Guild Wars 2

Well, i thought i’d try back and see what has changed and not much… same classes still OP… engi still getting the short end of the stick….

You know your game is NOT balanced when:

- A warrior can hit 9k damage with one button (kill shot, eviscerate, 100 blades) yet engi gets nerfed so they can’t use a 6k heal without interupt (elixer s)
- A thief can spam 4.5k per heart seaker, yet engi can’t put down a turret and pick it back up for a 5 k heal…. (we have to put it down, hit the over charge.. then pick it back up)
- A ranger pet can do more dps than the ranger, yet engi can’t get turrets that have a decent amount of health and damage. (had a pet do 17k worth a damage in a fight with a ranger)
- Rangers crossfire shoots twice as fast as explosive shot yet they both say 1/2 second cast…
- EVERY other class gets minimum 2 sets of 5 skills (2 weapon sets, ele gets 4 with atunements), 1 heal, 3 utility skills and an elite… except engineer who get 1 set of 5 skills and to get another set we have to give up a utility slot…..

Get your kitten together A-net……

i don’t know why i keep reading the engineer forums… it has even more whining than the thief forums

I don’t usually mind the QQ threads, but this is misinformation. For example, even if an engineer took zero kits, he’d still have 14 skills on his bar at the same time, compared to other professions who get 10 at one time and can swap to another 5 on a 10 second cooldown. And that’s with no kits at all.

Also, we really need to stop saying that damage per button press = balance.

Jastorm.5972:

- A warrior can hit 9k damage with one button (kill shot, eviscerate, 100 blades) yet engi gets nerfed so they can’t use a 6k heal without interupt (elixer s)

I routinely see Hundred Blades do a lot more than 9K. More like 25K. And I wear Knight’s gear on my Warrior.

Jastorm.5972:

- A thief can spam 4.5k per heart seaker, yet engi can’t put down a turret and pick it back up for a 5 k heal…. (we have to put it down, hit the over charge.. then pick it back up)

We can use Bandage Self or Elixir H for a 5K heal (8K total for the Med Kit)

The Healing Turret is used as an alternative to Elixir-spec Engineers with Cleansing Formula 409 that additionally provides Regeneration and Area Heals to your allies.

I’m very happy with where the Engineer is at, but I guess I’m a part of the minority.

hmm. engineers seem pretty good atm… and really>??? you think warriors are op. keke.

the thing is see. most engineers get mowed down in pvp. but there are some that are crazy good. i think its a l2 kitten ue .. or a spec issue.. dont play the profession with the hardest learning curve if you arent willing to hit the top of the curve before your judge the class.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Jastorm.5972:

- A warrior can hit 9k damage with one button (kill shot, eviscerate, 100 blades) yet engi gets nerfed so they can’t use a 6k heal without interupt (elixer s)

I routinely see Hundred Blades do a lot more than 9K. More like 25K. And I wear Knight’s gear on my Warrior.

Jastorm.5972:

- A thief can spam 4.5k per heart seaker, yet engi can’t put down a turret and pick it back up for a 5 k heal…. (we have to put it down, hit the over charge.. then pick it back up)

We can use Bandage Self or Elixir H for a 5K heal (8K total for the Med Kit)

The Healing Turret is used as an alternative to Elixir-spec Engineers with Cleansing Formula 409 that additionally provides Regeneration and Area Heals to your allies.

I’m very happy with where the Engineer is at, but I guess I’m a part of the minority.

I am happy with my build and the profession is never boring, the skill ceiling is high, and there are skills that I am STILL learning. But I really don’t like that “balancing” the game has to be done at the expense of my skills that worked well, just because the sPvP guys got a little upset that we did our jobs better than they did.

I agree that if you want the epic DPS, roll a Warrior, but I really don’t like the constant nerfs that ANet keeps calling buffs. Even the ninja-nerfs in PvE with foods like the Omnomberry ghost cool-down, which was aimed those of us who could generate several crits a second. Anyone with a FT or a Grenade Kit that ran with that food knows for certain that that extra 400 hp a few times a second was helpful, but not imbalanced.

