Guild Wars 2

Since our profession designers have some views on how engi should be doing in game, I’d like to ask developers to show us how they play on their engineers.

Please, show us a video of current engi usage in some dungeons. Preferrably Arah, grawl fractal 20+, coe, etc. Highlighting our outstanding versatility and support options.

Surely, class designers do play their own class. Can’t doubt that.

I think it’s not just me, who wants to see how developers actually play this class.

Because, clearly, we simple players don’t really understand how to make best use of engi in pve.

Anyone who feels the same is welcome to support this thread.

Seconded. It would be interesting, at least.

I wanna see it too

While you’re at it: show me what that ‘medium range’ in a pvp fight is.
Very interested to see how the dev’s play that in pvp.

Most of all: show me a versatile build that indeed deserves a tax on it’s damage.
Show me a versatile build that can compete with the best builds of both engineers AND other professions. Just by being so versatile it’s awesome!

ooooo ^^^^^^^^^^^^ what kimbald said. Especially the elusive medium range.

I imagine its that small window of time when both you and your opponent are flying backwards through the air during overcharged shot, then shortly ends.

Why not look up videos from already accomplished Engineers in tPvP play? There are already streams on twitch.tv you can watch.

The point isn’t “We need to see a skilled engineer,” but “We need to see how the devs think this class should be played.”

You know, what with their general vaguefixing and seeming complete disconnection between the patches and the class. Especially with their much-quoted Class Balance Philosophy.

I think that this would be a REALLY good idea. I think Jon Peters would enjoy it too! Please, lol, this would be an amazing Christmas present.

Anymras.5729:

The point isn’t “We need to see a skilled engineer,” but “We need to see how the devs think this class should be played.”

You know, what with their general vaguefixing and seeming complete disconnection between the patches and the class. Especially with their much-quoted Class Balance Philosophy.

So… seeing an Engineer played well isn’t important, seeing a Dev playing an Engineer well is. Gotcha.

I would be much rather interested in hearing the developers comment on what they want engineers to be able to do, and how comfortable they feel with their current ability to fill those roles.

I currently think they are in a good spot (minus the bugs), but some traits definitely need replacing. Far better than beta though…

Numot.3965:

I would be much rather interested in hearing the developers comment on what they want engineers to be able to do, and how comfortable they feel with their current ability to fill those roles.

I currently think they are in a good spot (minus the bugs), but some traits definitely need replacing. Far better than beta though…

You, Sir, are slowly restoring my faith in this forum.

On a seperate note, I think we are supposed to be the CC experts… we can spec for more knockbacks and knockdowns than any other profession… the problem, to me, seems to be that this doesn’t translate into much usefulness in PvE, and with the current meta making all good tPvP teams run bunkers with Guardians, stability also screw us over, especially AoE stability that Guardians provide. So our best quality is nullified by the lack of it’s necessity.

If it happens to be that nobody at Anet plays and Engineer.
I have an AAS for CAD Drafting that has turned out to be useless because I have to wait for all the OLD CAD Drafters to die before I can get a job.
I only live like an hour away and I would love to come and develop the Engineer profession for you.

I promise to add Kit and Turret skins. Fix ALL bugs and glitches before attempting ANY balance and also develop the sweetest most kitten elite skill to replace the Mortar.

^^^ Hire this man, anet! ^^^

CriSPeH.8512:

I promise to add Kit and Turret skins. Fix ALL bugs and glitches before attempting ANY balance and also develop the sweetest most kitten elite skill to replace the Mortar.

But i like my mortar i just think it needs a larger target range/faster shells/bigger explosion radius.

Absolutely! there’s no harm in getting the designer’s eye view of how best to use the jack of all trades in their own game. I would love to see details of traits, gear, runes, sigils, and weapon choices for what they show us too, with no magic godmode turned on please. Three examples for pve should be enough imo. I would personally love to see them include the bombs/grenade kits, the EG/FT kits, and the pistols without condi damage. That would prove interesting.

