Guild Wars 2

My personal suggestions for Jon I can think of at this time:

-Packaged Stimulants: increase the pickup radius of Med Kit skills, and drop two of each (except Stimulant), instead of one. (context: while it’s certainly convenient to be able to toss your bandages to players that need them, it’s far more convenient to not have to ground-target a skill that you might actually be needing in a split second to save yourself! Doubling the effectiveness of each bandage might sound like a huge buff, and if so perhaps the numbers could be tweaked, but, suffice to say, two packages of healing are better than one if your barely-hurt comrade happens to walk over it, leaving you with nothing. The increase in pickup radius is to compensate for not being able to toss it at other people who you are intending to give it to)

-Deadly Mixture: in addition, increase the duration of Elixer Gun’s bleed, and allow the continuous use of Flame Jet, (no channeling the skill, but keep the Burn every 10th hit or so). (This would be a quality of life improvement for FT users, who constantly have to sit there waiting for the auto to channel before starting to do any damage, and have to constantly make the choice of whether or not to cancel the longest-autoattack-in-the-game and sacrifice a burn proc in order to use another skill that might have just come off cooldown)

-Power Wrench, If anything, change healing to more damage (“Turrets deal 33% more damage while Tool Kit is equipped”). The real problem with this trait I can think of is that Tool Kit doesn’t get nearly as much play as others. While it’s certainly a unique set of skills, I think that turrets are very lackluster in most mixed builds (you’d do better with another turret instead of the kit, or another kit that focuses on damage), and that healing them isn’t what’s really needed. In my opinion, slightly overhaul the Tool Kit…

-Tool Kit. Going along with my last statement, I’m going to suggest a few changes here to make Power Wrench much more enticing. First of all, Tool Kit should give you another turret (seriously, if it’s so focused on buffing turret builds, why does it force you to sacrifice a turret to slot it?). {Skill 5, “Junk Turret”: fires as fast as the rifle turret but mimics the engi’s downed skill #1.} Gear Shield, I think, would be better with a second activation like the other shield skills, so let’s throw perhaps a slightly weaker version of Magnet on that, and increase the cooldown to compensate. Lastly, when has being hit over the head with a wrench ever NOT knocked some of the sense out of a person? Box of nails, while very nice, might be better used as a wrench-skull-cracking mild CC skill (assuming massive damage is coming from other skills, and you have a block available).

-Empowering Adrenaline: Might on dodge. (Very simple suggestion, mimic the thief’s trait. Who needs extra damage when you’re dodging for your life? Who wants to sacrifice a dodge just for a short lived damage boost? Vigor actually decreases this buff’s duration?)

-Potent Elixers, nothing wrong per-Se, it’s just that each elixir needs to get a specific buff, rather than this trait’s simplified effect. Duration increase on Elixir C? R? strange.

Tulki.1458:

JonPeters.5630:

Ok I had some time to talk through some of the engineer discussion. Overall Engineer is in a difficult place because they have a ton of good adept traits, not a lot of good master traits, and again a good # of grandmasters so you end up spreading points fairly diversly to get all the good adept traits but lose out on a lot of power by failing to get as many grandmaster traits. Here is what I see a lot of talk about:

Incendiary Powder
Moving this was just something that was a long time coming. It was simply forcing almost every engineer into 10 points in Explosives which was really hurting build diversity. We have tried to counter this by improving other triats that might now be reachable by dropping those 10 points. For example Modified Ammunition, Elixir Infuxed Bombs, and Armor Mods. Now all three of these lines, some more than others, have a strong reason to invest 30 points to match the strong grandmasters already in the other lines.Grenadier, Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, HGH, and Automated Response.

Firearms
We still feel this line is lackluster and in the future some merging and redesigning will take place, but we took the lowest hanging fruit for now. We talked about this line more than any other trait line, but at the end of the day the work and testing required got out of scope for this release. The other spot this line could get a quick pick-me-up is by making at least 2 or 3 of the adept traits in this line good choices.

Invogorating Speed
The indirect nerf to this through speedy kits will reduce some surviveability in the alchemy line, but we felt like it was important given how much other strong stuff that line has.

Master tier traits
Some good suggestions on builds that might open up if we improve some of the master tier traits would be good to see. Here is a pretty decent list of master tier traits that I still find underwhelming.

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents, Power Wrench, Leg Mods.

Keep the discussion going and let’s see if we can find some room in those traits to bring those trait lines some more into play.

We won’t be able to address all of the concerns, but we will address the most pressing if we can.

Thanks,

Jon

The balance patch notes made absolutely no mention of turrets aside from a slight buff to a near-useless regeneration skill. Are there any plans to make turrets usable and to fix the bugs that have been around since the beta weekends? These skills take up almost a quarter of the engineer’s utilities.

This about encapsulates my concerns.
Slight quibble, though – it does also mention a buff to Accelerant-Packed Turrets in the form of shifting it from Master to Adept.

JonPeters.5630:

One more thing I forgot to mention. The nice thing about Incendiary Powder was that it was a nice build neutral go to for adept tier. Right now the new build neutral traits there are Exploit Weakness and Empowering Adrenaline. I think a good discussion might be why these are not up to par as build neutral adept tier explosives traits.

Jon

Because they’re both inconsistent and terrible? And completely useless in PVE. Exploit Weakness might be ok if it was 50% instead of 25%, with a 10s ICD in PVP.

While we’re here, can we look at pistol 1? That bleed needs to be at least 4 seconds, seriously. And Rifle 3 needs to have a bit longer/larger radius for it’s high damage hit.

Anymras.5729:

I
Jon, I have to ask, because it’s bugging me – what’s up with the asterisk in ‘•Inventions X – Autotool Installation. Increased healing percent from 1% to 5%. * Decreased interval from 10s to 3s?’

As my attempt to put your mind at ease may fall short, I think that was a typo for a bullet point or text formatting that wasn’t taken out. That’s what I think but hey I could be wrong.

Anyhow, moving on…

Incendiary Powder

To be blunt and save some reading time Ostrich gave very good reasons as to why this shouldn’t be implemented just yet so just read his posts.

Firearms

I hope by altering this line with those adept traits as you said, you will consider moving rifle mods down a tier since rifle doesn’t gain much benefit from going deep into this tree, that or change how rifle can function with this tree. Seems kind of lackluster when the rifle can only put bleeding out there one stack or 2 stacks on average. Anyhow, if this is in the works I won’t judge it to hard since most of it will hopefully be changed.

Master Trait Changes (you forgot to add scope to that list as well)

First off, most of those traits better keep the same effect if they do get buffed. Personally I don’t want to loose my 25% movement speed from power shoes for a 90 second cool down I block one stunning effect. A few thoughts I had on a few master traits were these

Accelerant packed turrets (Just based on its current position not after this build)- Maybe add something to give the turrets a bonus somewhere such as a fire rate increase, stat increase, or passive buff to player/turret.

Explosive powder- The only benefit that I can think of to improve this would be to give it the steel powder ability where it will vuln the target or with the cool down perk.

