Guild Wars 2

So I was bored, and I’ve decided to create my dream balance patch for engineer.
Brace yourself for wall of text!

Bug fixed and features:

• Kits now properly scale from Ascended quality gear
• You can now switch between visable Hobosacks and disabled
• While switching to kits, player no longer looses legendary weapon effects – aura and footsteps.

Pistol – pistol lacks of strong auto-attack also glue shot feels unimpactfull with it’s low duration of immobilize.

• Fragmentation Shot – now inflicts bleed in explosion part of skill. Increased bleed duration to 5 sec.
• Glue Shot – increased immobilize to 2 seconds.

Rifle – I like to compare engineer’s rifle to Ranger’s greatsword. They both have weak auto-attack, but have strong burst cooldowns. However engineer’s rifle is locked behind much higher cooldowns. Jump shot locks engineer in animation, allowing to be shutdown in mid-air, this shouldn’t have a place becouse you can’t react to anythig while in casting animation.

• Blunderbuss – this skill is swapped with net shot in places on the skill bar. Removed bleed from the skill. Increased skill damage by 10%. Reduced cooldown to 4 seconds.
• Net shot – this skills is now under 3# slot. Improved projectile speed.
• Jump shot – evade attacks while in air – leap animation.

Hammer – there’s lack of clarity when using electro whril. You deal damage in the first part of the skill and second part is only reflect based, which leads to misunderstandings where attack accur. Now skill does three impact through all of it’s attack animation, with reduced damage per single impact – however overall damage is buffed.

• Electro-whirl – increased number of impacts from 2 to 3. Reduced single impact damage by 20%

Bomb kit – Bomb kit auto-attack simply out-dps all of other damage oriented skills in raid scenario. Reduced power scalling by a bit and increased effectivnes of big-ol bomb

• Bomb – Reduced power scalling from 1,25 to 1,05.
• Big Ol’ Bomb – Increased damage by 20%, increased blast radius to 400.

Flamethrower – Goal to changes in flamethrower is increasing it’s purity of purpose. Flame Blast were to clunky to use, so now it’s ground targeted skill which hit’s 2 times – as projectile pass through enemy and detonation part.

• Flame Jet – Reduced power damage of this skill by 33%, now inflicts 1 sec of Burning every second hit.
• Flame Blast – Now is ground-targeted skill, like elementalist’s Phoenix skill.

Med kit – Med kit felt realy underwelming as support kit. We are buffing it’s condition removal abilities. New Grandmaster trait will increase it’s usability in group scenario (read about it bellow)

• Throw Stimulant – Now removes 2 debilitating conditions (weakness. blind, vulnerabilty). Increased cooldown to from 10 to 15 seconds.
• Throw Accelerant – Now removes 2 movement-impairing conditions (chill, immobilize, cripple). Increased cooldown to 15 to 16 seconds.
• Throw Antidote – Now removes 2 conditions and grants 3 seconds of Ressitance. Increased cooldown from 20 to 25 seconds.

Toolkit – Toolkit uses mace attack animations, however it was forgotten when maces recieved their animation improvements. Toolkit skills now hits up to 3 targets

• Smack – Improved chain attack speed and animation. Now hits up to 3 targets.
• Prybar – Now hits up to 3 players.
• Throw Wrench – Increased cooldown from 17 to 20 seconds. Wrench while returning now pulls enemies by 100 units.

Elite Mortar Kit – Orbital strike didn’t do enough damage, as traited elite attack – so we are increasing it’s attack. In compensate delay before hit has been increased

• Orbital Strike -Increased Power Scalling from 1.33 to 2.00, increased delay time between cast and impact from 2 to 3 seconds.

Elixirs – We are buffing some unused Elixirs and increasing guaranteed effect chances

• Elixir H – Now always grants Regeneration (10 seconds), and one of following: Protection (5seconds) or Vigor (10 seconds).
  Throw Elixr H – Now always grants Regeneration (8 seconds), and one of following: Protection (5 seconds) or Vigor (8 seconds).
• Throw Elixir C – Now applies Ressitance (3 seconds). Removed condition removal part.
• Elixir R – Reduced cooldown to 15 seconds.

