Guild Wars 2

I don’t care much about the permanent vigor, that is an agreeable change. But why change Incendiary Powder to Master Tier? This will severely diminish the usefulness of grenade kit forcing us to choose between Incendiary Powder or further range and an extra grenade. Will any one be running grenade kit at all with this changes? I just spent all my laurels on condition ascended gear for my Engineer and soon my build will be useless?

So, from a FT engi’s perspective, the change to IP is huge. FT is already very trait heavy, with a pretty much mandatory 20 Firearms 20 Alchemy 10 tools (for speedy kits), leaving only 20 points left, all of which would have to be put into explosives to get IP. This means FT engis have to do one of three things
-Give up their last trait selection (IE no HGH, speedy Gadgets, Protective Shield, etc)
-Give up one of their core traits (Juggernaut, speedy kits, deadly mixture)
-Give up incendiary powder.

IP was one of the only things that was making up for FT otherwise lackluster damage. It synergizes well, triggering often because of the rapid attack from Flame Jet and activating the +10% damage to burning foes effect. Without it FT builds take a huge damage hit.

I think the core problem is the inherant weakness of builds that relied on IP without access to it. Like my case with FT, many people use IP to make up for their lower damage outputs (not everyone wants to play full grenades after all). Nerfing every single one of these builds will not increase build diversity. It will simply push more engineers away from new builds into the already popular specs.

If you want to make engis have more build diversity several things need to be addressed.

-Up the damage on builds that required IP. Give FT more flat damage, make Napalm deal damage like lava font, decrease the cooldown on Incendiary Ammo. Boost the effectiveness of pistol autoattack in applying bleeds. Boost the bleed and weakness duration of tranquilizer dart. Make the wrench swing faster. Make rifle hit harder. Don’t make engis rely on either grenades, bomb auto attacks, or 3 kit rotations to deal damage.

-Kits and weapons need to be less trait dependant! Traits that improve, customize, and change the way kits and weapons work, without being mandatory, are great. Forceful Explosives, Steel packed powder, and Elixir infused bombs are all good examples of this. On the other hand, traits like Deadly mixture and grenadier are terrible for build diversity. Without DM, FT and EG damage goes from mediocre to bad. Without grenadier, grenade damage and effectiveness is cut by 1/3. I should not have to trait 30 points just to make grenades not be useless. I should not have to trait 40 points just to make FT not useless. Traits like Grenadier, Deadly Mixture, and rifle mod should be worked into kits baseline and used to open up new trait options.

-With IP moved engis need to have something in their adept explosives line that isn’t useless or niche. A 6 s cripple with a health threshold or a small damage increase isnt going to cut it.

-Lastly Engis need more options than just kits. Turrets as a whole need a complete overhaul. They should function as disposable, powerful, and easily movable area denial. Gadgets could use a boost, particularly Mine, to make them more useful in more situations. Make enemies afraid to deal with an Engi minefield, have them apply cripple and massive damage. Maybe make PBR a highly telegraphed, but very powerful attack. Maybe make googles apply revealed like Sick Em does. Elixirs are in a pretty good place, but C and U could use some tweaks, and R needs more to it than just refilling endurance.

tldr: Moving IP isnt the problem, the problem is that the engineer has terrible damage output in most builds, especially Autoattacks, making this trait almost madatory. Nerfing IP without dealing with the core problem by giving us more options for dealing damage, choosing traits, and using utilities other than kits is a very bad decision.

Lipstick.3469:

I don’t care much about the permanent vigor, that is an agreeable change. But why change Incendiary Powder to Master Tier? This will severely diminish the usefulness of grenade kit forcing us to choose between Incendiary Powder or further range and an extra grenade. Will any one be running grenade kit at all with this changes? I just spent all my laurels on condition ascended gear for my Engineer and soon my build will be useless?

Master tier, not Grandmaster tier.

pheroth.5306:

Lipstick.3469:

I don’t care much about the permanent vigor, that is an agreeable change. But why change Incendiary Powder to Master Tier? This will severely diminish the usefulness of grenade kit forcing us to choose between Incendiary Powder or further range and an extra grenade. Will any one be running grenade kit at all with this changes? I just spent all my laurels on condition ascended gear for my Engineer and soon my build will be useless?

