Guild Wars 2

Am I the only person that feels the Engineer elites are far worse than the other professions?

The elixir is random and unreliable – it feels very out of place with the class.

The mortar is stationary, low damage and it’s range is terrible – grenades go further and do more damage, PLUS you can move while throwing them. It is bad in PvE and in WvW you are far too frequently hit by enemy AOE which has a better range than you.

The supply crate, while the best elite we have available is very lacklustre, dull and nothing really special. As is the case with Engineers, the turrets feel very worthless, adding little to your damage or survivability in comparison to other abilities. This on top of ANOTHER stationary move, an unnoticeable stun, a lack of damage or real support/utility. So our best elite is a 10 point weak support ability?

These weak elites go on top of an already [IMO] gimmick profession. The sound of blowing things up, using gadgets and rifles sounded awesome. But in reality you build around one weapon kit or gimmick and have no real in combat versatility that other classes do. The rifles should be swapped with the warriors skills, or we should at least given a Sniper Rifle kit.

The Engineer does less damage than other classes, it has less versatility, less survivability, less damage sponging and worse skills – In other words it’s a jack of all trades but master of none, you’d think? Well when you have to build around one of it’s trades, which is sub-par to other classes, you wonder what the point is.

I love the Engineer’s uniqueness but I feel it is in need of dire need of care. As someone who played Guild Wars Proh all the way to EoTN, I didn’t really want to play an old class with some new tricks – So the Engineer was nice and fresh. By I constantly feel drawn back to my Elementalist when that profession far exceeds the Engineer’s performance in every aspect [except the extreme squishiness even on full earth traits].

In addition for those that really care, we have poor aesthetics. We got the short-straw with armour and weapon designers and our skill effects and ‘spell’ particles are borrowed or forgettable.

Thoughts?

Supply Crate is awesome, but the Mortar needs a range boost and Elixir X badly needs to be straight replaced with something that isn’t unreliable and a complete cop-out.

As for the rest, we do need a LOT of fixes and some tweaking, but overall I’m not too scared for our future. Iron out all the bugged traits andkittenlet weapon stats affect kits and we’ll do fine. A more pedestrian ranged weapon than our grenade bag would be nice, but please god not at the expense of our rifle. That thing has the greatest weapon bar in the game.

I disagree on that supply drop and mortar are weak. Mortar is very niche, but not weak at what it does. It has huge aoe, much larger than grenades, and is very useful in WvW because of that. It can easily hit people on walls or sneakily placed siege weapons that grenades can’t reach. Supply Drop is powerful, because it does so many different things. 2 second stun is nothing to scoff at. It’s a blast finisher, and I feel this part of the skill is very underrated. One of the turrets is a net turret, which means lots of immobilize. And the medkits can heal you almost up to full.

I also disagree on the weakness of the engineer. We have lots and lots of utility available, and great damage with the grenade kit. We can also be very survivable, with the shield reflect and block, massive cc, and elixirs. You say it’s a bad thing to be jack of all trades, since you have to specialize in something. I ask you, why specialize? Be a jack of all trades. Have a grenade kit for damage, rifle for cc, elixirs for utility. Or shield for survivability and mines and turrets for teamplay.

You say you should build around one gimmick, and then complain about lack of versatility. If you want versatility, there is plenty to get. Having two different kits among your utilities lets you change the way you play immediately. Running around with rifle, grenades and elixir gun means you can at any time switch between cc, support and damage. That’s a lot of versatility. You probably won’t do as much damage as a greatsword warrior, but you can support much better. You probably won’t support as well as a staff guardian, but you can do more damage. This is just one example of what you can do. Focusing on a single aspect of the engineer will mean you lose the other aspects. Luckily, we don’t have to focus. We can spread our traits, and be prepared for any situation.

I agree somewhat.

I agree that the elixir and the mortar are terrible, but I feel supply crate is an amazing elite.

I can use it in so many situations. I can use it for the stun, and I also get a blast finisher, a bit of regen, likely a single net on my enemy and a single burn. Since the turrets are lackluster, but firing them off once isn’t a waste at all. Though the regen from the turret I am not so sure about…

Furthermore, the bandages! So many of them! You can save your hide so many times. If I am having trouble soloing a veteran mob in Orr.. where there are enemies with CC and aggro ranges of several miles, its often the case that you pull more than a veteran, and that saves your skin so many times.

Its a really well designed, versatile and powerful elite. Leave it as it is please.

However, you did raise good points with the others.

Mortar: Dead zone, less damage than grenades, less range than grenades, immobile and does not scale with stats.

