Guild Wars 2

I really want to like my Engineer but alot of her skills seems lacking.
Are they ever going to make Flamethrower better?

I also wish that the rifle skills was more like the warriors.

Right now im just holding of playing until i see some good changes for the engineer.

Not really sure if I would like rifle skills similar to that of a warrior as they seem rather bland like the rest of the class.

Saying that though I wouldn’t mind rifle skills feeling more like your using a rifle.

Flamethrower is only kinda bad at the moment because you can’t use the 3-2 combo without it bugging out 90% of the time. Kit scaling is an issue but its a pretty hot topic here and I’m sure the devs are aware of it.

How would one go about making the flame thrower “better”?

Why do we need rifle skills like the warrior? That is why folks play warriors.

The rifle skills would be perfect for a shotgun… IMO they should take all current rifle skills and make it a shotgun-kit and add some real rifle skills with 1200 range for the weapon.

The problem I see with rifle is two fold:

1) Hip firing rifles looks stupid as kitten.

2) It lacks the damage a main weapon should have and makes power based builds more reliant on kits for damage than their main weapon.

Now let’s compare the rifle to the flamethrower, in this comparison I will be ignoring the buggy nature of flamethrower skills and how it doesn’t scale well at all.

Skill #1: Not much to say here, however flamethrower’s range is more in line with the effective range of the class outside of grenades.

Skill #2: Rifles is a utility immobilize, and a good one at that, flamethrower is a short range direct damage AE nuke.

Skill #3: The only real effective damage skill aside from autoattack rifle has, reliant on very close range, flamethrower has utility knockback.

Skill #4: Rifle has knockback that’s worse than the flamethrower one because it is not cone AoE. Flamethrower has utility flame field and small damage.

Skill #5: Rifle has a clunky gap closer that can’t really be effectively used for damage on any moving target and is an effective 1s stun on yourself but other than that is ok, flamethrower has a one time pbae blind; both of these skills are subpar.

So, rifle and flamethrower both has one solid damage skill (blunderbuss and flame blast)
the only real difference between these weapons is the flamethrower auto attack operates at a effective range that synergises with the rest of the engi abilities and has one more utility ability.

The point of this is the rifle is too much of a utility weapon to be considered a main weapon in my eyes, any power based build that wants to do damage uses grenades as their main weapons for pretty much every range.

Compare this to pistols, not going to run through an in depth comparison but for any build that uses condition damage will be using their pistol(s) as their main weapon due to the damage it has and any kits they might have as utility to supplement their main weapon, which is the way I felt the system should be designed.

Making rifle skills more like warriors would solve my issues with the weapon, but is not a change I would like implemented because honestly, warrior rifle skills are boring.

Excuse me? Rifles lack main hand damage? You are aware that engineers are capable of dropping 12k crits with a rifle build. also, kits don’t scale with stats. Their damage is naturally inferior unless it’s traited grenades.

Seriously.

That 1) complaint isn’t even gameplay-changing. It’s an aesthetic that you personally don’t agree on.

Warrior’s rifle skills are terrible. They lack the control that Engineer skills have, as well as the versatility. If you want a bland, direct-damage ranged weapon then you should be playing a warrior.

I agree with lifelike.

Hipfiring looks stupid? Hip firing is a tactic used in real life when in less optimal situations, which the engineer is always in. The engineer may seem “comical” but thats because he is a nade chuckin, flamethrowerin shotgun using Combat engineer, The engineer is more at home in trenchs then open warfare, Because he is in the back lines using artillery such as morters, rather then upfront damage like the warrior.

if you guys wanna do direct damage at 1200 range, please, play a warrior. I LOVE the way the rifle works for engineer, and shotguns/rifles are not much diffrent from weapons perspectives. A shotgun is not a rifle for one simple fact. The barrel of a shotgun does not contain rifling, so its for the most part, just a rifle with a larger barrel, and no rifling. To make an entirely diffrent kit just so you guys can play soldier is silly.

@the 5 comparison, yeah, jumpshot is lacking animation wise, that sucks, if they fixed the animation it would be SO GOOD. and I dont think you understand the power that is flamethrower 5, it can be used at anytime since it has no frames….

For soloing I really like the rifle/FT combo, the amount of control I get from these two weapons in close range is amazing between the kb’s and immobilize. I have found it more effective to use the rifle kb then switch to ft to land flame blast since it actually knocks down the target. Of course if there are multiple targets the self kb off rifle can be a small issue at times so have to adapt to that situation. I also really enjoy the elixir gun yes even geared for power immobilizing a enemy in the acid bomb does a ton of dmg (of course I am speaking from mostly a pve perspective). I know nades do much more raw dmg than either ft or elixir gun or rifle, I just find them cumbersome to use solo without having to constantly circle strafe, at least with rifle/ft or rifle/elixir I feel like I can get in and out of situations a little easier using almost hit and run tactics of large bursts in short periods then controlling my enemy. I realize this style of play is not for everyone, especially those looking to drop enemies in the absolute fastest way possible but I really enjoy controlling enemy movement in most games I play and as of yet I have not seen a combo of weapons that work better for this than using rifle and ft or eg.