Power shoes- I would say keep the movement in combat part of this and add onto it stabilized armor or something along the lines of dealing with a stun effect. Would also open up a trait for turrets to deal with specifics issues at the moment (coughmovementcough)

Elite supplies- This should be looked into honestly AFTER the 2 blaring ineffective elites are looked into. Elixir-X SHOULD NOT BE AN RNG ELITE. I fail to see the reason behind this when only half of these transformation are even remotely good and you can’t rely on getting the one transformation you need. Mortar- to sum up in 3 words: IT DOESN’T WORK. 90% of the time it jams up and burns cool downs that never fire, has less range then traited grenades (and less damage for that matter), has min range which means no use to man when you are in CQC, and has a weird targeting arc where it can’t hit things unless placed in direct LOS of targets. Example of this is in WvW mortar can only hit rams when its placed on the very edge of the wall where it get nuked by the zerg down below. Point being, and to the next few master traits that I will get into, is that the item being traited should work or be optimal before you start changing the traits for them.

Deadly Mixture/Power Wrench

Once again I don’t see the reason to change or buff these traits until the core parts are buffed as well. Specifically, flamethrower and toolkit do less damage over the course of a fight than compared to rifle. Why should I take them when they have very little reason or benefit to slot compared to grenade/bomb kit. Before these kinds of traits be looked into the kits that they relate to need to be looked at.

Basically in short before you start buffing traits for skills that don’t work functionally, you should consider looking at those skills first before trait changes.

A typo is entirely possible, but I also can’t help but wonder if there’s a footnote hidden somewhere; just how I work, that’s all.

Also: I’m not sure adding anything to Accelerant-Packed Turrets would be a good idea, especially if it’s being dropped from a 20-point to a 10-point; it’s one of the best traits available for Turrets as it is, in my opinion.
Autotool Installation, though, even after it’s been improved…well, let’s just wait and see how effective it really is, but if it’s not good enough even after the change, then it’d certainly be a good place to cram some secondary Turret improvement effects, I think.

Suggestions:

—Make speedy kits give X seconds of swiftness automatically every X seconds. That will satisfy people who dislike having to button mash just to get around. You can adjust vigor cooldowns however you want—you don’t have to tie that to speedy kits.
—Incendiary powder will stay just as crucial for most engineer tournament builds. Basically this just nerfs the explosive master traits because engineers now can’t take them. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the way it is.

Jon about deadly mixture. Why not add a way for Engineer to gain access to torment with this trait? Flamethrower and Elixer gun have a chance to inflict torment? Also what about that damage also affecting conditions. Lets face it Elixer gun and flamethrower are both power and condition weapons.

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a pretty decent list of master tier traits that I still find underwhelming.

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents, Power Wrench, Leg Mods.

I’m happy that we agree on this part. On top of that, other underwhelming traits (imo). Acidic Elixirs, Exploit Weakness, Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, Precise Sights, Go For The Eyes, Coated Bullets, Modified Ammunition, Napalm Specialist, Acidic Coating, Always Prepared, Kit Refinement, Leg Mods, Packaged Stimulants, Scope.

Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, Napalm Specialist and Modified Ammunition aren’t grandmaster tier worthy imo.

Always Prepared and Packaged Stimulants are useless and a waste of your slot. The med kit isn’t that great for this kind of play, the healing isn’t enough.

Kit Refinement gives such short boons, spells or attacks, that they seem useless. Timing is also something difficult.

Some of these are quite nice, but they are so specific that you pay a hefty price for it. Merging some of these traits (with others) would make them more viable.

As for our skills, most are okay, with the exception of turrets.
I think it’d be better if haste was removed from Elixir U, only making you frenzy. As someone said before, it makes no sense to break your stun only to have no dodge so still have eat all the damage coming after the stun.

Our elites need some work. We only have the supply crate, the other skills are only for laughs and actually cripple you more than doing helping. The mortar still jams and has quite low damage and utility. The only nice effect is the knockback, and that one is only situational.

Elixir X seems like a lazy skill. It’s just a copy of other professions.

As for the firearms, it could indeed use some reworking. I do have a build which heavily invests into the firearm trait line, together with gadgets, but it comes at a very expensive price, no condition clean. That while I’m not even dishing out that much damage.

Turrets get destroyed so fast, it’s not normal. They usually break before they can do anything. The overcharge rotation has been a nerf for us, not to mention it often being bugged often. Perhaps you should just delete them. It is clear that you have no intention of buffing their health and defense (skipped us with the pet/minnion buffs) and I assume you aren’t going to overhaul them either, so we’re just going to be stuck with a broken mechanic.

On a last note, I’d like to ask you what the role of the engineer is. We can do pretty much anything other classes can, except we literally have to work at least three times as hard for it.

i have known a change to incendiary powder & perma vigor would come its very much justified but i never in a million years thought its will be without any real compensation.

to lock out so many builds out of incendiary powder=huge dmg nerf some of this build are on the low side of the dmg scale anyway this does more harm then good.
think about it losing somewhere from 3k to 4k dmg every 10s with condi build is a huge nerf you cant just delete it and think everything is going to be fine, a real compensation is needed as other have pointed out there is none in the adept at lest not one thet can pull of this kind of dmg reliably.

as for perma vigor its still will be doable but to take something you actively did and make it into a passive =boring that is if you feel the need to have perma vigor.
this again needs to have some compensation ever so small but still

transmute=hard to say if this is bad or fine imo 15s looks a bit much for ng that have minimal coni removal (outside of hgh build).
you might want to consider moving it to explosives line and replace it with exploit weakness and make it 10s i think it will merit 10 points there.

*consider looking at the profession cd`s(and icd) (traits, skills, utility skills ect) some are way too high for what they do still…

*consider to “tank up” our power builds its feels too much do or die (same as old warriors).

Explosives master has great traits: Explosive Powder, Short Fuse, and Enhance Performance. Now we have to choose between 4 great traits…

I don’t know if I could justify 20 points just for incendiary powder. I will probably be using it a lot less. Which is sad because I am missing out on a lot of damage from burning.

Engineer has been a mediocre class that was played by great players. I feel like these nerfs were made to justify nerfs on other classes, but in reality engineers are still behind other classes in terms of balance.

Jon,

My only problem with engineer is the amount of work that needs to be done to do things other classes can do. For example, our main damage source is condition damage. Our two main applications of this is grenade and bomb kit. Both of which are very hard to use compared to our competitors (as of right now it is mostly rangers and necromancers). Grenades are skill shots while bombs have timers and require you to be right next to the person. On top of this is that they produce red circles. Our current meta build is 3 kits and requires a pretty large APM to play effectively.

Now I understand why you’re nerfing speedy kits, however you need to give us something in return. Dodging was our main damage negator. Without it engineer will be a lot harder to play. Don’t get me wrong, we have a few defensive skills. Toolkit, shield (woot this weapon will be required even more now), and elixir S. My problem with elixir S is that our lack of weapon switching means we are pretty much required to have a kit. Not too many kits work well with elixir S, hence why the 3 kit is a meta. Our weapon skills need some majors buff to warrant us moving away from such a dependence on kits, or traits (probably better) that better buff them. P/P is ok, but lacks the ability to negate damage when being focused, especially in WvW. Rifle is just bad because all of its major damaging skills require you to be at close range, and most of the time when you trait to use rifle you lack good defensive skills.