Master tier, not Grandmaster tier.

Hmm.. Maybe I was too fast to judge. Thank you for correcting me in my mistake and putting my mind at ease.. My build will still be viable then!

Lipstick.3469:

Agreed.. Ditching Engineer, I guess.. Maybe that is what they want? To have us all reroll.. I loved the Engineer as it was. I also play many professions, and can say that the Engineer was already balanced.. Not sure what will happen to it now. Back to my Necromancer I go.

Noooo I mean Grenadier is Grandmaster tier and IP was moved to Master tier.

Which means you can still have both.

In lines to the changes of I can’t seem to find documented changes for Go for the eyes, from 50% on crit 10s ICD iirc or the removal of burning from rocket turret..Will these be mentioned in the 12-10 update despite being at best a month (nearly 2) old by then or any explanation for them really?

pheroth.5306:

Lipstick.3469:

Agreed.. Ditching Engineer, I guess.. Maybe that is what they want? To have us all reroll.. I loved the Engineer as it was. I also play many professions, and can say that the Engineer was already balanced.. Not sure what will happen to it now. Back to my Necromancer I go.

Noooo I mean Grenadier is Grandmaster tier and IP was moved to Master tier.

Which means you can still have both.

Aye. I edited last post. Darnit you’re fast. Then these changes has barely any significance to the build I’m running with exception of the Speedy Kits changes which isn’t that big of a deal. Just got to learn to use my dodges more carefully.

Oh incendiary powder how I will miss thee. Was a long time coming though. One of the best adept traits in the game. Oh well. To Jon Peters would you please look at gadgets and the rifle auto attack please?

I’m pretty new on Engi class. Keeping that in mind, I would say that main problem is that we use utility slots as weapons slots. So, each trait that improves utilities or weapons is a lackluster trait. So, I would say that what we need is traits that improve our utilities at the same time that improves our weapons. For instance: Accelerant-Packed turrets: also gives damage bonus for each turret.

Also most of our Gadgets should be improved. If weapons improving traits are merged with traits that improves utilities there is room for new gadgets traits.

Well, I’m not going to lie to me this feels like huge nerfs across a spectrum of our builds. I don’t know how it will all play out, but I feel like currently one of the only reasons we can run berserker builds and be effective is because of the permanent vigor+speedy kits combination. Also them moving Incendiary Powder up to master really causes problems, because that means that basically your going to have to either give up the 10% damage bonus to explosives, short fuse, or enhanced performance. The main problem with it being the complete lack of decent adept traits in the explosives line, and much like others have already said, if they expect us to use them then they need to completely redefine what the traits do. For a while now our three most stellar lines in my opinion have been alchemy, explosives, and tools its good to see them bringing other lines up, but there is no doubt in my mind this is really going to hurt the build that I play in WvW because I depend a ton on my dodges to keep me up due to my low ac. Anyway we will see how this pans out and hope they have some idea of what they are doing.

Ryn.6459:

I’m pretty new on Engi class. Keeping that in mind, I would say that main problem is that we use utility slots as weapons slots. So, each trait that improves utilities or weapons is a lackluster trait. So, I would say that what we need is traits that improve our utilities at the same time that improves our weapons. For instance: Accelerant-Packed turrets: also gives damage bonus for each turret.

I would add, many of our traits are focused on a single kit, with the exception of speedy kits, backpack regenerator and kit refinement (that got heavily nerfed, anyway) that work on any kit. We are the only class that has got grandmaster traits focused on a single utility (usually, they work in categories).
As such, you need to invest heavily just for a single utility slot (taking the bomb traits makes you spend 50 points alone). Grenades are basically useless without grenadier.
This goes against the adaptability and versatility we should have with kits, that is also the reason why our main weapons are relatively weak (again, last december balance philosophies).
Imho, we should have more “universal” traits (as master/grandmaster ones depending on their usefulness) and less focused traits (using at most master slots). This would also permit to free some slots here and there, making space for gadget traits (that are severely lacking).

