Guild Wars 2

   As we all know, engineer is CLEARLY the most fun profession there is. However, it’s still suffering from useless abilities, nonstop RNG gameplay, and low damage/healing/defence overall. 

   Let’s take a look at a few abilities that need some work.
Elixir U

This ability is alot of fun, however there’s a post-patch bug going around right now that’s causing the quickness to not apply properly while still triggering the cooldown. Obviously this needs to be fixed. Aside from that, I think this move is in a good spot. You gain offence and lose defence for a few seconds. Perfect burst ability, minus the bug.

Every single turret

These things are just garbage, except MAYBE the net turret if you’re doing pvp. The main problem with them is that often they’re completely broken seconds after you place them. These things have low health, slow fire rates, and bad damage. Even their active/toolbelt abilities stink, for the most part. If these things are going to be balanced and viable, they need MUCH higher health, more damage, faster fire rates, and possibly lower cooldowns. 

Gadgets

Gadgets. Just, gadgets. Most of the gadgets are completely useless, and a waste of a bar space. For example, when was the last time you saw an Engineer using Slick Shoes? Never? I believe so. Some of them provide effects that your weapons normally give you, with a significantly longer cooldown. Granted, some of these’ toolbelt abilities aren’t bad for triggering static shock, but that’s besides the point. With Kits being the highest damage source from the sheer number of abilities they have available, Gadgets PALE in comparison to any kit. Gadgets need to be SUPER buffed, to compensate. 
Consider the 100n build, or a power bomb build, widely considered the best damage builds an Engineer can do. It’s main burst comes from spamming, a lot. Gadgets need to be equal in worth to a kit, and since kits have quantity of abilities, gadgets need quality. 

Kits

Kits don’t necessarily have strong abilities, they have A LOT of abilities. You give yourself a Grenade/Bomb build and you just go down the line with your abilities. That’s how they work, save the Elixir Gun due to it’s support nature. 
Personally, I think the Grenade and Bomb kits are in a good place right now. The grenade kit gives raw damage (although a little on the low side compared to some) with a little bit of conditions, and the bomb kit is amazingly disruptive. 
The Flamethrower needs some work. The flamethrower is supposed to be a “close range brawler” type of kit. Oh, it’s close range alright, but it’s no good. It’s got a knockback, (which potentially both weapons have,) a glitchy as hell auto attack that’s a pain to “aim”, a blind, (which is a bit useful, however a bit strange,) a fire wall for area denial and damage over time. The main problem here is the auto attack and its damage output. The damage just isn’t that high, and it’s overall a pain to tell where the fire is hitting, and where it’s going to hit. You can hit enemies that aren’t anywhere near the flame, hit enemies inside the flame as intended, or completely and utterly miss. Why even bother using this kit compared to the Bomb kit? There’s nothing it has that the Bomb kit doesn’t do better, including a blind, cripple, and confuse. (There’s your area denial, firewall.) Please, give this kit some love. I hate it, personally, but it is in deperate need of some viability.

The Tool Kit

This one is also a bit interesting. This kit has no purpose, but utility. It has a 3-hit autoattack, good for nothing but repairing those crappy turrets, an AoE bleed, a power-based nuke that confuses, (which is great,) a shield block, (also great,) and a magnet pull. This kit does a little bit of everything, as it’s meant to. However, the auto attack is put to shame due to Turrets being garbage. It may have gotten buffed, but even if you have all of your turrets firing, while you auto attack to hit the enemy while repairing, your damage will be low and your turrets will still break. I recommend buffing the damage/speed of the swings a bit, to give it a bit more useful application. The AoE bleed is fine where it’s at, but I believe it cou;d also do with a crippling effect, but only in the area of the spikes. If I stepped on a giant nail that impaled my feet, I’d probably slow my steps to avoid further injury. Why shouldn’t enemies do the same?
Floating enemies? Forget about em. They have imaginary feet.