I think if you take care of one messed up mechanic (the infinte vigor which is very bad thing to have), take care of them all. What about a guardians abudance of anti projectile skills, invurnabilities (which have no way of countering), passive healing/aegis that we can’t counter, and just great survivability. What about a thieves insane amount of mobility (stealthing which has no counter, evades which have no counter, leaps, teleports, and lots of blinds).

Quite honestly the way engineer is setup with no weapon switch, it causes most of our skills to be bad. Why are gadgets bad? They not only need to have the ability to make up for a utility slot, but also the lack of a secondary weapon. Turrets? Same story. This is why kits are so popular. You either need to significantly buff toolbelt skills are these skills or buff default weapon stats. Till you do that the meta will also involve primarily kits.

cdimgcc.1638:

Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, Napalm Specialist and Modified Ammunition aren’t grandmaster tier worthy imo.

Make Modified Ammunition 3-4% per condi or add some extra effect.

Deified.7520:

Jon,

My only problem with engineer is the amount of work that needs to be done to do things other classes can do. For example, our main damage source is condition damage. Our two main applications of this is grenade and bomb kit. Both of which are very hard to use compared to our competitors (as of right now it is mostly rangers and necromancers). Grenades are skill shots while bombs have timers and require you to be right next to the person. On top of this is that they produce red circles. Our current meta build is 3 kits and requires a pretty large APM to play effectively.

Now I understand why you’re nerfing speedy kits, however you need to give us something in return. Dodging was our main damage negator. Without it engineer will be a lot harder to play. Don’t get me wrong, we have a few defensive skills. Toolkit, shield (woot this weapon will be required even more now), and elixir S. My problem with elixir S is that our lack of weapon switching means we are pretty much required to have a kit. Not too many kits work well with elixir S, hence why the 3 kit is a meta. Our weapon skills need some majors buff to warrant us moving away from such a dependence on kits, or traits (probably better) that better buff them. P/P is ok, but lacks the ability to negate damage when being focused, especially in WvW. Rifle is just bad because all of its major damaging skills require you to be at close range, and most of the time when you trait to use rifle you lack good defensive skills.

I think if you take care of one messed up mechanic (the infinte vigor which is very bad thing to have), take care of them all. What about a guardians abudance of anti projectile skills, invurnabilities (which have no way of countering), passive healing/aegis that we can’t counter, and just great survivability. What about a thieves insane amount of mobility (stealthing which has no counter, evades which have no counter, leaps, teleports, and lots of blinds).

Quite honestly the way engineer is setup with no weapon switch, it causes most of our skills to be bad. Why are gadgets bad? They not only need to have the ability to make up for a utility slot, but also the lack of a secondary weapon. Turrets? Same story. This is why kits are so popular. You either need to significantly buff toolbelt skills are these skills or buff default weapon stats. Till you do that the meta will also involve primarily kits.

This is a great post. Good point about the kit usage. It’s because we need them. Make us not need them and more options will open up.

“We’re going to improve build variety by nerfing.”

Thats basicly what you’re doing. Is a trait overpowered? no, just better then everything else. Instead of buffing other traits to be more attractive, we’ll just nerf the trait thats good. Bam, now people dont care what they pick cause theyre all bad and that equals build diversity!

Warriors are out of line and there you’re trying to mediate the problem, nerf here but a buff there. But we get the straigth up nerfhammer.

Maybe if you want some of us to pick other traits then the standerd stuff, maybe make our traits better then what other professions get as minor traits.

Modified Ammunition is a minor trait for Necro. And theirs already applies to all weapons/damage sources.
Power Shoes is a sigil to most professions, and those that have a trait for it have it apply all the time, not just in combat.
Leg Mods is the same as Dogged March for warrior. Only, dogged march is adept tier and procs regeneration proc whenever chilled/cripple/immob with no internal cooldown.

We get 20% cooldown reduction on rifle, warrior’s identical trait has a 20% cd reduction on rifle plus rifle now pierces. Ranger combines the flat damage increase with the range increase on longbow.
Backpack Regenerator is a major trait, and its much weaker then Adrenal Health which is a minor trait for Warriors. Or the minor trait Life Siphon for necro.

We get 5% more dmg to bleeding targets as a minor trait, warriors get 10% to bleeding target for the same trait in the same tree at the same spot.

So many of our traits are just so kitten weak, then its not a surprise that people will pick up the few traits that are actually good. And your solution is, just nerf the traits that are good instead of looking at all the aweful traits…

@jon

regarding IP:

I can see how this change should promote build diversity, but it’s doing it wrong and will end up doing the opposite. There are some decent condition builds that don’t got 30 points into explosives atm. With this change you will just force all condition builds to go bomb/nades and 30 in explosives.

The alternatives, like going 10 more into firearms, just don’t compete in terms of raw dps IP brings. I could go for modified ammo, but even with my carrion build it’s hard to justify those extra 60~ dmg per skill when IP brings 800 per second. don’t even get me started on coated bullets.
going extra 10 in explosives without bombs/nades isn’t much worth it although the change to exploit weakness might be decent enough to go 20 for both e.w. and i.p.

regarding some master tier traits:

-I consider enhanced performance a decent trait. it will be worthless now because it has to compete with IP.

-Potent elixirs is not a bad trait by itself. the problem is it has to compete with either fast acting elixirs (cooldown reduction is much better than longer duration), 409 (the only good source of condition removal) or HGH/AR.
There’s some ways you devs could go around this. A buff to elixir C (especially the toss) could remove the need for 409, maybe even removing the conversion aspect of the elixir and just buffing the removal part (reducing cooldown/buffing toss). Maybe making the elixir toss no longer a toss but an aoe multiple condi cleanse and/or a stunbreak.
Another way you could go is making potent elixirs give an extra effect on each elixir toss, provided the extra effect is not a boon (unless that boon is aegis, that could work) and not something that requires the toss to be aimed at an enemy.. which seriously limits the possibilities to little more than combo fields (I honestly dont see what else).
I have another idea but not sure if it would still justify using the trait: in addition to the 20% duration, make potent elixirs turn all elixir tosses into instant pbaoe centered on the player. would add some value to it as you could prevent chain cc locks by using toss B or toss S, would add great value to R again, etc.

Coated bullets:

I know you didn’t mention this one but I’m one of the few players that uses it and I find myself removing it for something else all the time. It needs a buff. It’s hard to justify it working for just 2 skills. It should, at the very least, add one or two bounces to static shot and/or do something with the offhand skills. Turning pdv or static shot into projectile combo finishers with this trait wouldn’t be too op either, just look at warriors longbow or thieves shortbow.

cheers, and keep up the good work, in general I really like the changes to every class and the avoided power creep.

One of my problems with this patch is that currently the only way I have managed to stay viable in TPvP is with a high survivability build. In fact, the only way I could compete with a hammer/mace warrior at all was to tailor my build completely towards doing so.

