Guild Wars 2

Finally I got the forums to work<3 Hi fellow engis!! I have been reading the forums since the forums have been released. Ive seen awesome builds come and go. And yet I see noone really asking about more about a pve stand point. Changing something to make it less op or w/e in pvp makes the pve aspect suffer sometimes. I was wondering if we will ever get a spvp or tpvp /pve skill split? thus making balancing different parts of the game easier. May require more resources ,but will the 2 main aspects of the game be more enjoyable?

Yeah, my huge question is how is this going to help build diversity? Your taking a good choice trait that is useful across a spectrum of different builds including power, conditions, and hybrids and making it harder to get, which in most cases people will of course then be pigeon holed into taking it, at which point they are going to invest 30 pts into explosives. And to be frank it is the only decent pick we have in the adept line. The others are just not good.

Giving turrets and FT kit each a bit more boost would do more for build diversity. I was hoping that December 10th would bring at least some kind of buff to the Juggernaut trait, like turning the 200 Toughness into +15-to-20 percent (about the same for most but scales with defensive gear/traits) and, if a damage boost isn’t in the nature of the trait, then at least helping engis with our condition cleanse issues by giving the auto-attack a chance to dump or transfer at least one condition, even if it meant turning the trait into a Grandmaster.

I’m a full-zerk all-nades build min-maxed to the utmost, fwiw, but it just seems obvious.

Ision.3207:

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.

I agree, this change would cause far more problems that it could possibly fix.

JonPeters.5630:

It was a typo.

Great, that answers that.

So…about Turrets scaling with Power. The tooltips say they do, they don’t, are they going to?

Jewles.6390:

Finally I got the forums to work<3 Hi fellow engis!! I have been reading the forums since the forums have been released. Ive seen awesome builds come and go. And yet I see noone really asking about more about a pve stand point. Changing something to make it less op or w/e in pvp makes the pve aspect suffer sometimes. I was wondering if we will ever get a spvp or tpvp /pve skill split? thus making balancing different parts of the game easier. May require more resources ,but will the 2 main aspects of the game be more enjoyable?

The game has splits between skills/traits in PvE and PvP so don’t worry about that.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Engineer-Traits-discussion/first#post3151778

Take a look at the state of our traits right now. Most of them are in a good place or have a use in specific builds, but a few are pretty UP.

JonPeters.5630:

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

I know that we all want to see fixes right this second and what you guys are providing definitely addresses that need but, I believe you know just as well that the time consuming changes would definitely bear fruit if they were worked on.

I do hope that we will see a patch preview that really embraces active play because from where I stand, that is the key to turning things around.

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

Please address turrets in those changes. In my opinion, the main problems in turrets are (in this order):

• Huge hitting box
• Health
• Cooldown
• You lose the turret toolbelt while the turret is up

I also feel a solution for the last problem is to have turrets be a bit more automatic. Have them overcharge regularly and automatically when necessary. For example, the thumper turret will overcharge every time there is a valid target around and it is off cooldown. The healing turret will automatically heal as long as there is some ally in need of health and it’s off cooldown. Then change the Turret Utility to be the skill that destroys the turret and keep the toolbelt skill up. This is a much needed change for the Thumper turret for example in which you lose your stun break when the turret is down.

BTW, just one more thing. Thanks a lot JonPeters for being more active in talking to us. This is great. I also like the way you guys are being open about the changes you have planned and your understanding of the situation. Great read.

JonPeters.5630:

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

This argument seems just fallacious. In the very same patch you plan to up ranger long bow and add damage to guardians…

How can you have here any technical reasons for not doing this for engi ?

What kind of mystical and improbable justification can have you to prevent engineer from being treated like other class ?

Quite honestly if we had the option of having 2 weapons for weapon switching, skills like gadgets, elixirs, and turrets would be good. Problem is is that we dont. These skills sometimes have identical effects to other skills on other classes. So that means the one thing that should be different is our main weapon should be better since we dont get to switch weapons. Its not sadly.

Jon, you guys should think about putting in some kind of trait like “Weapon Specalist” or something in the grandmaster traits. This would maybe provide a small buff to the weapons but also allow us to switch weapons.

From what I’ve seen I really don’t think the meta will change at all. You’ve basically just made us sacrifice more for the meta build that wasn’t insanely overpowered while giving us no suitable buffs in return for it. Don’t get me wrong, it is a alright balance change for areas like tPvP and sPvP, problem is is that most people play WvW and PvE. These two areas will be hit hugely by this nerf. You guys need to realize when you balance for engineer, you need to account that we have no seconday weapon! It sometimes seems like you forget this. I’ve been playing my necromancer as of late and I’m just amazed on how much easier it is on that class to do the same thing that engineers do. They got CC that is easy to use, their ability to negate damage from notable sources is on level with the engineer (after this next balance patch it will be a lot better), they can apply conditions much more easily.

The nerf to Invigorating Speed will greatly reduce our survivability when we fight on point. Other classes (Mesmers and Guardians) only need to invest measly 5 points to have perma vigor. Engineers, however, need to invest 20! Infused Precision grants SWIFTNESS not vigor. That means if we want to keep out-of-combat swiftness and vigor, we would actually need to give up either Grendier or Automated Response.
We all know Guardians and Mesmers have great survivability. Engineers need to actively dodge CC. I hope Anet will compensate this HUGE nerf to Engineers.

