Guild Wars 2

Hello,
I didn’t find a similar topic, sorry if it has been discussed before.

I just rolled an alt, RWarrior, as I was curious to see what skills I’d get.
And I was kind of surprised. It feels like what Engineers could have had.
Now I know Engineers’ strength come from all the skills around firearms, but hey, a warrior has skills too, not as complex, less depth, but still very viable.
What do you guys think of this? Is there a reason to feel wronged in one’s engineer’s heart?

This was brought up in a number of threads, but yes a lot of people do believe the warrior/engineer rifle skills are almost reverse of what they should be. The supportive argument for the warriors getting the skills they have is that as warriors they are trained to specialize in weapons (spears, swords, firearms, etc) and that is why they would get the skills they do. While engineer’s rifle is more gadgety and not straight firepower. There are many complaints for things like the #3 engineer skill that is actually rather close range, while the general idea of playing a rifle engineer would be to keep enemies at a distance. Some have even suggested a “Sniper Kit” as a potential sort of fix that would give engineers that classic expected long range rifle skillset.

The only thing I hate about engi is the fact that, yeah we have utility skills, BUT none of them have a default auto attack. The bombs and grenades i understand, but the elixir gun once I switch to it i have to immediately start pressing the 1 key if i decide to use that kit to PvE. If the devs see this they need to make the elixir gun #1 attack default to auto attack. Because even if I set it to auto attack sometimes I accidentally switch kits and then switch back and I have to stop and re-enable the auto attack. LAME.

The engi skills with rifle is fine with me. I LOVE the overload shot and blunderbuss. I don’t really use netshot unless I need a couple of seconds for endurance to fill up. Oh, and Jumpshot is pretty boss as well. Warriors don’t have it

Dybz.9275:

This was brought up in a number of threads, but yes a lot of people do believe the warrior/engineer rifle skills are almost reverse of what they should be. The supportive argument for the warriors getting the skills they have is that as warriors they are trained to specialize in weapons (spears, swords, firearms, etc) and that is why they would get the skills they do. While engineer’s rifle is more gadgety and not straight firepower. There are many complaints for things like the #3 engineer skill that is actually rather close range, while the general idea of playing a rifle engineer would be to keep enemies at a distance. Some have even suggested a “Sniper Kit” as a potential sort of fix that would give engineers that classic expected long range rifle skillset.

I see. thanks for the explanation.
I don’t fall for the whole warrior-are-trained-mean-machines argument, though. Engineers have access to two weapon types only (note that I said weapon, not kit), so this seems silly.
If Kits were considered weapons, they’d be called so, swapping would keep your weapon’s bonuses (power, vitality, whatever).
If I want to play ranged type with a rifle, I’m force to go heavy armor then, which I don’t want.
So I can’t. This seems a strange design choice. I’m kinda disappointed, not that it really matters.
Oh and Dybz, I’m not saying you support this theory in your given explanation

I wish they called our rifle a shot gun because that is more what it is like. Oh well

Nepocrates.3642:

I wish they called our rifle a shot gun because that is more what it is like. Oh well

Yeah, exactly. Or maybe longbows should be called rifles? Less classy though, hence my primary Engineer choice.

You have to remember that the engineer’s rifle is one of only three possible weapon sets we can have. By that nature the weapons have to offer a wider variety of skills to tackle most situations as weapon kits are in no way shape or form required to play the engineer effectively.

Compare this to the warrior, who has a total of sixteen possible different weaponsets, and then you begin to understand that the warrior’s weapons tend to be a lot more focused in their role.

Now I would love for the engineer to have a kit or something that offered a similar skill set to the warrior’s rifle (lots of long range single target damage). But I would not want to switch our rifle’s skill sets.

Riot Inducer.8964:

You have to remember that the engineer’s rifle is one of only three possible weapon sets we can have. By that nature the weapons have to offer a wider variety of skills to tackle most situations as weapon kits are in no way shape or form required to play the engineer effectively.

Compare this to the warrior, who has a total of sixteen possible different weaponsets, and then you begin to understand that the warrior’s weapons tend to be a lot more focused in their role.

Now I would love for the engineer to have a kit or something that offered a similar skill set to the warrior’s rifle (lots of long range single target damage). But I would not want to switch our rifle’s skill sets.

