Guild Wars 2

I’m asking as a returning player. I went to the PvP lobby and only saw 1 other engineer there. I queued a match and found myself unable to do a lick of damage, all the same getting shredded from full health to dead in roughly kittens (something that most certainly didn’t happen before)

I know that Scrapper got a nerf around the time I quit, but I’m wondering if Anet just continued nerfing it until it was practically worthless.

No, it isn’t garbage now.

Hell no. The explosions have never been so beautiful!

Engie is not as its best, but it is far from garbage. Some of the new changes have had a very warm reception from many players, so you can say it is generally better than the last few months.
That being said, the meta seems to have suffered a lot, specially the marginal area where Power Engie was still relevant in PvE hard content (Raids). Condi engie suffered too because the change on the food boons, but this change affected most professions, so it somehow balances itself.

It’s going to really depend on your and those your playing with’s level of skill on your PvP experience with engie. You’re really not going to be able to carry a match on an engie.

Engie is a bunker-type these days. It doesn’t have a tool available (i.e. knockback, launch) to decap other bunkers, has pretty low damage output (near zero chase dmg, so if you are chasing you are probably playing ineffectively) against even moderately skilled players and has some bad matchups. The playstyle is to fap around mostly wasting one or possibly two people’s time trying to kill you, while you either wait for your team to notice and +1 you or make use of you being outnumbered by outnumbering another fight. This playstyle is as much up to your teammates and enemy’s choices as it is your own (assuming you’re where you should be) to be effective or impact the outcome of a match. The other option is to take 2vX’s (not as effective when solo queuing) and act as a rezbot.

Since your second sentence referenced doing damage, its quite likely that engie isn’t the class for you in PvP.

It’s slowly improving.