Guild Wars 2

Hey there!

I played this game from launch to a few months after that – absolutely loved the concept and gameplay of the Engineer, but after hitting the level cap it quickly became apparent that Engineers were seriously lacking compared to other classes – it took flawless performance with an engineer just to get on level playing ground with an ‘average’ player of most other classes.

Engineers desperately needed buffs across the board… and we got nerfs. Well, useless things were buffed, but any time a build was uncovered that made engi’s semi-competitive, it was promptly broken in the next update.

None of the other classes, despite being able to actually function, delivered the kind of appeal that my engineer did, so I got burnt out and decided to quit for a few months in hopes that in that time, Anet would have gotten bored of using the Engineer class as a punching bag, and finally put it on level playing ground as like-geared/skilled players using the other classes.

It’s been a few months… are Engineers still the ‘child called It’ or can we finally pull our own weight as effectively as the rest of the crew?

If engies have been buffed up to ‘normal’, is it because one or two cookie-cutter builds that we’re pigeon-holed into, or is it across the board?

Looking forward to coming back to GW2, if I can finally play my engie without being a handicap to myself or my group!

…otherwise… guess I’ll check again in a few months :P

- Hal

The problem is that there are just few Anet devs working on game balance it seems. And most of the game balancing comes via pvp, which is a serious mistake, because we have just one pvp mode (conquest). Pvp skill balance correlates badly with WvWvW or pve.

If engineers would be as super powerful as some people claim then we would constantly see people looking for engineers into their dungeon / fractal parties. But instead we see “LF1M thief or warrior only”. Or looking for a mesmer or a guardian. As a warrior I can get into a dungeon party in just 1 minute!

To make engineer a desired profession in a pve setting, it needs:
- easy to play builds (currently engineer is by far the most difficult profession to play efficiently)
- a little bit more dps (easily implemented by buffing the attack skill #1 for all weapons and kits)
- some powerful utility, which other professions don’t provide (something unique to engineers e.g. mesmers have portal)

Same sad situation for WvWvW. I was yesterday listening in Team Speak as Desolation commanders organized a big 5+ h rush in EB. The commander was asking how many guardians and making them mark themselves with X and checking that they have a few specific skills. Mesmers were also requested constantly. Nobody was asking for engineers. In fact there was a comment in the voice chat “engineers are not needed”. So reroll into something else?

Anet developers are too much obsessed on what the engineer should not do and cannot do. They obviously don’t want engineer to have a high burst damage or have good sustained damage either. Granted the kit refinement was too good (but so is elementalist’s elemental attunement, and it still hasn’t been nerfed). KR was totally destroyed, instead of just toning down the grenade kit related KR effect. This destroyed a lot of other builds, which were not 100nades. Every single patch has limited the versatility of engineers. The developers do their best to pigeon hole engineers into one build. Currently HGH, expect it to be nerfed soon. Usually they nerf things so that other builds get trashed as well. So I expect the grenade kit will be nerfed in the next patch (instead of touching HGH trait), making engineers a completely irrelevant profession in any form of play.

Anet developers also don’t want engineers to be too good bunkers, thus the recent nerfs to elixir S and survivability related traits (cloaking device and Low Health Response System. Yet they are planning to give warriors even more buffs, as if warriors were ever weak in pve or WvWvW group fights.

Anet developers want engineers to use turrets, but currently all the turret-related traits are broken and way too weak to make them viable. Turret hit points are a bad joke. See http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Turret#Health
Compare this e.g. with ranger pets: ursines have around 2.6k armor and 29000+ health. That is better than most players have! And pets are mobile, they do a lot of useful utility and/or conditions. And ranger doesn’t even need to waste a utility slot to use a turret.

The recent buffs to the arrow cart have made turrets even more non-viable in a WvWvW settings. With the new trait even the normal arrow carts have huge range, don’t require target in line of sight = destruction of turrets in seconds. Turrets have always been useless in a zerg fight. They get destroyed in a second in zerg clash. E.g. I have seen elementalist’s burning speed crit hit over 7k damage = there goes your turret. I urge the developers to try turrets in such setting to see how utterly useless they are.

Almost all engineer gadgets are simply not worth the slot. Easy fix would to reduce the cooldown of some toolbelt skills and utility skills.

The trait lines are full of bugged or seriously underpowered traits e.g. adrenal implant (30 trait points) does exactly the same as ranger’s natural vigor (5 trait points). And does anybody ever use grandmaster traits like Autodefense Bomb Dispenser (60 s cooldown!) ?

So what does that leave engineers with? Few working kits (bomb, elixir gun, grenade and tool kit) and elixir B, C, H and R (elixir S is broken now, U seems bugged as well). The rest is pretty much meh.

PvP

We’re amazing as always. Our three main builds are HGH Grenade, Power Grenade and Bomb Kit Bunker. There are some other builds which are variant of these.

PvE

Warrior is breaking the curve, but we’re not terrible. We certainly have a lot of damage with grenade kit, even if we aren’t hitting for 40k crits like warriors. Stick to grenades if you want to be useful.