There is a lot about this game that is just borked, and unfortunately, as engineers we get the opportunity to try a lot of things and get to know the game mechanics quite well, and we see where the problems are.

We have staying power that Warriors could only dream of, can stack useful utilities for a variety of situations, can build for conditions (reasonably speaking) and build for crit damage (grenades are tied for the farthest range in the game when traited), we can hold a point, defend a tower, have projectile mitigation, condition mitigation, a tiny bit of access to stability, can build for roots, knockbacks, pulls, even a reasonable amount of party healing (not like a Guard or Ele—but still).

and even though we complain about “viable” builds, we can build for situations better than any other profession. And when in any pvp mode, our opponents NEVER know what we will be pulling out of our bag, which is always fun to imagine what they are saying to their other party members in voice chat…“What did that guy just do? It looked like he threw something, but it knocked me back and took my protection away!” “Engineers are SO BROKEN!”

That being said… some extra damage would be nice.

OP is comparing apples to oranges and making no sense at all.

The only major complaint I have with engineer is how terrible we are in downed state, being pretty much tied with warriors and necros. I even recently watched a livestream of devs playing WvW as a small raiding party, and he specifically mentioned that they prefered ele, mesmer, and thief because of their superior downed states.

ya. wouldnt say engineers are op. i dont play them but i fight them all the time and the word op seems to be thrown around alot by whiners. engineers seem like they are in a good spot imo.

lunyboy.8672:

That being said… some extra damage would be nice.

It would be nice, but is it necessary?

I run dungeons often. It’s how I prefer to play the game. I have a level 80 Warrior, Guardian, and Engineer. When I bring my Guardian to groups, everybody else benefits. Binding Blade -> Ring of Warding is one of the best cross-weapon combinations in the game that elevates the DPS of the group when eliminating trash significantly. Wall of Reflection is arguably the best projectile block in the game. The Hammer has a Blast finisher on a ridiculously short cooldown.

I bring so much more to groups on my Guardian than I do my Warrior, so when I see people complain that Warriors and their Hundred Blades do so much damage, I just roll my eyes. And of course playing a Guardian I would love to see my Hammer do more damage. I would like my Greatsword to do more damage. But like the Engineer, I have to ask: is it really necessary?

As an FT/EG Engineer, I’d always like to eke out a little more damage with Flame Jet. But with my setup I grant my group Might, Fury, and Regeneration every time I drop my Healing Turret, overcharging + Area Heal for a decent group heal.

I can then Regenerating Mist + Acid Bomb for another Area Heal when necessary. Or I can use Acid Bomb in Napalm for Might stacking. I can use Fumigate to remove conditions. I can use the Healing Turret to remove conditions. I can use thrown elixirs to remove conditions.

Like Guardians, Engineers are so much more than their DPS. You could say that a Warrior could be built similarly with a Sonic Boon build or something of the like, but they don’t have Water fields. They don’t have Light fields. They don’t have projectile walls. They can’t give their group Fury as consistently as an Altruism Rune Engineer swapping to the Med Kit does (Lung Capacity drops it to 20s, but Altruism gives Fury every 15s).

The Engineer is such a versatile, exciting class that it confuses me why anybody would even bother comparing us to such a stifling, simplistic class like the Warrior. I love my Warrior and I love its DPS, but if you ask me I’ll always take my Engineer over it unless the group needs DPS THAT badly.

Would I like it if Rocket Boots didn’t self-CC? Would I like it if Flame Blast was a Blast finisher? Would I like it if Engineers had a Whirl finisher outside of Elixir X?

Of course I would. I’d also like it if my Guardian sprout wings and could have perma Swiftness without being ensnared with Retreat and Save Yourselves in WvW. Some things just are intentional limitations to balance classes across the board.

