Guild Wars 2

Guru SotG March – Engineer

• Kit Refinement nerfs towards utility. “… more utility and less damage output.” 100 Nades and Super Elixir were too good compared to the rest. 100 Nades mentioned specifically, in that a 10 point trait isn’t meant to be that powerful. 24k damage mentioned, which while up in the top end of possible damage is still possible. “…we wanted to normalize how this works and make it useful for all kits.”

• Turret buffs such as Thumper gaining AoE Cripple (3s every 5s) and Rifle Turret getting more damage. “… and some other cool stuff that you’ll see.”

• Overall a lot of changes planned, mostly buff-centric. “…couple pages worth of notes…” It appeared it was data for the next patch, but isn’t necessarily the case. “… pretty heavy focus [on the Engineer]…” Globally some changes are planned in increasing the strength of the weaker utilities, so perhaps that may be addressed here as well.

• Described as mid-range skirmishers that can control battlefield in various ways such as with turrets, control skills, AoE, and other ways. “…they are going to be impactful in close range fights and have the ability to control space…” Intended on buffing the things that aren’t used as often so that they do get used as different playstyles.

• RNG toned down, but not necessarily removed. Example is Elixir U only has Frenzy and Haste variants and the Toss lacks Veil now so it always blocks projectiles in some fashion. Not much done in the March patch yet though. “… smaller subsets [of RNG].”

• Condition buffs, non-specific. Mentioned offhand during the Thief discussion, but it was in reference to Engineers and Thieves in particular.

Also, remember not to hate on their comments. Don’t overreach into what they say and take it negatively. Discussion is great and it gives us insight into their thoughts. The only negative thing here I find is Kit Refinement, but I think nerfing the effects towards utility is a better option then going through with the ridiculous internal cooldown fiasco for example.

I very much liked this State of the Game, especially in regard to Engineers. Things take time, and I think they are on the right path.

thanks for that, I missed the engie part.

I missed it but this sounds very interesting
Glad rifle is getting some love

I also listened to it but…
But I cringed in pain, when Karl said that, when you place your thumber turret you could still defend yourself with your toolbelt skill. I think he got some stuff confused there.
And 100nade combo hitting for 25k…. Did I miss something?

The stuff about turrets he said seemed good … but it seems I missed out the condition-buff part o.o

I´m quite curious, what they´re about to do with our most beloved profession :O

Are we really getting a buff to conditions damage? If there is a place we didn’t need a buff, it was conditions.

Note : I misread, this is a global conditions buff. My bad!

And I’m still missing the points of Kit refinement nerf, if grenade barrage and Super Elixir were too strong, nerf them , not the rest.

And I fail to recall someone calling SE overpowered.

Rest looks good, especially if they buff turret!

I think the point was to nerf Super Elixir and Grenade Barrage to make them like the utility options the other types bring. However, they weren’t specific other then mentioning Super Elixir and Grenade Barrage, and then talking about changing it as a whole towards utility.

Wait is our rifle weapon damage going to increase, or rifle turrets? It is kinda unclear.

I thought it was Rifle Turrets, I’ll relisten to it again once the vod comes up. I don’t remember anything Rifle specific, but my memory isn’t always perfect.

Edit: Seems I only put “Rifle” instead of “Rifle Turret”, oops. Sorry if I caused any of this.

I am certain that he only said rifle turrets. But on the other hand english is not my main language so I could be wrong there o.o

AsmallChicken.9634:

Wait is our rifle weapon damage going to increase, or rifle turrets? It is kinda unclear.

they said rifle turret.

Also I still don’t get this concept of “mid-range”. Either we are at long range lobbing grenades or rifling, or in their face with tool kit/bomb/every other engineer skill.

waka.9826:

AsmallChicken.9634:

Wait is our rifle weapon damage going to increase, or rifle turrets? It is kinda unclear.

they said rifle turret.

There goes my hopes. Either way rifle turret buff is still good.

Grenades and Rifle even with long range capabilities work much better at short range. Grenades are much more accurate and land all three hits reliably, and Blunderbuss is a ton (technically infinitely) more effective at 100 range then 1200 range.

I’m comfortable with being called a mid-range class, and it makes a lot of sense to me. We can be mindbogglingly dangerous at close range, especially in terms of AoE.

Ayestes.1273:

Grenades and Rifle even with long range capabilities work much better at short range. Grenades are much more accurate and land all three hits reliably, and Blunderbuss is a ton (technically infinitely) more effective at 100 range then 1200 range.

I’m comfortable with being called a mid-range class, and it makes a lot of sense to me. We can be mindbogglingly dangerous at close range, especially in terms of AoE.

