Guild Wars 2

I. An Introduction
II. What’s wrong with Engineers?
III. Skills
IV. Traits
V. New Traits
VI. Downed State
VII. Underwater Combat
VIII. Elite Skills
IX. Things that are fine that you might think are bad

I. Introduction

Engineer has got some problems. Other classes aren’t just too strong (which is a huge problem), but we also do need a tiny boost in some areas; we’re not far from being a very balanced class.

In tPvP, Engineer is out of the meta. As the game has progressed, more and more players have found that playing an Engineer is the difficult way to get a job done. And, again, other overpowered classes are just completely nullifying Engineers in team fights and in 1v1.

While the profession is very versatile in how it can build, it is very limited by each build. For example, if I want to play high burst, I cannot still have huge control and support. Engineers choose how they want to play and then are limited by utility skills and weapon sets; this is by design. Engineers don’t get to swap weapons. If we want to emulate weapon swapping, we pick up Weapon Kits but then we lose some Utility Skill slots. That said, I genuinely don’t believe that the Engineer design philosophy fits with what the profession is right now.

That is why I’m making this post. Below are suggestions for the class that are not all necessary to bring us back to a competitive level. That said, this is also only the start. Some of them may even be too strong. Let’s talk about them.

II. What’s wrong with Engineers?

1. Bugs
   Engineers have an alarming number of class bugs that significantly affect their usability. This is the single biggest issue with Engineer right now. Without some bug fixes, Engineers will continue to be confused and underplayed.
2. Lack of accurate descriptions on traits and skills
   Another contributing factor to people being confused about Engineer. It’s difficult enough that many things are bugged, but the lack of proper descriptions leaves a lot of people who want to play Engineer completely in the dark about how the class is intended to function. This leads to a lot frustration. Some of the above mentioned bugs are definitely not bugs and I’m aware of that. But I can’t argue that they’re not bugs when the descriptions leave a lot to guessing.
3. Weak traits
   Many of our tier 3 traits simply lack the power to be in tier 3. This is seen by comparing our traits to other classes and even our own traits. In this post I will make suggestions for these.
4. Lack of survival options
   We do have some great survival traits but they are very limiting and pigeon-holing. For example, if we want condition removal, Alchemy traits and Elixir skills are the best and only way for reliable condition removal. We need more active AND passive condition removal outside of these options. Suggestions below.
5. Low damage
   Mesmer and Thief have incredible survival tools and this allows them to play as classes with the best damage and the best survival at the same time. Engineers don’t need their damage output to match these classes, but we do need some help to make our balanced builds more threatening without being overpowered.
6. Weak Kits
   This is why we have low damage. You’re probably aware that Engineers don’t get to switch weapon sets in combat. Even if we could, we only have 3 weapons we can use. Kits are incredibly important for our utility but many skills on kits are bugged or weak and they don’t offer proper supplements to our weapon sets.
7. Bugs?
   Did I mention there are a lot of bugs? They are in desperate need of attention.

III. Skills

Weapon Skills
Rifle

• Jump Shot
  When using this, there is a long delay before landing. The only times I use this ability are when I’m hitting someone that is already downed or when I’m absolutely wrecking someone. Can the landing animation for this skill be sped up so that we don’t float above potential targets? This is a clip from ANet’s Engineer skill preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=10HoAywmedY#t=102s
  Make Jump Shot like that!
  We want to be able to use this offensively for damage and as a gap closer. We also want to use it defensively as a gap opener. The way it is right now, it essentially stuns you during use so any gaps created are easily closed by enemies.

Pistol

• Poison Dart Volley
  I like the idea of attacks that do more damage at close range for the class, but this has about a 20% accuracy rate when you’re at 450 or more range; that’s just too low. Suggestions for this ability are to make all bolts fire in a straight line that hit your target like an auto attack, significantly increase the accuracy of the bolts, or keep it the way it is but increase the duration of the Poison significantly.

Utility Skills
Heals

• Healing Turret
  Cleansing Burst removes 2 conditions on a 60 second recharge. It requires Healing Turret to be down, too. I believe the recharge for Cleansing Burst should be 30-40 seconds instead of 60.

• Med Kit – Drop Antidote
  This is very difficult to use because it requires you to stand on top of it to remove a condition. If I’m immobilized, I cannot pick it up and I can be knocked away from it as well; I would love to be able to press ‘F’ to pick these up when I’m next to them.

Flamethrower

• Incendiary Ammo
  Can we get an indicator that tells us how many charges we have left on this skill, please?

