Guild Wars 2

I am asking this in all serious because of the following reasons.

1. Turrets are still broken. – Bugs from all sides, terrible health and still being one-shot by any real form of aoe.

2. Celestial gear- This is almost perfect for the idea of playing an engineer, Takes 2-3 months to farm a whole set….. through crafting.

3. Our downed skills- Pretty week and not viable in almost any situation due to bugs, LoS issues and generally everyone having some form of stability/immunity to our abilities. Even mobs are teaming up to block us some times.

4. The lack of consistent stability- no explanation needed.

5. The Ranged Weapons- We suffer from the horrible mechanic of reflected projectiles, but our only standard weapons choices are all ranged based. Also our ranged abilities have very little range (pre-trait) even then the only part with range is rifle #1.
side note I know we will be getting new weapons in the future. Also all the abilities on them are pretty poor, Condi pistols? with around 1 second of conditions on each weapon(pre condi duration) meaning we can have maybe 3 seconds? It’s a little bit under powered.

6. Champion weapons skins/Legendary weapons skins- There is no pistol skins in the new champion loot bags. The rifle skins are nice, but half of them are from WvW. Also we are being looked into for the legendary issue. but I still see it as annoying.

7. limited backpack skins and being told they’ll fix them now- This is great and a nightmare at the same time. If this was announced in Flame and frost I would’ve spent hours farming the backpack skin. I didn’t because there was no point as I would never see it as I mainly use kits.

8. The Nerf hammer- Other classes have been smashing PvP, PvE and WvW for almost a year now. As soon as an Eng joins them it seems those classes scream out and the nerf hammer comes crashing down. Meaning we as a community are to afraid to help each other as we think “OMG I have found this great build, oh if i tell everyone it might get nerfed. better keep quiet” Whether this is intentional (which we know it isn’t) or not. It seems our build diversity of great builds is slowly disappearing. Nerfing one build does affect others.

Now the engineer class has some great mechanics, game play and all round awesomeness, It’s just the little things that could be improved in general.

We do appreciate the work Anet put in but we are feeling a little left behind.

If any of this could be looked into I think the community as a whole would be happy bunnies.

Thanks

Feel free to add to this as a community. These are just the things I have noticed over the few months of playing.

I already have a full celestial set. and it only took 30 days to craft. Not 2-3 months. 5 days per piece X 6 Armour pieces = 30 days. 40 days if you’re going for celestial weapons as well although to be honest there is such a thing as too much celestial stats. So its not that bad.

Also, The Flamethrower doesn’t get reflected back. Nor does elixer guns fumigate. Nor toolbelt skills or skill 4 on dual pistols. you just have to pay attention to what you use when you see reflects. Its not really a problem to me honestly. Then there is also toolbelt. Just magnet the person reflecting and smack him in the face.

Regarding the Nerf hammer the build diversity is higher than its ever been in my opinion. Celestial gear alone has opened up the way to all sorts of unorthodox builds. like a viable Elixer gun + flamethrower build in WvW. You just have to be willing to experiment.

Yesterday I made the very hard decision to place my engineer in storage, a character that I have played since day one and served me well. However as I spent more time in WvW, I realized just how much more the engineer could have been doing. The engie is a support build but with no stability to withstand the massive AOE, the lack of power to cut through zergs, its lack of speed to move quick from target to target… meh I am gonna stop there . I simply took most of his armor, salvaged them for ectos and the mad king runes ( which went into my Ranger) and spending my time happily playing a ranger. Yeah the Ranger still needs much Anet love but personally the ranger has something it is good at rather than a mish mash of half levelled damage kits of the engineer, that make you sacrifice survivability over damage (and that base damage is not that great to begin with IMO). Added to the fact that engineers seems to drag their sorry backsides in normal movement, sure we got the amazing rocket boots but its still the equivalent of strapping a firework to a snails backside. Don’t get me started on speedy kits, 5 seconds of speeds is just awful considering the amount of button presses you need to do. Yeah you get by but its a pain to use honestly. Movement is everything and I feel IMO the engineer truly needs to be brought up with on par base speeds of other classes, that way we have a fighting chance to escape when we need to. Just now other classes have better catching up skills that only further pulls out the inevitable. Some people like the engineer and will defend its idiosyncratic traits but in honestly other classes can do things a lot better because they are not a jack of all trades.

The main issue however lies in Anets decision in how they created the Engineers skills tree. Instead of actually looking into it and creating the tree to base itself on your chosen damage as well as having a defensive boost. The ranger for example can specialize into either crit or condition builds by utilizing the skills tree quite easily, if you do it well you can have both albeit slightly more diluted than having it either as a specialized damage trait. The poor engie simply does not have this. If engineer had the range, power and condition set-ups of the ranger ( by this I mean that the skills were matched up in the skill and trait tree) , it would be a far more destructive build. Anet could also ramp the toughness and damage on those turrets to make them viable as extra support etc. I would give up my kits any day for a stat based weapon of my choosing also.