I agree with this! All in all, it sounds intrestring, but I’m waiting for the patch notes before I can be kitten to do any serious commentary on it!

Karl McLain.5604:

Cero.5132:

I also listened to it but…
But I cringed in pain, when Karl said that, when you place your thumber turret you could still defend yourself with your toolbelt skill. I think he got some stuff confused there.

Sorry if I misspoke, I was more referring to the overcharge ability that blows enemies back, the next time the turret fires.

Ah that´s a relieve
Thanks for clearing that up.

uhhhhh an Anet posted something!!!!! “Dance around the room with the hands up the air”
I think you did a good jop Karl, you guys appear nice down on the earth when you do this kind of stuff, and I like that

Haha, I’m not even worried that you misspoke. You have to know 8 classes in the entirety, getting a little mixed up is completely reasonable to me.

I personally really liked your responses in their entirety.

Where did this interview take place? Can I get a link?

I am sooo happy to hear this! After the deployable turret fix I started playing with turrets again, they really are my preferred playstyle. They have a long way to go and I am glad that you are working towards that.

Yeah link is in the top post now.

Karl, will rifle turret have some more hp to go along with the damage? because you know…it gets destroyed pretty easily as of right now

Personally, I’d like to see the other kit-refinement abilities buffed instead of our two quality ones nerfed. Currently, the bomb kit refinement is relatively a waste, tool kit is great (very versatile), flamethrower isn’t bad, and medkit is horrendous. I think the kit refinements need to be better considering we get hit with confusion 2x if we switch to a kit and have kit refinement traited (which may be an unintended side effect but its HUGE against anyone stacking confusion).

I guess we’ll have to wait and see the patch notes, but I really hope they didn’t finish the destruction of kit refinement overall definitely one of our best traits.

Im sorry, but after this i am convinced that the devs seriously hate the engineer with a burning passion. And i don’t mean it as a joke anymore. When someone brings up a concern like with RTL (which is not affected by slow unlike other leaps) they jump at a chance to bash the engineer for his super speed, and when invulnerability comes up, back at the engineer again. Maybe it is because they are all playing warriors, which are the profession that’s easiest for us to counter but what do i know…

We still have zerkstabbers, invulnerable shattzbotmesmers and so on bursting with excellent class synergy but no, the engineer with the grenades are the real devil!

@Karl,
something i think should be noted. The toolkit seems to have innate synergy with the turrets, meaning if you want to go a turret build in spvp…the toolkit should be an obvious choice, but you have to give up a turret leaving you with only 2. Meaning you prob will want a damage one and a utility one…meaning your dps from them will be low.

Is it possible to give the toolkit a further synergy through like….wacking them buffs them with might maybe crowbar gives them fury. To impose more reason to hit them then just little heals. Also perhaps using an ability on a target (magnet pull for examp) makes the turrets have extra effectiveness on that target for a duration?

Just some ideas to make toolkit/turret play style a lot more enjoyable.

For kit refinement I hope they adress the individual powers of the free grenade barrage and super elixir, and not the trait in itself, as they did last time…

Making the trait unreliable was a very bad solution to what may be a valid concern.

Make those two aspects weaker if you really want, but make the procs usefull and reliable.

This confirms a couple theories I had about their views of Engineer—namely that we weren’t supposed to be hinging builds on an adept trait (though they coukd have had a more consistent fix than stacking uneven cooldowns…) and they recognize why we were doing that is because we have a number of utilities are useless and need to be viable. So I’m hopeful, and I think we’re going to see a lot of good changes even past this coming our way.

Additional damage utility on turrets is nice, but I hope they’ll address their fragility too because they’re useless in defense or offense if they keel over and go on a 30-40+ second cooldown.

Maybe someday our down state will be addressed too, I’d like to actually have a fighting chance down there…

Zinwrath.2049:

@Karl,
something i think should be noted. The toolkit seems to have innate synergy with the turrets, meaning if you want to go a turret build in spvp…the toolkit should be an obvious choice, but you have to give up a turret leaving you with only 2. Meaning you prob will want a damage one and a utility one…meaning your dps from them will be low.

Is it possible to give the toolkit a further synergy through like….wacking them buffs them with might maybe crowbar gives them fury. To impose more reason to hit them then just little heals. Also perhaps using an ability on a target (magnet pull for examp) makes the turrets have extra effectiveness on that target for a duration?

Just some ideas to make toolkit/turret play style a lot more enjoyable.

very good point. A real ‘turret build’ would likely use at least 2 and maybe a stun breaker, or even 3 turrets… but than you have Tool Kit being designed to work with turrets.
How does this compute? Healing turret and 1 turret, 1 stunbreaker and Tool Kit? And just call it a ‘turret build’ because it uses at least 1 non healing turret?

