Vulnerability yes, but Burn no.  Incendiary Powder has a ten second internal cooldown; it's strong for roaming builds, but one application of Burn every ten seconds is negligible in a zerg.

[Raven]

Slein Jinn, on 08 August 2014 - 11:17 AM, said:

... but it should be perfectly reasonable to expect them to switch to a zerg-friendly build when running with a larger group.

No, they should bring whatever the hell then want even a thief with nothing but short bow to shoot blast finishers at things. (I have sadly brought my thief to EBG zergs, but that's because there are traits in EBG.)  But I do see your point, and this is why I tend to bring my guardian when there's a large group.  It's also the only time I can really play my guardian without swapping traits.  I hope one day we get the ability to save trait builds for easy switching.  That'll most likely help this issue too.

[Rimmy1a]

Slein Jinn, on 01 August 2014 - 02:17 PM, said:

It's probably worth mentioning in this discussion that many--very likely even most--players use their healing skills badly.  The natural instinct for most players is to use their healing skill very reactively as an "oh shit!" button.  They hold onto their healing skill until they have to use it or die.  But this is very inefficient, and gives you much less sustained survivability over the course of a protracted engagement.  What you need to force yourself into the habit of doing is using your healing skill much more proactively.  Any time you've taken enough damage that you can use your healing skill and still not be at full health, you need to use your healing skill.  (e.g. Suppose you've got 20k HP and your healing skill heals you for 5k.  As soon as you fall below 15k Health, you should be using your healing skill; don't fall into the common trap of holding it for when you're under 10k or even lower.)  There's a bit more nuance to it for certain classes/builds, but the general principle of it holds overwhelmingly (the only genuine exception being builds that utilise passive healing skills--notably Warriors), and yet a staggering number of players fail to follow it.  

The engineer healing skills talk is fine, but I liked your post for the quoted part. People in parties I'm in seem a bit fuzzy on this idea, and end up dead or breaking combat (just as bad, often enough) to get out of the heat.

Just wish there was a way to round up our casuals and punt them through the hallowed gates of Ehmry Bay University.