It’s just that P/P and P/S are already close range weapons. I’d have expected a difference with the rifle.
As for the kits, they’re mostly short/medium range as well. It’s just, I guess, that engineers are meant to remain close and keep it personal. It was fine until I tested that RWarrior.
I unserstand what you mean, but it just seems it could have been done differently. A kit, for example, as said by Dybz and you, I didn’t think of that, at least this would be nice. I hate bows and heavy armor, that’s all

Netshot is pretty much the greatest thing ever for my grenade/mine/boots build. Netshot, Grenade Barrage, Blunderbuss, Mines, Rocket Leap(at melee range), and then rocket boots/grenades at range

Just looking at a Warriors Rifle abilities make me confused.
To those who don’t have an engineer, here’s what we have with a rifle;

1) Auto Attack. It penetrates targets. 1 of 2 long range attacks.
2) Net Shot. It roots a target. 2 of 2 long range attacks, does no damage.
3) A close range “shotgun” attack.
4) A close range double edged knock back.
5) An AoE that, when used as an attack, places us in melee range.

So 3 of 5 of our attacks are close range attacks, despite engineers using a rifle wanting to be long range.
If I want to stay at a range, I’d want to use double Pistols, which have a LOWER range than rifle. Also it feels weaker…
We really need a “Sniper Kit” or something to give us long range attacks…

“So 3 of 5 of our attacks are close range attacks, despite engineers using a rifle wanting to be long range.”

I can’t accept this argument after seeing what Mesmers do with greatswords.

Stop asking them to ruin an amazing weapon just so you can play sniper with five skills that all do the exact same thing plus different conditions. If you want that we have grenades.

The rifle skills are fine for the engineer except for the jump shot, which I never use unless Im fighting a thieve or something I locked with net shot. Its just not useful enough. Its good for jumping puzzles tho.

Haette.2701:

“So 3 of 5 of our attacks are close range attacks, despite engineers using a rifle wanting to be long range.”

I can’t accept this argument after seeing what Mesmers do with greatswords.

Stop asking them to ruin an amazing weapon just so you can play sniper with five skills that all do the exact same thing plus different conditions. If you want that we have grenades.

Good luck hitting anything with grenades from a range.

Haette.2701:

“So 3 of 5 of our attacks are close range attacks, despite engineers using a rifle wanting to be long range.”

I can’t accept this argument after seeing what Mesmers do with greatswords.

Stop asking them to ruin an amazing weapon just so you can play sniper with five skills that all do the exact same thing plus different conditions. If you want that we have grenades.

Mesmers with great swords are still a ranged class, they don’t have to get into melee range to use their damaging abilities while Engineers only get 1 long ranged attack; auto attack.

Point is, Engineer is meant to be the techy-long range class, but it constantly forces us into a dangerous melee range. Considering that we’re the squishiest class due to not having many escape abilities if we actually want to do damage (who would take the slippy, oil shoes or rocket boots a serious fight?) and yeah, there’s an issue.
I learned how to abuse the melee range abilities rather well, but that doesn’t change the fact that a ranged class is forces to be in melee range to be effective.

Use your grenades in WvW, tell me how you fair.

TheRamosOnline.2670:

Point is, Engineer is meant to be the techy-long range class, but it constantly forces us into a dangerous melee range.

After carefully perusing our weapon skills, I’m pretty confident in saying that we are NOT meant to be a long-range class. If we were, we’d probably have a long-range weapon. If you say “guns should be long-range,” I’m going to point to the mesmer’s greatsword again, and then maybe to the guardian’s staff. At worst we’re short-range, at best we’re whatever the hell range we want because we have some absurd range control.

Haette.2701:

TheRamosOnline.2670:

Point is, Engineer is meant to be the techy-long range class, but it constantly forces us into a dangerous melee range.

After carefully perusing our weapon skills, I’m pretty confident in saying that we are NOT meant to be a long-range class.

Do I really have to point out the Firearms talent that increases pistol and rifle range?
Do I really have to point out the Explosives talent that increases grenade throw range/explosion range?

If you want to be a close range Engineer, that’s fine. But don’t be complaining that you die before you can do anything.

If you examine the engineer, you’ll find that he has a lot of ‘redundancy’, where skills do similar things.

How many stun breaks do we have? 4. That’s a whole lot of stun breaks. Can’t even fit all of them in your bar.

How many melee kits do we have? 3, out of 5. C’mon… and then consider that the rifle is pretty much a melee weapon.

So… counting kits and pistol+rifle, which is 7 total things to choose from.