Excuse me if I don’t think this is an elite… this feels like an under-powered utility, let alone an underpowered elite.
It has its nichés, for when an ally has no ranged weapon, but as a ranged weapon, it is terrible itself.

Elixir X: RNG, caters only to power builds and just plain lazy.

It used to be much worse, I’ll give Anet credit for buffing it, but even then, they just lowered the cooldown and removed the chance for plague, they didn’t change what makes this skill bad.

Honestly, unless the transformations are hugely buffed, as right now they are not really worth it, even if you are 100% of which one you get.

This is because in both cases, you can’t use your heal skill, your weapon skills, your utilities and toolbelts. You are left, in a way, helpless to whatever the RNG decides.

Its a poor skill basically, from a design and balance perspective.

My suggestion has always been to just make it a plain old normal buff elite.

180s cooldown, elixir traits affect it:
8s quickness
8s stability
8s fury
8s of 3 stacks of might
8s swiftness

Its the ultimate in an offensive elixir. Bit similar to elixir B, but with no toolbelt and no retaliation.

Alright, I do have a couple concerns here.

The elite skills have already been spoken for: yes, Elixir X is kind of lame, and people have mixed opinions about the mortar. It does have its uses. While it’s true that grenades seem to dwarf its usefulness in many situations, it’s not like you need to use it; let the guy next to you use it while you grenade-spam the fort wall (in the case of WvW, that is), or simply pop its cooldowns and go back to what you were doing. As for supply crate, I can think of quite a few abilities from other professions that are just lame in comparison (imo). And as for its “dullness,” that’s all a matter of opinion. dropping a boat-load of turrets and health packs seems a lot more interesting than “Oh man, signets!”

What I really want to mention is what you say about the aesthetics and the need for a sniper kit. Our skill effects are borrowed or forgettable? Have you picked up the elixir gun? Does any other profession have something as cool-looking as turrets (okay yeah they’re broken right now, but that doesn’t mean they don’t look sweet)? Our kits are ridiculously fun and fun-looking. We are the only class that doesn’t use signets, which has got to be the most God-awful, boring idea for a skill (oh man a button that just gives me stuff, how interesting). Our least interesting abilities are our elixirs, and even they can sometimes do something neat.

Anet even made an animation where you throw the empty elixir to the ground and it smashes after you consume one. Okay, not the most interesting thing in the world, but that’s precisely why it’s so neat; Anet did not need to do that, but the designers probably thought it was a fun little thing to add on.

As far as armor and weapon designs go, that’s not really an engineer-specific issue. That being said, cool-looking rifles, pistols and shields are not in short supply. And have you seen the guild armor choice we have compared to the heavy and light armor? Definitely didn’t get the short straw there. The light chest piece looks like an Old Navy long-sleeve with a giant bib.

And that brings me to a less imortant, but more annoying concern: why does everyone keep mentioning the need for a sniper kit? I don’t understand it. I mean, for its usefulness , I can see why anyone would want that, but I don’t understand why people feel that “sniper” is something an engineer does. Where did this idea come from? Yes, we’re squishier than warriors, but that doesn’t automatically entitle engineers to be turned into rifle-wielding rangers. There are most likely other ways of solving any issues we have other than “More range!” Of course having extreme range is practical. However, an engineer having this doesn’t make sense. When someone says, “I’m an engineer,” do you immediately respond with, “Oh man, can I see your .50 cal?”

People should be worrying less about turning the engineer into something that Anet doesn’t want it to be, and start worrying about improving on what it is supposed to be; an engineer. You are supposed to be building things, not starring in Enemy at the Gates.

Sorry about the rant at the end there (my whole response is a bit of a tangent), but I just don’t understand why so many people associate “sniper” with “engineer.”

Edit: Bit of a wall of text so I’ll throw down a TLDR:
-Supply Crate is awesome
-Mortar has its uses
-Our aesthetics are much more appealing than most other professions in this game (signets are boring and I’m glad we don’t have them). While some of our abilities need some repairs, they are much more fun than what most other professions are given.
-Can everyone please stop asking for a Sniper Kit? Yes, we have rifles; that doesn’t automatically mean we’re Vassili Vaitsev. We’re engineers. We are supposed to be engineering things.

I made a similar thread in the PvP forum. So I’ll just talk about the elites in regard to PvP.

The Supply Crate is a good skill. It does a lot of different things, which is great for giving your engineer a lot of flexibility.

