Preface: I main engineer. I have somewhere around 3k hours on it. I’ve been playing since launch.
To the forum moderators
Please don’t relegate this post to the engineer forum. The devs don’t look at it. Nobody on the staff at ANet seems to look at it either: we still have a thread from the BWE3 of HoT pinned to the top of the forum. It’s a year and a half old, and the last time we saw a dev on the forum.
See for yourselves, if you don’t believe me.
To the ANet Devs
The last few balance patches to engineer have left me wondering if anybody on the development team plays engineer for more than a brief passing period. The reason I wonder this is because there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason behind the changes. Let’s take a look at some examples:
- 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.
Blunderbuss is skill #3 on an engineer’s rifle. The rifle is currently suffering from a host of different issues including underwhelming damage and generally being out-of-date. The rifle is not, however, suffering from a lack of condition damage. The rifle was, and has always been, a power-based weapon. What on earth is the reasoning behind bleeding instead of vulnerability? Why is this skill, which is so hard to pull off properly, being given a minor condi damage buff?
- Blowtorch: The number of burning applications that this skill applies has been increased from 1/2/3 to 2/3/4.
This is #4 skill on Pistol/Pistol offhand. Blowtorch was already a go-to on the condi engineer’s playbook. It wasn’t hurting for lack of burning. So why was it buffed? What was the reasoning? I’m not complaining because I love the increase in DPS, but why buff the meta build even further?
- Elixir U: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
Utility skill that gives you quickness for about 4-5 seconds. The toolbelt skill either puts up a reflect wall or smoke screen (50/50). The thing is… Elixir U is almost never used, in any build. I only ever put it on for the toolbelt reflects in the Uncategorized Fractal. Why is this getting a minor change to cooldown when it’s still so underwhelming?
- Big Ol’ Bomb: This skill is now affected by Short Fuse. The visual size of this bomb has been increased by 33%.
This bug in Big Ol’ Bomb has been around since launch, roughly. Why has it taken this long to finally get fixed?
- 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.
Another case of bugs being fixed that have been around a while. Used to be that smoke bomb (a non-damaging bomb) could inflict shrapnel’s effect onto enemies. Why did this take so long to fix?
And these are just a handful of the odd changes made by devs in the recent past. You can probably go back over the last year and wonder what they’re thinking. My bet is that they don’t play the class and don’t know how to balance it.
The Crux of the Matter
I’ve read some great suggestions on the engineer forum. I’ve read some bad suggestions. But what I haven’t read is a recent dev post discussing any changes. Gifts are granted from on high, and gifts are taken away from high. But there is very little communication between the players and the devs around the engineer.
And this is starting to come to a head. Build diversity for engineers is at an all-time low. We have one primary build for PvE, and one primary build for PvP. Anything else is very situational and will get you mocked. Yes, all classes are suffering from a lack of diversity (HoT aggravated the problem with powercreep, IMO). But engineer is probably in the saddest state I’ve ever seen it — the vast majority of utilities are never used (and I mean never), I haven’t seen rifle or shield used competitively in well over a year, and there are many completely useless traits that are never touched.
So ANet. We need to talk about the engineer.
(edited by Vagrant.7206)