Engineers have 4/7 of their weapons working best at a melee range.
The rest?
Mid range.

I’m not going to pretend that grenades are viable long range. Maybe against static enemies, but I think being able to hit moving targets, is what makes a long range weapon, a long range weapon.

aflarge.1439:

Netshot is pretty much the greatest thing ever for my grenade/mine/boots build. Netshot, Grenade Barrage, Blunderbuss, Mines, Rocket Leap(at melee range), and then rocket boots/grenades at range

Yeah, netshot, when as mentionned above, does no damage and lasts 2 seconds (from the top of my head).
WRifle : 5 seconds cripple. And damage.
I don’t get this.
Also, all this talk about kits, I just wanted to point out that not everyone enjoy kits that are far from flawless.
I wanted to go “me and my rifle” kinda feel.
Guess it’s gonna be “me and another class”, which is a shame, engineers have some fun features. (But they don’t make up to that ununderstandable difference in rifles).
For example, what would you guys say if P/P thieves had better skills than engineers? It’w not the case, but still, that would feel like a rip-off.

EDIT : I just checked and it seems the word “ununderstandable” doesn’t exist. I chose to let it as is, it’s a kind of penitence ha ha.

I think what I’ve realized with the engineer after maining one from betas until now is that we aren’t a long range class (despite rolling grenadier for a good while – it really doesn’t count), but there is so much to compensate for that. I’ve tried playing some other classes and at least for me and my play style, nothing can fit into such a huge variety of roles with just a few swaps and clicks like an engineer. So to answer the OP, I don’t feel wronged: I certainly don’t feel as strong at long range as other classes – but for me, we have enough strengths elsewhere to compensate for this.

As a warrior player, (Axe/Mace + Sword/Shield || Rifle + Sword/Shield) I can tell you:
Every well played Engineer just kites you to death, knocks you down and deals tons of damage.
I feel completely outclassed.

Haette.2701:

“So 3 of 5 of our attacks are close range attacks, despite engineers using a rifle wanting to be long range.”

I can’t accept this argument after seeing what Mesmers do with greatswords.

Stop asking them to ruin an amazing weapon just so you can play sniper with five skills that all do the exact same thing plus different conditions. If you want that we have grenades.

Ugh, every time someone mentions “sniper kit,” I die a little bit inside. I’ve mentioned this in another thread. Where the heck did the idea of a sniper kit for an engineer come from? What about engineers makes anybody think “long-range sniper?” I don’t understand why so many people bring this up. It wouldn’t make any sense for the class to have.

Of course having longer range would benefit us; it would benefit any profession. We’re engineers: we’re supposed to be engineering things. Instead of asking for more range, how about making what we’re supposed to be doing a bit stronger (not that I’m saying anything should be, but it would make more sense to ask for)?

And as for the thought of engineers and warriors switching rifle abilities, the same problem emerges; why would a warrior have these abilities and an engineer not have them?

Everyone mentions that 3/5 rifle abilities are close range; they’re CC and get-away abilities. Yes, they’re short range, but half of the guys you run into are going to try to be in that range.

I honestly agree.

Whenever I hear of a sniper kit, I simply think of all those videos 12 year olds made a while back with that Crawling song… just makes me feel embarrassed for them you know… makes me feel bad.

Firstly: Its a bit impractical. I learnt a while ago, to ask for changes that are reasonable and achievable first, and then after they are fixed, start going into the crazy areas.

A sniper kit is no good to us, if kits are still treated as bundles for example.

Furthermore… it would take a lot of coding, and would either replace an existing elite, an existing utility OR it would be a new one there, and frankly, other professions would be kitten as engineers have one more utility/elite than they do, and they would demand some new thing and it would get crazy. And of course, if you replace something to facilitate the kit, then people who used it before would be kitten

And finally… traits. They would need to be changed up significantly, and or more added, to make a sniper kit viable.

In the end: its a lot of work. Maybe it would have been a good suggestion in the early Betas. But now? Need to be more reasonably.

A better suggestion for filling the gap is changing how grenade kit works:

Change it so it works somewhat similar to jump shot.
The problem with jumpshot of course, is that it has a preset time it has to be in the air. Which leads to you looking silly while you use it for the jump and landing damage.

Well maybe apply something like that to grenades? If the range of grenades is below 600, then they act like they do now, but anything thrown past 600, has a preset flight time on it. Maybe 1.5s maximum.

So, throwing at max range, would be significantly sped up.

