Guild Wars 2

I’ve been looking on the different professions and specially their trait trees. I have spotted a lot of synergy in all of them but one thing pointed out. Why engineer has traits that are weaker versions than their counterparts on other professions?
The biggest of all is Adrenal Implant. I would like to ask the developers in real life how ever can it be possible that an engineer grandmaster tier major trait is equivalent to a ranger adept tier minor trait? (Adrenal Implant = Natural Vigor) I thought major traits were supposed to be more powerful than minors (of the same tier!!!).

The ranger and the engineer are both medium armored and have the same base health. They have both access to 1500 range (ranger has it for single target and engineer for AoE which has been nerfed down really hard) and both have it pretty hard against condition damage if not traited, however, ranger has more evades but that is covered with engineers’ easy access to hard cc and somewhat easy access to protection and/or blocking.

IMO they should switch Adrenal Implant to adept tier minor trait and make Adrenaline Pump grandmaster major with minor tweaks: tool belt skills that have a base cooldown of 45 seconds or longer would return 25% of endurance, all the other skills would return that normal 10%. This way it could be more rewarding to put 5 points in tools to improve Energized Armor and Evasive Powder Keg.
I play mainly warrior and necromancer (sometimes guardian, too) so this comes from neutral perspective.

There are some other traits, too that are weaker than their equivalents. Here are some I found:

(M = major, m = minor, 1 = adept tier, 2 = master tier, 3 = grandmaster tier)

Engineer Firearms: Target the Maimed (m3) —— Warrior Arms: AoO (m3)
– warriors will have a damage increase of 10% while engineers get 5%

Engineer Firearms: Sharpshooter (m1) —— Warrior Arms: Precise Strikes (m1)
– warriors have 33% chanse of triggering 1 stack of 3s bleed, engineers have 30%

Engineer Tools: Armor Mods (M3) —— Warrior Defense: Spiked Armor (M3)
– warriors have an internal cooldown of 15s, engineer have 25s

I am not saying nerf all the other classes. I am saying that maybe it is time to rise the engineer to the same level as the other classes are, at least for the traits!

Because the ranger, unlike the engineer, is supposed to share in the extremely high amount of evasion that is the thief, the engineer, unlike both the ranger AND the thief, does not evade attacks but simply shrugs them off.

If you haven’t noticed we have 2 traits that’ll apply protections pretty liberally AND we can get perms vigor by either swapping kits, or just from critting, making us a LOT more evasive than a ranger could even dream of being if we have the tool tree maxed out as well, because, you know, we get 10% of our endurance bar back with each tool belt skill use.

Durzlla.6295:

Because the ranger, unlike the engineer, is supposed to share in the extremely high amount of evasion that is the thief, the engineer, unlike both the ranger AND the thief, does not evade attacks but simply shrugs them off.

If you haven’t noticed we have 2 traits that’ll apply protections pretty liberally AND we can get perms vigor by either swapping kits, or just from critting, making us a LOT more evasive than a ranger could even dream of being if we have the tool tree maxed out as well, because, you know, we get 10% of our endurance bar back with each tool belt skill use.

The difference is: if we do all of that, or even just part of these traits, that we end up with not enough traits to make any decent build.

Engineer traits do need better synergy, and a lot of cleaning up.
Regardless of what rangers have or have not, engineer traits are scattered all over the place.
To be truly versatile, our traits need to be versatile in the first place.

Some traits are superb in their versatility (kit refinement being the best versatile trait around IF you like kits).
But sadly enough most traits are not versatile.

Durzlla.6295:

Because the ranger, unlike the engineer, is supposed to share in the extremely high amount of evasion that is the thief, the engineer, unlike both the ranger AND the thief, does not evade attacks but simply shrugs them off.

If you haven’t noticed we have 2 traits that’ll apply protections pretty liberally AND we can get perms vigor by either swapping kits, or just from critting, making us a LOT more evasive than a ranger could even dream of being if we have the tool tree maxed out as well, because, you know, we get 10% of our endurance bar back with each tool belt skill use.

