Which basically means that, even if scrapper turns out to be amazing, we still have to take two core specializations from our current engineers, thus there will still be problems.
First of all, I honestly think that June 23rd patch butchered our synergies by:
- spreading our best traits in different specializations (incendiary powder/grenadier), making us choose between them on the same tier (invigorating speed/protection injection)
- giving us extremely bad or niche alternatives further narrowing down our capabilities. An example? What if you want to go condition with bomb kit? You get explosives, with Short Fuse and Shrapnel, but what about the adept tier? You would get forced to take explosive descent which is not even remotely of any use nor an interesting trait.
Now, for the sake of being honest, I think that the previous combos are something that had to change. The explosive line was completely mandatory, and firearms was utterly overshadowed by it. I get that they wanted to change this. What I don’t get is that they have given us very bad alternatives.
To analyze the problem better I’ll just take a quick look at the traits that I personally think are bad, speaking mostly from a SPVP perspective. I will try to not to touch modifiers and other traits that could be of any use for PvE.
Explosives
As I wrote above, this is both lackluster and mandatory at the same time. Bombkit isn’t shown love given that there really is only one useful trait in this specialization (Short fuse) and that Shrapnel has very bad synergy given the low % on hit.
- Evasive Powder Keg (minor): yes, it’s cool and everything but this trait is mostly known for accidentaly revealing engineers when in stealth. Making this a minor cripples engineers a lot and I think it should receive the same treatment Last Refuge had for thieves (proccing Black powder when hit below 25% hp) and should be made an adept/master trait, replacing the minor with one of the two damage modifiers we can choose in adept/master Glass Cannon and Shaped Charge.
- Shrapnel(grandmaster): I personally think this is a useful trait but at the same time unworthy of the “grandmaster title”. I think a buff in the numbers would help, since I don’t see a complete rework necessary.
- Thermobaric Detonation (grandmaster): welp, this is a shame. It has such a niche role that I don’t see anyone taking this. Evasive powder keg having 10s CD make this trait even more useless. My advice would be to show bomb kit some more love and making this trait use BomKit #1 as a blast finisher instead of evasive powder keg (still keeping the 10s CD and the “only works in combat” part).
Firearms
This traitline isn’t bad per se, but it surely has a lot of “meh” traits.
- Heavy Armor Exploits (adept): it has very nice synergy with “Invigorating Speed” but a part from that, it is of no use. The swiftness it applies has a too short duration and coupled with the fact that you need to constantly attack a target (and crit on hit) make this an unrealiable trait. Yes, it synergizes nicely with granades given that it has no ICD but I’d rather it to have increased swiftness duration and vulnerability stacks with a 1s ICD. This way we’d get the same functionality it had before but without being forced to spam nades on our target.
- High Caliber (adept): another very dull trait. Not only the 10% critical chance increase is pretty meh, it also only works if we’re within 240 range to our target. I can see PvE using this trait, thus my suggestion would be to just double the range treshold. I’d personally prefer this trait to be reworked, though.
- No Scope (master): and here we are again with the 240 radius restriction. This totally isn’t worthy of being a master trait, not the way it is shaped right now. It provides very situational fury, forcing us to attack targets in close range and to crit on them. There are far too many restrictions for such a very little bonus. It stands no chance against the other master traits. Removing the range treshold entirely might make this trait more desirable, even if, given that we already have several accesses to fury, I don’t really see that.
Inventions
I remember when inventions was considered trash by most engineers.. oh wait, it still is. This sepcialization has so much unexpressed potential I’d like to cry. The purpose of this traitline is clear: support and sustain. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver both.
- Automated Medical Response (adept): when it was bugged it was nichely useful. After they fixed it the trait went back to uselessness. A part from the fact that it is still bugged (it doesn’t work properly with healing turret), it has such a huge ICD that I’d never pick that instead of the other traits. When it was bugged it had a 10s CD, actually making heals like A.E.D. kinda useful, especially when combined with Gadgeteer (yes, you heard me right, gadgeteer was actually used! Long live Vee Wee!). While I recognize that the 10s CD was terribly broken, I would suggest to restore part of that potential lowering the ICD from 90s to 60s and fixing the bugged interaction with cleansing turret.
