Guild Wars 2

I’m sorry, but i’m just kitten by how many negetive feedback this class gets.

I started off at launch as a thief, went to lvl 60 and then tried engineer and totally loved it. Just the sheer veriaty of stuff i can do got me.
Turrets, kits that present whole new 5 weapon skills , gadgets and elixers.

I know there are alot of buggy skills.
There are even more underpowered skills and traits.

But is it really? Really!!! that bad?

I myself have played engineer ever since ( only making an ele alt for the heck of it,lvl 34).

I usually do very well in Spvp and PvE ( dungeons, Fracts and general roaming).
The only real problems that present are maybe Tpvp and WvWvW to some extent, mostly because some classes and some builds seem over-powered rather then me being underpowered.

Once they buff some of our under powered skills and fix the buggy ones while on the same note tuning down other classes – i’ll be just happy with the balance and my roll.

So yeah, comment ahead if you want. I just think there are alot of people going over-board on the subject, claiming engineer is mega-weak, ‘total rework’ and what not.

It’s not that engie is bad. It suffers from same stuff as other classes but to greater extent. Many sucky skills on kits. Kits need to have more determined roles and useful competitive skills.

That’s pretty much this + bug fixes.

Engie > all in fun so yeah

Pistol bomb engie is still pretty good

Well to answer your question: our situation sucks.
Our kits are way op in comparisment to gadgets and turrets. Some (inclusing me) think our rifle skills (one of our 3 weapon choices) are clunky, and moe

But no it isn’t that bad.
There are some great builds out here for the engineer. For sure other classes know a good engineer is a tough nutt to crack. Builds like 100nades and tankCAT or awesome!

Try the tankCAT build for WvW. I use it atm and it works perfect!

Engineers are in a good spot when it comes to WvW thanks to tanky condition builds. With regards to PvP engis have gotten a little more popular due to how diverse the builds can get, and the sheer number of them.

Dungeons are where Engineers are in a hard spot right now. We are CC specialists but that doesn’t do much in PvE. When we build for utility we don’t provide as many offensive or defensive boons as an elementalist, guardian, or mesmer (banner warrior may be a toss up because I haven’t partied with many of them), and we don’t do as much damage as any of the other classes (unless we go full GC but then we become less reliable than mesmer/thief/ranger GCs).

We can definitely do dungeon runs, if the player is good we can do kitten well at them. One question persists though, Would you be more effective playing an elementalist or a mesmer?

It’s up to the player. We choose to stick to the engineer because it’s fun and we consider fun to be our top priority when playing this game. It sucks that we have to choose between playing as effectively as we can in dungeons, and playing our preferred class.

I’ve put in more hours on my engineer than any of my other characters combined, and I think the entire problem Engineers are facing is that to be effective there are certain skills you have to use. If you look at the builds on the forums there are only a few that are viable for “real” PvP combat. We have a whole bunch of kits and skills that will make you ineffective if you try to use them. For example, I originally liked the idea of a bunker turret Engineer, but the turret’s damage and health is too low to make them effective as a build. (Yes I still use them, but mostly because I run around like a nut and try to knock people off cliffs. Not much good in sieges and open areas)

ShaunZ.1098:

I’ve put in more hours on my engineer than any of my other characters combined, and I think the entire problem Engineers are facing is that to be effective there are certain skills you have to use. If you look at the builds on the forums there are only a few that are viable for “real” PvP combat. We have a whole bunch of kits and skills that will make you ineffective if you try to use them. For example, I originally liked the idea of a bunker turret Engineer, but the turret’s damage and health is too low to make them effective as a build. (Yes I still use them, but mostly because I run around like a nut and try to knock people off cliffs. Not much good in sieges and open areas)

each of those builds only work against specific classes wich makes it even more pathetic. the game has become a class issue rather than a build issue

Not it’s not that bad but it’s worse than everyone else which is bad enough.

In WvW engineer can do nades or build a bit tanky and do magnet pull picks. Other classes like eles and thieves however get to do all kinds of useful damage stuff and you can never catch any good ones. Other classes just have so much more.

i dont know. but my engi always be the first or second in PvP. and when i do WvW i can make foes stay away from castle gate.

