Guild Wars 2

bump. rifle needs to be brought up to par w hammer cause no matter the argument the rifle is weaker than the hammer period. only advantage it has is it is a ranged option for us that involves the power stat and even then it is reflection heavy meta right now and most smart players will just send your shots right back at you.

bump.

Rifle needs a buff (and/or projectile hate needs a nerf across the board)
Hammer needs a nerf – all of its skills defend while doing good damage

Just look at the stats on ranked pvp matches. I bet 98% or more of all engis in ranked use hammer. Something is wrong here.

coro.3176:

bump.

Rifle needs a buff (and/or projectile hate needs a nerf across the board)
Hammer needs a nerf – all of its skills defend while doing good damage

Just look at the stats on ranked pvp matches. I bet 98% or more of all engis in ranked use hammer. Something is wrong here.

you’re looking at things the wrong way

is it really hammer’s fault rifle and pistols arent used?
have you tried them even against teams without scrappers ?

its not that hammer is OP so engies go and ditch the rifle its that rifle offers Nothing, pistol can at least keep constant pressure on enemies via conditions

due to its skills kit being made to play in a high risk low reward play style all of its skills are to be used at close range asides from the auto attack try compare that to warrior rifle or ranger’s longbow

Yes I agree with that^. It used to give us some burst but now the only thing rifle offers is a good cc on #4

Does it though? I’m hesitant to even use overcharged shot if there’s a chance it’ll hit reflect. It’s already a self-cc. Reflect makes it a double-self-cc + damage.

coro.3176:

Does it though? I’m hesitant to even use overcharged shot if there’s a chance it’ll hit reflect. It’s already a self-cc. Reflect makes it a double-self-cc + damage.

I agree w him, that gets reflected in a teamfight and you don’t have stability well guess who the thieves and rangers are going for now..

Projectile hate is fine (it’s counterplay to the rifle) and Engins have kits that work around the issue.

BUT there needs to be compensation for that Projectile hate.

The main issue with Rifle is the Master trait is required for Rifle to be any decent. It’s clear that the whole weapon is based around the Engin having this trait. This also means, Rifle is balanced around having the target bleed (33% bleed on crit/higher crit chance) since Firearms line but Rifle only has Blunderbuss by default that causes bleed.

To fix:

> Make the attack speed increase baseline and remove from Skilled Marksman trait

> Add to trait Skilled Marksman that it now adds “unblockable” to Hip Shot – make it unique. It is called “Skilled Marksman” after all (change the name from Hip Shot to Skill Shot). Keep recharge reduced 20% for all Rifle skills.

> Add autobleed 1 stack to the Rifle (remove it from Elixir Gun’s autoattack Tranquilizer Dart. Replace Bleed on Exilir Gun with Confusion instead – thematically fits. Now Rifle benefits from the Firearms traits by default (without being at Blunderbuss range).

Don’t change the other Rifle abilities. Autoattack is the problem child.

Unblockable, oh god yes please make it happen. Amount of blocks, evades and reflections that currently exist just makes me want to quit the game.

why not suggest they remove some blocks, evades, and reflections instead of making rifle unblockable. they are the culprits.

insanemaniac.2456:

why not suggest they remove some blocks, evades, and reflections instead of making rifle unblockable. they are the culprits.

overcharged shot should be unblockable the rest of the skills just need a slight damage raise

immob web needs normal targetting

i think that shield need a huge cd reduction , now it is really useless. Rifle instead need a quite total redesign . with all projectils hate and stability it is really an unusefull weapon, at least for spvp and wvw . I think that for all the game modes we have there are only 2 viable weapons/setup for engineer : hammer power , pistol pistol condition. ( i am a great fun of pistols , more than hammer )

We would really use another one handed weapon with power stats, shield is useless now because pistol mainhand can’t do much direct damage, and shield is purely defensive at the moment; mh pistol alone can be outhealed pretty easly.

Rifle is in a weird place, hardly usefull in ranged since Hip Shot doesn’t give big damage.
Only one ability for close combat, which has decent damage, but only in meele range.
One ability to kinda defend from meele classes, but knockback isn’t big AND we’r getting CCd too.
One gap closer which can be interrupted, and prey you don’t get immobilized in the duration of jump, because you are locked in mid-air and can’t do anything.
And Net Shot of course. Slow projectile, blockable, reflectable, evaded by moving, even enemies running in straight line will be missed.

engi rifle need some unblockable skills. thats a fact (or at least a redesign of its skills). an evade on the 5 would be great too. i would change completly the net (2) with a special projectile that will immobilze the target after some time after it touch it.

and we need a better trait for rifle user.

but if we would add a nice feature to rifle it would be overcharged skills.
when the overcharge is ready our skills change.
_ auto stay the same
_the net immobilize but also severly cripple the target.(or make him fall down while immobilized)
_blunderbuss become unblockable and/or push back.
_overcharged shot become a little aoe or pierce
_jump shot make you evade while jumping.

