Guild Wars 2

Let’s leave the bugs alone for a bit since the engineer forum is finally open.

DPS

Right now, every dps spec other than grenades is (rightfully) considered useless and is mostly only good thanks to the grenadier trait.

• Flamethrower: Even with the new Juggernaut, the best spec I could come up with only did 75% of the dps I did with grenades
• Bombs: Does just a bit less damage than grenades but is over shadowed thanks to traits like Sharpshooter, Incendiary Powder or Steel-Packed Powder that can trigger multiple times in a single attack with grenades but only once with bombs. You’d expect a spec that basically forces you to sit on your target to deal good damage but no luck here. Also the healing from Elixir-Infused Bomb is terrible.
• Turrets: Not even considering that they are destroyed in 5 seconds on any fight with AOEs and for some unknow reason are often a priority target for basically any mob , the fact that they don’t scale with stats makes them obsolete. Their long cooldowns really don’t help either, they already don’t do much damage but when they’re destroyed and on cooldown, you really feel like you’ve been gutted.
• Rifle/pistol: At range, it’s the lowest damage i’ve seen in every spec I tried, in melee, it just alright at best. You just need to check the numbers to notice it.
• Elixirs(with HGH): Seemed interesting, too bad you have to spend so much time drinking potions for damage pretty much equivalent to what you get without spending 30 points in Alchemy.
• Harpoon Gun (because underwater combat matters too): If anything it’s in a better shape than rifle damage. But yeah, grenades are also better underwater.
• Grenades: Because even the best spec isn’t without faults, namely the trajectory of the grenades. At short or medium range the grenades are launched pretty much horizontally, but at long range, they are lobbed very high instead, increasing the time they take to hit their target zone by a lot but are also very likely to hit ceilings, decors or trees in the way.

Generally, specs based around long durations conditions damage are useless in group play or world events unless you’re the one with the most condition damage on your gear. (which is unlikely to be an engineer since we lose the stats from our weapon when using a kit)

Support

As a buffer, we’re basically limited to throwing elixirs which is absolutely terrible because:

• Random boon
• Short durations
• Small area of effect along with the fact that it’s zone targetted goes against the dynamic and movement heavy fights we see in GW2.

As a healer, we shine the most, too bad it’s boring, unrewarding, unreliable and everyone else will consider you mostly useless. See, being a healer in GW2 is a very hazy definition, I already expected that a long time ago when Anet announced they wanted to get rid of the holy trinity (tank, healer, dps).

• Boring because you have so few skills to begin with. (and I’m quite certain we’re one of the class with the most healing skills)
• Unreliable because all those skills are ground targetted or dropped.
• Unrewarding because it really doesn’t depend on you but on the rest of your group to go in the healing zone here, get in range of the turret there or walk on the bandages on the ground.
• And people will consider you useless, because Anet really insisted that there was no healer in this game, nobody plays them. And this whole: healers aren’t absolutely needed so healers are useless mentality, but for some reason people still ask for tanks (guardian or warrior) when doing dungeons.