Guild Wars 2

Engie Patch Notes:

• Blunderbuss: This skill has been unsplit from PvP and will now deal the higher (10%) damage values in all areas of the game. Increased bleeding stacks from 1 – 4 to 2 – 5, based on range. Increased bleeding duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Fragmentation Shot: Bleeding duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
• Blowtorch: The number of burning applications that this skill applies has been increased from 1/2/3 to 2/3/4.
• Elixir U: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
• Toss Elixir U: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 50 seconds to 40 seconds.
• Super Elixir: Fixed a bug where this skill would display the wrong healing values underwater.
• Shredder Gyro Self-Destruct: Increased damage to match other gyros.
• Shredder Gyro: Increased damage by roughly 50%.
• Glue Bomb: Immobilize duration of this skill has been increased from 1 second to 2 seconds.
• Big Ol’ Bomb: This skill is now affected by Short Fuse. The visual size of this bomb has been increased by 33%.
• Short Fuse: Updated the Fuse Time to correctly display the fuse time reduction of 0.5 seconds. This trait now affects Big Ol’ Bomb.
• Glass Cannon: The threshold for damage increase has been reduced from 90% to 75%.
• Shaped Charge: The damage of this skill has been increased from 7% to 10%.
• Static Discharge: The damage dealt by this trait has been increased by 20%.
• Shrapnel: The chance for this trait to activate has been increased from 15% to 33%. Reduced cripple duration from 2 seconds to 1 second. Reduced bleed duration from 12 seconds to 6 seconds. Fixed issues with this trait that caused it to activate at lower-than-expected rates for some skills. Updated the description to specify that this trait only activates on hit.
• Explosion: Skills that count as explosions for the traits Steel-Packed Powder, Explosive Powder, and Shrapnel are now marked with a skill fact. Scrapper gyro detonations are now considered explosions. Skills that do not hit the enemy, such as Smoke Bomb and Magnetic Bomb, are no longer considered explosions for combat clarity reasons.
• Pinpoint Distribution: This trait no longer grants condition damage based on precision. This trait will now instead grant up to 150 condition damage to nearby allies.
• Flame Jet: The duration of burning inflicted on the final hit of this skill has been increased from 2 seconds to 4 seconds.
• Flame Blast: Reduced the base damage of this skill by 66%. This skill now inflicts burning for 3 seconds.
• Detonate Flame Blast: Reduced the base damage of this skill by 57%. This skill now inflicts 2 stacks of burning for 3 seconds.

My thoughts on the changes:

1. The rifle change is a far cry from making Engie-Rifle playable in any sort of format. Very oddly, the condition damage on the skill (at close range) increased about 56%. This makes almost no sense to me since the rifle hasn’t any other condition capability, so you’ll never use it for the condition damage (although the longer bleeding duration does synergize with Hematic Focus.) However, the rifle still pales in comparison to Scrapper’s hammer. If you are doing physical damage at close range (where the Rifle is at full effectiveness), you really should just go Hammer. If you’re doing long range physical, you run a kit.
2. A 33% increase to condition damage for Fragmentation Shot. If you’re playing Condi Engie, you should not be auto-attacking with your pistol (especially after some of the nice Condi buffs in this patch).
3. Uhm… wh-…what? Why did Blowtorch get buffed? Blowtorch was the skill you wanted to use as much as possible and they buffed it by 33%? I won’t complain, but I am confused.
4. Both buffs to Elixir U are very nice. With HGH, you can get a cooldown of 32 seconds on both the drink and wall. The buffs provided aren’t particularly amazing, but nice none the less. However, the wall can be a great defensive option; 12 seconds of negating projectiles for 12 seconds every 40 seconds is nothing to sneeze at.
5. The “buffs” to Shredder Gyro are an absolute joke. At level 80, the Gyro does approximately 1k damage every second. This sounds pretty decent, until you realize a) the average DPS drops to about 300 when you take cooldown into effect, b) not all of the hits may actually land if the target moves/kills the Gyro, c) the utility provides very little functionality beyond the damage, and d) the Gyro DOES NOT SCALE WITH YOUR STATS. The final point makes the Whirl Finisher almost entirely useless. Each flaming bolt that hits (and it won’t be a lot), will only deal 131 damage at most. You cannot increase this except by Vulnerability. While this is still the case, I do not know. This utility is an interesting idea in the sense that the Whirl Finisher seemed to be the main selling point of the thing; however, the execution does not match this idea as ArenaNet seems to keep pushing the physical damage up. This not only makes the skill boring, but it also makes it severely difficult to balance as the expected damage will vary entirely by how long the target remains in the AoE.
6. The changes to bombs seem mostly like bug-fixing, but increased Immobilize on Glue Bomb will not be unappreciated.
7. Shaped Charge, Glass Cannon, and Static Discharge have all been directly buffed. These changes can be combined together to increase physical damage by a fairly hefty amount, but I would say that the tools aren’t quite there to make physical damage great.
8. Shrapnel has effectively been upgraded. A bit more than double the proc chance but half the duration of the conditions will net-gain Engineers who use explosives. As a side-effect, Shrapnel will be a bit more “bursty” in terms of damage. However this seems more like a smoothing out of RNG. The 15% chance was fairly uncommon to occur so this new version should make things more consistent (which is always nice).
9. The tooltips showing which skills are considered “Explosive” will certainly be appreciated, as will making Gyro self-destructs explosive. However, I will miss crippling smoke bombs, though I will entirely admit that interaction was unintuitive and certainly a bug.
10. Pinpoint Distribution. THIS NEW VERSION LOWS YOUR CONDITION DAMAGE! (Though, I admit, not by too much.) With the old version, you were guaranteed 100 Condition Damage and it only went up from there. In a reasonable build, it would net you between 163 – 200(ish) extra points which was nice! But now it’s set to 150, losing you stats (though it gives it to other players, too). HOWEVER, giving condition damage is nothing like giving power. Power will always be useful, as will precision or ferocity since all skills scale off of those three stats. Condition Damage though? Not all abilities scale with it. It’s a net-gain most of the time, but this still rubs me the wrong way quite a bit.
11. These Flamethrower buffs are actually quite nice. It pushes the FT a bit more into a hybrid kit, which isn’t bad by any means. Flame Blast, which was fairly respectable burst, is now improved by a fair amount from the damage increase, not to mention 9 seconds of extra burning if you can time your blast well. These changes likely aren’t going to increase FT’s use at all, but they will push the numbers up a bit for people who do use it. Okay, so I somehow misread the FT patch part no less than 3 times. It made sense to try to push it to a Hybrid kit sorta place that ALL the other kits are at, but now…. I mean I guess it gives you some reliable burning.

What wasn’t changed:

• Med Kit. Oh lord, Med Kit. Another balance patch and yet again, no change to Med Kit. The numbers are theoretically there, but the difficulty of using it and the loss of a player’s DPS while using it just makes Med Kit a complete joke. Literally the only use is in a Static Shock build for the F1 ability.
• Turrets. Turrets need love. While not as kittenhredder Gyro, they’re still pretty far down there (except healing turret). For most of them, their use is outweighed by “losing” a utility slot for something better.
• Gadgets feel like they’re on the cusp of usability, but for the most part, anything they do, you can get with something else better. Blast Gyro makes Battering Ram look like a joke, Utility Goggles isn’t as flexible as either Elixir B or Elixir U, Rocket Boots is just out-matched by the hammer’s #3 (though the tool belt skill is respectable), etc.
• Shield. I bet most of you forgot that Engineer can even equip a shield. I know I did. This weapon is so intensely over-shadowed by the Hammer, I honestly cannot think of a reason why you would want to equip it.
• General Trait balancing. Things are certainly better after this patch, but there are still a number of lines where I feel there is only one choice (and sometimes not even that). For instance, if I want to use Elixirs in an offensive build, I either have to choose a dead trait (unless I’m using elixir gun), remove myself from combat for 4 seconds when I hit 25% health, or have a worse regeneration on me when I’m using a kit. Tuning some traits up and maybe even tuning others down would certainly diversify builds.

If you made it through this tremendous wall of text, wow! Thanks a bunch for reading all of this. If you didn’t…
TL:DR; Engie got some nice changes, some confusing ones, and still needs a lot of work.
Either way, feel free to share how you feel on these changes.

My thoughts on the balance patch can be found here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Engineer-gripes-about-the-balance-patch/6506005

Does anybody on the ANet balance team remember this from about 2 months ago?

Gaile Gray.6029:

We’ve been making some gradual changes to pistol and rifle, hoping to bring them a bit more in line with hammer. As for Jump Shot, it’s difficult to land both the first and second attacks consistently unless you’re cleaving a downed player. To address this, we’ve moved some of the initial damage to the end of the attack, making it easier to spike. The total damage done by the skill will be the same.