I am not saying the engie is bad, its not as I have had an amazing time both in WvW and PvE and I have a soft spot for it. But until, Anet make this class actually shine at something, give it good base damage with the ability to make it tanky rather than the " peashooter versatility angle", then its relegated to the re-roll pile. Yes Anet, please please look into the engie and make it shine, I do miss my engie terribly but not enough to give up my ranger with its zippiness,1600 condition damage" and decent toughness / vit to keep me going. Sorry but you just cant get that on engineer, engies should be utter tanks and the Master Blasters of GW and they are not. In military terms a tank is a tank for good reason, it has toughness, heavy armor and massive power to counteract its slowness. The engie has Pew Pew damage, medium armor , blunders along like its been downing hippo tranquilizers and we have tiny Golems as an elite??. We want the big WVW Golems and we want them now It would be like mechwarriors and we know how fun that would be.

Engineers don’t get golems, that’s Asura.

Kirschwasser.3972:

Engineers don’t get golems, that’s Asura.

Asura engineer is why XD

GoNeKrAzY.7308:

I already have a full celestial set. and it only took 30 days to craft. Not 2-3 months. 5 days per piece X 6 Armour pieces = 30 days. 40 days if you’re going for celestial weapons as well although to be honest there is such a thing as too much celestial stats. So its not that bad.

Now, add accessories, rings and amulet. 5 days per piece x 5 = 25 days add that to your 40 days we are at 65 days. 2 months of logging in everyday, most people will miss a couple of days and the odd slip up of that awkward thing called life. you are looking at 2 months if you get every day. or closer to 3 months if you have other commitments.

GoNeKrAzY.7308:

Also, The Flamethrower doesn’t get reflected back. Nor does elixer guns fumigate. Nor toolbelt skills or skill 4 on dual pistols. you just have to pay attention to what you use when you see reflects. Its not really a problem to me honestly. Then there is also toolbelt. Just magnet the person reflecting and smack him in the face.

Yes I also will happily agree there are other thing you could use to avoid the reflect, part of the game is to be adaptable. I think it’s just odd that with a class where you make a build that could be built around having only one weapon, it means you have to sacrifice something to have a chance to do any damage. It’s not so much that as a the issue as a whole. We have only ranged weapons with limited range, that get thrown in with the long ranged weapons. It’s a balance issue. How can you balance something as ranged but remove the ranged part of it? If we had the standard range on our weapons of the traited range, then the traited range added on top of that, I think balance wouldn’t be so much of an issue.

Hope that makes more sense.

OP, as far as your balance concerns go, I can vouch that engineers are in a good place. I play a lot of tPvP and WvW as engineer and can assure you we are balanced. Specifically on stability, we have traits to deal that weakness.

I honestly consider Engineer the best class in the game, but GW2 being so skill based, perhaps Engineer is just the class that works best for my playstyle.

Everyone must remember that a clever build is part of the skill factor almost as much as playing to your builds strengths.

Engineers aren’t hated as much as they are out of focus and befuddled. Anet isn’t sure what they want the engineer to do, so every time something emerges they attack with the nerf mallet, not sure what the end result will be.

I never said we are unbalanced. What I was saying was that when we find something relatively good with a very specific purpose we get hit hard, without really considering the source of the complaints.
It makes us as a community very weary of sharing builds. It seems that every time what is considered an OP build crops up we are instantly the focus of every other class, being under represented we then have to have a fun time of waiting for the hammer to drop.

The best example I have seen of this is 100nades as a build, was easily avoidable and high damage, one photo-shopped image appears and the build was attacked.
We have other builds cropping up which are causing certain classes issues, because of the publicity of it and the relative under-representation of the class. Nerfs calls get larger votes for, rather than objectively looked at.

I totally agree we are just in a confusing zone at the moment and Was hoping that concerns raised will give Anet areas to look at rather than a moan about fixing them as such.

We are a patient bunch, just seems that we are maybe being too patient. especially when it comes to turrets and down skill bugs.

The only thing I would add to this is: The Fix-er-Upper. The exotic….. MACE? Put one named Wrench into the game and make it so Engineers can’t use it? Odd.

FreekPalmer.2839:

I never said we are unbalanced. What I was saying was that when we find something relatively good with a very specific purpose we get hit hard, without really considering the source of the complaints.
It makes us as a community very weary of sharing builds.

Please tell me this is not motivated by the Torment rune nerf.
Because I have to seriously question the sanity of someone who didn’t think this would get a very swift nerf. There’s situations where a nerf is unexpected, and there’s situations where every day something isn’t getting nerfed I’d have to wonder whether the devs even know about it.