In GW2 it helps to not think of classes as underpowered/overpowered, but as finished/unfinished.

Engineer is on the unfinished end of the scale.

If you’re a decent player, you can make everything work, in this game more than in others. If you’re looking for a smooth ride, this class isn’t for you though.

I play a elementalist since day one and made a engeneeir few weeks ago and i tell you this, i like engenneir far more than elementalist.

Don’t listen to anyone who’s equipped with Daggers or a Greatsword, and play Engi.

Eng isn’t bad at all, it’s just that other classes have their roles easily fleshed out for people to understand and digest. It’s just a little bit more blurry for engs. For example, what’s the first role/thing that class brings to the table when you see the word

1. Warrior
2. Necro
3. Mesmer
4. Ele
5. Thief
6. Guardian
7. Ranger

….

I’m willing to guess it’s

1. DPS/tanky
2. Condi
3. Time warp/dps
4. Aoe/heal/support
5. DPS
6. Tanky/boons
7. I think rangers have it as bad as engs in terms of public appearance.

I have to say, since i made this post i started a new char – a Warrior.

Boy are those guys good or what.
A little on the boring side but very solid !
I was always under the impression they had weak support skills and range combat but that’s just wrong.

Their rifle skills are just superior to ours and can stand just fine compared to any of our rangy – kits.
Their buffs are even better. Who needs 1 stack of might from an elixier when i get 3 for 25 sec on a 25 sec CD ( which means almost 100% uptime).

While on the engineer’s side of the table i’m playing the keyboard like Beethoven for lesser results.
They are versatile just not solid.

I’m still pretty new to them, i’m sure i’m missing alot,but put it short :
They are just better and way easier. ( i’ve played an engieer for 3-4 months. i know).

LOL XD troll- you don’t need to show off.

Engineer does not “suck” per-say..

It’s the DEV ATTIUDE to the class that leaves something to be desired — they seem to have “elementalist blinders” on when they approach engi — they are treating our kits as the entire class, like attunements are for elementalist – except they ARE NOT for eng.

eng has gadgets, toolbelt, base weapons, and turrets, and they deserve viability too, otherwise ANet should dispense with them and make our kits F1-F4 like ele attunements.

Because they treat our kits as the entire profession’s ability set, they dismiss legitimate desires expressed that kit-free builds be made fully viable and that our base weapons scale properly.

This is the sore spot for engineers.

it’s not that the class is not “viable” right now, it’s that the only viable builds require kits, and those kits get nerfed all the time.

As an eng who prefers gadgets and wants to use my weapons, I don’t like being shoehorned into kits, and think my main weapon attacks should be viable and scale at least as well as mesmer weapons — which is really saying something, considering how bad mesmer individual damage is due to balancing around their shatters.

It’s that the class lacks scaling and a coherent design philosophy.

Things i’d like to see:

• i’d like to see elixir support builds able to maintain boons like a D/D support elementalist. (they just DON’T right now, and that’s a crime!)

• i’d like to see our base weapons be worth using, rifle needs to have damage upped to compete with kits (the kits have just as much control as rifle, but more damage), but pistol is crap .. thieves do more condie damage with their pistols in zerker builds. than eng does with full condie builds.

• I’d like to see our turrets be more useful – they should either be more durable, or squishy ones like the healing turret should have regeneration baseline (LOL @ a healing turret that can’t heal itself).

• Our downed state is crap — the cooldown that starts on ability 3 when you first go down should be cut to 1 second just to prvent accidentally using it, and it should cause us to move as well.

• Our grenade kit needs to have its damage looked at – it should not be mindless spam of 1 like it was before the nerfs, but right now its crap. Maybe if 1 did more damage to targets with at least 1 condition, or maybe if they replaced the grenades with rockets so they flew faster.

One thing nice I can say about what the devs have for the profession:

The underwater combat is one of the few i’ve seen that does NOT suck.

It’s very powerful and NOT boring.

MrForz.1953:

Don’t listen to anyone who’s equipped with Daggers or a Greatsword, and play Engi.

Isn’t that… literally every other class?