• Flame Blast
  Ignoring the fact that this is a bit buggy right now, the damage on this is very low and there is never a reason to use this ability ever. Similar to Flame Jet, this should probably apply a 1 second Burn after hitting targets, as well.
  Air Blast puts enemies at the perfect distance away to be hit by Flame Blast. Ignoring the fact that this is always obstructed after using Air Blast, this projectile moves far too slow to hit any target after using Air Blast. It would be wonderful if we could use the ability again to detonate it in the air when we choose.

• Smoke Vent
  Slightly increased range would help immensely. Perhaps a lingering effect or combo field, as well. Melee classes are difficult to fight but they’re not impossible. Classes that keep distance on us are sometimes hopelessly difficult because of the range of our attacks. I’m not suggesting that Smoke Vent have a 1200 radius, but 180 is too small to be of use in most situations.

Bomb Kit

• General Bombs
  Bombs are just not useable without the Forceful Explosives trait. I hesitate to say that because I really try hard to not just throw my arms in the air and exclaim that something is useless when it’s really not (I still use Grenades!). One suggestion is to increase base range of bombs to the current range with Forceful Explosives. Then either remove the trait or allow it to increase the range of bombs even further.

• Smoke Bomb
  When the radius got nerfed on this, I was totally fine with. I thought we didn’t need the abnormally large range on it. Oh boy, I was so wrong. I’m not asking for the change to be reverted, but I do want to point out that this is really where Engineer started to experience huge problems in PvP; we actually needed the large radius.

Tool Kit

• Smack (Skill Chain)
  I think I would only do something as risky as meleeing someone as an Engineer if there was a huge reward. This skill chain is slow to execute and does low damage for the risk and time spent. I think it either needs to be sped up significantly or the damage needs to increase significantly.

• Box of Nails
  The cast time on this is too long to use reliably. There is a very visible animation and a loud audio cue when you activate this ability so the concern can’t be that it would take too many people by surprise if the cast time was lower. Right now it’s a 1 second cast and I think it should come down to .5 seconds.

Elixir Gun

• Acid Bomb
  This makes you leap backwards but is rarely useful. Can it remove Cripple, Chill, and Immobilize? It’s not a stun breaker and using it will likely take you off of a control point.

• Super Elixir
  This does not scale well with healing power. When this ability was bugged, it was healing for too much without any healing power. But with healing power, it was actually great! Please increase how it scales with healing power.

Elixirs

• Toss Elixir S
  I would love to see a bit more consistency on this skill. Right now I have no idea if I’m going to get stability or stealth. I typically save this for when I’m trying to stomp someone because I can’t rely on it for anything else; this skill is random in a bad way. A suggestion I have is to make the skill give you Stability or Invisibility based on what weapon you have equipped; it can give 1 of 2 boons and we can equip 1 of 2 weapons in our main hand! I’d personally prefer Stability with Rifle and Invisibility with Pistol so that I can occasionally not stun myself when I use Overcharged Shot.

• Toss Elixir R
  This got an increased recharge to 120 seconds. I believe this was to stop Engineers from getting a double revive when downed. The increased recharge did absolutely nothing to prevent this because it was caused by a trait, not by the recharge. This recharge should be reverted back to its original because increasing it did absolutely nothing except make Engineers feel confused. In the traits section, I will talk about how to fix the double revive issue.

Gadgets

• Mine Field
  I really want to like Throw Mine but I simply cannot take it with Mine Field attached to it; there aren’t any creative ways to use that tool belt skill. The mines go in random directions and don’t provide any utility. A suggestion would be to increase the radius of the explosions (by the way, the Forceful Explosives trait doesn’t work with them) or make them deploy in a set pattern. Finally add some sort of condition(s) to the explosion. A Cripple or Immobilize or Chill would make this skill much more appealing.

• Rocket Boots
  I want to love this skill so much. Good damage and good tool belt skill. It’s unfortunate that it’s so unreliable. Unreliable skills are not usable in PvP. Suggestions to improve this are to take away the self-stun. I don’t think it makes sense that using a stun-breaker should have to stun you. Make it remove cripple and chill BEFORE it sends you flying through the air. This would make it so that it sends you the appropriate distance. It also appears that you can be stunned and rooted while in flight so you could actually be in a worse situation after using this skill than you were in before you used it. An evasion while flying through the air could also greatly improve this skill.