WvW

Deployable Turrets on walls can take out siege other classes could only dream of hitting. Grenades are great at keeping people off of flame rams. They’re also great at area denial.

Patches

We’ve been nerfed and lost some great builds, although admittedly they were over powered. We’ve gained some minor buffs. Overall, we’re still a great class in the PvP area and a decent class when not compared to the overpowered monstrosity that is the warrior in PvE.

Fact: we are far weaker then we were 9 months ago

Deniara Devious.3948:

They obviously don’t want engineer to have a high burst damage or have good sustained damage either.

I have to disagree with this. The Grenade Kit and Bomb Kit both have very good sustained damage. And Static Discharge has great burst damage.

They just took issue with 100nades, doing tons of damage by literally pressing two buttons. Warriors can do this with Hundred Blades, sure, but that requires you being immobilized in place and is a cleave versus AoE.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Deniara Devious.3948:

They obviously don’t want engineer to have a high burst damage or have good sustained damage either.

I have to disagree with this. The Grenade Kit and Bomb Kit both have very good sustained damage. And Static Discharge has great burst damage.

They just took issue with 100nades, doing tons of damage by literally pressing two buttons. Warriors can do this with Hundred Blades, sure, but that requires you being immobilized in place and is a cleave versus AoE.

Hundred blades is also not instant, doesn’t pull the foe to you and doesn’t stack 18 stacks of vulnerability.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Deniara Devious.3948:

They obviously don’t want engineer to have a high burst damage or have good sustained damage either.

I have to disagree with this. The Grenade Kit and Bomb Kit both have very good sustained damage. And Static Discharge has great burst damage.

They just took issue with 100nades, doing tons of damage by literally pressing two buttons. Warriors can do this with Hundred Blades, sure, but that requires you being immobilized in place and is a cleave versus AoE.

Hundred blades is also not instant, doesn’t pull the foe to you and doesn’t stack 18 stacks of vulnerability.

both require the same setup an immobilize or stun or knockdown to land hundred blades dont give vulnerability but gives might stacks wich gives the same result. 1 might =1.5% damage if im not mistaken

Raijinn.9065:

Fact: we are far weaker then we were 9 months ago

This is actually true. We were pretty OP at launch. Old juggernaut, old smoke bomb, old grenade 1…were all quite nice.

I do think engineers are still above average (literally, as in better than 4 of 8 professions) in most areas of the game. That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues, namely, a lot of bugs and the fact that the builds everybody wants to play aren’t that great (looking at you, turrets).

NevirSayDie.6235:

We were pretty OP at launch. Old juggernaut, old smoke bomb, old grenade 1...were all quite nice.

I do think engineers are still above average (literally, as in better than 4 of 8 professions) in most areas of the game. That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues, namely, a lot of bugs and the fact that the builds everybody wants to play aren’t that great (looking at you, turrets).

Didn’t try a bomb or flame spec - not my cups of tea - but I don’t recall grenade1 being anywhere near OP... if you were 100% accurate the DPS would be *decent*, but this goes again to needing to play the engineer flawlessly in order to match up with the performance of other classes mashing a simple rotation.

...what did they do to grenade 1? ...not really sure I want to know :-S

it’s looking like I’ll be giving it a few more months. :-/

Haltus Kain.4578:

NevirSayDie.6235:

We were pretty OP at launch. Old juggernaut, old smoke bomb, old grenade 1…were all quite nice.

I do think engineers are still above average (literally, as in better than 4 of 8 professions) in most areas of the game. That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues, namely, a lot of bugs and the fact that the builds everybody wants to play aren’t that great (looking at you, turrets).

Didn’t try a bomb or flame spec – not my cups of tea – but I don’t recall grenade1 being anywhere near OP… if you were 100% accurate the DPS would be decent, but this goes again to needing to play the engineer flawlessly in order to match up with the performance of other classes mashing a simple rotation.

…what did they do to grenade 1? …not really sure I want to know :-S

it’s looking like I’ll be giving it a few more months. :-/

Haha yeah, better to not know how badly grenade 1 was toned down. It was rather severe. However, getting sigils and weapon stats on kits (the latter only helped PvE/WvW, obviously) was a pretty big buff to kits in general.

I’m curious how effective deployable turrets can be at taking out seige just out of reach of our grenades or the mesmers zerker phantasm. Does anyone have any experience with this tactic.

Gaffles.3296:

I’m curious how effective deployable turrets can be at taking out seige just out of reach of our grenades or the mesmers zerker phantasm. Does anyone have any experience with this tactic.

It’s not effective.
Your turret has to be standing precisly right, then it has to target the siege weaponry (half of the time the turret will pick a random guy :S), and it has to be up for an frickin hour to kill the siege weapons, because it does so little damage.

The only thing that works with deployable turret is thumper turret and overcharge, you’ll knock alot of people of the walls, but you won’t kill siege with it.

Gaffles.3296:

I’m curious how effective deployable turrets can be at taking out seige just out of reach of our grenades or the mesmers zerker phantasm. Does anyone have any experience with this tactic.

