Guild Wars 2

I have played all professions in spvp and tpvp and have gotten over 80 wins now in tpvp with my engy. But seriously engineers are the ONLY prof that require 30 traitpoints invested in toughness, but when they do that they eventually lack pure dmg. It’s possible to combine with condi dmg but there are almost no other viable options.

Am I the only one thinking this way or do you guys experience the prof differently?

I feel the same way a lot of times and it is due to our lack of good access to stability. We have to mitigate by toughing it out and constantly healing up.

i have absolutely zero points in Inventions and so do many other engineers, feels like such a weaksauce tree.
Warriors are alot more “forced” into their defense tree, their condi removal is there..

My conclusion is that there isn’t one thing engi’s shine in, more than other professions; condi damage is done by necro’s 3 times better. Other damage by power and crit damage; mesmers, thiefs, wars and eles do this better, survivability is higher with guardians, mesmers, necro’s and eles… What’s left besides that..?

What’s left besides condi damage, direct damage, and survivability? Control, support, versatility, hybrid-ability?

I wouldn’t say Mesmers are tougher. Just use AoE and they get squished flat in seconds, usually. Good luck trying to take them down with single-target, though.

Also the engineer is the only class that can stack burning damage that high..other can stack some but not as much..so much about condition damage. Vs. multiple targets? Ok the necro’s got that one. Direct damage? Ever seen a rifle engineer with SD? I’ve done quite some damage myself in sPvP with that combo. While I’m at the rifle: rifle+net turret+bomb kit+ram is just ridiculous! All that CC which is only challenged by the warrior.
Toughness is not everything.

bartrentenaar.8674:

My conclusion is that there isn’t one thing engi’s shine in, more than other professions; condi damage is done by necro’s 3 times better. Other damage by power and crit damage; mesmers, thiefs, wars and eles do this better, survivability is higher with guardians, mesmers, necro’s and eles… What’s left besides that..?

I think you’re underselling the engineer. The main thing that they bring to a fight that no one else can match is utility. On the Ft we have a cc on a 15s cooldown that also acts as a missle reflector, a very long lasting fire field, and an aoe blind for stomps. Bombs give fire fields and smoke fields, as well as a really big CC on a pontential low cooldown as well. Rifle has a snare, and a knockback CC, shield has 2 cc’s. lol we have a lot of cc and fields/finishers that we can abuse in a team fight.

I think you’re underestimating the engineer’s natural survival capabilities.

I run a full zerk engineer. PM me ingame, and we could run FoTM 38 or CoE together.

However, Engi can easily build for perma-vigor, making dodging nearly endless. On top of that, P/S + TK = 5s of block, reflection, and a knockback. Stun break once and you should be able to turn the tide.

Thanks all for your normal feedback, so almost none of you think engi’s lack overall compared to other profs?

I think they have their own place apart from other classes, some of our utilities still need work, as do some of our trait lines. Overall, engis have found a good niche on each aspect of gw2, wvw they have aoe dps/condis with grenades, and in tpvp/spvp, they are great point defenders, and point harassers with their CC. I havent played pve with an engineer though, but i can’t imagining them facerolling like guardians and warriors. I think what they most lack (but can easily make up for) is good power choices, most of our kits have conditions as a main dps, and rifle is lackluster in damage.

Going back to OP’s main point though, the lack of power, and especially burst, that the engineer has, leads to using conditions as our direct damage. Conditions take a while to kill the enemy so we must be able to outlast them, thus we need higher toughness to do this. Even with direct damage, we’re still going to be fighting for longer periods of time, which gives thieves and warriors and eles more chance to perform their bursts.

tl;dr Our lack of burst damage causes us to be in longer fights, therefore we need more toughness to survive multiple bursts.

I wouldn’t say engineers lack burst. I run a non SD burst build and do really well. The problem lies in relying on kit swapping for a burst rotation while other classes can spam theirs easier. But i personally prefer this over a condition build, much shorter fights.

If you REQUIRE toughness then you definitely aren’t playing the engineer properly , you can run with 2k def and it wreck , and our Invention tree is lackluster at best…doesn’t matter how many tpvp matches you won..that statement along holds more weight than not. Far as i ever require in the toughness tree is 10-20 points and thats ONLY in my bunker builds rest is spread for speedy kits occasional incen powder and lower cds..