This patch supposedly creating build diversity makes minor DPS improvements, which will still leave DPS as not viable, whilst giving minor nerfs to my survivability, making a barely viable build even harder to play with.

If you want build diversity you need to address the fundamental problem that a DPS engineer will always lose out to a true DPS class.

JonPeters.5630:

One more thing I forgot to mention. The nice thing about Incendiary Powder was that it was a nice build neutral go to for adept tier. Right now the new build neutral traits there are Exploit Weakness and Empowering Adrenaline. I think a good discussion might be why these are not up to par as build neutral adept tier explosives traits.

Jon

Agreed.

I think that eliminating the “endurance not full” part of Empowering Adrenaline would go a long way towards making it a nice build neutral go to for adept tier. Basically it would become an adept tier sigil of force. But don’t expect too much discussion or feedback on this trait because A. it does not enhance condition damage for the popular nades/bombs builds, and B. it’s just not a “sexy” trait to talk about like IC – lol.

But yes, a tiny little tweak to Empowering Adrenaline like eliminating the endurance requirement would go a long way to seeing it used at times by the non- grenade players.

•Explosives V – Incendiary Powder. Moved to Master tier.

While I can understand the move I can’t say I agree with it. It now means that you’re going to lack the build diversity that the engineer normally would have because people are now having to put 20 into explosives rather than the 10 they had left over after putting points into their core build. Not only this but it’s now fighting with Enhance Performance and Short Fuse.

•Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%

Nice but not really a decent trade for IP being moved to Master tier

•Explosives IX – Accelerant packed turrets. Moved to Adept tier.

Might be worth using with healing turret but other than that, unless Turrets and their relating traits getting a decent overhaul, this will most likely end up being a filler trait to get to IP.

•Firearms XI – Modified Ammunition. This trait now works regardless of equipped weapon.

Not a bad change and I might run a 30/30/0/0/10 build with grenades and rifle for lols but honestly I’d rather spend those points in getting IP.

•Inventions V – Energized Armor. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.

Decent enough change if you’re intending to run turrets or healing bombs/bunker.

•Inventions X – Autotool Installation. Increased healing percent from 1% to 5%. Decreased interval from 10s to 3s.

Again until turrets get an overhaul it’s okay but nothing that screams ‘use this trait’. If I’m being honest, I’d rather see this merged with metal plating and a new turret trait created.

•Inventions XI – Elixir Infused bombs. Increased healing scaling by 50%.

This I like. Gives me a reason to put on my cleric gear and run a support build when WvW with a 10-20 man group.

•Alchemy V – Blood Injection. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.

Again a decent enough buff for the times I run a condition build and don’t take IS

•Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.

I’ll have to see how this one performs out in the field. Still it does mean I do have a reliable passive coniditon removal every 15 seconds (number of times I’ve died from having one stack of bleed on me, being near death and having my condition removal on CD)

•Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.

So you want to nerf perma vigor, so you nerf this trait instead…would rather have seen a 10sec CD on IS rather than this.

•Tools XI – Armor Mods. Changed this to now trigger on struck instead of on critical hit incoming. Reduced the cool-down from 25 seconds to 15 seconds

It’s very rare I actually use the Toolkit line for anything more than speedy kits. Sure having regular access to aegis is nice I honestly don’t think it’s 30 points nice, unless I’m running a SD build and want to give up on the toolkit trait.

Overall I’m feeling that this patch isn’t going to help with build diversity, if anything it’s going to limit them, given how there isn’t a decent replacement for IP. It was a nice 10 trait that you could fit into majority of builds and it boosted your overall DPS from ‘meh’ to reasonable.

Suggestions.

Explosives II: Shrapnel

Have this work with more than just grenades and bombs. Explosive Shot and the Mortar Skills come to mind.

Turrets:

Turrets at the moment need to have a more indepth rejig than just tweaking their traits. I have no real reason to take them over say Elixirs, Kits and even gadgets as the die far to easily, can’t easily be redeployed when in a fast moving group and bring no other utility to the group than a small bit of DPS. What would be nice is if they acted like warbanners to some degree, giving people who are in range either a stat boost or a boon. This would open up some possibilies as a turret engineer acting as defensive DPS where one is hard to kill while near their turrets but vulnerable when either caught off guard or their turrets have been destroyed.

Gadgets

Again another skill set that needs to be looked at in a bit more depth. Currently I usually have one gadget skill on my bar (usually rocket boots or utility goggles) and have no real need to take any more as it’s a poor trade off compared to taking a kit. Having them act as a pseudo-signet is one way but something like having them combo together would be somewhat more interesting. One example would be using Oil Slick with Rocket Boots. Rather than creating an long oil slick it leaves both a fire and smoke field behind it. Theres opportunity to turn the gadget line into a rather quirky combo setup line.

Anyway we’ll have to see what the changes are like in practice when they’re release, but on paper I am somewhat concerned.

JonPeters.5630:

Incendiary Powder
Moving this was just something that was a long time coming. It was simply forcing almost every engineer into 10 points in Explosives which was really hurting build diversity. We have tried to counter this by improving other triats that might now be reachable by dropping those 10 points. For example Modified Ammunition, Elixir Infuxed Bombs, and Armor Mods. Now all three of these lines, some more than others, have a strong reason to invest 30 points to match the strong grandmasters already in the other lines.Grenadier, Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, HGH, and Automated Response.

I think when people discuss Incendiary powder, they also discuss reducing the passive play in the game. I would have hoped that this is what you guys would be working on and I’m left wondering why you are still on the road of things activating passively.

Side note, Autodefense Bomb dispenser is a master trait at best. I really don’t know anyone who would use that unless there was some other benefit to blinding people repeatedly.

JonPeters.5630:

Firearms
We still feel this line is lackluster and in the future some merging and redesigning will take place, but we took the lowest hanging fruit for now. We talked about this line more than any other trait line, but at the end of the day the work and testing required got out of scope for this release. The other spot this line could get a quick pick-me-up is by making at least 2 or 3 of the adept traits in this line good choices.

I think this tree is a very combo heavy tree. The tree doesn’t really have a lot of special things on it’s own (Juggernaut and Modified Ammo being the exceptions) but it does play an additive role when it comes to making a build.

It’s good that you guys are taking a look at this tree but I hope it isn’t to a capacity that makes a certain trait too essential like Incendiary Powder.

JonPeters.5630:

Master tier traits
Some good suggestions on builds that might open up if we improve some of the master tier traits would be good to see. Here is a pretty decent list of master tier traits that I still find underwhelming.

Explosive Powder; Merge with Shrapnel. Explosions deal 10% more damage. Successful blast finishes cause 3 stacks of Bleeding and burning.

Enhance Performance; I find this to be pretty good because I currently use it in my condi build

Power Shoes Merge with Leg Mods.

Elite Supplies Call down a mobile mecha that dispenses med-kits, gives AoE regen, burns, immobilizes and fires bullets at the speed of a Rifle turret at your targets.

Deadly Mixture; I think this is pretty good. Combined with the upcoming changes to modified ammunition, this trait may see some use.