Engineers are perfectly fine right now in my book.

yes I agree with the things said here however turrets and utilities are a joke. Once they make them worth including in build then I could see engineer being balanced, but as it stands half of our skill types are wasted slots.

welcome to gw2. while you do not miss the glitches in your own profession. tahts how they all are. so its not an engineer being up or o kitten ue. its a anet cant fix thier buggs issue. most professions are lucky if they have more then 1 useable trait spec.

jeez. it said OP then it said ISSUE.. not kitten u

OP makes some weird comparisons. The only ones that I see that aren’t “So they get this, but we can’t X thing opposite?” are the Crossfire/Explosive Shot one, and the Weapon Slot one. If the Crossfire/Explosive Shot comparison is accurate, it’s a bug and they need to get off their kitten and fix it. The Weapon Slot one, however, we have the Toolbelt to (theoretically) make up for it, as pointed out by another poster already – although the Toolbelt doesn’t let us choose what skill we get, instead having it linked intrinsically with the skills on our Utility bar.

Also, just a thought, OP: It might help if you didn’t compare a class’s strong point to something the Engineer is, admittedly, mediocre at. 1000 Blades and Killshot are both Warrior Finishing Blow skills, so they’re going to be powerful – I’m not sure about Eviscerate, but I have the feeling it’s one of those as well. Thieves are glass cannons who are at their best when bursting, such as by spamming, say, Heartseeker, which is why they use Initiative instead of cooldowns on their regular attacks. Rangers rely on their pet for quite a lot of their damage, because it’s their class mechanic. None of these have anything to do with how much the class can heal for, or how much health the pet has. I almost want to go “Eh, fair enough” about the “Turrets need more damage,” but now you’re comparing a utility skill set to a class’s main mechanic, and even as a Turret Engineer, I don’t think that’s a valid comparison.

It’s definitely NOT balanced in PVE that’s for sure. Saw yet another 3 shot warrior in Orr today. Walked right up and slammed a giant. guess that’s why they can run Arah by themselves.

Anyways you’re right OP, it’s something they definitely need to work on and now that the population might be dwindling a bit they might actually listen to what we’ve been telling them for 8 months now.

Gotta loooong way to go tho, 19 pages of bugs and design flaws and they’ve added a new design flaw with the change in the medkit/EG/TK refined kit effects imo, completely useless and what’s worse is they don’t even last 5 seconds like skills in other professions do or even mobs.

They started off good by separating the coded behaviors of skills between PVE PVP and WVW so ….

Here’s to hoping.

Engineer has a high learning curve, but tops out around the same level as other professions. This is a generally accepted thing amongst long time players (except Tigirius who has been disgruntled for… forever).

No, it’s not fair that we have to work harder to achieve adequate results, but if you’re looking at things purely from a ‘best of the best’ position, we are one of the top 4 professions in the game across the board. If you accept this, then you know, Engineer requires hard work, but is one of the better professions. If you do not, you will roll another class and spam a button or two and smile. It’s all in what you want, personally I feel they are in a good place PvP wise, and middle of the pack for anything else.

It helps once you realize that Engineers do not do great sustained damage with their main weapons, it requires quite a bit of kit swapping, elixir swigging, turret dropping, grenade aiming… you get the idea. Nothing comes easy, it’s not a profession for beginners, but it’s by no means as kitten as the forums make it sound. Not even close.

To OP: GET A GRIP
Engis are perfectly fine atm- for christ’s sake a good engi can be practically impossible to kill at times so don’t complain.
yes there are a few reworks that need to be done here and there but no class is necessarily overpowered

I think a fight is not about taking dmg and outhealing dmg, but rather avoiding and migrating dmg. the heal is there to correct mistakes and allow you to stay in battle.

also… Kits are wayyyyyyyy better than weapon swaping!! and is not really giving up an utility slot when our kits are some if not the best utilities in the entire game

I’m actually quite pleased with where the engineer is currently.

Feels sorta like Elementalist 2.0. Nerfnerfnerf, build diversity shrinkage. Yet we find a way to make it work.

Now I’m just waiting for the next patch, where they don’t hold back with the nerfs, and do to us what they did with Ride the Lightning and other ele nerfs last patch…. sigh

Engi has the short end of the stick, but definitely not in PvP :/

ohh. you care about balance in pve.. sounds wierd. who cares about pve numbers. you guys must be in a panic sweat without dps meters.