It can be effective and you shouldn’t throw the idea out. Sometimes it attacks random people, but when it does work, it’s great. Rocket Turret and Flame turrets are great for this (They have AoE). Rifle Turret is great if the siege is the only thing it could possibly attack.

both require the same setup an immobilize or stun or knockdown to land hundred blades dont give vulnerability but gives might stacks wich gives the same result. 1 might =1.5% damage if im not mistaken

…You aren’t really trying to compare 100blades to 100nades, are you? It’s really no contest. 100nades could instantly kill most people. 100blades takes longer and it cannot kill most people. Not to mention 100blades is incredibly obvious and easy to catch. 100nades doesn’t need a snare. It PULLS them to you and puts them in perfect position. Seriously. No contest.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Gaffles.3296:

I’m curious how effective deployable turrets can be at taking out seige just out of reach of our grenades or the mesmers zerker phantasm. Does anyone have any experience with this tactic.

It can be effective and you shouldn’t throw the idea out. Sometimes it attacks random people, but when it does work, it’s great. Rocket Turret and Flame turrets are great for this (They have AoE). Rifle Turret is great if the siege is the only thing it could possibly attack.

both require the same setup an immobilize or stun or knockdown to land hundred blades dont give vulnerability but gives might stacks wich gives the same result. 1 might =1.5% damage if im not mistaken

…You aren’t really trying to compare 100blades to 100nades, are you? It’s really no contest. 100nades could instantly kill most people. 100blades takes longer and it cannot kill most people. Not to mention 100blades is incredibly obvious and easy to catch. 100nades doesn’t need a snare. It PULLS them to you and puts them in perfect position. Seriously. No contest.

It seems everybody here is talking things in tournament pvp perspective. At least to my observation most GW2 players never do tpvp. Pve and WvWvW are much more popular. Thus the engineer should also be balanced for these two popular game modes. Now all those skill “balancing” “updates” are only centered on how good/bad a certain class in in one pvp mode (conquest).

100blades zerker warrior is still the meta in pve. Just one skill with 8 s cooldown does around 19k cleave area damage and the enemy mobs are not gonna dodge that. Are you seriously arguing that engineer does more direct damage? Correct me if I am wrong, because I haven’t tried every possible build on this planet. Engineer can do pretty good sustained dps on a 120 area radius, by using the grenades more or less like a bomb kit, throwing them at your own feet so that max. amount of grenades hit the same target. That is what I do in pve with my engineer everyday. With proper traits you can get 25 stacks of vulnerability + 10-20 bleeds up in a sustained fight, but hey a warrior can also put up pretty hefty amount of vulnerability fast and my dual sword + rifle warrior has no problem to put up 25 stacks of bleed and with the proper equipment setup and traits those bleeds do more dps than almost anything else in the game (greatsword does more direct dmg, but in a very long fight the bleed damage is bigger than direct damage). Dual sword warrior might not be great for pvp, as the bleed stacks can be removed so easily, but in long pve fights the dps from conditions is amazing (e.g. fighting alone against a champion boss). Note that warriors also have very good ways to stack might and might increases power and condition damage.

You can call me misinformed, but I simply don’t understand how turrets could be viable in a WvWvW setting. Their hit box is huge and health is way too low. They get destroyed almost instantly in any zerg fight. In siege setting the superior arrow cart + WXP trait (increasing e.g. arrow cart range) is currently totally overpowered. I was getting tons of loots bags with it yesterday. And yes, it destroys any enemy siege weapons + enemy turrets very fast as well. Our dear enemy, Visunah Square, is master of siege and favors glass cannonbuilds. They have a lot of gc rangers with 1500 range and very high dps. How are turrets gonna stay up against such enemy?

I never complained about how my proffesion is weak(I have Necro,Ranger,Engineer,Warrior, Mesmer) but my god, engi is underpowered, it’s not even funny. My mains are ranger and engi (u can guess I have a thing for weak proffesions ), but engineer is so bad at the moment, I’m considering not playing him untill next patch that will at least fix traits that aren’t working.
Honestly I’m not even hoping turrets will get buff in the next 2 months, so I guess I’ll play as warrior and mesmer, and I hate to say this, as Anet intended. I mean really, GW1 was way more complexed, and it had way more skills, but it had better balance than GW2. What happend?
I embraced the idea of first 5 skills being locked on weapons as a way to balance and having 1 heal, 3 utillity and 1 elite, but it seems it isn’t working, at least not for all professions. I really hope you fix engi, becuase I can’t play it now… at least not with the turrets

To OP: We suck worse than ever. We have never pulled our weight in PVE and we pull far less now. Just roll a Mesmer, Guardian or Warrior.

Pvp: engi is great and powerful

Pve: condition engi’s main damage comes from burning (and 10 bleeds) making it weak when non condition classes put out burning too (ele, guard,…) Power engi is weaker than other power classes.

With the build I am running now, and having played other classes with powerful builds, I would venture to say that the engineer is the most powerful class, easily.