How does it make us more evasive then Ranger?

Right now in tPvP bunker ranger are prolly one of the best bunker classe because of dodge, damage mitigation and pet.

Ranger can get perma vigor, perma protection and perma regen without even trying.

Engineer have perma vigor, limited protection and few source of regen.

Also, if we spec into bunker, we lose all our damage.

Ranger pets aren’t affected by stats, so they can still do 4k crit damage in full bunker.

They also have sword, which have 2 dodge in the weapon skill.

I fail to see how Ranger could only dream to be as evasive as us?

On trhe topic, yep some of our traits are weirdly weaker then other class. Not sure of the reason.

I’ll be honest, every profession has these problems. There is a lot of absolute garbage traits scattered throughout the entire game. This isn’t just an Engineer issue.

As to the evasiveness issue in a Ranger and Engineer comparison, I really can’t come up with a clear opinion. I don’t think we need more evasiveness though. I for example would prefer we be more capable at supporting our allies with elixirs.

I wasn’t asking for more dodge or anything, I was surprise anyone would say Engineer are more evasive then Ranger, the “Dodge” class.

And some have it worse then other about traits.

Over all the class I tried (all of them), engineer seems to be the only one I will take the same traits for many builds because we have too many bads traits.

Take the inventor line, if you aren’t in turret, you’re left with 2-3 useful traits in the line.

Just butting in, turret skills do not give you 10% endurance, so if you’re running SD and popping hidden shot and the heal turret, you are losing out on the endurance regen.

Oh I didn’t think you were asking for more dodge. Was more a general comment on the topic. I agree that Rangers and Thieves would be more dodge-centric in their survival then an Engi.

25pts Alchemy: Minor trait.
Gives 1% more damage for every boon.

25pt Water: Minor trait (Elementalist)
Give 2% more damage for every boon.

Straigth up compareable traits, yet Elementalist’s is twice as strong.

Ayestes.1273:

I’ll be honest, every profession has these problems. There is a lot of absolute garbage traits scattered throughout the entire game. This isn’t just an Engineer issue.

As to the evasiveness issue in a Ranger and Engineer comparison, I really can’t come up with a clear opinion. I don’t think we need more evasiveness though. I for example would prefer we be more capable at supporting our allies with elixirs.

I second this, i’d much prefer a support role for engi over evasiveness, I totally feel the Elixir gun has been forgotten about and left to rot…

Absolutely true! I am so glad someone else noticed this. I posted a while back some observations about why engineers are so much weaker then the adventurer leatherwearing counterparts. The traits are the culprits. Our traits are setup so that they are defensive reactions instead of offensive actions. We wait until 75% to get our buffs while the thief simply uses a single ability. Our minor bonuses to damage are 100% tied to endurance levels, thiefs and rangers are basically setup per weapon type and getting the enemy to 50% as fast as possible. Thief/Ranger recieve extra damage and bonuses once the enemy is at 50% hitpoints. We don’t get anything of the like, we put out the same amount of damage constantly, which makes no sense when you’re dealing with things like explosives or fire damage from flame throwers.

Just isn’t setup to actually have the same chances that every other class of it’s type to do damage. My feeling is this. If we’re supposed to be versatile, then let us be versatile, give us the same options of putting out tons of damage all at once. Everyone else can, it’s only fair.

Otherwise when you look at the roles for each class, the “new” trinity you’ll see they have support, CC, dps while we just have support, CC.

Durzlla.6295:

Because the ranger, unlike the engineer, is supposed to share in the extremely high amount of evasion that is the thief, the engineer, unlike both the ranger AND the thief, does not evade attacks but simply shrugs them off.

If you haven’t noticed we have 2 traits that’ll apply protections pretty liberally AND we can get perms vigor by either swapping kits, or just from critting, making us a LOT more evasive than a ranger could even dream of being if we have the tool tree maxed out as well, because, you know, we get 10% of our endurance bar back with each tool belt skill use.