Lowering eng vigor and moving IP would be lowering damage and survival at the same time… burning the candle at both ends. Eng isn’t OP so this sort of change is undeserved

JonPeters.5630:

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

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes sic, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents sic, 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

Here’s some suggestions for modifying how these traits behave and putting them in-line with other similar traits in power, effectiveness and viability.

Explosive Powder – Improve on the current list (and identify) what exactly is considered an explosion. This is a small modification, but could be what you’re looking for (improving Rocket Kick, Blunderbuss, Flame Blast, Acid Bomb, Supply Crate, etc). Honestly, I see this trait as a bit lackluster, but effective for any players utilizing bomb, grenade and turret focused builds, while also giving them an option between reducing skill cooldowns (20% via short fuse) for condition focused builds or improving power-based damage (10% via Explosive Powder) at the Master Tier. If your metrics are seeing a massive lack of use of this trait and no like-viability in other Master tiered Explosive traits, improving this damage to +12% or +15% is always an option. (Not one I would suggest, since Bomb and Grenade builds already consist of a decent majority of engineer players)

Enhance Performance – Completely redesign this skill to function similar to Speedy Kits or Invigorating Speed. Apply a Might on receiving the Regeneration boon. Unlike the former two traits, apply an ICD lower than the boon’s duration (~3/6/9 seconds would provide great synergy with many abilities), allowing stacking might similar to the Juggernaut trait under certain circumstances, (probably not as powerful though). This makes sense as other boons that stack in intensity often have ICDs that ‘overlap’, so to speak. If placed in line with other similar traits, granting Might on only Regeneration application would have synergy with the following skills available to the engineer as well as promoting certain forms of team gameplay not seen:
Elixir H (And Toss Elixir H), Healing Turret (And Rejuvenating Mist), Elixir Gun’s Healing Mist, and Supply Crate.
The most active change in combat would be with Healing Turret’s current use – Most experienced players will drop Healing Turret, overcharge and pick up the turret to place it out of harm’s reach and under a faster cooldown. The majority of this healing is provided via base Heal, not Regeneration. This trait would give players the option to risk leaving the turret up, with an additional bonus application of Might boons. This falls in line with the Explosive trait-line’s offensive nature. Elixir H would see more use as well, since it could provide bonus might, a great synergy with HGH and other elixir builds.

Power Shoes – Does this trait really see less active use compared to others in the Inventions tree? That’s surprising to hear, since I love this trait while creating certain mobile builds in sPvP. One option is improving the effectiveness of certain foot-related skills or reducing the ‘blow-out’ effect duration while this trait is equipped by a certain percentage. This makes thematic sense as you’re getting up on your feet faster from a knockdown effect. There was a time this worked both in and out of combat too, right? Why in combat only? See Leg Mods below for other ideas.

Elite Supplies – Simply put, fix this trait by fixing the skills associated with it. Elixir X sees very limited use and a small duration boost to a skill that takes well over a minute to recharge is fairly lacking. Maybe add effects on the skills associated with the elite? Mortar doesn’t work well at all. I try to use it when I can, but it always results in facepalm worthy results. Awful Skill lag, lacking range, low durability, and weak power all result in an underwhelming elite that a trait can’t do anything to save. Fix this elite to fix the trait. Of all the elites, Supply Crate is used by the majority of engineer players, but an extra turret and a few more med kits every few minutes doesn’t justify the trade off of other more valuable traits with active ICDs or passive boosts. Reducing the cooldown of all the skills it affects would also improve its viability, but not by much. I can’t say I’ve been in a live or die moment as an engineer where 10-20 seconds less on an elite cooldown would have saved me. I can understand that this is very difficult, given WvW balance can be a pain with class-summonable pets or mortars. Maybe grant a WvW or guild siege equivalent boost to these skills for PvE exclusive environments?

Continued…

Deadly Mixture – The primary issue with this trait is what it does. It is a trait that boosts power-based damage output on weapons not strongly associated with power builds (and when they are, they’re secondary to grenades, bombs or the rifle, all better alternatives for actual damage output). The only reason players grab this is to boost the two ‘burst’ skills on the kits – Acid Bomb and Flame Blast. Every other option at Master is defensive and great, vital for elixir builds, condition removal and passive healing. This is everything 90% of engineers speccing in this tree will be attempting to build towards – not improved damage output. The end result is a trait that provides poor synergy with what the tree focuses on, something a player will swap to when they need a bit more damage output without resetting their traits. I suggest you boost the power of both of these kits’ standard abilities a small amount and modify this trait as below:

Redesign this trait to function like an inverted Transmute (Call it Mutagen Additive or something like that ) – have a chance on hit with these two kits to convert one of the opponent’s boons into a condition. If you see this proccing too frequently, apply an ICD similar to Transmute when it activates. The only problem I foresee with this is it loses effectiveness against multiple targets and can be wasted on ‘meat shields’ since some of these skills are AoEs. Regardless, it turns this trait into something that is in line with other Alchemy traits and a desirable one at that, especially for offensive support.

