Guild Wars 2

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/preview-of-upcoming-balance-changes/

From a PvP standpoint:

Scavenging Runes will be really good for condi Engi, especially if you combine it with Leeching Sigil! 62042 – Rabid Amulet – Elixir S/Slick Shoes + Tool Kit + Grenade Kit – Pistol/Pistol – Geomancy/Leeching!

Sigil of Torment is a nice addition to a condi Engi’s asrenal (<- lol if you swap the S and R it’s censored)! The damage is pretty mediocre but it provides a cover condition for your burns/bleeds and it’s AoE!

Launch Battering Ram daze is a nice buff to #gadgetmeta! Unfortunately gadget builds are still pretty subpar in comparison to meta builds! The big issue is taking multiple gadgets over kits which will always be inferior and unfortunately that’s not gonna be changed anytime soon! A good step would be to start buffing gadget traits and not the gadgets themselves! Most of them are already pretty good except AED! AED sucks!

Throw Mine received a nice boost but it’s still pretty inferior to everything else and will still be only taken for one trick pony burst builds which are extremely rare anyway (because it’s bad lol)!

Suggestions from Vee Wee!

• AED needs to not be bad! The first thing that needs to be done for AED is to lower the cooldown! Even with a reduced cooldown, it will still be pretty subpar especially in comparison to Healing Turret! But it’s a start I guess!
• Elixir C should have its cast time removed so it can be a pseudo stunbreak for fears! And since Necros are the ultimate hard counter for Engi and many Warriors these days are running Fear Me, it would be pretty useful! I don’t think people will opt to take it even if this change went through but it’s a start!
• Gadgets are the least viable builds for Engi! The problem (other than it’s not worth taking a one time use ability over a kit) isn’t with the gadgets themselves, but rather there’s just no good traits for them! Massive buffs are needed to existing gadget traits and maybe new gadget traits should be added!
• Engis have really poor condi removal! Maybe we could add condi removal alternatives outside of the existing meta builds! For example the Inventions tree is really subpar so maybe there could be a trait deep in there that beefs up the Elixir Gun so that one of its new features can be to remove conditions from yourself during Fumigate! Engi builds could change to give up Alchemy sustain to be able to have more condition removal! A pretty fair trade I think! After all isn’t the Elixir Gun an Engineer invention! Maybe you could have a grandmaster Tools trait that removes conditions on toolbelt usage! The possibilities are endless!
• Formula 409 should work similarly to HgH in regards to differences between chugging and throwing elixirs! HgH grants 2 stacks of might for chugged elixirs and one for thrown! Formula 409 should cure 2 conditions for a chugged Elixir and one for thrown! Taking multiple elixirs hurts your survivability by a lot and Formula 409’s condi removal is mediocre at best!
• Slick Shoes needs to be nerfed! The cooldown decrease from last patch really made it too strong! The stunbreak cooldown should be increased to 45 seconds! The oil puddles the utility grants should have their durations reduced!
• Kit Refinement is still worthless! A few patches ago a change was made to the Elementalist’s Elemental Contingency to where it had seperate cooldowns for each attunement! I think a similar change needs to be made here so that each Kit Refinement proc has a separate cooldown per kit!

That’s all for now frands! Wahoo! Bye frands!

I think buffing Elixir Gun like that would be abit too op, they want engis to be countered by conditions and CC. If they buffed Fumigate, then they’d most likely increase the cooldown of it. How about a trait similar to juggernaut, but works like this: Every time an elixir gun skill is used, removes 2 conditions from the user, cooldown of 10-15 seconds or so, grandmaster, also gives the user 200 vit.

Indeed Kit Refinement is horrible, it has potential but still nothing special. Your suggestion is good, also the mine with grenade kit doesn’t really make sense, maybe something like grenades do weakness on take hit, 1s each.

One more thing I’m wondering about is if they could put in a trait for grandmaster where engis take 25%-40% less reliation dmg, its really horrible due to the fact we do so much AoE, but in wvw we can’t even get it off without dying so fast. It might make engis abit too strong but its something to think about.

One last thing, I’m confused about the Ram change, I was thinking Launching was much more effective then a daze. I mean if it dazed at a long range maybe but so close, I don’t really see the difference, could you explain that to me alittle? I mean if it launched then after they got dazed for a second, then I can see how strong it can be.
EDIT: Ty for guys who answered my question, I’ve barely used it XD forgot the difference in skill name.