Med Kit

At first, I really disliked this kit. However, with a few points into Tools I began to like it alot more. However, I do believe that the Med Kits should heal for a bit more, and automatically use ground targeting similar to a grenade. I don’t see why it would be challenging to throw a box of Bandaids to someone on the field, and that you need to “train” to do so is silly.

Elixer Gun

I really liked this kit at first, but as time went on it became pretty useless. It’s auto attack is a slightly weaker version of the pistols’, it’s 2 is barely noticeable in combat, it’d 3 is a wannabe-flamethrower-attack that causes vulnerability, it’s 4 is fine where it is,(an escape,) and it’s 5 is a weak, aoe heal. The auto attack is fine as it is, it’s a support gun, not damage. It’s 2 needs to do more than swiftness/cripple. Swiftness is barely noticable during combat, and if allies are actually within range of an enemy for it to cripple it, a cripple only meant it has to move slow WHILE attacking. Your allies aren’t really gaining anything, and your enemy hasn’t lost a thing. Its 3 is a neat idea, but it’s just bad overall. It does no damage, has a bad condition scale, and applies less vulnerability than spamming a few grenades. It’s damage should stay low, but possibly raise the condition damage/vulnerability apply rate. The 4 is fine, leave it alone. It’s meant to be an escape, and it does it well. The 5 has potential to be a great ability, but it falls vert short. The AoE heal is barely noticable, both the heal and the area is covers. Overall, it falls just short of being amazing, even after it was buffed. The rate of the heal needs to be significantly buffed, and the area needs to be made a little bit more clear.

Elite Skills

Engineer elite skills are rather bad, frankly. Supply Drop is an aoe nuke that drops turrets and medkits. The damage and medkits are nice, but they need to be toned up. One medkit simply doesn’t heal for a lot, and honestly the damage is sub-par. And don’t even get me started again on the turrets.

Damage Tax

I read a Red post somewhere that Engineers received a damage tax with their main hand weapons, due to kits. The problem with this is that even with kits, their damage is still terrible, and their gadgets and elixirs are only a mediocre attempt at fixing that. Remove the damage tax from their weapons, it’s not accomplishing anything good for the class and even less for overall class balance.

Weapon Selection

The engineers as you know have the most limited weapon arsenal to choose from. Yes, kits exist, but kits are ABILITIES, and should be treated as abilities, not weapons. Expand the engineers’ arsenal a bit. For example, Hammers, Maces, or Swords.
Giving Engineers some melee capability would give ALOT more use to the Tool and Flamethrower kits, helping to make them a viable pick again. It would also open a WIDE range of new builds. Some abilities you may have overlooked earlier.

Power split

ALL of the kits/weapons don’t know what they want to be: power or condition damage. No matter how you build, you are always missing out on half of the weapon unless you sacrifice a major stat to gain damage with a mediocre weapon that is being taxed to begin with. Refine the weapons and kits to be more build-fitting. For example, all power builds now are generally Rifle builds. Most Condition builds use Pistols. Make the pistols scale much less with power, but much higher with condition damage, and remove the Bleed effects from rifle while buffing it’s power. Remove some power scaling from Flamethrower, while making it focus alot more on Burn DoTs. Add some more power to the Tool Kit, while toning down it;s bleed to be only a crippling effect.
This would let players know what to build for, and eliminate alot of confusion about what traits/skills go to which weapon set. (Arena Net, I know you encorage people to build how they want, but in this case, that just simply will not work. Something needs to change for that to be a viable possibility.)