• Slick Shoes
  This is close to being in a really good spot. I’d like to see the tool belt skill completely remove and possibly make you immune to movement impairing effects as well as increasing movement speed.

• Utility Goggles
  I know this is impossible with the game system because of technical limitations, but do you know how awesome it would be if this let the user see stealthed enemies? Stealth could really use a counter in the game and this would be the perfect way to do it.

IV. Traits

Explosives

• Shrapnel
  This trait is great with Grenades. It’s finally a reason to not take Incendiary Powder in PvE and possibly in PvP. With Bombs, Incendiary Powder is still your best choice. Bombs only hit once where Grenades hit 3 times and bombs are harder to hit with so you’ll almost certainly get more Incendiary Powder damage from your main weapon than you will get Shrapnel damage from Bombs. My suggestion is to increase the chance to proc with Bomb explosions and leave Grenade explosions as is.

• Acidic Elixirs
  The damage on this is very low and I believe it should scale better with Power. An awesome suggestion would be to have tossed Elixirs create different, offensive effects based on which one is tossed. This may need to move to tier 2 with that change.

Firearms

• Coated Bullets
  Move to tier 1 or tier 2. It’s very strong but its actually devastating against some classes to NOT have this.

• Napalm Specialist
  Make it increase the duration of all burns by 1 second to give 1 extra tick on all of our burns. It’s a tier 2 trait.

• Juggernaut
  This gives 6 stacks of Might if you are continuously using the Flamethrower. This should give more stacks of Might or the duration of Might should be way longer. 6 stacks of Might for a tier 3 trait that encourages the user to keep a single kit equipped is not very useful. There are a lot of Flamethrower lovers that are happy with this trait in PvE, I think that a Speedy Kits-like trait would work best here where you gain all the Might stacks for 5 seconds (5 second recharge) when you equip the Flamethrower.

Inventions

• Automated Medical Response
  Make it trigger at 30-35% HP. Since it doesn’t trigger until the hit that puts you below 25% HP this means that sometimes I’m already dead or caught in a cc chain and I never get to use the heal unless I’m using Soldier’s or Knight’s amulets.

• Power Shoes
  This is a tier 2 trait that is made completely useless by Speedy Kits which is superior in every way. I would love to see this stack with swiftness and/or work out of combat.

• Low Health Response System
  This should trigger at 50% instead of 25% HP. Regeneration at 25% HP probably isn’t going to last the full duration.

• Stabilized Armor
  This should just be removed and something else should replace it. A 5%, across the board damage reduction does not provide a greater benefit than using dodges.

• Protective Shield
  Change recharge to 10-15s instead of 20s. Unless you want to apply protection before the crit applies its damage.

Alchemy

• Backpack Regenerator
  My suggestion is to disallow scaling with healing power but bump up the healing on it a tiny bit. Another suggestion is to make it apply a 5 second regeneration with a 5 second ICD that happens when you equip a kit. This would also be similar to Speedy Kits.

• Deadly Mixture
  Keep the 15% damage increase on Flamethrower. Drop it on Elixir Gun and just increase the duration of conditions/boons from Elixir Gun by 15%.

• Fast Acting Elixirs and Potent Elixirs
  They should just be combined and moved to tier 2.

• Acidic Coating
  Make it stun or daze enemies instead of poison. Increase recharge to 60-90s.

Tools

• Packaged Stimulants
  Should also reduce recharge of med kit skills (it’s actually bugged and increases the recharge of some skills). The travel speed of these is also pretty slow. I think a lot of people would love to throw Bandages and Antidotes in front of their allies on the move.

• Inertial Converter
  This is the reason people complained about Engineers using Toss Elixir R twice in a row. Make this trigger at 50% HP and Engineer won’t be able to use 2 Toss Elixir R in a row unless the Engineer anticipates being bursted from +50% HP (this will not happen often).

• Adrenal Implant
  Tier 3 trait that is completely overshadowed by the tier 1 trait Invigorating Speed. This should work with Vigor and it would make it a worthy tier 3 trait.

• Armor Mods
  Significantly increase duration of retaliation AND significantly decrease recharge. It’s a tier 3 trait.

• Always Prepared
  This trait should be completely reworked. Because of the name, I suggest when you use a kit in combat, you drop that kit on the ground for an ally to use. Not something super useful in tPvP but it would increase the fun factor for a lot of people playing the game. A 60-90s recharge would be appropriate.

• Leg Mods
  We have 2 other traits that increase movement speed and Speedy Kits is already in this same line at tier 1; this trait is completely inferior to Speedy Kits. It is also unclear what an “unarmed kit” is defined as. This should be removed and replaced with a new trait.