Maybe for Gadgets give the boons they give to the engi an AoE effect?

Black para goner.7612:

One last thing, I’m confused about the Ram change, I was thinking Launching was much effective then a daze. I mean if it dazed at a long range maybe but so close, I don’t really see the difference, could you explain that to me alittle? I mean if it launched then after they got dazed for a second, then I can see how strong it can be.

Nah, its the toolbelt skill they meant on that, not the actual utility.

What Joshua said below me

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Launch_Personal_Battering_Ram

This one.

Slick shoes are OP? Lol. Slick shoes are in a really good spot right now, they’re powerful yeah but they’re a 1 trick pony. Anyone with stability will go right through them (although super speed will allow you to gtfo of that situation at the cost of your stunbreak).

Slick Shoes are definitely OP right now. I can cancel the self knockback on every other overcharged shot with super speed for some ridiculous burst, decimate any thieves/mesmers that have popped their blink, and still have super speed up to escape if things go south due to it recharging instantly at 25% HP. It’s a 4-6 second AoE chain knockdown in a meta without high stability uptime combined with the game’s best stunbreak. I’d say that’s definitely on the OP side. Super Speed needs a cooldown increase for sure, though I’d say put it at 38-40s instead of 45.

Sins.4782:

Slick Shoes are definitely OP right now. I can cancel the self knockback on every other overcharged shot with super speed for some ridiculous burst, decimate any thieves/mesmers that have popped their blink, and still have super speed up to escape if things go south due to it recharging instantly at 25% HP. It’s a 4-6 second AoE chain knockdown in a meta without high stability uptime combined with the game’s best stunbreak. I’d say that’s definitely on the OP side. Super Speed needs a cooldown increase for sure, though I’d say put it at 38-40s instead of 45.

Slick Shoes is pretty in-line with E-Gun and Elixir S. When Super Speed was 45 toolbelt, and 60 on the utility, it wasn’t brought.

Equipping E-Gun over Slick Shoes gives you significantly more 1v1 sustain, with only a 10s longer CD on stunbreak. In a 1v1 against Thieves you pretty much cannot die if you bring E-gun. Elixir S brings so much team utility via stealthing allies, and invuln stomp/res, -or- a stealth pull that’s just as lethal as a CC lock if you use the pull to combo with your allies.

It wouldn’t take much to upset the balance, I think a Gadget being good is #winning.

I really don’t think there’s any point in taking EGun over slick shoes right now. SS has the superior escape, the superior stunbreak, and far superior offensive capabilities. About the only things EGun has going for it are its corpse cleave and heal/condi clear, which still won’t save you from high condi pressure. If stability was more prevalent in the current meta things would be different, but I don’t really see that changing anytime soon.

Elixir S is still great, but the roles it fills are mostly different from SS/EGun. Stealth opener damage is lovely, but having your only stun break on a 60s cd, and losing the ability to safe stomp and possibly losing a capture point because of it is not fun. I’ve taken to only running it in/versus comps where I think we’d need the safe stomps. I miss some of the clutch stealth plays, but I think the higher offensive capabilities on SS are still worth it.

Chaith.8256:

Sins.4782:

Slick Shoes are definitely OP right now. I can cancel the self knockback on every other overcharged shot with super speed for some ridiculous burst, decimate any thieves/mesmers that have popped their blink, and still have super speed up to escape if things go south due to it recharging instantly at 25% HP. It’s a 4-6 second AoE chain knockdown in a meta without high stability uptime combined with the game’s best stunbreak. I’d say that’s definitely on the OP side. Super Speed needs a cooldown increase for sure, though I’d say put it at 38-40s instead of 45.

Slick Shoes is pretty in-line with E-Gun and Elixir S. When Super Speed was 45 toolbelt, and 60 on the utility, it wasn’t brought.

Equipping E-Gun over Slick Shoes gives you significantly more 1v1 sustain, with only a 10s longer CD on stunbreak. In a 1v1 against Thieves you pretty much cannot die if you bring E-gun. Elixir S brings so much team utility via stealthing allies, and invuln stomp/res, -or- a stealth pull that’s just as lethal as a CC lock if you use the pull to combo with your allies.

It wouldn’t take much to upset the balance, I think a Gadget being good is #winning.

