Guild Wars 2

Currently i have 3 full geared chars, a Thief, Elementalist and a Guardian. Now i was really hoping to level and gear a engineer after that but so far i’m hearing nothing but bad news from players. Obviously i started to look around for Arena net responses, but they don’t seem too concerned. I’m just completely failing to find a -MUCH NEEDED- post from a Arenanet to explain their thought, direction and future for the class.

Even before the infamous nade nerf 3 friends of mine who used to main Engineer (but all left the game now) already said engineer needed work. They don’t really succeed at anything and that the tools are often great and sometimes really a game-changer, the overall package is kinda lacking.

The engineer population seems really low aswell, i mean i’m Dungeon Master but still pugging alot, i can count the number of times i’ve seen a pug engineer in my party on one hand. And tPvP i’ve seen a couple boring Bunker ones but There simply don’t seem to be much around, at all. Does this not flare up discussion somewhere?

Lastly i joined a pug to fractals a couple of nights ago and the leader kicked the self-invited engineer claiming the class is “useless”, ofcourse hes was wrong but is this really where it’s heading?

Maybe in 2013 when the developers we once respected so much will sober up and start to collect (and actually work with) some feedback about the classes. Looking back, i sadly doubt it very much.

Well, either they don’t actually play engineer or are thinking “it’s fine”. Anyways, no response.

It is and you are absolutely right. There are some who have found their niche place (and have said they work around bugs) but really there are so many that you can’t work around them all. These people who keep claiming there’s nothing wrong with this class play bunker builds (which are oddly nerfed if you look at the cond damage differences between classes you’ll notice like i have that engis have taken a huge hit to cond damage as well as the imbalance of having cond damage builds for other classes not give initial damage bursts like they do for the necro under the same build armorset types) So you’ll likely get people who play 2 builds in pvp and that’s all they’ll play and say it’s perfectly fine.

They say they are coming out with two major patches on in jan on in feb I have to say after waiting 4 months for some of these bugs to be squashed I’m not really all that trusting that they have their schedule or priority fixes together for this. (this is based off of my experience so far where the last three major patches have ALL had nerfs for engineers and fixed nothing but underwater combat which is only about 10% of the combat experience in this title)

The engineering population is going to shrink to almost no one it’s already begun. People are actually denying engis the chance to run dungeons, to do world events all because they nerfed this class despite claiming it was never their focus to do so. (every class was meant to not have issues fighting according to their original statements on combat)

I personally have picked up a new build (AGAIN btw since every patch they nerf something i have to spend money to change everything around just to solo in pve) Even with this new build I have the same miss miss miss problems. Right now I’m using FT with cond burn damage. It’s nothing special trust me but it’s much easier then shooting 30 bullets (with the charr engi hidden pistol) or throwing out 30-39 grenades to kill anything. It really is that bad. The explosive radius bug and the slow cast time of each shot with the pistol doesn’t make for an improved gameplay.

I’m hoping they eventually make a statement. Twice I’ve been kicked from a high level fractal group over the fact that I play an engineer. People simply don’t want a class that doesn’t have a niche. The most success I’ve gotten is running a very Resurrection-support heavy build and that’s mainly because very few people want to “waste” a utility skill on downed players.

Something needs to be done to remove the stigma the class has. Dev communication would be a massive step in the right direction.

The only communcation we have is about that design thing they had in mind, the one that has so many people up in arms. Besides that, nothing.

Play an Engineer because you like the concept, not for serious pve, wvw or pvp. And you’ll have to accept that stuff dies much slower then with your other character. If Guildwars 2 Hardmode sounds like fun, then by all means have yourself a time.

If you actually want to play an Engineer as an equal member of society, i think you’re in for a long wait. Im suspecting the upcomming patches will only hold more nerfs, as they nerf the few obscure builds and other builds that are getting a little to close to other professions in performance. Something they do not want.

I wonder if they even look at the population balance.

Funny you mention this. They’ve actually not said a single word in the Engineer forum for as long as I can remember. If you actually go back several pages you’ll see there isn’t a ArenaNet Developer response at all. (and I don’t mean the bumped developer posts that are extremely old).

Now this can mean a few things.