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.

It still puts too much into that master tier. How about we just remove/move down reserved mines and put it in the 15 point slot instead? If you guys are moving IP up will you be un-nerfing it (seems only fair)?

please remove reserve mines completely :p

I like the changes on elixir infused bombs and the “Exploit Weakness” traits. Not using bombs a lot atm but I might try with that trait again. Also might try “Exploit Weakness” – I usually stayed with my rifle and using Sitting Duck atm. Might be nice against single targets and in smaller scaled group fights.

Maskaganda.2043:

please remove reserve mines completely :p

If they swapped IP with it then at least it would give you the choice not to take it while also making IP a little bit harder to grab.

To re-echo a lot of the sentiments here if you are going to nerf IP, could you please take a look at the attack 1 skill for most of our kits/weapons (with the exception of grenades and bombs).

1) Flamethrower is just absolutely atrocious for being the longest channeled autoattack in the game, with the added benefit of being the most efficient weapon in self-slaughter to retaliation.
2) Pistol and rifle 1 are lackluster, pistol one especially with its incredibly short duration bleed. Compare to warrior sword 1 where they get an 8 second bleed with an adept trait that can increase it to 12 seconds. If there any reason at all now to play a condition based engi over a sword/bow warrior?
3) EG 1 has always been terrible, again a look at weakness and bleed duration may be appropriate here.
4) TK 1 is just bad for a melee attack.

Almost every build centered on those weapons requires IP right now to put out any damage pressure whatsoever. (Ironically Bombs and Grenades rely a lot less on IP but now are the only builds that can reasonably take it!) If those skills were buffed slightly the IP change would hurt a lot less.

Anymras.5729:

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.

Larger range, 120 isn’t doing it for a Master Tier trait.

Re: IP – The first nerf was bad, but this nerf has me considering running my guardian exclusively in pvp and wvw. Why should I invest time in playing a profession that has such a high skill ceiling and such a low pay off in any game mode at the moment?

I also want to chime in and say that at least as far as wvw is concerned I do not care where you move any of the turret traits, until you fix turrets themselves and take into account the absurdly long cooldowns some of them have for their low hp and the fact that they can pretty much be one shotted, force the user into staying in one place, and are completely worthless in large scale fights, not many people are going to use them. Even in small scale fights I feel like they are lacklaster and there are much better options available via gadgets/kits/elixirs. Its actually sad that one of the things that is supposed to make us unique is so worthless.

Saki Asakura.6479:

So, from a FT engi’s perspective, the change to IP is huge.

The Flamethrower doesn’t need Incendiary Powder. I dropped it out of my build months ago and I dish out a lot more damage than I ever did with 10 points in Explosives.

Use Incendiary Ammo properly. Equip the off-hand Pistol for Blowtorch. Use Rocket Kick on Rocket Boots. Eat Koi Cakes/Rare Veggie Pizza. We have more than plenty access to burning, and in group situations we are rarely the only ones applying it. You do not need Incendiary Powder.

Jon, are there any plans to address the two glaring issues for Engineers in large group play in WvW? As it stands, Engineer (and perhaps Ranger) feels by far the most underperforming class in this area. It also seems to me that the issue, for Engineer at least, could be fixed with two simple changes. I imagine that even with the trait tweaks (the significance of which I feel is is being blown out of proportion my fellow Engineers) we’ll continue to perform very effectively in small-scale combat. No issues here. However, there’s very little to address the glaring issues we’re facing in zergplay.

• Retaliation – Retaliation is a big issue for Engineers right now. As it stands, the most logical kit choices for zergs are Flamethrower, Grenade Kit, and Bomb Kit for their AoE damage. The problem is that the Flamethrower cone attack hits with a stacking series of smaller numbers, cue 5x retaliation hits per second for each player we damage. This results in the Engineer taking more damage than he’s giving out, and probably killing himself in one or two auto-attacks if he’s also taking fire.