Slick Shoes is easily the most powerful of the 3! It basically guarantees a kill in a teamfight, and can almost guarantee a 1v1 kill against anyone without stability or blinks! Super Speed is the shortest cooldown stunbreak in the game by A LOT at 25 seconds with the standard 60044 cele build and it recharges when you have low health! That’s just crazy! What I proposed is for a maximum of 3-4 oil puddles out at once! You will still be able to encircle some poor soul with your greasy death trap but you won’t be able to leave tons of giant unblockable movement impeding death barriers all over the place! And the cooldown for the stunbreak is just way too short! 25 seconds really! C’mon now my frand Chaith! Even at 45 seconds base, the cooldown will be 35 seconds that recharges when your health gets low! That’s still one of the shortest cooldown stunbreaks in the entire game! Vee Wee is not proposing radical changes!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

ArrDee.2573:

Wahoo! Bye frands!

When was Super Speed just changed from a 45 to 30 because nobody ran Slick Shoes? Was that like, a couple months ago, I think it was October.

I doubt it will get changed back, but there’s always Elixir S which is amazing.

30% reduce from trait line maybe?

ArrDee.2573:

• AED needs to not be bad! The first thing that needs to be done for AED is to lower the cooldown! Even with a reduced cooldown, it will still be pretty subpar especially in comparison to Healing Turret! But it’s a start I guess!

Not sure if the problem is AED, healing turret, or simply the lack of a energy mechanic.

The more i look at it the more i am tempted to say that it is the latter.

This because i notice similarities between AED and the engineer shield skill. This in that the cooldown is set high because AED may be strong under the right circumstance, even though that circumstance may be rare.

The only way really to solve this would be if the cooldown got longer depending on how a skill is used.

With AED this could be that the cooldown was 20 if the low heal triggered, while 40 when rescued from downed.

With the healing turret, it should perhaps rack up to 40+ as deploy, overcharge, detonate was used in short order.

With shield skills it should produce a short one when the first skill is used, but a longer one when the second is used.

but another problem is that the current cooldown surrounding turrets, and healing turret in particular, encourage using them as anything but turrets. This because the cooldown starts when they are destroyed rather than when deployed.

This is particularly bad with the healing turret, as it does most of its work when deployed and when overcharged. The regen boon is simply not enough of a benefit to leaving it out, when detonating it give a short cooldown towards another heal and water field.

One option may be to replace the regen with a pulsed heal, and have the overcharge add a pulsed condition cleanse or boosted heal pulse. And drop the water field.

Imho, AED’s major problem lies in its opportunity costs.
Other healing skills would be used when you’re still relatively healthly, thus having some time to recharge before you’re actually dying. But AED requires you to be near death if you want a successful healing, making you lose out on many other uses of the healing skill.
The long cooldown also doesn’t help, i would add.
Having a relatively low cooldown for the low heal version could help solving the opportunity cost issue.

Albeit, i can’t agree with the skyrocketing of healing turret cooldown proposed above. And neither i think it would solve anything. As it works now, letting the healing turret down is more risk than reward. The healing skill is too important to risk being unable to use it when the needs arise – and them being quite brittle, especially in PvE situations, doesn’t help at all.
Imho, there are some things that would help in solving this issue.
First, making the cooldown dependant on the last healing skill used, be it the deployment or an overcharge – so that you aren’t able to overcharge, destroy it and deploy it again.
Second, give some warm-up time at the turret, making the overcharge weaker at the start and stronger after a certain amount of time passes, thus giving some advantage on keeping it down (and making it a better instrument for prolonged battles).
Third, properly balance its health and defense outside of pvp. If AoEs – especially from bosses – can destroy it too easily, of course no one will keep it down.

25 second stunbreak is absolutely insane! The stunbreak cooldown was just fine before! Nobody ran Slick Shoes because even though the utility was really strong, it had a 60 second cooldown! That’s pretty bad! Lowering the cooldown to 45 seconds was a good change but in combination with the crazy low stunbreak cooldown, it made the utility as a whole just too powerful! The proof is that nearly every single cele Engi player both high and low tier runs this utility after the patch when nobody ran it at all before!