Turrets – Turrets are hard to balance corectly becouse they are AI based. Making them critable and susceptible to conditions made them to easy to destroy. Overcharged skills will be now responsive and allow for skillfull play. Turrets will scale from offesive stats in PvE only. We are nerfing healing turret supermacy in all game modes, promoting keeping turret set instead of blasting combo.

• Increased Health Points of all turrets by 40%
• Overcharge Skills – are now instant cast and will cancel current turret animation/cooldown time between attacks.
• Thumper Turret -(PvE only)- now scales from player’s Power, Precision and Ferocity.
• Rocket Turret -(PvE only)- now scales from player’s Power, Precision and Ferocity.
• Rifle Turret -(PvE only)- now scales from player’s Power, Precision and Ferocity.
• Net Turret – Now scales from player’s condition durration.
• Healing Turret – Increased deployment cooldown from 20 to 25 seconds. Reduced deployment heal by 33%. Increased Cleansing Burst heal by 10%.

Gadgets – We are increasing purity of purpuse of each skill, making them very strong in one specyfic department, instead of increasing damage

• AED – Now removes also confusion when taking lethal damage, reduced cooldown to 25 seconds.
  Static Shock(toolbelt) – This skill is now called Defibe. Now inflicts 1,5 second daze in small PbAoE radius and partially revives nearby allies in downed state.
• Rocket Boots – This skill no longer deals damage and causes blast finisher. Now evades attacks while in skill animation.
  - Rocket Kick(toolbelt) – Now evades attacks while in skill animation.
• Slick Shoes – This skill now has 2 seconds cooldown between knockdown procs, allowing for two knockdowns when used correctly.
• Personal Battering Ram – Now has cone-shaped attack radius, allowning to hit multiple enemies with it. Reduced cooldown to 18 seconds.
• Utility Googles – Now makes your attacks unblockable (5 seconds).
• Throw Mine – This skill now works like Trap – it’s cooldown starts in moment of placing mine, it also has 1 second arm time, also you no longer can manually detonate this skill. Reduced cooldown to 12 seconds. Increased proximity radius to 180.
  - Mine Field(toolbelt) – This skill now works like Trap – it’s cooldown starts in moment of placing minefield, it also has 1 second arm time, also you no longer can manually detonate this skill. Reduced cooldown to 15 seconds. Increased proximity radius to 180, increased explosion radius to 240.

Traits

Explosive:

• Evasive Powder Keg(Minor adept) – Increased damage by 25%, reduced cooldown to 8 seconds.
• Thermobaric Detonation (Grandmaster) – This trait has been renamed to Blast Maniac
  - Blast Maniac- Evasive Powder Keg is now blast finisher. Blasting combo fields now grants you Blasting Delight- Increases your physical damage by 4% for 15 seconds, stacks up to 5 times.

Firearms

• Skilled Marksman – This trait no longer increases attack speed of rifle, instead increase damage of Rifle skills by 10% and reduces cooldown of them by 20%.

Inventions

• Medical Dispersion Field – this trait has been reworked.
  Medical Dispersion Field – support packs (bandages, stimulants, accelerants, antidotes) now also affects allies in small AoE(300) when picked up.

