Guild Wars 2

Hellows

Before you continue to read,I want to state Im talking mainly about spvp.
I’ve been playing various classes before I ended up at the Engineer.
In fact Ranger and Guardian are the only classes I didn’t play yet.
I really enjoy the class despite it’s chaotic nature (and bugs),but it could be much better.
I’ve tried a number of builds and P/P cond build proved to be the most effective overall.
But also worth to mention glass cannon Engis have pitiful dmg compared to other classes’ dmg focused builds.(which is not that big problem but it hurts the class’ flexibility)

More important is that this class feels like the developers made it in haste and full of unfinished placeholder skills without any synergy among them.

1. Rifle:
As it was discussed many times on the forum,many player was disappointed by the shotgun like abilities.
Expecting long range sniper like direct dmg abilities saying it would fit the class,I was also surprised,however I don’t mind having a “shotgun” if it would be really a shotgun instead of this boring long range autoattack and melee/medium range hybrid.This would question the role of the flamethrower as a close/medium range weapon tho.
And role as a cc weapon? Hardly useful.

TLDR: Rifle is a clunky badly designed placeholder like weapon which doesn’t have a clear role.

2. Grenade kit:
A lot of players likes it because of it’s VERY long range and relatively high damage.
It is indeed useful in WvW and PvE but it’s button mash style and the travel time of grenades at longer range makes it very awkward to use and limits it’s uses in spvp.
The question is,what’s the point of the very long range if it’s useful only against static targets at long range? (And it doesn’t makes sense to throw a grenade farther than a rifle can shoot)

3. Bomb kit.
Now this is the stuff I use only cuz of the toolbelt skill.I can’t even imagine a single situation where it performs better than any other weapons/kits.
Low dmg,melee range,delayed detonation time.Placeholder kit?

4. Flamethrower:
Not much to say,pretty well designed stuff. Awesome in PvE and it does have a clear role as a close range weapon.If only it would be better in pvp.
And the bugs ofc.

5. Tool kit
This is the stuff I’ve never tried so I can’t say anything about it :s

6. Elixir Gun:
It’s clearly a support thingy but Im not sure if it provides enough support to make it worthy to replace your damaging weapons for such a lil support.

I wanted to continue with Downed skills and Elite skills but when i think about them they’re simply just badly designed,weak,boring skills with the exception of Supply Crate. I just hate them.

Feel free to disagree but do it civilised,constructive plx.

I can fill in the bit about the tool kit. In short, its horribad in all game modes. This is not only because the kit itself is bad, but also because the profession does not have traits or utility skills that synergize well with a melee build. Lack of stability really hurts melee engineers as well.

In PvE the Tool Kit is bad because it doesn’t do any where near enough damage to justify putting you in harms way. Again this is also a reflection on the engineer lacking the defensive utilities that would be needed for a melee build to work. It also sucks for tagging so its useless for farming. You don’t even have to compare it to grenade kit to realize its bad. Even compared to a mediocre kit like flamethrower, the tool kit is still horrible in PvE.

In PvP the tool kit is even worse. This is mostly do to ridiculously slow animations, but also due to low damage and the professions lack of good gap closers and defensive utility skills / traits. In PvP gap closers are pretty much mandatory for a melee build. The engineer has gap closers, but they are all horribly slow in terms of activation and animation times. The rifle 5 for instance, takes almost as long to move you to the target location as it would take to run there. The magnet pull on tool kit is good against ranged enemies in theory, but again the animation and activation time are so horribly slow that you are likely dead before it goes off. The melee attack animations are also very slow and this is obviously bad when trying to fill a melee role. The damage numbers seem high, but you will find it very hard to connect with any of the attacks. Again, the fact that engineers have essentially no on demand source of stability would make melee difficult even if the tool kit did not suck. You will find yourself being kited and killed very quickly by ranged, and true melee professions will eat you up with hilariously little effort. Professions that are more melee based do everything better than a melee engineer: better sustained damage, better burst damage, better CC’s (engineer CC’s usually punt the enemy out of melee range making it hard to combo), better defenses and they have some kind of on demand stability.

All in all, the tool kit behaves much like the other kits- you end up using throw wrench and sometimes swapping in to it for the #4 block. You will not find it effective as a primary weapon.

This is sort of relevant. It’s in WvW, but still entertaining and fun to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJkTMqJOWvU

I run rifle/grenades/mines/bombs. Lots of DPS and control options, with the only downside being I have to preemptively protect myself from bursts(placing a mine right next to me so if I get stunned, I can blast them away, for example) In the end, I think it’s a fair tradeoff, as it has extremely fun and versatile gameplay while maintaining a good charr style(using potions, magnets, and batteries always feels like more of an Asuran engineer style than Charr)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcIQFAUl0piY3yynF1LJyoCdGIF6lfJqQl95hc1WQIA;ToAg0CnoSykkIJbSukkJNG5MC|

The bomb kit is more for utility than dps. I usually just switch to it to drop a smoke/sticky bomb. It does less damage than grenades(with grenadier), but it’s nice to be able to use the bomb autoattack to destroy the treb/base door while still being able to keep an eye out for flankers.

@Avie.2359

1-Rifle, while most people complain that it doesn’t have long range stuff I actually like it more this way, simply because it’ll be very rare find a situation in pvp where long range actually helps, also it gets you extreme control from its net shot and jump shot not to mention “overcharged shot” which added to others knockback skills helps you physically keeping targets at distance, maybe even throw’em off cliffs (easily paired with net turret).