Unless the dungeon is super hard, there is no reason to take anything but a warrior. A Warrior can critical for 40,000 damage in one hit. That’s the low end. That means every six seconds, 5 warriors could hit for 200,000 damage. When things are dying that fast and the content is that easy, you don’t even need to heal. Just rally off of the bloody mess you and your team is making.

I don’t think the engineer is necessarily underpowered (Although there are buffs to be made). I think the warrior has just so horribly broken the curve that other classes seem to have “Like no damage”.

zaxon.6819:

ohh. you care about balance in pve.. sounds wierd. who cares about pve numbers. you guys must be in a panic sweat without dps meters.

Well, if everyone agrees that we’re uber powerful in PvP then what else is there to talk about?

The Engineer is not a class you can pick up and play. Our skill floor is much higher than any profession (Ele’s have nothing on us), you could play a thousand hours and still be learning things about the class. If you manage to stick with the class long enough, like I have, you’ll learn that we punch out a lot of dps; maybe not as much as a warrior, but enough. Our Grenade and Bomb kit’s are a thing to be reckoned with, as well as our HGH builds. We are, as of this post, the best support class in the game. Able to bring more to the table than, the Warrior’s “I canz dps” mentality.

Well, without a doubt under the sun, we are FARRRR weaker then we were at release date. I fail to see how we’re in such a great state right now when they have successfully nerfed our strongest builds every month and pigeonholed us.

Raijinn.9065:

Well, without a doubt under the sun, we are FARRRR weaker then we were at release date. I fail to see how we’re in such a great state right now when they have successfully nerfed our strongest builds every month and pigeonholed us.

This. I don’t mind the devs changing or removing builds, as long they add new ones to compensate which this set of devs is spectacularly failing to do.

As long as there is 1 useable build left you’ll always find some forum hero who strokes his ego by saying everything is fine as long as his build is untouched. The overview is that engy choices are at an all time low now, particularly with turrets being even more broken (and ignored) this patch.

Also the Elixir-S nerf last patch hurt HGH quite a bit for everyone who knew how to use S for more than just stomping.

Major design failures like the recent kit refinement changes are shockingly inept for a game that’s supposedly not just throwing any half baked idea around during a beta process.

Engy badly needs a patch where the devs actually take some time to try and improve not further ruin the class.

seems they want professions with super low skill caps to compete with complex professions. making the only benefit of a skill based character that you need to do more work to get the same result.

Raijinn.9065:

Well, without a doubt under the sun, we are FARRRR weaker then we were at release date. I fail to see how we’re in such a great state right now when they have successfully nerfed our strongest builds every month and pigeonholed us.

True, we were much stronger at launch, but we’re still in a decent position.

Kalan.9705:

Engy badly needs a patch where the devs actually take some time to try and improve not further ruin the class.

They’ve been trying…they’ve just been creating more bugs than they remove.

zaxon.6819:

seems they want professions with super low skill caps to compete with complex professions. making the only benefit of a skill based character that you need to do more work to get the same result.

That’s not entirely true—a more complex profession is more difficult to counter. Even if I require twice as many button presses to deal out equal damage as other professions, at least I’m twice as difficult to learn how to fight against. I’m not the greatest player, but I can assure you that even in some decently-high tier tournaments people have absolutely no clue how to fight an engineer. WvW is like a walk in the park—I think most people die without any idea of what killed them.

One aspect of engineer issues is requiring 3x as many button presses to do about the same as 1 button press on another character is a pretty bad design failure for WvW where the server load prevents reliable precision timing of abilities, especially in top tiers.

Kalan.9705:

One aspect of engineer issues is requiring 3x as many button presses to do about the same as 1 button press on another character is a pretty bad design failure for WvW where the server load prevents reliable precision timing of abilities, especially in top tiers.

Good point, I didn’t consider that. Rifle 1 is a pretty decent ranged auto, though, and from my understanding that’s the most important thing in huge lagfest fights? I never really stay in those, so I don’t know for sure.

clearly you fought crappy warriors the warriors i ve seen land 29k with an axe and up to 15k with kill shot

Thiefs evolved now they spam Sword #3 landing for 9k+ good luck dodging it too cuz sword #2 is a shadow step/stun beaker.

