Guild Wars 2

Should there be changes to engineers to make them more useful in gvg and wvw zergs?Last week when a commander was splitting up the useful classes he finally got to engineers and rangers. “Re-roll” is what he said and honestly I cant blame him. This is not the first time ive heard this. Roaming is fine and ive done plenty of that but I would like to feel like im making more of an impact in wvw then flipping camps and random fights. Any thoughts on this or anyone experience something similar?

Engi needs some tweaks what make his traits and skill more affecting other playes, like Backpack Regenerator or Juggernaut for whole party

Helcor.9527:

Should there be changes to engineers to make them more useful in gvg and wvw zergs?Last week when a commander was splitting up the useful classes he finally got to engineers and rangers. “Re-roll” is what he said and honestly I cant blame him. This is not the first time ive heard this. Roaming is fine and ive done plenty of that but I would like to feel like im making more of an impact in wvw then flipping camps and random fights. Any thoughts on this or anyone experience something similar?

Sounds like you need to swap servers.

Shaogin.2679:

Sounds like you need to swap servers.

Maybe not swap servers, but follow a different commander. Engineers are extremely useful in zergs. Think of their ability to stack might, area heal and apply cc, among other things.

If you feel useless, play around with your build. Engineer can be played many different ways, and it’s possible you haven’t found your play style yet. And don’t let one person’s opinion determine your efficacy. It’s possible that commander was being sarcastic, or has never played engineer.

I play Engineer in coordinated guild zergs for GvG. Engineer can be played in so many ways that it is by no means useless.

You can go for a condi spam build, an SD burst build, or even a flamethrower bunker down build in uncoordinated zergs. The point is… Don’t listen to commanders all of the time. They are often Warriors or Guardians who see very little past being tanky walls with stability and power builds.

What engi really needs is:

• AoE stunbreak.
• Possibly longer water field.
• Something special that other classes can’t do already. Like an unique boon or condition that only engies can apply to allies/foes.

guildabd.6529:

What engi really needs is:

• AoE stunbreak.
• Possibly longer water field.
• Something special that other classes can’t do already. Like an unique boon or condition that only engies can apply to allies/foes.

this is not what engi really needs, this is potentially OP or luxury for later general class-buffs
what engi really needs is stablity, and even that is questionable since we can reduce dmg while stunned by 73% in wvw.
usually engi needs better condi-clean as well but with all the cleans going off around you, condis are a rather minor thread, that you can deal with legmods and defensive condi-food even better.
For wvw, the class is good as it is, and what it makes unique is a backbreaking long-range cc drop (your fault if you drop it into a stability-buffed area), 1k hp regen for allies per sec, heavier blind-Spam than necros (only bested by thieves) and uninterruptable stomps.
I had a whole zerg camping and rage-spamming on me several times while i was sitting in elixir S and stomped their commander regardless.

I think for zerging engi is fine where it is, even tho I’d really like us to be a heavy armor class like intended by the devs in the first place, because one thing is true: if everything is on cd, we are nowhere near as tanky as out guardians or warris around.

DISCLAIMER: this text only consideres frontliner cleric bombhealer-builds. If we speak about backliner or focus builds, engi has so many more viable options.

Arantheal.7396:

1k hp regen for allies per sec

I see another person espousing this number, according to the wiki the bomb actually takes .74 seconds to cast, do your bombs heal for ~750 each?

Sigil of water: 800 (5 sec) | 160 hp/s
Elixir Infused Bombs: 494 (0.84 sec) | 588 hp/s
Healing Burst: 3087 (15 sec) | 205 hp/s
Evasive Powder Keg: 494 (5sec (vigor)) | 99 hp/s
== 1052 hp/s (or 1003 hp/s without vigor)

oh look, pretty much 1k hp/s…
Even before counting in the loads of regeneration we spread…
now imagine what happens if I decide to switch toolkit for elixir-gun. (I rather take toolkit since the pull is too hilarious and the block is kinda mandatory for me, also EG #5 is a lightfield which is kinda meh when you could simply blast water instead)
Yes, the healing burst does not stack with healing power, but it gets in fact modified by sigil of benevolence and monk runes, which I both run.