The nerfs have been infuriating, and I agree that we have been A-net’s punching bag for the last 4 patches -few of us disagree there. The buffs they have handed out have been pretty lame for what we got sheared off, but they show that the engineer concept is what it took me a few months to figure out. The problem with engineer nerfs is that the engineers that are truly excellent are shining a spotlight for the nerf-herders. The engineer that are so-so are wondering what fell on them and why.

The engineer is not like any other class in that it is the absolute “middle of the road, jack of all trades” utility class, which few people like and even fewer are good at. Elixir build is one of the few master builds that puts Engineer on the same footing as the other classes, and while it is great, the learning curve to play can still be very high. Only the elementalist, imo, has a learning curve as high and with an almost equal amount of utility. The other classes do what they do, and do it well. The engineer does a little of everything, and you have to use everything in unison to be truly good.

This is why you have such a disparity in the engineers you meet. You either meet engineers that are amazing and seemingly invincible, or you meet mediocre pistol poppers with a travelling junkyard who fold faster than Superman on laundry day. There are very few in between.

Too many people are writing whole novels and don’t even mention if they’re talking about pvp or pve :p

Clip.6845:

Too many people are writing whole novels and don’t even mention if they’re talking about pvp or pve :p

I use the same build, different runes and sigils for both PVP and PVE, and it works great for both.

PvP, we’re one of the best classes.
PvE, we are so lackluster that it’s hilarious.

As a side note, every trait that Anet “fixes” breaks two others; it’s quite interesting to watch. Makes me wonder when they are just going to torch the class all together.

Specterryu Quipter.8412:

PvP, we’re one of the best classes.
PvE, we are so lackluster that it’s hilarious.

As a side note, every trait that Anet “fixes” breaks two others; it’s quite interesting to watch. Makes me wonder when they are just going to torch the class all together.

Its like I said. Engineer abilities all domino off each other. Break one, you break three or four.

It’s sad that people think that Engineers are in a good place in sPvP.
We still have design issues, we still have bugs, we still have a lack of build variety.

All we have is one overpowered, simplistically designed, crutch of a trait: HGH.

OP: People are pretty much all running varients of HGH in PvP atm. WvW I don’t know, maybe there are still some static discharge rifle users.

Why? There’s not much else. You wanna take turrets? All of the turret traits in the inventions line are literally not doing ANYTHING as of the latest patch, with videos to back it up. Even if they were, what are you going to do with them? You have to choose between 2 turrets and a stun break, or it’s pretty much gg, and turrets die VERY quickly. The recent change to healing turret is good, but I’ve never seen anyone actually leave the turret out. They drop it, instantly overcharge and detonate. Why risk having it destroyed?

Gadgets have insanely long cooldowns + self CC (what?!).

Grenades have suffered a 10 – 15% damage nerf on all skills, and another 30% for #1 on top of that with a later patch. They’re not done though, they want to nerf it some more according to JP in the SOTG for April.

Everyone in sPvP runs a variant of the HGH build because it works well, but this too is likely in anet’s crosshairs. Build variety is very low, and non-existant at high level PvP (probably true for almost all classes).

Overall it’s not looking good. I want to remain positive, but nobody knows what’s going to be next on the chopping block. We get minor buffs to things nobody can still hope to use right along with major nerfs.

I hope you come back, just don’t settle on anything. If you do really like a particular build, give it till the next patch and see if it works.

Engineers are still okay in pvp, but if the developers will take out some crucial trait e.g. HGH or cleaning formula 409 or nerf the grenade kit, there goes engineer out of the window.

The situation is much more dire in other forms of the game. After all most people never do top level tournament pvp. Pve and WvWvW plays very different from the conquest pvp mode. Engineer is the rarest profession there and for a good reason. You never see people posting “Looking for 1 more, only engineer”. But you can substitute the engineer word with other profession. Anet should really look at the engineer in a pve and WvWvW setting. The nerfs have hit engineer harder than any other profession, while the already popular professions, like guardian and warrior, were once again buffed. What is the logic behind this? And after this patch I have seen really ridiculous amounts of thieves in WvWvW play. The thieves run in pairs, allowing easy permanent stealth (e.g. Black powder + cluster bomb), double D/D burst spike or very nasty permanent daze lock (Cloak and Dagger + tactical strike combo). You want Thief Wars 2 back?

Ayna

Jay.4837:

With the build I am running now, and having played other classes with powerful builds, I would venture to say that the engineer is the most powerful class, easily.

The nerfs have been infuriating, and I agree that we have been A-net’s punching bag for the last 4 patches -few of us disagree there. The buffs they have handed out have been pretty lame for what we got sheared off, but they show that the engineer concept is what it took me a few months to figure out. The problem with engineer nerfs is that the engineers that are truly excellent are shining a spotlight for the nerf-herders. The engineer that are so-so are wondering what fell on them and why.

The engineer is not like any other class in that it is the absolute “middle of the road, jack of all trades” utility class, which few people like and even fewer are good at. Elixir build is one of the few master builds that puts Engineer on the same footing as the other classes, and while it is great, the learning curve to play can still be very high. Only the elementalist, imo, has a learning curve as high and with an almost equal amount of utility. The other classes do what they do, and do it well. The engineer does a little of everything, and you have to use everything in unison to be truly good.