V. New Traits

• Condition removal when you heal.
• Condition removal every X seconds.
• Trait that helps us revive allies. Suggestions would be you drop an Elixir R when you start to revive an ally (long recharge) or you stealth the downed ally and/or yourself or you just revive downed allies faster.
• “Refined Gadgets” trait. We have only 1 trait that affects Gadgets. This trait would give each gadget some bonus effect when it’s used (suggestion from Karast).
  • Goggles – next attack has a 100% chance to crit
  • Rocket Boots – gain stability for 3 sec or 3s AoE burn
  • Slick Shoes – cripple nearby enemies for 3 sec
  • PBR – apply 5 stacks of vulnerability for 3 sec
  • Mine – 3s AoE Burn or 3 sec AoE cripple

VI. Downed State

Engineers easily have the worst downed state in the game right now but it’s actually pretty close to being balanced. It’s my opinion that everyone should have the following:

1. weak attack (#1)
2. weak/moderate CC (#2 or #3)
3. survival tool (#2 or #3)
4. slow self-revive (#4)

The damage on our attack, Throw Junk, is low. This is actually a good thing because I think downed state damage should be low. If anything, I think this could come down some more along with all other classes that have too much damage on their #1 ability.

Grappling Line is what needs the most work. It’s a single target knockdown that pulls enemies towards us. We don’t want people on top of us when we’re downed. Grappling Line should be something like Rocket Boots or Overcharged Shot, something that creates distance and moves me away from my target and possibly moves my target or multiple enemies away from me. Another suggestion would be to have Grappling Line pull you towards an object or the ground. I would love to see a combination of the two: a ground targeted ability that moves me to the targeted location and knocks back enemies at my original location. Maybe that’s too strong.

Booby Trap is big damage on a long recharge. We shouldn’t have big damage when we’re downed. We need something to help us revive like a weakened Elixir R. It doesn’t need to be as ridiculous as Ranger’s #3, something like the Guardian’s #3 would be plenty.

VII. Underwater Combat

I’m glad that we can now apply Burning and Bleed on targets underwater because it means this weapon isn’t completely useless to condition builds now. But the abilities still need a lot of work.

Harpoon Gun
Homing Torpedo is slow and does very low damage. The auto attack from Rifle does more damage and shoots faster. It also does not apply any conditions for condition builds.

Scatter Mines isn’t awful. But it requires you to be VERY close if you want to hit with it. The spread just needs to be reduced a little bit so you can hit targets at longer range.

Retreating Grapple is confusing. Firstly, I think it may be very buggy because it very often fails to pull people. It also seems to briefly stun you after using it. Perhaps this should be more like Overcharged Shot where it pushes targets away and moves the user away to create even more distance. But please don’t let it stun the user.

Timed Charge is just a button mashing ability. There is never a right or wrong time to use it. When it’s not on cooldown, don’t think about it just use it immediately. I don’t like abilities like that but I also don’t have any suggestions for how to improve it right now.

Grenade Kit
This damage was decreased and the cast time was increased. This is all fine. However, the spread on grenades underwater is awful. It’s another kit that requires the user to be very close to targets to use properly. Grenade Barrage will still miss even if you’re in melee range of targets. Please just decrease the spread on all Grenades when underwater, especially Grenade Barrage.

VIII. Elite Skills

Supply Crate is great in PvP and awful in PvE.

I hate Mortar but a lot of people love it.

Elixir X should be reworked. As mentioned before, random skills are bad in PvP. I occasionally use this Elite as a joke and we get a good laugh out of it. I don’t have any suggestions for how to change it into something useful. I would really like to see an elite that has between a 45-90 second recharge, though.

IX. Things that are fine that you might think are bad

These things get brought up a lot:

Rifle – Overcharged Shot
This stuns the user and only works on a single target. We’re okay with that because it’s on such a short recharge. I love and hate this ability and I have some suggestions for it but I concluded that it should just be left how it is. We don’t want a longer recharge on it and that’s the only reasonable response if this ability were to be buffed.

Pistol – Explosive Shot
Damage on it is perfect. While it’s low in comparison to what other professions have, it’s exactly where all auto attack damage should be. Spamming 1 should be the best answer in combat.

Stability
We have a single source of Stability and it’s a very short duration. This is perfectly fine and we can live without it just like Necromancer and Mesmer.

I disagree with points 4, 5, and 6.