Hipfiring looks stupid? Hip firing is a tactic used in real life when in less optimal situations, which the engineer is always in. The engineer may seem “comical” but thats because he is a nade chuckin, flamethrowerin shotgun using Combat engineer, The engineer is more at home in trenchs then open warfare, Because he is in the back lines using artillery such as morters, rather then upfront damage like the warrior.

Hip firing a shotgun or rifle irl is extremely rare and would hardly call it a tactic. It is extremely rare because it is innacurate and will likely hurt you, especially if you do it repeatedly.

Whether or not you think it looks stupid is up to the individual but please for the love of god don’t try to argue realism in favor of hip firing.

if you guys wanna do direct damage at 1200 range, please, play a warrior. I LOVE the way the rifle works for engineer, and shotguns/rifles are not much diffrent from weapons perspectives. A shotgun is not a rifle for one simple fact. The barrel of a shotgun does not contain rifling, so its for the most part, just a rifle with a larger barrel, and no rifling. To make an entirely diffrent kit just so you guys can play soldier is silly.

We can do direct damage at 1200 range, it’s called grenade, kinda sucks for moving targets though. I would settle for being able to do good damage at close range on rifle.

@the 5 comparison, yeah, jumpshot is lacking animation wise, that sucks, if they fixed the animation it would be SO GOOD. and I dont think you understand the power that is flamethrower 5, it can be used at anytime since it has no frames….

Yeah flamethrower 5 is alright, I just wish it was a field or something. As for jump shot, if they made it a viable damage ability I would be ecstatic, if they made rifle into a main weapon rather than what is essentially another kit with stats I would also be happy.

I differentiate kits and main weapons on the assumption that kits are designed to supplement your main weapon, not replace it.

And yes, I’m aware of the mechanical differences between rifles and shotguns, rifles are rifled so they can shoot further, I don’t know why you think shotguns normally have larger barrels than rifles though: they don’t.

The thing is, kits DON’T compete with the rifle for damage unless you’re using grenades. Engineer rifle actually has very respectable damage. My partner’s crit rifle build has insane burst that’s much more reliable than the grenade kits’ slow moving projectiles, as well as the huge amount of control that comes with wielding a rifle. Save for grenades with the grenadier trait, you simply lose too many stats with a weapon kit for it to be considered a ‘replacement’ for the rifle at all. I have no idea where you’re getting that from. Most engineers I’ve seen agree that rifle is the way to go for damage if you’re not using grenades, and wish that kits were stronger overall and/or carried stats from a mainhand weapon.

Engie rifle only does slightly less damage than Warrior’s rifle per shot, and comes with way more utility, moblity, and control. trait for trait, I think engineers get the best tradeoffs.

Ok, are we talking about PvP or PvE here?

If we are talking about PvE then any dps engineer WILL be using grenades because it does better damage in every imaginable situation, these engineers will only be swapping to rifle to blunderbus or maybe to knockback.

Since we’re talking about PvE the slow moving projectiles are irrelevant because mobs are either stationary or following a predictable path, yes some will miss but not enough to offset the massive dps gain from using grenades over rifles.

As for burst, grenades are comparable to rifle.

Yes, rifles do have control, that’s why I am saying its used to supplement to main weapon in this case (grenades)

If you don’t have grenades in your PvE DPS build it isn’t a very good DPS build.

@ the comparison between engi and warrior rifle, the auto attack is similar yes, however iirc every warrior rifle ability is pure damage, so as for them dishing out equal damage once you factor in abilities just no.

If we’re talking about PvP its a different story entirely because control is far more important than DPS generally.

“Hip firing a shotgun or rifle irl is extremely rare and would hardly call it a tactic. It is extremely rare because it is innacurate and will likely hurt you, especially if you do it repeatedly.”

Not exactly, you just have to be trained properly and be used to using the firearm in such a manner, Is it regular and ordinary? not at all, and very few people would actually find vaule in the skill, but engineer is all about using odd tactics hence the rifle moves. lol

@barrel comment, this is true, but I guess its cause we just shoot .22 LR when I shoot, and so shotguns always seem larger, but then again, there are plenty of rifles like that too.

I have to agree with nofo on most of the points.

And yes the hipshot looks kitten stupid. I dont know about you other races but my charr’s coat flys up each time he shoots. It looks like I’m trying to be Marilyn Monroe standing on an air vent.

Skills like the Blunderbuss even look stupid if you have one of the sniper rifle weapons equipped.

Heres an idea, replace blunderbuss with a machinegun styled attack, have it use the spread styled similar to poison darts (and change poison darts to act like volly shot, aka not randomly around the target but AT the target) have it still apply bleeding, fires maybe 8 shots really fast. This way it still has the “deals more damage the closer you are” aspect but also can be used at ranged and be effective against groups at a distance. Can call it Clip Discharge.

Replace skill 5 with a grenade launcher, as rifles tend to come with grenade launcher attachments, and the the engi seems to be all about the ordinance. have it add vulnerability in 2 stages. a direct hit adds 6 vulnerability while the “splash zone” only applys 3. maybe even have the direct hit deal more damage than the “splash zone”.