(I quietly wonder tho how many hours of gameplay they will have to film in order to put together an encounter that doesn’t bug out the weapons/kits the engi is using to show us a clean use of their builds.)

Something tells me Jon Peters is playing the lolstacking Flamejugger and wants us all to appreciate how versatile it is…

Step two is to get the weapon stats to apply to kits as well. We felt sigils was the more important first step because it creates build diversity. Flamethrower with sigil of air? Yes please.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Generell-questions-about-kits-sigils/928692

Although of course, its not the king of versatility. We can’t be that versatile and not pay the price, mind you. Because:
“All magic comes with a price.”

aydenunited.5729:

On a seperate note, I think we are supposed to be the CC experts… we can spec for more knockbacks and knockdowns than any other profession… the problem, to me, seems to be that this doesn’t translate into much usefulness in PvE, and with the current meta making all good tPvP teams run bunkers with Guardians, stability also screw us over, especially AoE stability that Guardians provide. So our best quality is nullified by the lack of it’s necessity.

I think this is a very accurate description of our tournament problems. I play a cc-based engineer and it’s very enjoyable, and viable in free tournaments—I’ve had pretty good success anyway. But as you say, anyone who pops stability nullifies the build. Also, the only way for us to get more crowd control than the average ele or guardian is to give up all of our stunbreakers and all or most of our condition removal.

To top it all off, knockbacks and blowouts underperform in teamfights because in GW2, damage = melee. So your teammates will always prefer a guardian’s cc to an engineer’s cc, because the guardian can better lock a target down for his burst to kill. I feel like the devs thought that knockbacks and blowouts would be really powerful, when in reality, they are little more than an interrupt.

tl;dr—our numerous short-cooldown knockbacks/blowouts can make a very strong build, but it is easily countered and leaves no room for survival or damage tools.

(As a side note, I think the devs originally expected all professions to function at about this level—but the numerous builds that sport high damage/control/survivability at the same time have proven them wrong.)

Basically, this is how we end up, instead of being awesome:

Pannonica.5378:

Basically, this is how we end up, instead of being awesome:

That is a dog with safety goggles pouring some substance out of an Erlenmeyer flask into a coffee mug.

If you looked up either Awesome or Super-Science in the dictionary, you would see that picture.

…but yes, detailed examples would be great. Also, a definition of “versatility” with respect to the class, and how that versatility—not the ability to excel or bring anything unique to a group—is supposed to place the engineer on an equal footing with other classes, both in PvE and PvP.

Yeah, I don’t want to see anything spectacular, like soloing Lupicus or something.

Just some general overview of our profession from the devs eyes. With real examples of how it is executed in game.

Something similar to champion spotlights in LoL.

Pannonica.5378:

Something tells me Jon Peters is playing the lolstacking Flamejugger and wants us all to appreciate how versatile it is…

Step two is to get the weapon stats to apply to kits as well. We felt sigils was the more important first step because it creates build diversity. Flamethrower with sigil of air? Yes please.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Generell-questions-about-kits-sigils/928692

Although of course, its not the king of versatility. We can’t be that versatile and not pay the price, mind you. Because:
“All magic comes with a price.”

Well we all know he ‘s playing an signet warrior. A screenshot of him wanders in the forums somewhere. I’ve saved a copy on my laptops HDD to make sure that it doesn’t get lost by accident.

Well lets summon up what builds are currently known and widespread:

1. Rilfe Burst Build:
Overly high burst in a short amount of time possible. Yes this is possible and yes it ‘s bah. I’m not going into details, but I’m sure AreaNet will apply nerfs sooner or later – this is when we will see the a high amount of engineers coming back here – crying about how unfair AreaNet is – when they didn’t care about balancing before at all.

2. Healing Bomber Build:
I would like to see some video footage of that one for myself as I didn’t try to venture into that cave yet. Theoretically it sounds fun.