FreekPalmer.2839:

Now, add accessories, rings and amulet. 5 days per piece x 5 = 25 days add that to your 40 days we are at 65 days. 2 months of logging in everyday, most people will miss a couple of days and the odd slip up of that awkward thing called life. you are looking at 2 months if you get every day. or closer to 3 months if you have other commitments.

It would actually be faster just getting Ascended Celestial trinkets.

You could get both accessories in 4 weeks if you’re in a guild that has all missions unlocked. You could get both rings in 20 days or less, depending on how many 10+ Fractal tiers you have available across all characters. You could get your amulet in 30 days or less either through laurels or laurels + badges.

You could do all of this alongside compiling your armor and weapons, meaning you could have full Celestial gear in 40 days.

People complained that (1) gear is too easy to get in GW2 and (2) crafting is largely pointless in PvE aside from speed leveling. ArenaNet in one patch rectified both of these problems, and people complain about it anyway. Just goes to show you cannot satisfy everybody regardless of what you do.

I personally think the Engineer is fine. Turrets are weak. We lack reliable means of Stability. We have no melee weapons except the Tool Kit, which is not a weapon but a utility skill.

I agree with you on all of these points, but I could easily make a list just as long about why the Warrior relies on Guardians to be the oh-so-amazing DPS people cite on the forums while Engineers can stand back at 1500 range with top-tier condi removal and sustainability at the same time. Or about how Guardians have to sink points into several traits to get what Engineers have in Super Elixir spending zero.

The Engineer has access to every single combo finisher and the most combo fields of any class in the game. We have ranged DPS equal to Rangers (if not better). Our Bomb Kit does damage close to the Warrior Axe while stacking more Vulnerability, having access to a Fire field, a Smoke field, and an AoE Immobilization.

I refuse to believe that ArenaNet dislikes Engineers in any way, because the amount of work they put into our kits is unbelievable compared to the simplicity of other classes.

I only see #4 as a valid complaint. We do need stability added to at least a few utility skills and possibly a trait or 2.

The rest are really something the OP just wants and will end up making the Eng OP. It’s fairly obvious that Engineers are fairly well balanced and don’t need any huge adjustments to play well in just about every aspect of the game.

I seriously don’t see how the time gating on Celestial gear is some sort of “hate” directed at the Engineer class…..paranoid much?

what Anet should fix:

- we have not stability

- Anet forgot about pistols and their skin (not in adventure box, not in champions drop, mystic skins are the same for 3 pistols.. etc..)

-they should consider that engineer it the less played class, so they need to improve it… it’s a game based on skins..medium skins are for the most just for thiefs and ranger.. show us a large choice of skins for us!!

- add the possibility to show off the kits please

this is my opinion

I am sure Anet loves Engineers like a mother her child. I am software developer by myself and I love every line of code and so I am sure Anet loves us

Lupanic.6502:

I am sure Anet loves Engineers like a mother her child. I am software developer by myself and I love every line of code and so I am sure Anet loves us

ahaha.. so i hope the mother gives same gifts for all the child

-Necro son—→ a lot of skins choice
-Warrior son —→ a very lot of skins choice
…
…
- Engi son-→ skins just to wear it

:P

ehhhh engineers are fine.
downed state is fine.
celestial gear is not that good and the fact that it takes a long time to make isn’t an engi problem.
neither are lack of new pistol skins.
turrets are bad in pve i agree.
we have stability. other classes don’t have stability. don’t complain about stability.
can you tell me the last engi build that was nerfed? because i can’t remember. was it kit refinement like 8 months ago?
and as for projectile reflect, perhaps you could not throw projectiles at it. can’t tell you how many times i’ve seen people shoot their guns or bows at wiggin’s whirl and then whine about projectile reflection. and we have bomb, ft, tool kit to bypass reflection

Ale.3280:

-they should consider that engineer it the less played class

People always say this, but I question how much of it is true.

Engineers are everywhere in PvP.

I also personally feel like Necromancers and Rangers are the least played classes in PvE, but that’s all a matter of perspective.

Carighan.6758:

Please tell me this is not motivated by the Torment rune nerf.
Because I have to seriously question the sanity of someone who didn’t think this would get a very swift nerf. There’s situations where a nerf is unexpected, and there’s situations where every day something isn’t getting nerfed I’d have to wonder whether the devs even know about it.

So your process was to make an assumption, then use that as the basis of your argument?
It was never about the Torment nerf because that’s not anything to do with engineer. Also Technically that was an exploit. NERF ACCEPTED

The point that was made is that for what I have seen an OP build engineer gets latched onto very quickly.