The Mortar’s biggest weakness is that it’s stationary, and make’s you out to be a sitting duck. I tried using it for a number of games, and I could never find a good spot for it. And even when I did find a spot for it, I felt that aside from the number 5 skill that it wasn’t doing anything that I couldn’t do considerably more effectively with my pistol/shield engineer. That is to say, the mortar is worse than your engineer.

The Elixir X is far too random to be useful, a 50/50 chance on a large cooldown for two very different skills is not something I want to use, that is far to unreliable for any amount of skill to compensate for. And the effects that it has are themselves quite lackluster it seems (I think in all my PvPing I’ve seen one Elementalist Tornado and zero Warrior Juggernaughts).

I don’t think it’s so much that the skills need a buff either, I think the mechanics of the skills make them useless in PvP. Which is sad, because the skills are fun, they just aren’t effective in PvP, and because of that, for all the Engineer’s versatiliy and options, they effectively have only one Elite Skill in PvP.

supply drop is borderline overpowered. Its amazing.

Mortar is niche as stated. you can let others use it you know… if you have grenades. so 2 people are hitting, not just you..
The main issue is it dies too easy, and yeah, needs longer range by default. If its in range to hit them, its in range to die to grenades, fire rain nearly instantly.

Some interesting points brought up here.

In reply to ‘Spracket’ – the idea behind a sniper kit is that we are ‘mechanical masterminds’, we build the latest weapons and machinery, a simple blunderbuss seems a bit backwards when there are already sniper rifles in the game. Without naming and spoiling, there is a Charr Engineer within a story arc that actually uses a massive Sniper Rifle. Surely it would make sense for tinkerers to build scopes on their guns? A 1500 range sniper rifle would make really fit the glass cannon play style the Engineer can adapt, without making them too strong. Slow firing, high damage and some utility – perfect.

If engineers are made out to be high-tech inventors, and warriors are made out to be soldiers, then surely the Engineer would use something to give them an ‘edge’, while being physically weaker and with less combat training. So many people mention this Sniper Kit because it seems like a complete no brainer, both in terms of gameplay and lore. It would amaze me if it’s something the developers hadn’t thought of, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it added within an expansion.

Aesthetics are merely down to opinion but that’s simply the general consensus I have gathered from reading forums, in game-chat and my personal opinion.

Let me make myself clear, I am not complaining about the game, I’m not whining or hating on ANet. I loved GW and I love GW2. I’m merely sparking debate on launch specific class issues which I’m sure developers would be interested in – player feedback.

I do however feel that two classes have been rushed or not thought through/tested thoroughly enough. The Engineer and the Necromancer [which I won’t go into on an Engineer forum nor do I have much personal experience with]. All classes have their problems, except for the Warrior, but I feel the Engineers performance has suffered among the most and there are various tweeks, polish and changes it’s in need of, I DON’T think it’s underpowered, I just feel it under performs in certain scenarios.

TLDR[good idea]:
– Sniper Fits Engineer
– Aesthetics are personal opinion
– Engineer is not the only class with problems
– Engineer needs a lot of tweeks and polish
– ANet are awesome.

I agree that mortar and elixir X need work. Here are my suggestions.

MORTAR

1. Double mortar’s range. Mortar’s are artillery for crying out loud. There are already systems in place to prevent abusing long range attacks (invulnerable, fast Regen, etc), so it won’t break anything.

-or-

2. Turn Mortar into a bunker/turret. Essentially, remove the minimum range, increase it’s HP, and make it so that the engineer cannot be harmed until the turret is destroyed.

ELIXIR X

1. Make it a reliable super buff. See Lyuben’s suggestion above.

-or-

2. Keep it random, but make it very powerful. If an elite skill is going to be THIS random, the randomness should benefit the engineer, not his opponent. The engineer should not be worried that his random skill will be shooting himself in the foot. Instead, the engineer’s opponent should be worried because he has no idea what crazy, destructive thing the mad scientist will be coming up with next. All skills are trade-offs. Randomness is a very negative effect, and it should be offset by an equally large boost in power.

Lyuben.2613:

My suggestion has always been to just make it a plain old normal buff elite.

180s cooldown, elixir traits affect it:
8s quickness
8s stability
8s fury
8s of 3 stacks of might
8s swiftness

Its the ultimate in an offensive elixir. Bit similar to elixir B, but with no toolbelt and no retaliation.

That’s an awesome idea, but maybe a tad OP (and very similar to two Elixirs we already have).

I’d rather see Elixir X give us access to boons we might not normally have access to:
8s Protection
8s Vigor
8s Stability
8s (some boon for Offense)

EDIT: More on topic, Mortar is unfortunate and needs range increase. nod

Said by many before, so I just parrot.