- Autodefense Bomb Dispenser (adept): it is a good trait, but I’d like to make it more viable by making this a breakstun, and increasing it’s ICD to kitten to compensate (and to avoid the “perma breakstun combo” with that and Reactive Lenses).
- Soothing Detonation (master): and here we get to the part where the traitline tries to go support but fails to deliver. First of all, the heal is very low even if considered it has no ICD. It’s not like we only build to have permablast, and even if we did, using all our utility slots, we would get 6-7 blasts which means we’d get a disappinting 3500-4000 heal with 1200 healing power. And the 240 radius? It’s so laughable I want to cry. A quick comparison: a guardian doing empower heals for 5500+ with zero healing power, on 20s CD, without wasting utility slots, on 600 radius range.
- Medical Dispersion Field (grandmaster): whoever designed the engi traits was in love with the 240 range. Yes, you guessed right, this trait has once again 240 radius range. It is depressing. This is a grandmaster, completely support oriented, with 240 radius. Two hundred and forty. At least the previous trait had some niche role for self healing, but in this case there are no excuses. The radius has to be massively buffed to 600 radius, and the functionality HAS to change if we want to keep the 5s ICD. It could currently heal for 12% of a blast finisher (200 HP AoE with 1200 Healing Power, omg so OP please nerf) on a waterfield instead of 12% of A.E.D. effect just because someone blasted a waterfield around you, placing the trait on 5s ICD. This trait is pure and total garbage. And even if you miraculously get to work it right (i.e. getting the big chunk of heal portion from A.E.D.) you’d still heal allies for around 1600 HP only. I don’t think we can actually grasp the stupidity of this trait.
Alchemy
This is probably our most well designed traitline. It yields benefits for every kind of build, while providing synergies with other traits from other specializations. I still think there’s room for improvement, though. Of course, having to chose between Protection injection and Invigorating speed still makes me cringe but I can see why the balance team wanted this to happen. I don’t really think there are any traits here that needs a rework, but I suppose that some of them might use a soft buff.
- Health insurance (adept): very nice synergy with Med Kit, but since Medkit is already overshadowed by Healing Turret I’d make this skill more selfish by simply increasing healing (not only outgoing healing) by 15% when wielding medkit, thus creating potential synergies with Backpack Regenerator and with Med Kit toolbelt skill (we’d equip the medkit, use the toolbelt skill which would heal for 5000 + 0.15 * 5000 and then un-equip the medkit).
- Alchemical Tinctures (minor): this is another well designed trait which could use a slight buff. Well, not really a buff to the trait itself, actually. I’d like Alchemical Tinctures to affect Elixir Gun skills aswell, which would mean that EG #4 would remove 1 condition and EG #5 would remove 2 conditions, making this trait work better when synergized with Inversion Enzyme and Iron Blooded, opening space for more possible builds and combos.
Tools
Another amazingly well-designed traitline, which has enormous potential but at the same times it lacks reliability.
- Optimized Activation (minor): nothing revolutionary here. Buff the vigor duration to 3s base.
- Streamlined Kits (master): I can’t remember how many times I was tempted to switch to nade kit to get swiftness but I was stealthed thus I couldn’t do it if I wanted to avoid being revealed. I’d like the kits procs that cause reveal to be changed to something that doesn’t deal damage. Furthermore, I’d like the 20s ICD to only be per kit, not shared (excluding the swfitness, of course).
- Kinetic Battery (grandmaster): I’d just like the duration to be increased from 8s to 10s, to give us more decision power about what toolbelt skill to use and when.
- Adrenal Implant (grandmaster): make it stack with vigor.
- Gadgeteer (grandmaster): it should get 25% CD reduction baseline (maybe nerfing it to 20% would be more appropriate), and the static charges would only affect the functionality of the gadgets used.
I probably wrote too much, but I always hope for devs to randomly pop in and read these kind of threads, thus I want to make it polished.. maybe they’ll take inspiration from what I’ve written, maybe they think I wrote BS, maybe you do too. But hey, here is what I think of our core traits.