Funny that you should mention “liberal application of protection” as an engineer thing in a post where you compare engineer with ranger.

Terrahero.9358:

25pts Alchemy: Minor trait.
Gives 1% more damage for every boon.

25pt Water: Minor trait (Elementalist)
Give 2% more damage for every boon.

Straigth up compareable traits, yet Elementalist’s is twice as strong.

That’s kind of subjective. I am not well versed in ele skills. I would ask can the ele apply as many different TYPES of boons as the engineer? Engineers can gain almost every boon in the game. Several of them can easily become perma. Does the ele have the same ability or access to as wide of a range?

Granted it would take us 6 boons to make up for 3 ele boons which is a pretty big disparity.

Question 2: Does 2 stacks of Might (or any boon) count as two boons or as one boon concerning that trait.

Food for thought.

Vexor.3640:

Terrahero.9358:

25pts Alchemy: Minor trait.
Gives 1% more damage for every boon.

25pt Water: Minor trait (Elementalist)
Give 2% more damage for every boon.

Straigth up compareable traits, yet Elementalist’s is twice as strong.

That’s kind of subjective. I am not well versed in ele skills. I would ask can the ele apply as many different TYPES of boons as the engineer? Engineers can gain almost every boon in the game. Several of them can easily become perma. Does the ele have the same ability or access to as wide of a range?

Granted it would take us 6 boons to make up for 3 ele boons which is a pretty big disparity.

Question 2: Does 2 stacks of Might (or any boon) count as two boons or as one boon concerning that trait.

Food for thought.

In this example, unfortunately, the ele wins at every front. Might “stacks” only count as one boon, and the current 10/30/30 d/d ele build keeps at least as many different boons up as an elixir engineer—possibly more, although an elixir engi traited for protection and vigor and using healing turret would keep as many boons up.

Engineers have some advantages, but this is not one.

Vexor.3640:

Terrahero.9358:

25pts Alchemy: Minor trait.
Gives 1% more damage for every boon.

25pt Water: Minor trait (Elementalist)
Give 2% more damage for every boon.

Straigth up compareable traits, yet Elementalist’s is twice as strong.

That’s kind of subjective. I am not well versed in ele skills. I would ask can the ele apply as many different TYPES of boons as the engineer? Engineers can gain almost every boon in the game. Several of them can easily become perma. Does the ele have the same ability or access to as wide of a range?

Granted it would take us 6 boons to make up for 3 ele boons which is a pretty big disparity.

Question 2: Does 2 stacks of Might (or any boon) count as two boons or as one boon concerning that trait.

Food for thought.

Yes, an Ele can keep up boons very well. Some builds are keeping up 4 boons permanently, with a high uptime of Protection. And Stability on a long cooldown, but reliably available. When im going for the hurt i have every single Boon available to me up for the duration my damage needs it the most, reliable, on demand, (except for stability) low cooldown (<10sec) The only thing not available is Aegis.
But for the duration of combat i have 4boons up at all times, and most of the time even 5.

Might counts as 1 boon, regardless of how many stacks. Else those Might-stacking builds would be doing miles better then they are doing now if they could get 25% more dmg from a full stack of might, instead of 1%.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Vexor.3640:

Terrahero.9358:

25pts Alchemy: Minor trait.
Gives 1% more damage for every boon.

25pt Water: Minor trait (Elementalist)
Give 2% more damage for every boon.

Straigth up compareable traits, yet Elementalist’s is twice as strong.

That’s kind of subjective. I am not well versed in ele skills. I would ask can the ele apply as many different TYPES of boons as the engineer? Engineers can gain almost every boon in the game. Several of them can easily become perma. Does the ele have the same ability or access to as wide of a range?

Granted it would take us 6 boons to make up for 3 ele boons which is a pretty big disparity.