- Supply Drop is fine.
- Mortar has its uses but maybe range could be slightly longer when taking into consideration that it does not make it overpowering since shell travel time is quite long.
- Elixir X, like Lyuben suggested could be non-random multi-boon.

I loved the unique feel of the Engineer, it’s my only class and I love it to bits.
However I agree that our elite skills are weak and will be opting for an Elite Racial skill once I pile up 10 skill points.

An elite kit would be nice, maybe a sniper elite kit or something.

No, no, and no. In a profession designed around multiple options and variety, why in Grenth’s name would you want to make us more like the boring classes that grab signets and passive buffs as their Big Thing?

Supply Drop, as Casia said, is borderline OP. Drop it on a foe and he’s stunned, plus he will get hit with the initial net turret firing, plus you get a healing turret (without the need to give up Elixir H’s clutch healing), plus about 1/5-1/3 of your health in bandages. Boost it with Elite Supplies and you get more bandages and a rifle turret. Boost turrets with any trait, and it gets more powerful. No other Elite I have seen gives you instant zone control with a single skill.

I have seen Supply Drop turn entire zerg vs zerg battles around almost on its own. If you convince ANet to change it in any way, you are a bad person.

Mortars are less versatile, but quite good in their niche. It’s stationary, long range, replaces your skill bar… hmm, sounds like a siege weapon, wonder where we are supposed to use those?

Drop one on top of a keep wall you are defending, rain down your death from aboveand watch the attackers flee. Or drop one and let another class man it, while you use grenades/rifle to defend, and suddenly you’ve doubled your team’s defensive power. On offense, use it to take out siege weaponry on top of the enemy’s ramparts, the ones behind the crenelation edge that regular ranged shots can’t hit. A 2 minute cooldown and duration lets you use them, lose them, and not worry about “wasting” it.

Elixir X is, admittedly, the least useful; but I would argue it has its niche underwater. Both possible underwater transformations beef up your toughness and do good AoE damage, at the expense of not being able to heal or use skills. But if you use underwater turrets before dropping this, or have some Regeneration going before you drink X, it works pretty well. (On land, I can’t defend its use over Supply Drop, but I think it would be more viable if every elixir trait properly affected Elixir X just like they affect, say, Elixir B.)

In Response back to Atrixer,

You mentioned this to justify the use of a sniper kit. “If engineers are made out to be high-tech inventors, and warriors are made out to be soldiers, then surely the Engineer would use something to give them an ‘edge’, while being physically weaker and with less combat training.”

Maybe I’m concerning myself too much with IRL professions, but soldiers are pretty much the only ones between the two that actually use sniper rifles. Sniper rifles require boat-loads of training.

I completely agree that engineers should use things that give them an edge with less combat training. That’s probably how Anet feels as wel. That’s why we’re given abilities like gadgets, turrets, utility kits, and elixirs. We use these to give us an edge (excluding what might need buffs, of course). Our weapon abilities are influenced by our theme. That’s why we don’t have the rifle abilities of the warrior; we aren’t warriors. Even the flamethrower is used for more than just “burnin’ junk.”

Okay, there’s one guy who uses a sniper rifle who happens to be an engineer. Do you really think that’s what Anet had in mind for the engineer? All of the abilities we have, the wallpapers they put up on the websites, do they really reflect how this engineer looks (I haven’t seen him or don’t remember him)?

This conversation reminds me of one of the events in Malchor’s Leap. I can’t remember their names, but there was an engineer, a warrior, and some other person. The warrior says something like, “This is how you use a cannon,” while the engineer replies, “Well, you wouldn’t have anything to shoot if I hadn’t designed it.” This is how Anet wants engineers to be (as well as myself).

Elixir X has its uses in PvE, to be honest. 15-20 seconds of Stability is extremely helpful in situations. Yes, you don’t get to choose between Brute or Tornado, but they’re both extremely limited in range anyway. You’ll be in close range with either of them, so which one you get doesn’t particularly matter in most boss encounters. (Mainly because the knockback from Tornado doesn’t work all that well on bosses.)

Compared to some other classes, Engineer has decent elites. Mortar I hear needs to be tweaked, but Elixer X has a shorter cooldown than its comparable elites, and supply crqate…well I just like supply crate. The elites could be much worse.

I think mortar needs slight tweeks, but even as is it has it’s uses.

For supply drop I think maybe swapping in rocket turret for flame turret, and rifle for the healing turret as it is underwater could do the trick.