And there you have it,
Skill 1 – Ranged damage
Skill 2 – Ranged immobilize
Skill 3 – Heavy close ranged damage/moderate ranged damage, with varying stacks of bleeding on one or many targets.
Skill 4 – Emergency “get out of my face” skill
Skill 5 – Ranged aoe damage and vulnerability

Skills still pretty much do the same a they do now, just with out the need to be in the enemys face and the skills are even cooler with still having an engineer feel to them.
——
First lets assume the flamethrower bugs are fixed, they would be skill 1 hits 5 targets instead of 3, it can hit objects while your moving, the flame graphic follows the hit zone. and Skill 2 doesnt fail after using skill 3. I’m sure there is more I just have forgot them.

skill 1, once fully fixed seems alright to me. maybe move the burn effect to the middle of the casting instead of the end. but w/e
skill 2, needs an option to detonate early.
skill 3 seems fine.
skill 4; napalm needs to apply cripple to any one that walks though it as well as the burn. maybe even a stun or knockdown when they walk into it. It needs to act as a barrier to limit enemy movement.
I would change skill 5 create a smoke area instead of the 1 time blindness. Maybe just take the flame turret’s over charge and copy it over to here would work fine.

Not exactly, you just have to be trained properly and be used to using the firearm in such a manner, Is it regular and ordinary? not at all, and very few people would actually find vaule in the skill, but engineer is all about using odd tactics hence the rifle moves. lol
@barrel comment, this is true, but I guess its cause we just shoot .22 LR when I shoot, and so shotguns always seem larger, but then again, there are plenty of rifles like that too.

Yeah fair enough its fantasy and lots of leeway of silliness is allowed.

I was looking forward to getting a legendary on my engineer though, had the map completed and enough gold saved to buy a precurser.

Then I looked at the legendaries. The pistol just looks bad and the rifle looks awesome except for the fact its rather large, has a scope and a silencer.

Hipfiring that thing pushes the boundaries of silly wayyyy too far.

Nofo, considering how there are lots of engineers who love the rifle the way it is now and it’s unlikely ANet are going to change it – at least not to any great degree, perhaps it would be better to argue for a legendary that looked like an awesome shotgun with moving cogs and other kinds of sticky out engineer thingies. That’s what I would like, anyway, because you’re right, engineers don’t have a legendary right now.

nofo.8469:

Hipfiring that thing pushes the boundaries of silly wayyyy too far.

Agreed haha.

I love when folks post trying to tell us a list of broken or “wrong” issues with something, when the rest of the player base is using it successfully. Nothing is wrong with the rifle. Every day someone makes post attempting to get a weapon, skill, or utility changed to match how they want it for their specific play style.

Hip shot is a great animation. Leave it alone.

coglin.1496:

I love when folks post trying to tell us a list of broken or “wrong” issues with something, when the rest of the player base is using it successfully. Nothing is wrong with the rifle. Every day someone makes post attempting to get a weapon, skill, or utility changed to match how they want it for their specific play style.

Hip shot is a great animation. Leave it alone.

If you’re going to tell me I’m wrong can you at least give reasons, it’s what forums are for: to discuss.

Maybe I am just playing engineer wrong and the rest of the playerbase is much better than myself? If so perhaps you should tell me how the rifle can be used as a main weapon in PvE over grenades in a power based build.

Hip fire is great to you, quite a few people disagree with you however.

I never said you were wrong. As far as I know the OP is the only one who stated that some of the skills were wrong. Not sure why you assume my post referred to you and you alone, I never quoted your post or anything.

That is correct, hip shot is a great animation to me, apparently to the game creators, and to a extremely vast amount of posters who say it is fine in 5,288 other threads.

I never said you were wrong. As far as I know the OP is the only one who stated that some of the skills were wrong. Not sure why you assume my post referred to you and you alone, I never quoted your post or anything.
That is correct, hip shot is a great animation to me, apparently to the game creators, and to a extremely vast amount of posters who say it is fine in 5,288 other threads.

I assumed you were referring to my post as it is one of the few in the thread who actually gave a list on why the rifle is “broken” and “wrong”

If you were not though, my apologies.

As for hip firing, I see far more posts disagreeing with it than praising it.

I believe you made a post in another thread about engineers being the least played class because lots of people dislike the way engineers are thematically handled.

Perhaps not having any decent looking legendaries and hip firing rifles are part of this reason.

Excuse me? Rifles lack main hand damage? You are aware that engineers are capable of dropping 12k crits with a rifle build. also, kits don’t scale with stats. Their damage is naturally inferior unless it’s traited grenades.
Seriously.
That 1) complaint isn’t even gameplay-changing. It’s an aesthetic that you personally don’t agree on.
Warrior’s rifle skills are terrible. They lack the control that Engineer skills have, as well as the versatility. If you want a bland, direct-damage ranged weapon then you should be playing a warrior.

Yes, I’m aware that kits in general aside from the grenade kit do bad damage and are used to supplement your main weapon.

12k crits? Sweet, on that one damage ability that rifle has? Get real, if you think rifle is a good primary dps weapon you are a bad engineer.

If you want a bland, direct-damage ranged weapon then you should be playing a warrior.

Let’s ignore the bland part for a second because that only means bad implementation. Are you seriously trying to say engineers shouldn’t have access to a direct damage ranged weapon?

nofo.8469:

As for hip firing, I see far more posts disagreeing with it than praising it.

