Guild Wars 2

Here are a few I thought need help. Curious what other Engineer think about traits.

List: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_engineer_traits

Acidic Elixirs – Thrown elixirs cause damage when they land.
Terrible damage and generally useless trait. As you want to toss your elixirs on yourself or allies never the enemy.

Reserve Mines – Release a number of timed mines when your health reaches 25%
Never see these go off, but its a free trait think its radius is bugged like other bombs/mines currently. Enemy has to literally walk on top of it to go off. Would like 2 see these become more useful in the future.

Fireforged Trigger – Flamethrower and elixir gun skills recharge 20% faster.
Personally dont think E-gun -cd should be this far in the firearms tree. It seems better fit for inventions. This more of a consequence of Flamethrower and E-gun being grouped together. As a result, if you grab all E-gun related traits. You wont be able to get more then 20 pts in inventions

Explosive Descent – Release a barrage of grenades when you take falling damage. Take 50% less damage from falling.
The barrage of grenades is useless compared to what other classes get but hey its a fall trait so doesnt matter much

Metal Plating - Reduces damage dealt to turrets by 30%.
I think buffing this trait to say 50% is the key to making turret builds viable. Another idea give turrets better base stats without traits. As it stands now they take massive amount of damage. Although Im more a fan of making turrets more useful if specced into them.

Stabilized Armor – You take 5% less damage when your endurance is full.
I think it should be when endurance is not full.

Power Shoes – 10% faster movement speed in combat.
This trait should give more movement speed for a master trait. Also seeing as u can get perma swiftness with the tools adept trait. Heck even the 75% drink elixir B trait for 5 trait pts is better. Arena buffed this trait to 25%

Autotool Installation – Turrets are self-repairing.
This is another trait that if buffed correctly can make turrets builds more viable. The current heal on it is pretty bad. Well so is all the ways you can heal turrets. Toolkit I’m looking at you.

Rifled Turret Barrels – Turrets deal 15% more damage and have a longer attack range.
Yet another trait that can help turret viability. Well lts get the longer attack range bug fixed first. Maybe increase the bonus turret damage aswell. (33%?) It is a grandmaster trait.. Compare this to Grenader.

Acidic Coating – 20% chance to cause poison for 5 seconds when struck with a melee attack. This effect cannot trigger more than once every 10 seconds.
This has to be the one of the most useless trait, Ive ever seen. The odds you get struct by a melee attack… then within those odds you get a 20% chance… then the 10 second cd…. This trait needs alot of help idk where to begin

Always Prepared – Drop bandages and a flamethrower or elixir gun when downed.
I like this trait but I would replace the flamethrower with Medkit. No one wants a flamethrower when downed. Anet buffed this trait not in the way I was expecting but good changes

Leg Mods – Move 10% faster while using an unarmed kit.
Same deal with Power shoes this trait needs to be better for a Master trait. Seeing as how good speedy kits is in the same tree. There is never a time where you should have this trait. Probally should be removed. inb4 strawman arguement about ppl who cant press 2 buttons.

Armor Mods – Gain 5 seconds of retaliation when critically hit. 25 second recharge.
I would increase the duration or reduce the recharge a bit.

Adrenal Implant – 50% faster endurance regeneration.
Since this trait doesnt stack with vigor and you can get perma vigor from 10 pts in tools and alchemy. I think this trait should be buffed to atleast 75%. Its a Grandmaster trait after all.

About Adrenal Implant : Ranger got the same thing has a 5 points traits. So yeah, it’s pretty lackluster haha.

I’m going to not comment on the bugged traits, just because they’d be too easy.

Rifled Turret Barrels: Why does this increase the range of the Mortar, while Elite Supplies does not? Also, why does it increase the range of the Mortar to 1500 (on par with traited Grenade kit) and not further? It’s an immobile support platform with mediocre power except for the one random-spread attack; it needs more range, if nothing else.

Grenadier/Rifled Barrels: Grenade kit, untraited, has the range of a Rifle, traited. What kind of super throwing arm does the Engineer have that they can lob grenades farther than they can shoot? I’d probably swap the base ranges of the weapon kit and weapons, really, and leave the traits be on this one.

