Guild Wars 2

We are supposed to be the Jack-of-all-trades class, but with our current trait set-up we get shoehorned into a few builds that are hardly able to do everything at once. If we are supposed to be truly able to adapt, I would like to see changes along the lines of:

Make all turrets part of a kit.

Rework the trait lines into something like:
Alchemy
*Largely stays how it is
Firearms
*Largely stays how it is
Gadgets
*Improves toolbelt and utility skills like the battering ram, slick shoes, etc.
Kits
*Traits give benefits to multiple kits to encourage running multiple kits at once.
Adaptability
*Increase survivability and support roles; includes traits like Kit Refinement.

My vision for the Engineer is a class that can run with either all kits, all elixirs, or all gadgets and still be effective solo or as part of a team.

I love your idea but if anet did this much nerfind, they would end up messing it up so bad that they would rather delete the class a whole :|

jw, why does everyoen keep saying engineers is a jack of all trades, is this something anet said, cause its not in the official description nor wiki! and with the past couple updates seem to be trying to tell us that we stick to 1 kit and do 1 thing, multi kit /trades = bad! they even deleted 1 build to make a point! you don’t do damage, you dont support! :S

would be really nice and appreciated to see some positive changes! i wish people like you worked in Anet, used to love them as a company since gw1 but they’ve changed..

From the December 14th update:
The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.

They never explicitly say Jack-of-all-trades but they emphasize the versatility of the Engineer class, which I don’t feel that we have at the moment. I feel much more versatile playing my Elementalist than I ever have playing my Engineer. Plus, the full saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none,” fits very well with their design philosophy for the Engineer.

“Lack of all trades, mediocre at one” – appears to better fit A-net’s ‘engineer vision’ in practice.

I would:
a.) make elixirs more powerful on their own, i.e. elixir B would a near direct analog to “for great justice!”, except single target.

b.) give some kind of trait support to gadgets (they have one trait currently, and it’s a lame 20% recast reduction trait), and give them functionality worth a utility slot.

c.) remove turrets completely and add a new utility skill line. “improvised weapons” or something, maybe.

and of course d.) complete overhaul of traits, i.e. traits that augment explosions would affect explosive shot, elixir traits would affect super elixir etc. broken or otherwise completely useless traits (scope, adrenal implant, etc.) would be removed and replaced with something interesting. 20% recast reduction traits would be removed or merged into other traits, trait that increase range and damage (i.e. rifle damage +10%) would be merged as well, making room for stuff that’s exciting.

edit: also I believe the 20% recast reduction traits should be merged into other traits for every single class, or made more powerful. they’re obvious filler and unimaginative. take superior aria and pure of voice on guardian for example; they lower shout recasts by 20% and make shouts convert one condition to a boon, respectively. pure of voice will never, ever be used without superior aria. merging them into one trait (-20% shout cool down, shouts convert one condition to a boon) would create a very powerful trait, and allow for new (hopefully interesting and unique) trait to replace superior aria. near as I can tell, every single class suffers from the lame 20% recast reduction traits somewhere. conversely, there are already some good traits that include both the recast reduction and another aspect that modifies functionality, i.e. power wrench and forceful great sword.

We’d be more “versatile” if we could put more skills on our bars. It seems like we are limited in builds just like the other classes (with kits we have a few more buttons available, but that depends on build as well). Though we can’t swap weapons so having main weapons and a weapon kit takes up one of our skill slots so we are less versatile!

I’d change the two things that cause the most issues for balance and greif. (kits and turrets as utilitys) then find a completely unrelated way to incorperate them where they would not take utility slots.

Prob what woulda happend if the game stayed in beta another 6 months, but….too late for that now.

So I took a glance at gw2buildcraft.com to look at how Arenanet have structured their profession design and it would appear that all the professions (bar the Engineer) follow these rules:

• Five utility skill types

• Four utility skills of each type

• Twenty utility skills in total

• All have a summon type (Conjures, Spirit Weapons, Clone/Phantasms, Minions, Traps, Banners)

• All have a passive type (Signets)

The other three types seem to vary between control, support, offence, defence and conditions depending on the professions ‘style’ and what the other types/weapons/profession ability offers.

The Engineer on the other hand has:

• Four utility types* (Elixirs, Gadgets, Kits, Turrets)

• Five utility skills of each type

• No passive type

*gw2buildcraft combines the Mesmer Clone/Phantasm’s into one type but not the kits. The game treats the kits the same way so I’m bundling them together.

This stuff doesn’t matter too much it just illustrates the difficulty that Arenanet are having with creating an Engineer that fits inline with the other professions.