The design goal here, when we look at our medium armor cousins, is the ability to tank damage unconventionally. Thieves do this the best via stealth tanking to mitigate damage. Rangers can heavily regenerate to mitigate damage taken. Engineers cant do either exceptionally well but have access to options that can permit both to a lesser extent. It goes without saying the Engineer is a master generalist with no clear optimal method behind our damage mitigating options. Blinds, blocks, stealth, regeneration, protection, and damage reduction while stunned are all available to the class but are deliberately scattered in various trait lines, some of which make no sense (Auto-Defense Bomb Dispenser to name one).

The long and short of it is there is no simple fix to damage mitigation for Engineers and of all the things that could be done, raising native toughness is something I think could cause the most imbalance.

As a thought, Engineers could be outfitted with a few more skill options to compensate builds that don’t spec in toughness. With any luck, these are the kinds of skills that ANet is currently working on putting into the game sometime this year.

Until then, if you don’t spec in toughness, Block, Evade, Blind, and CC counter as best you can.

i dont put any points in inventions, and if i do, its not for the toughness. but i do see what you mean, if you run an amulet/trinket without toughness you have a very small chance of staying alive

Hmm you guys clearly don’t use all the tools at your disposal at optimum times lol ..the amount of mitigation we have is insane , that dodge button isnt there to open a fight you know lol..how many kitten times have i seen that button not used or used randomly.

bartrentenaar.8674:

Thanks all for your normal feedback, so almost none of you think engi’s lack overall compared to other profs?

If we lack one thing that is a REAL ranged weapon aside from granades.
Sure I can increase the range of the rifle but does that help the overall damage capability of the rifle? Not that much as most of the rifle is more shotgun oriented and more CC.
What has the warrior? The rifle with 1200 range on most skills. The ranger? Well bows?!
Even the guardian’s got quite some range with their dinky scepter but the way to deal good damage with the engineer is to go up close and personal or use granades(which can get annoying after a while).
Pistole might be fine but still doesn’t have that much range and people could kite you(which is unlikely as a good engineer will get to you easily…but it could still happen).
Maybe we’ll be getting a real ranged weapon that isn’t granades but as of now that I’d say is our main weakness aside from our not so perfect invention tree. Damage is alright, if you wanted you could go hybrid and survivability is up the roof. I played a necro before creating my engineer and my things to survive were DS(which is strong don’t get me wrong) and 2 dodges.
As an engineer I got seemingly endless vigor, TONS of cc, mobility to get away and some nice condition removal on top of good survival traits in most cookie cutter builds.

cloudysan.4397:

bartrentenaar.8674:

Thanks all for your normal feedback, so almost none of you think engi’s lack overall compared to other profs?

If we lack one thing that is a REAL ranged weapon aside from granades.
Sure I can increase the range of the rifle but does that help the overall damage capability of the rifle? Not that much as most of the rifle is more shotgun oriented and more CC.
What has the warrior? The rifle with 1200 range on most skills. The ranger? Well bows?!
Even the guardian’s got quite some range with their dinky scepter but the way to deal good damage with the engineer is to go up close and personal or use granades(which can get annoying after a while).
Pistole might be fine but still doesn’t have that much range and people could kite you(which is unlikely as a good engineer will get to you easily…but it could still happen).
Maybe we’ll be getting a real ranged weapon that isn’t granades but as of now that I’d say is our main weakness aside from our not so perfect invention tree. Damage is alright, if you wanted you could go hybrid and survivability is up the roof. I played a necro before creating my engineer and my things to survive were DS(which is strong don’t get me wrong) and 2 dodges.
As an engineer I got seemingly endless vigor, TONS of cc, mobility to get away and some nice condition removal on top of good survival traits in most cookie cutter builds.

I agree with you completely , an engineer from far back isnt truly viable as we could be.

engi was my 1st 80 since game lunched but now i dont play anymore i have 4 / 80s.

the only good choice to beat ppl 1 v1 is Condi/bunker, nothing else.

I got tired for swapping kits and pressing those tool belts lol

u dont need to do that for other classes but yea that’s just me if u enjoy this life style .. good for you

I play a lot of WvWvW and not so much s/tPvP and I can tell you that you still need some amount of toughness in your build, whether through gear or through the traitline, because your mitigation skills like blinds and cc will all be on cooldown eventually (Thank you Anet for giving engineer an escape via Rocket Boots!). You are NOT going against onesies-twosies opponents like in PvP. You WILL blow all the tools at your disposal at the optimum times and STILL have to deal with more. That little extra toughness, extra vitality, that Stabilized Armor or Leg Mods, will save you while you wait 1-2 more seconds for your FT #5 blind or static shield to be off cooldown.