The Grenade Kit suffers the same fate, hitting with three smaller grenades instead of one big one, causing us to take 3x as much retaliation damage as anybody else. The simple fix would be to cap retaliation intake at 5 times per action. If I press button 1 on the flamethrower and hit 5 targets, I should take five hits from retaliation, not 25. If I press button 1 on grenades, and hit 5 targets, I should take five hits from retaliation, not 15. A change to this mechanic will not cripple any other classes gameplay, there are no builds that rely on this to defeat other players, as it stands all that it serves to do is make Engineers all but redundant in large group fights.

• Stability – Bomb Kit was the other kit mentioned, which is currently almost entirely useless in a large fight because it requires melee range yet we have absolutely no reliable source of stability. Sure, we can use Elixir B for a negligible amount of Stability on a high cooldown, but that is literally where it ends. Stability is also crippling for Flamethrower. Other classes have far more reliable means of obtaining stability than we do.

What I’d propose is a rehashed reintroduction of the old Flamethrower Juggernaut stability trait. Every time you hit three or more targets with the flamethrower, you gain 3 seconds of stability (3 second cooldown). This would prevent the old issue of permanent stability and messing with sPvP point holding, but allow us to maintain stability while in a large group of players. The trait could also be expanded to accommodate a similar effect for bomb kit too.

These two simple changes would do nothing to hurt any other classes builds, they would do nothing to create overpowered tweaks to the current Engineer meta, they would simply allow Engineer to at last perform respectably in a large group fight whilst changing little else.

I cannot agree with what your saying Unhinged Carrot. One thing this game is good at is having a counter for everything. If your taking too much retaliation damage use something other then the FT auto attack on the FT till the retaliation buff drops.

And as far as grenades go, it is a 1500 range AoE. That in itself is a strong benefit. If they have retaliation up, apply common sense and stop hitting them. Engineers can stack retaliation as well, use it back at them.

Sorry, you’re wrong. Retaliation is a permanent buff in a large group of players given the frequency of Guardians and light fields in large group play. You’ll be literally waiting forever for the retaliation buff to drop. I’d love to know what else you propose that we use, our only AoE attacks all require that we either take 3-5x as much damage as any other class from retaliation, or get into melee range without any stability whatsoever. The class is severely underperforming in large group play, and most Engineers will agree that retaliation and stability are the source of this problem. The changes I proposed will fix it, without creating a knock-on scenario where the class is at all overpowered in other areas of the game.

I don’t have any issues using the Bomb Kit in WvW zergs without Stability.

I do like your idea about changing Juggernaut, but I think that’d be hard to implement.

+1 for OstrichEggs

I wrote this on main discussion, but will make a little statement here too.

IP is super powerful, but mostly because there isn’t any useful minor traits in this line. 5% damage when endurance is not full? You’ll get only laugh.

As a mostly pve player (been playing pvp for few months, but now waiting for reward rework) I don’t see huge reason to take engi to dungeons. I know they can do moderate damage, but warriors still can do much more and give additional buffs with banners. I take my phantasm berserker mesmer with projectile reflection on focus and feedback and it can be useful, together with boon guardian and 3 warriors.

Engi is only useful in hgh for quick condi cleanse and range combat (especially on new TA route), but on many other dungeons they are useless. Same with necro and ranger – they’re quite useless outside of fractals, where you’ve got plenty of thrash mobs. Whole defiant thing stops many condi support builds. It’s better to have boons, because they will always work. Support condi won’t. End of topic.

More nerfs to dps of less played classes will only make them more useless in pve, and create “hate” for these class users.

Make heavy nerf to warrior and mesmer dps and lower hp pool of pve bosses, it’ll make problems with pve balance almost non-existent.

Divus.3175:

+1 for OstrichEggs

I wrote this on main discussion, but will make a little statement here too.

IP is super powerful, but mostly because there isn’t any useful minor traits in this line. 5% damage when endurance is not full? You’ll get only laugh.