Stunbreaker is a weak point of both kit builds and turret builds.
This is where traits like kit refinement come into play. Make sure we have valid alternatives when you adress such traits and when you look at turrets (and kits).

Ya turret CD has been an issue for a long time. I think if the turret dies or you decide to blow it up, there should definitly be balance and counter play to make sure those stronger turrets have to be kept on a longer cd in exchange. But if you just wanna up and reposition…picking up the turret should half the cd time. Its annoying in all game modes.

With regards to kits:
Kit refinement was the only Engineer trait that really worked right. It made several kits a possibility and helped engineers a little towards the versatility they are supposed to have on paper but seriously don’t in practise. Multi-kit builds pretty much died with the KR nerf. It was an ungly and poor attempt that failed by adding yet more invisible cooldowns ontop of the existing invisible cooldowns (especially when the CD’s can reset with zero skills getting activated because they’re still on the other cooldown!).

Kit refinement should be reverted, and most other kit traits should be revamped to apply to several kits. Kit refinement nerf only broke engineer condition survival/mitigation options outside of elixirs, it didn’t do much to 100nades.

tl;dr the Kit Refinement ‘Cure’ was much more deadly than the disease it was trying and failing to target.

Stun breakers are not mandatory. At least in my opinion. Heck there are a lot of viable builds out there right now that that lack stun breakers as well. I think saying that stun breakers are mandatory is just pigeonholing yourself into such builds. Stun breakers are really, really good inside glass cannon like builds I’d agree, but a Turret build isn’t necessarily a glass cannon in this case. That is if it ends up being good enough after the changes.

In terms of the Engi being brought up for Elixir R and Super Speed… those things are actually very good for flag running irregardless of whatever issues the Engineer have. I see nothing wrong with that being brought up as an example of other things that are good on that map. RTL is a heck of a lot more common I’ll admit and fits into more builds, but that still doesn’t make that comment irrelevant.

I would love the see the crowbar become a weapon and allow us to start using weapon swapping… thought I know it isn’t very likely to happen at all. that would free up a slot so I could run 3 turrets instead of 2 like I do now.

I am discovering that when running turrets currently the toolkit is a must.

Ayestes.1273:

Stun breakers are not mandatory. At least in my opinion. Heck there are a lot of viable builds out there right now that that lack stun breakers as well. I think saying that stun breakers are mandatory is just pigeonholing yourself into such builds.

If you enjoy dying to every burst build they are not necessary indeed.

@Kimbald

I think what i gathered from the dev interview, was that they want a turret build to not need a stun breaker. That utility you might need would be built into the turrets over charge. No turret has a stun breaker unfortunatly but turrets can stun/knockdown/knockback someone trying to stun you or stunning you. So i guess thats supposed to balance out that way. not saying it does or that its perfect, but thats what i gathered from the interview.

Spiuk.8421:

Ayestes.1273:

Stun breakers are not mandatory. At least in my opinion. Heck there are a lot of viable builds out there right now that that lack stun breakers as well. I think saying that stun breakers are mandatory is just pigeonholing yourself into such builds.

If you enjoy dying to every burst build they are not necessary indeed.

You shouldnt be dieng to burst builds unless you are also a burst build, Turret’s are clearly designed for a bunker build, where you should have protection boon traits and high toughness. So i view stun breakers is more of a must have for glass cannon builds where you cant afford to be stunned. We have a trait in the alchemy tree on a short cd that gives us protection everytime we’re stunned so. Use that with your bunker build and you wont need stun break to survive burst.

What kim said.

I will not use turrets and probably never will until there is a serious reworking of them and their traits. Engi is quite literally the most utility intensive class in the game because our weapons MUST be supplemented with kits by design (see: damage tax on engi weapons). Add in the fact that turrets get 2 shot in team fights, the fact that you can’t control where they fire and the fact that the stat distribution up the inventions tree is completely irrational with regards to the actual usage of turrets and you have yourself a recipe for no damaging turrets under any situation.

It’s really a shame. What am I gonna do with turrets that have a 60 second cooldown when they die in two hits unless traited up a kittenty tree and are baby sat with a toolkit? Run two turrets and a toolkit?

Good joke.

Zinwrath.2049:

@Kimbald

I think what i gathered from the dev interview, was that they want a turret build to not need a stun breaker. That utility you might need would be built into the turrets over charge. No turret has a stun breaker unfortunatly but turrets can stun/knockdown/knockback someone trying to stun you or stunning you. So i guess thats supposed to balance out that way. not saying it does or that its perfect, but thats what i gathered from the interview.

