Guild Wars 2

We’re now looking at entering the seventh season of Heart of Thorns PvP with little if any real changes to the engineer. A few token nerfs just to make us feel weaker than we were previously without any compensating buffs to push the class in any visible, coherent direction.

I’m just baffled.

Six seasons into Heart of Thorns, entering what is ostensibly the penultimate or even final season of Heart of Thorns PvP (depending on when the next expansion actually drops), and we have seen no real changes to the scrapper elite specialization or the engineer profession overall since the end of season one.

We are still stuck with only running the hammer with gyros, the elixir gun, and the healing turret. Minus the nerf to Slick Shoes following season one, my build has not changed in any significant way for nearly two years—not to say that those two years were particularly comfortable. In that time: gyros lost their daze, their damage, and had their cooldowns increased; Rapid Regeneration was nerfed; Automated Medical Response was nerfed; Slick Shoes was nerfed; and now Protection Injection has been nerfed. It’s been a consistent if not systematic downhill slide since Heart of Thorns launched, and core engi has suffered some of the worst of it. Not including today’s nerf to Protection Injection, other traits and skills like Gear Shield have also seen significant reductions in their utility, rendering any core engi build significantly weaker to the scrapper—a state, I imagine, is entirely on purpose to drive sales and artificially inflate the value of one’s purchase.

To compensate many of these nerfs, ArenaNet has, to their merit, tried to help us by adjusting values and tinkering with things for seemingly random effects. Every patch I see a few changes like Fire Bomb’s physical damage being buffed or seeing Utility Goggles’ cooldown reduced from 30 seconds to 20. Despite the fact that these changes did little if anything to the profession, it was nice to see that ArenaNet was at least trying to make other skills more viable—even if at times it feels like they’re improperly forcing those decisions by just making the status quo less viable.

There’s no denial here that Heart of Thorns introduced a great deal of power creep that needed scaling back. I absolutely acknowledge it and I’m glad to see some of it curtailed. But there’s nothing more demeaning than being forced to run the same build you ran the past three to four seasons while being cognizant of the fact that it’s a lesser version of those previous builds. Much like how the reward nerf crippled season six’s popularity, it’s a tough sell to tell people to keep doing what they’re doing for less pay or—in our case—less effectiveness.

It was Irenio’s comment during one of the AMAs, following the closure of season five, however, that gave me hope, which you can find here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Official-Skill-Balance-Thread-22-February-Update/page/2#post6505559

We would really like to do some in-depth passes on underused utility types across most professions. We did not have time to do that for this update, sadly.

Kits on Engineer are an outlier; as utilities they provide an insane amount of versatility. Inherently it is difficult to bring a single skill up to the level of five skills. This is a difficult conundrum and one we discuss regularly. That said, we do have a few ideas for creating gameplay with other utility revisits in the future.

In particular I’d like to review and revisit Elementalist Conjures, Guardian Spirit Weapons, Engineer Gadgets and potentially Mesmer Mantras.

And I guess I just find myself asking: is this it? Are kits always going to be an outlier for us? Are gadgets always going to be useless? Are we going to just shift from one elite specialization to another, stuck with yet another completely overpowered elite specialization tree that only forces ArenaNet to gut core trait lines further to compensate?

I just don’t get it. They’ve had over 18 months to get this sorted out, and right now, May 17th, 2017, this is what they have to show for it. If this balance patch wasn’t the opportune time to give us something new prior to the next expansion, which obviously will take the lion’s share of the balance team’s focus in the coming months, then when?

I bought into ArenaNet’s fresh take on the engineer when they unveiled the scrapper by purchasing Heart of Thorns, but my hope is dwindling that the engineer will be anything but the scrapper moving forward into the next expansion—to where it’ll then be whatever the next thing is, never again being the class I bought the game to play originally, or being the class that kept me actively playing this game for years.

Here’s the thing: We know they are aware of the engineer’s problems. I’ve seen multiple dev comments where they point out that rifle is underwhelming, that kits are simply way more useful than most of our other skills, and the traits are a mess. There’s other issues they are aware of too, like legendaries and kit interactions. They have seen our complaints. They are aware of the issues.

And yet they have done nothing to address these problems in the past 2 years. This last “balance” patch for engineers looks like it was cobbled together the night before they implemented it. Whatever their team is doing, they’re not devoting the time they need to fix these issues. It honestly feels like engineer is an afterthought in their minds — we were the last class to be added to the core game, and we were the last (rushed) specialization added to HoT. They continue to demonstrate that we’re last in their minds.

My hope is fading extremely fast. I’m not a naturally pessimistic person, but I find myself growing angrier and less interested in playing Guild Wars every day (I only log in for dailies now). Unless they do some serious balancing before the next expac, I’m not sure I’ll want to buy it.