The Bugs and Dev Hate

Go look at the Engineer bug forum post. No, really. I dare you. The list is HUGE, and many of these have been around for a long time, remaining unfixed. (Add Elixir U to the list, baby)
There’s a huge bug where a Tools trait named Scope doesn’t work at all. Not partially, at all. 0% effectiveness. This is a real letdown, as Scope would be a very useful trait for PvE content.
Is it just me, or does Arena Net KNOW they screwed up beyond repair? Think I’m wrong?
They’ve considerably nerfed engineer repeatedly, regardless of the massive outcry and their own knowledge that Engineer needs some hope.
Their bugs are remaining unfixed, for ages after they are reported.
They refuse to address much of the concern regarding engineer. (In fact, I’d be more than amazed if any engineer post in the Suggestion forum got answered)
I would really like to see the justification on some of the nerfs that are going around.
The folks who balance the engineer need to pay attention to the community, they might learn a thing or two, or twenty.

Elixirs and RNG

The elixirs are great and each fills their role rather well, except for one problem, THE RNG. EVERYONE and their grandmother hates it.
It makes strategy impossible, it’s a pain for everything and accomplishes nothing, and is a sad excuse for “utility”. If Elixer S Throw always gave stealth, you could assist your team in pvp or dungeons. If it fails, however, you’re just going to end up embarassing yourself for trying. You want to give your team stability on that boss fight? Nope, stealth. Congratulations, you used a totally pointless move and wasted time that could be spent bursting the boss down. Give each elixir one thing it does, and make that its purpose. Once again, if an ability is going to take the place of a Kit on your bar, it needs to be worth while. Often, only one or two are even close to being worthwhile, when a kit can give you generally much more.

Conclusion

Engineer needs alot of love, and the developers are either seriously slacking, or completely unaware (somehow) to how bad it is. I love the engineer and will never re-roll, but I’d really like to see some love brought to this profession. It really is deserved.

TL;DR
Engineer is broke as crap. Fix stuff. No more RNG, no more condition/power confusion. Gadgets suck. Kits are weird. Damage tax is unnecessary.

Nails already cripple

Chickenshoes.6250:

Nails already cripple

I had meant immobilize, my bad. You don’t often see crippled people freely walking about, so in my mind cripple = not moving.

I agree with most things, like Gadgets not being that good, Turrets need a buff (though I used to play with a turret build and if you position them well they don’t die so quickly, but the damage aint great, no). Elixer Gun I use myself and I’m fine with it to be honest. I run Cleric gear so the heal somewhat better than normal.

Thing I don’t agree with is the RNG. Everyone complains about it and I don’t get it. I find it a very original class mechanic that fits with the fluff of the class in a really original way. Sure sometimes I really need that Wall of Reflection to pop from my Elixer U throw, but when it doesn’t I quickly adapt and use what I do have at my disposal. I find that overall people exaggerate a bit about how ‘bad’ it is. That’s just me though, I find it original and fun.

About weapons: I personally don’t see hammers, maces or swords work for an Engineer, but perhaps others don’t see the following either: A shortbow. I personally would find a Shortbow to be able to fit with the Engineer, I think there has been some discussion about one in the past and overall pretty original ideas came forth. Though I do not think we’ll see new weapons being added anytime soon.

Engineers med-kit heal should be % say it give 20% off your health back / bag so you can get 60% back with all 3, as it is now it give 2% / bag.

I think hammers would be a good weapon to add, I mean you gotta hammer stuff when you are building.

Honestly, I do not do much with my engineer aside from farm and jump puzzles, and for them two things I’m perfectly fine… so aside from wanting another weapon I don’t have much input.

Captain Swag.5893:

Weapon Selection

The engineers as you know have the most limited weapon arsenal to choose from. Yes, kits exist, but kits are ABILITIES, and should be treated as abilities, not weapons. Expand the engineers’ arsenal a bit. For example, Hammers, Maces, or Swords.
Giving Engineers some melee capability would give ALOT more use to the Tool and Flamethrower kits, helping to make them a viable pick again. It would also open a WIDE range of new builds. Some abilities you may have overlooked earlier.

now that you mention it-i would like a melee weapon. it could make me serve as tank even. plus-weapon swapping is not avalible to the engineer, making him tacticly a lot less proficent

Shadow.3475:

Engineers med-kit heal should be % say it give 20% off your health back / bag so you can get 60% back with all 3, as it is now it give 2% / bag.

