Guild Wars 2

When looking at the engineer, you need to consider the following

1. We have no weapon swapping
2. We use “kits” that have toolbelt skills. These kits take up a utility slot
3. A large majorty of the toolbelt skills aren’t incredible good or have long CDs
4. Turrets are immobile and large cooldowns.
5. Two of our elites are useless when compared to the third
6. A majority of our DPS is close range (bomb kit, FT, Rifle). Our lack of weaponswapping to account for people who kite with range makes it a very big handicap.
7. We have very little high single target dps. Our once main DPS spec, nades, were range AoE targets. Those in constant motion were difficult to kill
8. We use medium armor. This is quite the handicap because our class is mostly close range. Unlike the thief, we do not have the same amount of great escapes. Our escapes often come at a price. (Rocket shoes knock you down)

These are some of the biggest issues with engineer right now. The recent balances and nerfs dont seem to take these things into account. I can’t even use bomb kit in WvW, which is quite sad. If i get in close I get downed very quickly. I could use my elixer S to buy me some time, but its not nearly enough.

Deified.7520:

When looking at the engineer, you need to consider the following

1. We have no weapon swapping
2. We use “kits” that have toolbelt skills. These kits take up a utility slot
3. A large majorty of the toolbelt skills aren’t incredible good or have long CDs
4. Turrets are immobile and large cooldowns.
5. Two of our elites are useless when compared to the third
6. A majority of our DPS is close range (bomb kit, FT, Rifle). Our lack of weaponswapping to account for people who kite with range makes it a very big handicap.
7. We have very little high single target dps. Our once main DPS spec, nades, were range AoE targets. Those in constant motion were difficult to kill
8. We use medium armor. This is quite the handicap because our class is mostly close range. Unlike the thief, we do not have the same amount of great escapes. Our escapes often come at a price. (Rocket shoes knock you down)

These are some of the biggest issues with engineer right now. The recent balances and nerfs dont seem to take these things into account. I can’t even use bomb kit in WvW, which is quite sad. If i get in close I get downed very quickly. I could use my elixer S to buy me some time, but its not nearly enough.

Here’s my response to your list:

1. Doesn’t worry me, master your weapon to master yourself.
2. If you can’t handle it, play another profession. Most engineers know how to work around handicaps.
3. Time your abilities on a cycle so you always have a trick up your sleeve. They aren’t meant to be overpowering, just supplemental to your current skills.
4. Turrets are meant to be something that assist the engineer or the group. Placement is key during battles. If you don’t like it, use something else such as elixirs.
5. Supply Drop is handy for additional DPS and heals. Mortar has uses in Wv3. The racial elites are subjective to the situation at hand.
6. Engineers are short/mid range combatants. Most offensive abilities have decent range so you don’t have to get up close and personal.
7. Try utilizing poisons, bleeds, and other forms of condition damage to win a fight. You don’t need raw damage to fight and that mentality is going to cripple you.
8. See #6: If you’re on top of an enemy and he/she is kicking your kitten, then you’re obviously not playing to your strengths. Granted Overcharge Shot knocks you on your butt, it knocks the enemy back considerably to give you breathing room. That’s what most or all of engineer escapes do, give you breathing room in a fight.

I hate to be the one who says “L2P” but the point is you may have to re-evaluate how you play your profession. Engineers in my opinion are mid-range support dps, very handy if you know what you’re doing. If you want to be in someone’s face, warrior and guardian work just fine in that category.

@SemiProStump.1084

1st: we do have sub-par damage overall, what (sorta) makes up for it we got many control skills like blocks, knockbacks, immobilizes and such.

2nd: assuming you want to use turrets for what they were originally thought: turret skills HAVE HUGE cooldowns so QUIT it man, in pvp you HAVE to trait’em to get’em to survive, and whenever facing an AoE focused enemy they ARE going to blow fast, in WvW they are useless, in PvE they WOULD be useful, just not while leveling/exploring ‘coz you want to travel fast, maybe inside dungeons in general, too bad “Deployable turrets” trait is bugged and doesn’t work outside of PvP.

@semipro
No class should be forced to play a support role, and thats exactly what we are doing. We really dont have any burst DPS, especially with all the nerfs to our damage sepcs (p/p, nades). Even in Wv3, mortar sucks. If you’re up on a wall, sure it might be good, but every class gets 3 elites, and I’m pretty sure each doesn’t have one elite that is only for WvW…Sure we can rack up the conditions quickly if we choose, but out condition spells are either on pretty long cooldowns or rely on crits. I can pop my conditions and stack bleed, but another engineer can undo all my work within seconds (not mention the condtion removals of all the other classes) and then I have to dodge and wait for CD.