Tools

• Kinetic Battery(Grandmaster) – this trait is now Major trait. Reduced cooldown from 40 to 30 seconds.
• Excessive Energy(Minor grandmaster) – Deal 10% more damage after using toolbelt skill, this effect last for 8 seconds.
• Gadgeteer – Build static charges when hitting enemy or struck. At maximum charge level, your next gadget skill is overcharged and recharges faster.
  - Rocket Boots:Breakes stun, increases range to 1200.
  - Slick Shoes : Increases oil slick duration to 5 seconds.
  - Throw Mine: Now explodes 2 times before dissapearing.
  - A.E.D: Increases duration to 8 seconds and removes all conditions.
  - Personal Battering Ram: Increases cone radius and launch range to 600
  - Utility Googles: Increases unblockable and unblindable effect to 8 seconds
• Streamlined Kits(Master) – this skill now has separate cooldown per kit, no longer grants swiftness. Reduced cooldown to 15 seconds.
  Skills of different kits have been altered:
  - Med Kit: Throw Accelerant: Throw out an accelerant that heals, grants swiftness, and removes 2 movement-impairing conditions (with it you have still pernament swiftness but in different way)
  - Bomb Kit: Magnetic Bomb: Set a timed charge that pulls nearby foes.
  - Granade Kit: Drop Shrapnel: Drop a mine that deals damage to enemies that trigger it and cripples them.
  - Tool Kit: Magnetic Aura: Grants Magnetic Aura which reflects incomming projectiles.
  - Elixir Gun: Glue Trail: Leave a trail of glue behind you that immobilizes enemies
  - Flamethrower: Smoke Vent: Vent smoke from your flamethrower, blinding nearby foes.
  - Elite Mortar Kit: Static Field: Manifest an electrical field that dazes foes crossing it

reserved space for Scrapper trait, utility and class mechanic changes

Swapping Rifle 3 and 2 skills – …why?

Reducing Elixir H cooldown to 20s – too low without getting rid of the cooldown reduction from HGH or reducing the heal on it.

Removing swiftness on Streamlined Kits – eh.. reduces build diversity by forcing people to run medkit for swiftness. Would prefer to leave swiftness on swap as it is.

Changing Throw Mine behavior – meh. detonating the mine manually is an essential part of the skill. It adds depth to gameplay rather than waiting for the enemy to walk over it.

Rocket Boots – Blast finisher is an essential part of the skill.

Rest of the changes look pretty good

yeah lets do burning on every hit of flame jet.

coro.3176:

Swapping Rifle 3 and 2 skills – …why?

In general weapon skills are ordered on cooldown (skill 2 has lowest cooldown, then skill 3 etc etc). This might be different though when using a 1 handed weapon with an offhand.

I think in this case, it’d be outweighed by having the entire population of Rifle engineers (admittendly, that’s probably like.. 7 players) re-learn their skill buttons.

It is a great list, but i think some things are a bit too overpowered so the numbers might be a bit adjusted, but I really like some of the ideas in this list!

Only change i don’t like is the streamlined kits change, also Gadgeteer trait doesn’t really change that much does it? idk the trait would still feel useless imo

You missed the FT effect on your Streamlined kits version. Just saying.

Overall a very interesting list, although I would do different changes almost everywhere.

I agree with Coro on the Streamlined Kits changes being detrimental to diversity.
I disagree with Coro on the Blast finisher on Rocket Boots. IMO the blast should be on Rocket Kick, so Rocket Boots can be 100% movement skill.

Personal Battering Ram – Now has cone-shaped attack radius, allowing to hit multiple enemies with it. Reduced cooldown to 18 seconds.

I simply LOVE this.

@insanemaniac
You are looking wrong way on flamethrower Flame Jet change.
Current iteration of Flame Jet inflicts 4 seconds of burning at the end of the chain – which has 2 second cast time. So if you stop attack in the middle of Flame Jet as condition build, you will loose tons of your damage.

Let’s compare it to my idea of Flame Jet. It applies 1 second burning on every second hit. We know that Flame Jet consist of 10 separate hits, so it’s 5 seconds – 5 ticks of burning spread through 2 second cast. In this way Flame Jet is much less clunky to use and achieves 100% of it’s dps in second hit. You are no longer punished for dodging while mid-animation or getting stunned.

Let’s quickly compare:
Old:
4 seconds of burning on last hit
New:
5 seconds of burning aplied through full flame jet durration
-33% physical damage.