This is why you have such a disparity in the engineers you meet. You either meet engineers that are amazing and seemingly invincible, or you meet mediocre pistol poppers with a travelling junkyard who fold faster than Superman on laundry day. There are very few in between.

This,this,and all of this. It’s what I’ve been saying to everyone having difficulty on an engineer. I have an engineer,it was my first love and still do this day remains my favorite. I started off as a mediocre dual pistol condition engineer. I now run an HGH grenade berserk engineer running level 40 Fractals and even carrying people through them. The learning curve is extremely high,with only Elementalist having a higher learning curve,but once mastered,the pay off is exceptional.

And that would be nice and good, but we really can’t be a “jack of all trades” as far as the game goes. If you go conditions, you’ve got to pump condition damage, else you won’t actually do damage (due to how they works). If you want to use direct damage, you need some specialized stats and a couple of traits (grenadier, steel-packed powder) to stack vulnerability as well. Crowd control doesn’t work much in dungeons, cause either there are too many trash mobs or you’ve got enemies with defiant stacks.And healing requires heavy investment into healing power for measle results. Basically, our ability to be “jack of all trades” is hindered by the mechanics themselves, and so we must specialize heavily and build up might stacks to make up for the poor damage of our skills (that get nerfed everytime because they are balancing all the game according to pvp, despite pvp and pve being quite different).

Oh, and turrets. We’ve got a game that requires you to be on the move constantly, to avoid all kind of attacks…and turrets that stay still, unable to dodge, unable to block attacks and quite weak as far as hp and defense goes. And they aren’t that good in dealing damage, anyway. I wonder how they thought they could be a good idea.

Fayoria.2569:

This,this,and all of this. It’s what I’ve been saying to everyone having difficulty on an engineer. I have an engineer,it was my first love and still do this day remains my favorite. I started off as a mediocre dual pistol condition engineer. I now run an HGH grenade berserk engineer running level 40 Fractals and even carrying people through them. The learning curve is extremely high,with only Elementalist having a higher learning curve,but once mastered,the pay off is exceptional.

I have to admit a hgh grenadier with zerker/pvt gear is a very decent build. Even without the might stacks it has great damage, wonderful mobility and good utility for dungeons.

jniel.3581:

We have never pulled our weight in PVE and we pull far less now. Just roll a Mesmer, Guardian or Warrior.

Engineers have the best sustained Condition Damage of all classes. The Pistol is the only weapon in the entire game that has access to 4 different damage conditions. And once you combine that with the Tool Kit for added Confusion, the Grenade Kit for added Bleeds, the Flamethrower for added Burns, or the Bomb Kit for Combo fields, our role in parties is pretty well healthily defined.

I still roll a Power-based build most of the time because I love the Flamethrower too much, but neither Guardians nor Warriors are effective Condition Damage classes, and neither is the Mesmer. You’re better off comparing the Engineer to other Condition Damage classes like Necromancer—and then ask yourself, what, beyond our Condition Damage, do we bring to parties? We have bar none the best group condition removal in the game, some of the most elaborate combo fields, including a 10-second Light field that heals allies and cures conditions without the need for any traits.

I have rolled a Warrior and a Guardian. They’re both excellent classes at what they do. One Guardian brings so much defensive boons and projectile reflects to a group that it is a night and day experience for Warriors—speaking from personal experience having played one in dungeons as well. But the same could easily be said of Engineers.

I give my group Regeneration. I give my group Fury. I give my group Might. I remove their conditions. I snare bosses so the glass cannons aren’t getting destroyed. I poison bosses so their regenerative skills mean much faster content clears (i.e., CoF and CoE).

Engineers bring plenty to the table to groups for PvE. It’s just about identifying what gaps there are in your group and filling them. That’s what the Engineer does.

So, we must compare with one of the least used classes like us – necromancer – and not with the classes more used and considered more useful – warriors, mesmers, guardians.
And you’re omitting all the problems with condition damage – unless you’ve got more condition damage than other people, you aren’t actually contributing with it when conditions overlaps, the fact that some of those kits need to be properly traited to be actually good – and unlike other classes, we’ve got to trait for every one of them singularly, even if they’re treated as utility skills; that what you consider “best condition removals” are either: traited tossed elixirs with a laughable radius; fumigate, that while is good, requires you to physically go to the allies to spray them; a super elixir that heals a single condition unless you do some combo (and with physical projectiles, you should shoot onto them and actually hit an ally while aiming for some enemy) and whose healing is quite poor for a skill that requires you to stay in a limited area for 10 seconds anyway.
But sure, you can give regeneration (but unless you did go for apothecary equipment, it will be quite poor – and if you did so, as our skill are quite hybrid as far as damage go, you’re doing quite a low dps). You can give fury (actually, we’re kinda limited in doing that; either randomly with toss elixir B or with the med kit, but at a single target, or with runes). You can give might if you’re highly specced into it, and that requires traits and/or runes (especially to raise might/boon duration). And even when you go area might via fire field+blast finisher, you’ve got to be really close to allies for them to be affected (so, renewing those stacks in combat for the allies can prove quite difficult).
We can snare bosses (if you mean “immobilize them” with 2 skills: either you’re using rifle or p/p, + glue bomb. I’m not even considering kit refinement/s EG ability. On the other side, all our control skills are wasted due to defiant stacks. And while we can poison our enemies with a certain degree, other classes are better specialized in that regard (necro, thieves).
In the end, even a warrior can support allies better than us, either using shouts for buffs and INSTANT healing or banners that buff all the people in the area and can be freely moved (and eventually, can give regeneration). All without having to aim aoe with small radius or having to blast finish some fields (again, for area effects with small radius). While having the best hp and armor in the game and dealing a lot of direct damage (that can’t be hindered by other players, unlike condition damage).