• Blunderbuss: The damage of this ability has been increased by 10% at all range thresholds in PvP only.
• Jump Shot: The damage of the initial jump has been reduced by 56%. The damage of the landing has been increased by 28%

Hi balance team! It’s been months since you suggested improving Pistol and Rifle in PvP and PvE. The changes we got back then were relatively minor, and really didn’t do anything to help the overall situation for these weapons.

Today we got some improvements to kits, which is great for us condi engineers in PvE.

But pistol and rifle still suffer horrible issues in PvP, making them non-viable. Why has it been months since ANet acknowledged the issue, and they STILL haven’t responded with anything meaningful? The class is suffering badly from a lack of build diversity, and this balance patch does little to address the issue. Engineer needs some love, particularly in PvP.

Case in point: The changes to blunderbuss. Rifle has always been power-based weapon, not condition-based damage. Its main DPS comes from its autoattack. The other skills are utilities. So why does the balance team insist on giving blunderbuss more bleeds? This solves a problem no rifle engineer has. What gives?

Does the balance team not understand the class or its weapons? Do they not realize the issue with projectile hate right now? Do they not recognize that most of the engineers main weapons (and some of its kits) are projectile-based?

ShadowMageAlpha.7580:

These Flamethrower buffs are actually quite nice. It pushes the FT a bit more into a hybrid kit, which isn’t bad by any means. Flame Blast, which was fairly respectable burst, is now improved by a fair amount from the damage increase, not to mention 9 seconds of extra burning if you can time your blast well. These changes likely aren’t going to increase FT’s use at all, but they will push the numbers up a bit for people who do use it.

I haven’t looked at flamethrower all too much yet in game, but my understanding was that they decreased the direct damage, not increased. That forces it out of the hybrid and towards conditions.

On #10, I wonder what your definition of “Reasonable Build” is.

Because if you go Full Vipers, your Precision is about 1630, which means the change had you lose a whopping 13 condition damage. Even if you follow the qtfy raid build and swap shoulders and a ring with Sinister, you previously got only 17 more condi damage with the old Pinpoint than with the new one.

Unless you are going Full Sinister (which you shouldn’t unless you simply don’t have HoT, the Condi Duration from Vipers is a much better damage multiplier) you wouldn’t have anywhere close to enough Precision with a Condi build to have a noticable drop in the Condi Damage Pinpoint Precision used to give.

What should change:

1: Static Discharge activating in combat ONLY.
2. Gyros affecting 10 players, not 5.

Still don’t understand why does the Sneak Gyro do damage when exploding. The whole point of using it is to avoid combat…

Foefaller.1082:

On #10, I wonder what your definition of “Reasonable Build” is.

I actually use a Sinister build instead of Vipers. It’s not technically the most optimized build, but it gets you close enough that it’ll do for anything. I’ve lost a somewhat decent chunk of Condi Damage because of it (not enough for it to be a huge deal, but it still rubs me the wrong way). Additionally, you’ll get a 150 Precision boost from Rangers (more than likely), so you’re losing a bit from that as well.

Ultimately, my point was that I think the stat gain should be a bit higher since Condi Damage isn’t as useful as Precision, Power, or Ferocity. Not everyone will benefit from it, so it’s not as good as the other aura boosts.

This patch gave Engineers safe spots in Raids and I like it. Both, power and condi are now over 30k dps with realistic buffs wich is pretty amazing, as they both got their uses according to each boss.

I admit I’m a bit hyped.

Xyonon.3987:

This patch gave Engineers safe spots in Raids and I like it. Both, power and condi are now over 30k dps with realistic buffs wich is pretty amazing, as they both got their uses according to each boss.

I admit I’m a bit hyped.

Using our "old’ condi raid build or is there something new in the works? I too am hyped and am just waiting to see if we actually do get taken now,or at least given the chance to!

Joxer.6024:

Xyonon.3987:

This patch gave Engineers safe spots in Raids and I like it. Both, power and condi are now over 30k dps with realistic buffs wich is pretty amazing, as they both got their uses according to each boss.

I admit I’m a bit hyped.

Using our "old’ condi raid build or is there something new in the works? I too am hyped and am just waiting to see if we actually do get taken now,or at least given the chance to!

I assume pugs are still sceptical, although dps meters will filter out bad engis pretty quickly.

The condi build is still the same, just that I’d probably stop using “Short Fuse” even on enemies where you could easily make use of the trait, as 10% increased power damage became too dominant.

So I’d go with Explosives 322, Firearms 113, Tools 111. If you’re ranging a lot or can’t handle the streamlined mortar proc, go for Tools 131.