I think the stunbreak cooldown should be reverted to 45 seconds and cap the amount of oil puddles that you can spawn to 4! This means as soon as you put down a 5th oil puddle, the first one disappears! As soon as you put down a 6th oil puddle, the second one disappears and so on! Having mile long trails of unblockable, undodgeable knockdowns is anti fun! And it gives other people the opportunity to dodge out of the oily ring of death! Dodging is supposed to evade attacks! There shouldn’t be a single attack in the game you can’t dodge out of with the exception of trap attacks like Static Field and Ring of Warding! But even those two skills allow dodging and being active inside! And you can stunbreak out of them if you want to break free! You can do none of these things inside a Slick Shoes grease ring of death! If you’re a poor soul without stability or blinks, all you can do is die!

Yes Elixir S is great! Vee Wee agrees!

40 second cooldown Healing Turret! That’s just crazy! That’s not gonna do anything except absolutely destroy the only viable heal the Engineer has!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

ArrDee.2573:

Dodging is supposed to evade attacks! There shouldn’t be a single attack in the game you can’t dodge out of with the exception of trap attacks like Static Field and Ring of Warding!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

What do you think Slick Shoes should do if it’s able to be dodged through? It’d have to be totally rebalanced, obv

My frand Chaith! You misunderstand! I think how it works is fine if there’s a gap in the oil ring of death that you can dodge through! Slick Shoes is after all a trapping skill! Like I said, the difference is you can move and dodge around in Ring of Warding and Static Field whereas a Slick Shoes trap is practically a guaranteed death since you literally can’t do anything without stab or blinks! This is why I suggested that there be a cap on how many oil puddles that can be created! I don’t think a rework would be necessary if that were the case and I don’t think it’s a change that would kill off Slick Shoes!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

ArrDee.2573:

My frand Chaith! You misunderstand! I think how it works is fine if there’s a gap in the oil ring of death that you can dodge through! Slick Shoes is after all a trapping skill! Like I said, the difference is you can move and dodge around in Ring of Warding and Static Field whereas a Slick Shoes trap is practically a guaranteed death since you literally can’t do anything without stab or blinks! This is why I suggested that there be a cap on how many oil puddles that can be created! I don’t think a rework would be necessary if that were the case and I don’t think it’s a change that would kill off Slick Shoes!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

4 Puddles constantly being replaced is enough to secure a triple knockdown though so…

I think slick shoes is pretty much in line with elixier s and e-gun. E-gun is the best 1on1 option with the most utility. Elixier s is the best teamfight option for save stomps and disengages. Slick shoes is kinda right between, with additional CC plus the shortest stunbreak, but less utility than e-gun and worse disengage than elixier s. I think all 3 have their uses and are pretty much on par.

I dont see guaranteed kills due to slick shoes either. There are also other options to handle slick shoes than blinks or stability. You can simply stand still(maybe pop a block i.e.) and wait it out, if you dont move(!). Plus im very sure you can dodge over if the oil is around you and not right under your feet.

No offense, but this sounds like a l2p issue if you die each time you get slick shoed… 0o

Chaith.8256:

4 Puddles constantly being replaced is enough to secure a triple knockdown though so…

Then you have no objections to the change! Wahoo! Devs a top Engi on the #1 team NA and maybe world agrees with this change! Plz implement!

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

I think slick shoes is pretty much in line with elixier s and e-gun. E-gun is the best 1on1 option with the most utility. Elixier s is the best teamfight option for save stomps and disengages. Slick shoes is kinda right between, with additional CC plus the shortest stunbreak, but less utility than e-gun and worse disengage than elixier s. I think all 3 have their uses and are pretty much on par.

I dont see guaranteed kills due to slick shoes either. There are also other options to handle slick shoes than blinks or stability. You can simply stand still(maybe pop a block i.e.) and wait it out, if you dont move(!). Plus im very sure you can dodge over if the oil is around you and not right under your feet.

No offense, but this sounds like a l2p issue if you die each time you get slick shoed… 0o

Egun is probably the worst out of the 3! And lol! Stand still! Yes let’s stand still while being pelted by grenades and prybars and then more cc from rifle! And that’s just from a 1v1! In a teamfight or skirmish, let’s see how long you last standing still inside a nearly inescapable cc trap while being focused by multiple people! Good luck my frand! And this is all with the shortest cooldown stunbreak in the game BY FAR! And it also recharges at low health! Jokes!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Technically, the ‘lowest cooldown stunbreak’ award goes to Mesmer’s Mantra of Concentration, when fully traited it provides 3x stun breaks with a 20s cd afterwards. After that comes war and ele at a simple 20s cd with traited “Shake it Off!” and traited Signet of Air, respectively. We come in 4th. None of those provide ridiculous escapes or CC as well, though.