Potent Elixirs – The fact that Potent Elixirs affects all elixir skills (aside from Healing Elixir from the Elixir Gun) including the Toss abilities while Fast Acting Elixirs only affects the base skill and not their Toolbelt equivalents alludes me. That said, this is also a Master trait (compared to Potent Elixir’s Adept tier) that’s up against a few other more desirable traits that work with all builds, not just elixir focused ones. If you want this trait to be extremely useful, add another aspect – give the trait a Kit Refinement-like attribute based on elixir usage. Toss an ICD on it every 30 seconds or so to prevent players from exploiting their use. This will make it a viable option for any build with at least one elixir slotted (with a consistent bonus if only one is used).

Packaged Stimulants – This is a tough one. I love Healing Kit, but typically when I’m running a very squishy build against a lot of powerful AoEs that prevent Healing Turret usage – it provides a lot of heals and with toolbelt cooldowns reduced, a very fast and powerful direct heal. This trait is great on paper (and unfortunately doesn’t affect your toolbelt), but requiring active mouse targeting is something most players dislike. When you’re in the middle of combat, throwing a heal where you’re going and timing it correctly can be a huge pain. My biggest pet peeve is when I end up throwing a heal behind or on myself due to my speed (or swiftness kicking in via team boons or procs) and its cast time. If you toss the item directly on you, you’re unable to pick it up until you move off and back on the item. Without the trait, moving forward and using the skill will automatically pick up the boost if you’re in need of it. This makes it a fast and effective heal (assuming you’re not immobilized). A nice improvement to this trait could be as follows: Reduce the cast time on healing kit skills by 50%-100% (You still have to wait for the boost to get to your target, which can take up to a couple seconds). If this is still lacking, allow the “Throw Antidote” skill to cure two conditions instead of the standard one. This would improve all five skills the kit provides, not just those with a heal or boon duration associated with it. The new expected functionality would be as follows: “Med kit skills can be quickly thrown and are more effective. Effectiveness increased: 25% Casting speed reduction: 50% less (Or 1/4 or 0 sec) Antidote: +1 condition removed”

Continued…

Power Wrench – This trait probably sees little use because it’s also focused entirely on Tool Kit builds and loadouts. 20% CD reduction is a nice boost, but turret healing is very meh. Improve turret healing substantially to see more use. Grant Throw Wrench a percentage based heal that’s significant and the Thwak, Whack, Smack chain of skills an incremental boost to healing on a turret that is HP (not percent) based (eg: 1K, 2K, 5K heals @ level 80, respectively). Another reason this trait sees less play is because turrets have very limited use in most modes due to a multitude of functional and AI bugs. Fix turrets and you’ll see this trait used more frequently than now. In a kit heavy build, having the toolkit skills available with another general trait is more valuable than having it on a slightly shorter cooldown since you’ll have so many other abilities to choose from while in combat.

Leg Mods – Add a bonus function on Gadget activation (The first thing that comes to mind is bonus Power-based damage on offensive skills like Rocket Kick or +1 second duration on Super Speed, since your legs are stronger). There are only 5 gadgets. 3 of them can easily be associated to a trait based on legs. If this isn’t an option, change how these conditions are affected, not just their duration. Reduce the effectiveness not the duration on them instead. Cause chilled to reduce movement by only 33%, crippled to reduce movement by 25% and immobilize to just reduce movement by 95% (allowing a player to pick up an antidote or even dodge if necessary). If that isn’t an option either, tie a Kit Refinement like ability to Gadgets to grant a bonus effect involving the trait’s name. This trait is a bit iffy, since Rocket Boots is capable of eliminating exactly these conditions and a minimal reduction in mobility condition durations, unless stacked with additional condition duration reduction runes, has limited use in a firefight. Most of the damage in higher tiered combat is done immediately after a condition is procced on a target.

Phew. There’s my two cents on all that.

I hope this provides some constructive suggestions for your traits seeing less use Jon! I’m not familiar with the technical aspects of Guild Wars 2, so some of these suggestions may not be possible without massive code manipulation (condition behaviour for example). Regardless, I feel these changes would improve these traits’ ‘power’ while keeping them in line with the other traits available to the engineer at those tiers.

Edit: I’ll post more about the other changes you’re making later in the week when I have time – they’re mostly on par with what I’d expect to see. I’m currently in the process of job searching, so my time I have is a bit limited. I am a bit interested in what metrics you’re obtaining to make some of your modifications (mostly of other classes though). Are they primarily from high ranked gameplay in sPvP or varied in all three primary aspects of the game (PvE, WvW, sPvP)?

(Also, tell Karl that Stan says hi.)

Having Explosive Powder affect all Explosions (Accelerant-Packed Turrets, Rocket Turret and Rocket Turret Toolbelt, and Explosive Shot, for example) would be great.

Frankly, I think the toolkit should do more damage since that is our “melee” option oriented kit.

I love the in-your-face option with the bomb kit, but toolkit SHOULD be dangerous up-close like a 15% chance of interruption or daze on 1# “thwack” or “whack”

maybe even make prybar a knockdown move?

Transmute could probably be tweaked more to 10%-30% with a 5 sec internal cooldown?