The last patch effectively destroyed the bunker engineer. If you knew how to use elixir s, medkit, the %25 health elixir s, with the heal resets (throw bomb kit in there too) , you could become a true bunker. As far as I can tell we no longer have the ability to bunker on any level we could before the last patch.

Raijinn.9065:

The last patch effectively destroyed the bunker engineer. If you knew how to use elixir s, medkit, the %25 health elixir s, with the heal resets (throw bomb kit in there too) , you could become a true bunker. As far as I can tell we no longer have the ability to bunker on any level we could before the last patch.

Healing turret improvements were a slight help to mid-point bunkers, but honestly we’ll never be as good as a guardian there. I run a side-point bunker build very similar to the one you’re describing. It’s still possible, but now very difficult and you have to plan ahead a lot.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Raijinn.9065:

The last patch effectively destroyed the bunker engineer. If you knew how to use elixir s, medkit, the %25 health elixir s, with the heal resets (throw bomb kit in there too) , you could become a true bunker. As far as I can tell we no longer have the ability to bunker on any level we could before the last patch.

Healing turret improvements were a slight help to mid-point bunkers, but honestly we’ll never be as good as a guardian there. I run a side-point bunker build very similar to the one you’re describing. It’s still possible, but now very difficult and you have to plan ahead a lot.

I believe that was an attempt to get people to stop using medkit and elixir h more. They have shown that they will nerf and ability or build just so we have no choice but to use other things

Amazes me to see sooo many not get the picture. It takes five minutes fighting in any other class to see there’s loads wrong with PVE in engineers or have some of you truly forgotten the 7 months of nerfs? I haven’t. I see it every time i login to a level 70+ zone and trust me I’m using one of the tried and true geared builds to boot.

It’s really sad that people actually think it’s perfectly fine.

tigirius.9014:

Amazes me to see sooo many not get the picture. It takes five minutes fighting in any other class to see there’s loads wrong with PVE in engineers or have some of you truly forgotten the 7 months of nerfs? I haven’t. I see it every time i login to a level 70+ zone and trust me I’m using one of the tried and true geared builds to boot.

It’s really sad that people actually think it’s perfectly fine.

I haven’t forgotten them either. I’ve always said that engineers were strongest at launch and have gotten weaker since then, because it’s true. Old juggernaut, old grenade 1, old kit refinement, old smoke bomb—all were incredibly powerful, way more powerful than the current engineer profession.

That said, engineers still aren’t bad at PvE and pretty good in tournaments and WvW. There are some huge problems, such as broken traits and lack of build diversity. But the bottom line is that I play an engineer because even with all the problems, it’s still more fun for me than other professions.

Edit: almost forgot—original incendiary powder! That stuff was good…

I don’t know why I keep coming back to these forums. Maybe it’s because I still hope Arena Net gets back to their senses and and buff what is right to buff and nerf what really should be nerfed.

The game feels really weird in contrast to the actual devs. It seems like the original developers are gone, maybe they are from another country. The actual can only tweak a few numbers up and down every month to justify their work and nothing more. No real skill additions, no animation modifiers, no nothing. The engineer skills are very complex and maybe the devs lack the tools to fix certain bugs. This is the only explanation I have.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Also, we really need to stop saying that damage per button press = balance.

Yeah but most people won’t understand that. It was the same in 8 years of WoW: “But they have that, so we demand to have it too!!!!”. One of my professors at uni also lamented that explaining context-sensitive languages versus context-free languages in regards is beyond most people. So that might be the issue, people forget the context.

Engineer is considered viable in all modes. Unlike Warriors, who are considered useless in PvP, Thieves and Rangers are considered dead weight in dungeons. Engies are pretty much the most variable class in the game, being able to be useful in a multitude of situations. If you go into kits, they actually have up to 4 weapon sets, with no cooldown on weaponswap. The engies are the reason they put cooldown timers on the on-swap effect sigils. (You’re comparing Ranger Sb to Engineer Pistol? Well for one, sure the Sb shoots more rapidly, but the pistol does mini AoE on hit, and if you build your engie right you’ll have access to more conditions and CCs then Sb could ever muster.)

