Guild Wars 2

We have been waiting since beta 1 for the rushed, unfinished, last class to finally get some polish. Instead we keep getting the few workable areas either toned down or eliminated. The changes we get appear to lack vision, focus and consistency and directly contradict the stated dev aims and class vision.

It’s clear our devs have no clue what the hell to do with engineer. Kit Refinement was the only trait that actively supported their engineer is versatile fantasy, the other traits also stat and power/cond layouts actively prevent versatility. Yet KR has been given a hammer-nerf to the testes destroying all multi kit builds and ensuring the only reliable condition/cc defence is an elixir build.

Engineer has far less viable builds now than at release. Engineer still has a 20 page buglist and a 40 page QoL list. Engineer still has no real compensation for lacking weapon swap (& sigil swap!) everyone has Fkey mechanics. Elixirs are still rubbish compared to shouts. Turrets are still laughable. Gadgets are still very unfinished, and barely supported by traits. Engineer still has no working gap ability (jump shot animation = fail).

Just what the hell is the devs intention for this class, and why do we keep going in the opposite direction from their started aims?

I am at a total loss as to what the hell an engineer is supposed to do without kit refinement.

This horrible, broken, buggy class had only one thing going for it.. and they ruined it…

Imo, the nerf to KR has caused profound problems within the class, certainly within multi-kit builds. A guildy summed it up for me last night “We’ve not been nerfed, we’ve been Seared”. I’m not talking from a PvE-landscape perspective, you could run landscape naked on any class and be fine; I’m coming from a Dungeon perspective, and from the angle that we don’t need specific classes to complete content. I typically ran a med/med/soft/soft/heavy group.

Pre-Searing my three utility slots (with KR) were set up on the basis of “me/us/you”. FT was for me (fun, AoE DPS for swarms and a condition removal for me); EG was for me and the group (AoE condition removal, tank/off-tanking for bosses and a light field); the last utility was for an elixir (typically El-R). While I was not the best at any of of the above (engies just aren’t) it allowed me to bring enough ‘versatility’ to round of my group nicely. It was also fun because it suited my playstyle; a touch of this, a pinch of that a hint of something else. KR was essential in order to make the whole work.

Via the Traits we were able to maintain a swift and a vigor while controlling the ICD of KR; the short-term boost of each swift, and our requirement to work the keyboard to maintain the swift were a reasonable price to pay for that boost. KR, and kits in general, were one of the most balanced, interesting and useful of our class mechanics in the game, they were a kitten good example of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

Now that it has been Seared, I cannot comfortably use Swift because each use will reset the ICD, so become more dependent on another class’ group speed. I cannot juggle FT and EG for me and the group because of the global ICD. In order to run a build that brings a similar about of Dungeon support I realistically need to load El-R and El-C (both of which have longer CDs) and EG, or run 409. Not only have my removals become ranged but they will now also suffer from the same problem as Grenades; I need to be able to 2nd-guess where my target will be or ask my target to stand still while I target him and throw the elixir in…this can be problematic in Arah.

The knock-on effect of this is that my DPS contribution will be the rifle or the pistol.

As things stand now we (again imo) have been reduced to a clunky ranged support class, that isn’t very good at either ranged or support…a shabby class that changes the meaning of support from “what we can give to help a group” into “we need support to get through”.

I have no doubt there are WvW/sPvP bulds that still function, as I stated at the begining insofar as dungeons are concerned we’re broken and in time will likely only be given a place in Guild-runs. I love the class, but not sure I’d want an engi in my pug.

Sorry for the wall of text, but some things cannot be addressed in one or two sentences.

tl;dr We’re broken.

Grenades/elixirs is still a viable and effective build for all aspects of the game; it’s just a lot less interesting than the multi-kit builds.

And they are killed our Flamethrower!