Depending on map and team comps, e-gun is very viable. It offers good mobility, best cleave dmg(#4 hits pretty kitten celestial), good condi remove and lots of poison. All on top of a relative low CD stunbreaker(main reason to take 1 of these 3) that also offers long lasting regeneration. Tell me whats bad about this? There are tons of scenarios its superior to slick shoes/elixier s…

With e-gun you simply lack the superior disengage option of slick shoes/elixier s, thats why the other 2 are seen much more. I cycle between all 3 of them, just depends on team and map.

As for your slick shoes issues, you might laugh but believe me, its much better to stand still than to panic react/moving around like a chicken. Stand still, blind/block/daze/kd your opponent, than dodge out as soon as the oil beneath your soles lifted. Just make sure hes in front of you when attacking so you dont turn around into the next kd. Overcharged shot is a pretty good example for getting out of oil in 1on1. Wait till hes in front of you, shoot him and slick shoes is wasted.
But this is all just about having your defensive skills on CD. Every class has lots of stuff to handle slick shoes. Stability, ranger lightning reflexes, immunity skills against the burst, leap skills, and the list goes on and on. Slick shoes is just another tool to initiate your bursts, but by no means an guaranteed kill…

Btw, signet of air(ele) is the shortest cooldown stunbreak in game.

Just a quick question:
The #3 skill of the E-gun cures conditions only from your teammates – right?
And could you more experienced engineers give me a brief insight of how to use the E-Gun and especially in which build?
Is it a strength/Precision weapon, or does it only make sense to take it in a condi setup?
Thank you in advance

I always carry E-gun…. but I PVE and fractal. Take one of the more vexxing bosses, Mai Tran.

If your fighting say Mai Tran, who does a tonne of damage via condtions, you can stand second row and do fumigate (while causing poison). You can crippler her with #2 while speeding all your allies (keeping her crippled helps quite a bit). You can acid bomb leap escape when she comes to you (does terrific damage). You can also from second row remove a condtion and give regen to a fairly large area. I also pair with bombs and the Might/Fury/Stability elixir in my build. I think the weakness hit from option 1 doesn’t work on her… but I may be incorrect.

The other nice thing about the weapon is that many of its effects are pretty useful regardless of what you trait. The acid bomb is decent damage regardless, and a great blast finisher with a water field. The cripple and speed are useful to me, the poison, adds to my power builds traited +2% per condi on an opponent, weakness is great fun (especially on ice fractal when the guy yells out your weakness makes me skick… and for meta humour I immediately pelt him with weaknesss… hehehehe). Finally condi removal, who cares how you traited, it;s condi removal and a bit of regen. Finally the toolbelt is a stun break. I run 6/6/0/0/2 typically. Assassin and zerk mostly.

ArrDee.2573:

25 second stunbreak is absolutely insane! The stunbreak cooldown was just fine before! Nobody ran Slick Shoes because even though the utility was really strong, it had a 60 second cooldown! That’s pretty bad! Lowering the cooldown to 45 seconds was a good change but in combination with the crazy low stunbreak cooldown, it made the utility as a whole just too powerful! The proof is that nearly every single cele Engi player both high and low tier runs this utility after the patch when nobody ran it at all before!

i see a mix of all 3 of S, eg, and slicky in my matches. eg is slightly less common.

ArrDee.2573:

Super Speed is the shortest cooldown stunbreak in the game by A LOT at 25 seconds with the standard 60044 cele build and it recharges when you have low health! That’s just crazy

C’mon now my frand Chaith! Even at 45 seconds base, the cooldown will be 35 seconds that recharges when your health gets low! That’s still one of the shortest cooldown stunbreaks in the entire game! Vee Wee is not proposing radical changes!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

No it’s not a radical change, but I feel like it’s just because Engi is OP right now that the cooldown of the stunbreak is a problem. If anything, it’s the Engineer’s CC that’s a problem with it’s over-performance in this meta. It’d be better to shave something like the cooldown on Overcharged Shot. The Slick Shoes active I think is unnaturally potent in this meta because of the lack of virtues Guardian with improved Courage virtue, Stand Your Ground, and an abundance of Engineers and Cele Wars with no Stab to get out of Slick Shoes.