Mortar could be made useful if it had a passive “increased damage on structures” for WvWing :P

while we are throwing ideas around… how about changing one grenade move like flash grenade? Take away the damage by making it throw only one, increase the blind duration and internal cooldown, and make it a blast finisher?

Forget about Damage! Take Engineers down the deadliest CC class route!
……. balancing is hard work..

hi jon ppl here got a little side tracked and posted things (good things) that dont have alot to do with the thread & issues at hand,and fix`s you cant realistically do by the 10th.
so can you pl discuss and open a dialog on our feedback to you on the changes you previewed.
one thing as you can clearly see is that ip moving to master is not liked by consensus (the first thing i see here that have a consensus on in the ng community since release lol)

so 3 questions:

1)after the feedback we gave you guys will you still go with the change as is and the notes will stay as is?

2)will you hold off the ip change and w8 to buff some things in the future to make the base and groundwork to impalement this change?

3)will you go ahead with the change and give us a compensation on the 10th?

looking forward to hearing from you

If you have to nerf our vigor (btw a ranger/thief are able to evade 3 times as much as we do in the same time) merge the traits to one trait.

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

should give 10 swftness and 5sec of vigor at the same time. So we do not have to spend 20points for something like this.

So technically… Putting 10 points into tools and 10 points into alchemy will give us 50% vigor uptime and 10s swiftness over a timeframe of 10s (boonduration not included).
With 2x rune of the monk and 2x rune of water and 30 in alchemy we can push it to 7.5 seconds of vigor every 10 seconds in pvp and 15 seconds of swiftness.
Only thing we have to do for this is change kits. Seeing that latey most engineers use at least 2 kits I guess we swap pretty regularly in a fight. So the active play to get these boons is minimal.

Now looking at a trait that gives automatically 50% endurance regeneration – Adrenal Implant.
It´s an investment of 30 points into tools. The trait itself doesnt need swiftness to trigger it. In fact it works completely passive. Though I think that most engineers would still take Speedy Kits if they´d go for it.
So there´s max 15s of swiftness and always 50% endurance regeneration without the possibility to enhance it. All that for 30! points into tools. The trait is a little bit more useful for engineers that use only 1 kit and thus mostly dont swap as regularly.

In my opinion Adrenal Implant as a grandmaster trait is overall still inferior to the Speedy kits/Invigorating Speed combo. I don´t think it should be moved down to master tier but instead it should get an additional effect. Nothing big just a minor tweak so that people actually consider taking it.
Some may argue that Adrenal implant is for people who use only 1 kit and sooo on… But I think that engineers who only use 1 kit should get a boon because they dont have the benefit of the versatility a 2+kit engineer can bring.
Maybe Adrenal Implant could be merged with kit refinement? 1 kit engineers could easily handle the effect and the cooldown wheras 2+kit engineers would need to actually concentrate even more. So it would overall still be a nice trait for 1 kit engineers..

tldr; Bring Adrenal Implant up so that there´s an alternative to the Speedy Kit/ Invigorating Speed Combo. Maybe merge it with Kit refinement?

Hey Jon,

First off I want to say thanks for opening this up to the community for discussion. If I can make a few suggestions for the engineer as a TK/FT/SS roaming condition engi. Before we go messing with the traits let’s try to fix what’s already there.

1 ) Please fix magnet. Currently it is way to unpredictable to be considered reliable in any situation. Consistently I have victims landing behind me, shooting up into the air and just teleporting to different locations. The 1-2 second delay in action makes this skill broken.

A – One possible fix which some might term OP would be an AOE pull that pulls up to X targets to your location. Since around 1 out of every 5 pulls actually works in real combat I think 5 targets would be a good number that way at least you have 1 that you can focus in the correct location. This would also make engis more vaiable for larger combat being able to pull 5 targets away from their group.

2) Smoke Vent for FT – Give smoke vent a smoke field similar to the blind field for thieves. This will give us a reliable source of blinds and a visible field. Out of any skill in the game one would assume “Smoke Vent” would generate a field. That would make FT more viable in comparision to bombs. and with the current CD I doubt spammable stealth will be a problem like it is with thieves.

3) Air Blast – Increase the knockback range to 600 (guardian banish is 750 but is a single target launch).

4) Flame Jet – Give us a reliable source of burning so that we dont have to trait into IP to get a source of burning from a flame based weapon. The damage output is already sub par for the auto attack increasing the condi duration from 1-1/2 second to at least 3-5 seconds. While still using IA would give us a source of burning on our other kits. (I just dont see P/SH being able to stay viable for a condi build in respect to condi pressure by moving IP to Master tier. Again some people will say rocket boots etc But I don’t run rocket boots so that isn’t an option. IMO if you’re getting blasted by a gaint flamethrower the burning should last a bit longer that it currently does.

5) Backpack Regenerator increase the regen to be on par with Adrenal HP.

6) Box of Nails – Add Torment as a condition.

7) Pistol 1 – Increase bleeds stacks to be on par with condi warrior.