Fast-Acting Elixirs: If it’s not going to affect everything marked with the Elixir tag, then take the freakin’ tag off (my preferred solution, as it’s less likely to lead to yet more rebalances and nerfs). If there’s concern about balance with the thing stacking, then clarify that it won’t stack, or apply a diminishing return, either by applying each reduction in sequence or halving all after the first/largest. Using Elixir B’s toolbelt skill as example, here’s how that could work:

Base Cooldown: 20 sec
Tools Trait reductions at 10/20/30 points applied: 18/16/14
Fast-Acting Elixir reduction applied simultaneously (for 30/40/50 total): 14/12/10
Tools Trait and F-AE reductions applied sequentially (starting with highest reduction): 14.4/12.8/11.2
TT&F-AE reductions applied with diminishing returns: 15.2/14.4/12.6

If any stacking is used, I’d like the diminishing return type more, simply because it’s less likely to unbalance things; it’s worth noting, though, that whatever way it could be chosen to work, the Elixir Gun’s skills would also have to be considered.
Elixir Gun 2’s cooldown could be as low as 3 seconds, or as high as 3.6, Elixir Gun 4’s cooldown could be as low as 9 seconds, or as high as 10.6, and Elixir Gun 5’s cooldown could be as low as 12 seconds, or as high as 14.4 (if it were affected by Fireforged Trigger to begin with – countdown merely starts at 15, jumps back up to 19 after counting to 14, and then counts down as normal when Fireforged Trigger is active).

Also: Elite Supplies. If it doesn’t increase the Mortar’s range, it shouldn’t say it does – just like Rifled Turret Barrels should mention that the Mortar counts.

HGH should also be on this list. It’d make a decent master trait but where it stands, it’s not that good.

@Anymras.5729: I particular didn’t talk about bugs. Mainly hoping to give feedback on the functionality.

@KirinDave.6451: I think HGH is fine.

Wow, didn’t realize how long it took me to work out the Fast-Acting Elixir stuff. Anyway: Yeah, tried to focus on function.

As a guy who plays all of the adventurer professions I have to say you are spot on, many of these traits should not be grandmaster traits at all

1. like the 50% vigor, on a ranger that’s actually located as the FIRST mini trait you get for five points in their similar tree.
2. mines and explosives have been so manipulated they now not only don’t explode at the range of the length of the sword my thief is using but they also get a smaller range suddenly when you trait the Forceful Explosives trait that’s supposedly supposed to increase the explosive range. /facepalm
3. it would have been so much more useful to get a shield or a cloak when we decend instead of the explosions seeing as how they never work anymore anyways.
4. Fireforged trigger and Elixir-Infused Explosives shouldn’t be in any other line other then those that directly affect the amount of toughness or healing one gets and EIE should not be a grandmaster trait, the master trait before it is completely useless for support imo.
5. Armor mods don’t seem to do much. It should happen more often for longer periods of time and let me say that there’s some suspicious differences between the numbers between my thief who’s not built for condition damage and my engineer who is. The bleeds/poisons are so much more powerful per tick on my thief then on my engineer I have to wonder if when you messed with the engineer cond damage some time ago you did it as a per profession basis. It doesn’t make any sense that my thief is traited for burst damage and does so well but has higher DoT’s then my engineer who’s traited for cond damage but when i trait the bleeds burns longer burns and poison all at the same time to do these things, not only does the poison almost never go off, but the bleeds do nowhere near the same damage as my thief that isn’t even traited for that.

There’s too many fishy things going on with this class right now. There’s inconsistancies between even the adventurer professions trait lines and how they are laid out. It’s like another engineer said in another thread, this class wasn’t ready for launch and it’s still in it’s beta stage.

Well for all those complaints I still consume a lot of thieves in PvP.

@Anymras.5729: As far as Fast-Acting Elixirs goes, I perfer more elegant solutions not complicated fixes.

@tigirius.9014: I think you got some of the names mixed up. So not sure what you are suggesting.