As a mostly pve player (been playing pvp for few months, but now waiting for reward rework) I don’t see huge reason to take engi to dungeons. I know they can do moderate damage, but warriors still can do much more and give additional buffs with banners. I take my phantasm berserker mesmer with projectile reflection on focus and feedback and it can be useful, together with boon guardian and 3 warriors.

Engi is only useful in hgh for quick condi cleanse and range combat (especially on new TA route), but on many other dungeons they are useless. Same with necro and ranger – they’re quite useless outside of fractals, where you’ve got plenty of thrash mobs. Whole defiant thing stops many condi support builds. It’s better to have boons, because they will always work. Support condi won’t. End of topic.

More nerfs to dps of less played classes will only make them more useless in pve, and create “hate” for these class users.

Make heavy nerf to warrior and mesmer dps and lower hp pool of pve bosses, it’ll make problems with pve balance almost non-existent.

Same problem in sPvP or tPvP. Engi is able to create good damage, but even if you go HGH and drop your survivability you are not able to outdamage other classes.

For AE condi damage we are now No 2 after Necro and for single target condi damage we are no 3 after necro and ranger.
Direct damage we are no 4 or 5 (after Thief, Ele, Mesmer and Warrior).

We have a hard time to 1on1 any class. With this nerfs it does not get better.

coglin.1867:

I cannot agree with what your saying Unhinged Carrot. One thing this game is good at is having a counter for everything. If your taking too much retaliation damage use something other then the FT auto attack on the FT till the retaliation buff drops.

And as far as grenades go, it is a 1500 range AoE. That in itself is a strong benefit. If they have retaliation up, apply common sense and stop hitting them. Engineers can stack retaliation as well, use it back at them.

Grenade retaliation is Ok because of the great range allows more tactical awareness and gives you time to respond. FT retaliation is the pits because you take more damage than grenades on a short range weapon that does less DPS than grenades.

Grenade and bomb specs are in a decent place right now and will be after the nerf. Everything else is going to be hit hard.

Lupanic.6502:

We have a hard time to 1on1 any class. With this nerfs it does not get better.

Are you mad? Engineer is among the best classes for dueling at the moment (not that the game is balanced around this anyway).

Unhinged Carrot.3849:

Lupanic.6502:

We have a hard time to 1on1 any class. With this nerfs it does not get better.

Are you mad? Engineer is among the best classes for dueling at the moment (not that the game is balanced around this anyway).

False, this is just a feeling your are performing well, because engineer, as the hardest profesion to master, make you plays better, and you feel just you are good cauz your are killing horde of random pvplayer, but if you take a closer look, there is no engineer a top tier pvp tournament.

At least engineer should have his weapons and kit reworked and dmg increased to be balanced compare to other profession.s Playing at randomly change traits is the worst fix to engi issues actualy.

Ho wait, you should fix all our bugs too, but I have really no hope at this part, since a lot of ’em are here from release…

Unhinged Carrot.3849:

Lupanic.6502:

We have a hard time to 1on1 any class. With this nerfs it does not get better.

Are you mad? Engineer is among the best classes for dueling at the moment (not that the game is balanced around this anyway).

I am not mad. Watching Ostricheggs channel from yesterday (tpvp Video) he had a hard time against thiefs. No chance agaist Mesmer. Necro and warrior at at the moment over the top and spirit ranger are also hard. Ostricheggs plays ten times better then me. So I guess 1on1 is not very easy for us. Or could you post me a link to a spvp 1on1 build

Keen.9253:

but if you take a closer look, there is no engineer a top tier pvp tournament.

Chaith, Steamhawk, Got Might, Google, and Ostricheggs disagree.

Hebee.8460:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first#post3133104

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

Of all the changes, I object to this the most. In this case I believe you have favored balance in a way that deviates from how the class should feel. Worst of all, I believe it invalidates all the previous buffs you have recently tried to give to turrets.

Engineers are builders, fortifiers, they should be a threat to anyone who steps into a zone they have claimed for themselves. The Supply Crate is a perfect example of what promotes this. Accelerant Packed Turrets, on the other hand, does nothing to promote this feel. In fact, APT runs counter with all of the other turret talents and the turret engineer’s playstyle. Why invest a lot of points in improving the power or survivability of turrets when I can instead choose a more mobile and self-improving build that has 10 points to spare.