Those are just a few suggestions that I don’t think are over the top and would put us on par with some of the other classes. Feel free to give some input or suggestions. Thanks everyone! Happy Engineering

Hi,
Some ideas for the engineer turrets :

Regroup them by use :
- Rifle, rocket and net turret for distant combat (range : 1000)
- Thumper, flame and add chill or blindness for close combat (range : 400)

Global turrets change :
- Create a support turret that add randomly swiftness, retaliation, might, fury, protection, aegis or protection.
- Reset CD when you pick it up.

Traits :
- Add a Master traits that reduce turret’s cooldown when they are destroyed (In my mind, replace Invention X : Autotool Installation).
- Improve Invention XII – Rifle Turrets Barrel : Turrets deal more damage (change from 15% to 35% or 50%) and have a longer attack range (from 33% to 50%).

Why ?
Turrets are weak because they are not pets.

If you improve their resistance, you will transform them in necromancer’s pet and there will be no reason to roll as engineer instead of necro.

If you change their mecanics, you will have a class specific gameplay.

(Excuse me for my lack in english skill, I hope you’ll understand the idea.)

Make turrets a bit like Warriors banners, and maybe they will be good.

Or make them scale with power and let them crit.

About Incendiary Powder:

• p/p builds
  Before the change to grandmaster of Napal Specialist trait, I was used to put 20 points into Firearms, after the change, I tried 10 points in Explosives for Incendiary Powder.
  It was great, it worked well with Blowtorch and kept sustained the lacking damage by bleeds of Explosive Shot.
  Reverting Napal Specialist to master wont make me spend points in Firearms anymore, IP is great for any p/x user.

• p/s builds
  IP helps this weaponset to have access to burning, but who use p/s?
  Turrets engis and nades engis; nades engis have to put 30 points into Explosives, and I’ll talk about them later.
  Turrets engis: I use a turret build in pvp and I want to bring IP because when turrets are on cd, aka “idle” mode, it’s the only way I can try to make a sort of pressure, also with 0 points in condition damage.
  When rocket turret is up, IP duty is just replaced by that.

What happens if I need to put 20 points in Explosives for IP?
Nodes engis are barely affected, Shrapnel is good: in www, when in raid, I usually swap IP for Shrapnel; IP or Short Fuse? IP, like before.
Like p/s or p/p user I want try 20 points in Explosives for IP but:

1. I get power but lose precision, IP works on crit %, grenades can hit 2(3) times, pistols only 1 at time, so less % of activation;
2. I go out of context: pistols are supposed to be supported by the Firearms tree, same turrets with Inventions, not by 20 points in Explosives;
3. Why use 20 points in Explosives when I can add +10 points and use a good tested nades build?

What are the alternatives with 10 points left?

1. I have to spend 10 points in defensive traits because the offensive ones aren’t effective like IP;
2. Napal Specialist and Modified Ammunition keep being shadows behind IP: no reliable damage;
3. all the other grandmaster traits are defensive.

I admit that ft build can be a valid option after the 10th dec patch, thanks to the Modified Ammunition change.

purecontact.1680:

Hi,
- Reset CD when you pick it up.

Traits :
- Add a Master traits that reduce turret’s cooldown when they are destroyed (In my mind, replace Invention X : Autotool Installation).
- Improve Invention XII – Rifle Turrets Barrel : Turrets deal more damage (change from 15% to 35% or 50%) and have a longer attack range (from 33% to 50%).

This. Turrets dont need a lot of changes to reach a decent usefullness. Give ’em more life or more resist, add a little more damage, and very important : fix the rifled turret barrel grand master trait which do not improve range and reduce damage of rocket turret.

Or how about this:

Change the turrets into disposables, much like mines.

When the skill key is hit, the engineer simply throws a box over his shoulder and the turret unfolds from that.

Make overcharge the default behavior, but give turrets a much shorter lifespan. Maybe make each attack they do cost them a bit of health, rather than some fixed timer, allowing the engineer to keep them going with the toolkit if he so chooses.

Remove detonate, and always give us access to the toolbelt skills.

Make the skill cooldown start at once rather than on turret destruction.

Have “always prepared” drop a turret or two on the engineer going down, rather than the current medkits.

This would allow turrets to be more “mobile”, rather than forcing a turret engineer to set up camp each time.

Furious Speed – Warrior
You have a chance to gain swiftness on critical hits.
Chance on critical hit: 100%
Swiftness: 10s
VS
Infused Precision – Engineer
You have a chance to gain swiftness on critical hits.
Chance on critical hit: 50%
Swiftness: 5s

I didn’t see any mention of this so thought id bring it up myself.

Seeing as Infused Precision is blatantly weaker and i understand that its used at range wouldn’t it be wise it increase the chance to 60% and the swiftness to 7s then also increase Invigorating Speed to 7s along with it.

This will still give the Speedy Kit + Invigorating Speed users there build setup and further increase overall play while still being a slight nerf to perma vigor.

Okkie shoot your criticism’s my body is ready.
Sincerely Trebuchette.

I’ll speak to this as a pve engineer who loves the kit playstyle.

Is incendiary powder a nice trait? Sure, it’s nice.. 4/10 seconds burning is good for condition builds and particularly flamethrower. Kit builds in general, then.

My issue with moving it is that kit builds are already oppressively trait-locked. Flamethrower in particular has 50 points taken up by incendiary power, juggernaut, and deadly mixture.