1) They don’t have time to constantly make responses on the class forums. (This is the obvious choice).
2) They know about the issues that the Engineer profession has and are keeping silent about it.
3) They think the class is fine and are ignoring all the legitimate complaints and bugs the profession has.
4) They’ve given up on the class and see no point in posting or commenting on it at all.
5) They’re working on fixes and improvements to the Engineer profession and are just keeping quiet about it.
6) They don’t visit the profession forums often, and only read the sticky threads.
7) They hate us…..

Personally I think it’s #1 and #5. They can’t possibly respond to every thread.

That being said, I do believe it is appropriate to communicate with your community at least once in awhile. I know it’s the holidays but they’ve could have at least posted something prior to the holidays. Once a month isn’t going to kill them.

The devs haven’t said squat on any class forum as far as I can tell.

Their last communications were around Dec 14. Then Wintersday hit. There’s a ton of stuff that had to be fixed and maintained in that time. It’s quite possible that they class devs got pulled to help with the immediate issues in events. Considering the 21st was when things seemed to stabilize most, I’d assume after that, they got pretty busy with personal holiday stuff.

So I think we all need to chill out a little and go celebrate fat guy in a red suit day. Whether it be by seeing family and opening gifts, or by going to see a movie while everyone else is busy burning the big family dinner and dealing with Uncle Bob’s drunken antics. Let the holiday season pass before expecting anything past the barest essentials.

Wasdclick.1764:

The devs haven’t said squat on any class forum as far as I can tell.

I personally play other classes and I frequent those forums alot. They’ve given more attention to elementalists, necros, and warriors then they have this profession and they’ve even managed to push out the removal of class breaking bugs the same day of a patch last minute. So yes they’ve definitely communicated more to the rest of the playerbase in other professions, we’re just that cousin no one wants to talk to and only tolerates during the family get-togethers.

It rather feels that engineer has a few parallels with the early form of WoW’s druid class.

Druids were another class built under the ‘jack of all, master of none’ traits and early in the game’s life suffered a very severe lack of focus that resulted in a low druid player population and a general perception of them being sub-par in dungeons and raids.
They were taken to raids for exactly one ability (innervate) and eventually labelled by Blizzard as a primarily healer class, as that was the role they shackled together for raids.

Druids only started to shine when given an overhaul for the first expansion, where Blizzard refined the class with the intent of allowing them to specialise, with carrying token utility abilities. It was a rocky road, but that philosophy eventually has allowed druids to become fairly viable in all combat roles in the game today: by virtue of being able to specialise properly.

I guess what I’m saying is that a lack of focus on anything other than ‘versatility’ with result in an unappealing slab of mulch (especially true when that philospohy also includes ‘and their damage should be below average to compensate’). This is one area Anet might want to learn from Blizzard on.

tigirius.9014:

Wasdclick.1764:

The devs haven’t said squat on any class forum as far as I can tell.

I personally play other classes and I frequent those forums alot. They’ve given more attention to elementalists, necros, and warriors then they have this profession and they’ve even managed to push out the removal of class breaking bugs the same day of a patch last minute. So yes they’ve definitely communicated more to the rest of the playerbase in other professions, we’re just that cousin no one wants to talk to and only tolerates during the family get-togethers.

Well, I meant since the 14th patch, as Jon Peters has sent 2-3 messages total. One was telling players that Prismatic Understanding still had the buffing effect on The Prestige, but the stealth didn’t last longer as that would effectively increase casting time. The other was to explain how the water version of the new Elementalist falling damage resistance trait worked. And I think 1 about how they were working on getting armor preview to work properly again.

Since the 14th, nobody has said anything as to anything important.

As for total messages tossed around, I honestly don’t see a whole lot in any forum. And I jump around a lot. I’m an altaholic, so I play all the classes, visit all the forums, and spend more time theory crafting things I won’t ever use, than I do using the things I theory craft. It’s sad, but true.

And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that EVERYONE says their class is in need of buffs/communication/fixes/etc. And while I’d assert that Engineers, Necromancers, and Rangers need work most, they all have decent points for things that they want fixed. Warriors are complaining about the fact that they can’t shrug off conditions. Guardians are sad that they can’t get a decent WvW or exploring speed buff without devoting their entire build to having near perma-swiftness. Thieves complain about the lack of a 1200 range weapon, and lack of build options when it comes to late-game. Rangers have a load of pet problems, animation roots, and utility skills that are ultimately useless. Engineers have broken traits, wonky mechanics, and utilities that are ultimately useless or detrimental. Elementalists are feeling like they’re pinned into one and only one build, D/D, since scepter is weak and staff offers little to no control. Necromancers have a bunch of broken traits, and minion AI, and a trait that will get them killed nine times more than it will actually help them. And Mesmers have bugs aplenty on their clones, as well as having recently been given a speed buff that isn’t working.

