Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: This thread is purely my opinion on the engineer class, it is not fact. Also, i only play WvW so my opinions can be a lot different to those who play Spvp and PvE. This post is mainly about kits seeming turrets seem highly situational, and the survivability is laughable, and gadgets i rarely use due to long CD. Elixirs im fine with.

I’ve been playing Gw2 for a little over two months and the only character I’ve spent time on is an engineer which i leveled to 80. I’ve been lvl 80 for about 6 weeks and theres a lot of things i dont quite understand. ( /age turns up 371 hours in the past 55 days). I should also state that before playing GW2 i was a WoW player for 7 years, 9 max level characters, 260 days playtime on a paladin.

The engineer seems conflicted, it cant decide whether its a ranged class or melee class. Now i can understand that each class in the game needs a variety of abilities to choose from in order to build a melee or a ranged type build but even when you look at the abilities themselves things dont make sense.

Take our primary weapons, These can both be traited to increase the range to 1200 but at that range many of the skills are useless. Id say that 4 of the rifle abilities are sub-standard at range (#2 misses most of the time and only hits close to the target, #3 only does any real damage standing next to the target, #4 ill give you that but it knocks us down the same amount of time as the enemy, #5 rarely can could jump in from range and get someone with it, you really have to have them imobalized). Then with the pistol 3 are only good close range ( #2 the spread is horrible, #4 more damage the closer you are, #5 moves so slow they could walk out of its path). Now, saying that, arnt these suppose to be our main ranged weapons?

Looking at the kits, we only have one long ranged kit, which is of course the grenade kit. The other kits are purely short-mid ranged kits (bomb kit is melee only, tool kit is a melee/block/pull kit, FT is close-mid range but through using it, close range is the only way to really hit anything. I would add elixir kit to this list too, even though it does have ranged abilities in it, id say #2 travels too slow and can be avoided, #3 only seems to land on target in close-mid ranged and the hardest hitting ability, #4, requires you to be in melee to begin with).

Grenades as a ranged kit are fine, i dislike them due to them be ground targeted, which can be a giant pain in fast moving pvp combat, but i realize many people do like it and it should be kept the way it is. Now apart from that, there is no other kit to choose from. It seems that most of the time i should be close to the enemy to use alot of attacks.I did read on the wiki that engineers were slotted to wear heavy armor but were given medium armor instead, reading that this all seems to make sense. why we’re given so much melee oriented attack styles but yet we, to me, just seem too squishy.

Im disappointed with the lack of ranged options we have, to me it feels like we were cheated out of a kit or two. Why is it that Grenade kit is our only ranged kit? I feel we should have a sniper kit, which everyone and their uncle seems to be asking for, or a mini gun kit, i know my norn would love to be running around screaming " cry some more!"

It just seems to me that engineers are confused and not finished, dont get me wrong, i do like playing an engineer but i always have that nagging sensation at the back of my mind that something is wrong. Well these are my feelings on the matter, sorry for the wall o text.

Well that is a pretty kitten good observation.
I think you hit it on the head.

It seems the Engineer is lacking most because it never had clear defined goal of what they wanted the profession to be. It was more of a add something, test a bit and adjust and some of the skills seem like they were just tacked on right at the last minute.

I love the Engineer and it is my favorite profession to play with because I have the most fun. But I am still hoping that one day the Dev’s Luv Scope will focus in on the profession and give it a much need revision.

I hope they do too, if they don’t then I want to see the gameplay developers actually come into WvW as a test to see how they fair with this class. I am sure if they did, revisions would be made quickly. Engies always should have had heavy armor, they should be built like tanks and would explain the low damage/ low speeds of this character.
I hope the devs will spread some much needed steroids to this class, if and when they do they will soon see more people becoming engies. Engies are fun to play, just really poorly matched.

mzt.3270:

I hope they do too, if they don’t then I want to see the gameplay developers actually come into WvW as a test to see how they fair with this class. I am sure if they did, revisions would be made quickly. Engies always should have had heavy armor, they should be built like tanks and would explain the low damage/ low speeds of this character.
I hope the devs will spread some much needed steroids to this class, if and when they do they will soon see more people becoming engies. Engies are fun to play, just really poorly matched.

It will always make me sad engies didn’t get the heavy armor they deserve :/ We got awesome tanky sounding traits like Juggernaut that just scream HEAVY!! Yet we will always be expected to run in to medium-close range with medium armor.

But anyways yeah the current engie has no idea what it wants to be, though it leans a lot toward close range fights. The engie is not a “mid range” fighter like arenanet states. There is no such thing as mid range, you are either fighting at close or long range here. Heck even the engies skills are either close or long range but not in between.