As it stands, I already see no benefit to placing a healing turret and sticking with it. I always double spam 5 and then move to blow up the turret. In return I get double the healing, full condition removal, a water field, a blast finisher upon that water field, and the damage from the exploding turret. The only sacrifice here is some regeneration, which the tool kit makes up for since I free it up for its use and another water field. On rare occasions the turret will die before I explode it, but I pretty much always get the water field. You can guarantee I’ll take 10 points in explosives just to ensure the blast finisher goes off and to enhance it with a control effect. You can also bet that I won’t see the need to change any of my other utilities to turrets.

I think turret engineers should be given incentives to place and keep there turrets, not place, explode, and move on. What I would like to see is fear. Fear from other professions. I would like to see other players see those turrets and actually question their chances of survival should they choose to fight on engineer soil. I want to see the effects of overcharging your turrets to be big. Way big. So big that other professions know the skills by name out of recognition of how good they are. In trade for that, put overcharges on cooldown when you place the turret. Make me invest the time into the ground I have chosen to fight on.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Keen.9253:

but if you take a closer look, there is no engineer a top tier pvp tournament.

Chaith, Steamhawk, Got Might, Google, and Ostricheggs disagree.

I was talking about top tier pvpplayers, not guys doing videos…

Moreover what about builds variety ? As all engineer, thoses guys are just using the 2 or 3 builds available for engi, nothing more.

SD berserker ? check
HGH grenadier ? check
Tank miner ? check

other builds are subpar, but sure moving IP to master tier will change everything, yes…

ho wait, no !

Engie is only reasonably viable in tourneys because of their ability to condition spam at range. This “Balance patch” is based on the misguided notion that Engineers are “balanced” somewhat to start with, and any traits that are perceived as stronger compared to other dev-admitted lackluster traits are shifted into increasingly difficult to spec to places.

I don’t think IP is over-powered in any way as an adept trait, before the nerf, yes, but now? No.

My reasoning is as follows, there are 2 primary types of build in the game, condition, and direct damage. For direct damage builds, assuming the spec is either bombs or grenades, an extra 5-6 seconds of 380 pt burning per second is negligible, and is mostly taken because as others have stated, there are no other decent adept traits. So while this does up your DPS a smidgen, in a Power/direct damage line it is definitely an adept trait amount of damage.

For condition builds, things are a bit stickier. Primarily conditions are for pvp-type environments, because PvE conditions are broken. And in PvP, burning is an engineer’s best condition, not because it’s the best damage condition, but because engies have decent access to it through various means, and more importantly, we can’t generate a constant barrage of bleeds through traits and skills alone. The one kit that synergizes with Shrapnel to give us decent bleeds is grenades, which is 30 points in explosives, gives us IP and then Grenadier.

Here the IP cool down allows us to keep bleeding up on 1 target to a maximum of 80% of the time, if we can hit them. Once again, not overpowered, because we went 30 points into the POWER line to get 2 sources of condition damage and the grenadier trait. But we could have CHOSEN to do this before.

I understand where Ostricheggs is coming from saying it’s powerful where it is now, but he is playing at the top of of his profession, and is using might stacking to push the limits of condition damage, but that isn’t the case for everyone in the profession. Engies were required to take this trait not because it was OP, because it was the only option.

So what “build diversity” has been gained by moving a reasonable trait to a more difficult spot?

Keen.9253:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Keen.9253:

but if you take a closer look, there is no engineer a top tier pvp tournament.

Chaith, Steamhawk, Got Might, Google, and Ostricheggs disagree.

I was talking about top tier pvpplayers, not guys doing videos…

Moreover what about builds variety ? As all engineer, thoses guys are just using the 2 or 3 builds available for engi, nothing more.

SD berserker ? check
HGH grenadier ? check
Tank miner ? check

other builds are subpar, but sure moving IP to master tier will change everything, yes…

ho wait, no !

