Guild Wars 2

@JonPeters

Reinforced Shield This should be adept tier.

Metal Plating Turrets in their current implementation are quite a let-down. Change this trait to something that boosts their attack speed. How about… “Charged Plating”

Explosive Descent This should be in explosives tree, adept tier, Move accelerant packed turrets to replace trait in inventions.

Autotool Installation Even with your latest buff, turrets are still not going to happen. You could make them regen 100% every 3 seconds and they would still die too often, because often times they are dead in one hit. Fundamentally turrets have to be redesigned.. This suggestion comes farther down the post.

Elite Supplies This trait is somewhat underwhelming, like JonPeters said. And the problem mostly lies with our elites. Change this to chance to pop out a bandage, 50% on hit, 2s cd. People would still have to run over it to get the benefit, so moving to grandmaster is not necessary, keep this as Master.

Elixir X Elixir X is underwhelming due to copy-pasting other minor elites from other classes. Change this to give us Stability and Quickness for 8 seconds. Reduce cooldown to 80 seconds (and change Elixir U, more below..)

Elixir U Random negative effects are never a good thing. Get rid of quickness and the random negative effect, now grants protection for X seconds, and still breaks stun, nothing else changed.

Turrets Turrets do a low amount of damage, even fully traited. They take too much damage, the overcharge is underwhelming, and most of the toolbelt skills for turrets are underwhelming, partly because you cant use them when the turret is out.

1) Make turrets immune to damage, but have a duration, so that they arent permanent. You don’t see banners from warriors being killed do you? And they buff the whole group.
2) Make them overcharge automatically, This should be transparent to the player.
3) Move Detonate turret to the corresponding turret utility button once the turret is deployed, so that players can use toolbelt skills while they are out.
4) Change all “turret survivability” traits to damage boosts to turrets. (attack speed, dmg increase, etc)

Pistol for Engineer Underwhelming even for pistol HGH builds. Some players refuse to acknowledge it due to stubbornness, but the damage is low, the condi stacking (#1) is slow and inneffecient, and the explosion on explosive slot doesnt count as an explosive, meaning things like Shrapnel wont benefit them.

1) make Explosive shot hit harder.
2) Poison Dart “volley” This skill is currently bugged and does not hit your target with kittens as the hint states, it often goes off to the side and hits nothing. Making this skill unreliable. The damage is underwhelming for its CD, shorten the CD to 5s.

Rifle for Engineer Not much to change here.. just a few “build diversity” buffs to make them more appealing.

1) The Auto attack should have vulnerability as an effect, it’s slow hitting, so give 2 stacks with 3 second duration. every hit.
2) Overcharged Shot This should not be a self CC knockback. It should be a jump back, like Hidden Pistol for Charrs Why are we getting punished for using our own abilities? Charr engineering isn’t mad science, I dont consider a 450 launch to be over the top to punish myself for using it. Guardians get a 0 negative effect launch that hits just as hard, and launches farther, also a #4.
3) Not a necessary change, but one I would like to see, Jump shot often times can get me killed in PVP and PVE, make it evade during the leap. Lower distance to jump to compensate.

That’s all I have for now, I’m going to make some coffee…

Saved for future use.

Kahrgan.7401:

@JonPeters
Explosive Descent This should be in explosives tree, adept tier.

YES! I hate having to kitten my build just so I don’t die to fall damage in WvW. Having it as an adept explosive trait not only makes more sense semantically, but also more accessible since most people are going to have points invested into that tree anyways.

Poison dart cooldown is ok. But to remove the pattern is needed. I have very often the situation that only 1 of my 5 shots hits a target.

Kahrgan.7401:

Reinforced Shield This should be adept tier.

Not gonna happen, he stated in the Dec. 10th elementalist discussion that they don’t like having recharge-reduction at the adept tier.

Dr Ishmael.9685:

Kahrgan.7401:

Reinforced Shield This should be adept tier.

Not gonna happen, he stated in the Dec. 10th elementalist discussion that they don’t like having recharge-reduction at the adept tier.