All of the effects above are stacking and can not overwrite itself with other players.

Now tell me where it is not beneficial to have a 1k healing tick, 2k stable damage tick on 5 enemies / allies, accompanied by ticking aoe soft cc, blinds, stealth, waterfields and firefields in your melee-train that delivers 100% guaranteed stomps even in the middle of the enemy trains’ wrath?

the problem is in the commanders and anet
warriors and guardians are a must for melee train
ele for water field and stun field
necro for aoe dmg
mesmer for viel bot
all other class for zerg are optional

some commander start to see the effectiveness in havoc squad like LB ranger, d/p thieves and give them freedom just kill fast the backline
engi can support in so many ways maybe not strong enough but still they can

I think a lot of the engineer prejudice in WvW/GvG is largely born out of willful ignorance. People more often than not base their opinions on hearsay and treat it as fact(it’s not A, B, or C therefore bad). Anyone spending any decent amount of time researching the profession would see the value of engineers. I still think having too many would be wasteful however from a composition standpoint.

Engineers make excellent periphery fighters and backline support they can even work with the frontline as long as you’re in a party with good aoe stab. Excellent spot support for the back lines with cc/extra fields self blasting a water field 4 times+ on the spot without the need for additional coordination can be life saving support for your backline since they’re usually blowing their own support and waterfields on aiding the frontline. Quite a few options for general soft cc and a aoe stun I don’t care if they clear soft cc with in 0.5s-1 second that small duration of chill/cripple means either the periphery fighters are picking them off or the hammer train is about to land on their head. It’s enough to create quite a gap in a moving group. While limited there is boon stripping options available too. Not to forget the exceptional damage capability. Low CD firefields, higher capability of maintaining aoe might stacks than most and can do this for your backlines and periphery since any frontline might stackers are not there to do this and/or blast. There are also modes of play and support outside this but in general these are the more viable options from my personal point of view.

Outside of combat situations your nades can take out siege/cannons that would be otherwise unreachable from some angles with the exception of read the wind LB rangers.

In general a few is very nice to have providing they’re skilled and know when and what to do. While some classes can do a lot of the same they have to use their abilities in different situations typically and they lose too much by focusing on that kind of play.

I still think some things can be improved upon to better general perception. I think improving our boon stripping capability with our existing skills would be a nice area to review or some form of additional area denial.

Engineers are actually really good class , not only they have tons of AoE, CCs, and water field for the group that you are running with, but engineer also deals one of the best Damage in the game regardless of what build you are using.

IMO it is more towards the bad word of mouth that happened in game. People do not try and experiment the class when one random dude come out and say the class is s***. BUT I can say that it is not an easy class where you can spam 1 all the time, you have to know the rotation of your skills to maximize the damage and CC that you can put down for the team.

Cheers
Grand Excutor

Evigishki Gustkraken.9623:

Engineers are actually really good class , not only they have tons of AoE, CCs, and water field for the group that you are running with, but engineer also deals one of the best Damage in the game regardless of what build you are using.

IMO it is more towards the bad word of mouth that happened in game. People do not try and experiment the class when one random dude come out and say the class is s***. BUT I can say that it is not an easy class where you can spam 1 all the time, you have to know the rotation of your skills to maximize the damage and CC that you can put down for the team.

Cheers
Grand Excutor

That and everyone compares everything to the absolute meta that assumes that every single person is amazingly skilled with their class, makes no mistakes, and plays to their absolute full potential. They do the same thing with dungeon runs. Skilled people know the engineer can bring a lot and shore up the weak points of a party. People who just follow what everyone else says want the ideal party setup for speed runs and nothing else because they assume anything less than that is worthless and won’t work. They see zerg or party composition as something that is set in stone and shouldn’t be changed because if you change it you will fail. I.E. A party should be 1 Warrior, 1 Thief, 1 Guardian, 1 Ele then either a mesmer or another ele, otherwise you will fail. Or a zerg should be mostly necros, guardians, eles and warriors, otherwise you’ll get wiped.

