Guild Wars 2

I’m going to try to keep this short.

I, personally, have never played the sustain meta, I’ve been told I’m one of the glassiest engineers many have seen be successful.

As a result, I’m not really able to comment on the sustain output scrappers are currently capable of, as I haven’t seen any while roaming.

I will say this, engineer sustain was on par with elementalist sustain, and I agreed with most of the nerfs in regards to that.

My issue lies with the damage potential engineers now lack. The fact is, most classes outhit us, even at the higher power thresholds.

With a 50% nerf to Shock Shield, and no damage on hit from Thunderclap, I have personally found that fights have become significantly harder than they should be.

Realistically speaking, no one worth fighting is going to stand in the Thunderclap AoE long enough to take damage, and shock shield no longer punishes over-aggression, due to its hefty damage nerf.

Kiting remains an issue, and our lack of gap closers and ranged pressure, that was being slightly mitigated by Thunderclap, has made hammer scrappers incredibly underwhelming.

I’ve attempted to adapt, and while I can still gain some measure of success, it’s not very difficult to beat a hammer scrapper.

In my opinion, the changes to Thunderclap and Shock Shield need to be reverted.

Umm actually, this sounds like an l2p issue scrubkitten???

jk
Nerfing two skills so hard like that just seems like a mistake when power engis can’t even switch to rifle to make up for it.
Because we all know how good rifle is.

Shock Shield nerf is fine IMO. The Thunderclap one just seems needless and makes it a whole lot less effective. A lot of the time the only damage you got out of it was the initial hit, meaning now it’s a daze if you land it, which with that cast time is not the easiest thing to do. I still wish that Rocket Charge was actually a gap closer and not just some fancy leap finisher with an evade that doesn’t even last the whole animation.

Kiting is a problem for a Hammer build against something like a Ranger, who can shoot from the other side of the map. You won’t die, but it will take more time than I care to spend chasing him. Hammer is great for zerging, great for camp flipping, tower flipping and small havoc groups. But as a solo roamer, you might just want to skip some fights.

Remember, Scrapper was designed, like all Specializations across all professions, for sPvP. So too have been all the changes made by Anet. WvW wasn’t even thought about when they were created.

FOR roaming a classic condi rabid-dire/balthazar rune build with firearm, alchemy and tool in my opinion works really well … not worst than scrapper ( ft , toolkit, elixir S, mortar ) . I use it quite often and i find it more effective than scrapper. scrapper is really strong but it is slow and you don’t have any good range weapon ,

@Jerus

Regarding shock shield, in T1 everyone’s running some degree of toughness. There are very few glass players. With 3.8k power and 200% critical damage, I’m averaging 750 crits. It’s not great, and I feel like I’d be better off hit-trading most of the time.

I’d argue that due to the nature of it, it certainly didn’t need to hit as hard as it used to, but I would’ve gone with a 25% nerf, rather than a hard 50%.

As for Thunderclap, the delay to damage also messes with the Tools line’s Lock-On trait, meaning I can no longer use it to reliably unstealth thieves either.

@Soon

I’ve never really been one to skip fights, as there’s no particular class I consider to be unkillable. The nerfs have made things significantly harder against certain builds, but it’s still doable.

WTB Hug.3849:

@Soon

I’ve never really been one to skip fights, as there’s no particular class I consider to be unkillable. The nerfs have made things significantly harder against certain builds, but it’s still doable.

I hear you, but the hammer Scrapper is just not a very mobile build. I’m not saying that any class is un-killable by a Scrapper, but Anet just did not make us very mobile or ranged. In my experience, most roamers in WvW that I meet while I’m roaming are the mobile professions. I roam a great deal on my Dire P/P Engi. EG, Rocket Boots, Tool Kit (for pulls) and do fine.

Thunderclap nerf was uncalled for, but Anet never goes back on a nerf unless the community literally goes insane over it.

What many ppl need to know is that engi is the only class that is anywhere near a balanced class, but what makes it seem unfair is the fact that engis have to compare with broken classes that are far from balance.
~quaggan

Alec B.8905:

What many ppl need to know is that engi is the only class that is anywhere near a balanced class, but what makes it seem unfair is the fact that engis have to compare with broken classes that are far from balance.
~quaggan

Not even kidding. I’very always felt that other classes balance philosophy has been “well class b can use this specific build to counter class a, balance done”. Engi is balanced by making it sure it can’t do anything better than any other class. Haha

The engineer handbook (http://www.sheriffsauer.com) is a great place to start.

As others have said in this post, solo-roaming as an engineer is best if you know how to play core. Scrapper is fun to solo roam but I feel like there’s not much you can do once you get outnumbered. Of course you can find ways to escape (best thing about engineer) but if you want to stick to solo, you should try pistol/shield or pistol/pistol. Rifle would be fun too still but I haven’t really tried that in a long time.