Potent Elixirs; What would you want to do with this trait? Elixirs give twice their benefit? I think this trait is fine unless you would want to merge it with Fast acting Elixirs to open up space for a different trait

Packaged Stimulants; Med packs now convert 1 condition into a boon. Still does all the other stuff it does.

Power Wrench Thwack gains a 1-second stun (just to solve the problem of getting absolutely destroyed if you dare to use the auto in this kit). Still reduces cooldowns for the Kit skills.

Just like the Auto Bomb Dispenser, I think there are still quite a few traits that need tweaking to become something worth taking. But if those traits are what you guys are focusing on, those are the things I’d find interesting if I saw them.

well theres several things that could use serious improving

Firearms trait line as a whole is somewhat lacking

Power shoes should give a 25% speed increase at all times and that right there opens up build diversity as players would have an alternative to speedy kits wich would help Non Kit builds

Mortar and turrets still need love the 5% regen will be great on their survivability however third tier turret cooldowns are just too lengthy mortar simply gets stuck whenever players try casting its skills fast wich makes the 20% trait a debuff rather than a buff another big deal is the 5 minute timer now i know they obviously got this implemented cuz players was dropping them in event stuff and would afk farm or farm several events at once however 5 minutes seems too short 10-15 mins should be reasonable as most events take about 30 minutes minimum unless turrets simply had their cooldown reset if they despawn due to timer despawn

Edit: how could i forget

our puffer fish gun is the most lacking thing engineer has so far auto attack is a joke when you compare it to every other class’s underwater skills

JonPeters.5630:

One more thing I forgot to mention. The nice thing about Incendiary Powder was that it was a nice build neutral go to for adept tier. Right now the new build neutral traits there are Exploit Weakness and Empowering Adrenaline. I think a good discussion might be why these are not up to par as build neutral adept tier explosives traits.

Jon

Whats your position on automated response vs the new diamond skin? (risk vs reward, ease of use etc.)

When you make posts that require multiple departments to create (call in a mecha) you are not being helpful. Please keep to simple numbers that can be changed and the traits that are already discussed…. And for the love of god if you never run the tool kit don’t talk about changes you think it needs.

I like the armor mods trait change but I don’t see it as a grandmaster. Buff KR and push it to grandmaster that makes sense to me. Push the aegis trait to master to and bring power wrench down to adept. And please STOP being afraid of a three way trade. Happens in sports all the time XD.

Ostricheggs.3742:

The change to incendiary does absolutely nothing to the trait except move it up to master tier. This might seem like a good idea on paper; incendiary is too strong to maintain its position as an adept trait and would work better as a master trait. But simple reality is far different.

Quite literally the only thing that this change does is limit the viability of fringe builds that might have had a shot in the meta but nobody plays them. It doesn’t do anything to limit the most powerful build (and in my opinion overpowered build) that engis have in their kitten nal, the bomb/nade build. Simply put it pigeon holes us into going bomb/nade if we wish to do condi damage because the trait spread is unaffected by the change to incendiary.

The first example of the aforementioned nerfed builds that I can give would be HGH nades. Because incendiary powder would now compete with both short fuse, enhance performance AND explosive powder it limits the capability of HGH substantially. The only adept trait even worth looking at would be shrapnel which is simply too underwhelming and RNG to take and do as well with. As a matter of fact any build that chooses to go nades for condi damage without taking bombs with radius is going to take a hit so hard that it’ll be hard to justify running them.

The next example would be non-nade condi builds. I’ve been experimenting a decent bit over the last month with them and ALL of them go 10 up explosives to grab incendiary. Some of them even teeter on the precipice of being viable but simply do not fit my playstyle to play extensively. There is absolutely no point in nerfing these builds because they are not being used by anyone, let alone being used effectively enough to justify such a serious nerf.

And AGAIN, none of these examples do not even come close to being as strong as the monstrous bomb/nade build.

and as a final note it’s good to see vigor being addressed as it should have been a while ago. Sadly it seems like we are the only class to take such a hit to their vigor trait. The condi engineers main flaw has always been that to do adequate DPS we must make ourselves EXTREMELY squishy and reliant on skillful dodges/blinds to do well. Given the extensive set of nerfs over the last few patches to our survivability I find it very difficult to believe that this decision was made without looking at the insane numbers of dodges that many other classes can dish out without making such a large sacrifice as engis do. I agree that vigor is too strong. I agree that speedy kits and invigorating speed is too strong. But to flagrantly ignore other classes source(s) of evades to such an extent and to nerf engineers survivability further is a not-so-great balance change.

Mesmers and guardians receive something similar to invigorating speed with only five points spent on a minor trait. Rangers receive an insane amount of dodges on their weapon sets, 50% endurance regeneration from a minor trait, 2 seconds of protection post-dodge and very large amounts of vigor from trait selection. Energy sigils are one of the most popular sigils in the game for good reason. Thieves get a minor trait that returns endurance used and the ability to blow a full initiative bar for many more seconds of evade-spam than an engi can dream of.

If all of these things were addressed in conjunction with the change to invigorating speed I would be very happy to take this nerf…

You put that into words better then I could. I agree with you. +1

I think focusing on such fundamental flaws (taking the developers focus in mind) first, would help everyone. I see so many people on those forums here telling you that their build is either fine or is not and the typical stereotype of black or white telling the other side off. I mean it ’s no wonder if the developers get confused or even burned with so many people pulling in both directions ripping them appart instead of sitting on a table together discussing such things properly.

Aberrant.6749:

I agree. They should have moved something better into the adept line… would have softened the blow a bit. Not sure what to take in that spot now that will be much of any use

+1

My flamethrower engineer has a dead spot in Explosives 10 after this. Kind of rotten that I have to give up my Gadget recharge to use my Rocket Boots more often, which was fun, to get an empty hole with nothing useful in return on a build that wasn’t broken.

mas.7401:

Jon about deadly mixture. Why not add a way for Engineer to gain access to torment with this trait? Flamethrower and Elixer gun have a chance to inflict torment? Also what about that damage also affecting conditions. Lets face it Elixer gun and flamethrower are both power and condition weapons.

Very good point. With Torment being added to the engi’s skills, however, I’d be worried about the repercussions of this simultaneously with Modified Ammunition… that power-FT would be the next flavor of the month. With increasing the effectiveness of using these two kits being the goal, I think it’d be much more in line to increase condition duration far enough to give Sharpshooter another second of bleeding, in order to stack it up further. Either that or increase both damage and condition damage by the same amount.