Xyonon.3987:

Joxer.6024:

Xyonon.3987:

This patch gave Engineers safe spots in Raids and I like it. Both, power and condi are now over 30k dps with realistic buffs wich is pretty amazing, as they both got their uses according to each boss.

I admit I’m a bit hyped.

Using our "old’ condi raid build or is there something new in the works? I too am hyped and am just waiting to see if we actually do get taken now,or at least given the chance to!

I assume pugs are still sceptical, although dps meters will filter out bad engis pretty quickly.

The condi build is still the same, just that I’d probably stop using “Short Fuse” even on enemies where you could easily make use of the trait, as 10% increased power damage became too dominant.

So I’d go with Explosives 322, Firearms 113, Tools 111. If you’re ranging a lot or can’t handle the streamlined mortar proc, go for Tools 131.

Thanks for that!! And dps meters…yea, not sure about those as when I tried to run it made my game unplayable….so not so sure about them at this stage.

What do you mean by “unplayable”? Literally? BGDM updates itself and shouldn’t be an issue, ARC DpS however has to be deactivated and updated manually after each patch (1-2 days without it) or it will cause crashes.

Yea, BGDM was the one that I followed the instructions and then my game wouldn’t load. Didn’t try any others, figured I would wait for something a bit more stable if that happens.

Undo.5091:

I haven’t looked at flamethrower all too much yet in game, but my understanding was that they decreased the direct damage, not increased. That forces it out of the hybrid and towards conditions.

Yup. You’re right. I don’t know how i misread the notes like 4 times. This makes no sense to me. It’s nice that the FT got some love, but I feel… confused about what they did here. Was FT being used too much for physical damage? I just… what?

ShadowMageAlpha.7580:

Foefaller.1082:

On #10, I wonder what your definition of “Reasonable Build” is.

I actually use a Sinister build instead of Vipers. It’s not technically the most optimized build, but it gets you close enough that it’ll do for anything. I’ve lost a somewhat decent chunk of Condi Damage because of it (not enough for it to be a huge deal, but it still rubs me the wrong way). Additionally, you’ll get a 150 Precision boost from Rangers (more than likely), so you’re losing a bit from that as well.

Ultimately, my point was that I think the stat gain should be a bit higher since Condi Damage isn’t as useful as Precision, Power, or Ferocity. Not everyone will benefit from it, so it’s not as good as the other aura boosts.

IIRC “% of X as Y” traits and buffs only take your base stats + the stats from your gear and sigils, not other buffs, be they food items, banners or Ranger Spotter, so you aren’t losing the condition damage you got with that trait from Spotter or Banner of Discipline, because you never got Condition damage from those buffs in the first place.

Xyonon.3987:

This patch gave Engineers safe spots in Raids and I like it. Both, power and condi are now over 30k dps with realistic buffs wich is pretty amazing, as they both got their uses according to each boss.

I admit I’m a bit hyped.

Our old (and technically current) raid build is actually very competitive. My guild actually told me to stay on my engineer in DPS-heavy raid fights because my DPS was 1k or 2k below our Eles, before the patch. These changes are enough to push my DPS within less than 1k of Ele DPS. It’s about rotation, and these changes only require me to add one skill to the rotation for an extra 3 stacks of burning.

The issue with engineers being discouraged from raids is the skill disparity. A great engineer can absolutely rock the damage. A bad one is like bringing dead weight. And generally speaking, there are more bad engineers than there are good ones.

my biggest complaint is the change to light field blasting removing condi. I much prefer AOE retaliation.

As a flamethrower advocate, the less sources of retaliation there are, the best for me.

Spartacus.3192:

my biggest complaint is the change to light field blasting removing condi. I much prefer AOE retaliation.

I actually played a PvP match moments ago and the new blast finisher was a lifesaver. I was removing large amounts of condis left and right, on top of the beast tank of scrapper hammer.

This patch really boosted the existing meta engineer builds. I don’t know why they did it, but they did.

Alright. I have played for a bit and here’s my feedback:
1) Blunderbuss changes are welcome, as well as the changes to rifle where power was shifted to the final hit. Good, appreciated changes so far. Unlike the others that frequent this forum I do not support any high damage skill carrying evade frames, players should not have relative immunity while preparing to land a devastating hit (I feel the same for thieves as well). If you commit to these types of skills you are saying that I want to take BIG RISKS for BIG REWARDS.