Yeah, there’s just not a lot of ‘elegant’ fixes for ‘well, this thing should, according to what I can see, affect these traits, and does not; if it were to affect these traits, thus overlapping with some other traits, the issue of cooldown-reduction stacking needs to be addressed, but how?’

Then again, I do tend to overthink things; any ideas?

HGH needs to give at least two stacks of might to be worth it. You can get better might stacks with bombkit 2 and/or flamethrower 4 + blast finishers. I can barely keep up ~6 stacks of might with HGH as it stands now.

Healing traits seem a bit broken, currently. I have this feeling that if I drop Firearms from my engi’s support build and go Tools, I’ll see better healing output, simply because of that second Superelixir. (Until it gets nerfed, as we all know it’s going to be).

As for the Traits listed in the OP: Acidic Elixirs, Reserve Mines, Acidic Coating, and both the movement speed traits are indeed, useless. And that’s without all the currently broken traits we have!

why they didnt fix acidic elixir anyway… i think its good for jokes tho. like personal battering rams.
engineer: wanna see a magic trick? a sheep pop up from your belt
other class: YAYYY hahaha!!! again again!
engineer: sorry 45 second cool down.
other class: 0_0

ReanSean.7693:

why they didnt fix acidic elixir anyway… i think its good for jokes tho. like personal battering rams.
engineer: wanna see a magic trick? a sheep pop up from your belt
other class: YAYYY hahaha!!! again again!
engineer: sorry 45 second cool down.
other class: 0_0

Oh wow haven’t thought of that for YEARS! I miss my explosive sheep….tear

if acidic elixir created a long lasting combo field, then i could see using it.

something similar to the rangers fire trap. it combo’s and damages any opponent that stands in it, after all it’s an acidic elixir, it shouldn’t just disappear when it hits the ground. it should bubble and create a noxious area that any foolish opponent would hesitate to walk though.

Halcyon.7352:

HGH needs to give at least two stacks of might to be worth it. You can get better might stacks with bombkit 2 and/or flamethrower 4 + blast finishers. I can barely keep up ~6 stacks of might with HGH as it stands now.

I’m glad someone else said this too. People keep including this in their builds and I cannot help but shake my head sadly. It is not a very good trait.

I could get 11 stacks easily (sometimes more) using elixir b, hgh, and the healing/might trait in the power tier (using med kit).

Fun fact about power shoes: it means you travel the same speed out of combat in combat, without swiftness. There is a reason its a master trait, mainly this lets you kite things really easily, even without swiftness.

Beonebee.7385:

I could get 11 stacks easily (sometimes more) using elixir b, hgh, and the healing/might trait in the power tier (using med kit).

See, compare that Grandmaster trait to HGH. HGH should at a minimum, apply two stacks on self use elixirs, maybe keep thrown elixirs at one. In order to get the levels of Might you mention, you’d have to be chugging down the Elixir H as soon as it was off cooldown, and/or taking advantage of the medkit bug where it acts as a heal (and incorrectly applies Might).

As it is currently, I find HGH most useful for Elixir Tosses granting a small bit of might to allies.

Numot.3965:

Fun fact about power shoes: it means you travel the same speed out of combat in combat, without swiftness. There is a reason its a master trait, mainly this lets you kite things really easily, even without swiftness.

Now list for me situations in which I wouldn’t take Swiftness over it.

Even mobs that turn boons into conditions rarely do it fast enough while I’m still in range.

JonPeters.5630:

KirinDave.6451:

HGH should also be on this list. It’d make a decent master trait but where it stands, it’s not that good.

Lucky for you we agree. There is an improvement for this trait coming on the 14th.

Oh there are so many possibilities. I cannot wait to see. Even just increasing the stack size to something like 3-5 (upside would be half of BiP) would be a huge improvement to the trait. Or maybe adding protection or regeneration with the might…

The second dev post in our forum in a week! Huzzah!