Manuhell.2759:

In the end, even a warrior can support allies better than us.

I laughed.

Sonic Boon is a good build, but a Warrior has no projectile walls, no Light fields, no Water fields, and no Protection. And to give Regeneration they have to trait into Inspiring Battle Standard, which is halfway up the Tactics tree. More importantly, no shout build is going to use banners.

This myth that Warriors can do everything is propagated by people who have no experience playing the class, mostly fueled by internet hysterics like yourself who suffer from awful inferiority complexes.

Level a Warrior, get it to 80, play it in dungeons, and say again that a Warrior can do everything an Engineer can.

I love my Warrior. I love its DPS. But suggesting that they provide better support than us is utter effing bullspit.

We’ve got exactly a single projectile wall, with toss elixir U, at an higher cooldown than the guardian’s one (we must spend 30 points to get a similar cooldown). Our light fields are given either by super elixir, toss elixir r and toss elixir U (if you get the wall of reflection). Of these, only the first one is usually used for that purpose. Still, it isn’t like light fields are that good. We can only get or give protection at random with elixir H, or in response to certain events (due to traits). Regarding regeneration, while they need traits, it applies to all the range of the banners. While ours have either got a small radius (and you won’t actually hit many of your allies) or is given by the healing turret assuming you’re near enough (and turrets can’t survive much anyway). Banners can have a range that is almost double the one of the healing turret, give other passive bonuses as well and can be moved freely without being destroyed by enemy attacks.
Still, they can heal condition via shouts using soldier runes (again, with a larger area than our tossed elixirs, low cooldowns and without even having to aim) and can even heal allies when traited.
Oh, and i have a warrior, anyway.

Manuhell.2759:

We’ve got exactly a single projectile wall, with toss elixir U, at an higher cooldown than the guardian’s one (we must spend 30 points to get a similar cooldown).

So? 1>0, which is how many a Warrior has. Never implicated that an Engineer is comparable to a Guardian in that regard.

Manuhell.2759:

We can only get or give protection at random with elixir H, or in response to certain events (due to traits).

Randomization is still better than not at all. Toss Elixir H can grant either Protection, Regeneration, or Swiftness. I’ll be inclined to admit that Swiftness is often not entirely useful, but Protection and Regeneration are both often helpful to one’s group, especially if you’re curing a condition and granting a stack of Might at the same time—you know, traits people actually take.

Manuhell.2759:

Banners can have a range that is almost double the one of the healing turret, give other passive bonuses as well and can be moved freely without being destroyed by enemy attacks.

Banners don’t have a Water field, cure two conditions, grant Regeneration, or can be detonated for an Area Heal. The Healing Turret has always been one of the best supportive skills across all classes in the entire game. And now it can be overcharged almost instantaneously along with Regenerative Mist’s reduced cooldown.

Most importantly, Inspiring Battle Standard is a crappy trait compared to other options that you have. You might as well run Zealous Blade on a Guardian or Automated Response on an Engineer.

If you seriously run with that, you need to re-trait. There are better options.

I’m done feeding the trolls.

1) They can still protect themselves with the shield and reflect with that, if traited. Or swap weapons in combat when needed, eventually.
Anyway, if people need projectile walls, they would rather take guardians or such. We can’t mantain a constant protection from projectiles, after all.
2) Randomization is not necessarly better than not having something. Cause they aren’t interchangeable (and that’s why toss elixir U was crappy before – at least now we’ve got an assured projectile block – and why toss elixir S is still crap – stability and stealth have different purposes). Still, you have to hit allies with the tossed elixir, and that means they are all in a small area (and possibly not moving – the elixir isn’t instant, after all). Whereas shouts are instant, don’t need to aim and, eventually, can heal and remove conditions as added effects…
3)You are still talking about healing turret while completely omitting that it can (and will) be destroyed quite easily by enemies in a couple hits. Even before being able to use the cleansing burst, eventually. Especially when most needed, that is, versus bosses. And since you’ve got to stay near it to being healed, you’re also concentrating the aoes of the enemies in that exact area. And whileas it does give some water fields, if i use the blast finishers there, i won’t buff my allies with area might later (assuming they’re near enough for both, obviously, and more often than not i will be able to buff just 2 or 3 people).
Anyway, guess i should stop as well about feeding the trolls.

The engineer isn’t week in the sense that there’s no way to play effectively, it’s just that in order to do so you have to work 10 times harder than any class and push the boundaries or go outside of the game design to do it.