There is no tourney viable, or even hotjoin viable, build without a stunbreak. You WILL die. I don’t care how tanky you are, when updraft stuns you for 3 seconds you are going to die even if you have 3400 armor.

And using an overcharge with a CC as a replacement is even worse. That’s completely factoring out stability and the fact that overcharge works on the turrets next hit which can mean the entire duration of the CC. That also assumes the turret isn’t going to get one shot by the frenzied warrior buttkittening you.

Kalan.9705:

With regards to kits:
Kit refinement was the only Engineer trait that really worked right. It made several kits a possibility and helped engineers a little towards the versatility they are supposed to have on paper but seriously don’t in practise. Multi-kit builds pretty much died with the KR nerf. It was an ungly and poor attempt that failed by adding yet more invisible cooldowns ontop of the existing invisible cooldowns (especially when the CD’s can reset with zero skills getting activated because they’re still on the other cooldown!).

Kit refinement should be reverted, and most other kit traits should be revamped to apply to several kits. Kit refinement nerf only broke engineer condition survival/mitigation options outside of elixirs, it didn’t do much to 100nades.

tl;dr the Kit Refinement ‘Cure’ was much more deadly than the disease it was trying and failing to target.

I could be wrong but it hink kit refinement will be reverted but put at a higher teir in the tree (prob 20 or 30 pointer). And will not be as much about free damage as more utility.

All turrets need to be inside 1 kit,.
Their traits need to not be spread across the entire engineeer tree in a totally illogical and un-buildable way.
They need vastly better ai.
They need several seconds of invulnerability on placement so they do anything before they evaporate.
They need to be useful and provide some meaningful dps or conditions.

Kalan.9705:

All turrets need to be inside 1 kit,.
Their traits need to not be spread across the entire engineeer tree in a totally illogical and un-buildable way.
They need vastly better ai.
They need several seconds of invulnerability on placement so they do anything before they evaporate.

I agree with them being in one kit, I hope if they’re still reading this thread, they take it into serious consideration.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Zinwrath.2049:

@Kimbald

I think what i gathered from the dev interview, was that they want a turret build to not need a stun breaker. That utility you might need would be built into the turrets over charge. No turret has a stun breaker unfortunatly but turrets can stun/knockdown/knockback someone trying to stun you or stunning you. So i guess thats supposed to balance out that way. not saying it does or that its perfect, but thats what i gathered from the interview.

There is no tourney viable, or even hotjoin viable, build without a stunbreak. You WILL die. I don’t care how tanky you are, when updraft stuns you for 3 seconds you are going to die even if you have 3400 armor.

And using an overcharge with a CC as a replacement is even worse. That’s completely factoring out stability and the fact that overcharge works on the turrets next hit which can mean the entire duration of the CC. That also assumes the turret isn’t going to get one shot by the frenzied warrior buttkittening you.

One example off the top of my head is the Trap Ranger which lacks a stun break, and instead relies on the evades and Pet CC to use while stunned. I think there are viable builds without stun breaks out there. Very few builds yes and it is a strong determining factor, but I think the statement cannot be said in an absolute fashion.

I do think there are problems in terms of utility slots as a Turret Engi though, but it’s not necessarily just because it lacks a Stun Break.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Zinwrath.2049:

@Kimbald

I think what i gathered from the dev interview, was that they want a turret build to not need a stun breaker. That utility you might need would be built into the turrets over charge. No turret has a stun breaker unfortunatly but turrets can stun/knockdown/knockback someone trying to stun you or stunning you. So i guess thats supposed to balance out that way. not saying it does or that its perfect, but thats what i gathered from the interview.

There is no tourney viable, or even hotjoin viable, build without a stunbreak. You WILL die. I don’t care how tanky you are, when updraft stuns you for 3 seconds you are going to die even if you have 3400 armor.

And using an overcharge with a CC as a replacement is even worse. That’s completely factoring out stability and the fact that overcharge works on the turrets next hit which can mean the entire duration of the CC. That also assumes the turret isn’t going to get one shot by the frenzied warrior buttkittening you.

theres a couple things to consider there. For one stun breaks are on a decent CD where i can have multiple stuns on a profession. So is that to say you are an easy kill between stun break uses? I never use stun break on warriors, i just dodge their stun or block it for example (stun breaker is there for when you failed at doing this). Also i mentioned that the turrets CC is supposed to be used to stun those stunning you, so its a different answer.