Warrior’s Shield Mastery is adept., and also given that most specs are in a kit most of the time, it only makes sense to have it as adept, it’s a balancing act.

all good point in OP.
i’ll add my idea for turrets: make them like structures/obstacles so that characters (friends or foes) in order to go the other side of them have to turn around, jump over or destroy.
pair this with a rework of traits so that can give turrets much higher damage OR much higher resistance and you’ll end up with a complete new role in the game, especially in wvw.

i know, turrets need fixes more than modification… just speculating.

Turrets can’t be immune to damage, that would be greatly out of balance, but they could have MUCH higher HP, on par with actual siege weapons, and have reduction to non-targeted AoE damage.

Kahrgan.7401:

@JonPeters

Reinforced Shield This should be adept tier.

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Or just move Warrior’s to master tier.
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Metal Plating Turrets in their current implementation are quite a let-down. Change this trait to something that boosts their attack speed. How about… “Charged Plating”

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Since there is a trait to increase damage and range, and most overcharged turret skills already increase attack speed, it’s not a good idea to have another trait JUST to boost their attack speed.
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Explosive Descent This should be in explosives tree, adept tier, Move accelerant packed turrets to replace trait in inventions.

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HMMM, yeah this could be nice.
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Autotool Installation Even with your latest buff, turrets are still not going to happen. You could make them regen 100% every 3 seconds and they would still die too often, because often times they are dead in one hit. Fundamentally turrets have to be redesigned.. This suggestion comes farther down the post.

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I think turret HP is okay, maybe a small buff in PVE dungeons might be nice; the thing to avoid is turrets taking so much damage that it dies before doing anything, this only happens in dungeons. If it’s being focused down by players it should die fast.
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Elite Supplies This trait is somewhat underwhelming, like JonPeters said. And the problem mostly lies with our elites. Change this to chance to pop out a bandage, 50% on hit, 2s cd. People would still have to run over it to get the benefit, so moving to grandmaster is not necessary, keep this as Master.

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No Comment.
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Elixir X Elixir X is underwhelming due to copy-pasting other minor elites from other classes. Change this to give us Stability and Quickness for 8 seconds. Reduce cooldown to 80 seconds (and change Elixir U, more below..)

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Don’t like this idea, seems like a lame way to get back quickness cuz you personally decided to take it out in elixir U
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Elixir U Random negative effects are never a good thing. Get rid of quickness and the random negative effect, now grants protection for X seconds, and still breaks stun, nothing else changed.

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I think it’s ok.
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Turrets Turrets do a low amount of damage, even fully traited. They take too much damage, the overcharge is underwhelming, and most of the toolbelt skills for turrets are underwhelming, partly because you cant use them when the turret is out.

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Definitely a problem that tool belt skills are locked for turrets when you have the turrets out.
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1) Make turrets immune to damage, but have a duration, so that they arent permanent. You don’t see banners from warriors being killed do you? And they buff the whole group.

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Banners don’t damage you.
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2) Make them overcharge automatically, This should be transparent to the player.

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Yeah might as well just overcharge automatically, cuz people do it anyway.
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Pistol for Engineer Underwhelming even for pistol HGH builds. Some players refuse to acknowledge it due to stubbornness, but the damage is low, the condi stacking (#1) is slow and inneffecient, and the explosion on explosive slot doesnt count as an explosive, meaning things like Shrapnel wont benefit them.

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I think people take pistol for it’s utility and defense, if they want damage they would take a pistol offhand for blowtorch; if anything Rifle auto-attack is too weak.
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A lot of minion HP already feels OP in player VS. player, if I don’t have an aoe attack and it takes me 4 or more hits to kill a pet, that’s 4 hits the enemy doesn’t have to take, and if I don’t attack the pet then I am just going to have to let it do things to me; how balanced is that in 1v1 if bunch of turrets are hard to kill by 1 player and still do decent damage.

I really like your suggestion about turrets, elixir X, elite supplies, and rifle. Great post.

Dr Ishmael.9685:

Kahrgan.7401:

Reinforced Shield This should be adept tier.