Question 2: Does 2 stacks of Might (or any boon) count as two boons or as one boon concerning that trait.

Food for thought.

In this example, unfortunately, the ele wins at every front. Might “stacks” only count as one boon, and the current 10/30/30 d/d ele build keeps at least as many different boons up as an elixir engineer—possibly more, although an elixir engi traited for protection and vigor and using healing turret would keep as many boons up.

Engineers have some advantages, but this is not one.

elementalists just need 10 points into arcana and get the following boons on attunement swaps:
fury (self only)
might (for self and team)
regeneration (for self and team)
swiftness (for self and team)
protection (for self and team)

addtionally armor of earth utility skill gives yourself stability.

in short: elementalists are boss when it comes to boons.

Terrahero.9358:

Vexor.3640:

Terrahero.9358:

25pts Alchemy: Minor trait.
Gives 1% more damage for every boon.

25pt Water: Minor trait (Elementalist)
Give 2% more damage for every boon.

Straigth up compareable traits, yet Elementalist’s is twice as strong.

That’s kind of subjective. I am not well versed in ele skills. I would ask can the ele apply as many different TYPES of boons as the engineer? Engineers can gain almost every boon in the game. Several of them can easily become perma. Does the ele have the same ability or access to as wide of a range?

Granted it would take us 6 boons to make up for 3 ele boons which is a pretty big disparity.

Question 2: Does 2 stacks of Might (or any boon) count as two boons or as one boon concerning that trait.

Food for thought.

Yes, an Ele can keep up boons very well. Some builds are keeping up 4 boons permanently, with a high uptime of Protection. And Stability on a long cooldown, but reliably available. When im going for the hurt i have every single Boon available to me up for the duration my damage needs it the most, reliable, on demand, (except for stability) low cooldown (<10sec) The only thing not available is Aegis.
But for the duration of combat i have 4boons up at all times, and most of the time even 5.

Might counts as 1 boon, regardless of how many stacks. Else those Might-stacking builds would be doing miles better then they are doing now if they could get 25% more dmg from a full stack of might, instead of 1%.

I agree but we also have to look at the line that falls under. Not only is it a 25point requirement whereas the thief and ranger don’t require that many points to receive damage bonuses they simply use them on the first tier “adept” but this trait is also under a defensive line, again which falls under the support,CC sections of their trinity not the DPS. Engineers are missing the DPS because our trait lines that have bonuses to DPS rely only on defensive occurances and are missing multiple venues of initial damage bonuses the other two classes enjoy without thinking about it.

Here’s my analysis of the situation.

As you can see we’re not only missing quite alot of bonuses both pre and post getting an enemy down to 50% but we’re also missing multiple bonuses and how they occur. like might fury etc with more then just elixirs.

In light of all your excellent posts: I completely agree with the “what the _” engineers getting shafted sentiment.

ok dont hate me for this.

on the wiki engy page it states that engineers were originally suppose to have heavy armor, Personally, it does seem to me that engies were made with heavy armor in mind but then got changed to medium at the last moment. I mean., just take a look at alot of our abilities, they basically want us to get into melee range all the time ( more damage the closer you are etc).

when i see my survivalness versus a theif or a ranger its laughable unless i trait heavily into it, then i lose a lot of damage and severely hurt my ranged abilities.

Personally, I think Engineers need more specialization with its weapons and kits. We need our P/P #1 needs to stack 2 bleeds at the expense of raw damage, poison dart needs to shoot in a fan-close up stacks 5 durations, far away multi target.
Wrench kit needs to go more way of the condition build. I’d suggest the #1 skill stack bleeds and on the third heavy hit do a burn.

Does that mean that grenades and flamethrower need to go raw damage? Sure.

I run my engineer in a 30/0/0/20/20 setup and I have 0 issue in melee with p/s, bomb and elixir kits, and usually a situational elixir, typically R for extra dodges and group support. With a setup of soldier/knight gear with one or two pieces carrying pre I have about 3000 armor.