Engineers can have some impressive survivability when played correctly, both with and without kits. Their damage is fine, but it isn’t bursty like some professions. Engineers do sustained pressure fairly well, both with power builds, or condition builds. I don’t think kits are weak, I do think some are a little awkward to get the most use out of.

I was under the impression that gw2 can have any builds viable, but a rifle specced dps build has no dps. Not to mention all the bugs.

Elixer U needs to be mentioned as it is highly unreliable and not warrant the benefits especailly the toolbelt skill sometimes doesn;t activate after thrown
.
sometimes my riflecharged shot,and blunderbuss shots are just not coming out.

You list a lots of good things, other things I’d like to see are:
-Turrets: need some passive aoe damage reduction, something like -50% damage from aoe skill(and not just turret, even necromancer minion and ranger pets), it would be even better if there would be a trait, maybe in the invention line that increase that resistance to 65-75%. Also something like “if you pick up turret you’ll have a reduced cd while if it is destroyed or you make it explode you’ll have the full cd”, it may be even a trait.
-Healing turret: I’d like a more realiable water field when turret is not out, I mean, even some kind of texture on the ground because i never know if it is still there and use my blast finisher to make it heal or not, and maybe a longer duration of the water field, something like 5 sec to have time to set some finisher.(the mist on the ground is pretty confusing, it isn’t the water field anymore because you have the field only the istant you cast it for something like 1-2 seconds, I don’t know if it work as intended or whatelse but is not that good as it is now)
-Flamethrower: good points of the op, but just remember the miss problem with #1 on inanimate objects; yesterday I noticed that often, not always but just often, if I’m standing still and until I don’t move, it hit object on my “z level”; I don’t know if it’s a bug in the bug(for sure it will not help much in pvp/WvWvW) but maybe can help the fix.
-Pistol #1: it scale poorly with power, ok it’s a cond damage wapon, then make it be, 2.5 seconds of bleed is just low, I mean, I know it has some kind of aoe, but unless you have a guardian with GS#5 to grip many people/mob in a single spot you will rarely hit more than 1-2 target, making coated bullet a lower tier trait could be a compromise.

I have a doubt, what is our current power main kit? ‘nades#1 has been nerfed and now maybe perform better with condition than with power. FT#1 scale poorly with power and as it is now running a condition based may not be a bad idea because spreading burn 600+ per tic each second + bleed probably do more damage than a pure power build. Elixir Gun sure scale better than pistol with power, but it’s ok as a condition kit. Bombs probably with a larger radius(as pointed from OP) would be good, maybe Elixir infused bomb healing a little more and be in explosive or in alchemy line would help, but there are still a lots of boss(in pve) that are melee unfriendly. Tool Kit, as op said, is slow no other complain, the damage is not bad even if it’s melee. Rifle, I don’t know, is not totally bad, it could be better, it could be worst, but fore sure a power ranged weapon/kit with ranged skill would be nice.

About the FT #2 I’m very aware that it’s bit hard to use but c’mon it’s not that hard to use really. It really should explode on hit but while waiting that better learn to use it best you can.

Spam ‘2’ right after air blast and most of the time aoe range is enough to hit target, properly placed camera view and you can hit with #1 & #2 when circling around the enemies. Ranged targets are easy just move right into #1 range and #2 will hit as well plus in zergs, event etc you can swap target and hit #2 and then return to the original target.. plus you can always use net shot, glue, etc to keep target on proper distance for #2.

1. could use lil damage boost like #1 but with proper gear and boons it will crit 3-6k.

Juggernauts 200toughness and 6stacks of might is imo very good plus there is so many ways to increase might stacks that giving more could be sort of OP. FT + juggernaut is meant to be standing flame turret.

Crows.2764:

About the FT #2 I’m very aware that it’s bit hard to use but c’mon it’s not that hard to use really. It really should explode on hit but while waiting that better learn to use it best you can.

Spam ‘2’ right after air blast and most of the time aoe range is enough to hit target, properly placed camera view and you can hit with #1 & #2 when circling around the enemies. Ranged targets are easy just move right into #1 range and #2 will hit as well plus in zergs, event etc you can swap target and hit #2 and then return to the original target.. plus you can always use net shot, glue, etc to keep target on proper distance for #2.

1. could use lil damage boost like #1 but with proper gear and boons it will crit 3-6k.