So yeah, everyone’s complaining. So everyone needs to get attention. And they can’t give a few professions more attention than others. Thus, they have to do what they can, for whom they can, when they can. Some things are reallllly easy to fix (or gamebreaking), so they power it out in a hotfix. So these bigger problems with more abstract answers, like Pet AI, are going to take longer.

Everyone gets communication when the devs can report something for the players. Do you really want to hear “Day 62 of AI Troubleshooting… Pets have begun attacking their controller, exploding, then respawning as a drake… I don’t even know how the heck that happened. Anyway, back to square one. Again.”

Well even a short monthly report about general progress and direction of profession would be great.

Transparency=good, obscure=bad.

Wasdclick.1764:

So yeah, everyone’s complaining. So everyone needs to get attention. And they can’t give a few professions more attention than others.

Really? Because theyve been giving a lot of attention to Elementalist. Theyve had their stat scaling on conjure weapons adressed. Theyve had their attunements adressed to work with sigils loooong before we did. They had their horrible downed state fixed, to what is now one of the best.

Some pretty big and good things happend for Elementalist. So they are kitten well spending more time on one profession then the next. And honestly, they should. But focus on the professions that need it.
Fix the professions that shipped with the most bugs and issues first.

If you keep working on all profensions evenly, the one or two that are behind the curve will never ever catch up.
And it would also inspire a lot more convidence. Sure your profession didnt get its pass this time, but you know you are getting a turn. And then you will have the devs undivided attention to really take a look at it. Instead of haphazerdly skimping across all professions, and only helping those that your dev team plays a lot themselves (cough, cough Warrior.)

There’s a large number of bugs for the engineeer that have yet to be addressed in any way, shape, or form. Meanwhile Jon Peters is over at the warrior forum telling people to “rest assured” about their bugs since he and the other lead on class balance, Issiah Cartwright, both main warriors.

Thus the problem with engineer and essentially any other class is the fact that there is a sheer favoritism from the developers about one specific class, thus leading the others to get nerfed, then ignored, while few classes are able to put together specific builds before just finally switching to a warrior since it out-damages, out-survives, and, outside of guardian, out-supports every other profession in the game.

Then we have the other issue with engineer: His total damage appears to be split. Look at his pistol or his rifle, then each of his kits. There’s a split on what can do condition damage, and what can do raw damage. As Cosine described, the engineer is a good example of a “Jack of all trades, master of none” profession, except that in this case, he’s a “jack of no trades, master of none” that result from his broken, bugged trait lines, the sheer randomness of some of his abilities, and his incredibly weak kits and weapons that have been nerfed into sheer nothingness since beta weekend two.

It’s kind of sad, really, when a profession was better off in beta then it was in the actual launch of the game. Anyways, I wouldn’t expect any sort of developer post in the profession forums. Except with the obvious exception of the warrior sub forum.

I don’t think anyone at ANet really played engineer in last few weeks. Class is really bad compared to others, doesn’t even do half the dmg as other professions and has less survivability/support.

Terrahero.9358:

Really? Because theyve been giving a lot of attention to Elementalist. Theyve had their stat scaling on conjure weapons adressed. Theyve had their attunements adressed to work with sigils loooong before we did. They had their horrible downed state fixed, to what is now one of the best.

Some pretty big and good things happend for Elementalist. So they are kitten well spending more time on one profession then the next. And honestly, they should. But focus on the professions that need it.
Fix the professions that shipped with the most bugs and issues first.

If you keep working on all profensions evenly, the one or two that are behind the curve will never ever catch up.
And it would also inspire a lot more convidence. Sure your profession didnt get its pass this time, but you know you are getting a turn. And then you will have the devs undivided attention to really take a look at it. Instead of haphazerdly skimping across all professions, and only helping those that your dev team plays a lot themselves (cough, cough Warrior.)