2) Fragmentation Shot’s increase is towards improving performance vs Elixir Gun (imo) however this change does not help the case of P/S weapon combination when untraited (Chemical Rounds).

Suggestion: Change Pistol AA to an explosive, allowing it the potential to stack more vulnerability as well as distinguishing it from other weapon skills such as Elixir Gun. While this is shy of double bleed stacks it does have the potential to add more meaningful condition application for P/S combinations.

3) Pistol Blowtorch changes return it back to it’s prior performance level before the swap to the new traits system. This is good because this skill is hard to land and previously was not as rewarding.

4) Elixir U (Toss and Otherwise) – Good.

5) Shredder Gyro – Have not used or considered it.

Suggestion: Change the tool-belt skill to something more interesting.
Vent steam: Release a smoke field that burns opponents.
Blind: 4s on first pulse
1x Burn: 4s
Radius: 300
Duration: 4 Pulses
Combo Field: Smoke

Change promotes more synergy with itself and makes it a more solid PvP/E choice for players.

6) Glue Bomb – Logical. Good.

7) Big Ol’ Bomb + Short Fuse – Good.

8) Glass Cannon – OK, really helps it’s case (now when elixir b procs, you know it is lost)

9) Shaped Charge – Damage boost is nice however I would have loved to have seen some boon stripping and high vulnerability stacking on Gadgets here instead of a flat 10%.

10) Static Discharge – Unfortunately still mediocre performance. Still not strong enough to be worth this choice over it’s competitors.

Suggestion: Make GM, move Gadgeteer to T2 in-place of Lock On. Move Lock On to T1. Buff SD damage by another 20% as a GM. Reduced CD on Lock On to 20s.

11) Shrapnel – now more useful. Should make it possible to proc on Blunderbuss in order to give Rifle more control options.

12) Explosion Changes – Logical. Make Blunderbuss and Homing Torpedo an explosion.

13) Pinpoint Distribution – Changes fundamentally how Engineer builds for condition damage. Allows for wider range of stat choices when building P/S Engineer for survive-ability.

14) Flamethrower Changes – Logical but pinches out prior power builds.

Suggestion: Change scaling of Flame Blast so that it also now scales off of Ferocity as well as Power so that power builds can still use this tool effectively and condition/power hybrids do not acquire a tool that is stronger than it should be.

Few things I want to bring to focus to be looked at:
1) Merge Grenadier + Explosive Descent. Replace Explosive Descent with Timed Charge (Engineer Harpoon Gun #4), increase it’s damage by 20%, keep other stats, procs on critical hit.

2) Shocking Speed changes.

Suggestion: Blast and leap finishers in Lightning Fields causes arc lightning (5 targets in AoE range of the Lightning Field) and grants superspeed (5 Allies). 10s ICD. (Yes I know leap finishers already daze)

3) Turrets – Lower the cool-downs, stop focusing on people talking about making the turret themselves better and let’s pay more attention to their tool-belt skills. Make tool belt skills on Turrets their true focus/potential and turrets themselves as purely utility.

4) Gadgets – Reduce cool-downs significant (except those that are already in the < 20s range). Increase duration of Stun Duration on AED’s toolbelt skill, Make Rocket Boots a stun breaker. Also very interested in seeing your rework for Gadgets.

LilBiM.3581:

Alright. I have played for a bit and here’s my feedback:
1) Unlike the others that frequent this forum I do not support any high damage skill carrying evade frames, players should not have relative immunity while preparing to land a devastating hit (I feel the same for thieves as well). If you commit to these types of skills you are saying that I want to take BIG RISKS for BIG REWARDS.

I agree with you in theory, but..

• Why doesn’t that apply to everyone else?. Rocket Charge on hammer comes with built-in evades. Vault on daredevil. Whirlwind Attack on warrior. The entire Berzerker spec is about dealing ridiculous burst while being invulnerable to damage, immune to conditions for up to 20s, with perma-stab all while healing 1k/s passively. Where’s the risk there?

• Rifle is a 50% close-range weapon, so it needs some built-in defense, and Overcharged Shot doesn’t cut it because half the time it’ll eat stability, reflect, or a passive on-cc trait. Net Shot has the same problem except it’s also countered by resistance.

• Yes, Jump Shot deals high damage (up to 10k!) if you spec full glass. That’s already pretty high-risk when you consider Rifle’s lack of defense (see above). It is not spammable, it’s pretty slow and easily dodged. IMO, if thieves can spam 10k vaults, Engis ought to be able to do one evasive 10k movement attack on a 20s cooldown.