Not gonna happen, he stated in the Dec. 10th elementalist discussion that they don’t like having recharge-reduction at the adept tier.

Certainly didn’t stop them with Fireforged Trigger or Hair Trigger.

make turrets able to run with you by adding mechanical legs and an entrench ability.

First, healing turret should NOT draw aggro or be killable. No other profession has an aoe heal that does either of those things.

Second, Rifle is just too slow. Speed the shots up, a bit.

Other than that, I like the suggestions.

Pistol 1# is something I’d love to see some buffs for. As it is now, I can’t really use it as a core of a build.
There are a bunch of changes they could do with it to buff it in diffrent fields:

• Pure dmg buff – Would make it more viable to pure dmg builds, but condition pistol would stay where it is.
• Reduce after cast – This would buff both types of dmg and make it feel better to use.
• Make it 100% chance for combo finisher – Like the warrior longbow, this would buff condition builds by granting us some interesting ways to apply conditions. It would also work well with our kits or the flame turret.
• Increese conditions/condition duration – pure buff to condition pistols.
• Make the explotion count as explotions – This change would let us trait in interesting ways to buff out pistol setup.

That is all I can think of at the moment. I’m not saying that all of this should be done, I’d be happy with just one of the concepts above.

Please attempt to look at the balance of the game as a whole instead of your own class and only that.

Kahrgan.7401:

2) Overcharged Shot This should not be a self CC knockback. It should be a jump back, like Hidden Pistol for Charrs Why are we getting punished for using our own abilities? Charr engineering isn’t mad science, I dont consider a 450 launch to be over the top to punish myself for using it. Guardians get a 0 negative effect launch that hits just as hard, and launches farther, also a #4.

Traited, it’s 12 seconds. Also, very very little telegraph. Have you seen Banish’s animation? It’s like firing lasers from space to write “dodge” on the ground for your opponent to see, so you have to combo it with other skills to land on a good opponent.

Also, Banish doesn’t remove cripple, chill, or immobilise. Also, you have more range leniency with it.

Been playing Engineer since beta, it’s my main and favorite class.
I’m known in my guild as the “Go To Guy” for Engies.
I’ve played every engi build ever made, and made afew.

I could never get turrets and mines to be effective for anything. pvp and pve turrets and mines are no deterrent. the net turret is probably the most useful for snares and pins, but often shrugged off as a minor annoyance.

Often the go to build is nades and flame thrower for just about everything.
I’d really like to see turrets work, i’ve tried to make em work. Placed them in spots where the could potential not get 1 shoted be area wide damage that these dungeons have. Sadly nades and flame king.

Ive had this discussion many… many times, on how the engie is saposta be diverse, but in reality they are just really good Kiters with minamal damage. Most of the damage will be from condition DOT.

I’d like to see an Engi rework. Please.

SpelignErrir.4263:

Kahrgan.7401:

2) Overcharged Shot This should not be a self CC knockback. It should be a jump back, like Hidden Pistol for Charrs Why are we getting punished for using our own abilities? Charr engineering isn’t mad science, I dont consider a 450 launch to be over the top to punish myself for using it. Guardians get a 0 negative effect launch that hits just as hard, and launches farther, also a #4.

Traited, it’s 12 seconds. Also, very very little telegraph. Have you seen Banish’s animation? It’s like firing lasers from space to write “dodge” on the ground for your opponent to see, so you have to combo it with other skills to land on a good opponent.

Also, Banish doesn’t remove cripple, chill, or immobilise. Also, you have more range leniency with it.

A good guardian wont let you see his telegraph, or wait for you to dodge twice, and time his knockback. We could argue till the sun comes down, the point is, Self-CC is silly, and shouldnt exist.

Kahrgan.7401:

Dr Ishmael.9685:

Kahrgan.7401:

Reinforced Shield This should be adept tier.

Not gonna happen, he stated in the Dec. 10th elementalist discussion that they don’t like having recharge-reduction at the adept tier.

Warrior’s Shield Mastery is adept., and also given that most specs are in a kit most of the time, it only makes sense to have it as adept, it’s a balancing act.