Rifle doesn’t need much any buffs if projectile hate is toned down.

I would like to see:
rifle #2, net shot, with increased projectile speed (now it is way too easy to miss it at distance)
rifle #3, blunderbuss, also be blast finisher and unblockable
rifle #5, jump shot, make animation twice as fast and evade while in mid air. This would turn the skill into effective gap closer/disengage skill. Now running with swiftness is roughly as fast as using rifle #5 and you risk being victim of mid air immobilize while doing so, thus using rifle #5 for traveling is risky.

PS. I have 3000+ h playing as rifle engi, I think many of the other above suggestions are overpowered.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Rifle doesn’t need much any buffs if projectile hate is toned down.

I would like to see:
rifle #2, net shot, with increased projectile speed (now it is way too easy to miss it at distance)
rifle #3, blunderbuss, also be blast finisher and unblockable
rifle #5, jump shot, make animation twice as fast and evade while in mid air. This would turn the skill into effective gap closer/disengage skill. Now running with swiftness is roughly as fast as using rifle #5 and you risk being victim of mid air immobilize while doing so, thus using rifle #5 for traveling is risky.

PS. I have 3000+ h playing as rifle engi, I think many of the other above suggestions are overpowered.

theres fundamental design flaws in the rifle skillset though

its playstyle is an aggressive high risk low reward playstyle

due to the big damage skills being basically melee range Aka blunderbuss and Landing the rocket jump leap on target

overcharged shot is short range, single target Projectile that Self CCs so thats a double Knock if you get reflected

net shot right now even with increased speed will have the same problem , it simply needs a more traditional targetting implemented as well as speed increase

then there’s the fact our “burst” skills still do about 50% less damage than the other professions’s 1200-1500 range burst skills

so basically the only good thing about engi rifle is its auto and only because it has inherent pierce

and 5 for jumping over JPs and cliffs

however i gotta say i agree with your ideas being a good start, Utility over damage , i still say overcharged shot should be unblockable tho and/or a Cone spread shot

bump ONLY YOU CAN MAKE RIFLE ENGI GREAT AGAIN!

Rezzet.3614:

its playstyle is an aggressive high risk low reward playstyle

due to the big damage skills being basically melee rang

I agree with this, but I also think this should stay like that.

Engi Rifle should remain to be high risk aggressive weapon, but it should also turned more into high reward.

Both hammer and pistol/shield offer reflect, which are strong against rifle. Pistol/pistol offers condition spam, including AoE immobilize and blind. Thus it can also be used more defensive manner than rifle.

Now the big problem is that both pistol/pistol and hammer offer better DPS than rifle. and many rifle skills are more or less single target. This should be changed. Rifle should clearly do more damage than other engineer weapon sets or else it needs added utility and defenses.

Yes basically now rifle is high risk + no reward weapon. Will see whether it will be changed on 26th but I highly doubt it. The weapon has always been really weird but now it’s just left in dust because of the power creep. Trying to do something with rifle now feels like trying to kill a high tech robot with a stone lol

Deniara Devious.3948:

Now the big problem is that both pistol/pistol and hammer offer better DPS than rifle.

no they dont. they offer similar dps. hammer just can be used more often. p/p… similarly to rifle, you just use 3 & 4 on cd and switch away (like rifle 3 & 5).

insanemaniac.2456:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Now the big problem is that both pistol/pistol and hammer offer better DPS than rifle.

no they dont. they offer similar dps. hammer just can be used more often. p/p… similarly to rifle, you just use 3 & 4 on cd and switch away (like rifle 3 & 5).

I know the damage is very similar, but to my memory rifle lags tiny bit behind. Correct me if I am wrong but hammer has slightly higher DPS than rifle. If this is the case or the damage is almost equal, then why anybody would choose rifle?!

Roughly equal damage should NOT be the case, when rifle is very aggressive weapon with no reliable defense built in it.

Deniara Devious.3948:

insanemaniac.2456:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Now the big problem is that both pistol/pistol and hammer offer better DPS than rifle.

no they dont. they offer similar dps. hammer just can be used more often. p/p… similarly to rifle, you just use 3 & 4 on cd and switch away (like rifle 3 & 5).

I know the damage is very similar, but to my memory rifle lags tiny bit behind. Correct me if I am wrong but hammer has slightly higher DPS than rifle. If this is the case or the damage is almost equal, then why anybody would choose rifle?!