If the goal really is to increase build diversity, what’d help me is to take deadly mixture out. I’m serious, roll the base damage increase into the weapons themselves and make deadly mixture a neat but optional playstyle changer. Flat damage increases are boring anyway – the fact that it’s in an entirely different line from juggernaut is painful, too. At least in grenades, the ‘musts’ are in two trees and not three.

And why not? FT doesn’t do super awesome damage anyway; nobody’ll really use it unless they’re traited to benefit it.. and if they do, all they gain is a moderate damage and utility weapon that they trade a utility skill for. That’s nothing to write home about; I can’t see it being unbalanced. And elixir gun.. nobody goes to elixir gun for the damage.

I have to agree with the direction you are going Lheimroo. One issue with kits is that we lose a utility slot to utilize them as a second weapon, but we are not gaining nearly enough benefit out of the kits. Where other professions can slot a buff, CC skill, stun breaker, or condition removal, we must equip a kit. Adding a stun breaker to the tool belt skill of elixir gun eased that pain, but we still lose out of a slot for condition removal for example (personally I felt condition removal fit thematically better then a stun breaker for healing mist). But as Lheimroo mentions we are double penalized by requiring so so many traits for these kits. Traits I might add, that are often spread out all over the place for each kit.

In my opinion, they really do need to stream line some of these benefits better with the kits as well as streamline some of the traits to releave the price we have to pay to use them. Particularly due to the fact that kits are so necessary.

These changes do nothing for “build diversity.” The popular condition nade build (30/10/0/20/10) doesn’t change at all besides the nerf to vigor. All these notes do is push more people in to that build by moving IP to master. Even then, my condition necro is 10x easier to play, and more effective. A better option would have been to drop grenade specialization to master similar to how necro’s axe specilization was moved down in the June patch. That would open up more explorable lines for the engineer as it did for the necro. It also would help new engineers during the leveling process since it seems grenades are actually balanced for having the trait.

That said, I don’t really understand the nerfs that have been presented for what is the most underplayed class in the game. You should be focusing on making better master/gm traits to encourage people to try different lines (the changes to Elixir-infused bombs is a step in the right direction). This idea that pushing “must have” traits further up the trait lines so that people might experiment with other trait lines is flawed. Most likely, the few engineers you actually have playing the game will just give up on the class an play easy mode faceroll classes like Necros, Guardians and Warriors.

Dasboba.1652:

These changes do nothing for “build diversity.” The popular condition nade build (30/10/0/20/10) doesn’t change at all besides the nerf to vigor. All these notes do is push more people in to that build by moving IP to master. Even then, my condition necro is 10x easier to play, and more effective. A better option would have been to drop grenade specialization to master similar to how necro’s axe specilization was moved down in the June patch. That would open up more explorable lines for the engineer as it did for the necro. It also would help new engineers during the leveling process since it seems grenades are actually balanced for having the trait.

That said, I don’t really understand the nerfs that have been presented for what is the most underplayed class in the game. You should be focusing on making better master/gm traits to encourage people to try different lines (the changes to Elixir-infused bombs is a step in the right direction). This idea that pushing “must have” traits further up the trait lines so that people might experiment with other trait lines is flawed. Most likely, the few engineers you actually have playing the game will just give up on the class an play easy mode faceroll classes like Necros, Guardians and Warriors.

This pretty much sums it up!

Hi, I will be very happy to speak about the engineer, but first i want to tell you that all the changes that you will make on decemeber will be very good, and especially for thief and warrior.
now let’s talk about engineer, i’m not here for complaining, and want to point out that engineer is my favourite class and i spent with that over 1000 hours of game. i love the basically idea behind this profession, i love the mechanic based on toolbelt and kit, but also i have some problems making different build.
Now, i tried a lot of different build but in conclusion i see that one of the utility skill is essentially stuck, being a kit, whatever you want, ok, but a kit. i say that because base weapon an engineer can use are less powerful than every kit. i tried to change a kit with other utility but the final result is always the same.
Now i want to ask devs something about that: you said that you are ok with a warrior that can do massive damage, so i can think that the imprint of a warrior is based on damage like a guardian is based on healing. what’s the role of engineer? i see that can do a lot of things, and is very flexible, but if i can say that berz war is the best dps, or something like that (thinking at the ele build based on hammer delivering 10k damage on the 3 attack of tha autoattack chain), what can i say about engineer?
being the best doing something can give you a role in a party, like people call for guardian and ele if they look for great defensive capabilities, or war and mesmer for high dps. at the moment i see that (pve speaking) nobody calls out for engineer: not in fractals, or every dungeons or other events. at the beginning engineer used to be an high aoe dps class, but with melee fighters like warriors that can hit 3 or 5 enemy at a time, aoe damage like granades or bombs are less useful.
P.s. speaking about utility skills and traits, i think that elixir with traits support is not compared with other stuff, cause they can give powerful buffs like stability, stealth, invulnerability etc, lcuring one condition, and possibly giving might. The other options are: kits (as i said before to maximize a build one slot is yet taken by one kit, so you can decide to take other 1 or 2 kit) but the traits that support this style of game are not so useful (the best effect for changing kit is placed on med kit, an healing skill). turrets: speaking of pve, they are something that you put down, fire, and than explodes easily if used in dungeon or fractal, and the attack speed it’s slow, near to one of a phantasm of a mesmer, but that can do 10X damage of one turret. Gadgets: the idea it’s very itneresting and funny, but if i want to play using gadgets, i have some extra movements but i can’t remove conditions ( except for the healing skill ) but no buff and no damage bonus.
If you can answer to my question i will be grateful to you, because i really appreciate the explanation of the reason behind your choice, and i’m very interested in the ones made for engineer.
ty