What did you do, just read the post on this thread over a day or so? Try reading the discussions with more posters. There are a ridiculous number of threads that get into this. By no means is there any evidence of the general population demanding a graphic change. It is quit the opposite.

coglin.1496:

nofo.8469:

As for hip firing, I see far more posts disagreeing with it than praising it.

What did you do, just read the post on this thread over a day or so? Try reading the discussions with more posters. There are a ridiculous number of threads that get into this. By no means is there any evidence of the general population demanding a graphic change. It is quit the opposite.

You mean like this thread?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Hip-Shot-Name-and-Animation-change

You are the only person in this thread that seems to like it, with the exception of some guy who thinks hip firing a shotgun is more realistic.

XelNigma.6315:

I have to agree with nofo on most of the points.

And yes the hipshot looks kitten stupid. I dont know about you other races but my charr’s coat flys up each time he shoots. It looks like I’m trying to be Marilyn Monroe standing on an air vent.

Skills like the Blunderbuss even look stupid if you have one of the sniper rifle weapons equipped.

Heres an idea, replace blunderbuss with a machinegun styled attack, have it use the spread styled similar to poison darts (and change poison darts to act like volly shot, aka not randomly around the target but AT the target) have it still apply bleeding, fires maybe 8 shots really fast. This way it still has the “deals more damage the closer you are” aspect but also can be used at ranged and be effective against groups at a distance. Can call it Clip Discharge.

Replace skill 5 with a grenade launcher, as rifles tend to come with grenade launcher attachments, and the the engi seems to be all about the ordinance. have it add vulnerability in 2 stages. a direct hit adds 6 vulnerability while the “splash zone” only applys 3. maybe even have the direct hit deal more damage than the “splash zone”.

And there you have it,
Skill 1 – Ranged damage
Skill 2 – Ranged immobilize
Skill 3 – Heavy close ranged damage/moderate ranged damage, with varying stacks of bleeding on one or many targets.
Skill 4 – Emergency “get out of my face” skill
Skill 5 – Ranged aoe damage and vulnerability

Skills still pretty much do the same a they do now, just with out the need to be in the enemys face and the skills are even cooler with still having an engineer feel to them.
——
First lets assume the flamethrower bugs are fixed, they would be skill 1 hits 5 targets instead of 3, it can hit objects while your moving, the flame graphic follows the hit zone. and Skill 2 doesnt fail after using skill 3. I’m sure there is more I just have forgot them.

skill 1, once fully fixed seems alright to me. maybe move the burn effect to the middle of the casting instead of the end. but w/e
skill 2, needs an option to detonate early.
skill 3 seems fine.
skill 4; napalm needs to apply cripple to any one that walks though it as well as the burn. maybe even a stun or knockdown when they walk into it. It needs to act as a barrier to limit enemy movement.
I would change skill 5 create a smoke area instead of the 1 time blindness. Maybe just take the flame turret’s over charge and copy it over to here would work fine.

lol @ the image of a charr posing as Marilyn Monroe now in my head.

Initially I thought the idea of a machine gun attack sounded pretty stupid but essentially its similar to what the pistol has, just faster and serves the same purpose as blunderbuss just a bit more versatile.

These are quite good ideas.

I do feel the rifle is more of a utility weapon then a main weapon. It should simply not be that way. Engineers should excell useing both rifles and pistols. No other class should be able to out dps us using a rifle or pistol. To some that may sound OP, but engineers excell at ( Engineering things) so why would they make something better for someone else?
I’m also not a big fan of the bomb kit. I know that bombs can be useful, however I feel like I’m just running from the fight instead of being in the fight. Just my opinion.

I would like to see maybe merging bombs with mines in someway to make a kit to use as defense. Wether that be point defense or personal defense. I just really don’t like the fuses where I’m running around throwing bombs over my shoulder like a mad man.

Lifelike.5862:

Excuse me? Rifles lack main hand damage? You are aware that engineers are capable of dropping 12k crits with a rifle build. also, kits don’t scale with stats. Their damage is naturally inferior unless it’s traited grenades.

Seriously.

That 1) complaint isn’t even gameplay-changing. It’s an aesthetic that you personally don’t agree on.

Warrior’s rifle skills are terrible. They lack the control that Engineer skills have, as well as the versatility. If you want a bland, direct-damage ranged weapon then you should be playing a warrior.

Can you send me the 12k crit rifle build then? If what you say is true the complains I make are not rectified.

YouTube bud. Plenty of vids showing 13,000 and more damage with jump shot. Many of them detail their builds.

coglin.1496:

YouTube bud. Plenty of vids showing 13,000 and more damage with jump shot. Many of them detail their builds.

Can you please give link? I can’t find them.

Yep.
Gief link, coglin.

Until the I assume the 12k crit with rifle 1 has been done with 3 orbs, fully food buffed in full zerkers with maximum might stacks, against a level 1 upscaled naked target.
And even then I don’t see it happening really.
… but I’d be glad to be corrected by a video proof. ^^

Feel free to make any incorrect assumptions you like. that is your business

I didn’t know if I believed it at first either, and I did a search on You tube that brought up a literally page of vids showing similar damage with the same skill.