I’ve documented many of the issues in my post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/The-Engineer-Injustice/first . I didn’t bother telling them how to fix the issues because it’s their job, not mine.

Many people seem intent on arguing that our DPS is meta, but I would argue that they’re equating the weather with the climate. The winds have been temporarily kind to us, but history has shown that we almost always get nerfed in the harshest ways possible. Take turrets and gyros, our two big selling points. Because they were seen as “OP”, they got nerfed so hard that they’re significantly less useful (if useful at all). There’s no gentle nerf stick for the engineer. We get the nerf mace. And then the skills are left in obscurity until they inconvenience someone on the dev team.

Vagrant.7206:

Here’s the thing: We know they are aware of the engineer’s problems. I’ve seen multiple dev comments where they point out that rifle is underwhelming, that kits are simply way more useful than most of our other skills, and the traits are a mess. There’s other issues they are aware of too, like legendaries and kit interactions. They have seen our complaints. They are aware of the issues.

And yet they have done nothing to address these problems in the past 2 years. This last “balance” patch for engineers looks like it was cobbled together the night before they implemented it. Whatever their team is doing, they’re not devoting the time they need to fix these issues. It honestly feels like engineer is an afterthought in their minds — we were the last class to be added to the core game, and we were the last (rushed) specialization added to HoT. They continue to demonstrate that we’re last in their minds.

My hope is fading extremely fast. I’m not a naturally pessimistic person, but I find myself growing angrier and less interested in playing Guild Wars every day (I only log in for dailies now). Unless they do some serious balancing before the next expac, I’m not sure I’ll want to buy it.

I’ve documented many of the issues in my post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/The-Engineer-Injustice/first . I didn’t bother telling them how to fix the issues because it’s their job, not mine.

Many people seem intent on arguing that our DPS is meta, but I would argue that they’re equating the weather with the climate. The winds have been temporarily kind to us, but history has shown that we almost always get nerfed in the harshest ways possible. Take turrets and gyros, our two big selling points. Because they were seen as “OP”, they got nerfed so hard that they’re significantly less useful (if useful at all). There’s no gentle nerf stick for the engineer. We get the nerf mace. And then the skills are left in obscurity until they inconvenience someone on the dev team.

Jep, I always tell my engineer guildmates, that they should loose their hope. The meta is friendly to engineer right now, not the other way around.
I suppose not even after the new expension engineer’s new specialization will be the last added, balances won’t happen (or for god’s sake, overhauls of turret/kit design will definetly NOT happen).
Loose your hope and you illusions. We engineers are always the end of all balance designs. Except nerfs, they happen easily.
There are hundres of problems (most since beta), but Anet simply don’t give a kitten.

oh when did they announce season 7 and when is it

Phineas Poe, the hero we engi’s need but not what we deserve.

Fionne will be proud. Kek

• Elite spec too stronk
• Nerfs core
• People become even more reliant on elite specs.

That is HoT balance for you.

Anyhow, I play most classes besides warrior, and I have to say that if I were to rate the elite specs, I would have to say their direction with scrapper is undoubtedly the worst. Every other classes seems to have gotten a unique take on what they were. Well, I guess Revs are in an awkward position.

ArchonWing.9480:

Anyhow, I play most classes besides warrior, and I have to say that if I were to rate the elite specs, I would have to say their direction with scrapper is undoubtedly the worst. Every other classes seems to have gotten a unique take on what they were. Well, I guess Revs are in an awkward position.

Like I said, it’s really because we’re always the last one in their thoughts. Scrapper was the last elite spec in HoT, and it was clearly rushed:

• There’s no real synergy with the core skills. Scrapper is almost like an entire class apart from engineer, and not in a good way.
• Scrapper is only really useful in PvP or WvW. In PvE, it severely underperforms compared to core. And when compared against other elite specs, it’s a joke in PvE.
• They never even bothered to follow up with our feedback in the forum. It wasn’t until last month that Gaile un-pinned the BWE3 thread.
• The traits are a broken mess because they rushed out a nerf to gyros. I guess they’re consistent about making sure our traits are broken, because the meta is always more important than a vision when it comes to engineers.

Vagrant.7206:

Like I said, it’s really because we’re always the last one in their thoughts. Scrapper was the last elite spec in HoT, and it was clearly rushed:

• There’s no real synergy with the core skills. Scrapper is almost like an entire class apart from engineer, and not in a good way.
• Scrapper is only really useful in PvP or WvW. In PvE, it severely underperforms compared to core. And when compared against other elite specs, it’s a joke in PvE.
• They never even bothered to follow up with our feedback in the forum. It wasn’t until last month that Gaile un-pinned the BWE3 thread.
• The traits are a broken mess because they rushed out a nerf to gyros. I guess they’re consistent about making sure our traits are broken, because the meta is always more important than a vision when it comes to engineers.