I think you will now understand.

@Ardid
Oh, I forgot about it! :P Big returner there. Added

If you like those changes I may continue with Scrapper changes. However I would love to see some big changes to how Function Gyro works and I don’t know if my opinion would be objective enough

@Coro
Same stuff happened with Guardian’s Greatsword. Whrilling Wrath was under button 3 and symbol under 2, later it was changed to Whriling Wrath on second button with reduced cooldown.

I see that you like your engineer… or else you would not have put this much work into this.
Let me tell you my personal opinion (and plz don’t be insulted because of it).

You don’t named all important bugs:
1. Wrong calculation of the CD reduction for Tool-belt skills of the Trait-line “Tools”
2. Flame-jet displacement of damage cone with visible cone.
3. Jump-shot fail (a- does not jump to the location that you want, b- jump on the spot and not where you aiming)

Miltek.2104:

Firearms

• Skilled Marksman – This trait no longer increases attack speed of rifle, instead increase damage of Rifle skills by 10% and reduces cool down of them by 20%.

4. Although it is in the description, this trait never increased the speed of the rifle attacks. (I done several testing on it and I get an increase of speed by 1% – 3% instead of the 10 % that are promised.)
#You can compare it with the speed increase of the mushrooms that are scattered in the HoT maps.

And there are still more…

By analyzing your changes i see that you actually decrease the dps against moving targets by far!
The engineer is very clunky in movement (Power and Condition). By your dps changes his movement will be even more limited.

The turrets will be still underpowered / unusable.
Since you get your dps from the right skill bar it is not possible to get elixirs in it for a battle.

Some of your changes are simply for pvp. This thinking is the very problem that all classes have since gw2 and even more since HoT. You cannot balance skills around structured pvp (for “1 on 1” up to “5 on 5”). The only way pvp can be balanced in a mmorpg is in a higher number of combatants (“10 on 10” up to “20 on 20” battleground.)

In my opinion you should not fix the working parts.
You have to fix the underused.
For example: If you use a skill that is a main damage skill, than it should increase the dps instead of lowering it… unfortunately I don’t see your changes would do that.

Some of your changes seem overpowered while they are actual nerfs or does not engage the actual problems and therefor do nothing.

Reducing dmg of bumb kit is lame.
Engineer is set up in a way that your main dmg comes from weapon kits, while main weapons (riffle/pistols) are more burst (blowtorch, blunderburst) and utility (jump shot, glue shot, net shot).

The engineer is not a gunslinger or sniper, he uses explosives, tools and inventions to fight. It seems with your ideas you want to turn this around.
I’m all for giving options to play without kits, but nerfing kits so you are forced into weapons AA is lame.

Some notes/suggestions

Pistol -

See above, flat increase to weapons AA is a bit against the core engi idea (kits as main weapons). But I think it should be a valid option.
IMO, its better to:
– Merge granadier and explosive descent;
– New trait – Explosive ammo: fragmentation shot is now an explosion.
This will give the explosive line the option to spec on condi with pistol/nades or with power and bombs. Giving pistol AA the triggering of bleed, vuln and cripple (if fully traited) and a nice combo with chemical rounds. Including a viable hybrid build with mod ammo. All without hurting people that prefer to use nades and/or bombs

Also, swap pistol #3 and #4 so p main hand is condi, and p off hand is soft cc and p/s can be a viable option.

Miltek.2104:

• Rifle -

Again as mentioned at the start, riffle is a burst weapon, and lowering the CD of Blunderbuss makes it it more of a sustain weapon.
IMO:
– Include in No Scope: Improve critical dmg against disabled and immobilized foes.
This will reward a well placed burst and can highly increase riffle burst dmg on bosses with breakbar. In this way you indirectly improve the skills (netshot, OC shot and the 2 burst skills) while rewarding skillful play, instead of giving out free dmg to everyone and lowering the skill level of the profession in general.