For example, I’m sure that the amount of might stacking we can do in combat isn’t intended by the devs, and if it was I doubt they’d implement such a clunky way to do it. The problem is that without it our damage is non effectual and the remaining builds we have go down the toilet.

I love the fact that this is a hard class to play and is the only reason I stick with it, but the continual tweaks and adjustments without any new alternatives being added is starting to grind my gears.

Engineer has been the most disappointing and depressing class. After I watched the pre release videos for the classes, engineer looked amazing. He had turrets to hold down areas, he was placing down mines that were doing great damage. All these cool utilities. Then the class gets released.

Everything that makes this class cool, sucks so bad dyson is claiming to have made them. Gadgets are nearly useless compared to what other classes get with their utilities. Most builds are just bomb kit/grenade/toolkit with elixirs. elixirs are the most boring and uncool spells. Sure they are cool, but there is not satisfaction in using them. You just get boons and look like you’re drinking something.

I wanted players to fear and engineer who has all his turrets placed down. Instead they just run into the middle of them all, do one AoE, and boom they’re dead. I wanted to place down mines that people would actually avoid, not just run over them and shrug off what they do.

I wanted cool,creative, and useful gadgets. Not ones with useless skills that have long CDs and benefit the enemy more than they do you.

In hindsight, I realize what I posted last night was very negative. I think ANet could still really open this game up and create good build variety. To accomplish this, I think they’re going to need to do the following:

1. Spread out stun breakers. They are so vital in just about every mode, and yet so few utilities have them. No need to go crazy, but I think at least 1-2 in every utility type (except maybe device / weapon kits) is fair. Luckily, they’ve made mention of doing this recently, a step in the right direction.

2. Give some more options for condition removal through traits. Too much condi removal and condi damage becomes worthless. But making them grandmaster traits on trees chosen for different build categories would be a good way of ensuring nobody can get too much without seriously hurting their build anyways.

3. Reduce cooldowns and / or buff very weak and underused utility skills, and possibly traits to affect those utilities. Nobody chooses gadgets because of the cost / reward factor, among other quirks like self-cc.

I firmly believe that by focusing on these 3 things, the game could seriously change for the better for ALL professions. Maybe I’m way off base, idk. Let me know what you guys think.

warriors get boon hate and new traits, thiefs get boon hate, mesmers buffed, ele’s fixed and hunter and guardians pets buffed. Engineer gets well nerfs. So were in a BLACK SHEEP state right now

Shadowtech.5071:

warriors get boon hate and new traits, thiefs get boon hate, mesmers buffed, ele’s fixed and hunter and guardians pets buffed. Engineer gets well nerfs. So were in a BLACK SHEEP state right now

To be fair, ANet did commit resources across two patches (Feb and Mar) to try and improve the state of the Eng class. Unfortunately they didn’t understand the class well enough (and ignored what players were saying on this forum), with the result that much of their work was inadequate and what they considered simple correction of a minor trait turned ot to be a diversity killing nerf to the class (as if we hadn’t given them enough warning about that).

I`v been away for 4 months, came back 1 week ago. Eng was my main, I loved the play style. After the last patch I have given up on her, and I`m sorry I wasted the dungeon badges on gear for her. It just does not seam rewarding doing so little for the party.
Sure it`s cool to play the underdog, switch this and that and so on, but the dmg(tried power and cnd builds and gear) / healing output(if you spec support) is so low… I am talking about PvE and WvW, not PvP.

Anyway I will never play the kitten grenade build, I don`t like it and I think it.

That`s how Eng feel for me.

First and foremost we need all of our bugs fixed, more so than anything.

Then we need a serious design pass. Our flavor needs to come from the skills, not from things like RNG (random effects out of our control).

We need to be able to count on our utilities doing exactly what we expect them to do on demand.

I would be okay with being a hybrid adventurer profession if:

*our bugs were fixed
*the traits we shared with other classes cost the same investment of trait points and had the same numerical benefits.
*traits lines were cleaned up to allow for focused builds. Turrets is the prime offender with traits in 3 different lines and requiring a 60 point investment to reach them all.
*Completely lackluster traits were eliminated: Acidic Elixirs, Always Prepared, etc.
*Traits were combined, and others were made baseline to their corresponding skills: for example Accelerant-packed Turrets should be baseline to all turrets.

Engineers are pathetic, it goes without saying that we are by far the weakest class. I am excellent at playing the class, I have tried so many different combinations trying to find a semi decent build to no avail. Anet seriously screwed up the class, breaking more and more until and i quote are a “traveling junkyard”.

How long is it going to take the Devs to realize that this class needs some major buffs! I almost think Anet is trying to destroy this class on purpose. How stupid do the Devs have to be, to keep nerfing a severely broken class!?

If this continues im going to quit the game, a couple of my Engi friends have perma quit and it seems im right behind them.

There’s two schools of thought:

1 out of 20 engineer builds works ok, quit complaining and all respec the same.