This is the max frequency of stunbreaks (per minute) meta builds live with:

Shatter Mes: 3.5

S/D Thief: 3.2-4.4 (Max number if you use the Shadow Return to break a 2nd stun.)

Cele War: 3

Medi Guard: 2.92

Condi Necro: 2.5

Cele Rifle (Slick Shoes): 2.4

D/D Ele: 0.8-2.3 (Max number if you use Lightning Flash like an effective Stunbreak)

If you add in how many times you can possibly use the Stunbreak at 25% reset (90s CD), Engi goes up, but it’s not really an outlier in stunbreaks.

Lol Engi may be too good but Slick Shoes are likely a fad until the Cele Wars and Engineers get some kitten defense against it, or Guardians start taking group stability again.

I’d say increase the CD on Overcharged Shot to 20s and see.

Assassin.7890:

Just a quick question:
The #3 skill of the E-gun cures conditions only from your teammates – right?
And could you more experienced engineers give me a brief insight of how to use the E-Gun and especially in which build?
Is it a strength/Precision weapon, or does it only make sense to take it in a condi setup?
Thank you in advance

Yes, Fumigate only cleanses conditions from allies. Super Elixir cleanses one from everyone in the field on creation, though.

The majority of the damage EGun deals is power based, coming from Acid Bomb on an immobile target. In a hybrid or power build you can get a ton of damage off on a downed body, and enemies that are attempting to res or stomp, because they will stay in the field for 3+ ticks. In PvE with the current meta dungeon build you can deal over 20k damage with all 5 ticks connecting. In PvP it’s a lot lower, but with a hybrid build you can still do 6k-9k damage on it to a target that stays in the field. That’s pretty strong considering it’s a good sized field that can hit up to 5 targets.

In condi builds, acid bomb does a lot less damage, and is more likely to be used for its blast finisher or as an escape than it is for damage (though the damage on downed bodies is still pretty good). The autoattack is bad from a damage prospective, and not really used in hybrid or power builds often, but can be useful in a condition build because it provides 2 cover conditions, making your burning harder to cleanse. It’s a bit faster and easier to land than pistol autoattack, too. That said, it’s inferior to other kits autoattacks when fighting multiple enemies due to being entirely single target.

Elixir F provides decent damage in hybrid/power builds, but is easy to avoid at anything but short range due to its slow movement. It’s not really a priority attack or anything.

Super Elixir is used both for the condi cleanse and the heal, a lot of which comes from the initial field creation, so be sure to hit whoever you want to heal with it initially. It provides a decent heal for standing in it as well, but remember that you will have to move outside the field to blast important combo fields like water fields. Note that you can place and overcharge your healing turret within the field, walk outside, and detonate for area healing, even though the turret will be inside the light field.

Also note that Acid Bomb can be used as an extra ~1k heal inside a water field, which your healing turret and its toolbelt skill can produce. You can hit F1, use acid bomb, and cancel the leap with ` for a quick heal. Practice canceling the leap portion of acid bomb so that you can use it for more than just an escape.

Thank you for the detailed answers. It really helps. Especially the description of how the acid bomb works. Two more follow up questions:

How do you make sure that the target stays as loong as possible in the acid puddle? Which CC effect is the most efficient in this case?

And how do you cancel the #4 egun leap to only make use of the blast?

Cheers

All you can do to keep them in the acid pool is immobilize or stun, mostly from net shot and supply crate. Glue bomb can be used as well if you’re running bomb kit, though I generally prefer saving it to ensure big ol’ bomb hits. Good players will not stay in acid bomb’s field for more than 2 ticks unless they’re trying to resurrect a downed ally, or stomp an enemy, but inexperienced players will likely stand it in longer. You can discourage melee foes from attacking you by standing in the middle of the field (useful vs thieves and warriors that have just switched into their melee sets) as well.

To cancel the leap on it, simply press your drop kit key (default ` ) after the channel completes. It can be a pain to cancel if you have a bad connection, but it’s worth practicing.

Thank you. I really start to like this kit

Chaith.8256:

it’s just because Engi is OP right now.

And why exactly is that?

When I look back at the September 9 patch notes I see a lot of buffs for Engineer. But none of them actually play any real part in what anyone is complaining about in pvp, and don’t even make up a part in most “meta” builds. The slick shoes buff is more recent, and the only Engineer buff in the past 7 months.