People have personal opinions and Agreed that Celestial gear isn’t “The best” if you roll one way and not just for engineers. The point was Eng and Ele that jack of all trades are offered a set of gear, which is very nice, We must wait to get it. No other gear is like this. That’s the issue. It’s the only fully gated set of gear. If all gear was this way it would be acceptable.
Check the dps and surviability you could get with celestial gear it’s pretty good.

Stability is available with a turret, but again it’s on a turret which is broken atm. So maybe one fix could hit both problems?

Just to point out the title “Does Anet not like Engineers?” was to start a discussion, not an attack.

I did say that Anet have done some fine work with them. We are just lacking in key areas.
Which I posted and explained.
Areas which have been around for a long time, and mentioned frequently.

FreekPalmer.2839:

It’s the only fully gated set of gear. If all gear was this way it would be acceptable.

I think you’re looking at it wrong. Celestial is just a preview of how future content will be handled. They’ve said as much about how they’ll be releasing Ascended armor—that it will be craftable, but that tier 7 material acquisition will be gated.

This all being said, Charged Quartz are ridiculously easy to obtain. Even after the event is over, Quartz is only a little over a gold per stack. It’s actually cheaper to craft Celestial gear than it is buying Powerful Blood to craft Berserker gear.

Think of it this way, classes have their own little niches where they excel in, guardians support, necros conditions, etc. Engineers ANet dosn’t know what they want to do with = they have no niche = they currently arn’t meant to excel in anything. If they do, banhammer comes down. End of story.

I chose my engineer over my (WvW) guild. It was a mistake, but i don’t regret it. Now i don’t play GW2 except for festivals.

Elixir X gives stability… Yeah… We need better stability. Maybe it’s because of the myriad of pushback/cripple/blowbacks we have access to.

I dunno engineers seem to be in a good place. They move faster than guardians, hit just as hard. Good access to numerous stuns and cc as well area denial skills.

They don’t heal as well, but that’d make them OP.

Once an engineer starts holding a point down it’s really hard to dislodge them. So again I don’t know what the complaint is.

I think what’s going on right now is a shift to look at where the class is heading, and not so much on where it is right now. We’ve seen a whole lot of attention in recent patches, and to be honest its all been changes for the better. Pre-Sky Pirates patch, Engineers only saw nerfs and were largely ignored by the meta. But now with the plethora of new build options they’ve been tossing in, I’d say that ANet wants to like Engineer but in the end we’re still the minority class, that plays so wildly different than other classes we don’t have a tangible “good place” to be, design wise.

You get 5 Engineers in one party and you’ll have different 15 builds between them. It’s the one class that’s effectiveness is genuinely up to the player, as one build that a player cant do anything with another could use to solo cap a tower.

My personal take is that engineers have been, and continue to be, solid if niche contenders in WvW and sPvP.

In PvE however, they’re a horrible mixed bag of broken mechanics that never quite seem to add up to something solid no matter which way I stack them.

As someone who’s a primarily PvE player with only the occasional dash of PvP for something different to do, this is a matter of concern for me.

A lot of it, I think, comes from a fear to buff/not nerf to handle the PvP balance side of the equation, but something about the Engineer design just means we’re hit extra hard by their decision to not separate PvP and PvE mechanics further.

I love my engineer, and I’ve been trying very hard to make it work better, but as someone who spends most of their time running Dungeons and Fractals I’m just about to the point of fed up. The most I’ve been able to do is find a good “speed run” build, but the moment I’m running something that’s not speedrun zerkable it all falls apart because I can’t seem to conjure up the DPS to pull my weight and the survivability to keep pulling said weight in a single build.

I play my mesmer, or my guardian, and this stops being a problem instantly. I have better damage and more survivability in one package. There may be something I’m doing wrong, but as long as I’ve been trying to make this work? I doubt it.

KTheAlchemist.7158:

My personal take is that engineers have been, and continue to be, solid if niche contenders in WvW and sPvP.

In PvE however, they’re a horrible mixed bag of broken mechanics that never quite seem to add up to something solid no matter which way I stack them.

As someone who’s a primarily PvE player with only the occasional dash of PvP for something different to do, this is a matter of concern for me.

A lot of it, I think, comes from a fear to buff/not nerf to handle the PvP balance side of the equation, but something about the Engineer design just means we’re hit extra hard by their decision to not separate PvP and PvE mechanics further.

I love my engineer, and I’ve been trying very hard to make it work better, but as someone who spends most of their time running Dungeons and Fractals I’m just about to the point of fed up. The most I’ve been able to do is find a good “speed run” build, but the moment I’m running something that’s not speedrun zerkable it all falls apart because I can’t seem to conjure up the DPS to pull my weight and the survivability to keep pulling said weight in a single build.

I play my mesmer, or my guardian, and this stops being a problem instantly. I have better damage and more survivability in one package. There may be something I’m doing wrong, but as long as I’ve been trying to make this work? I doubt it.