19 out of 20 of our builds are now seriously sub par, it’s going downhill.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Gaffles.3296:

I’m curious how effective deployable turrets can be at taking out seige just out of reach of our grenades or the mesmers zerker phantasm. Does anyone have any experience with this tactic.

It can be effective and you shouldn’t throw the idea out. Sometimes it attacks random people, but when it does work, it’s great. Rocket Turret and Flame turrets are great for this (They have AoE). Rifle Turret is great if the siege is the only thing it could possibly attack.

both require the same setup an immobilize or stun or knockdown to land hundred blades dont give vulnerability but gives might stacks wich gives the same result. 1 might =1.5% damage if im not mistaken

…You aren’t really trying to compare 100blades to 100nades, are you? It’s really no contest. 100nades could instantly kill most people. 100blades takes longer and it cannot kill most people. Not to mention 100blades is incredibly obvious and easy to catch. 100nades doesn’t need a snare. It PULLS them to you and puts them in perfect position. Seriously. No contest.

precisely why 100blades has the advantage over 100nades 100 nades only pulled players giving them that second needed to i dunno Run or Dodge or even better Block
and it wasnt instant kill except on glass cannon wich 100 blades lands with the same effect highest damage i pulled with 100nades= 16.400 highest i pulled with
100b= 19.300

now “Burst unmissable” setups :

Warrior:Bull Charge—100b

Engi: magnet pull—Rifle net/pistol glue/net turret (1 of these)—walk to exact center of player red circle and change kit to nades—hit f key for nade barrage

hundred blades took longer but it was a 2 button trick and dint require precision to be in the center of player’s hit box.

Kalan.9705:

There’s two schools of thought:

1 out of 20 engineer builds works ok, quit complaining and all respec the same.

19 out of 20 of our builds are now seriously sub par, it’s going downhill.

by the looks of it we’re still gonna get even another nerf on nades some time along with our condi builds .

Phineas Poe.3018:

Engineers have the best sustained Condition Damage of all classes. The Pistol is the only weapon in the entire game that has access to 4 different damage conditions. And once you combine that with the Tool Kit for added Confusion, the Grenade Kit for added Bleeds, the Flamethrower for added Burns, or the Bomb Kit for Combo fields, our role in parties is pretty well healthily defined.

To get the “best” sustained Condition Damage, you have to practically just kitten your own build, jumping through hoops.

Pistol:
Bleed from #1….there’s a handful of classes that can stack bleeds equally good, some of them even faster and better.
Poison from #2….sucks donkey unless you’re point blank on the enemy.
Confuse from #3….sucks unless you can stack it with between several mobs (unless that was nerfed too) or you need to stack it with something else causing confusion.
Fire from #4…..sucks donkey unless you’re AGAIN….point blank on the enemy.

Elementalist:
Maxed Fire and Earth, scepter+dagger/focus.
You can stack fire and bleed outta the wazoo while having twice the survivability.
No poison or confuse as it’s traded for a MUCH more reliable fire and bleed.

Rezzet.3614:

Kalan.9705:

There’s two schools of thought:

1 out of 20 engineer builds works ok, quit complaining and all respec the same.

19 out of 20 of our builds are now seriously sub par, it’s going downhill.

by the looks of it we’re still gonna get even another nerf on nades some time along with our condi builds .

Yes that’s the two states of mind of engineer posters.

Anet state of mind is .we’re totally winging it, with no vision consistency or goals for engineer, lets nerf everything else so bad that players may one day use turrets for more than point defence. Keep nerfing engineer every month without fail, eventually everyone who wants balance will reroll, and we’ ll never have to tell our bosses we have to have at least 8 more staff to cover balance minimums for the classes in all game modes.

If you want to discuss Anets competency, we can all agree that a) their quality assurance is garbage (in-game and out) b.) they obviously don’t care about their players. ( They give out fan service to other classes, and treat us like red headed step children. ) The point of the Engineer is to be Utilitarian, playing any which way we want, and still have a great class, what is the point if you can only do 1 out of 20? They should rename the engineer to “Junkyard” with traits in “Garbage” with skills like “Kicks the Can”

if they remove the randomness from our skills then I am fine. I hate to get regeneration while I am chase someone and get fury if I try to escape

In my opinion, Engineer is one of the most well done class in GW2.

I used to think we were a kitten class, and that we were getting a lot of nerf (tho I still think some nerf like the removal of KR were not warranted) and we had a lot of bugs.

But it’s untrue. After leveling most class to 80, or a least doing a lot of tPvP with them, I gotta say Engineer is one of the most well rounded class.

Our class mecanism, kit and toolbelt, give us the possibility to counter mostly any move from the enemy.

Most of our kit are strong, our weapon are also pretty efficient too.

I agree tho that our burst build are a bit lacking if you compare to HGH and condition build, but nothing terrible.

Nothing worse then other classes if you ask me.

Sure we still have some bug, and still have balance to achieve. But Overall, when I jump on my engineer, I know I can be competitive with mostly anyone.

Except those kitten BM Ranger. That’ another story.

But If you feel like Engineer is a bad class, I won’t convince you with my word, I’m just going to say : Go try a necromancer.