Dagger:
Ranger
Thief
Elementalist
Necromancer

Greatsword:
Ranger
Warrior
Guardian
Mesmer

Engi is only bad because they have different values for condi damage between classes and because there’s a large number of design flaws and bugs that need serious attention(try it, I did, my full exotic condi damage build engi has lower ticks of bleeding then my burst thief and lower ticks of burn damage then my trap ranger, explain that one). It’s not that it’s a bad design it’s that they really haven’t taken serious time on working on it. (except of course the traits. If I’m to believe that this is an adventurer class, then treat it as such, as it is we are cut off from one out of the three Anet trinity roles, DPS, we can do minor support and major CC, but nowhere near the DPS of even the Ranger).

Engi has been as neglected as necro and many of the problems are pretty simple to see if you test properly. PTR would solve a large number of these problems because they would be able to get feedback consistantly from the players on how the abilities function. Instead they test it with a stationary mechanical dummy and expect the numbers and behavior to be perfectly fine (my theory at least). Take grenades for example. There’s no way that they tested those properly. Even the new 5 second cd on the Sigil of Fire doesn’t make up for the damage reduction those. Nor does it make right the constant need to play a concert solo on a keypad just to keep up with it because of ground targeting. Physics are also a big thing. When your genades and bombs fly farther and explode faster underwater then they do on land there’s a fundamental problem here and no one’s even acknowledging it over there.

It’s even worse when they don’t 100% clear a bug, my FT cone attacks still miss if the enemy on to my left or right despite it being an AOE and my character automatically turning. It’s as frustrating as Culling is.

Blakey.5670:

I have to say, since i made this post i started a new char – a Warrior.

Boy are those guys good or what.
A little on the boring side but very solid !
I was always under the impression they had weak support skills and range combat but that’s just wrong.

Their rifle skills are just superior to ours and can stand just fine compared to any of our rangy – kits.
Their buffs are even better. Who needs 1 stack of might from an elixier when i get 3 for 25 sec on a 25 sec CD ( which means almost 100% uptime).

While on the engineer’s side of the table i’m playing the keyboard like Beethoven for lesser results.
They are versatile just not solid.

I’m still pretty new to them, i’m sure i’m missing alot,but put it short :
They are just better and way easier. ( i’ve played an engieer for 3-4 months. i know).

This. And even engineers being versatile is bullcrap aswell. Every kit needs its traits.
Grenade kit is useless without grenadier trait, flamethrower is just near usefull WITH juggernaut trait. Same thing with the puther kits. If you don’t spec in explosions, bombkit will be useless etc.

There is nothing which an engineer can do better then other classes, except for CC (and even that’s arguable)…

The only reason play an engineer is if you like having fun (and don’t get me wrong engineer is super fun) with a rare precious little snowflake of a class because otherwise this class is badly designed with a very poor damage output. All the way to level 80 I kept saying to myself it can’t be this bad at 80 things will be different… I was wrong it is this bad and they seem unwilling to change it.

I have always played a Necromancer and will continue to do so (never having played an Engi) – BUT – I have a couple of free minutes and thought I’d browse through the forums and evidently made my way here. Last night, for the very first time, I encountered an Engineer who’s play style took my breath away – while exploring Arah nonetheless!

Never mind the thought of mobile dagger/dagger elementalists, or burst warriors and tanky guardians. In my opinion, Engineers, when well played, have everything to be easily recognized as a top class. This engi supported the team, dealt damage and was more than once the only player left standing, tanking the mobs and saving our skins.

So as somebody that has never played an Engi before.. I would like to /salute the class.

DayLight.9603:

I have always played a Necromancer and will continue to do so (never having played an Engi) – BUT – I have a couple of free minutes and thought I’d browse through the forums and evidently made my way here. Last night, for the very first time, I encountered an Engineer who’s play style took my breath away – while exploring Arah nonetheless!

Never mind the thought of mobile dagger/dagger elementalists, or burst warriors and tanky guardians. In my opinion, Engineers, when well played, have everything to be easily recognized as a top class. This engi supported the team, dealt damage and was more than once the only player left standing, tanking the mobs and saving our skins.

So as somebody that has never played an Engi before.. I would like to /salute the class.