That in combination with the Toolbelt would be too overpowered. Nope.

ceg.2587:

Captain Swag.5893:

Weapon Selection

The engineers as you know have the most limited weapon arsenal to choose from. Yes, kits exist, but kits are ABILITIES, and should be treated as abilities, not weapons. Expand the engineers’ arsenal a bit. For example, Hammers, Maces, or Swords.
Giving Engineers some melee capability would give ALOT more use to the Tool and Flamethrower kits, helping to make them a viable pick again. It would also open a WIDE range of new builds. Some abilities you may have overlooked earlier.

now that you mention it-i would like a melee weapon. it could make me serve as tank even. plus-weapon swapping is not avalible to the engineer, making him tacticly a lot less proficent

I think more weapons in the form of kits would be nice. A Steamhammer perhaps? I’m not a big fan of the idea, but I guess if executed well it could work!

Captain Swag.5893:

Power split

ALL of the kits/weapons don’t know what they want to be: power or condition damage. No matter how you build, you are always missing out on half of the weapon unless you sacrifice a major stat to gain damage with a mediocre weapon that is being taxed to begin with. Refine the weapons and kits to be more build-fitting. For example, all power builds now are generally Rifle builds. Most Condition builds use Pistols. Make the pistols scale much less with power, but much higher with condition damage, and remove the Bleed effects from rifle while buffing it’s power. Remove some power scaling from Flamethrower, while making it focus alot more on Burn DoTs. Add some more power to the Tool Kit, while toning down it;s bleed to be only a crippling effect.
This would let players know what to build for, and eliminate alot of confusion about what traits/skills go to which weapon set. (Arena Net, I know you encorage people to build how they want, but in this case, that just simply will not work. Something needs to change for that to be a viable possibility.)

Elixirs and RNG

The elixirs are great and each fills their role rather well, except for one problem, THE RNG. EVERYONE and their grandmother hates it.
It makes strategy impossible, it’s a pain for everything and accomplishes nothing, and is a sad excuse for “utility”. If Elixer S Throw always gave stealth, you could assist your team in pvp or dungeons. If it fails, however, you’re just going to end up embarassing yourself for trying. You want to give your team stability on that boss fight? Nope, stealth. Congratulations, you used a totally pointless move and wasted time that could be spent bursting the boss down. Give each elixir one thing it does, and make that its purpose. Once again, if an ability is going to take the place of a Kit on your bar, it needs to be worth while. Often, only one or two are even close to being worthwhile, when a kit can give you generally much more.

Conclusion

Engineer needs alot of love, and the developers are either seriously slacking, or completely unaware (somehow) to how bad it is. I love the engineer and will never re-roll, but I’d really like to see some love brought to this profession. It really is deserved.

TL;DR
Engineer is broke as crap. Fix stuff. No more RNG, no more condition/power confusion. Gadgets suck. Kits are weird. Damage tax is unnecessary.

Amen brother! People wonder why the Warrior & Guardian professions are so finished and it’s because they can role either power or condition damage if they want, not some mix matched set of skills. I’d love to use kits, but they really need to give us a kit that is pure bleed, burn, confusion that is actually good…..really the best condition build in the game uses pistol/pistols and it’s underwhelming. On a side know, #4 is a blow torch, wouldn’t it have made more sense for the engineer to hold a torch in the second hand? – dont worry about that now, people are geared.

RNG is another stupid thing. In my opinion if they really want us to keep those stats they need to have Healing Elixir like this: 75%HP+ Swiftness, 50% Regeneration, 25% Protection. That would open a ton of options for us. Also medkit is pretty sad, for having to cast a heal skill it does the least amount of healing. Don’t give me this “preparation” crap either the opportunity cost of not being able to dodge a second after like the others is worth a heal alone so this needs to either have it’s healing as good as the rest or better or remove the casting time to an instant (sorry for my english).