The crate underwater is nice because you get the 2 ranged dps turrets, but on land flame does not do much, and the regen from healing turret overrides and kittens other regen buffs. I lose my 260 tick for a 125.

Sniper kit is the obvious solution though, our damage is low because it is constantly capable of AoE. We need something long range, single target, heavy damage.

I think people are trying to push Engineer = inventor only too much. Looking at the skills we have we are masters of demolition, which can take a lot of knowledge to use, and also very capable of creating our own attachments for weapons (pretty much every weapon skill aside from the spam shot)

Warrior fills the modern role of infantry, they are tough, they use assault rifles to kill from a large variety of ranges. Engineer as a soldier (which considering i am a Charr, i AM a soldier) should be able to fulfil the other roles the basic infantry can not. He should be able to make/use a high powered, slow fire rate rifle, maybe add a bit of crazyness where every normal shot blows up on the person a little after contact, like underwater skill #4 except without any AoE component.

Engineer as a soldier can fill a variety of roles, he can be a ground pounder with his shotgun, a gun slinger, a grenadier, a demolition expert, a medic, expert in automated defense. Why ‘shouldnt’ the engineer be able to also be a sniper? Its not like that niche is actually being filled by anyone anyway =P

I would like to see sniper build, but main arguments against it are having to remove another utility in order to keep even numbers, and that will disappoint someone at all times.

However, looking at Engineer abilities, its hard to say that they are ‘not’ trained in combat, they can fire from the hip with amazing accuracy, and if they were truely noobs to combat, something more spray and pray would fit more, like a machine gun with a massive spread.

I really want that machine gun with massive spread now…

You got me thinking Graywolf… but… combining your idea of a long range kit with that of the inventor thing… I came up with the idea of an Elite Railgun skill. I think that might be the way to go for a future skill. Long range, tech-friendly, and Grenth kitten awesome. Hell, you could slow down the animations to make them easy to spot, achieving balance while still being incredibly awesome.

Hell i would go for a 1 second root on everything but auto attack, i just need me some heavy kitten single target damage.

Also explain railgun, im thinking Red Faction laser sniper thing that could shoot and see through walls, and that would be OP xD

I really want a sniper kit now how cool would that be!

Railgun being an electromagnetic cannon that probably can shoot through walls. Basically…it fires projectiles at stupidly fast speeds, doesn’t need to use explosive primer, and probably will knock around whatever it hits. So if there was a railgun kit, it’d probably have at least one form of knockback or knockdown attached.

Also…easily a long range weapon. A root might actually be a good way to balance out the high power and range, but I was thinking a very obvious charging animation of some kind, but…hey, this is all theory.

I’d like an elite kit over mortar. Something fun like an electro magnet kit or a lightning rod/tesla coil sort of kit with a cool Dr. Frankenstein backpack.

Also about aesthetics some things are good, some need improvement. Flamethrower is strong on skill 1, but weak on all other skills. Shield effects are good but its hard to make a build that works on its theme graphically. Bomb Kit is good, but grenades have weak graphics. Turrets are all poor and essentially look like clutter.

The profession is also overloaded with explosive effects imo.

Mine, slick shoes, and battering ram all do the same thing.

Something that is specifically disappointing to me is the elixir gun. It has such potential for coolness. Instead its just a flamethrower re-skin. I’d imagine something like a kit that creates, instead of a 2h, an offhand syringe gun and a main hand chemical gun that connects to the backpack.

The fact that rangers have longer range than the mortar makes it near useless during WvWvW. I know there’s a trait that increases mortar range but i heard it didn’t work so I’ve never tried that. I found the elixir elite skill to be quite interesting, changing you into two different elites from different classes. It’s actually pretty good while in a group or during PvE. The supply crate is good within sPvP since it gives so many different targets for other players to attack, plus combined with all turret skill slots makes the damage rack up fast on other players while kiting them around. And, of course, we have the asura golems which are awesome in every field, PvE, sPvP or WvWvW.

About Elixir X, I’d prefer Engineers get their own unique form. A graphic resembling something like the hulk/mr hyde.
Tool bar resembling something like thus

1. punch, punch twice, double arm sweep, all attacks frontal aoe arc.

2. breathe cone of poisonous stomach gas inflict moderate duration burn and poison

3. big aoe stomp with a 2 sec kd

4. Aoe channeled whirl that does physical damage and inflicts bleed per tick.

5. Axe handle fist smash that inflicts daze and confuse

I would kill small animals for a tesla coil kit.