Guild Wars 2

About a month ago I wrote this thread. While it’s difficult to disentangle numerous 500+ word forum posts into easily digestible soundbites, the conclusions I reached then and now can be whittled down into a few salient points:

1. We hard-counter no meta builds in particular despite still being hard-countered by conditions and boon strip
2. We do not provide team-wide sustain to the level of a druid or tempest in team fights
3. We cannot replicate the damage output of a warrior, guardian, or necromancer in team fights

This, in my view, has resulted in us being left in a no-man’s-land of sorts in the meta, not really contributing much to a team, fulfilling instead a mash-up of pseudo-roles that could be better covered by more specialized professions. Our responsibilities this season were quite wide and multi-faceted, but we never were really given the tools to excel at any of them—except to pester side points and force 1v2s.

Are there people that still found success in light of these facts? Absolutely. I saw plenty of engineer mains like Lycar and Marvin in my games finding plenty of success with the profession. And while I’ll be ending the season out of the top 250, I still finished the season in platinum, mostly solo-queuing, having not really played the game much for the entirety of 2016 and being admittedly incredibly rusty both on my mechanics and my rotations. I’m OK with what I’ve achieved this season, and I’m happy that many of you reading this thread did just as well as I did or better.

I am not here to insinuate that the scrapper specialization is awful; in fact, I think the scrapper is about where it should be. The problem, rather, is everything else about us.

If the engineer is to be relegated to side-points for season six, I’m fine with that. But the pistol and rifle should be buffed with “purity of purpose” in mind.

Decap engineer absolutely must be a thing again, and core engineer should be a lot stronger than it currently is because buffing it would resolve almost all of the above issues:

• Condition engineer serves as an incredibly effective 1v1 build, and hard-counters numerous duelists that dominated this season—including both berserker and dragonhunter. Condition engineer would actually be the one build/profession that could actually keep dragonhunter in check for season six.

• Rifle engineer also serves as an incredibly effective 1v1 build, servicing a decap role. If only the rifle was buffed so that the damage output of Hip Shot, Blunderbuss, and Jump Shot was threatening enough to warrant the trade-off in survivability with the hammer.

Overall, what I’m hoping to drive at in this post is that the scrapper is likely, ideally, where it should be. Its mediocrity this season is largely at fault for other professions being slightly overtuned, and not an issue native to the specialization trait line, the hammer, or gyros specifically. By boosting build diversity with core engineer builds (or even just being given incentive to take pistols or rifle with scrapper) I think a lot of the “meh” feeling many of us had this season will be largely resolved.

My concern, however, is that the scrapper trait line will remain the primary focus of engineer balance moving forward, and with another new specialization coming within a year or two, a lot of these preexisting problems may never be resolved.

Something else I was thinking about, which I think would be a really easy fix for core engi, is changing Utility Goggles so that it’s no longer a blind immunity but that it makes our attacks unblockable similar to Signet of Might. That change alone would open up so many opportunities for us, and maybe make Tools a viable trait line in PvP again.

Some perspective on Rifle:

I don’t know if any damage buff will compensate for the fact that the cc that rifle depends on just doesn’t work any more.

• Vs Warrior – Can’t Overcharged Shot because they’ll stunbreak and kill you while you’re self-cc’d – or Last Stand will proc Balanced Stance if they’re running it. Can’t Net Shot while they have resistance or stability, which is nearly always. Can’t Net Shot when they don’t have resistance or stab because movement skills break immob instantly on a shorter cooldown thatn net shot. Can’t Overcharged Shot while they’re in Zerk mode because of Eternal Champion. Etc. etc. You have range – yes, but they have a reflecting block and mobility. They can be on point and attacking much longer than you.

• Vs DH – I think this matchup is winnable for Rifle engi, though still unfavorable in a pvp situation because Guard/DH dumps traps on point and controls it, meaning you’ll lose the point for too long before you eventually win. Rifle Engi would like to OC shot them off the point, but can’t because of long-lasting DH blocks/aegis procs, and the fact that OC shot will launch you backward through Test of Faith, taking damage.

I won’t go through every class, but hopefully you get the idea. Rifle cc is ineffective and high-risk, therefore rifle is ineffective.

IMO, it would have to be a significant damage buff to compensate for that fact.

I don’t know what the solution is.. maybe unblockable Overcharged Shot? To me, that’d be a bit OP though considering it’s an instant CC. Backward evade on Overcharged shot could work. Jump Shot definitely needs evade.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Something else I was thinking about, which I think would be a really easy fix for core engi, is changing Utility Goggles so that it’s no longer a blind immunity but that it makes our attacks unblockable similar to Signet of Might. That change alone would open up so many opportunities for us, and maybe make Tools a viable trait line in PvP again.

I’m fine with only this… Engineer class needs an unblockable effect…