Also condition duration really needs to be looked at, this crap about only doing another tick of damage if we meet the rounding is a joke. Imagine if a Berserker warrior only was able to do 50% more damage if he only had 51% crit damage and if he had 50% or lower he wouldn’t see any increase at all……that would be stupid right? Well that’s the boat condition duration is in. Also to my knowledge the last patch bugged/broke 100%+ condition duration builds and they will no longer tick for double even if there is 101%+ condition on those skills – or their could be a bug with using transmutation stones not applying the rune’s bonuses after it’s been used.

Please fix the power suit!!! its a crying shame how far it is from what it should be.

My reasoning behind adding a Hammer specifically is that Engineer weaponization is very limited, even if you include kits. Sure, you can use more than 2, but you don’t have very many to choose from. Someone here suggested a Steam-Hammer kit. That would be FANTASTIC. A viable melee “weapon” that could be used with the Tool and flamethrower kits as suggested. Engineers may use hammers, but not giant hammers. But then again, they don’t use flamethrowers or potion guns either. A steam hammer would fit well with the “feel” of the fantasy rpg engineer, and it would fill a spot that they DESPERATELY need filled.

Make it happen, please.

Well, you said that Med Kit was sad. That’s a problem.
I agree with you that it doesn’t heal for alot, but if you’re in a dungeon and need to run, heal, and remove conditions, it’s am amazing tool for doing so. It isn’t for group heals, it’s for “Omg I’m gonna die, run” heals. [/quote]

ceg.2587:

Captain Swag.5893:

Weapon Selection

The engineers as you know have the most limited weapon arsenal to choose from. Yes, kits exist, but kits are ABILITIES, and should be treated as abilities, not weapons. Expand the engineers’ arsenal a bit. For example, Hammers, Maces, or Swords.
Giving Engineers some melee capability would give ALOT more use to the Tool and Flamethrower kits, helping to make them a viable pick again. It would also open a WIDE range of new builds. Some abilities you may have overlooked earlier.

now that you mention it-i would like a melee weapon. it could make me serve as tank even. plus-weapon swapping is not avalible to the engineer, making him tacticly a lot less proficent

imagine an axe/shield Engineer? flaming axes…exploding axes…electrified axes…omnom.
as overpowered as that sounds it wouldn’t compare to thief’s or warriors output.

Captain Swag.5893:

My reasoning behind adding a Hammer specifically is that Engineer weaponization is very limited, even if you include kits. Sure, you can use more than 2, but you don’t have very many to choose from. Someone here suggested a Steam-Hammer kit. That would be FANTASTIC. A viable melee “weapon” that could be used with the Tool and flamethrower kits as suggested. Engineers may use hammers, but not giant hammers. But then again, they don’t use flamethrowers or potion guns either. A steam hammer would fit well with the “feel” of the fantasy rpg engineer, and it would fill a spot that they DESPERATELY need filled.

Make it happen, please.

So give us Hammer the weapon and just get yourself a Charr Steam Hammer. It’s a thing. Then Engineers can have a reasonalb melee weapon without having to get another skill and use up the space in order to keep it. I like rifle, but I would rather walk around with a hammer.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Captain Swag.5893:

My reasoning behind adding a Hammer specifically is that Engineer weaponization is very limited, even if you include kits. Sure, you can use more than 2, but you don’t have very many to choose from. Someone here suggested a Steam-Hammer kit. That would be FANTASTIC. A viable melee “weapon” that could be used with the Tool and flamethrower kits as suggested. Engineers may use hammers, but not giant hammers. But then again, they don’t use flamethrowers or potion guns either. A steam hammer would fit well with the “feel” of the fantasy rpg engineer, and it would fill a spot that they DESPERATELY need filled.

Make it happen, please.

