Guild Wars 2

There are far less viable engineer builds now than at release. Major bugs and gameplay issues appear to be nowhere on the devs radar at all, there is no indication they are anything but happy how turrets play for example. Also the dev engineer philosophy recently stated leaves little room for hope for positive change, it reads like a self justification for continuing to get it wrong. The numbers of people happy with the results of serious time investment into engineer or happy with engineer in groups suggest dev philosophy simply doesn’t resonate with the vast majority of the player base

We’re nearly half a year into Gw2 counting beta, shouldn’t we have more playable builds not far less?

Its christmas, they are bound to make money so they don’t have time for any concerns aside from that. Maybe in some few months you’ll see a response and a few weeks later another brainafk-changelog withouth involving the community at all.

AreaNet is now Blizzard v2
I’m joking … aint I?

Exaggerating much? Could you name some of these builds that have been made unviable since launch?

Removing stability on demand from flamethrower. It was the only thing engineers did that other classes couldn’t do better. Massive number of builds and combat options disappear with that one change.

I’m going to assume viable = PvP, since you can make almost anything work in PvE if you really try.

Stability from flamethrower was awesome, but extremely overpowered. It also broke stuns every time you switched to it. But yes, juggernaut for stability-tanking was more than viable, and bad now. Six stacks of might is fine and all, but the flamethrower is so bad that the only time you can afford to keep it equipped in PvP is 1-2 seconds for #3 and #4. So yes, that is one build that is no longer viable.

Pistol/pistol/elixirs condition build is still kind of viable, although the autoattack bleed getting cut in half in betas made it kind of bad.

Group stealth build was borderline OP/exploiting, but is no longer viable (mine field is no longer a blast finisher).

Rifle burst hasn’t changed, although “viable” is a stretch.

Static discharge burst hasn’t changed.

Turret build hasn’t changed, although “viable” is a stretch.

P/S bunker hasn’t changed, except that it used to run juggernaut for stability, and now just packs a little more armor and no stability. So it’s much, much worse than before, but still one of the more viable engineer specs.

Grenade burst hasn’t changed much, but did take a nerf. It was never really viable in tournaments anyway, though.

HgH might stack builds got a small buff, equivalent to a permanent 3-4 extra stacks of might.

So that’s pretty much all the builds I can think of. I’m not complaining—I still love playing my engineer and play it more than any other profession. I also still experience great success in free tourneys with my engineer. Still haven’t found a group that’s willing to run engi in a paid, though.

NevirSayDie.6235:

P/S bunker hasn’t changed, except that it used to run juggernaut for stability, and now just packs a little more armor and no stability. So it’s much, much worse than before, but still one of the more viable engineer specs.

Oh, it changed alright. Forceful explosions getting nerfed, smoke bomb nerf were pretty hard hits to the bunker build. Between that and several other nerfs Enges went from being arguably the best bunker in the game to dead weight. Do any of the devs know where this class is intended to shine?

Silentsins.3726:

NevirSayDie.6235:

P/S bunker hasn’t changed, except that it used to run juggernaut for stability, and now just packs a little more armor and no stability. So it’s much, much worse than before, but still one of the more viable engineer specs.

Oh, it changed alright. Forceful explosions getting nerfed, smoke bomb nerf were pretty hard hits to the bunker build. Between that and several other nerfs Enges went from being arguably the best bunker in the game to dead weight. Do any of the devs know where this class is intended to shine?

Sorry, I should have said the pistol/shield skills didn’t change much. Right, the smoke bomb nerf was very hard on bunkers.

Silentsins.3726:

NevirSayDie.6235:

P/S bunker hasn’t changed, except that it used to run juggernaut for stability, and now just packs a little more armor and no stability. So it’s much, much worse than before, but still one of the more viable engineer specs.

Oh, it changed alright. Forceful explosions getting nerfed, smoke bomb nerf were pretty hard hits to the bunker build. Between that and several other nerfs Enges went from being arguably the best bunker in the game to dead weight. Do any of the devs know where this class is intended to shine?

Well, according to their Class Balance Philosophy, the Engineer is supposed to be versatile, but deal less damage as a result. Funny story, though – the Elementalist is more versatile, and deals tons of damage (more if you can drop a bunch of Blast Finishers into a Fire Field for three stacks of Might a pop – mine can get up to 12, maybe 15 if I can get faster switching to Water and dropping a Comet on anything that survives the Dragon’s Fang, Phoenix, Magnetic Blast and Arcane Blast preceding). They also mention stuff about boons keeping them and their companions alive, but there’s the minor issue of most Elixirs being random-effect.

So, in theory, the Engineer is supposed to be versatile, but not as versatile as the Elementalist. They’re also supposed to be good at boons, but not as good as the Guardian (for a couple reasons).

tl;dr: Hell no, they have no idea where they want this class to go. Obligatory plug of suggestion regarding making the Engineer good at Preparation via additional traitlines and trait points.

At release engineer had access to pretty reliable condition removal via cleanse all in the med kit. Yes it required careful placement to use and not have it picked up by an ally, and was unavailable when immobilised, but it gave a route to counter conditions without having to heavily specialise into elixirs and alchemy and was available to most builds. Alchemy and elixirs is very specialised and synergises badly with most builds because of the amount of traits and utility slots it takes away.

Changing from all condition removal, to one single condition removal, on the med kit, was a big move away from the versatility that we’re supposed to have, requiring significant specialisation to now gain reliable condition removal. Big step backwards.