The vigor nerf will destroy us in team fights. In team fights we don’t have fail safes for getting caught. Once we get caught were done. We also don’t have stability to make up for not having vigor. I use 3 kits and 1 stun break. I think the vigor nerf will leave us close to not viable at mid fights since it will be very hard to evade the incoming cc. I’m talking about real top tier tourney teams. Most the complaints you are getting are from hotjoin players any good player can 1v2/1v3 them so they are going to think we are op and complain. ANET if you really think we engis need a nerf do it to something other than vigor! IT KEEPS US ALIVE please test how kittenty engi will be before you change it. (we don’t need a nerf, nor do we need a buff)

JonPeters.5630:

Ok I had some time to talk through some of the engineer discussion. Overall Engineer is in a difficult place because they have a ton of good adept traits, not a lot of good master traits, and again a good # of grandmasters so you end up spreading points fairly diversly to get all the good adept traits but lose out on a lot of power by failing to get as many grandmaster traits. Here is what I see a lot of talk about:

Incendiary Powder
Moving this was just something that was a long time coming. It was simply forcing almost every engineer into 10 points in Explosives which was really hurting build diversity. We have tried to counter this by improving other triats that might now be reachable by dropping those 10 points. For example Modified Ammunition, Elixir Infuxed Bombs, and Armor Mods. Now all three of these lines, some more than others, have a strong reason to invest 30 points to match the strong grandmasters already in the other lines.Grenadier, Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, HGH, and Automated Response.

Firearms
We still feel this line is lackluster and in the future some merging and redesigning will take place, but we took the lowest hanging fruit for now. We talked about this line more than any other trait line, but at the end of the day the work and testing required got out of scope for this release. The other spot this line could get a quick pick-me-up is by making at least 2 or 3 of the adept traits in this line good choices.

Invogorating Speed
The indirect nerf to this through speedy kits will reduce some surviveability in the alchemy line, but we felt like it was important given how much other strong stuff that line has.

Master tier traits
Some good suggestions on builds that might open up if we improve some of the master tier traits would be good to see. Here is a pretty decent list of master tier traits that I still find underwhelming.

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents, Power Wrench, Leg Mods.

Keep the discussion going and let’s see if we can find some room in those traits to bring those trait lines some more into play.

We won’t be able to address all of the concerns, but we will address the most pressing if we can.

Thanks,

Jon

Invogorating Speed
The indirect nerf to this through speedy kits will reduce some surviveability in the alchemy line, but we felt like it was important given how much other strong stuff that line has.
….what? “The indirect nerf” “but we felt like it was important given how much other strong stuff that line has.” what?…. you guys are nerfing engis the wrong way. We need the vigor to dish out as much dps as other classes and still live.

The vigor nerf will destroy us in team fights. In team fights we don’t have fail safes for getting caught. Once we get caught were done. We also don’t have stability to make up for not having vigor. I use 3 kits and 1 stun break. I think the vigor nerf will leave us close to not viable at mid fights since it will be very hard to evade the incoming cc. I’m talking about real top tier tourney teams. Do you expect us to only rain nades the whole team fight…? Most the complaints you are getting are from hotjoin players any good player can 1v2/1v3 them so they are going to think we are op and complain.

Stop trying to fight the vigor NERF. It’s happening. 100% swiftness is a lot already 100% vigor is in need of a NERF.

I don’t know of any player that complains of speedy kits for having to switch in between kits too much

Voramoz.6790:

Stop trying to fight the vigor NERF. It’s happening. 100% swiftness is a lot already 100% vigor is in need of a NERF.

And i assume you base this on how absolutely dominant engineers currently are in virtually every game mode, right?
Which is also why we see so many Engineers, easily the most played profession. Correct?

Oh… wait….

Here’s the dirty truth. To be effective as an Engineer and deal damage you need to get pretty close to your opponent. Simply because of how the profession is designed and how every weapon or kit seems to scream at us “GET CLOSER!”.
Yet Engineer lacks the defenses to actually stay in close range. No series of evades, like ranger/thief. No stealth, like a thief. Not all that many blinds.
No solid healthpool like Warrior/Necro. No heavy armor, like Guardian/Warrior.

Even with perma-vigor, which comes at the cost of 2 major traits and constant APM to keep it rolling, engineer is still rather squishy in close range.

Voramoz.6790:

Stop trying to fight the vigor NERF. It’s happening. 100% swiftness is a lot already 100% vigor is in need of a NERF.

Yes it is. But it’s in need of a nerf across the board and not just targeted at engineers who are one of the least in need of such a nerf and its a nerf that hits home pretty hard given the fact that our survivability has taken a hit every single patch outside of the last one.

There are a large number of good examples to give for classes that have viable builds with far more dodges than engis can get.

AGAIN, invigorating speed is TOO STRONG. But you’re ignoring the blatant offenders (rangers, acrobatics thieves, energy sigils)

Deified.7520:

Jon,

My only problem with engineer is the amount of work that needs to be done to do things other classes can do. For example, our main damage source is condition damage. Our two main applications of this is grenade and bomb kit. Both of which are very hard to use compared to our competitors (as of right now it is mostly rangers and necromancers). Grenades are skill shots while bombs have timers and require you to be right next to the person. On top of this is that they produce red circles. Our current meta build is 3 kits and requires a pretty large APM to play effectively.

Now I understand why you’re nerfing speedy kits, however you need to give us something in return. Dodging was our main damage negator. Without it engineer will be a lot harder to play. Don’t get me wrong, we have a few defensive skills. Toolkit, shield (woot this weapon will be required even more now), and elixir S. My problem with elixir S is that our lack of weapon switching means we are pretty much required to have a kit. Not too many kits work well with elixir S, hence why the 3 kit is a meta. Our weapon skills need some majors buff to warrant us moving away from such a dependence on kits, or traits (probably better) that better buff them. P/P is ok, but lacks the ability to negate damage when being focused, especially in WvW. Rifle is just bad because all of its major damaging skills require you to be at close range, and most of the time when you trait to use rifle you lack good defensive skills.

I think if you take care of one messed up mechanic (the infinte vigor which is very bad thing to have), take care of them all. What about a guardians abudance of anti projectile skills, invurnabilities (which have no way of countering), passive healing/aegis that we can’t counter, and just great survivability. What about a thieves insane amount of mobility (stealthing which has no counter, evades which have no counter, leaps, teleports, and lots of blinds).

Quite honestly the way engineer is setup with no weapon switch, it causes most of our skills to be bad. Why are gadgets bad? They not only need to have the ability to make up for a utility slot, but also the lack of a secondary weapon. Turrets? Same story. This is why kits are so popular. You either need to significantly buff toolbelt skills are these skills or buff default weapon stats. Till you do that the meta will also involve primarily kits.

Don’t forget about Warriors berserker stance, or endure pain, or healing sig. Mesmers teleports/fake clones/distortion. Necros death shroud. Rangers weapon evades/for now 50% vigor regen. ( most other classes have stab as well )

Ostricheggs.3742:

Voramoz.6790:

Stop trying to fight the vigor NERF. It’s happening. 100% swiftness is a lot already 100% vigor is in need of a NERF.

Yes it is. But it’s in need of a nerf across the board and not just targeted at engineers who are one of the least in need of such a nerf and its a nerf that hits home pretty hard given the fact that our survivability has taken a hit every single patch outside of the last one.

There are a large number of good examples to give for classes that have viable builds with far more dodges than engis can get.

AGAIN, invigorating speed is TOO STRONG. But you’re ignoring the blatant offenders (rangers, acrobatics thieves, energy sigils)

Exactly. We’re already the least played class (not by a lot sure, only like 4%), and giving us such a nerf without even touching the other classes that have similar mechanics.

Deified.7520:

Exactly. We’re already the least played class (not by a lot sure, only like 4%), and giving us such a nerf without even touching the other classes that have similar mechanics.