20/20/0/30/0

Utilities: Med Kit, Flamethrower, Elixir B, Elixir U, Elixir X

Traits: Incendiary Powder, Enhance Performance, Hair Trigger, Juggernaut, Potent Elixirs, Fast-Acting Elixirs, HGH

Gear: Full Cleric, Runes of Altruism

PvE should be a cake walk for you from now on.

Obscure One.4357:

20/20/0/30/0

Utilities: Med Kit, Flamethrower, Elixir B, Elixir U, Elixir X

Traits: Incendiary Powder, Enhance Performance, Hair Trigger, Juggernaut, Potent Elixirs, Fast-Acting Elixirs, HGH

Gear: Full Cleric, Runes of Altruism

PvE should be a cake walk for you from now on.

That sounds like a lot of survivability, sure, but my problem has never the ability to make a build that can survive, but rather one that can deal out competitive damage at the same time. I might be missing something, but I just don’t see where the damage comes from that build.

Brother Grimm.5176:

I only see #4 as a valid complaint. We do need stability added to at least a few utility skills and possibly a trait or 2.

Adrenal Implant would be a good trait to use for stability instead of endurance. Something like X seconds of stability on toolbelt skill use with a Y second cooldown.

KTheAlchemist.7158:

Obscure One.4357:

20/20/0/30/0

Utilities: Med Kit, Flamethrower, Elixir B, Elixir U, Elixir X

Traits: Incendiary Powder, Enhance Performance, Hair Trigger, Juggernaut, Potent Elixirs, Fast-Acting Elixirs, HGH

Gear: Full Cleric, Runes of Altruism

PvE should be a cake walk for you from now on.

That sounds like a lot of survivability, sure, but my problem has never the ability to make a build that can survive, but rather one that can deal out competitive damage at the same time. I might be missing something, but I just don’t see where the damage comes from that build.

3 stacks of Might from Enhance Performance, 3 Might stacks from Runes of Altruism, Might while using the Flamethrower, Might from using Elixirs, 3 stacks of Might from using Shield #4 to blast in Flamethrower fire field, Permanent Fury between Drop Stimulant and Runes of Altruism. Use Elixir B to capitalize on the minor trait +1% damage per boon. Elixir U grants Quickness for 50% faster DPS on a 32 second CD with an increased duration. Used before using Elixir X, which is now a 84 second CD with a longer form duration, Elixir U makes your elite more elite…especially with all those Might stacks. You’ll have high native Attack, and the ability to maintain a 40% crit rate with perma-fury.

Note: all of your boons last 45% longer.

Sigil of Strength for your pistol and Sigil of Battle for your Shield will give even more might stacks.

Tough as nails, hits like a truck.

Obscure One.4357:

KTheAlchemist.7158:

Obscure One.4357:

20/20/0/30/0

Utilities: Med Kit, Flamethrower, Elixir B, Elixir U, Elixir X

Traits: Incendiary Powder, Enhance Performance, Hair Trigger, Juggernaut, Potent Elixirs, Fast-Acting Elixirs, HGH

Gear: Full Cleric, Runes of Altruism

PvE should be a cake walk for you from now on.

That sounds like a lot of survivability, sure, but my problem has never the ability to make a build that can survive, but rather one that can deal out competitive damage at the same time. I might be missing something, but I just don’t see where the damage comes from that build.

3 stacks of Might from Enhance Performance, 3 Might stacks from Runes of Altruism, Might while using the Flamethrower, Might from using Elixirs, 3 stacks of Might from using Shield #4 to blast in Flamethrower fire field, Permanent Fury between Drop Stimulant and Runes of Altruism. Use Elixir B to capitalize on the minor trait +1% damage per boon. Elixir U grants Quickness for 50% faster DPS on a 32 second CD with an increased duration. Used before using Elixir X, which is now a 84 second CD with a longer form duration, Elixir U makes your elite more elite…especially with all those Might stacks. You’ll have high native Attack, and the ability to maintain a 40% crit rate with perma-fury.

Note: all of your boons last 45% longer.

Sigil of Strength for your pistol and Sigil of Battle for your Shield will give even more might stacks.

Tough as nails, hits like a truck.

Oncrit and onswap sigils share cooldowns. If you swap and activate sigil of battle, sigil of strength won’t activate until sigil of battle’s icd is over and vice versa.

Obscure One.4357:

3 stacks of Might from Enhance Performance, 3 Might stacks from Runes of Altruism, Might while using the Flamethrower, Might from using Elixirs, 3 stacks of Might from using Shield #4 to blast in Flamethrower fire field, Permanent Fury between Drop Stimulant and Runes of Altruism. Use Elixir B to capitalize on the minor trait +1% damage per boon. Elixir U grants Quickness for 50% faster DPS on a 32 second CD with an increased duration. Used before using Elixir X, which is now a 84 second CD with a longer form duration, Elixir U makes your elite more elite…especially with all those Might stacks. You’ll have high native Attack, and the ability to maintain a 40% crit rate with perma-fury.