I am not doing search’s for you, if you do not want to believe it that is fine by me, I have no desire to do the search for anyone once they get wise cracking with the orb/naked target sarcasm. I do not care if you believe it or not. I am P/S guy most of the time, I just happened to look it up after I got off work this morning and I read what Ferum Flamebender posted.

Besides, nofo will get all upset at the graphic of hip shot when the guy is using it to hit for 3k with constant crits.

I think maybe this thread got a little caried away on rifle dps. I myself don’t know the full dps of rifle build for engineer so I can’t speak on that. I think maybe what Scora was refering to is that our rifle skills is well boaring. Don’t get me wrong the controll is nice but it goes like this…

net shot..hip shot………hip shot……..hip shot……..blunderbuss..overcharged shot…… net shot.hip shot………hip shot………hip shot.

point is the rifle is slow and boaring. May have control, but still is boaring.

These threads always devolve into two sides; those that think Engineers need buffs, and those that think they are fine. They are not fine. There’s a reason they are the least played class right now. I see maybe one or two engineers in LA. I love the class and all its tricks, but that’s all I feel like at times, a trickster or a gimmick.

Turrets are a gimmick. Tool Kit is a gimmick. Bomb kit is laughable as a melee kit other than WELL coordinated groups that can stack finishers with your abilities. Mortar is a gimmick. You can leap on a mob, blunderbuss, switch to elixir gun and acid bomb, then back to rifle, look like a clown the entire time, then marvel how a ranger just out damaged you from range with one volley. The profession needs A LOT of work.

@Coglin, seriously, sometimes you make good points, but then you throw all of that to the curb with the nonsense you spout.

@Decklan, the reason the engineer is the “least” played class is because it is a very complicated class to play. You actually have to use more than 2 or 3 buttons to do well – CRAZY right!?

I’m really really not sure why you seem to be having so many problems doing damage, I roll with my friend who always plays his ranger in WvW and I am definitely the spike damage guy. If the engineer was as “broken” as you would have EVERYONE believe, we would be seeing more fixes than we’ve seen. Clearly the engineer is doing better than some of the other classes like say the necro or the ranger.

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Wow, are you guys really that obtuse?

I was making a sarcastic wise crack about Lifelike.5862 comment about 12k+ rifle crits. When a few of the extremely dense came at me about with back handed remarks, as if I was the one who said it originally (apparently their post got removed). They went on demanding I post links based on that sarcasm. When folks are that dense to make back handed remarks on such obvious sarcasm, it is all but required to edge them on.

Like Forty Seven Ninjas.6982, I thought you would have at least read the entire thread yourself and seen someone else said it, I just mocked it, yet you want to post as If I claimed it.

Seriously, 13k crits……..3k hipshots……….A full page of vids………You guys crack me up.

coglin.1496:

YouTube bud. Plenty of vids showing 13,000 and more damage with jump shot. Many of them detail their builds.

I can’t find such thing either? Am I just looking wrong?

It’s hard to believe engineers can to that mich damage, people would be dead in 2 seconds with this ‘12k crit build’. Therefore I do not believe it until i’m proven right with a video which shows me “the way” ^^

Decklan.7540:

These threads always devolve into two sides; those that think Engineers need buffs, and those that think they are fine. They are not fine. There’s a reason they are the least played class right now. I see maybe one or two engineers in LA. I love the class and all its tricks, but that’s all I feel like at times, a trickster or a gimmick.

Turrets are a gimmick. Tool Kit is a gimmick. Bomb kit is laughable as a melee kit other than WELL coordinated groups that can stack finishers with your abilities. Mortar is a gimmick. You can leap on a mob, blunderbuss, switch to elixir gun and acid bomb, then back to rifle, look like a clown the entire time, then marvel how a ranger just out damaged you from range with one volley. The profession needs A LOT of work.

I agree. Also about those 2 sides of engineers. I do not find those 13k crit builds.

If I remember later I will make a 12k jumpshot video and link it.

It’s not hard to do. If you spec 30 explosives 30 tools, have full stacks of might / bloodlust. The power + crit damage food and vulnerability up on a soft target using full berzerker gear.

Even without orb buffs it’s still easily doable. I did a 9k jumpshot last night during Hotw explorable.

Grenade barrage does very comparable damage.

Rifle does good damage that is slightly behind grenade. It feels less since the 1/2 skills of grenade hit harder than hipshot. But rifle is more bursty in nature with the 3/5. If you pair it with another kit. Tool kit or bomb kit. You can easily build rotations utilizing the kit moves to get good sustained dps.

Your just not spamming 1/2 as much. Rather than ~3k a second you do ~8k every 3 seconds.

But talking about 12k jumpshot making rifle really good on the dps is a bit of a red herring.

Sure you can hit hard with jump shot, just as you can hit hard with barrage. But the bulk of your dps is not from jump shot or barrage because both abilities have decently long cool downs, and a high miss rate in most situations.

If your playing rifle and counting on dps from just jumpshot / blunderbuss your not going to have an easy time of it. It is not a 2-3 button build, like grenade can be. If you want to do high dps with rifle, I’ve found you need to work a lot more into your builds. Utilize abilities like rifle turret for it’s fast tool belt skill, and the solid detonate damage, swap into kits like bomb / tool to take advantage of their auto attacks or bursty abilities like pry bar / confusion bomb, and learn to build and time rotations.

