Guild Wars 2

Hiya guys, there are a lot of traits and skills for every profession no one uses, I main engi so a couple of months ago I looked at every engineer trait and skill and chose to talk about the ones I think are not good enough. I properly should of written about traits and skills I think are too good but I’ll leave that for another time. Hope you enjoy and please give your opinions.

Skills

Elixir

• Elixir H – This heal is really bad, it can be used better with traits such as HGH and and 409 yet still the unpredictability in this skill makes it hard to use. Suggestion: Buff the throw, either giving longer boons or multiply boons. For the slot skill I think they should increase the duration of the boons giving engis longer protection would make this skill actually useful.
• Elixir U Toss – Why make this skill random? Engi now has reflect on turrets give them their one reflect on this toss skill! The elixir itself is very bad in pvp and wvw but usable at times in pve so I won’t suggest much of a change.

Kit

• Elixir F (Elixir Gun) – The way this skill works is too hard to use in actually combat, the shot itself moves very slowly, hardly ever hitting its target to make use of it. The dmg it does itself is pretty gd if you have alot of power/crit dmg. I suggest increasing the shots velocity and the number of bounces it does.

Gadget

• Static Shock (A.E.D) – In my opinions the Range is to short, although I do suspect this heal was used more for grouped meele combat vs heavy dmg, due to the range of the skill. I think the stun should be either same range but AoE hitting 5 people or, mid-range (900) hitting only one. Tbh I’d prefer the AoE one. This may be pushing it but bare in mind healing turret is still so much stronger since the engineer has so many blast finishers they can heal AoE for them self and teammates even more.

(Mine field can do a lot of damage, and remove boons, very useful but not used much so I didn’t include it here).

Elite

• Mortar – Give it more dmg, more HP and some boons to the user. The only way I can see this being used is in WvW defending a tower, if the user was given protection as long as stability and maybe even regen it would help this elite quite alot!

Traits

Explosives

• Autodefense Bomb Dispenser – In my opinion this is a really bad trait, the more I think about it I feel it may be useful vs Warriors, other engis and a thief to stop some dps after their CC. Although you only go 6 into this trait line if you are using grenades or bombs I don’t see any reason to not take grenadier for grenades or III IX and VIII for bombs (if going condi or I’d just go III VII with power and use points on another trait line). I don’t have a fair suggestion for this, although maybe decreasing the cooldown for a grandmaster trait.
• Synaptic Overload – I’ve tried using this trait with an SD (Static Discharge) build that goes 6 into explosives which is pretty risky anyway since rifle doesn’t have anything to do with that trait line. Another is flamethrower maybe but going 6 into explosives for flamethrower doesn’t really make much sense since Alchemy works much better with flamethrower. I believe the only way to use this trait properly is with either Bomb kit or Mines; I’ll have to do more testing with bomb kit and this trait to see how well it works. I don’t have many suggestions to change it.

Firearms

• Napalm Specialist – Why would you go 6 into firearms for longer burns when you could go 6 into explosives for longer duration on all your conditions? I can only see this being used for a flamethrower build, longer burns gives your auto attack more chance for more dmg. Yet it just isn’t worth it there are much better things. I believe this trait should also give you 10% more dmg on burnt foes and you either take less dmg from burn, decrease burn duration applied onto yourself, or burn immunity. Immunity may be a bit to strong but it’s an idea.
• Coated bullets – Useless, if you want to spread conditions grenade, bombs elixir gun but pistols piercing doesn’t do anything remotely interesting. I recommend giving engi more condi dmg while using this trait, and combined it with increase ranged. Or change the trait altogether and increase 5 peoples condition dmg by 150.

Inventions

• Cloaking Device – Terrible, most people playing this game now are pretty decent, if you get immobilized and stealthed of course they’ll know where you are, you can’t move! XD I mean c’mon! Prime example of this is thief, they you are dmging a thief and he stealths you normally unleash ur AoE were the thief was last seen. I suggest this trait remove immo when it stealths you.
• Low-Health Response System – This trait would be much better if it activated at 50% or at least 35% rather than 25%. There is no point of regen at such low Hp.
• Automated Medical Response – Reduce cooldown to 45 at least.
• Elixir infused bombs – Rarely used, even I who has almost every set of armor stats could only find use of this in pvp bunker engi. I suggest heal on pulse for fire bomb smoke bomb and glue bomb. Or add every 5 seconds removes a condition, this may be too strong but I believe it would make it seem actually more usable.

Alchemy

• Acidic Coating – Should blind AoE (I have revisited this and now not sure, what do you guys think?).