While agree that the Scrapper quite obviously was rushed and the recent nerf to Gyros left the traits in a mess, I really gotta disagree with your first two points. There are quite a few traits which have a beautiful synergy with baseline Engineer when it comes to power and tanky builds.

The issue with this is that Engineers could already sustain itself quite well and – despite not having a proper power AA – also had quite a few power builds (not talking meta… talking ‘viable’). As a result, Scrapper didn’t add too much especially since tanking is more of a niche role in PvE.

Sure, after some nerfs which mainly affected PvP and WvW didn’t turn out to be that popular in endgame PvE mainly because of the rise of condition damage – which the spec indeed doesn’t cater. Not that is too big of an issue considering Engineers were quite good at dealing condition damage to begin with. However, it’s a pitty they didn’t pick Mace instead of Hammer (poor Shield…) and didn’t introduce a proper new mechanic aside from F-Gyro.

Scrapper isn’t completely useless. It’s just kitten boring.

Vagrant.7206:

• Scrapper is only really useful in PvP or WvW.

It isn’t really useful in WvW, it is okay for small groups and had a really niche role in “GvG” that really is optional, unlike rev, guard, etc, and even when is used for that they only need one scrapper.

Outside of that it is weak, solo roaming it is sub-par because it has terrible damage application / zero chase ability, then the larger scale you get the less use its “GvG” niche becomes so if a guild runs 25 man there is really no need for it and in zergs/blobs it is completely surplus to requirements.

insanemaniac.2456:

oh when did they announce season 7 and when is it

I mean, it’s kind of a given at this point, isn’t it?

Vagrant.7206:

• There’s no real synergy with the core skills. Scrapper is almost like an entire class apart from engineer, and not in a good way.
• Scrapper is only really useful in PvP or WvW. In PvE, it severely underperforms compared to core. And when compared against other elite specs, it’s a joke in PvE.
• They never even bothered to follow up with our feedback in the forum. It wasn’t until last month that Gaile un-pinned the BWE3 thread.
• The traits are a broken mess because they rushed out a nerf to gyros. I guess they’re consistent about making sure our traits are broken, because the meta is always more important than a vision when it comes to engineers.

I agree in some ways and disagree with others. It’s not that scrapper underperforms in PvE; it’s just that the elite specialization mechanic, the function gyro, is more useful in PvP and WvW where people tend to (ideally) die more frequently.

The other aspect is that scrapper is pretty much a support spec in an area of the game where DPS is the only barometer of success. And since scrapper lacks any damage buff traits like Grace of the Land, other classes can support the raid group while simultaneously upping the group’s damage. The change to Pinpoint Distribution does help, but it’s not really enough—and I can’t imagine that ArenaNet would make the same mistake with the next one.

Scrapper isn’t a broken mess and is in fact quite a powerful and effective elite specialization. Across the game, it’s probably one of the strongest, and it’s likely to be one of the few specializations that remains powerful into the next expansion solely because of the expansive suite of utility gyros provide—most of all the function gyro.

The issue I am raising in this thread is that ArenaNet’s approach to balancing the scrapper has been nerfing core engineer trait lines, essentially reinforcing the need to use it. Engineer will very likely be a tier one profession again for season seven, but it will remain to be one on an even flimsier foundation with the nerfs to Protection Injection and Bunker Down. As Archon Wing said:

ArchonWing.9480:

• Elite spec too stronk
• Nerfs core
• People become even more reliant on elite specs.

That is HoT balance for you.

ArenaNet’s approach to balancing the engineer in PvP the past two years is akin to pouring gasoline on a fire. Instead of shaving Rapid Regeneration and Final Salvo, and instead of adjusting the values of gyros to make them less dominant (while perhaps buffing gadgets and elixirs in a more significant way), they’re hitting traits like Protection Injection that already have obvious counters (e.g., necromancers) and weren’t the real culprits of our sustain.

The reason engineer is so broken in PvP is because super speed can’t be stripped, and because Purge Gyro literally invalidates condi spam builds as a singular utility skill. But because for ArenaNet making money is more important than making your game actually fun, we’re stuck with the scrapper and will have no competent alternatives for the foreseeable future.

i thought it was a given but i looked at the pvp ui and couldnt find it when prior to this theyve always had something on there telling us when the next season starts. either on the ranked button or in the leagues tab somewhere.

i am somewhat alarmed and skeptical