Guild Wars 2

As we all know engineer got hit hard by the recent patch. While many other professions got 3 traits condensed into one, GM traits moved to lower in the tree and things made into baseline, engineer got a lot of promises, but the recent patch delivered little. Celestial rifle is mediocre. Engineer cannot compete as bunker with guardian nor elementalist. Mesmer, thief, elementalist and warrior all got better burst and dps. Medkit was butchered in the patch and I am trying to suggest reasonable (yet easy to implement changes) to make it viable.

I have spend a lot of time reading the comments on these forums and over 2500 hours playing as engineer. Here are my suggested list of changes to the engineer. The list includes minor nerfs, but more buffs:

Made into baseline:
rifled barrels (increase range for elixir gun/harpoon gun skills, maybe also pistol, rifle was done on Jun 28 patch)
240 radius bomb kit skills (or merged with short fuse trait)

Skill changes:
orbital strike, increase base damage by 50% (this skill has a big tell it is coming and does relatively low damage for so long activation skill)
napalm (flame thrower #4) reduce burning per pulse to 2 s per pulse
blowtorch (pistol #4) reduce the burning duration to 4 s
medkit throw skills all revert back to drop vial (like before)
medkit skill #3: reduce activation time to 1/2 s, no aftercast
medkit skill #4: reduce activation time to 1/2 s, no aftercast
medkit #1, med blaster, will heal 250+8*boon per second
on the engineer himself + up to 5 allies 600 radius burst, scaling with healing power
0.05*healing power+0.005 per boon (basically weak ~280 area heal/s and engi
is not doing damage or anything else while using this)
medkit works underwater again
elixir gun #2 (elixir F) and #5 super elixir count as elixirs, would also offer
much better synergy with inversion enzyme + alchemical tinctures traits

Trait changes:

Some of the engineer traits are currently very weak and boring e.g. shaped charge, which offers mere 5% conditional damage increase and it is major trait. Some traits are too situational e.g. shrapnel is useless without grenades + being able to have multiple grenades hit repeatedly. The trait synergy is gone. Incendiary Powder is clearly weaker now. Thermobaric Detonation sounds good on paper, but with 5 s icd on Evasive Powder Keg and vigor nerf, it is very weak GM trait and why to waste precious dodges on such?

Evasive Powder Keg – icd removed (would make thermobaric detonation more useful)
Shaped Charge renamed into Amazing grenadier: increase grenade range back to 1500, 20%
reduced cooldown on grenade kit skills
Shrapnel: explosions have 33% chance to 10 s bleed + 2 s cripple, 3 s icd
Thermobaric Detonation: in addition double damage from Evasive Powder Keg
Pinpoint precision: critical hits cause 3 s blind, 10 icd
Chemical rounds: condition duration increase 30% (previously 50%), 20% reduction of cd of pistol skills
Heal resonator, increase range to 360 (still much smaller than the shout radius)
Autodefense bomb dispenser renamed into autodefense protector: 4 s protection when hit by a critical hit, 10 s icd (current meta has several hard hitting unblockable hits or burst from stealth)
Automated medical response: reduce icd to 60 s, activates only if health is 25% and healing skill is already in cooldown,, making it actually useful
Energy amplifier —> http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enhance_Performance
(3 stacks of 15 s might, when using healing skill #6, 10 icd, allowing to stack might with medkit stowing)
Medical Dispersion Field --> http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir-Infused_Bombs
( Bomb explosions heal allies 145 + 0.15* healing power, alternative to bunker down, elixir infused bombs were a well-loved and balanced trait, which was deleted for no reason)
Takedown round: reduce icd to 5 s
Streamlined kits: reduce swiftness to 10 s, reduce internal cooldown to 10 s
Gadgeteer: remove the need for static charges, always improves gadgets, 20% reduced cd

Most of my suggested changes are simply tweaking some numbers or reverting back to old behavior which was already in the game, so they shouldn’t be too difficult to implement.

Please discuss!