Juggernauts 200toughness and 6stacks of might is imo very good plus there is so many ways to increase might stacks that giving more could be sort of OP. FT + juggernaut is meant to be standing flame turret.

and you play PVP or run around brainless dungeons?

sure you can hit sometimes with FT #2 but is there a reason why it should be so hard i mean is the kit is so OP?

Kuruptz.4782:

and you play PVP or run around brainless dungeons?

Since getting kids I’ve been brainless…

Kuruptz.4782:

sure you can hit sometimes with FT #2 but is there a reason why it should be so hard i mean is the kit is so OP?

Of course not FT is really kittenty in most regards but it’s obvious and been yelled at in these forums since launch and earlier. Fix is coming eventually, sooner the better but FT miss issue concern pretty much all classes and similar skills. gw2 has major implementation issues with cone effects.

So what I was after is that better to discuss and find out solutions to overcome current probs as best we can instead of whining in every thread same problem over and over since it doesnt benefit anyone.

Other than that you have lots of valid points.

I’m not sure why you might think my posts are whining or complaining. I’ve done my best to look at the profession objectively and then provided feedback and suggestions.

I tried to account for bugs in my suggestions. For example, I’m aware that Flame Blast often misses after using Air Blast. In a world where that was not the case, I still believe Flame Blast would need adjustment and I mention that in the above posts.

Finally, I do believe our damage is just a little bit too low, but I don’t think we need damage on any of our abilities increased by a percentage. I do think that all of our kit abilities should be useful and this would turn into a damage increase. For example, Flame Blast is unusable in PvP. If it was made usable, that would increase our damage by a perfectly reasonable amount.

i dont see this post as whiny at all he actully made alot of valid points and suggestions

This is a great post!

Good post.

It might also be worth noting that of all the turrets, the biggest loser is the Rifle Turret. Go to the mists and test using just the rifle toolbelt and your autoattack vs dropping the rifle turret and your autoattack with 0 traits. Using just the toolbelt is faster even if you key the rifle ability.

Do so again with max toolbelt enhancing traits vs. max turret enhancing traits. Note how much better it is to never drop the rifle turret ever and instead just use the toolbelt skill on cooldown with a spark. Since the rifle toolbelt comes off cooldown so fast, the quality of that skill only goes up.

Every other turret has at least one good reason to drop it except for the rifle turret. The Net turret is slow but very good at what it does, the healing turret gives regen and heals, the thumper turret helps with blast finishers, the flame turret can be used to blind tank… There is no reason to drop the rifle turret, ever.

KirinDave.6451:

There is no reason to drop the rifle turret, ever.

Yes there is – as a blast finisher and additional two static discharges.

imaginary.6241:

KirinDave.6451:

There is no reason to drop the rifle turret, ever.

Yes there is – as a blast finisher and additional two static discharges.

If you want a blast finisher, any turret will do. I’m not sure what you mean by two additional static discharges, detonating the turret doesn’t clear the cooldown; it’s just such a fast cooldown that usually it’s clear by the time you can drop, trigger, then detonate the turret.

The toolbelt skill is the best toolbelt skill for static discharges (the only thing that comes even close is the personal battering ram toolbelt skill, which only loses because of the longer cooldown), but the turret itself is almost comically bad except to get said blast finisher.

Good post overall—I’d note that backpack regenerator already doesn’t scale with healing power (125/sec, constant) and that kits are our most viable build right now, since each one contains a defensive cooldown.

Rifle turret is essential for static discharge burst builds, but there’s nothing wrong with expecting it to be viable to use as a turret. Right now, the skill could be called “toolbelt shot with blast finisher.”

Smoke bomb’s radius reduction hurt but they also decreased the frequency that it pulses blind, which really toned it down. It’s still a pretty strong skill.

I still play engineer as my main in tournaments, but my main concern for tournaments is that we pay for whatever spec we choose more dearly than other professions. In a game where most professions use one utility for a stunbreak and another utility for a condition removal, we use all of our utilities just to deal damage (static discharge) or get a full set of usable weapon skills (kit build). If you want to be a turret engineer, you lose a second weapon set, stunbreak, and condition removal. No wonder nobody rolls a turret engineer.

I love the idea of having something extremely unique to our class like having Utility Goggles see through stealth.

Just these cool little things would add a lot of flavor and viability to the class. It would make a lot of sense too and add in an additional component to the “cannot be blinded” that is a little too situational to take advantage of currently.

I agree with your general point, and I also feel that engineers don’t feel intuitive in many aspects. For example, the flamethrower 1 skill is shooting FLAMES over your enemy, and yet only the final pulse of the skill deals burning.