Kalan.9705:

As long as there is 1 useable build left you’ll always find some forum hero who strokes his ego by saying everything is fine as long as his build is untouched.

So because I found a build I liked—with the Flamethrower and Elixir Gun—that hasn’t been nerfed into the ground and has actually been buffed, that makes me “some forum hero?”

I now use the Healing Turret more than ever. You guys complain that all they can do is tweak and adjust numbers, but they re-designed the way the Healing Turret works entirely. It was a weird adjustment at first but it’s way more conducive to how I play my Engineer now.

I now use Elixir U much more often, and competes for slots with Elixir R and Elixir B where they used to always just sit on my bar. It was recently buffed to always be a projectile wall, which really helps out a lot in many dungeons. Do you have any idea how nice it is to play a class that not only provides projectile walls, but also has Water fields, grants Might and Fury to my group, and can tank all with the same build?

You guys wanna sit here and moan about how the Grenade Kit was nerfed six months ago despite still being the best ranged DPS in the game, go for it. But don’t construe players like myself as being blind, manipulated, or simply those that “don’t get it.”

I have a level 80 Warrior and Guardian and an Elementalist at 47 that I’m working on. I do play other classes, tigirius. I still enjoy the Engineer more than any of them.

Dual.8953:

Engineer is considered viable in all modes. Unlike Warriors, who are considered useless in PvP, Thieves and Rangers are considered dead weight in dungeons. Engies are pretty much the most variable class in the game, being able to be useful in a multitude of situations.

This. A lot of comments I keep seeing, want us to be like the Warrior. While the Warrior is the king of dps in PvE, they take a huge tax for this in PvP. I’d rather be decent all around than good in only one area.

Like I said earlier, the Engineer still brings more to a party than most Warriors do. Most Warriors are still stuck in this “I canz dps” mentality.

Carighan.6758:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Also, we really need to stop saying that damage per button press = balance.

Yeah but most people won’t understand that. It was the same in 8 years of WoW: “But they have that, so we demand to have it too!!!!”. One of my professors at uni also lamented that explaining context-sensitive languages versus context-free languages in regards is beyond most people. So that might be the issue, people forget the context.

Actually it is when a class is under the classification of a DPS heavy classification such as adventurer. That’s what engineer is supposed to be according to the devs, if that’s true why don’t we have a burst DPS capability in PVE, the demands most dungeon runners make on class selection tells us there isn’t one. If not then make it a soldier class with heavy armor. Either way there’s a change to be made big time and reworking to be done especially in traits. We have traits in the wrong places and we have traits that overlap cutting off much needed added dps and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of the problems.

Add to that the breakage from the nerfs not only to kits in an attempt make gadgets more desireable and the nerfs prior to making it a separate behavior per skill in PVE PVP WVW and you’ve got a big problem. No leetist argument that people need to lrn2play or should go back to WoW isn’t going to change the numbers. (or my personal favorite that just because the class works well in PVP WVW that PVE isn’t important or broken which i see in these forums all the time)

Engineers are fun, they have alot of choices and no one is saying that they aren’t or don’t, what we’re saying is they need to crap or get off the pot with alot of the problems with this class either it’s a class that’s capable of burst DPS which is now the new “must have” for everything it seems, or they need to make it a soldier class. Kit refinement is a great example of what is wrong with their thinking instead of actually buffing gadgets with much needed boons (like the 25% run speed we still don’t have) they’ve gone and broken many of the kit refinements entirely in an attempt to make them less desireable then the gadgets, that kind of thinking when doing balance leads to more problems not less.

There’s alot to fix that’s been broken and it’s piling up.

tigirius.9014:

Actually it is when a class is under the classification of a DPS heavy classification such as adventurer.

ANet never said adventurer class = DPS. So why do you expect that?