4% is pretty significant when you’re talking about something that should be a 12.5% split for all professions. 4% just sounds small, but to put it in another perspective

There are more Warriors then Engineers and Mesmers combined.

Thats pretty shocking, and speaks volumes on the state of GW2’s balance.

and I have to disagree on the lack of build variety. When I join non-competitive spvp, Almost no engineer is running the same build. We have flamethrower builds, bomb, HGH, nade build. You can swap out kits almost as you please. It’s the small differences, but we have more build diversity than any other class.

Ostricheggs.3742:

AGAIN, invigorating speed is TOO STRONG.

Is it?

I don’t believe the problem is Invigorating Speed. I believe the problem is that Engineers have ready access to Swiftness when swapping kits, which procs Invigorating Speed. Obviously they have no problem with how Vigor on-crit works, because (1) you have to actually be in combat and (2) it requires you to be attacking.

With Speedy Kits, Engineers literally have permanent Vigor. All the time. Inside and outside of combat. Now we’re on level with other classes who have to actually hit stuff to get it “permanently.”

Terrahero.9358:

And i assume you base this on how absolutely dominant engineers currently are in virtually every game mode, right?
Which is also why we see so many Engineers, easily the most played profession.

This is a really poor argument. There are fewer Engineers than Warriors because Engineers are a harder class to play, aren’t a legacy class from GW1, and are less aesthetically appealing to the average player. Rangers are one of the most created classes, and they’ve historically been one of the worst classes in every game type.

Population has little to do with actual balance.

And I would argue that Engineers are dominant in PvP and WvW. People just don’t know how to construct the right builds for these game types.

JonPeters.5630:

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents, Power Wrench, Leg Mods.

Explosive Powder:
-Improves explosions from grenades by 10%
-Improves explosions from bombs by 15%
-Improves explosions from gadgets and turrets by 20%

Enhance Performance:
-Gain might (3stacks,15sec) when you use a heal skill.
-Gain retaliation for 5sec when you use a heal skill.

Power Shoes: (merged with leg mods)
-Gain 25% movement speed in combat.
-Cripple, immobilize and chill duration’s are reduced by 33%.

Elite Supplies: (improve elite abilities and this will be better).

Deadly Mixture:
-Deal 15% more damage with Flamethrower and Elixir Gun.
-FT and EG have a 15% chance to proc torment for 5sec, 20sec cool down.

Potent Elixirs:
-Increase elixir duration’s by 20%.
-Gain Aegis when consuming an elixir (20sec cool down)

Packaged Stimulants:
-Can be thrown and 25% more effective.
-Gain 2sec of protection when equipping med kit (10sec cool down)

Power Wrench:
-Reduce recharge on tool kit skills by 20%.
-Nearby turrets are healed when tool kit equipped.

Leg Mods:
-Gain stability when near Healing turret.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Ostricheggs.3742:

AGAIN, invigorating speed is TOO STRONG.

Is it?

I don’t believe the problem is Invigorating Speed. I believe the problem is that Engineers have ready access to Swiftness when swapping kits, which procs Invigorating Speed. Obviously they have no problem with how Vigor on-crit works, because (1) you have to actually be in combat and (2) it requires you to be attacking.

With Speedy Kits, Engineers literally have permanent Vigor. All the time. Inside and outside of combat. Now we’re on level with other classes who have to actually hit stuff to get it “permanently.”

other classes have fail safes for when you get caught. Engis don’t

Ostricheggs.3742:

Voramoz.6790:

Stop trying to fight the vigor NERF. It’s happening. 100% swiftness is a lot already 100% vigor is in need of a NERF.

Yes it is. But it’s in need of a nerf across the board and not just targeted at engineers who are one of the least in need of such a nerf and its a nerf that hits home pretty hard given the fact that our survivability has taken a hit every single patch outside of the last one.

There are a large number of good examples to give for classes that have viable builds with far more dodges than engis can get.

AGAIN, invigorating speed is TOO STRONG. But you’re ignoring the blatant offenders (rangers, acrobatics thieves, energy sigils)

I don’t think it’s too powerful at all, other classes have fail safes for when you get caught. Engis don’t.

Voramoz.6790:

Stop trying to fight the vigor NERF. It’s happening. 100% swiftness is a lot already 100% vigor is in need of a NERF.

what class do you play? Because you obviously do not know anything about engi. We need the vigor we don’t have fail safes like the other classes when we get caught in cc/dmg

BoB.6082:

Ostricheggs.3742:

Voramoz.6790:

Stop trying to fight the vigor NERF. It’s happening. 100% swiftness is a lot already 100% vigor is in need of a NERF.

Yes it is. But it’s in need of a nerf across the board and not just targeted at engineers who are one of the least in need of such a nerf and its a nerf that hits home pretty hard given the fact that our survivability has taken a hit every single patch outside of the last one.

There are a large number of good examples to give for classes that have viable builds with far more dodges than engis can get.

AGAIN, invigorating speed is TOO STRONG. But you’re ignoring the blatant offenders (rangers, acrobatics thieves, energy sigils)

I don’t think it’s too powerful at all, other classes have fail safes for when you get caught. Engis don’t.

You keep saying this (and seriously, stop the spam), but it’s just not true. 2 different channeled blocks, 2 different ways to get invulnerability through elixir S, stealth, stability, and more.

Back on topic, I appreciate Jon being transparent with us but I just can’t agree with moving IP. It was already nerfed once when it was given a 10s cooldown, I really don’t think it’s too powerful for an Adept spot anymore. Most of this game is AOE anyways, and IP is barely noticeable in AOE.

I agree with some other posters that say this will not promote build diversity. There is really not much you can do with 10 leftover points into Explosives anymore. We really need to see some of the weaker traits that Jon mentioned BUFFED rather than see a good trait NERFED. There has been many good suggestions about those so far, I don’t really have anything to add to those. Use some of them please!

While I have defended our traits in the past when compared to other professions (because each profession is different and they all use traits different ways) the list of what we get compared to other professions is pretty long and it seems we always get the short end of the stick. As a long time Engi since the game started, it’s starting to get frustrating. I don’t think the Engineer is weak, but it takes SO MUCH effort just to be at the level of other professions. If we have to put in that much effort and manage so many skills we should be stronger than we are I think.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Terrahero.9358:

And i assume you base this on how absolutely dominant engineers currently are in virtually every game mode, right?
Which is also why we see so many Engineers, easily the most played profession.

This is a really poor argument. There are fewer Engineers than Warriors because Engineers are a harder class to play, aren’t a legacy class from GW1, and are less aesthetically appealing to the average player. Rangers are one of the most created classes, and they’ve historically been one of the worst classes in every game type.

Population has little to do with actual balance.

And I would argue that Engineers are dominant in PvP and WvW. People just don’t know how to construct the right builds for these game types.

Such excuses would explain small variences. But not why there is more then 2 warriors for every 1 engineer. That is more then just “ow, yah.. ppl just remember warrior from gw1” “ow, yah… people apparently like generic swordplay more then GODkitten FLAMETHROWERS OF AWESOME”
The community at large is fully aware about the high-effort/low-reward style of Engineers.