Now we could look back and say this started perhaps with the April content patch. Before then certainly Engineers weren’t good. Heck after the April content patch we had a big tournament of legends. Engineer was the second least picked profession, only barely more “popular” than Mesmer.
So whatever happened, happened after April. And besides the September 9th patch, not a whole lot of direct buffs were given to Engineers. In fact it was almost exclusively bug fixes of little things, tooltip fixes and the sorts.

Whatever made Engineer “overpowered” wasn’t the result of something that was changed about the Engineer. The meta build people are complaining about is mostly comprised of traits and skills that have changed very little, if any at all, since April 2014.

So what did happen? Well, Celestial amulet happened, along with a new and improved Rune overhaul that gave us such wonderfully unbalanced runes like Rune of the Strength.
Or is it a mere coincidence that Celestial is the keyword in almost every overpowered build people complain about? I don’t think so.

Why is it than that we need to nerf old skills that were not buffed and remained relatively unchanged, but the actually new stuff that we see come into play time and time again, is fine and needs to be left alone?
9 months ago Engineers were a joke, no body wanted them in their high end teams but now they are running double Celestial Engineers. And to anyone who’d dare suggest Engineers were already amazing but these high end teams just failed to value their potential I say: Why are we listening to pvp players for game balance if even their best couldn’t figure this out?

At this point we’re already putting Might on the cutting block, Sigil of Battle which as been in game since launch is put on the block. Regardless of how this effects builds that don’t rely on insane might stacking that gets backed by the over budgeted Celestial amulet. And you want to put even more stuff to face the man the with axe? Seems a bit premature if you ask me.

Because it’s good in the current meta? Well, meta doesn’t actually mean “play the most popular builds” it means “play the builds that beat the popular builds”. Meta-gaming is to beat what everyone else is playing. But rather then letting the pvp community sort this out on their own, dev intervention is requested almost immediately and constantly.
Is the pvp community so small it cannot shift anything on its own anymore? Or is it simply to stubborn or shortsighted? Either way is a compelling argument to, once more, stop listening to these people for balance suggestions.

But arenanet would more than happily nerf old stuff than agree they made a mistake with adding the new stuff. And for that everyone has to pay. People who don’t even play pvp get nerfed. People who cannot simply walk over to a vendor and get a different everything completely free of charge for zero effort.

We’ve had devon carver claim arenanet doesn’t want to invalidate player effort and time spend. But they do it so bloody often, and there is no real reason why these changes have to be broadstroked across the board. They could just make Might weaker in pvp, they could make it as weak as they want, without affecting the gamemodes were might is not viewed as the great evil. The same for everything else, I mean come on, the confusion buff is pve exclusive. So this isn’t alien to arenanet.

Terrahero.9358:

Chaith.8256:

it’s just because Engi is OP right now.

And why exactly is that?

You make a lot of good points.

When new content/buffs happen, so variety can be added to to the game, those things interact with the OLD things in a certain way.

Previously unchanged skills sometimes become become a problem. Very not often in their damage/healing/scaling, but often in other ways. Like delicate balances between frequency of CC vs. defensive CDs. The brand new content/buffs can’t simply be the scapegoat. Remember that those were done for a reason. Usually for variety.

The example at hand here is the fact that with the reduced cooldown on Slick Shoes, reduced cooldown on the Super Speed stunbreak, Slick Shoes is now in line with other stunbreaks (in my sole opinion), but in the context of the Engineer profession’s total skill kit, that took the already strong juggling ability of the Engi way up, and made the profession harder to get locked down at the same time.

Factor in the lack of pure condi damage professions to counter Engi, and the abundance of professions choosing to bring sweet nothing to escape Slick Shoes, the meta does affect the perception of Engineer being OP.

Engineer surely is over-performing right now, so of course everyone is going to say it’s overpowered. Some things about it can be argued to be overpowered level strong, like the accuracy of Incendiary Powder and Overcharged Shot.

Some may say that Engi is just not being countered properly, because the Engineer’s counters are being countered by Cele Ele & War condi removal, thus Engi is just over-performing due to external circumstances. That’s a valid stance, too.

But just don’t go around giving off the impression you don’t think Engi is currently over-performing right now in tPvP. I knew that, but didn’t put disclaimers on every post, so people have been jumping down my throat for weeks. People really demonize the profession right now.