Instead, if the devs wanted to limit burning stacking on an autoattack, I feel like they should have just made every tick of the autoattack deal a very short amount of burning – way under a second. Since burning damage only ticks on the second, it would be pretty similar in function – you need to hit for close to the entire autoattack duration to deal burning damage, and yet it would seem to make more sense as well as providing extra versatility in how the burning is applied, rather than just fighting a smart opponent who would just dodge at the very end of the flamethrower attack and not receive any burning damage at all. (and that’s assuming Flamethrower 1 ever becomes viable for anything other than literally burning through guardian blocks.)

In general, I feel like we need more solid improvements to kits as well as improved traits (Useless Inventions traitline, anyone?) for turrets and gadgets.

I feel like the Grenade kit is a good example of where a kit should be. The skillset is extremely solid – Poison, chill, blind, bleeding, and triple the usual chance to proc sigil effects. These are all very interesting and varied uses for just one kit. You could fashion a build based around any one of these things, like attempting to keep perma chilled on a foe by increasing condition duration, or kiting your foes around your poison field while taking advantage of the combo field.

The reason why many people were unhappy with the successive grenade kit nerfs over the past month wasn’t because they were all just whiners who failed to adapt, nor was it because the Grenade kit nerfs were unjustified. It was because Arenanet failed to give us much of anything in return. It may have been slightly overpowered, but everything else we have is extremely underpowered or broken. With the Flamethrower kit in its sorry state, it only ever sees use on Bunker or Hybrid engineers that primarily use it for the 3 CC and the 5 AoE blind. The 4 skill is an occasional amusement. The 1 and 2 skills are never touched because they are useless. Don’t forget the unreliability of the 1 skill to actually hit anything.

The Bomb Kit is pretty similar in function to the grenades – every single skill on the bar is useful, and most of them see use when the kit is chosen. However, it’s pretty more situational to use this based on the fact that the bombs have a pretty noticeable explosion delay. Smart people tend not to stand in bombs. It usually only sees use in TPvP, where people have to stand on points to contest, or PvE, where mobs, for some reason, stand in all AoE without even flinching. Regardless, I’ll say this is a pretty solid kit since most of the bar gets used pretty often whenever you take it.

And on to more useless kits.

The Elixir Gun primarily sees use for two things: Exploiting the weakness duration on the autoattack and for the Super Elixir. The other skills RARELY see any use. Fumigate is great, except for the fact that Super Elixir already removes conditions. And most engineers will trait to have two of those. – Oh god, I can already the patch notes coming.

“Fixed a bug where Super Elixir was unintentionally removing conditions. This will make Fumigate more useful.”

…Regardless, I’ll still try to have hope that Arenanet is a competent developer and won’t do that. Let’s continue on.

Tool Kit, which recently received a token buff in return for heavy nerfing on Grenade kit, is generally only used for its OP block duration. It was rarely used before the buff for a reason – it’s boring, it isn’t flashy, and it just doesn’t have the power or general utility of the bomb kit or grenade kit. You can’t stack conditions with it, since Box of Nails sucks at stacking bleeds or cripples. You can only use that to get away. You can’t control multiple foes at once – in fact, you can barely control one foe. Magnet is on more than a 1 second cast time with a very noticeable animation. The only reason I’d say it’s used now is for a laugh when using the 1200 range pull, or the shield. The pry bar is pretty good too, but I would say that’s almost a problem in how the kit is designed – Pry bar is just a better autoattack. That doesn’t seem like good design. Make the autoattack better, make Pry Bar do something different. 1 and 2 are yet again extremely situational skills that rarely see use.

Oh right – wasn’t Tool Kit supposed to be based around healing turrets? I completely forget about that function of the tool kit since nobody has even tried that since BWE1 – everyone quickly realized that was a completely useless thing to try to do.

In any case – It quickly becomes clear that on at least three of our kits, there are going to be useless skills that we never touch. We end up bringing a kit – which is supposed to function as another weaponset – just for one or two skills. What this means is that, in the current incarnation of the engineer, we aren’t giving up our weaponswap for kits. We’re giving up our weaponswap for HALF of a kit in many, many situations. This is the reason why I called bomb kit and grenade kit the two solid kits we have. The skills on those kits feel solid. They provide combo fields, provide an array of control, condition damage, direct damage, and generally every single skill on those kits gets used.

What I want is for every kit to be like this. Make it so every skill is useful rather than providing one “pretty good” skill and four mediocre skills.