speaking of pistols ability i think that is UP because of the bleed duration that is too low and for example with grenades an engineer can give more stacks of bleeding. the point using pistol is that with a pair of gun equipped the engineer can give burning poison confusion and bleeding, but loosing big amount of damage. using for example bombs and grenades an engineer ca give a lot of stack of bleeding, confusion burning and poison dealing also huge damage and a lot of stack of vulnerability and blindness.

i think that the basic discussion need to be first applied at a general point of view serching a good solution to emprove the number of builds improving utility and basic weapon that normally are not so used… giving them particular objectives and specialization.

for example also the Flamethrower it’s a bit UP because it’s not a good DPS weapon and not a condition one, beacuse can give only burning and bleeding. i think that kits can be respec using an idea like that: one or two with spec on dps, one or two for condition etc, and the same things regarding gadgets and turrets.

We loosing Vigor, that is realy bad for us – especially in tpvp!

Can we please have one more Stun-Breaker? For example “Rocket Boots”, “Rocket Kick” or the old “Elixir R”?

We are currently not intended to be the strongest classes such as Necro or Warr.

rocket boots was a stun breaker. It was great because it was on such a low cool down. The problem is so many players demanded it be changed for speed of movement purposes that we lost this nice low cool down stun breaker.

I completely feel it was a horrible trade off. But so many argued against it as it was. I argued in favor of it, but in my opinion, folks were being too short sighted on the matter and cost us our valuable low cool down stun breaker.

As for the vigor change, it will not be any worse for us then it will be for any other profession. From what I read of the other professions changes, it appears they are all getting changes on the same level as ours is.

Maul.3284:

7) Pistol 1 – Increase bleeds stacks to be on par with condi warrior.

Our 2s bleed on pistol 1 is very weak indeed.

Warrior sword auto-attack: 8s bleeding.
Necromancer scepter auto-attack: 4s bleeding.
Thief pistol auto-attack: 4s bleeding.

…how about ya start with fixing skills that still don’t work properly (overcharged shot bugs), are completely useless (Elixir R and Mortar are an insult), or have pathetic trait support (basically every gadget and turret). You want Engineer build diversity? Try making traits and skills that already see little to no use worth taking to compete with existing options. Don’t make existing options less viable or accessible to make other options appear more viable, that just decreases viable build diversity.

…taking a dump in the corn flakes to make the oatmeal look appetizing just ruins breakfast for everyone…

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

How about fixing Ascended and Legendary weapons so they impact kit damage? This would be a pretty big impact. You have added some nice power creep to all over professions and left Engi’s behind.

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a summary of the changes we have made thus far based on feedback we have read. This is not necessarily the end of adjustments, but where we stand currently. There were a lot of good suggestions, and some of them may not be able to make it due to time constraints on testing and implementation. Please continue to give feedback over the course of the next few days. We will continue to monitor that feedback and take it into account in changes we make for this patch and for the future.

ENGINEER

• Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

Reminder, we will be locking this thread near the end of the week.

Thanks,

Jon

This will be a great idea. I simply wonder if it will stay in the same tier it is in now.

Please consider some non elixir based cleansing options (409 and Elixir C are the only significant cleanses)! I don’t want to use elixirs but I also don’t want to be eaten alive by conditions.

Consider some changes like:

• Antidote cleanses 3 conditions
• Fumigate cleanses self and allies (also decrease to 3 ticks and increase the cooldown)
• Healing turret cures 1 condition per spin (a reason not to destroy it!)

If you combined some of these changes with the recent/pending buffs to Engi healing, the support engi might become a thing again!

One thing id like to see and I dont know why noone mentioned this but, with turrets and tool kit why cant you use magnetic pull on turrets? would be nice to pull your turrets to saftey, similar to the gw1 ritualist pull all spirits to you. would bring a UNIQUE thing to engis and would also make a better tactical retreat or pull your turrets into the frey with out picking em up wating for cd to put back down. that was always so inconvenient for a turret build. Even though turrets right now seem at a bad state in the PVE scene. That would just have more versatility and maybe more turret based builds if you can do so.

Also the trait that Kit refinement might also need need eather a rework or roll back. Some of the effects are nice but the switch to grenade kit still drops a fn single mine that was suppose to be a place holder.. also having the double super elixer would make engis more group help. Go in the frey DANGER! equip elixergun drops 2 super elixers (or a stronger version of 1 or EFFECTED BY Elixer Traits) acid bomb out granting aoe retaliation.
Or maybe go back farther and make 1 super elixer heal and grant protection -33% damage reduction. there needs to be MORE risk verses reward.