Gadget

• Kit Refinement – Oh so very bad very very. Us engineers love our kits but this can’t even be used correctly. I suggest decreasing the cooldowns to 15 seconds each and some other changes also.
  • Bomb kit – Decent, a AoE pull could be used in wvw maybe in pvp also
  • Grenade kit – Drop a mine :P Why would you want to drop a mine with grenades! I suggest changing it so the next grenade throw inflicts weakness for 1 seconds each grenade hit.
  • Med kit – Magnetic aura isn’t too bad but it would be more useful if it dropped 5 Bandages.
  • Elixir gun – This used to me great, it used to drop a super elixir but got heavily nerfed and super elixir then also got nerfed :P. I recommend being that back.
  • Flamethrower – Increase to 5 seconds from 4 seconds.
  • Tool kit – Increase the super speed to 4-5 seconds from 3 seconds.
• Armor Mods – I find this useless as a grandmaster trait, taking tool kit and having power wrench is much better. You get a 3 second block every 16 seconds! I don’t really know what to do with this trait, maybe give the engi 150 toughness for 5 seconds also.
• Adrenal Implant – I laugh at this trait, why would you need this when engineers can have almost perma vigor by going 2 into alchemy and 2 into tools. Although boons can be removed, but you can’t remove the 50% endurance increase. Also it would counter weakness yet I don’t see the point going 4 more into tools for that trait and vigor. I suggest every time the engineer dodges they also gain regen for 3 seconds on dodge. Or maybe since this trait line is about dodging and tools, whenever the engineer dodges, they decrease their tool belt skills by 3-5 seconds. I’d say that could introduce interesting gameplay.
• Gadgeteer – The Retaliation it gives AED isn’t longest for a 40 second cooldown skill (32 if traited). Give it 5-8 seconds.

Some trait was actualy usefull before devs make them totaly useless like Kit Refinement. It was most unique traite imo.

Coated Bullets is really strong trait. Only thing that needs buff is the pistol AA (maybe 50% damage increase?).

coated bullets and AMR are extremely potent traits

i agree with all of the rest and could go on for days about most of them

I was trying a different build for a while using Kite Refinement and I was amazed at all the Engineers asking me what skills I kept using that was CCing them. Magnet bomb is pretty amazing, as is the reflect on medkit (though, a little on the short side, but understable given the low C/D on KR). Everything else though… meh. It’s only viable on fringe builds that use bombs and medkits like Bunker Engineer, but even then, equipping other kits can ruin it completely and you don’t always have the luxury of choice depending on the situation your in. I think KR has a lot of promise though, as bad as it is it’s one of my favorite skills at the moment. If it was given a bit of TLC I could definitely see myself using it in my playstyle.

How would I fix it? Well for starters, some of those affects have gotta go. For instance dropping a mine when equiping grenade kit makes zero sense.

Here’s a couple of ideas to get the ball rolling:

More often than not you’ll be using grenades from a distance anyways, a lot of good that mines going to do you. These effects needs to have more synergy with the kit you’re using. I might add an effect like an additional grenade on the first throw for instance.

Elixir Gun’s glue trail should remove a condition or provide a random boon if there aren’t any conditions to remove.

The other ones I would leave as-is to prevent power creep.

I generally agree with most of your suggestions, so I will only address any I have additional thoughts on.

Black para goner.7612:

• Coated bullets – Useless, if you want to spread conditions grenade, bombs elixir gun but pistols piercing doesn’t do anything remotely interesting. I recommend giving engi more condi dmg while using this trait, and combined it with increase ranged. Or change the trait altogether and increase 5 peoples condition dmg by 150.

Have it add one more round to poison dart volley, and one more bounce to static shot……..Those seem like good ideas for MH pistol. I am baffled as to what I would suggest for OH pistol.

Black para goner.7612:

• Elixir infused bombs – Rarely used, even I who has almost every set of armor stats could only find use of this in pvp bunker engi. I suggest heal on pulse for fire bomb smoke bomb and glue bomb. Or add every 5 seconds removes a condition, this may be too strong but I believe it would make it seem actually more usable.

Interesting ideas. I use this trait occasionally in WvW. By no means is it particularly valuable, as you said, but I do work it into a support build. I find your suggestions here, particularly interesting.

Black para goner.7612:

• Kit Refinement – Oh so very bad very very. Us engineers love our kits but this can’t even be used correctly. I suggest decreasing the cooldowns to 15 seconds each and some other changes also.

Back in the day I loved this trait. Personally, I would like to see it give individual cooldowns per kit.

just give us a decent stability skill, i would prefer an elite like rampage as one.
Jes give me rampage alone you can have the crate for that.

And jes that ubernerf to kit-refinement is the reason why i now have 8 80s.
However Engineer is still the only adult class here.