I have to say, honestly. Buffing hgh would be like #1032 on my list of things engineers need.
I already use it.. As its already better then the other alch traits, which are all better then every none alch trait…

I mean there was a post were we all agreed gadgets are bad because alch traits make elixirs far better, and kits also are better options in those slots.
why use ram, when you can use flamethrower?
why use rocketboots, when you can use elixir r or rifle leapback?
Why goggles, when.. why googles? seriously? 6s of vul? blind immunity, yeah, again, 409, and alch resistant traits and elixir R. cleanses blind, and any other condition for 6s.

amiable.4823:

The second dev post in our forum in a week! Huzzah!

I don’t want to make too much of that, but it leads me to believe they’re taking a good hard look at the Engineer profession right now.

Casia.4281:

why use ram, when you can use flamethrower?

The toolbar skill in tool burst builds. The snare is nice; I’ve used it in FT builds because they’re short on quick snares.

Casia.4281:

why use rocketboots, when you can use elixir r or rifle leapback?

The toolbelt skill, again, is great in pve condition builds.

Casia.4281:

Why goggles, when.. why googles? seriously? 6s of vul? blind immunity, yeah, again, 409, and alch resistant traits and elixir R. cleanses blind, and any other condition for 6s.

I think traited goggles are fine, actually.

I am not saying Inventions doesn’t need love. I am just saying there are reasons and you did ask.

But I am all for easy numeric tweaks. Big sweeping changes require a lot more time, whereas easy tweaks don’t require nearly so much work. I’d love a release with a ton of simple numerical tweeks for Engineer and Necro, followed by a series of bigger improvements later. Because it would feel like progress is being made.

As it stands the last patch was pretty demoralizing for my two favorite classes.

Grenade/Elixir build just got even more broken lol.
Gadgets need some love or replaced because they are lackluster compared to kits/elixirs because they do more then just 2 things. Also their cooldowns aren’t absurd.

Turrets are also bad. Feels like half our skills aren’t worth using. Not just “These skills are better” but rather “These skills are not viable”

Example: Rifle turret does the same DPS as 1 stack of bleed with 1400 condition damage. Without overcharge.

I can’t even handle my anticipation at this point. Oh I wish we could just SEE the Friday patch notes already.

The Hobbit comes out AND An AMAZING GW2 patch? Too much to handle.

Let’s not get too excited about the patch yet. We’ll already probably be going “Well, that was pointless.” or whining about getting nerfed, if previous patches are any indication, without having everyone getting hyped up about it. Admittedly, having a staff member actually say -anything- in these parts is rare, but it’s not really much to celebrate.

so what exactly is HGH?

Sef.6918:

so what exactly is HGH?

“Human Growth Hormone”

It’s a Grandmaster trait that makes all elixirs grant a stack of might for a short period of time.

Wasdclick.1764:

Sef.6918:

so what exactly is HGH?

“Human Growth Hormone”

It’s a Grandmaster trait that makes all elixirs grant a stack of might for a short period of time.

Basically one of the grandmaster traits in Alchemy.

I can see just being boosted to 3 stacks, which will be lame.

The general design-problem I have with HGH is, that most elixirs have defensive character and I would need to put them on long cooldown to stack an offensive boon.

My thief gets 5 stacks of might from activating one signet with a T1-trait – which is in the trait-line which gives both crit-chance and +crit-damage. Activating more signets stacks the might and it can be paired with a trait that´s makes stealing reset the cooldown on signets – that´s synergy.

JonPeters.5630:

KirinDave.6451:

HGH should also be on this list. It’d make a decent master trait but where it stands, it’s not that good.

Lucky for you we agree. There is an improvement for this trait coming on the 14th.

That is great news, because I use HGH more than Lance Armstrong!

NickDollahZ.5348:

Fireforged Trigger – Flamethrower and elixir gun skills recharge 20% faster.
Personally dont think E-gun -cd should be this far in the firearms tree. It seems better fit for inventions. This more of a consequence of Flamethrower and E-gun being grouped together. As a result, if you grab all E-gun related traits. You wont be able to get more then 20 pts in inventions.

Moving it to Inventions would be a nerf to FT+EG builds. One suggestion I’ve seen is putting both benefits for the FT on Fireforged Trigger and both benefits for the EG on Deadly Mixture – that’d leave things about the same for FT/EG builds that will probably want both anyway, but it’ll provide more options for concentrating on just one or the other.