Well, you could have just checked the leaderboards. For example, chaith is currently fifth on the team leaderboards. Got might is first on the solo leaderboards. To my knowledge, no engineers in the top 100 team/solo use HGH regularly. One of those players uses SD. None of them use a tanky build.

I’m not saying the proposed changes are amazing, I just felt I needed to provide some clarification. If you feel the changes are bad, explain why. A blanket statement like “there are no engineers in top-tier tournaments,” even if it were true, is usually unhelpful.

I think the changes are bad, because most of those builds they are running are currently using the vigor trait to supplement our otherwise poor survivability. Now once it is changed, I have a feeling we’re going to be a lot worse off. I feel like on my full gc build that is where at least 50% of my survivability comes from. Maybe that is a bit overstated, but after the changes we will see.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Keen.9253:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Keen.9253:

but if you take a closer look, there is no engineer a top tier pvp tournament.

Chaith, Steamhawk, Got Might, Google, and Ostricheggs disagree.

I was talking about top tier pvpplayers, not guys doing videos…

Moreover what about builds variety ? As all engineer, thoses guys are just using the 2 or 3 builds available for engi, nothing more.

SD berserker ? check
HGH grenadier ? check
Tank miner ? check

other builds are subpar, but sure moving IP to master tier will change everything, yes…

ho wait, no !

Well, you could have just checked the leaderboards. For example, chaith is currently fifth on the team leaderboards. Got might is first on the solo leaderboards. To my knowledge, no engineers in the top 100 team/solo use HGH regularly. One of those players uses SD. None of them use a tanky build.

I’m not saying the proposed changes are amazing, I just felt I needed to provide some clarification. If you feel the changes are bad, explain why. A blanket statement like “there are no engineers in top-tier tournaments,” even if it were true, is usually unhelpful.

So I cannot be here just ranting ?

Everything about engi have been said for long already.

Engi cannot swap weapons because it was supposed to use kits instead. Unfortunately it seems Anet have considered this as an good excuse to design his weapons as a subpar of any other prof weapons, with the lowest dmg and efficiency. It will be nice if kits were OK, but no, only nade and bombs are decent, and TK as utilitaries, and only at the cost of a strong build spec.

You just end with a little bunch of decent builds, greatly relying on gear and runes, etc…

No other prof have to rely as many as engi on gear and runes to buile a decent spec.

Because of this, the traits choices is vital, and moving random traits just put more mess in this. Choosing a traits when you are a warrior, or anything else, is like saying :

“will I pick a little more dmg here, or adding an effect here ? "

Engi choosing traits are more like : " Should I cut my rigth arm or my legs ? "

We need more reliable kits, more reliable weapons, with a decent base dmg or utilities pool to pick in, not a bunch of situational skills who force us to build our role on gear and runes only.

Ho, and fix bug too.

Playing an engineer is like running a marathon with 5 lb ankle weights on. After a year of being handicapped we would just kick the ever loving kitten out of everyone if they fixed us.

Keen.9253:

So I cannot be here just ranting ?

Of course you can if you want, you’re free to speak your mind as you see fit. I was merely trying to clarify some misinformation about engineers in top-tier pvp.

What if exploit weakness gave an extra 1% damage boost per stack of vulnerability?

Not the first patch with the “nerfhammer of build diversity”.
We still suffer from the hardest overnerf in gw2 history that deleted kit refinement.
After that i started twinking, now i got six 80s, before that i preferred to main engineer and nothing else. I only play for the daily atm and wait if some day this class will regain its fun. Because for me this class died with the KR trait. A laughable trait compared to stuff other classes have.

I just dont get it why there are so hard nerfs every patch to this class that almost no one plays.

After obsesively reading over everything that Jon Peters has posted in the last week I’ve come to a conclusion. Every balance change they are trying to make is the so called ‘low hanging fruit’, stuff that has a high impact with the least amount of work involved. While this approach has been working decently for them, it doesn’t address any of the core problems I feel much of the Engi community has with the profession (namely turret bugs, main weapon weakness, overall weak traits for a profession that relies heavily on traits)

To go along with Jon’s analogy, Engineers are out of low hanging fruit, and I feel like these recent attempts are just polishing up rotten fruit that should’ve been culled along time ago.

amiable.4823:

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?”