Yes for better netshot speed!
Jump shot evade might be a problem to implement (jump duration variable with distance) so maybe just include a short (1-2 secs, 2 stacks) stability on activation? More counter play to the skill also and a good combo with traits and boom duration (for OC shot)

Miltek.2104:

Hammer – […]

IMO the problem with hammer is its total lack of synergy with the rest of the core engi and the nerfs it took.
It needs to fit the rest of the engi skills better, some suggestions:
– Third AA strike (equalizing blow) and each strike from rocket charge are now explosions;
– Thunderclap heals and cleanse turrets for each pulse;
– Rocket Charge needs to be 2 leaps and one blast finisher, improving its synergy with traits such as shocking speed/rapid regen/final salvo (and soothing detonation).

Miltek.2104:

Bomb kit – […]

Nerfing a good dps kit is not the way to improve your preferred gameplay of autoattacking with main weapon. Just, IMO, a bad idea to nerf bombs AA.

Miltek.2104:

Flamethrower – […]

Seems now that purity of purpose means everything needs to be power or condi.
What is wrong with hybrid kits/weapons and using traits to improve each aspect of it?
Let FT do some power dmg too and leave the option to improve burns with IA and other traits…

Miltek.2104:

Med kit – _Med kit felt realy underwelming as support kit. We are buffing it’s condition removal abilities. New Grandmaster trait will increase it’s usability in group scenario (read about it bellow) […]

Problem with med kit is:
– AA is useless, heals less than water staff ele while doing no dmg.
– Bandages and others are clunky, underwhelming and only affect whoever steps on it first.
To be a support kit it needs better implementation on its functionality and values.

Miltek.2104:

Toolkit – […]

Good changes, the AA needs desperate a speed increase.
I’d include there something to remove condis from turrets, maybe on the nailbox?

Miltek.2104:

Turrets – […]

I dont think turrets should scale with player stats. The whole point of this kind of skill is to provide a source of dmg while the player focus on another stat, not to provide more dps to a dps player. So, for example, a player can focus on defensive stats and use turrets to provide some pressure while he defends/supports/controls the opponents. The dps of turrets should never be equivalent of active player dps.
Although, I do believe that a trait in the inventions line should improve turrets effectiveness, and toolkit and hammer should be able to better keep turrets going (heal and cleanse) as they are the defensive/control weapons of the engi/scrapper.
Also, turrets should have more value working than just blowing up…
IMO:
– Healing turret needs to have lower healing upfront and provide more healing while its up and on the burst. Give it a unique buff like the ele water healing aura.
– Turrets need a 50-75% CD reduction if you pick them up, maybe via trait.

Miltek.2104:

Gadgets

- AED needs lower CD and to remove conditions BOTH on activation AND on death blow. If this happens it will have better synergy with traits (AMR) and could be used as a decent healing skill option to HT without the group support.
– I like the changes to mine and mine field but it might make it very clunky with the low range it has. Mine field also needs to remove boons.
– Change to UG might make it very OP (in pvp), even more with reactive lenses and rifle but burst, but sounds fun.
– Slickshoes nerf needs to be undone so engies can have a good breakbar tool again. With the recent change to stability it should not be a huge problem to pvp anymore. If anything, reduce the oil puddle uptime on pvp/wvw only.

Miltek.2104:

@insanemaniac
You are looking wrong way on flamethrower Flame Jet change.
Current iteration of Flame Jet inflicts 4 seconds of burning at the end of the chain – which has 2 second cast time. So if you stop attack in the middle of Flame Jet as condition build, you will loose tons of your damage.

Let’s compare it to my idea of Flame Jet. It applies 1 second burning on every second hit. We know that Flame Jet consist of 10 separate hits, so it’s 5 seconds – 5 ticks of burning spread through 2 second cast. In this way Flame Jet is much less clunky to use and achieves 100% of it’s dps in second hit. You are no longer punished for dodging while mid-animation or getting stunned.