Well, it is confirmed that the devs are working on stat scaling for our kits. And we got sigils. I don’t know if Elementalist conjures get sigils or not, but that’s just as big of a change as stats. And it has opened up a few more options. for the Engineer. And Conjures just get set stats based on the weapon type. We’re getting WEAPON scaling. Eff yeah. I’ll take some extra wait for that.

And you can’t say that elementalists have gotten all the attention. Rangers just got a massive melee pet improvement that makes them a lot more viable, even if not perfect. Mesmers got an awesome improvement to a Grandmaster trait (prismatic understanding).

Also, Elementalists got hit hard by the Evasive Arcana bugfix. Most all of warrior’s buffs have been to things that are rather weak in comparison, like their Arrow speed.

Would you really be happy if these once-per month updates were focused only on one class?

“This month, we worked on Necromancers. Now that they are both functional and will improved, they are now the new flavor of the month, everyone will roll one, and probably create unforeseen problems in PvP that are going to stick aorund for 8 months while we cycle through the other classes! Next month: Ranger! Sorry Mesmer, you’re going to have to wait 7 months before any problems you have are going to be addressed! HOORAY!”

We have been w8in months, MONTHS, and we STILL don’t know a thing if they are actually EVER going to fix bugs, they nerfed a skill prior to a “maybe” future stats scaling… “maybe”!

They didn’t even say when, also… did you seriously think stats scaling was the issue? The bugs are so many you can’t do a thing without noticing at least one for every single skill or trait, and even if we HAD our bugs addressed, we’d still be VERY lacking in every possible way (ever tried our elites? supply crate’s just “viable” not even that great)

I’m not talking about dumb bugs that you’ll probably have a hard time finding out or reproducing, I’m talking about MAJOR, as flamethrower’s main skills (1-2), it’s like missing an entire weapon, Deployable turrets (trait), the MOST important turret related trait.

I’m a customer, I’m bound to recieve at least one single response, and after three months left in the dark like this you certainly can’t expect the whole engineer community to just shut up and take kicks in the face in the form of a patch, multiple times! The last patch got the entire community mad because we didn’t actually have our bugs fixed and ate another nerf.

I bought this game for many reasons, and they are slowly taking them away from me with my money.

There’s no more balance, I don’t like my class any longer due to the amount of bugs, I can’t do as much as other classes even when putting much more effort/time/golds into it, the community just got “classist” towards engineers, this is completely against their “view” of their game isn’t it?

After a long hiatus from the game, I came to the Engi forum hoping that the class had been fixed. SURPRISED!! Nothing has changed except for a nerf to the class!! Awesome.

Cosine.1786:

It rather feels that engineer has a few parallels with the early form of WoW’s druid class…

I noticed this too. Hybrid specced druids were never popular or very effective, and in this game every class has at least two roles they can specialize in (and most of them can do any of the 3 effectively). Engineer and Elementalist are apparently supposed to be GW2’s hybrids, however our trait lines don’t really support this, something I’m sure Ele shares with us, though with far less of a hit in usefulness/desirability. I think trait/talent systems themselves can only with extreme difficulty be made balanced and supportive of hybrid/versatile specs, rather than simply offering specs with slightly improved performance in a couple of possible roles. As I’ve said before, even without speccing for it, choosing the right off handed weapon set can make any profession “versatile.”

This is an opinion, but I think it’s been rather foolish of them to roll out “balance” patches at this point. There have been a few bug fixes, but any attempt at balancing the professions will be undone when/if the many remaining bugs (which create a great number of imbalances themselves) are fixed. It’s also almost impossible to say what each profession truly is capable of (since developer vision is rarely realized mechanically) when available builds are limited by issues in the code. I’m somewhat concerned that this will be a persistent pattern and don’t predict it being a good thing for this profession, not if it stays in its current state.

I have held out hope we will get some love in the future. I do get the feeling ANet may not know what to do with the class?

We are like the sciencey gadget people of the world so I kind of envisioned being able to have mechanical pets beyond just throwing down turrets, or having more additive mods for our equipped weapons. Admittedly they seem to have tried to do mods, but the effect is either broken or it has a very limited affect??

I would like to know if what we have now is it, or if their are actually some plans either to extend our function or at least bolster the imbalance… hell if it is just fine and we are all just missing something I will take an official play guide on how to be better with what we have???

MAXIMISE.8321:

I have held out hope we will get some love in the future. I do get the feeling ANet may not know what to do with the class?