I hope today treats you well! In response to your observation, I guess this is the way the developers intended the Engineer to be played. Whether or not it pleases the playerbase is a whole other question. I’m personally fine supporting a team, but – and this is not directed at anyone in particular – I gather it’s natural to try to be more powerful than others. What really blows my mind is that if people had their way, every profession would do the same while not doing the same.

That having been said, I wish they spent more resources on fixing the actual issues – both quality of life and bugs of the engineers. Maybe then I’d be more inclined to buying Gems from them.

I try to encourage people to play as a team, regardless of profession. I’m really glad to see that at least someone still pays heed to teamwork

The problems with the Engineer are just a reflection of some of the broader problems this game is having with balance and the synergy between talents and attributes, it’s just more pronounced in engineers. The problem lies in the fact that in PvE and WvW DPS trumps everything (in sPvP bunker builds are useful, but thats basically it). The best way to stack dps is pow/prec/crit damage, because all three of those abilities synergize very well. The Engineer is a true “hybrid” tends to split its dps roughly equally between direct damage and conditions, being mediocre at both. This puts us at the bottom of the food chain from a DPS standpoint because even fully gearing one on the other you will be outperformed by other classes doing the same thing (the exception being a few burst oriented builds like 100nades or and of the static charge builds). Our condition spec is an even worse place as our weapon coefficients for conditions are just downright bad, resulting in laughable effects such as the pistol 1 bleed from a fully condition oriented engineer doing less damage than the bleed from a thief pistol stacking no condition damage. That is compounded by the atrocious mechanics surrounding condition builds in this game resulting in a substantial loss in group DPS if you have more than one condition oriented build in a party. If you are going to take a condition oriented class there is zero reason to take a engineer over a necro.

Grenades (our long range kit) suffer from targeting issues and slow travel time, requiring you to get into melee range or close to it to make them viable in small sale PvE and PvP. Bombs are great for bunkering but not much use outside it. Flamethrower is buggy and does generally poor DPS for a melee ranged weapon. Elixir gun offers decent support but absolutely wretched damage. Toolkit brings nice utility but also sub-par dps for a melee kit. Turrets are just flat out bad, they are weak and do anemic dps.

Even the burst builds we have suffer from “one-trick-pony” syndrome as we usually have to sacrifice between 1-3 utility slots to get them working so once we have completed them we are basically useless for 20 seconds and the lack of utility skills makes escape difficult in a PvW or PvP setting.

Take for example Mesmers, elementalists and thieves, who can both stack utilities that are helpful both offensively and defensively, while putting out far superior damage over time. Even if we have a build that does not focus on kits many of our utilities are flat out worse than comparable utilities in other classes and either possess a significant drawback such as a self root or have a random effect that means most of the time you re rolling the dice and hoping for the effect you want.

In addition to the broken coefficients the class is plagued with innumerate bugs that make many specs unviable. For example:

1. Cone spells don’t track targets properly, and we are the class with by far the most cone spells, 3 of our weapon sets have them, and one of our weapon sets uses it as a main attack. If you turn your camera properly they will work, but that can be difficult in a frenetic pvp or pve setting.

2. Some of our trait are non-funcitonal (scope).

3. Most of the elixir skills do not work with elixir gun elixirs skills.

There are plenty of folks that play Engineers and excel, but many of these people are good players who want a challenge. Invariably they would dominate even more if they chose to play one of the non-broken classes. In general however the average player will work harder and have to play better for a lesser effect (and even better players have the same problem). This is why you see so few Engineers. If we specialize there is nothing we do that another class cannot do more efficiently and if we try to jack-of-all trades we ending doing everything badly.

Having said all that, I still play an engineer because I like the looks and I don’t get too bogged down on having an optimized play style. I am honest with myself though, my Elementalist is pretty much better in than my Engineer in almost every sense.

amiable.4823:

snip

I do agree with you on several points. I want to furthermore highlight that if you don’t want to go full glass cannon and still want to deal proper damage, stacking Precision/Critical Chance is a must, because the direct damage from Grenades, Pistols and Rifle is poor without the Vulnerability and Burning stacking. Now the following is subjective: Burning from Crit is the only reason my Engineer remains competitive with other damage dealers from my guild and requires numerous compromises along the way.

Including but not limited to the fact that if there is an Elementalist and a DPS Guardian in the party, I’m just wasting my time.