Engineers need some changes, many bug fixes, and the like. But there are a lot more options than most have really tried or experimented with.

I use to hate rocket boots, rifle turret, and elixir X. But now they important parts of a few of my favorite builds.

Karast.1927:

If I remember later I will make a 12k jumpshot video and link it.

It’s not hard to do. If you spec 30 explosives 30 tools, have full stacks of might / bloodlust. The power + crit damage food and vulnerability up on a soft target using full berzerker gear.

Even without orb buffs it’s still easily doable. I did a 9k jumpshot last night during Hotw explorable.

Grenade barrage does very comparable damage.

Rifle does good damage that is slightly behind grenade. It feels less since the 1/2 skills of grenade hit harder than hipshot. But rifle is more bursty in nature with the 3/5. If you pair it with another kit. Tool kit or bomb kit. You can easily build rotations utilizing the kit moves to get good sustained dps.

Your just not spamming 1/2 as much. Rather than ~3k a second you do ~8k every 3 seconds.

But talking about 12k jumpshot making rifle really good on the dps is a bit of a red herring.

Sure you can hit hard with jump shot, just as you can hit hard with barrage. But the bulk of your dps is not from jump shot or barrage because both abilities have decently long cool downs, and a high miss rate in most situations.

If your playing rifle and counting on dps from just jumpshot / blunderbuss your not going to have an easy time of it. It is not a 2-3 button build, like grenade can be. If you want to do high dps with rifle, I’ve found you need to work a lot more into your builds. Utilize abilities like rifle turret for it’s fast tool belt skill, and the solid detonate damage, swap into kits like bomb / tool to take advantage of their auto attacks or bursty abilities like pry bar / confusion bomb, and learn to build and time rotations.

Engineers need some changes, many bug fixes, and the like. But there are a lot more options than most have really tried or experimented with.

I use to hate rocket boots, rifle turret, and elixir X. But now they important parts of a few of my favorite builds.

Nice post, I haven’t tried a pure glass build so the highest jumpshots I have seen are around 10k. And even then I don’t feel it is worthwhile using the skill very often because frankly there are normally better options in most situations and it seems clunky/also misses a lot.

In my experience these fun rifle builds fall behind 3 button grenade builds in terms of damage. And even then about half or more of their damage comes from bomb kit.

Pry bar is fun but being single target makes it of limited use, the toolbelt skill that comes with it is very nice though.

I wouldn’t say rifle dps is slightly behind a traited grenade build. There’s a rather large gap there.

If they called it shotgun, instead of rifle, I don’t think we’d see as many complaints. The reason it isn’t, in my opinion or why the devs did so, is because it can now share the rifle slot with other classes that use rifles and they don’t have to make a unique weapon tagged as shotgun just for the engineer. That’s why it is called a rifle, most likely.

As far as the weapon itself, I think it’s pretty much okay. If I want to play with a sniper rifle, I’ll play a warrior. Warriors are specialized in the rifle, so it makes sense. Engineers are tinkerers and toy around with things and aren’t specifically specialized so the current way it works feels right to me, just pretend the name is shotgun.

I believe it could be tweaked a little, but no need to change it farther than that. I think blunderbuss could use a little more range possibly. I think jump shot should be smoothed out animation and cast time wise and I think the our self knockback should work like the elixir gun one, so it doesn’t CC us as well. I think these are all it really needs to make it more solid.

As far as a long range option, I think adding a completely new scope/sniper kit or something would work better for a sniper play style instead of changing the current rifle setup to cater to it.

That depends on where and how your fighting.

If your bursting enemies down in 8-10 seconds, there is not a big difference between rifle and grenade.

This tends to be the case for me in WvW. I run with an organized group of 10-15. We pack a lot of burst dps. We focus on burst hit and run tactics. So the average fight is typically not longer than 30-40s before we pull out.

For this kind of fighting tool belt rifle / tool kit or bomb kit is a good rival to grenade. When your pulling back and getting the heck out of dodge, grenade kit is not as good as bomb kit or tool kit. It’s harder to dps with it while your moving the opposite direction.

But as a question do you utilize rifle turret with your rifle burst setup? The added dps from the tool belt + quick detonate in melee is very important.

The detonate with static discharge becomes a second blunderbuss pretty much. If you pair it with something like the mine gadget or rocket boots. You can build yourself into having 4-5 hard hitting AoE melee abilities all on sub ~20s cool downs.

With grenade you might go, chill grenade – grenade barrage – 2 skill – 1 skill spam

With rifle / tool kit it becomes, throw wrench – rifle turret tool belt – blunder buss – rocket boots – turret deploy + detonate – rifle turret tool belt

Jumpshot is used to help finish downed players. It’s actually fair good for that.

Things to keep in mind. You can deploy rifle turret while doing the rocket boot kick animation. Letting you hit with the kick and detonate at almost the same time. 1.5-2k + 1.5-2k with 2 lightning bolts each in the ~2k range and 5 seconds of burning. With good crits thats 7-8k with an additional 2k-2.5k depending on your + condi over 5 seconds.