You know what would work for a ranged weapon? Buffed up pistols.

It’s already got damage orientated skills, you could bring two (the offhand is designed to punish those who get too close with blowtorch and keep them away with the glueshot) or a shield.

TheRamosOnline.2670:

Haette.2701:

TheRamosOnline.2670:

Point is, Engineer is meant to be the techy-long range class, but it constantly forces us into a dangerous melee range.

After carefully perusing our weapon skills, I’m pretty confident in saying that we are NOT meant to be a long-range class.

Do I really have to point out the Firearms talent that increases pistol and rifle range?
Do I really have to point out the Explosives talent that increases grenade throw range/explosion range?

If you want to be a close range Engineer, that’s fine. But don’t be complaining that you die before you can do anything.

Every class has these generic traits. Same with the cooldown reducing ones and duration increasing ones.
Just because we have a trait that reduces fall damage and releases a bunch of grenades doesn’t mean our class is supposed to be a human-airstrike either. Even with the increased range traits the pistol still fails to reach the base range of a Ranger’s bow. The Engineer is not a long range class by any stretch of the imagination.
In fact, the very notion that we have to trait into getting increase range would suggest that it’s not something which is a core part of the Engineer mechanic, and it is -optional-
And there are way more useful traits in the Firearms line than increased range.

If you want to be a long-range Engineer that’s fine, but don’t complain when all your weapon skills bar two are utterly useless.

Engineer’s rifle is more about control than raw damage. Warrior’s rifle is just a blunt instrument…at range (like the rest of the class).

Engineer Rifle just flat out needs more damage. It’s only useful for control. If you want to kill anyone you need a kit (which funnily enough provide damage and control).

Net shot needs to do damage. I don’t mean a condition either, because rifle = power.

Blunderbuss needs to more range, and get rid of the cast time that makes it way to easy for it to miss on a mobile opponent.

Overcharged shot needs not knock the Engineer down. Why should my own skill punish me?

Jump Shot needs to stop being so slow so you can actually hit someone that’s not immobilised.

I really wish Rifle was viable, because I am getting very sick of doing nothing but spamming grenades.

Go to get some more gears than try again. if u are already geared then u are doing something wrong.

My only gripe about the Rifle is Blunderbuss.

Blunderbuss needs to be changed to:
Rocket Shot. 10 Second Cooldown. Fires a rocket towards the enemy, that causes more damage to enemies the closer they are to the targeted enemy.

Damage at 100 distance: 618
Damage at 400 distance: 386
Bleeding(4stacks) at 100 distance: 4 s (680 damage)
Bleeding at 400 distance: 4 s (170 damage)
Range: 1000

It’s EXACTLY the same amount of damage but changed to a 1000 distance ranged attack, that’s not a cone but a target based AoE.

Oh, and Jump Shot could either have a MUCH faster animation, or an invulnerability buff like Leaping Death Blossom. 3 seconds in the air is a lot of time.

Once again, I had a response typed up that was lost by a site error. Grr.

Anyways, I’m in the camp that would prefer the warrior rifle line to our own for sure.

If they replaced 3, 4, and 5 with a volley, rifle butt, and kill shot, it would be my perfect skill bar

Mif.3471:

Engineer Rifle just flat out needs more damage. It’s only useful for control. If you want to kill anyone you need a kit (which funnily enough provide damage and control).

Net shot needs to do damage. I don’t mean a condition either, because rifle = power.

Blunderbuss needs to more range, and get rid of the cast time that makes it way to easy for it to miss on a mobile opponent.

Overcharged shot needs not knock the Engineer down. Why should my own skill punish me?

Jump Shot needs to stop being so slow so you can actually hit someone that’s immobilised.

I really wish Rifle was viable, because I am getting very sick of doing nothing but spamming grenades.

After looking over the few other skills that are Launch abilities, I have come to understand why the self-knockdown.

So to understand Overcharged Shot, we have to look at other skills from other Professions that have a Launch ability. One also has to see the clear difference of between a Launch and a Knockback. Launch last much longer and actually lift the play above the ground in an arc animation. While Knockback may knock you on your kitten Launch will knock you on your back. In essence, it’s an extended knockdown.

There are only three weapon skills in the game that cause Launch.
Banish, Overcharged Shot, and Updraft. First off, let’s talk about Banish. Banish has a semi-comparable recast time of only 25 seconds. It has a long cast time, can be anticipated, and it only usable in melee range. It also has the farthest Launch distance of any ability.