The point of this thread was that I don’t think that they are considering these things when they work on our class. There isn’t supposed to be a holy trinity, and I honestly feel like a holy trinity when playing as an engineer. Also, I’m not so much saying that engineer suck, they are great. I am saying that they are outclass so heavily by every other class. Mesmers, Warriors, and Thiefs can do an insane amount of DPS within seconds. Sure I could pop elixer S, but what if theres two? They are also outdone heavily in dungeons. I played every other class, and it is amazing how much better they are. No class in this game should be confined of sitting behind another class while they do all the work. We should be able to hold our own in the DPS field against the other classes, we should be able to do good support against the other classes (not just great condition removal, although support is one of the engineers only uses atm). I really don’t think there is any excuse to how they have been treating engineers. While you may try to keep positive and brown nose/ defend them, the statistics don’t lie. Engineer is one of the least played classes and least feared in the field, there is good reason to.

For those who say we have no burst damage…

For me stacking up might with enchance peformance and a crit boost from medkit, then net shot, jump shot to foe, net attack, blunderbuss, toolkit, prybar did quite some good dmg – And I didn’t have much power. A glass cannon build could easily do 3k on each ot those hits while also doing damage with confusion and bleeds – And stacking up might with sigils on kits, you could do even more – Not to mention netting your foe up a lot will make him take more damage – And let you keep hitting him with your wrench.

@Oxstar.7643

You do realize you just listed like 7 skills when other classes can do the same things with a couple clicks?

While immobilized they can still do plenty of stuff to make your assault pretty useless.

Also what you are mentioning is only viable in pvp, I’m guessing you don’t mean pve ‘coz mobs ain’t that hard generally, and goin melee on “2HKO bosses” is… weird…

Remember in Terminator 2 when John and the black guy are getting the chip and the arm out of the glass containers and the black guy starts going off about all the things you have to do to get the arm out. Then John just throws them on the ground!

The black guy would have been an Engineer and we all know what happens to the black guy!!!!!

Haha @Crispeh

But imagine this. Somebody lines up all the classes and a person comes up and is looking for a person to finish their party.

Person : I want condition damage
Necro and Ranger do so much more condition damage easily and more sustained than an engineer
Person : I want burst damage
Mesmer, Warrior, Thief, and even guardian can do more burst easier than engineer.
Person: I want support
Engineer can do condition removal minimal amount of healing. Sure he can buff, but people need to be grouped up which is kinda bad if an enemy pops an AoE.
Thief can add some dominate poisions, guardians are just great support (kinda like monks). Mesmer is even better.

The problem with the engineer is not that they suck, it is that the other class are way overpowered in their respected field. They either need to bring us up to their level or bring them down.

eng might not have best single target dps but a glass cannon static discharge eng is up with backstab thief in burst damage

Support is just another word for “lackluster” or something that requires someone else to pick up the slack.

What the hell does “support dps” mean? Is that elixir gun? Because it sucks kitten, fyi. Everything else does straight-up damage.

Deified.7520:

stuff

1. In exchange we can equip and swap kits.
2. Rather than seeing it as “a kit that takes up a utility slot”, you should be seeing it as “a utility skill that maps to an F-key and also equips a faux-secondary weapon”. Kits do no expend a utility slot, as the toolbelt ability can largely be viewed as such.
3. Toolbelt skills vary. For instance rifle toolbelt is a very short cooldown, and both big ol’ bomb and grenade barrage are nothing but awesome. Even some of the more rarely equipped abilities like slick shoe’s speed boost are incredibly potent for their situations which, by and large, puts most toolbelt skills in line with other profession’s utility skills. Granted some ARE terrible (incendiary ammo, thumper’s blast, and ALL of the thrown elixirs with their random kitten effects), but then every profession has abilities resolved to need work so we’re not unusual there.
4. Turret cooldowns aren’t as bad as you think, though some are admittedly in need of addressing. For comparison the elementalist’s glyph of lesser elemental is a 45 second cooldown, which gives a mobile damaging pet. Alternatively rocket turret, our turret with the worst cooldown, has a full 60 second cooldown. This is followed by thumper turret at 50 seconds (which is fair, as thumper is basically an earth elemental that trades mobility for an on-demand knockdown), flame turret (whose best use is the smoke field…) at 40 seconds, then net turret (always fantastic) at 30 seconds, and finally the spammably weak rifle turret at 20 seconds. Given that we can have more than one out at a time and all can be “overcharged” for additional effects or exploded for a blast finisher, they’re easily put on par with elementals despite the trade off against their mobility (though I still find rocket turret’s cooldown to be completely absurd for its utility, and also possibly flame’s).
5. It is not completely unusual for a profession to have one elite that stands out. Also while Supply Crate is king on land, Elixir X is completely viable while underwater. It is true that mortar needs work.
6. They want the engineer to itemize for toughness. This is clear with their “rune of the engineer”, which gives power and toughness. The class is meant to be played running in and out of melee range depending on the fights. Granted some (many) fights make this too dangerous to consider, but then even thieves must sometimes pull out the guns to kite-fight. Kits are ideally supposed to also help with this, giving us additional options up close (FT/bomb/tool) as well as at range (grenade), but they all currently have their own flaws to deal with.
7. None of the engineer’s primary attacks are designed with single-target in mind, but rather small-scale grouped AoE. Rifle #1 pierces and #3 and #5 are both close AoEs, pistol #1 explodes, #2 spreads, and #3 bounces, and the only kit with a single-target attack is the tool kit. This is not to say that our attacks don’t need buffs in damage (warrior melee is a cone-AoE so our piercing is hardly special), but for the most part the only real “single-target” stuff we have is utility abilities like net shot.
8. We have more control options than a thief, and can equip some excellet escape traits and abilities. We have elixir S and can even trait to use it for free at <25% health, and can even trait for free stealth any time we’re immobalized (with a short cooldown). The problem of course being that there’s just never enough room for all the traits we want at one time…

What engineers really need more than anything else is intuitive synergy. An elementalist can drop a fire combo field with off-hand dagger, then use scepter #2 and #3 inside it to AoE buff 6 stacks of might on themselves and the party. To replicate, an engineer must drop a napalm blast with a flamethrower (which has a very narrow field to combo in), then either explode a turret inside it (invalidating the turret) or use either the thumper’s toolbelt ability (assuming it’s equipped) or their supply crate elite. This is just weird, and full of unique downsides involving which skills you bring and how you have to use them. It’s a lot of work for what can be done much easier by someone else.

Then again, that might be part of the charm of the profession? We can do almost everything, but nothing easily? If nothing else blast finishers can always synergize with someone else’s combo field.

tl;dr – Engineers are still interesting but admittedly have flaws that likely need to be looked at.

don’t forget that most of our utility traits are not in the same places at all the other classes.

Other classes enjoy things like 50% endurance regen, 5% crit chance, and automatic application of boons when switching to a different weapon or using a skill automatically. The first two happens with the same category class adventurer, which makes it even more insulting. It’s like they just threw together some traits for the engineer and said OH that one might be too powerful let’s move it to grandmaster. Meanwhile the first two i listed were from the thief and the ranger tree and they only need 5-10 points to get those. Yeah that’s fair right? smh

CriSPeH.8512:

Remember in Terminator 2 when John and the black guy are getting the chip and the arm out of the glass containers and the black guy starts going off about all the things you have to do to get the arm out. Then John just throws them on the ground!

The black guy would have been an Engineer and we all know what happens to the black guy!!!!!

Hey, I’m a black guy who plays Engineer and I’m not the first one to go down! I’m actually one of the last people to die.

All seriousness I dont think Engineer is that bad.

NickDollahZ.5348:

CriSPeH.8512:

Remember in Terminator 2 when John and the black guy are getting the chip and the arm out of the glass containers and the black guy starts going off about all the things you have to do to get the arm out. Then John just throws them on the ground!

The black guy would have been an Engineer and we all know what happens to the black guy!!!!!

Hey, I’m a black guy who plays Engineer and I’m not the first one to go down! I’m actually one of the last people to die.

All seriousness I dont think Engineer is that bad.

Exactly, I’m not saying that either. But I saw someone who put engineer perfectly. We are the “jack of all trades, masters of none”. This introduces a huge problem for the developers. Since we aren’t the best class suited for anything, we are often second picks if the other class is there. If they make us good and we are good at everything then we could easily become overpowered.

However, every class should be a jack of all trades. If they’re keeping us down because we’re the only class that follows their original concept of no holy trinity, then they need to hurry it up with the other class nerfs.

I definitely do not believe that engineer is as subpar as you are saying. There are certain builds that dominate in WvW and PvP, and can also be successful in PvE. However I do think that Anet has yet to decide where this profession is headed in the future. Engineers are an underdog FOR NOW, but even as the underdog we can get kitten done.

So, for now, im gonna continue WvW’ing and enjoying the chance to experiment with different builds in my favorite profession. I suggest you do the same.