And that is far more important then anything else, a profession that is boring to play but overpowered will still be very popular. I dont even have to point to another game as an example, i can just point to Warriors!
In PvE, very boring to play, extremely so. Very autoattack heavy, reliant on a few hardhitting ability you press on cooldown. But incredibly easy to play, and incredibly effective. More dps then anything. And as a result, they are everywhere, highly popular profession.

Fortunatly not nearly as toxic as other games, but when it happens that people look for certain professions for dungeon runs, engineers are usually among the ones they certainly do not want.

Engineers are neither dominant in pvp nor in wvw. The builds that work well require a great deal of skill from the player behind them, and its actually the players skill at the game that makes it work moreso then the builds in question.

Engineers are good in spvp, found their niché, mostly thanks to the way the gamemode works aswell. So a good player can do well.
But in wvw and pve engineer is sorely lacking, and it is by no means an “out of control” profession in spvp either, not even close. So these flat out nerfs that are happening are completely unwarented.

Why nerf engineers? It’s from mediocre/bad players in hotjoins thinking engis are op because we can 1v2 them. i could do the same thing with every other class except IT’S BORING. Generally you see the higher skilled players playing engi because it takes the most skill in the game to play. Sure i could jump on a warrior and 1v2 but it’s boring and im sure most of the skilled players looking for fun go towards engi. Higher skill=better the hotjoin players thing engi=better. we don’t need a nerf.

Valar Morghulis.7049:

JonPeters.5630:

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents, Power Wrench, Leg Mods.

Explosive Powder:
-Improves explosions from grenades by 10%
-Improves explosions from bombs by 15%
-Improves explosions from gadgets and turrets by 20%

Enhance Performance:
-Gain might (3stacks,15sec) when you use a heal skill.
-Gain retaliation for 5sec when you use a heal skill.

Power Shoes: (merged with leg mods)
-Gain 25% movement speed in combat.
-Cripple, immobilize and chill duration’s are reduced by 33%.

Elite Supplies: (improve elite abilities and this will be better).

Deadly Mixture:
-Deal 15% more damage with Flamethrower and Elixir Gun.
-FT and EG have a 15% chance to proc torment for 5sec, 20sec cool down.

Potent Elixirs:
-Increase elixir duration’s by 20%.
-Gain Aegis when consuming an elixir (20sec cool down)

Packaged Stimulants:
-Can be thrown and 25% more effective.
-Gain 2sec of protection when equipping med kit (10sec cool down)

Power Wrench:
-Reduce recharge on tool kit skills by 20%.
-Nearby turrets are healed when tool kit equipped.

Leg Mods:
-Gain stability when near Healing turret.

I love this one.

Adamantium.3682:

You keep saying this (and seriously, stop the spam), but it’s just not true. 2 different channeled blocks, 2 different ways to get invulnerability through elixir S, stealth, stability, and more.

And only one of those is in our main weapon, and just if we’re using a shield. No evades at all in our main weapon (but neither in kits) unlike the other classes involved in this vigor nerf.
In any other case we need to use up utility slots – the same slots we already have to share if we want more than a single weapon (and since this first one is nerfed by design because of the possibility of using other ones, we must usually do so).
Our baseline survivability is non-existant.

Terrahero.9358:

Such excuses would explain small variences. But not why there is more then 2 warriors for every 1 engineer.

Would it?

Mesmers are considered by many one of the top-3 professions of PvE. They’re heavily sought after in WvW. And they’ve always been a part of the meta in sPvP. Guess what?

They share 10% of the population, equal to Engineers.

Terrahero.9358:

The community at large is fully aware about the high-effort/low-reward style of Engineers.

I’m not. Care to explain?

Terrahero.9358:

Engineers are neither dominant in pvp nor in wvw.

Then why are they so popular in top-tier tPvP?

Some of you guys need to stop spewing misinformation. If you have cried “vigor nerf” then you do not know what your talking about.

“Infused Precision +Invigorating Speed” = 100% vigor. To see some of you call yourself engineers and go directly to crying nerf over a change that had thread upon thread upon thread demanding longer swiftness duration on speedy kits is embarrassing to the entire engineer community.

Terrahero.9358:

The community at large is fully aware about the high-effort/low-reward style of Engineers.

I’m not. Care to explain?

Adamantium.3682:

While I have defended our traits in the past when compared to other professions (because each profession is different and they all use traits different ways) the list of what we get compared to other professions is pretty long and it seems we always get the short end of the stick. As a long time Engi since the game started, it’s starting to get frustrating. I don’t think the Engineer is weak, but it takes SO MUCH effort just to be at the level of other professions. If we have to put in that much effort and manage so many skills we should be stronger than we are I think.

This is basically it. The effort/reward ratio is just so low. As an engineer you have to pick between doing little more than moderate damage at the cost of all defense, or being a bit of a bunker at the cost of all offense. If you want to do both you have to be quite skilled to achieve it, but this is kind of wrong compared to how most other classes can do both effectively without as much effort.

As for the firearms trait, it’s just that rifles aren’t that good. We have to get up close with that weapon, putting ourselves into danger.

I’ve ran a CC build with rifle, gadgets and mixed knights/cavalier gear, but due to all the stability the other professions had, it was nearly useless, leaving me with okay-ish damage. When the CC did work, you didn’t do enough damage by yourself to effectively make use of the CC. The problem is that with the firearms trait line, I also have to spec into condition damage, while I’m not even going to use conditions.

When you look at our firearm traits, it becomes obvious that the rifle traits are heavily reliant on precision and crit hits. This makes the tools line, with increased crit dmg a perfect combo. The problem is that the rate of fire of the rifle is so slow, that these crit activated traits can’t be used optimally. One solution would be an increased rate of fire for the rifle. For example, make it shoot three round burst, or let it have a more constant increased rate of fire. Both with lowered damage ofcourse. This would make it more easy to proc those crit effects, but only with an investment into precision, thus firearms. This would also make the engineer a bit more unique.

Another problem, this time with the use of gadgets, is that you can’t really trait for them. Nearly none of the traits directly affect gadgets. You can only get a reduced recharge and a specific trait for the mine.

Lastly is the problem with turrets, but I’ll save that for some other time, since this has little to do with the actual traits.

The biggest problem for me, is that we have so many skills just lying around shadowing other skills. I don’t want the other skills to be nerfed, but rather have the shadowing skills buffed (gadgets, turrets, rifle).

If you want to nerf IP, fine, but then please, please, please take a look at pistol 1 and EG 1 and FT 1, the autoattack damage of these skills is just so horrible that they are barely worth using, even in full damage builds. IP was the saving grace of all of these skills and now that its moved up a tier you have basically forced all WvW engineers into a cookie cutter grenade spec so they can be moderately useful as a poor-mans staff ele without the utility.

Edit funny story: As I was typing this up my wife was looking over my shoulder and commented “wow that’s a lot of walls of text.” I responded that Engineers were pretty upset at the new round of nerfs. Not missing a beat she said “What, all five of you?”