While I’m eagerly awaiting the patch tomorrow, I tried starting a thief, and after getting to lvl 11 and opening up my traits I started looking more closely at them and was floored by how well they’re setup. You mean I can get Precision AND Prowess in the same line, ridiculous! And my regen with class ability (stealth) is in the same line that gives me Healing Power, preposterous!

These are just 2 quick examples of how messed up engi traits really are, I’d like to go through all classes and compare but I don’t have time. So here’s my suggestion, move Backpack Regenerator to Inventions swap with Elixer-Infused Bombs, make the bombs work with 409 and HGH, you could only take one or the other so it wouldn’t be to OP

yes, engineer traits are awfully focused. The jack of all trades does not work.

digitalfodder.5086:

I can see just being boosted to 3 stacks, which will be lame.

How would that be lame!?

Elixir H + Elixir B, Add in enhanced performance

Elixir B – 4 stacks
Elixir H – 6 stacks
Throw B – 3-4 stacks
Throw H – 1 stack

So that’s 14-15 stacks of might, that you can keep up indefinitely if you use a triple might duration rune setup.

Combine that with Bomb Kit, and P/S and that’s another 6 stacks to add

You could keep yourself at 20-21 stacks of might, ALWAYS ON, by yourself.

Or 700 power/condition.

Casia.4281:

yes, engineer traits are awfully focused. The jack of all trades does not work.

I don’t know, happy going deep explosives and firearms, and with the first 20 points in tools. The only line that seems truly broken is inventions.

I feel the class needs a viable (and mutually exclusive)support/condition removing alternative to clensing formula 409. Heal turrent fights with elix H, I don’t see anyone seriously suggesting elixir C anymore, and I feel that Elixir Gun is a pve all-star, but a pvp bench warmer.

It’s hard to be a jack of all trades with a narrow selection of options.

NickDollahZ.5348:

Grenade/Elixir build just got even more broken lol.
Gadgets need some love or replaced because they are lackluster compared to kits/elixirs because they do more then just 2 things. Also their cooldowns aren’t absurd.

If cornered, I’d say that it’s the cooldowns that keep gadgets from being considered more often. Ram, slick shoes, and rocket boots could do some serious work with 10-20 seconds off their cooldown. That, and perhaps a group utility trait.

I agree with both your points Silent.

If they take some cooldown off the useful one they will atleast be a good alternative to kits. Although some of the Gadgets are just completely useless and need way more help.

Inventions needs some more love. I would love for it to become the Elixir Gun tree. Its my favorite kit. I want to just stay in it forever. Once I get weapon stats/sigils and bug fixes. I will be able to do that. Still I fill Inventions needs better traits. I would like them to move some of the Alchemy traits into inventions. Alchemy tree has too many good traits and u can only pick three. So I think that would work.

Protection Injection could be moved into inventions for example. Although inventions has some good traits as well. Just not as good as the others. It is getting dwarfed by the other trees. So I think some number tweaks would help as well.

Here are a few I think could use some love:

Protective Shield reduce the cd by 5-10 seconds. 20 second cd for 3 second boon is kinda brutal. Compare this to protective Injection in Alchemy.

The rest are in my first post already.

@Ahlen.7591: I’m already getting prepared to move back to my Elixir chucking build. Alchemy trait line just got even better if they buff HGH.

Reserve Mines: this annoys me so much. For grenadier there is so much usefull things u could get in explosives. This does absolutely nothing. I wonder if any other profession has trait like this at 20 -lines!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean ur supposed to get sweeter cookies the more u invest into trait line. This is worst joke of all jokes. Should be removed (no silly fixes or attempts of trying to make it “workish”). Most useless thing in any game ever. REMOVE IT!

What if those Reserve Mines actually knocked back people. Now that would be a good trait. There are ways to improve that trait. I dont think it needs to be removed.

HGH needs to be amended to work on other races. AGH, SGH, NGH, CGH …?

I guess Anet read this thread if you look at the patch notes! Great news will update OP after im done wiping the drool from my mouth. lol