This is strictly in the pve sense. Although it could be modded for pvp easily.

Sororita.3465:

ok dont hate me for this.

on the wiki engy page it states that engineers were originally suppose to have heavy armor, Personally, it does seem to me that engies were made with heavy armor in mind but then got changed to medium at the last moment. I mean., just take a look at alot of our abilities, they basically want us to get into melee range all the time ( more damage the closer you are etc).

when i see my survivalness versus a theif or a ranger its laughable unless i trait heavily into it, then i lose a lot of damage and severely hurt my ranged abilities.

That’s actually something i had no idea about thanks for that!

Well that sortof supports the ideas I had about engineers. The one in TL II has heavy armor has the option for a shield to turn on protecting him when he’s hit by anything (it’s not limited to being crit and this engineer on GW2 doesn’t even have the thief’s stealth response to losing a small portion of his hitpoints at once). There’s no cloak when we’re downed. We throw junk not explosives. We don’t have an electrical attack when downed that stuns. We don’t have turrets that move with us even as an option. We don’t have an on all the time speed bonus.

If they are going to insist that this class needs to be a leather wearer we need traits like an adventurer class, if they insist on this class being as gimped as it still is they need to make this class a heavy armor wearer but either way they need to seriously revamp the traits.

Goloith.6349:

Personally, I think Engineers need more specialization with its weapons and kits. We need our P/P #1 needs to stack 2 bleeds at the expense of raw damage, poison dart needs to shoot in a fan-close up stacks 5 durations, far away multi target.
Wrench kit needs to go more way of the condition build. I’d suggest the #1 skill stack bleeds and on the third heavy hit do a burn.

Does that mean that grenades and flamethrower need to go raw damage? Sure.

Actually no, they don’t need to remove the sorry excuse for damage the pistol already does. It’s gimped enough but they do need to increase it’s speed so it’s not as slow as the rifle and they do need to revamp the way they do the bleeds because our condi damage shouldn’t take backstage to someone elses.

Half the abilities we use should absolutely cause burn without traiting (because physics demands that these things burn) but they don’t.

The one trait we do have doesn’t happen like it should and has been stealth nerfed (yep, that 3 second thing was added later during the time when we didn’t get a patch note one about anything).

Poison darts needs to actually shoot in a row much like the shots from the rifle on the warrior but cause an aoe cloud like the spit from one of those grubs.

tigirius.9014:

Goloith.6349:

Personally, I think Engineers need more specialization with its weapons and kits. We need our P/P #1 needs to stack 2 bleeds at the expense of raw damage, poison dart needs to shoot in a fan-close up stacks 5 durations, far away multi target.
Wrench kit needs to go more way of the condition build. I’d suggest the #1 skill stack bleeds and on the third heavy hit do a burn.

Does that mean that grenades and flamethrower need to go raw damage? Sure.

Actually no, they don’t need to remove the sorry excuse for damage the pistol already does. It’s gimped enough but they do need to increase it’s speed so it’s not as slow as the rifle and they do need to revamp the way they do the bleeds because our condi damage shouldn’t take backstage to someone elses.

Half the abilities we use should absolutely cause burn without traiting (because physics demands that these things burn) but they don’t.

The one trait we do have doesn’t happen like it should and has been stealth nerfed (yep, that 3 second thing was added later during the time when we didn’t get a patch note one about anything).

Poison darts needs to actually shoot in a row much like the shots from the rifle on the warrior but cause an aoe cloud like the spit from one of those grubs.

Causing the pistol to do 2 stacks of bleed vs. its current stat would be a buff. Engineers need the intensity of stacking bleeds. I understand that pistols actually scale well with damage, but if your actually going damage Rifle is so much better…so much more control.

Any trait we share with other Adventurers either costs more trait points to reach or has received an arbitrary 50% reduction in effectiveness. It is lazy design.