Guild Wars 2

I played around with these changes… This doesn’t really change anything for Engis as described. While some skills may be used more often, they are hardly beneficial options. I hope this is just a snippet of the full changes in the works for Engis. I can see signs of addressing the issues of DPS correctly, but nothing yet on the core set of DPS skills. Note this: 1 .

Commented below…

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-October-18-2016

Engineer
We’ve been looking to improve the engineer and to support the areas it’s been lacking in so that the profession can perform more effectively in a DPS role. In order to improve purity of purpose, we have removed the daze functionality from the Gyro utility type for scrapper.

How this sounds/What it implies: Improve/support skills by increasing damage, decreasing cast-times or cooldowns, increasing condition duration, etc. on skills that are under-performing.

“Purity of purpose”…gyros are not a threat and even more-so: die for nothing. Albeit, the concept of “purity of purpose” may bring mixed interpretations. In my opinion, a lot of the changes may aim clarify their purposes but doesn’t adequately do anything to make the skills more purposeful toward the end goal.

Changes:

Static Shield: The recharge time of this ability has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds. Block duration has been increased from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds.

Pretty insignificant change. While it is a lower cooldown, it still has a 2s uptime and a 0.75s cast time if you choose to throw it. It should at least automatically “throw” if not manually thrown or at least reflect damage (in the sense of static discharge). Otherwise, still, it serves no real purpose in terms of DPS and provides very little support benefit.

Flamethrower—Air Blast: The description has been updated to better specify the ability’s function. The burning stacks it applies have been increased from 1 to 2.

It only adds 2s of burning. There is no real value of Air Blast other than being a knockback.

Not to mention that, the entire flamethrower kit hardly “burns” as is to make the extra stack pointless. ‘Blowtorch’ (Pistol Off-hand) is far better than any “burning” in the entire Flamethrower kit.

Fire Bomb: The physical damage of this ability has been increased by 10% per tick.

It only has a 3s uptime and 4 pulses… Not really worth rotating off the Auto-Attack Bomb (which has more physical damage) unless you need to apply the condition. Entirely situational, easily avoided in PvP.

Concussion Bomb: Confusion duration has been increased from 5 seconds to 8 seconds. The physical damage of this ability has been increased by 20%.

Again, the physical damage buff is still not really worth rotating off the Auto-Attack Bomb (which has more physical damage) unless you need to apply the condition. Entirely situational, has value in PvP (if you run Bomb Kit).

Big Ol’ Bomb: The knockdown duration of this ability has been increased from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.

Valuable in PvP/WvW. Hardly valuable in PvE given breakbars…

Poison Dart Volley: The projectiles fired by this skill will now land more consistently.

About time. Valuable to anyone running Pistol/s… Still have one or two stray shots every now and then, but most of the time they stay pretty close to target.

Rocket Boots: The initial damage of this ability has been increased by 25%.

Entirely situational. This is mainly used to escape or cover ground…it wasn’t really used for damage (Rocket Kick was though) because it would separate you from your target. While it is useful in that sense to break away, it still doesn’t really “hurt” anybody in a PvP sense (because they can probably recover from a single regen boon tick).

Rocket Boots still suffer from freezing you for a second after landing (people can easily catch up when this happens)…and there still isn’t any threat of following the Engi on the path flown. At least burn/smoke field the ground or something…

Utility Goggles: The recharge time of this ability has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.

This is nice…but still, entirely situational. Goggles should provide more benefit…like maybe increased Ferocity as well.

Gear Shield: The block duration of this ability has been reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds.

This is an unnecessary nerf, imo. Was having a 3s block a real problem? Other classes have longer invulnerability/block time than this and they weren’t even touched.

Gyro utility skills: Gyros will no longer daze anything in the area they affect when they die.

This is an unnecessary nerf. The 1s Daze, while minuscule, was important to find that gap/opportunity to prevent other classes from healing or casting skills (which lead to infinite bunker-play)…removing this buffed bunker-play.

I just don’t understand the logic behind whatever “Purity of Purpose” means. The Daze gave it purpose and gave Engis a sense of security. Meaning, they did not have to worry that their gyros went completely to waste (they aren’t even that strong). The daze at least gave attackers some caution when attacking an Engi.

Fixes:

Glue Trail: Fixed a bug that caused this skill to affect certain friendly NPCs.

Mechanized Deployment: Fixed a bug that prevented the tool belt recharge-rate attribute from updating properly on the Hero panel.

Gadgeteer: Fixed a bug in which the overcharged versions of gadget skills did not have their recharge time reduced by this trait.

Incendiary Powder: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to display longer than the attainable burning duration on skills.

Overall:
None of the changes really increased Engi’s support and DPS. All it did, slightly, was improve underused or “situational” skills by increasing their damage and decreasing their cooldowns. Again, this doesn’t constitute as balance given how favorable some Elementalist changes (in this patch) gave them even more opportunity to deal even more DPS.

Re: Rocket Boots. No one used this for damage anyway, and they still won’t. It takes you away from your target and you’re facing the wrong direction. It’s an escape, not an attack.

Re: Gear Shield. It needs to be 3s because there are lots of damaging skills that last about 3s – eg. Unrelenting Assault, Hundred Blades, Rapid Fire. 2s is not enough