So give us Hammer the weapon and just get yourself a Charr Steam Hammer. It’s a thing. Then Engineers can have a reasonalb melee weapon without having to get another skill and use up the space in order to keep it. I like rifle, but I would rather walk around with a hammer.

I agree with you completely, but God knows Arena thinks that Engineers should use kits and ONLY kits.

Alex.9567:

Please fix the power suit!!! its a crying shame how far it is from what it should be.

The power suit is an asura skill, not an engineer skill.

Lightsbane.9012:

ceg.2587:

Captain Swag.5893:

Weapon Selection

The engineers as you know have the most limited weapon arsenal to choose from. Yes, kits exist, but kits are ABILITIES, and should be treated as abilities, not weapons. Expand the engineers’ arsenal a bit. For example, Hammers, Maces, or Swords.
Giving Engineers some melee capability would give ALOT more use to the Tool and Flamethrower kits, helping to make them a viable pick again. It would also open a WIDE range of new builds. Some abilities you may have overlooked earlier.

now that you mention it-i would like a melee weapon. it could make me serve as tank even. plus-weapon swapping is not avalible to the engineer, making him tacticly a lot less proficent

imagine an axe/shield Engineer? flaming axes…exploding axes…electrified axes…omnom.
as overpowered as that sounds it wouldn’t compare to thief’s or warriors output.

I like the electrified weapons, but axes dont seem fitting. When making things, you may use a hammer and some nails, right? Engineers have experience hammering, so why not give them a hammer?

Shadow.3475:

Engineers med-kit heal should be % say it give 20% off your health back / bag so you can get 60% back with all 3, as it is now it give 2% / bag.

I main an engineer and med kit is one of the most thoughtful and well rounded heals. The reason why each bandage heals for so little, is because you can lay down a good number of them at every opportunity during a fight, in preparation for when you do need them. The bandage duration is longer than the recharge.

Redfeather.6401:

Shadow.3475:

Engineers med-kit heal should be % say it give 20% off your health back / bag so you can get 60% back with all 3, as it is now it give 2% / bag.

I main an engineer and med kit is one of the most thoughtful and well rounded heals. The reason why each bandage heals for so little, is because you can lay down a good number of them at every opportunity during a fight, in preparation for when you do need them. The bandage duration is longer than the recharge.

This to the 1000th degree. (You forgot to mention the bonuses when running out of combat too, though.)
Anyone that thinks the Med Kit is garbage needs to rethink how they use it. I DO still stand by the “ground targeting should be default” thing though.

Simple fact is if you use all 3 bags and the heal you will get up to 7800HP with is ~30% of max heal and a Thife hit you for ~10k on 1 hit so to heal up 1 hit you will need 1.5 round off your max heal with takes about 10sec so for 10sec you can not be hit ones more to get back 1 hit hp.

Then we compare to a Guard with on 1 heal do ~60% off it heal and then if he use the rest off his heal he will do about 150% off his max heal within about 3sec, were a eneginer need 10sec to get back 60% hp.

If you have the elite skill you can then 1 every 3min drop so you get 25% hp more back yea am alive for a white hit off any charatcer.

What i try to get at is the more hp you have the more penelty you get, the heals should be % not a number so if you have 15k heal and the heal give 25% you will get 3750hp and if you have 26k = 6500hp back.

Thought: how about turning the RNG elixirs into kits, so you can choose the effect you want?

And I hate that Elixir X isn’t even a unique elite, rather the random elite of another class. Talk about lazy development!

Traits are the biggest issue. Our level 30 traits are equal to some other classes level 10 traits.

Also, battering ram is awesome, it just needs a shorter cooldown.

danbuter.2314:

Traits are the biggest issue. Our level 30 traits are equal to some other classes level 10 traits.

Also, battering ram is awesome, it just needs a shorter cooldown.

Yeah, that’s the idea. Each one has some fatal flaw. Whether it be a long CD, or useless ability, or both,