Hair trigger says hello. It is the CD reducing trait for pistol, rifle, and harpoon gun, and has been an adept trait since release.

Kahrgan.7401:

A good guardian wont let you see his telegraph, or wait for you to dodge twice, and time his knockback. We could argue till the sun comes down, the point is, Self-CC is silly, and shouldnt exist.

Guardian talk aside, I really really want to agree with you, but too many people argued for a root on hundred blades, and it was implemented. To be fair, I feel there is a heck of a lot of difference between the two skills. I certainly do not care much about the hundred blades root, but I thought it was somewhat relevant here. I can completely getting behind changing overcharge shot, and after enough noise was made, they ruined, er um, I mean changed rocket boots.

Kahrgan.7401:

2) Poison Dart “volley” This skill is currently bugged and does not hit your target with kittens as the hint states, it often goes off to the side and hits nothing. Making this skill unreliable. The damage is underwhelming for its CD, shorten the CD to 5s.

Oh my gawd yes! I absolutely hate that skill, I have to be in melee range for it to do anything! I’ll be lucky to get a single hit in at max range. I can’t really comment on anything else since I just run around spamming nades, and not too often I might add.

Great topic and great ideas. Keep this in a positive light. Keep suggestions as advice for improvements not complaining or saying “that won’t happen”. Keep constructive and it gets noticed.

OP thank you for putting time into this you expressed a lot of the topics I was thinking about, i’d like to add a few of my own. Mostly about pistols. I love pistols and would love to have a pistol build that didn’t NEED a kit with it.

I hate that every build NEEDs a kit to be competitive. The fact that Engi’s are forced to give up a utility slot to have a second bar of abilities is pretty lame. Would love to see an option to have a kit go in the “switch weapon” slot for Engi’s. We can get rid of the healing skill toolbelt slot and use F1 for our weapon kit spot in there. As for med kit.. combine 4&5 into slot 4 and make spot 5 the self heal. (just an idea)

Pistol #1:
- Explosive shot should work with the explosive traits. E.G. Shrapnel and explosive powder.
- Bleed duration should be increased. This is the LOWEST bleed duration of every other weapon skill in the game and its meant as a condition weapon. (power is rifle) Even if this was a power weapon the damage is laughable compared to every other damage weapon out there.
– Explosive shot = 2sec bleed 1/2 sec cast
– Vital shot = 4sec bleed 1/2 sec cast
– Crossfire = 3 sec bleed 1/4 sec cast
– Blood/Rending curse = 4 sec bleed 1/2 sec cast
– Bleeding shot = 6 sec bleed 3/4 sec cast
– Stone shards = 3 stacks, 6 sec bleed, 1.5 sec cast

These are just the ranged #1 comparables.. not to mention the other classes have more then just this one skill to stack bleeds, engi’s don’t. (without using kits and even with kits we only have Box of nails for 2 sec bleed with 10 sec cool down and tranq dart for 4 sec bleed at 3/4 second cast.)

Pistol #2:
ACCURACY. Damage isn’t horrible, cast time could be a little faster but accuracy would be great. Give it the accuracy of skills like Volley or Rapid fire, then Coated bullets might be worth it for this one

Pistol #3: No real change needed. Works well

Pistol #4:
To make coated bullets be more interesting, change this from a cone effect to a blast of super heated/combustable oil that sticks to the target and burns same as blowtorch. Make this a blast finisher but only hits 1 target unless you have coated bullets.

Pistol #5:
Speed up the projectile and this one works great.

Just new ideas to make things more interesting for us pistol users. Would LOVE Pistol 1 to be a viable option.

Gadgets: Make gadgets like signets and give them a passive effect when not used.

Those are my ideas. Keep the constructive ideas coming. Maybe we’ll get the well versed and adaptable engi we all want. :-D

Jastorm.5972:

Great topic and great ideas. Keep this in a positive light. Keep suggestions as advice for improvements not complaining or saying “that won’t happen”. Keep constructive and it gets noticed.