I dont know any easy fixes for engis except for removing some place holder effects and combining skills and traits. we are diffrent cuz most smart engis try to find SYNERGY with skills and traits. when a good one is found it becomes meta then nerfed..

so would having super elixer granting protection be op now that the difficulty of everything has been ramped up? would engis not be overshadowed in the support role? will we get more controll? will we also get stonger condition? like was said months ago? Would it be cool for engis to get toxin as well as rangers(toxins may be more nature made, can someone say Hylek??) since thiefs wars necros got a extra bleed tick? Torment i believe was revealed during a event then given to players. Can we get toxin please? well thats my 2 coppers worth.

titanlectro.5029:

• Fumigate cleanses self and allies (also decrease to 3 ticks and increase the cooldown

I have asked for this in sooooo many post. Alas, the devs seem to avoid talk of condition removal all to often.

coglin.1867:

titanlectro.5029:

• Fumigate cleanses self and allies (also decrease to 3 ticks and increase the cooldown

I have asked for this in sooooo many post. Alas, the devs seem to avoid talk of condition removal all to often.

That would be awesome, and really throw some love to people who prefer not to use elixirs. As it currently stands if you want decent condi removal elixirs are the only way to go.

Copied from an earlier post in the general forum on builds… apologies if already read and digested/discounted/absorbed/etc

I really enjoy the motivation behind these changes, so that they reduce the reliance on randomness and gambling on % procs. However, the intent of increasing build diversity has not done much to broaden the versatility within the builds themselves. Modified Ammunition helps, but does not do much to soften the lock-in of certain weapons/skills in other traits. A few comments below are to address that issue and provide more context for the weapon-based trait-lines.

Explosives:
As stands, there is not much to encourage us to make a power-based Explosives-heavy focus meaningful outside of a Grenade-exclusive build.
*Incendiary Powder – Why move to Master tier as-is other than to replace with Accelerant turrets? It still has the potency of an Adept trait. Why not buff inside Master tier so that perhaps it is triggered by all shots, but cannot proc more than every 10s. After all, putting a crit-triggered buff in a Power-line Master tier outside of the Precision line is difficult for a trade-off in Power/Precision).
*Exploit Weakness – excellent change to health threshold as it makes this trait meaningfully synergistic with a Firearms-heavy build (ie, Modified Ammunition).

Proposed change to Explosives Grandmaster:
Grenadier – Grenadier adds a reduction to bomb fuse time from ~2s to instant. Explosives line should be a boon for bomb as well as grenade kits, and GM XI trait should reflect this. This would at least allow the Explosives build to be not as exclusionary and provide a GM support for bomb kits within the Power line.

Firearms:
Agreed that Firearms is the most lackluster mid-tier line, and thankful that the 15-20points is getting more attention.
Modified Ammunition: Great that we get the 2%/condition is applied to kits… I would also like to see a small condition-duration increase for all conditions applied by pistols/rifles added to this trait, to make it even beefier and useful in a variety of builds.

Proposed additional change to Firearms Master Tier:
*Juggernaut – Remove toughness increase, expand the might-tick for any wielded kits (expand tick from 3s to 5s). An overhaul of Juggernaut would allow it to more accurately fit into the Firearms line and have versatility with a number of builds while removing the constraint of having a Master tier trait benefiting a single utility skill/kit.

Inventions:
Interesting start on changes, but still makes Inventions a bizarre mixed-bag in the Master tier.
*Energized Armor – Excellent upgrade to the conversion. Thank you.
*Autotool Installation – Nice attempt to make a turret more durable, but does little to make the Engineer work with the turrets well (ie, an actual turret build being worthwhile). Would like to see something along the lines of a protection/aegis for the Engineer when the turrets reach a threshold (25%). This would make deploying turrets even in situations where they will be burned down viable for the Engineer.
*Elixir Infused bombs – Yay! Pure and simple love.

Proposed additional change to Invention Master Tier:
*Reinforced Shield – Would love to see this trait incorporate an increased toughness with not just shield but also wielding kits. This can be gained through removal of toughness on Juggernaut in Firearms (see above)

What about changing Kit refinement? This was very positive trait for engineers before Anet spent a lot of time coding in changes that basically nerfed the trait into the ground to the point that no one uses it anymore. This is one of the best ideas for an engineer as far as fun and interesting play. If we are to take advantage of all the coding work lets “Remove the global cooldown on Kit refinement” as a start to bringing this trait back on par with other options.

Lheimroo.2947:

And elixir gun.. nobody goes to elixir gun for the damage.

Acid Bomb is so good, though.

i am pretty pumped for this patch. lots of great changes. love the transmute change. too bad they are overshadowed by the slight vigor nerf. the most exciting changes, however, are the nerfs to stupid builds like hammer/longbow and spirit rangers. oh i am excited.

I understand the move of IP to Master tier, but as it has been pointed out the Master tier in Explosives has a glut of the better traits in the line. So with that being said, how about giving us something at the adept level that shares synergy with IP as well as some new utility or damage sources?

For example:

Exploit Weakness – deal extra damage to Burning foes (20% ?)

Shrapnel Wounds (obviously a name change, and a merge of the old EW effect): Cripple your Foe and deal 10% more damage once their health drops below 50%

and while you’re at it just delete Acidic Elixirs