Someone on the profession balance team recently talked about how the turrets were viewed as the ‘passive style’ skill set for the Engineer, which would mean it is viewed as being analogous to signets. However, from my point of view, playing with turrets is currently anything but passive and requires a great deal of micro managing to make good use out of them. Whereas a signet provides you with a permanent buff of some sort (condition removal for example) until you pop it and you briefly lose that passive until the cool down wears off.

That’s not to mention that many of the signets the various professions have are extremely powerful with both strong passive and active abilities. Usually these active abilities grant the player a powerful boon of some sort (e.g. stability). For me, turrets are far from being the Engineers passive utility skill option and any attempt to make them so will result in the PvE Ritualist problem where the vast majority of content is trivialised.

The Tool belt profession ability does throw somewhat of a spanner in the works because it grants the Engineer a ‘two for the price of one’ deal on all of its utility skills. We can’t have passive abilities because of our tool belt but we need our tool belt because of our kits and lack of weapon swap. Both the kits and tool belt are genuinely excellent ideas that make the Engineer unique and fun so we need to find a way to keep them while bringing the profession closer to the others in terms of structure.

I propose we look at the utilities as such:

• Elixirs are the support option.

• Gadgets are the control option.

• Turrets are the summon option.

• Kits are the passive option.

When you have a kit on your utility bar it grants you a passive ability just like a signet would. If you equip the kit you keep the passive ability and gain access to the weapon set. When you activate the tool belt skill you lose the passive.

To me this seems to fit with Arenanet’s vision for the passive signet play style where the player just wants to focus on his weapons and ‘pure’ combat abilities. I also feel it fits in with their vision for the kits and depending on what the passive abilities were could open up many options for ‘mixed utility type’ builds (“versatility”).

A Kit Refinement tweak could then see the global cool down removed but the tool belt skill go onto cool down. If placed high enough in the trait line (e.g. 30 and with worthwhile enough spells) it would probably please those who want to kit dance and Arenanet who seem to want to avoid the Engineer basically turning into the Elementalist.

Turrets can then be worked on as being a more active style of playing the game, which seems to be the only way they can make them useful without making content trivial.

I wouldn’t rebuild the class at all. I like the nuances of Engineer: turrets (I’m a tinkerer), nifty gadgets (I’m James Bond/Q), tossing elixirs (I’m an crazy alchemist), toolbelt skills (I’m Batman!), guns (James Bond again), and kits (I’m MacGyver).

The shell of Engineer is terrific. I like the toolbelt idea that balances out our lack of weapon swap, as well as giving inactive turrets & kits an active ability. I would simply tweak already existing skills/traits.

- Reduce gadgets cooldowns
- Improve turret survivability. Nobody wants to use their wrench to fix a turret. That means we’re not fighting and sitting ducks.
- Reduce/remove self-cc aspect of abilities
- Rework KR with more useful spells for a couple kits and remove global cooldown
- Fix mortar
- Fix bugs

Mostly I would just buff all the gunk that exists in the skills, traits, and such. As for specific types of reworks I’d reduce Turret and Gadget cooldowns, remove some auto-attacks in the Kits and replace them with just cooldown abilities, make sure things like Downed state have damage hybridization, boost survival a bit by introducing some more sustain, reduce RNG in the Elixir line, introduce a few new finishers into select places like the Pistol and Grenade Barrage, generally align the Engineer’s theme that their Utility Slots are above average in power, and introduce the Portal Mechanic into the Engineer’s utility slots.

drewtwo.8374:

So I took a glance at gw2buildcraft.com to look at how Arenanet have structured their profession design and it would appear that all the professions (bar the Engineer) follow these rules:

• Five utility skill types

• Four utility skills of each type

• Twenty utility skills in total

• All have a summon type (Conjures, Spirit Weapons, Clone/Phantasms, Minions, Traps, Banners)

• All have a passive type (Signets)

The other three types seem to vary between control, support, offence, defence and conditions depending on the professions ‘style’ and what the other types/weapons/profession ability offers.

The Engineer on the other hand has:

• Four utility types* (Elixirs, Gadgets, Kits, Turrets)

• Five utility skills of each type

• No passive type

*gw2buildcraft combines the Mesmer Clone/Phantasm’s into one type but not the kits. The game treats the kits the same way so I’m bundling them together.

This stuff doesn’t matter too much it just illustrates the difficulty that Arenanet are having with creating an Engineer that fits inline with the other professions.

Someone on the profession balance team recently talked about how the turrets were viewed as the ‘passive style’ skill set for the Engineer, which would mean it is viewed as being analogous to signets. However, from my point of view, playing with turrets is currently anything but passive and requires a great deal of micro managing to make good use out of them. Whereas a signet provides you with a permanent buff of some sort (condition removal for example) until you pop it and you briefly lose that passive until the cool down wears off.