Next is of course, Updraft. With the longest cooldown of the three weapon skills, it can launch multiple enemies at once. It comes with a bonus evade move that is a bonus to the Launch itself. However, Updraft has a comparable range to Banish as you have to be relatively close to use it.

Now, of course Overcharged Shot. This has THE LOWEST cooldown of any Launch ability in the game. It can be used at a medium range distance and can be traited to have an even longer range. It’s also has the “surprise!!!” factor going for it as it cannot be anticipated with an animation. The drawback is that we ourselves get knocked down.

TL;DR
-Banish has a lowish cooldown, farthest Launch in the game. Can only be used in melee range, on one opponent, and can be anticipated.
-Updraft can hit multiple enemies, semi-hard to anticipate, grants Swiftness, and comes with a dodge. Can only be used next to melee range and has a long cooldown.
-Overcharged shot has the lowest cooldown in the game for any Launch, can be extremely hard to predict, and can be used at medium range. It knocks you down and can only hit one opponent.

EDIT: It is also worth mentioning that Engineer has access to the most Launch abilities in the game. In fact, more than half (7/12 to be exact) of the Launch abilities that don’t come from environmental weapons are available through Engineer.

Haette.2701:

“So 3 of 5 of our attacks are close range attacks, despite engineers using a rifle wanting to be long range.”

I can’t accept this argument after seeing what Mesmers do with greatswords.
.

What are you talking about??? 4/5 abilities on Mesmers long sword abilities are 1200 range.

Are we all (me included) talking different languages or is this more of a PVE vs WWW vs sPvP or is it more of I want to play it this way and I can’t

For example
I use a rifle and gadgets and I have had no problem holding my own in WWW. I often hold off 2 players at once. So I do not feel there is an issue with the rifle. Sure players have abilities to counter but that’s the fun of it. knowing when to use your skills

How hard of a time would I have if I gear and change my traits for healing ran around with the rifle. Does that mean the rifle sucks?

I am just confused as I have found many creative way to use my abilities where the other classes I seem to be stuck in a rotation of key presses. Now granted I am level 80 with my Eng and working on my Defender and necro now.

For me a Eng is mid range support and I play it as one.I have great success in PVE and WWW with my rifle gadget build.
*edited to fix some typos and make new ones

“What are you talking about??? 4/5 abilities on Mesmers long sword abilities are 1200 range.”

That’s exactly my point. Someone new to mesmer is going to slap on a greatsword so they can SPIN TO WIN like everyone else he’s seen with a big ol’ sword, and be surprised and confused as to why they’re shooting laser beams instead. Likewise, a new engineer is going to wonder why his SNIPOR RIFUL has a 1000-range auto and does most of its damage at point-blank range. The weapons are good at what they do, they’re just used very differently from the stereotypical greatsword or rifle.

BTW I’m not saying the rifle’s perfect, 3 and 5 can be crazy laggy and 1 still feels lackluster even with added piercing. I still like the idea of an inverted “longbow” effect, where it deals bonus damage at closer ranges. That would add some much-needed damage to the rifle and also make it VERY CLEAR that this is a “melee” weapon.

Just to point out, originally there was going to be “shotguns” in the game but they decided to merge them with rifles. Hence why engineer feel all shotgun like. The rifle is not bad per say, but I do wish we had a sniper rifle kit or something. Cause I wouldn’t mind giving up a utility slot to get some more range. Grenades are nice, but they are situation only tool and if you do have to practice in order to hit with them. Not saying grenades are bad mind you, just learning curve is involved.

TheRamosOnline.2670:

Haette.2701:

“So 3 of 5 of our attacks are close range attacks, despite engineers using a rifle wanting to be long range.”

I can’t accept this argument after seeing what Mesmers do with greatswords.

Stop asking them to ruin an amazing weapon just so you can play sniper with five skills that all do the exact same thing plus different conditions. If you want that we have grenades.

Mesmers with great swords are still a ranged class, they don’t have to get into melee range to use their damaging abilities while Engineers only get 1 long ranged attack; auto attack.

Point is, Engineer is meant to be the techy-long range class, but it constantly forces us into a dangerous melee range. Considering that we’re the squishiest class due to not having many escape abilities if we actually want to do damage (who would take the slippy, oil shoes or rocket boots a serious fight?) and yeah, there’s an issue.
I learned how to abuse the melee range abilities rather well, but that doesn’t change the fact that a ranged class is forces to be in melee range to be effective.