2-grenades, yea you are right they are actually best used in places where you could just “stand there” so bosses and WvW, else you could try to get the best out of the toolbelt skill with the use of net shot, still you’ll have to spend 30sp to make it viable.
Also even in close range they are quite unreliable, because they’d land just too slow and scatter a bit too much on single targets, we truly need an auto-attack that works like elementalist’s fireball imo.

3-bombs, you couldn’t be more wrong, actually I think it’s a must have in pvp, yea BoB’s simply godly, but its bombs are strong (being stronger than your other skill1 attacks), they can hit enemies chasing you so you don’t have to turn the camera, also provides HUGE combo fields which help the entire party AND manage to hit guys running at you *cough*melee*cough* without even making them realize they are being hit because bombs look kinda small, you could even escape a bad situation by dropping a glue bomb and getting the hell away using the speedy kit trait, OR helping others and even yourself with finishing enemies in pvp by placing a smoke bomb right before pressing F.
To compliment all this you obviously have to take “forceful explosives” trait, and thank god it’s only 10sp.

4-Flamethrower, bugged, true, but considering Air blast is great for the control it provides, the Napalm, which is a very useful combo field that manages to still scare people in pvp (well mostly situation of roaming) AND finally smoke vent, which I think it’s the best, ’coz it lets you finish off enemies safely when timed correctly, just like smoke bomb, keep in mind you CAN switch kits while “finishing”.

5-Tool kit, kinda hard to see it as a desirable option compared to other kits but its 3-4-5 skills look quite good, pair it with “kit refinement” trait and you’ll have a no CD insta-skill 2. It obviously needs some kind of reworking though.

6-Elixir Gun… “such lil support”? Ok first “kit refinement” is a must on this kit, the kit’s worth almost for just its combo field, I mean it’s light, LIGHT, it heals, projectiles remove conditions and blasts gets you AND YOUR PARTY retaliation! (BoB+elixir kit=3s retaliation without possible bonuses from traits/eqs), Acid bomb’s pretty cool combined with other stuff to keep the distance, Elixir F cripples and fumigate… well yea it needs kinda reworking as to when/how much poison it applies, but I’d use it when I see the enemy might want to heal so he doesn’t fully recover.
The weapon would be even cooler if we had some more combo finishers, projectiles especially…

About downed skills… I think ours are some of the better ’coz both provide enemy control, ok not much resistance on a group of roamers but trust me, you have enough already while not downed.

About Elites, I agree, exept for the underwater Elixir-X, ’coz it lets me easily capture the Ruins even in 2v1.

I think this is all, I tried to be as constructive as I could, I hope it helped.

Kits were kinda a huge risk utility in the design phase and its obvious (especially considering all the last minute massive changes in beta) that they never did read fruition. But, (as i sorta quit actively playing over a week ago) i still check back occasionally cause i think they probably will eventually get out most of the major bugs and give the profession another look over to fix its confusing design. but who knows, if they dont..oh well i’ll play something else, i may not be their main market

@OP: As a rank 40 engineer, I’m going to say I disagree with the vast majority of your characterizations of the weapons.

The fact that you can’t even “imagine a single situation where it [bomb kit] performs better than any other weapons/kits” demonstrates that you aren’t aware of many of the ways to play engineer successfully.

Bombs are great, FT is lame except in PVP for the utility abilities. You are also wrong about a lot of other stuff. Not trying to be rude, just honest.

Avie.2359 and Zandur.5012 both offered very poor assessments in my opinion.

Avie having said bombs were low damage was actually rather comical. He appeared very unknowledgeable about the elixir gun.

Zandur seemed to have limited knowledge of how to use the tool kit.

It is as if both of them used the kits a few times, jumped to some conclusions on them and never used them again. If your going to take time to remake a thread for the 5,286th time because, for whatever reason, you decided we needed a new thread on it, at least have some knowledge on the subject matter.

The other issue I have difficulty understanding, is why every johnny come lately feels we need a new thread with there assessment of the profession. Not particularly bashing anyone for doing it, but I always feel a sense of elitism when folks are too good to simply post in the already ongoing discussions, and make separate threads just for their opinions. Just clutters up the sub forum even more.

Tool kit is like most other kits: good utility, not very good as a primary source of damage.

Yukishiro.8792:

Tool kit is like most other kits: good utility, not very good as a primary source of damage.

Tool kit would be substantially more useful if the auto-attack chain was a conal multi-hit (hits all in front of you) like all other 2h weapons are*, though it could do with a damage hit as well.

• the toolkit may use a 1h spanner in the animation but it replaces all 5 slots so by game definition its a 2h weapon

actually iz more weapons in one as it has the wrench, prybar, magnet and the gear shield, so well iz actually a W/S (W=wrench lol), I wish it counted as a shield set though…

I love the rifle and would like it if they made it shorter range but do more damage. I love the shotgun feel. The toolkit is pretty good in PVE. I use it mostly for the burst of the number 3 ability. Start with rifle, use your throw wrench, when they get close, blunderbus plus crowbar and they’re dead twice over. Another thing you can do is melee a group of three while they attack your thumper turret. You dps them while healing your turret. Tank, dps and heal all in one.