Let’s quickly compare:
Old:
4 seconds of burning on last hit
New:
5 seconds of burning aplied through full flame jet durration
-33% physical damage.

I think you will now understand.

I don’t think you understand how op it will be. that single line taints your entire post.

All in all i find this to be a very good summation of possible solutions to problems regarding the engineer class. Of course some things are a bit strong and so on, but given the extent of this overhaul id say its pretty natural that some of the stuff happen to be a bit overpowered on the first draft.

Do note that i have no idea about raidbalance (though it probably IS healthy to move away from auto spam in the supposedly “endgame” content for pver’s) or competitive pvp and mainly participate in wvw where we are pretty uncommon.

But the most important points for me are:

Orbital strike: It has been bothering me since the release of this skill how unimpressive this skill is. Untraited it hits for about the same as a bomb auto attack with a 40 second recharge and a long cast time + delay to boot. Oh and a blast. even when traited with a grandmaster in a tree that is highly unviable in pvp it is about the same damage as jumpshot or rocket from rocket turret. Your idea of increasing the delay on the first strike gives more counterplay while increasing the reward for pulling off a combo. I like it. One addition id like though is for the trait “siege rounds” to actually make the mortar feel like a siege weapon. As it is now its a ranged support weapon masquerading as a offensive tool (i suppose in pve you can work the Poison shell into the rotation somehow but still). There was the idea to have the projectile from the mortar auto apply to all enemies it hit but that was quickly forgotten about. What if the trait added secondary effects or damage to the rounds depending on what finisher the projectile was? Id even settle for adding a fair cooldown to the auto if we could beef it up a little. Increased damage based on range at the cost of more arc?

Medkit: Yes, finally a good way to get rid of that horrible medical dispersion and help medkit at the same time. A lot of people simply want it to be a auto attack spammer, but its the kits that makes this… kit special.

Turrets: Scaling on power and suchlike shouldn’t be restricted to pve only. No really hear me out. I would have preferred a revamp that made the turrets controlled entirely by the player as a a sort of remotely operated siege/weapon kit but that will never happen so lets settle for this: Allow them to scale on all stats. And reduce their base stats slightly. This way a glassy engineer can set up a surprise nest that hits decently at the cost of himself being pitifully easy to take down and a tanky engineer might want to use the more crowd control oriented turrets while allowing them to last a little longer. Both he and his turrets will hit like a packet of moldy noodles though. Make the overcharges recharge relatively fast but keep a long recharge on the turrets. This means they are impactful but when countered-, well then they are countered. For the hard hitting rocket turret the normal attack should have a very very slow velocity. This means its effective against crowds and as a area denial tool without being opressive in a mobile duel. That should be the purpose of rifle turret. Finally for pve remove the damage reduction on aoe. If a turret now hits hard without the intervention of the engineer then it needs a weakness otherwise it might make the meta focus around turrets. With a weakness it should be more situational.

Gadgets and gadgeteer: Yes this is lovely. I too have been bothered that the mine is more of a explosive frisbee and that the minefield is more like a suicide c4 with this implementation it could be allowed to be more distinct and to fulfill its role as a minefield more effectively. I would like the minefield to strip a boon for each target it catches within the explosion though. This means it can help more in stripping a frontline in wvw from boons (even if the target in front dodges the target behind might still be hit). And the overcharged versions actually makes sense. Rocket boots working as a stun break when overcharged helps a LOT with bar compression. And given the amount of short recharging stunbreaks (outrage, bandits defence etc.) nowadays its hard to call it unfair when its the result of a grandmaster.

As for the healing turret nerf and the elixir buffs, ive always imagined the healing elixir taking over the water field role from the healing turret. So you would throw down elixir h, gain a water field and a short duration version of the boons (regeneration first tick, vigor second and protection last). The drink skill could be a inverse consume conditions and heal based on boons.

I havent had any problem with the hammer though and the fragmentation shot buff is nuts.

these.posts.don’t.work…please.stop.

/15 salts