Use your grenades in WvW, tell me how you fair.

I get where your coming from with the tech-y long range class notion but the GW2 is not long range. We’re built to be a medium to close range skirmisher at best. We have no build that is really viable outside of about ~1000.

I really feel that engineers are built for knight / carrion gear and toughness stacking rather than anything else. The class runes play into this as well. No matter what your stuck nuking it out in melee

The GW2 Engi is closer to the TF2 Engi then anything but it is confusing. Engineers are a lot of different things in a lot of different games. The attributes of the steam punky professions haven’t really be locked down in fantasy yet. Are we archers / snipes? melee fighters? tech priest?

(Squat tech priest!!!!)

Spracket.9604:

Haette.2701:

“So 3 of 5 of our attacks are close range attacks, despite engineers using a rifle wanting to be long range.”

I can’t accept this argument after seeing what Mesmers do with greatswords.

Stop asking them to ruin an amazing weapon just so you can play sniper with five skills that all do the exact same thing plus different conditions. If you want that we have grenades.

Ugh, every time someone mentions “sniper kit,” I die a little bit inside. I’ve mentioned this in another thread. Where the heck did the idea of a sniper kit for an engineer come from? What about engineers makes anybody think “long-range sniper?” I don’t understand why so many people bring this up. It wouldn’t make any sense for the class to have.

Of course having longer range would benefit us; it would benefit any profession. We’re engineers: we’re supposed to be engineering things. Instead of asking for more range, how about making what we’re supposed to be doing a bit stronger (not that I’m saying anything should be, but it would make more sense to ask for)?

And as for the thought of engineers and warriors switching rifle abilities, the same problem emerges; why would a warrior have these abilities and an engineer not have them?

Everyone mentions that 3/5 rifle abilities are close range; they’re CC and get-away abilities. Yes, they’re short range, but half of the guys you run into are going to try to be in that range.

Maybe because warriors are are close range type, and maybe because engineers only have two weapon types access? (Dont bring the kits here, please).
As for the sniper kit, sorry, I meant no harm- it’s just an example. Sure it’s a lousy idea compared to have long ranged skills.
I was just saying this is the way I pictured rifle engineer, expressing my disappointment.
And OF COURSE long range benifits every class, but hey, this is the engineer forum.
Truth is it’s not much more a matter of range than a matter of skills “feel”. Pistols feel that way, but they’re weak, and they’re not rifles.
Playing with a rifle feels like being a Redneck chasing kids off his corn field.

EDIT : by weak pistols, I mean raw damage, not DoT.

Excuse accepted Clover, we pistol-users are very open about our disadvantages.. Even though within the time i do 20k with conditions ive only done like 500 direct dmg which is kinda sad XD (not saying we aint strong though)

True about the short range feel of engineers .. At wvw i hoped rifle would feel sniperlike.. Disappointed now i use turrets (especially rocket) in wvw .. At least those kinda make me feel viable at long range

At least warriors don’t have turrets. Ha ha.

while I would LOVE to see blunderbuss and jumpshot completely replaced with somthing else entirely.

Another option that I dont see listed here, What about changing the engi to use heavy armor instead of leather? That way he would at least have better protection to be in melee range for most of his powers.

Granted at this point in the game i strongly doubt any major changes, such as replacing powers or armor changes, would ever happen and this is all just wishful thinking on stuff thats never going to happen.

At the very VERY least they need to increase the range of blunderbuss to get it out of the “shorter than melee” range.

XelNigma.6315:

while I would LOVE to see blunderbuss and jumpshot completely replaced with somthing else entirely.

Another option that I dont see listed here, What about changing the engi to use heavy armor instead of leather? That way he would at least have better protection to be in melee range for most of his powers.

Granted at this point in the game i strongly doubt any major changes, such as replacing powers or armor changes, would ever happen and this is all just wishful thinking on stuff thats never going to happen.

At the very VERY least they need to increase the range of blunderbuss to get it out of the “shorter than melee” range.

I’m under the impression that they were originally the third Solider profession, while Thief and Ranger were the two Adventurer professions. Then it got switched around in the early parts of design.

Jon P: The marksman and warden eventually became the ranger. We had a profession that was called the juggernaut, for lack of a better name! It was basically a non-magical knight profession. At some stage we also talked about the engineer being a heavy armored profession, and then he became medium. Things move around a lot, but why things don’t make it is because people who may have played the juggernaut would have really chosen warrior instead, and it’s just taking away from the flavour of the warrior to have things too similar to it.