The recent buffs definitely weren’t the scapegoat. Since the release, when the profession was riddled with bugs and clunky effects, the Engi was strong, not stupidly strong but it gave everyone quite more trouble than they could handle. It didn’t have much nerfs, and not many people were ready to sink into a gameplay that frustrated them at first and didn’t care for it. Now that the metas have been forged in stone and the strength of the Engineer fully recognized, well, you’re witnessing the results at the moment. Some would like it to be toned down.

ArrDee.2573:

Throw Mine received a nice boost but it’s still pretty inferior to everything else and will still be only taken for one trick pony burst builds which are extremely rare anyway (because it’s bad lol)!

Them’s fightin’ words, Minegineer is great I tell ya!

BurrTheKing.8571:

ArrDee.2573:

Throw Mine received a nice boost but it’s still pretty inferior to everything else and will still be only taken for one trick pony burst builds which are extremely rare anyway (because it’s bad lol)!

Them’s fightin’ words, Minegineer is great I tell ya!

throw mine is great in dungeons when you want to lower your apm without sacrificing (much) dps

You have the WvW Jumping Puzzles for things such as the Mine, should you ever be in the mood. =P

MrForz.1953:

The recent buffs definitely weren’t the scapegoat. Since the release, when the profession was riddled with bugs and clunky effects, the Engi was strong,

No, not really. Engineers received significant increases in performance just from all the fixes to stupidly broken stuff. And after that Engineers were still mostly ignored, this whole Engineer = good thing happened post-april2014. During the ToL in April engineers were still pretty much shunned in top teams. A
nd even than Engineers didn’t actually get that many buffs, the current “meta build” involves how many actually buffed skills in the past 12 months? The big change was the Celestial amulet, which engineers and their hybridized skills benefit quite a lot from.

And that’s just pvp were talking about. WvW engineers only had one glorious moment through the 2.5 years and that was due to an overpowered Perplexity rune. The rest of the history of Engineer has been pretty much “meh”. So I absolutely contest the suggestion engineers were good all along, especially from the very start.

Might being the most important buff for engineer, this patch is quite a nerf.

ManCaptain.3154:

Might being the most important buff for engineer, this patch is quite a nerf.

Hm, I say not really. There are plenty of non-might stacking options that were competitive and didn’t get shaved. Quite a nerf, I would say not.

just use valk + int instead of cele + battle, it plays about the same and hits like a truck if you pay attention to your crits

insanemaniac.2456:

just use valk + int instead of cele + battle, it plays about the same and hits like a truck if you pay attention to your crits

No, don’t do this.

Use Cele. Or go full condi.

Valk is not for an Engineer who builds for a ton of condition application..

yeah, better stick with what you know works~

insanemaniac.2456:

yeah, better stick with what you know works~

Well you may think I only say that because I’m scared of venturing out of the Cele safe zone, but here’s why Valks is not going to be as good as Cele for a Nade/Toolkit Engi. You already scale from every stat if you bring the meta traits & utilities, why not just equip the proper itemization for that:

Valks with no might has flat 0 condition damage. When it’s no extra investment to bring strong conditions like Incendiary Powder, Shrapnel Grenade, Prybar, doom sigil, it’s a big loss to not have condition damage.

If you wanna use Valk, you ideally want a build that’s tailored to doing primarily power damage, and has great heal scaling.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpmqtbxkLseRCdBNypEGQugKIyFWkPFAA-TJBHwAMLDA4BA0a/hAXAAA

Like that for example.

Chaith.8256:

ManCaptain.3154:

Might being the most important buff for engineer, this patch is quite a nerf.

Hm, I say not really. There are plenty of non-might stacking options that were competitive and didn’t get shaved. Quite a nerf, I would say not.

Nearly everything on engineer is hybrid damage, so the might buff by far the best thing for this class. It’s also what makes this class so frustrating to build.

ManCaptain.3154:

Chaith.8256:

ManCaptain.3154:

Might being the most important buff for engineer, this patch is quite a nerf.

Hm, I say not really. There are plenty of non-might stacking options that were competitive and didn’t get shaved. Quite a nerf, I would say not.

Nearly everything on engineer is hybrid damage, so the might buff by far the best thing for this class. It’s also what makes this class so frustrating to build.

Well, might is certainly very nice, but we’re seeing might stacking options being replaced by non-stacking options at every turn.