Note: all of your boons last 45% longer.

Sigil of Strength for your pistol and Sigil of Battle for your Shield will give even more might stacks.

Tough as nails, hits like a truck.

Well, I guess it couldn’t hurt to give it a try.

One question: Did you mean flame-forged trigger rather than hair trigger?

KTheAlchemist.7158:

Obscure One.4357:

3 stacks of Might from Enhance Performance, 3 Might stacks from Runes of Altruism, Might while using the Flamethrower, Might from using Elixirs, 3 stacks of Might from using Shield #4 to blast in Flamethrower fire field, Permanent Fury between Drop Stimulant and Runes of Altruism. Use Elixir B to capitalize on the minor trait +1% damage per boon. Elixir U grants Quickness for 50% faster DPS on a 32 second CD with an increased duration. Used before using Elixir X, which is now a 84 second CD with a longer form duration, Elixir U makes your elite more elite…especially with all those Might stacks. You’ll have high native Attack, and the ability to maintain a 40% crit rate with perma-fury.

Note: all of your boons last 45% longer.

Sigil of Strength for your pistol and Sigil of Battle for your Shield will give even more might stacks.

Tough as nails, hits like a truck.

Well, I guess it couldn’t hurt to give it a try.

One question: Did you mean flame-forged trigger rather than hair trigger?

Yes. Sorry. I’ve been known to confuse the two.

@Xhyros: I was thinking Sigil of Strength didn’t share it’s ICD with on swap sigils. Sigil of Force and Sigil of Battle would therefore be preferred.

Short answer YES

if you like sPvP it is ok, anet has no clue about the engineer in PvE or WvW

Obscure One.4357:

Yes. Sorry. I’ve been known to confuse the two.

@Xhyros: I was thinking Sigil of Strength didn’t share it’s ICD with on swap sigils. Sigil of Force and Sigil of Battle would therefore be preferred.

Cool. I’ll probably set up one weapon with sigil of battle, and the other with sigil of force with a backup weapon to swap to sigil of night for nighttime instances.

Lets be honest, Engis are limited in roles, we are meant to be Crowd control but to be honest elementalists do it better, have access to more fields and CAN ACTUALLY CARRY SKILLS ¬_¬

Engis are fun but we cant easily buff our allies, elixirs are buffs for us only, compare that to a guardian and we look pretty useless in a team fight.
A lot of our skills have an element of RNG, which is fine in pvp for for anything competitive its useless, ill either be invisible or ill have stability, 50% chance to not have something I want… great

Kits are interesting, but they are also a nerf, you can only use 1 kit at a time which means that any extra kits are taking up skill slots that other classes arent stuck in, i believe that we should ALWAYS get 1 free kit maybe on the ¬ key since we are pretty much forced to be kits or elixirs they need to allow us to actually be able to use a few kits without a major nerf.

If different kits gave us a buff for each kit we had in our slots. that would be a fair compromise, since otherwise its a useless slot if we don’t have it out.

Grenade: Fury
Bombs: Might x 3
Healing: Stability/Regen
Flamethrower: Protection/Aegis

etc

but currently kits take up a slot and don’t do anything else, for example choosing Elixir gives you buffs and fast healing, but you could have a healing kit and get stability.

I could have elixirs to give me a group of buffs or i could focus on 1 buff that i want to have up.

make it so that a buff takes 8 seconds to come back if its stripped off and that balances it out a bit, either way i think this is a viable improvement on the engineer.

Phoenix.3416:

[Elementalists] have access to more fields

Do they?

Elementalists have Fire, Water, Ice, Smoke, and Lightning.

Engineers have Fire, Water, Ice, Smoke, Light, and Poison.

I really enjoy my engineer in pve and the small amount of wvw I’ve started to get into. I think Anet is going in the right direction with engies.
But with that said.. The only gripe I have is while I love the class I hate the fact I’ll never see my back items and Anet always seems to forget pistol/shield skins when they come out with new things. I love all the new skins that champions drop but I was sad that the was no pistol skin and the shield skin was a guild emblem one

Also stability.. Its nice to pop elixir X and have it, but I’d like some sort of auto response trait like a warrior has or even a utility still that is longer than 1 second.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Phoenix.3416:

[Elementalists] have access to more fields

Do they?

Elementalists have Fire, Water, Ice, Smoke, and Lightning.

Engineers have Fire, Water, Ice, Smoke, Light, and Poison.

Thats not exactly right

Engi have fire, ice, light, poison and smoke

Ele have Fire, ice, lightning, water.

http://i.imgur.com/NZINwh.png]http://i.imgur.com/NZINwh.png

but the amount of each ele have is greater, 9 fields for eles 7 for engis.