3. Grenade Build Post-Patch:
I would like to see some footage as well, as I dropped that game after the latest balance changes. I was doing perfectly fine with them before, and yes the fix to their auto-attack wasn’t what was causing the high amount of damage applied in a short amount of time. That is still possible up to now, until AreaNet figures out.

4. Tankcat:
I guess we mustn’t get into details concerning that one. It ’s balanced, works for its purpose and can be tweaked to your liking.

5. Condition Damage Builds making use of the Pistol and Condition-Kits like FT and EC:
I would love to see some Video-Footage of them as well. Don’t get me wrong when starting that game I was all about condition damage as it was something different and I liked that system, but due to its flawed system it has driven me away from using it unless they are used as an additional source of damage (which you obvisiously can’t avoid with most skills auto-applying them) . 25 global stacks, overly condition-applying skills everywhere even when using auto-attacks, intransparent formulas which differ from condition to condition and so on …

6. Hybrid Builds which due to AreaNet our class would be the Top-Notch in:
That one would be my favorite. As you ready point 1 to 5 you might get the feeling that it ’s a long way for those to be anyway good to use and break mostly after each balance change as they rely heavily on special mechanics that do not work properly (for the good or the worse). To venture into that area people should at least be involved for class changes and be told what might happen before it does and not for them reading some lame changelogs like -100% damage here, +500% damage there. Theoretically fun, when planned and executed well and communicating with your community but not applied well … But feel free to post your Videos here and lets see what happens after some class changes have went out.

2 people mentioned building for cc, and the fact that stability nulifies that build.
If this build is given as an example for what an engineer can be good at, I ask you this:

to get this build working, you sacrifice stun breaker, cond removal and quite a lot of damage.

In other words: IT IS NOT VERSATILE!

This is the case for almost every good engineer build:
IT IS NEVER VERSATILE!

Every good build we have is focused on one thing or another.

So no: I don’t want to see footage of a good engineer build, or of a dev playing a standard good engineer build.
I want to see footage of a good VERSATILE build.
And I want to see it at medium range in pvp on top of that…

That would impress me.

Too many classes can pop stability and stay on you, which means that in a fight (be it one-on-one or group-vs-group) CC is practically useless to the Engineer. The medium range that the devs tout about relies upon CC, but medium range really isn’t medium range if all the classes have the ability to close or expand range with one move and practically ignore CC moves.

Funny thing is that Engies don’t really have ways to gain stability unless it’s by chance through thrown Elixir S.

The only time I really felt stability to be an issue is when you have two guardians maintaining it with [Stand your ground!], that doesn’t hurt engineers specifically, but any control based build. If you’re a hammer guardian you’re still gonna have the same issue, half the time your skills are ineffective cause of all that stability. (On a side note, I think stand your ground is just way too good, thanks to its short cool down. Hallowed ground has a long cool down, and battle standard lost its passive AoE stability.)

I’m fine with engineers not having stability because of all the stun breaking options they get. They can still maintain spacing or avoid damage with their access to blind, immobilize and various movement skills, they also have great access to vigor and swiftness. If you build correctly you’re still hard to catch even if the person can’t be knocked back.

I think kits need a middle ground, they need to be solid on their own, and better when traited. The grenade kit for example is always going to balanced around grenadier and how much it boost the power of that kit. Just make it base line in function, and give a new grandmaster to the explosives line. Obviously there needs some re-balancing in there but the point is that you should be able to splash a kit without feeling like you’re using an inferior version of a kit. This helps pve and pvp.

Maullus.1273:

Pannonica.5378:

Basically, this is how we end up, instead of being awesome:

That is a dog with safety goggles pouring some substance out of an Erlenmeyer flask into a coffee mug.

If you looked up either Awesome or Super-Science in the dictionary, you would see that picture.

snip

not sure if sarcastic…

that picture is the “I have no idea what I’m doing” meme.

Let’s call it the “I have no idea what I’m doing with all this amazing versatility ANet gave me, but safety goggles, an Erlenmeyer flask and this coffee mug ought to be useful for something (read: build)” meme.
It just made me think how other professions look at us (after fighting us).