~ 10k from 3 key presses is a fair comparison to grenade kit. It’s just they have 20s CD’s versus no CD’s

It does take practice to get the timing right. You gotta watch the range on the kick like a hawk. To far and it wont hit, to close and you’ll go past. But it’s maximum range is about the sweet spot for blunderbuss which helps.

Lifelike.5862:

Excuse me? Rifles lack main hand damage? You are aware that engineers are capable of dropping 12k crits with a rifle build. also, kits don’t scale with stats. Their damage is naturally inferior unless it’s traited grenades.

Seriously.

That 1) complaint isn’t even gameplay-changing. It’s an aesthetic that you personally don’t agree on.

Warrior’s rifle skills are terrible. They lack the control that Engineer skills have, as well as the versatility. If you want a bland, direct-damage ranged weapon then you should be playing a warrior.

i agree didnt like warrior rifle AT ALL

engineers rifle is good now

but i have to ask..

12k? what kinda rifle build is this? i do 1,7k MAX right now with hip shot and jump shot do total around 3 – 4k 2.3k overcharged shot 1,7k blunderbuss

on a light golem

Kuruptz.4782:

Lifelike.5862:

Excuse me? Rifles lack main hand damage? You are aware that engineers are capable of dropping 12k crits with a rifle build. also, kits don’t scale with stats. Their damage is naturally inferior unless it’s traited grenades.

Seriously.

That 1) complaint isn’t even gameplay-changing. It’s an aesthetic that you personally don’t agree on.

Warrior’s rifle skills are terrible. They lack the control that Engineer skills have, as well as the versatility. If you want a bland, direct-damage ranged weapon then you should be playing a warrior.

i agree didnt like warrior rifle AT ALL

engineers rifle is good now

but i have to ask..

12k? what kinda rifle build is this? i do 1,7k MAX right now with hip shot and jump shot do total around 3 – 4k 2.3k overcharged shot 1,7k blunderbuss

on a light golem

I don’t know about 12k, but you can get some pretty strong crits with jumpshot, surprise shot at the same time since it’s off global, which procs lightning discharge if traited to add on top, plus any other proc effect sigils you may have. The key is hitting take off and landing damage with jumpshot on the target, that is how it does the big damage. You have to add all the numbers together to get the total output. Gear and trait for crit damage and lines, obviously. I typically get the highest numbers with grenade barrage though, and adding that right behind a jumpshot can be brutal burst.

Karast.1927:

That depends on where and how your fighting.

If your bursting enemies down in 8-10 seconds, there is not a big difference between rifle and grenade.

This tends to be the case for me in WvW. I run with an organized group of 10-15. We pack a lot of burst dps. We focus on burst hit and run tactics. So the average fight is typically not longer than 30-40s before we pull out.

For this kind of fighting tool belt rifle / tool kit or bomb kit is a good rival to grenade. When your pulling back and getting the heck out of dodge, grenade kit is not as good as bomb kit or tool kit. It’s harder to dps with it while your moving the opposite direction.

But as a question do you utilize rifle turret with your rifle burst setup? The added dps from the tool belt + quick detonate in melee is very important.

The detonate with static discharge becomes a second blunderbuss pretty much. If you pair it with something like the mine gadget or rocket boots. You can build yourself into having 4-5 hard hitting AoE melee abilities all on sub ~20s cool downs.

With grenade you might go, chill grenade – grenade barrage – 2 skill – 1 skill spam

With rifle / tool kit it becomes, throw wrench – rifle turret tool belt – blunder buss – rocket boots – turret deploy + detonate – rifle turret tool belt

Jumpshot is used to help finish downed players. It’s actually fair good for that.

Things to keep in mind. You can deploy rifle turret while doing the rocket boot kick animation. Letting you hit with the kick and detonate at almost the same time. 1.5-2k + 1.5-2k with 2 lightning bolts each in the ~2k range and 5 seconds of burning. With good crits thats 7-8k with an additional 2k-2.5k depending on your + condi over 5 seconds.

~ 10k from 3 key presses is a fair comparison to grenade kit. It’s just they have 20s CD’s versus no CD’s

It does take practice to get the timing right. You gotta watch the range on the kick like a hawk. To far and it wont hit, to close and you’ll go past. But it’s maximum range is about the sweet spot for blunderbuss which helps.

Well, I used to run a burst rifle spec and did similar roaming group in WvW except it was 5, and I agree for short fights rifle burst isn’t too much different from grenade burst. Problem I saw with it though is you had to give up a lot of utility and be in melee range to do any kind of burst.

Bomb is a great kit don’t get me wrong, I would still run grenades in WvW if only for the toolbelt ability if I was running around bursting people since barrage does the same thing as rocket jump except higher AE and longer distance.

I felt rocket jump is basically useless in PvP of any sort because even the worst players could dodge it readily or if you were in melee range you would be better off bomb/grenade spamming. It did have some use as a gap closer however the 1s stun on yourself made it extremely situational.

I used a very similar build to you I believe because I used grenades/rocket boots/rifle turret and rocket boots is really fun and also effective as a stunbreaker, but giving up elixir S for extra burst was a dealbreaker for me because that is crazy effective in organised PvP imo.