The engi fields are on skills that are somewhat limited or not used much, for example how often would you use a mortar for the ice field? Now assuming i have this right the Ele can equip 4 fire types with one kind of weapon, engis have to have a certain elite and 4 kits to access the rest.

Major difference in builds, realistically the engi can one 2 of those kits without breaking his build while the ele just needs to choose the right weapon and he can put down several of those fields, i believe Staff has access to 3 of those types and daggers 3 too.

Look at blast finishers for each race too http://i.imgur.com/RYj5h.jpg

the engineer ones involve using barely used skills or detonating the primary function of that skill like destroying a turret while the ele and warrior blasts are combat based and actually help the user when chained.

So out of the 2 if an engi goes for all the combo fields he will be pretty weak while the ele would be buffed by it.

That chart is pretty lacking. Engineers have water fields in Healing Turret, and throwing Elixir R creates a light field that isn’t listed on the chart. Throwing Elixir U creates either light or smoke field depending on the outcome.

Using Healing Turret, Bomb Kit, grenade kit and thumper turret with pistol and shield gives you two water fields, fire field, smoke field, poison field, and 6 blast finishers without counting elite skill.

Combo fields are magic in an engineer’s heart.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Phoenix.3416:

[Elementalists] have access to more fields

Do they?

Elementalists have Fire, Water, Ice, Smoke, and Lightning.

Engineers have Fire, Water, Ice, Smoke, Light, and Poison.

Are you saying you’re going to use Mortar for ice?

I’ve come to the conclusion that ANet think of the Eng as a high skill PvP class, and not a PvE class.

This makes us good for PvP and WvW roaming, but weak for PvE and large scale WvW, and leads directly to us being one of the least played classes outside of low end PvE (cause people like the idea of the Eng) and (that minority area) PvP.

Combine that with the fact that Engs’ heavy use of kits means extra programming is required for us to really benefit from cosmetic changes (legendaries, weapon skins, etc.), and enhancements to Engs give very low return for Anet’s effort.

The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy: as long as ANet treats Engs as a complex PvP class and PvP remains a minority area in GW2, then Engs will be bottom (or bottom equal) of the list when it comes to enhancements outside of PvP balancing.

TLDR: ANet’s focus on Engs being a high-skill PvP class relegates Engs to being the hobos of GW2.

Normally harder to play classes come with higher potential performance though.

Engineer is more actions per minute, with stricter timing, often for similar or lesser results. Make an objective comparison of elixirs vs. shouts, elixirs are a similar but both more complex and weaker version, for one example.

Anet really needs to buff / rework turrets in a major way. I got into engi because I liked the idea of turrets. I’ve tried so many builds to get those turrets working in WvW and it’s always a disaster. They are destroyed the MOMENT you drop them. Their damage output is pathetic, and they are hard to use. I would love to see a grandmaster trait that makes turrets invulnerable (but with a self destruct time limit) the way spirt weapons used to be. Or perhaps if they swapped out the useless thumper turret and replaced it with an oil slick turret that oozed oil causing permanent knock downs at choke points. If they buff turrets, I’ll play again.

Kalan.9705:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Phoenix.3416:

[Elementalists] have access to more fields

Do they?

Elementalists have Fire, Water, Ice, Smoke, and Lightning.

Engineers have Fire, Water, Ice, Smoke, Light, and Poison.

Are you saying you’re going to use Mortar for ice?

No, I was just making the point. Engineers do have more combo fields than any other class, in fact. And Light and Poison may be situationally useful, but in the times they shine they make a massive difference.

Phoenix.3416:

but the amount of each ele have is greater, 9 fields for eles 7 for engis.

Engineers have

• 2 Fire fields (Fire Bomb, Napalm)
• 2 Smoke fields (Smoke Bomb, Flame Turret)
• 2 Water fields (Healing Turret, Regenerating Mist)
• 1 Poison field (Poison Grenade)
• 1 Ice field (Launch Ice Mortar)
• 2 Light fields (Toss Elixir R, Super Elixir)
• 1 field that can either be Smoke or Light (Toss Elixir U)

That’s 11. Not 7. Your sources are out of date.

Phoenix.3416:

The engi fields are on skills that are somewhat limited or not used much, for example how often would you use a mortar for the ice field? Now assuming i have this right the Ele can equip 4 fire types with one kind of weapon, engis have to have a certain elite and 4 kits to access the rest.

I actually happen to use the Mortar in WvW all the time. Maybe not directly for Ice Mortar and its combo field, but the opportunity is there—unless you’re suggesting that wide-spread AoE snares are useless in WvW?

Phoenix.3416:

Major difference in builds, realistically the engi can one 2 of those kits without breaking his build while the ele just needs to choose the right weapon and he can put down several of those fields, i believe Staff has access to 3 of those types and daggers 3 too.