That’s not to mention that many of the signets the various professions have are extremely powerful with both strong passive and active abilities. Usually these active abilities grant the player a powerful boon of some sort (e.g. stability). For me, turrets are far from being the Engineers passive utility skill option and any attempt to make them so will result in the PvE Ritualist problem where the vast majority of content is trivialised.

The Tool belt profession ability does throw somewhat of a spanner in the works because it grants the Engineer a ‘two for the price of one’ deal on all of its utility skills. We can’t have passive abilities because of our tool belt but we need our tool belt because of our kits and lack of weapon swap. Both the kits and tool belt are genuinely excellent ideas that make the Engineer unique and fun so we need to find a way to keep them while bringing the profession closer to the others in terms of structure.

I propose we look at the utilities as such:

• Elixirs are the support option.

• Gadgets are the control option.

• Turrets are the summon option.

• Kits are the passive option.

When you have a kit on your utility bar it grants you a passive ability just like a signet would. If you equip the kit you keep the passive ability and gain access to the weapon set. When you activate the tool belt skill you lose the passive.

To me this seems to fit with Arenanet’s vision for the passive signet play style where the player just wants to focus on his weapons and ‘pure’ combat abilities. I also feel it fits in with their vision for the kits and depending on what the passive abilities were could open up many options for ‘mixed utility type’ builds (“versatility”).

A Kit Refinement tweak could then see the global cool down removed but the tool belt skill go onto cool down. If placed high enough in the trait line (e.g. 30 and with worthwhile enough spells) it would probably please those who want to kit dance and Arenanet who seem to want to avoid the Engineer basically turning into the Elementalist.

Turrets can then be worked on as being a more active style of playing the game, which seems to be the only way they can make them useful without making content trivial.

This.

Some ideas:

Elixirs:
- Acidic Elixirs: makes thrown elixirs blast finishers (maybe switch it’s position in the tree with Auto-Accelerant-Packed Turrets or give it a short CD if would be too strong)
- remove the randomness

Kits and Refinement:
- completely get rid of Kit Refinement as it is now.

- attach the Kit Refinement attacks (some might need a little change) to the kit’s respective traits:
Tool Kit: Power Wrench,
Grenade Kit: Grenadier,
Bomb Kit: Forceful Explosives/Elixir Infused Bombs/Short Fuse,
Flamethrower: Juggernaut,
Elixir Gun: Deadly Mixture/Fireforged Trigger
Med Kit: Packaged Stimulants

- make Kit Refinement enhance the kit’s tool belt skills instead of triggering attacks on swap:
Throw Wrench: 1sec immobilize on hit / longer range / short pull when it’s coming back
Grenade Barrage: this is a difficult one, as it already is a strong skill. More damage is the least it needs, but daze would make it OP imo. Could be turned into a small projectile finisher. Or every grenade which does not hit remains as a mine.
Big Ol’ Bomb: unblockable, remove one boon
Incendiary Ammo: inflicts blind
Healing Mist: removes a condition
Bandage Self: casting time reduced to 3/4 or even half a second.

About turrets:
- make them real area control/support tools. I’m thinking about Line/Ring of Warding and Shield of Absorption/Smoke Screen overcharges. Imo it would fit them quite well and it would make them much more interesting to use.

Gadgets:
- Rocket Boots: make them “leap-like”, no more self-“stun”, maybe add a short criple to the explosion
- Personal Battering Ram: slightly increase it’s range and hit angle, add a charge like Rocket Kick has with 600 Range. (Engi lacks charges and I imagine this would be amazingly fun to use)
- Utility Goggles: add a range increase for Pistol, Rifle and Elixir Gun for a short period of time (30-40%), increase Fury duration to 15sec
- Mine Field: no longer places mines randomly, but rather in a circle around you.

I’m hoping for better grandmaster tool traits. The ones we have now are generally worse than the adept ones..

I think there should be an extra button called “SCIENCE!” (put in all caps just like I showed). This button, when pressed, does one of several random things. I’ve not decided what those things are, but I’m sure that we can think up some amazing (and amazingly disastrous) effects.

Don’t just give buffs or super huge damage, though. This should include both breakthroughs and backsteps.

And it should be extremely random.

I would personally break up all the weapon skills from 2-5, then clear skills 2-5, and make them utility skills as well.

Skills placed on 6-9 will still have their toolbar skills, but anything placed from 2-5 will not.

This might be overpowered, but it enables a customization akin to GW1.