Great post ! (and funny too !)

But you basically hit the nail on the head. It’s not that we are all in love with this super-duper over-powered trait called Incendiary Power … it’s simply a case of not having any viable alternatives given the pathetically low auto-attack 1 skills.

And your examples are spot on; Pistol 1 is a complete joke —- so much so, that if you want to get the benefits of P2 and 3 … then IC becomes almost mandatory.

The bottom line is this, when they move IC to master level (and here is where it really truly belongs .. it’s a good trait) without addressing skills like Pistol 1 (and FG1/EG1) … then all they have accomplished is to further pigeonhole Engineers into the Grenade/Bomb builds.

So while I agree that IP does belong in the master tier, please don’t fix this until AFTER you have addressed the reason IP was deemed to be a must have trait in the first place.

JonPeters.5630:

Yes, as we start running out of easy changes we can start addressing those that are more difficult. I will say the notes we posted are balance changes and there are bug fixes coming both Nov 26th and Dec 10th that hopefully address some other concerns. We will not get to every bug but we are focusing on ones we think have the most detrimental impact to gameplay.

Jon

I assume you mean difficult as in the changes to engi are just like a medicine that we need to swallow to help the game as a whole.

But for the twentieth time, you’re substantially limiting build diversity and not actually reducing the one spec that is arguably in need of a reduction (bomb nade) because of the incendiary powder change.

In other words, instead of helping the game you’re actually detracting from engineers without limiting our efficacy outside of basically removing any sort of build diversity.

All of this just for the sake of having a “strong” trait be moved to where it’s more difficult to grab. It’s an honorable thing to do, but listen when your player base when they tell you that reality is simply far different from what looks good on paper. You’re nerfing builds that don’t need a nerf and leaving untouched the one monster build that engis have.

Ostricheggs.3742:

JonPeters.5630:

Yes, as we start running out of easy changes we can start addressing those that are more difficult. I will say the notes we posted are balance changes and there are bug fixes coming both Nov 26th and Dec 10th that hopefully address some other concerns. We will not get to every bug but we are focusing on ones we think have the most detrimental impact to gameplay.

Jon

I assume you mean difficult as in the changes to engi are just like a medicine that we need to swallow to help the game as a whole.

But for the twentieth time, you’re substantially limiting build diversity and not actually reducing the one spec that is arguably in need of a reduction (bomb nade) because of the incendiary powder change.

In other words, instead of helping the game you’re actually detracting from engineers without limiting our efficacy outside of basically removing any sort of build diversity.

All of this just for the sake of having a “strong” trait be moved to where it’s more difficult to grab. It’s an honorable thing to do, but listen when your player base when they tell you that reality is simply far different from what looks good on paper. You’re nerfing builds that don’t need a nerf and leaving untouched the one monster build that engis have.

Which is still bottom-tier in PvE instanced combat.

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

Exploit Weakness; Not taken because cripple doesn’t = damage. Since this trait is going to set to proc at 50% instead of 25% I think it will have it’s merits but I feel it only viable in builds that don’t have space for it. Empowering Adrenaline is okay in my opinion. Probably wasn’t taken because the benefit isn’t all that huge.

my response: cool story bro.
i don’t find most of those traits useful anyway, they just happen to be in the lines i use. except MAmmo. no thanks forever.

JonPeters.5630:

By difficult, I mean time consuming from either a technical or testing standpoint.

Okay Jon, cool.

I understand that you guys cannot simply change the #1 skills on Pistols, or whatever, without lots of testing. While moving IP to master is simple and quick to implement.

Got it.

The only thing we are asking is that you don’t make the easy fix until the hard fix is addressed. Because in the interim between moving IP to master and the Devs finishing their testing of 3 to 4 weapons and kits (and this could take many-many months) … you will have done more damage (from a balance and build diversity standpoint) than good.