I will say that I have played an Engi condi build and a Mesmer condi build for roaming and duels in WvW, and the mesmer is so much easier. Case in point, I have a very deep understanding of the engi compared to any other profession; I don’t really know what the mesmer weapons skills do. But despite this I have managed to win 80% of my fights with the mesmer, but I’m only about 25% with the engi.

I think you misinterpreted some things. While the base bonuses to stats from dropping points into a tree is a nice bonus, is not the main reason peeps pick trees to put points into, but the minor & major traits. What you build like is pretty much dictated by your gear setup (tpvp / spvp amulet playing the major role again).

You don’t have to drop a single point in the toughness tree to play a bunker.

Regarding the bleed number of stacks etc. Geeez, you can’t possibly expect to put and keep more than 10 stacks of bleed in an average to high level gameplay field. Is just not realistic unless your opponent(s) are completely ignoring you and don’t use any cleanse / blocks / reflects, don’t dodge etc.

The real damaging dot is the burning, followed by 6+ stacks of bleeding and poison. Chilling / weakness / blind / cripple (so they can’t use skills as often, can’t move in time out of AoEs when they can’t dodge or their block ends, their damage is diminished etc) are further hindering enemies. Then add confusion for engineers. Even 5 stacks is a lot if the targets are forced to dodge / use skills etc. We’re not talking pve where you can stay behind someone and AA them to death (in rangers case), or land the telegraphed warrior LB moves unhindered etc.

Well its safe to say from the responses that the Engineer is overall weakest class in the game , hopefully it stays this way

is this some kind of troll thread

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

Well its safe to say from the responses that the Engineer is overall weakest class in the game , hopefully it stays this way

It is the weakest class in the game…and one of the strongest.

I think engineer has the toughest learning curve of all classes. Nothing they have is straight forward such as Healing Turret vs Healing Spring. Healing spring you use and forget about it basically…so long as you stay in the zone….a healing turret is completely different, you have to manage it and try to avoid it being killed. This is a distraction that can get many players killed.

The actual engineer weapons are pretty useless on their own you have to couple them up with something like static discharge/bombs/nades/flamer.

You basically have to use kits and usually more than one. This means learning more abilities which in itself isn’t hard but the switching is easier to make mistakes with…getting out grenades instead of bombs for example.

Many of the skills are ground targeted…i only found out yesterday clicking on toss elixir automatically throws it at your feet…to be honest i would be happy if it always did that (except Rez elixir)…but higher skilled players would probably disagree. Grenades are stupidly hard to kit anything at range…but it can be done. Its easy when you have plenty of time but when your in the thick of battle its just a pain.

Static “Pets” – Turrets basically seems to be like our pets…except you can line of sight them and destroy them in a matter of seconds. They can do decent damage but i don’t think its worth it because they die too easily. Only really seem decent in defensive situations where you can have them setup before the fight starts. Even then no clue what they will target which will likely be a pet seeing most classes can summon at least 2.

I actually enjoy my engineer but it also annoys the hell out of me at times.

There are 2 things that engineers excel at and no other class can come close to matching the engineer at these

We are the coolest class
and
We are the most fun class

in summary, WE ARE AWESOME

I’ve read most of this thread and wow has it gotten pretty off-topic, BUT I wanted to check in as an Engi since beta that many are correct in saying that the Inventions trait line if very lackluster compared to our others, also you don’t NEED to put points in it to stay alive.
The main problem with inventions is that turret traits suck and most are bugged in some way, and heal power is extremely underwhelming scaling very badly.

As far as staying alive, you have to be aggressively proactive in defense. Engi’s excel at controlling opponents, I mean look at our skills, with the exception of elixirs almost every single one has some kind of control aspect.

Now that said I have recently leveled a warrior to 80, and OMG is it a refreshing break, faceroll easy mode.

Boy this post got long, but I have one more point to say. I believe the current ‘meta’ of melandru runes/lemongrass soup condition hate is a direct counter to engineer. Making one of the hardest to play professions even harder to play atm.