Although i disagree with the survival point ( if you build a holder engineer, you can sustain for quite some time), i agree with everything else.

At the moment in pvp there are only 2 viable build for engi: duo pistol condition or pistol/shield/rifle bunker support. Tool kit is useless, since you have to be in melee range and if ur a dps you will go down quickly, so it’s better to shoot from pistols instead, Flamethrower – if an engi uses flamethrower for something other then knockback/wall of flame, then he’s a noob, because flamethrower does little to no damage compared to other skills(and taking into consideration that flame blast is bugged and misses every single time)

med kit – depends how you use it, but i totally agree with the condition bottle, if u get immobilized, you can just die standing and watching the bottle next to you.

Bomb kit seems the only one that’s viable and pretty usefull, Grenade kit will be removed in next patch probably(otherwise there wouldnt be so many nerfs to it)

Tool traits tier 3 – no reason to go there, nothing usefull
Inventions traits – overall, if u go for bunker bomb support, it’s good, otherwise it’s not even considerable, since there is no such thing as Turret build with so many pets that get aggroed instead of players, and Aoe dmg taking them all in 2 sec leaving you with 60 sec of worthless cooldown.

Edit: Oh and yes i forgot – why engineers are the only ones with 1 elite skill in pvp? Elixir x – wtf is this, worthless piece of crap, and mortar is just for laughter.

I’d like to see a separate bar for selecting kits. No weapon swap and losing utility slots to equip kits feels too restricting options-wise. Freeing up a couple of utility spaces would add the versatility we’re supposed to have (to a degree)

Kuruptz.4782:

i dont see this post as whiny at all he actully made alot of valid points and suggestions

This is a great post!

Finally something we can agree on.

This post is very well thought out and put together. I agree on all accounts, and hope that someone with any sort of clout catches wind of this write up (as well as your post on bugs). Kudos!

KirinDave.6451:

imaginary.6241:

KirinDave.6451:

There is no reason to drop the rifle turret, ever.

Yes there is – as a blast finisher and additional two static discharges.

If you want a blast finisher, any turret will do. I’m not sure what you mean by two additional static discharges, detonating the turret doesn’t clear the cooldown; it’s just such a fast cooldown that usually it’s clear by the time you can drop, trigger, then detonate the turret.

The toolbelt skill is the best toolbelt skill for static discharges (the only thing that comes even close is the personal battering ram toolbelt skill, which only loses because of the longer cooldown), but the turret itself is almost comically bad except to get said blast finisher.

Using the utility belt skill to detonate your turret results in another static discharge effect. (It goes back to the remaining Surprise Shot cd once it’s detonated).

I dunno if this is true with other turrets, but I was pleasantly surprised to find this true on Rifle Turret.

So it is essentially a second static discharge on the same utility belt slot, with a long cooldown.

This thread NEEDS a sticky.

As mentioned above, Engineers do have some decent survival. I would really like to see a couple things improved upon, though.

• Bugs are the number one reason why our survival could even be considered low at all.
• I would also really like our escape tools to function better (Rocket Boots, Acid Bomb, and Jump Shot).

I want to reiterate that I don’t think these need a complete overhaul. Some minor tweaks would make them very strong.

Smoke Bomb
When the radius got nerfed on this, I was totally fine with. I thought we didn’t need the abnormally large range on it. Oh boy, I was so wrong. I’m not asking for the change to be reverted, but I do want to point out that this is really where Engineer started to experience huge problems in PvP; we actually needed the large radius.

This is the biggest engi nerf tbh

Silver.9084:

Smoke Bomb
When the radius got nerfed on this, I was totally fine with. I thought we didn’t need the abnormally large range on it. Oh boy, I was so wrong. I’m not asking for the change to be reverted, but I do want to point out that this is really where Engineer started to experience huge problems in PvP; we actually needed the large radius.

This is the biggest engi nerf tbh

I completely agree. Grenade Kit nerf was totally fine. Toss Elixir R nerf was mostly irrelevant. Elixir Gun was cool when it was healing for too much, but we’d still be in the same spot we’re in now if it was left alone.

I don’t really care about seeing Smoke Bomb changed back to the old radius, though. I’d rather see improvements elsewhere.

To nutshell what’s wrong with Engineer – They can’t be as much master at any trade as other classes can but when playing as a variable arsenal they can often provide the extra oomph a group needs to succeed and in single combat take advantage of holes in the enemys defense with their many different weapons and skills.