Rifle skills were designed for comic effect and not gameplay imo. As is the norm for engineer skills apparently.

It would make sense engineers were soldier based… majority of their kits and weapons are melee range.

I think the issue here is Warrior gets long range, high damage skills with a ton of health and heavy armor to boot.

Engineer is a medium armor mid-low health class that for some reason still requires you to step on someone’s toes to do good burst. Oh, and Rifle warrior deals 10k damage in a single crit on killshot with the right build. Look me in the eyes and tell me thats not stupid in comparison to a class that needs to get into melee range and blow all your cooldowns to do even close to that much damage.

It’s honestly not a good idea to compare class mechanic to class mechanic. There’s too much going on with each profession’s mechanic, that it would be near impossible to accurately measure and judge on any level of accuracy.

The 10k critical hit shot comes from their Burst mechanic, and as such it would be tough to judge the merit of that when we have our mechanic the way it is. But it should be worth mentioning that we can reach similar numbers with our mechanic too.

I don’t have a problem comparing class mechanics, given that engineer’s sucks and is designed to return basic functionality that was superfluously removed.

I’m sorry that the Engineer’s Tool Belt mechanic is not to your liking. It adds extra damage/control/support to ANY build and is one of the few classes that can manually change their class mechanic functionality. As I stated, with certain builds, you can certainly break 10k damage just as readily, sometimes even more reliably, than a Warrior.

Warrior rifles may have slightly larger range, but engineer rifles hit much harder unless the warrior has heavy trait investment for killshot. With any investment into power or crit, you can dish out plenty of pain as an engie. In any rifle fight I ever got into with a rifle warrior in WvW, I would either completely destroy the warrior or he’d be forced to switch to a melee in order to noticeably damage me. I’d take the quick burst and good control potential of our rifle over the warrior’s additional 200 range anyday.

Aristio.2784:

XelNigma.6315:

while I would LOVE to see blunderbuss and jumpshot completely replaced with somthing else entirely.

Another option that I dont see listed here, What about changing the engi to use heavy armor instead of leather? That way he would at least have better protection to be in melee range for most of his powers.

Granted at this point in the game i strongly doubt any major changes, such as replacing powers or armor changes, would ever happen and this is all just wishful thinking on stuff thats never going to happen.

At the very VERY least they need to increase the range of blunderbuss to get it out of the “shorter than melee” range.

I’m under the impression that they were originally the third Solider profession, while Thief and Ranger were the two Adventurer professions. Then it got switched around in the early parts of design.

Jon P: The marksman and warden eventually became the ranger. We had a profession that was called the juggernaut, for lack of a better name! It was basically a non-magical knight profession. At some stage we also talked about the engineer being a heavy armored profession, and then he became medium. Things move around a lot, but why things don’t make it is because people who may have played the juggernaut would have really chosen warrior instead, and it’s just taking away from the flavour of the warrior to have things too similar to it.

Never thougt of that, but this is a brilliant idea. This would, indeed, make sense. As for the argument of Engineer “jugg” being too close to warrior, with the given skills, it’s rubbish.

I think its more that warriors retain all their hp and armor when grabbing a bow, while we dont have that option. At the same time you cant just ask warriors to farm medium armor for using a bow either. But should that really mean engis need heavy armor? Or that warrior bow perhaps didnt take the Warriors defensive stats into account enough?

Not saying either is overpowered as i havent met enough bow warriors on my engi yet. But i disagree that it makes sense to have heavy armor on a character with all these jumps and a millions potions and heavy tools in his belt and pockets.

I’d say blunderbluss could get a tad more range. So we dont have to tank at melee until we can knockback. I know its more of a skill to punish melee when they DO get close, but it feels a bit awkward. A warrior can just drop his bow and then do a ton more dmg in melee than us as it is. We’re just sorta forced to stand close while getting beaten on to get any effect on our long range weap.

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Engineer is a medium armor mid-low health class that for some reason still requires you to step on someone’s toes to do good burst. Oh, and Rifle warrior deals 10k damage in a single crit on killshot with the right build. Look me in the eyes and tell me thats not stupid in comparison to a class that needs to get into melee range and blow all your cooldowns to do even close to that much damage.

Yeah, how can ANET dare to break with the common RPG design that low armor means more damage and range and everything else is negligible.