Mid range is a dev fantasy with no basis in reality, just like, engineers are versatile. Engineers can’t move around the battlefield well (no swiftness doesn’t count for anything, anyone can get swiftness) they lack gap closers/openers.

Also Heavy armour would have made much more sense.

Actually..engineers are mid range fighters. Our skills (melee and short range/mid/ long range kits) and mid range weapons requires us to move in and out during combat.

lchan.2169:

Actually..engineers are mid range fighters. Our skills (melee and short range/mid/ long range kits) and mid range weapons requires us to move in and out during combat.

So would you say that our way of fighting is designed to be that we rush in, unload as much as possible then run and hide till we can do it again? Because that just seems like a thief to me.

I think alot of our taxes and counterbalancing was based around wearing Heavy Armor.
I think that is why most of our skills have interuptable cast times instead of instant cast.
I think that is why alot of our skills self-CC.
And of course the lower damage on most our skills.

Alot of our traits seemed to be centered around tanking and being in the middle of battle but because of our lesser armor they are more used for escaping and keeping distance.

Maybe one day the will hit us the right way with the balance hammer.
I won’t care that much in an hour though since Simcity will be my new home.

Sororita.3465:

lchan.2169:

Actually..engineers are mid range fighters. Our skills (melee and short range/mid/ long range kits) and mid range weapons requires us to move in and out during combat.

So would you say that our way of fighting is designed to be that we rush in, unload as much as possible then run and hide till we can do it again? Because that just seems like a thief to me.

yes. i believe so. engi is just not built for pvp. Regardless of how you build the character its always going to be the weaker one. However in wvw, our role is truely support, looking around to give a warrior/guardian the extra edge to kill an enemy. The same with running dungeons. We stay mid range, move in and out.

Still, there is never one perfect build because it depends on individual gameplay. My build is extreme condition damage, toughness and vitality. From mid range i dump so much condition damage that it makes melee character’s life much easier. While the cond dmg is working, i have a choice to either provide further support like throwing throwing an elixir or minor healing to front forward fighters or move in with my wrench to put vulnerability and confusion and move back out.

lchan.2169:

yes. i believe so. engi is just not built for pvp. Regardless of how you build the character its always going to be the weaker one. However in wvw, our role is truely support, looking around to give a warrior/guardian the extra edge to kill an enemy. The same with running dungeons. We stay mid range, move in and out.

Still, there is never one perfect build because it depends on individual gameplay. My build is extreme condition damage, toughness and vitality. From mid range i dump so much condition damage that it makes melee character’s life much easier. While the cond dmg is working, i have a choice to either provide further support like throwing throwing an elixir or minor healing to front forward fighters or move in with my wrench to put vulnerability and confusion and move back out.

sad that we have to heavily rely on other players in order to function as wellas others then, it seems our best spot in WvW would be in a zerg providing short timer buffs and good heals.

Good summary in the OP.

As a solo performer the Eng is challenged (yes, I know some people can play Eng’s the way Hendrix did guitars – but most people aren’t Jimi Hendrix).

I’m finding the engineer seems best suited to supporting others (after the latest patch, this now includes supporting other engineers, so that’s a step in the right direction). This means the party can shine. However it takes a while for Eng’s to learn how best to support other players. And even when they do the other players have to be mature enough to realise that, although the Eng in the party may not be racking up a big kill tally, the Eng is helping the rest of the party to do that.

The gist of all this is the Eng has a long learning curve, and even when mastered they are still at their best supporting other players (with the exception of 100nades builds which seem to be the only Eng solo dps build).

Sororita.3465:

lchan.2169:

yes. i believe so. engi is just not built for pvp. Regardless of how you build the character its always going to be the weaker one. However in wvw, our role is truely support, looking around to give a warrior/guardian the extra edge to kill an enemy. The same with running dungeons. We stay mid range, move in and out.

Still, there is never one perfect build because it depends on individual gameplay. My build is extreme condition damage, toughness and vitality. From mid range i dump so much condition damage that it makes melee character’s life much easier. While the cond dmg is working, i have a choice to either provide further support like throwing throwing an elixir or minor healing to front forward fighters or move in with my wrench to put vulnerability and confusion and move back out.

sad that we have to heavily rely on other players in order to function as wellas others then, it seems our best spot in WvW would be in a zerg providing short timer buffs and good heals.

Guardian, elementalist, mesmer, ranger, necro, warrior: all of these can offer superior support with the right builds.

Bombs and elixirs lack a great deal of polish.