I play engi in GvG and for Guild Roaming / Skirmish and have played since launch.

We are not as useless as generally assumed but we are also not super fantastic either.

Having 1-2 engi’s doesn’t hurt and there are places we can be useful.

But you’re not going to stack engis like you would eles or necros or warriors. We are much more like theives / mesmers / rangers.

SD / Condi builds can work in assist teams, high toughness melee builds work well as well, using either FT or Bombkit.

But you gotta play a lot sharper, you’re a lot squishier even in full PVT with traits and for melee play a proper stab group is always a must.

To be honest if you’re smart about it you can do a lot. With elixir S, and some key traits you can become assist bait. Since engis have such a crappy reputation you can run separate and goof around a bit to draw in enemy assist teams, you bait them in and then your assist teams can cut them apart. If they don’t come for you, you can harass them with CC when they jump on your eles and necros, or go for their squishes.

But if you want to talk about making engis a bit more competitive then the problem lies with the fact retal sucks, constant kit / weapon swap is not effective when it gets laggy, and be it turrets / throw elixirs / grenades / or bombs they are all not as effective while moving, and you’re always moving in WvW.

Useless? I’ll have to disagree with that…

I’ve gone back to maining my engineer in WvW after focusing on my necro for many months. I have to say, support engie is highly underrated.

After running some numbers on sustained healing potential, the result is impressive. For my support build, which has mostly clerics gear with some celestial mixed in, full stack outgoing healing amounts to 508/sec bomb healing (426/.84) + 364/sec when regen is active. That’s up to 5 targets. That is a lot of damage negation. Then factor water field + blasts on top.

I know I could go even higher on the healing (see Arantheal’s post), but that’s plenty enough for me and gives decent balance with other stats thanks to the celestial.

In a high healing build such as mine, I’ve decided bomb spam is the most valuable use of my global cooldowns in group/guild play, assuming damage is being taken. This allowed me to simplify my build for more defense and survival. Previously, I tried to have it all with full kits. It also justified going back from rifle to my preference of pistol/shield, which gives even more defense and one more blast.

Bomb damage is still quite high though not always obvious, due to damage numbers being often behind you and out of view, especially when on the move which is most of the time.

Down side is that gameplay can be quite spammy, and obviously support builds are not for everyone.

I keep full celestial in my bags and simply switch my traits/skills for roaming and PvE.

Here’s a recent example of support engie gameplay in an exciting WvW tower defense (which ultimately failed, but was fun as heck).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnZdNcdUuC8

Engineers lack the stability to really hang in there with the trains so they need to be carried by guardians…. but then again guardians carry everyone which is why they are often the biggest part of a zerg so I never really saw that as a problem. I believe people are too used to the whole stack and blob/surround enemy thing or think that guardians and warriors are everything. Still, there are big problems— I don’t think the best groups in this game would have refrained from experimentation and meta is meta for a reason even if it is an evolving thing.

But warriors/eles have good invuls and stabilities/stunbreaks of their own and necros have deadly boon strips while mesmers have unique utility. Engineers possess the ability to resist being trained through traits such as protection injection and stabilized armor which makes them survivable but is that enough?

That leaves the 3 medium classes kind of out there which excel at assassinating targets and often out of nowhere but to get that done requires more than just mashing a few keys. It’s no surprise that rangers, engineers, and thieves get a ton of hate, and a lot of that comes from fear and ignorance. A random backstab, a rapid fire, or grenade/blunder/acid bomb burst suddenly downing a tanky generic frontliner guy is often considered an aberration and cheese.

The existence of terrain also changes matters heavily and factors in more than people would like to admit and these tend to benefit the medium classes a lot more.

The biggest barrier though is retaliation which can often wreak havoc on the engineer’s ability to do massive sustained aoe damage. These things can be overcome, but you’d definitely have an easier time as a GWEN. Still, nothing stops you from taking a bomb/heal engineer and do good damage/healing or grenade engineer to kitten people off.

In a world where people still think 4 warrior dungeon rushes or gtfo, take everything with a grain of salt. The terms useless and not viable often get thrown around way too much in a way that creates a kind of narrow mindedness.