Roughly equal damage should NOT be the case, when rifle is very aggressive weapon with no reliable defense built in it.

hammer is slightly more. currently the main advantage to rifle is that it doesnt tie you to scrapper so you can take tools/inventions instead and get movement speed without sacrificing explosives/firearms. the main advantage to hammer is that it has more to do, so in those times where a fight lasts long enough to run through all your cds with rifle/kits and have to resort to autos, a hammer can better fill a rotation with higher dps things. but grenade auto is pretty strong already, so replacing those autos by spamming 2s on hammer/bomb/nade/ft gets marginally more dps.

overall its only gonna matter if youre skilled enough to make it matter, and even at my personal peak play i doubt im good enough to make it matter. but thats just me.

however, hammer also brings defensive things while putting out the sameish dps, so its clearly superior (especially outside of pve). unless you cant live without movement speed and maximum deepz. sometimes i cant. i like swiftness.

The fact that hammer does that kind of dps WHILE blocking and defending really really matters. In a fight (say, Hammer vs Rifle) both players are rotating offensive vs defensive cooldowns – except Hammer gets combination offensive/defensive skills on much lower cooldowns that do the same if not more damage and provide more utility and combo better. Add to this, the reflect uptime from Bulwark Gyro’s defense field and Hammer 2 reflect, rifle just can’t compete at all.

please make this rifle good again this thread is the biggest on engi forums kitten do something right anet…

Net shot buff hype bois lmao

summary of engineer rifle changes: close to nothing

in fact I predict there will be even less engineers using rifle, because of pistol/pistol got buffed

hmmm … dunno if i can still dodge a reflected net shot.

i am so disappoint
again
forever
at least i didn’t waste time getting the predator…

Mahkno.7593:

at least i didn’t waste time getting the predator…

oh shut up

Xyonon.3987:

Mahkno.7593:

at least i didn’t waste time getting the predator…

oh shut up

:(

coro.3176:

The fact that hammer does that kind of dps WHILE blocking and defending really really matters. In a fight (say, Hammer vs Rifle) both players are rotating offensive vs defensive cooldowns – except Hammer gets combination offensive/defensive skills on much lower cooldowns that do the same if not more damage and provide more utility and combo better. Add to this, the reflect uptime from Bulwark Gyro’s defense field and Hammer 2 reflect, rifle just can’t compete at all.

^^ This ^^

Hammer offers defense (block and evade) while doing damage at same time, lighting field and blast finisher while the DPS is very similar to rifle (slighter better on hammer).

Either hammer needs significant nerfs or rifle really needs buffs to be competitive again!

I don’t think the Rifle needs a lot of buffs. I do not want another stand-alone weapon. I’d much rather see a return of the Grenade Kit game play in PvP/WvW. In my (arguably limited) experience, it’s not so much the projectile hate that is keeping back the Grenade Kit, but the overwhelming damage elite specs can throw at you. You simply cannot give up a utility slot for an offensive weapon Kit and expect to survive. You are pretty much forced to dedicate every utility slot to survival. An offensive weapon Kit hurts your survivability a lot. In my eyes, a simple fix would be to make the Grenade Kit the new elite weapon Kit. That way, you could run two stun breakers (Elixir S and Elixir Gun are a potent combination) and the Tool Kit and still have access to the damage of the Grenade Kit.

Pros:
• the Kit game play becomes an option again. I’m not saying (hoping?) that an elite Grenade Kit could be viable at the highest competitive level, but you would at least stand a fighting chance;
• the Grenadier trait could reflect the elite status by also upping the range of the Grenade Kit abilities and Tool Belt skill by 300 units (from 900 up to 1.200);
• as far as I know (maybe a more knowledgeable player can fill me in here), this won’t mess up the dominant PvE build. Since it uses both the Mortar Kit and the Grenade Kit, both would simply swap places on the ability bar;
• the Grenade Kit abilities deal splash damage. With proper targeting you can still damage an opponent sitting in a reflect bubble. This has always worked and still works now. It directly rewards player input and skill;
• I’m not a programmer but I’m under the impression that this is a relatively minor fix. At any rate, it is much less work than a complete Rifle overhaul.

Cons:
• my proposal leaves the old school condition Grenade Kit build in the dust. The Explosives trait line does not synergize with a condition build;
• my proposal leaves the Static Discharge build in the dust. Sacrificing a utility slot for the Rifle Turret/Personal Battering Ram is highly detrimental to your survivability (just like it currently is for the Grenade Kit);
• my proposal leaves the Bomb Kit in the dust since it suffers from the same lack of defensive utility as any other offensive weapon Kit.

Thanks for reading and may our overlords gift us with a viable Kit build.
/beg