My group now runs similar specs to what we do for tournaments (more defense orientated, fights last longer but we can take on many more people than we could before) which doesn’t have anything like the burst of our previous group but it doesn’t matter too much because almost everyone is glass in WvW anyway and dies quickly to any form of assist train.

But yeah, rifle is actually a solid weapon in PvP, with the exception of rocket jump imo. However in PvE it is a garbage weapon that offers absolutely nothing to the table that grenades don’t do better. TBH its the same with pistol as well, except the shield skills are quite good.

Let me just preface this with PvP can go die in a fire, i dont care what you tell me about PvP because i will never want to play it.

That said

I dont get this whole thread. I use a CD flamethrower build, I’m asuran so I can stack poison as well with radiation field and if i wanted to drop an elixir i could stack confusion with technobabble and have all the damage dealing conditions at once. Using the flamer and P, CD, T nightmare armour. Since i fitted that with mad king runes i can reach the bleed cap alone and keep it there much longer than my thief can.

I’ll admit 3-2 has trouble with walls and uneven ground, it quite pisses me off too. Still, that is only a fraction of the time and I dont usually have trouble scoring the double hit.

Dropping the power for toughness lowers my straight damage, which i dont care about since my condition damage is huge and doesnt suffer damage mitigation. But it also means that with blind and vigor I can pull, tank and run better than a lot of the warriors and guardians I’ve wound up stuck in a dungeon with.

Flamethrower 1 is also a melee attack for damage calculation purposes, which means that even with 400+ range, it cant be obstructed. The shape of the attack is also a very wide cone, wider than it’s animation lets on, wide enough to cover about half the area of a radiation field, except it has no cooldown, stacks 3-7 bleed and/or vulnerability and refreshes your stack of burning.

Once again, i dont know about PvP and i dont care. Once i stopped trying to like the rifle and switched to kits, engie is by far my favourite class

It would e nice to have my hard earned dungeon rifles do something though, even just altering the look of the flamer for showing off purposes would be nice.

Maimakterion.5940:

Let me just preface this with PvP can go die in a fire, i dont care what you tell me about PvP because i will never want to play it.

That said

I dont get this whole thread. I use a CD flamethrower build, I’m asuran so I can stack poison as well with radiation field and if i wanted to drop an elixir i could stack confusion with technobabble and have all the damage dealing conditions at once. Using the flamer and P, CD, T nightmare armour. Since i fitted that with mad king runes i can reach the bleed cap alone and keep it there much longer than my thief can.

I’ll admit 3-2 has trouble with walls and uneven ground, it quite pisses me off too. Still, that is only a fraction of the time and I dont usually have trouble scoring the double hit.

Dropping the power for toughness lowers my straight damage, which i dont care about since my condition damage is huge and doesnt suffer damage mitigation. But it also means that with blind and vigor I can pull, tank and run better than a lot of the warriors and guardians I’ve wound up stuck in a dungeon with.

Flamethrower 1 is also a melee attack for damage calculation purposes, which means that even with 400+ range, it cant be obstructed. The shape of the attack is also a very wide cone, wider than it’s animation lets on, wide enough to cover about half the area of a radiation field, except it has no cooldown, stacks 3-7 bleed and/or vulnerability and refreshes your stack of burning.

Once again, i dont know about PvP and i dont care. Once i stopped trying to like the rifle and switched to kits, engie is by far my favourite class

Flamethrower does mediocre damage at best.

Engineer main weapons do little in the way of damage.

I’m glad you are happy with flamethrower, but grenades will let you reach bleed cap, vuln cap and also do more damage from any range.

nofo.8469:

Flamethrower does mediocre damage at best.

Engineer main weapons do little in the way of damage.

I’m glad you are happy with flamethrower, but grenades will let you reach bleed cap, vuln cap and also do more damage from any range.

That is only considering straight dmg output.
The utility of the FT is amazing when you use it for that,
Flame Blast – if you work around the obstructed crap by aiming your camera at the sky you can get some good AOE dmg.
Air Blast – knockback is always nice
Smoke Vent – this can be used almost at anytime, when you are mining/rezzing/healing even when you are casting other skills, like dropping a golem(asura only).

Grenades do nice damage but the utiltity is where the Engineer excels, I can run around and pull groups of mobs with EG -FT – Thumper and I can down all those mobs without worry and the absolute best part is that it is FUN to do it. You don’t get to just spam a few skills which is boring anyway. Playing the Engineer takes more thought and effort than any of the other professions I have played but it is by FAR the funnest one to play.

I mean it IS a game I want to play not worry about math.

I can use grenades and switch to flamethrower if i need knockback, grenades have blind, chill and poison. If i need utility I switch to bomb or elixir gun though.

Flamethrower utility isn’t very good tbh.

nofo.8469:

Flamethrower utility isn’t very good tbh.

Your opinion. I like the FT and since there is almost no reason for them to nerf it in anyway it will only get better with fixes.

the only thing i see that they need to change is a faster series of shots. It’s like oh the thief can unload and occasionally the warrior can shoot really fast or even snipe but when you play the engineer and you look at the abilities besides 1 that don’t have a special CC purpose what are you left with, an overload that does bleeding and I’m sorry, but bleeding and poison in all other classes other then necro are inconsistant. At the very least that overload ability should cause burning at least then it will have increased damage and duration.