Also, if someone is able to take a fully defence specced player with full toughness/vitality with protection buff on and melt them before a stun wears off. Well, then the issue is with that ability, and that profession’s ability needs nerfed and have its power directed elsewhere, for then i can just wait for the person to have to use their stun breaker, and then know i will definitly kill them everytime.

Simple solutions that could work for stun breakers and buffing turrets, could be:

let turrets be deployable when stunned…

This would allow that build to be incredibly effective against any stunning enemy, which would be a great buff to turret utility in general.
Take 3 turrets and be better of than even having a stunbreaker…

Not saying you should be able to overcharge or explode your turret when stunned, the auto-ability alone could make a difference.
Just like kit refinement makes a difference when stunned for kit builds.

So I went over some of the interview, and I picked up that they wanted to add some things that give some hard counters to boon stacking builds. Now as this was mainly aimed towards elementalists, I’m sure our elixer drinking engineers will also feel its effects.

Well this is good news. It doesn’t even matter what they said in the interview to me. As long as they have noticed that, while it can be made to work, the class functions like something from a beta right now.

Was there any mention of fixing the Scope trait so that it actually applies the 10% crit chance bonus when not moving? This has been reported as not working since release. I would be very excited about a fix for this. I’ll also be very happy if they remove (or tone down) the RNG aspect of our elixirs and toolbelt abilities.

I like their reasoning for toning down the RNG actually applied to having ANY rng. They said something to the degree of "we’re making less options for it to not do what you want it to do, because its really upsetting when you use it to give a shield wall but it gives you something you dont need instead…..except it will still do that.

when they’re constantly hammered by the community by how much they hate RNG, i have no idea why they hang onto it. Gonna have to break out my SOE director John Smedly quote again.

“[The mistake was] to not just think we know the right direction without bringing the fans into the mix,” he explained. “We made the cardinal sin of not listening, but assuming and we were wrong.”

When asked what he would do differently if he could have a “do over” on Star Wars Galaxies, Smedley said, “We would have encouraged more in-depth discussion with the community surrounding the idea of any game modifications.”

It killed another MMO, SOE is your competition in the MMO market…..might wanna listen.

Zinwrath.2049:

I like their reasoning for toning down the RNG actually applied to having ANY rng. They said something to the degree of "we’re making less options for it to not do what you want it to do, because its really upsetting when you use it to give a shield wall but it gives you something you dont need instead…..except it will still do that.

I agree it seemed like there was a smoke break before the engineer talk session and they all came back high.

Also, why would he compare turrets to signets. Turrets are immobile and fairly weak, thus causing almost no player other than the casual pve soloer to use them. They don’t begin to compare to turrets since the cooldown + immobility makes them undesirable.

AsmallChicken.9634:

So I went over some of the interview, and I picked up that they wanted to add some things that give some hard counters to boon stacking builds. Now as this was mainly aimed towards elementalists, I’m sure our elixer drinking engineers will also feel its effects.

Yes, you know how thieves kill you in 5 seconds? If you have boons it will be 2 seconds.

“Engineers were just walking up and doing 24k damage on people”

Except, they don’t.

The combo is around ~17,000 on a light golem, assuming all crits (8x kit refinement at ~820, 8x barrage at ~1200, 1x static discharge at ~900).

Your standard bunker ele has 15,700 health, with an instant ~2,400 heal just by switching to water, and 2,470 on evade, (and cleansing wave, cone of cold, soothing mist, regen on attunement swap, and their normal heal).

Necros have an instant, second health bar.

Most other classes have either better armor, or other passive defenses.

Backstab theives still exist.

“We don’t want a 10 point trait to be this defining.”

Guess they missed Elemental Attunement, Inspired Virtue, Justice is Blind, Shared Anguish, Berserker’s Power, and Shadow’s Embrace.

We want kit refinement to be useful for all kits…

Except for med kit and perhaps bomb kit, it IS useful. They should’ve just buffed those.

I have a hard time being optimistic about the stream. Sure, they said a lot of nice, non-specific things, but they did the same thing back in November with “lots of changes” and it turned out to be a lot of trivial upgrades and a big nerf, and Rangers got their expectations completely shattered (for the worst) 4 months ago with
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-update

I’ll believe positive changes when I see them. It’s my experience that when the A-net devs call their shots like this, it’s usually followed with utter disappointment from the player base when they actually see the changes. “A lot of work” doesn’t always mean the same thing to us as it does the devs. We see that statement and look forward to qualitative, meaningful changes, we often get a few numbers pushed around that took a lot of effort on their part but makes not much difference for us.

I say ditch all turrets in some sort of turret kit :P
WE NEED MORE JUGGLE! I still have too much free time to watch enemy moves!