I don’t understand this line of thinking. An Engineer can wield 3 kits without “breaking” their build. What do you mean by that?

Phoenix.3416:

Look at blast finishers for each race too http://i.imgur.com/RYj5h.jpg

This is another outdated (or just wrongly done) chart. Engineers have more than 10 Blast finishers. They have 16, which is the most of any class in the game. And many of the best ones we have like Magnetic Inversion and Acid Bomb are off that list.

Phoenix.3416:

the engineer ones involve using barely used skills or detonating the primary function of that skill like destroying a turret while the ele and warrior blasts are combat based and actually help the user when chained.

So out of the 2 if an engi goes for all the combo fields he will be pretty weak while the ele would be buffed by it.

Again, this makes no sense. What do you mean by Engineers being “pretty weak” or that Elementalists would be “buffed” by this? You’re insinuating that detonating turrets is a bad move on an Engineer’s part, but that’s precisely how the Healing Turret is best used. You don’t leave it out. You either detonate it for the Blast finisher or you just pick it up after you overcharge it.

If I go for “all” combo fields, that would mean I would be wielding the Grenade Kit, Bomb Kit, and Elixir Gun. I’m curious how you can explain to me how that is a bad build.

Poe you’re describing things a bit one sided. Many engineer blasts aren’t attached to intrinsically helpful skills, they’re attached to trade off, lose something (like a turret or reposition) in order to gain the blast finisher. This isn’t true of most other classes blast finishers, they are generally gain skills, e.g. lose nothing, do nice damage, with blast finisher as well.

Kalan.9705:

Poe you’re describing things a bit one sided. Many engineer blasts aren’t attached to intrinsically helpful skills, they’re attached to trade off, lose something (like a turret or reposition) in order to gain the blast finisher.

This isn’t true of most other classes blast finishers, they are generally gain skills, e.g. lose nothing, do nice damage, with blast finisher as well.

I don’t see how I’m being much in the way of “one-sided.” Engineer isn’t the only class I play. I have a level 60 Elementalist, a level 80 Guardian, and a level 80 Warrior. And I’ve got enough off-hand experience with most other classes in the game, even if I haven’t directly played them.

Is picking up my Banner of Discipline, using #2, and then using Plant Standard for a Blast finisher effective as a Warrior? Absolutely. It’s also the only Blast finisher my build has.

A Warrior also must take considerable time picking up their banner and “planting” it. The animation is long, with goofy swirls in the air. I would argue that the amount of DPS gained adding 3 Might to the group is totally cancelled out by how much DPS my Axe AA would do in the same amount of time. Never mind the fact that a Warrior must use the Bow to self-combo, depleting all of your Adrenaline which in turn emasculates your DPS output, especially since you’ve dropped your Greatsword for the Bow. Unless, of course, you feel like burning your Healing Surge to gain it back.

You argue that many of our Blast finishers aren’t attached to “intrinsically helpful” skills, but what exactly do you mean by this? My build utilizes Magnetic Inversion, Acid Bomb, and Rocket Boots as Blast finishers. I lay down Napalm, set off my Shield, Acid Bomb away, and Rocket Boot back. I can freely integrate the Healing Turret into that rotation as well if I’d like to, but Engineers have access to more than plenty Blast finishers to where you can stack 9-12 Might for your group without touching any turrets.

And during all of that time I am dishing out DPS, unlike my Warrior. So no: I have to disagree with you that there is anything “intrinsically” lost stacking Might on my Engineer. I find that Elementalists and Engineers are actually the two best classes at it, and while Guardians definitely have the best one in the game with Mighty Blow, the Hammer just as often overwrites Fire fields with the Symbol in the AA chain, and the Guardian must give up valuable utility skills to self-combo in the first place. They pretty much have no room for Hallowed Ground, especially in Fractals where Wall of Reflection and Shield of the Avenger are best in slot, with Stand Your Ground as the obvious third utility.

Kalan.9705:

Normally harder to play classes come with higher potential performance though.

That’s the logic of most computer games – and that makes sense, as it balances the higher effort/risk on the part of the player with higher rewards.

However, ANet wants GW2 to be a leading eSport, which means they want all classes to be equal at the highest levels of competition. As a result, there is no reward for the greater effort/risk of playing a Eng.

This wouldn’t be such a problem if GW2 was PvP only. But far more Eng players want to use them in PvE and (large scale) WvW. In effect, we pay an eSport performance tax because we use our Engs elsewhere in the game.

So, Anet does like Engs as a high end PvP class, but doesn’t seem to care much about them as a PvE and large sale WvW class. I can’t see this changing until ANet decide to balance classes for PvE and large scale WvW (something they’re not showing any sign of doing atm).