OP thank you for putting time into this you expressed a lot of the topics I was thinking about,

You’re welcome, I hope that it helps Anet get some ideas, or take mine to change some things that would be for the betterment of the 2nd to last, least played class.

Poor Gadgets.. Sure wish I could make a viable/competitive Gadget Build. And I love Static Discharge but I’d like a Build that uses Gadgets for the Creative Utility, not Spam Damage.

Good thoughts though, at least among my Engineer friends I’m sure most of your points are unanimous!

But I disagree with Elixir U. I always thought it should give you Quickness, 3 stacks of Might And Protection for 6 seconds then when those effects expire you should get Cripple, Weakness and Vulnerability for 6 Seconds. Makes for a better high risk high reward in a unique way.

Pistol does need some Love no disputing that, specifically the off Hand, Glue Shot’s projectile travels painfully slow and is very unrewarding even when managing a direct hit. I think making it a field that continuously applies a 1 second immobilize to those that stay inside or pass through would be enough to make it worth it as your only defensive measure. Or, your could keep the slow projectile speed and make it be a unique combo field that provides immobilizing projectiles to those who shoot through it.

And Rifle’s Blunderbuss needs to have its pinnacle damage range increased slightly, while also making it a “PBOE”.

But Pertaining to Turrets, I feel, should always be immobile, And should not be indestructible. I do think they should have the ability to body block like every other pet/minion/clones and I think you should be able to Overcharged and Detonated from downed state.

I don’t feel Turrets that have a reasonable range should have increased life. However Turrets that have a minimal attack range should. And the Cool Downs on all turrets should be reduced again.

And this has been mentioned before but I would completely love a rework of the pick up mechanic.

For example:
Walking near your deployed Turret and pressing the interact key would give you a 3/4 second cast then you would physically carry your turret, replacing your weapon Skills with a single skill: Fire.

This would allow you to fire your turret like an environmental weapon with a reasonable attack speed. Your Tool Belt skill would remain as Detonate and your Utility Skill would remain as Overcharge which when activated would cause your shots to be Overcharged for its duration/ammo. Additionally While being held your Turret cannot be harmed.

There could be a whole smorgasbord of innovative traits and combos that could be utilized if this was implemented.

For Example:
Like a trait to slowly repair the turret being held, or where 50% of damage you take is divided amongst your turret that is being held.

Innovative changes like these would make the game more involved as opposed to number tweaking. This is of course, just my opinion.

Autoattack on Grenade kit 1.

stabillity, not this sad joke of a throwing elixir stabillity without stunbreake, lol a real usuable access to stabillity. Its almost unplayable without, there is just to much stunlocking around waaay to much.

Kontrolle.3514:

stabillity, not this sad joke of a throwing elixir stabillity without stunbreake, lol a real usuable access to stabillity. Its almost unplayable without, there is just to much stunlocking around waaay to much.

Hard to grasp what your saying through the sarcastic cynicism here. I think your simply suggesting that our stability skill should be a stun breaker, is that accurate? If so, I fully agree. Aren’t al of the other stability skills on other professions, stun breakers?

As far as stun locking, I don’t honestly have much trouble with it. Only time it becomes and issues is 1v4 or 1v5 situation, in which case I expect to have more CC then I can dodge or cleanse.

1. Leg Mods should grant more benefits than Dogged March (warrior adept trait), since it is in the master tier.

2. Coated bullets, I would like seem them get rid of the pierce and make it increase the duration of all pistol conds by a 1 or 2 sec. This would make modified ammo a bit more attractive for pistol users.

3. Gadgets need some trait love.

Dharknite.7906:

2. Coated bullets, I would like seem them get rid of the pierce and make it increase the duration of all pistol conds by a 1 or 2 sec. This would make modified ammo a bit more attractive for pistol users.

I hope they never do this. The pierce is very handy. I feel they should improve on this trait, by perhaps giving static shot an extra bounce with this trait.

This trait allows the engineer to use the pistol skills to hit players out of line of site, such as when they are hiding in the merlons of the keep tops.