I think turrets as a concept is cool but in practice they just don’t compete in most cases. I would like to see them made into something similar to necromancer minions, making them tanks or something similar. This would fit with the Engi’s theme of mimicking other classes abilities using technology as opposed to magic. Grenades functions similarly to a combination of marks and wells, the flamethrower acts like an ele’s fire magic, Elixirs are like signets or shouts, and even the shield is like taking several ele and warrior abilities together.

Making turrets more like minions would require a total rebuild but I feel it would give them more utility. Not to mention I think many would agree mini tanks are a lot cooler than the current turret designs.

I think another annoying aspect of Engi in PvP is how random many elixir skills are. Sometimes getting stealth from a thrown Elixir S can help you escape from combat, but when you get stability instead it can be frustrating. Perhaps have an addon to one of the elixir traits that allows you to choose what effects you receive. I like to know what will happen when I use my skills rather than leaving it to chance.

Keep in mind that most Necros believe Minions aren’t viable either. For many of the same reasons Turrets aren’t viable. AI, durability, and no scaling. I don’t think changing them to minions would alleviate any of the complaints we have.

Ayestes.1273:

Keep in mind that most Necros believe Minions aren’t viable either. For many of the same reasons Turrets aren’t viable. AI, durability, and no scaling. I don’t think changing them to minions would alleviate any of the complaints we have.

Well, then that just means we have to advocate them fixing minions before making our turrets like them :P/

Esseos.4098:

From the December 14th update:
The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.

They never explicitly say Jack-of-all-trades but they emphasize the versatility of the Engineer class, which I don’t feel that we have at the moment. I feel much more versatile playing my Elementalist than I ever have playing my Engineer. Plus, the full saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none,” fits very well with their design philosophy for the Engineer.

They have versatility, you just haven’t maximized that potential yet.

If I were to rebuild the class, on the UI the class would have a kit section, in which they equip kits there. Also a turret section as well. This way all Engineers will have at least 1 kit and 1 turret at all times.

Also I would have more skills that deal with unique roles. Like creating a robot to pilot or a bot pet. More support with a better focused support kit to make up for weakness.

Kalan.9705:

“Lack of all trades, mediocre at one” – appears to better fit A-net’s ‘engineer vision’ in practice.

Debating this as my new sig…. or my new motto for Anet.

The easiest way for anyone to compare a profession is run out to the PvP lobby as a lvl 2, stack pure damage, pure defense, and mix stats, and just test some numbers with key builds.

You’ll notice something Anet appears to…. never look at. Numbers. The damage you do that is high for an Engineer is low for the other professions (when adjusting for equality in stats/builds).

Go pure berserkers, and watch how pathetic the damage when spamming your auto-attack. Now switch professions, and watch how you are more pleased.

Engineer has short cooldowns on swapping. That is it. Nothing more. Nada.

So the engineer can hit for crap, and respond with “meh” counters, but do so repeatedly hoping to “wait out” the other player’s cooldowns. It is fun because the engineer can just do a lot, even if it is all mediocre.

But when Anet takes away, for a profession that isn’t on top, you need to wonder what vision will happen down the road. We already have super long CDs on mediocre skills, which were made longer in past patches….

The vision of the future is bleak. Unless you are looking at what Elder Scrolls Online will shape up to be. Fresh air can either bring a new love, or appreciation for an old love.

A redesign is always difficult and it’s probably not something Anet will ever attempt with any of its professions, just because of the time cost involved…

I would say the easiest way to redesign the engineer profession would be to create a few new weapon sets for them and give them a weapon swap. Engineers currently have so much riding on each utility slot because of lacking a weapon swap (and lacking versatility on their main weapons).

Thus, every utility we choose must be super powerful and used all the time. Anet has been trying to make that happen—we’ve seen large buffs to kits and turrets. But squeezing the entire profession into those three tiny utility slots is really hurting the versatility. So much is riding on those three slots—our dps, our escapes, our condition removal, most of our control (except for rifle builds), our weapon swap, our gap closer (singular), our support skills. That’s just so much to ask from three slots.

So in the end, we choose builds just because they have all those things. I started running HGH in tourneys because it has condition removal. GW2 has an incredibly complex combat system that demands a lot from its builds, which is why only a few builds meet the requirements.

Engis now get one free kit for a weaponswap, power scaling on the rifle and all kits increased, extra stack of bleed on pistol 1, gadgets now have passive effects and have their CD reduced, elixir X and mortar changed, add in better traits for turrets and fix AI.
I feel this is a reasonable list.

I would rebuild it bit by bit, starting with to tools trait line and gadgets. I would write more but I have already made a post in the suggestion forum under “Engineer Tool Trait line Revamp Suggestion.” I would link, but people dont seem to like it when I do that, so if you want to read it you will have to find it.

Other than that fixing bugs and improving the turret AI would go a long way of helping this class.