We are like the sciencey gadget people of the world so I kind of envisioned being able to have mechanical pets beyond just throwing down turrets, or having more additive mods for our equipped weapons. Admittedly they seem to have tried to do mods, but the effect is either broken or it has a very limited affect??

I would like to know if what we have now is it, or if their are actually some plans either to extend our function or at least bolster the imbalance… hell if it is just fine and we are all just missing something I will take an official play guide on how to be better with what we have???

I long for the day of turretbots and spidermines

Rfreak.6591:

we’d still be VERY lacking in every possible way (ever tried our elites? supply crate’s just “viable” not even that great)

There’s no denying that the profession has significant issues but Supply Crate isn’t one of them. If I could give my other characters our elite then I would do so in a heartbeat, it’s just so useful. you could argue that it’s not as powerful as other professions’ elite skills, and you might have a point, but here is where I think the “versatility over power” design really works, because Supply Crate is useful in a broad variety of scenarios, I never feel like I have to hold onto it for something specific (eg. waiting till people are downed) but feel free to use it in all sorts of different circumstances.

Bargaw.4832:

I don’t think anyone at ANet really played engineer in last few weeks. Class is really bad compared to others, doesn’t even do half the dmg as other professions and has less survivability/support.

i bet you really believe that and blame the class ^^

I totaly agree there is much to do about the engineer. But it is not that bad as ppl say. Ppl get kicked in dungon groups, because engineer is actualy not a casual gamer class and if u play engineer not hardcore – u will not be effective. I played my engineer today fractals level 22. We got another engineer in group, and I have to say: more stabile and more dmg than with 2 eles. True, we both played vulnerability and might stacking grenade build with elixiers – one of those realy rare builds which works for dungons/fractals.

But I never saw bosses going down that fast. This asura golem Tom just did one time his posion – then dead. This flying kitten of a crawl just got 2 times his shield – then dead. And even King of ascalon had his firesword maybe 5-10 seconds before dead.

The point is: As engi u have to play with about 200+ APM (actions per minute) to be effective. I came from starcraft2, so this is no problem for me, but it is a realy high APM value for an MMO.

Don’t get me wrong, there is much work to do on the engineer. If u start playing engineer, remember there are 1 or 2 builds for spvp. And also only 1 or 2 builds for wvw or dungon/fractals. Because there is so much bugged or ineffective. Sad but true story.

But! U already played some classes up to level 80. So beeing stucked in 1 or 2 builds may not be your problem. Because if u get bored about it, u will change class for a few hours/days. Don’t play engi as your main. But it is still a good, funny and destroyable class.

Just my 2 Cent.

What I really want is a DPS-meter. Cause sometimes I wonder how much damage other people do in dungeons.

Because sometimes bosses\champions chase me exclusively. And since I’m always standing far with my ‘nades and don’t have that much armor (compared to warriors\guardians) it may mean that I’m doing the most damage (?). Granted, this happens only in bad parties that kill bosses very slowly overall. But it may mean that a top-performance grenade engi can have more damage than a slacking warrior.

Yeah, the problems with this class are definitely NOT the players, in pve that is.

You can do everything the cookie cutter websites tell you to do, get all the same gear, dodge at all the right times but in the end, when you can’t do enough damage to the mobs to kill them outright without having to stack a massive amount of might from chugging elixirs like a college sophmore chugs beers there’s something wrong.

Sorry people-who-keep-arguing-elitism-is-the-answer you’re just plain wrong.

The facts are these:

1. no other class has to give up so much to function
2. no other class has to play a piano piece to play
3. no other class has gotten a nerf with every single major patch
4. no other class has to spam the #1 button on their attacks or point everywhere that 1 single attack is going to land then entire time all because it won’t be programmed right to auto attack like every other class enjoys on their weapons.
5. all other classes can kill in three shots, we have to do it in 30 with similar builds, especially against level 80 mobs of every kind
6. it’s not okay that we have to throw 30-39 total grenades to do the same damage as three swings of a two hander on other classes
7. no other class gets so few communications about their problems, in fact the other classes get communications all the time and often they get fixes in the same day on patch day

People who are complaining are very much in the right for complaining because of the serious lack of concern about this class and until the elitists stop posting nonsense and get behind the rest of the community these concerns are less likely to be taken as seriously as they should be.