I’d say a lot of this needs more clarification on why. The developers are not as interested in what we think the traits should do, but instead why we have problems with them at the moment.

As for your trait suggestions, I mostly agree with them, except Shrapnel.
Currently it have a 15% chance to proc, with 3 nades that becomes a 38.25% chance to proc at least once. (about 0.34% chance to proc all all three).

A 3 sec ICD would make this weaker for ALL explosive basic attacks because they can all attack slightly faster than once a sec. An ICD in general causes problems with the travel time of grenades and mortar shoots when you are moving towards your enemy (they will hit more rapidly than how fast you fired them). It would also stop it from procing on multiple targets (the main benefid with explosions over other attacks) and it would mean that traited explosions like mines from bunker down, Aim-assisted rocket and takedown rounds could hit the cooldown time and not get a chance to proc like they should.

My suggestion to solve the problem of shrapnels useability when using grenades instead of mortar/bombs/pistol 1# (if it was an explosion) is to make it only proc on the main grenade (the one that allways goes in the middle of your AoE circle) and incresse the proc chance to 33%. This will bring it down a slight bit on grenades (can’t multi proc on the same toss and loses about 5% proc chance) but brings the proc chance up to the same level for all other explosive attacks (even Aim assisted, mines or takedown rounds.

This would also alow the developers to tweak the proc chance to be balanced on all explosive attacks (because we can expect one proc around every 3/4th of a sec).

I think your getting a little greedy when it comes to request about grenades. Your showing a bit too much personal bias in how you request changes aspects such as shrapnel, to clearly cater to grenades. As well as asking for longer range on grenades, and so on.

Personally, I think bombs need more. With exception of the combo fields, bombs need a clear damage superiority to grenades, to support the risk versus reward of the range capabilities of each kit.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I think your getting a little greedy when it comes to request about grenades. Your showing a bit too much personal bias in how you request changes aspects such as shrapnel, to clearly cater to grenades. As well as asking for longer range on grenades, and so on.

Personally, I think bombs need more. With exception of the combo fields, bombs need a clear damage superiority to grenades, to support the risk versus reward of the range capabilities of each kit.

Actually if you read my suggestion, shrapnel would be weaker for grenades!

The grenade kit auto attack is 1/2 s, but the real attack speed is about 1 s. In 3 seconds that would mean 3 × 3 = 9 grenades. Assuming just one target and 15% trigger chance, it would trigger roughly 0.15 × 9 = 1.35 times per 3 seconds.

In my suggestion the trait can trigger maximum 1 times per 3 seconds, due the 3 second cooldown. Thus the current shrapnel is 35 % better than I suggested, plus it has 12 s bleed, not 10 s bleed. Against multiple targets the current shrapnel can be even 5 times better as the 3 s icd would limit it to 1 target.

Bomb kit would still have the following advantage over the grenades:
240 radius vs 180 (traited grenades)
25 % stronger auto attack (1.25 dmg multiplier vs 3×.033 )
fire field (for might stacking)
smoke field (for stealth)
unblockable immobilize
pulsing attacks
blast finisher
400 range launch
less vulnerable against retaliation

Grenade kit advantages:
much better range
better synergy with steel-packed powder and similar feats
potential to hit more targets (3×3) and “eat” more retaliation dmg from it

Thus the bomb kit is better in almost every single aspect, except range. I know the range is a big thing. The current meta is full of excessive burst, cleave, AoE and chained stuns and other hard CC. I don’t think it makes bomb kit viable in spvp or WvWvW even if the elixir infused bombs ( bomb healing trait ) would be back. You simply cannot sit on the point and eat all that dmg. I will later make posts to other profession forums how some of the his excessive dps/burst/CC should be toned down (mantra mesmers, elementalists, rampage warriors, burning guardians all need to be toned down).

I may sound greedy, but what I am asking would require to invest both an adept trait and major trait to get the 1500 range on grenades back. After all my suggestions the grenade kit would still be weaker than it was after the June 23 patch. Grenade kit used to have poison field, which was unblockable and very useful in real life situations. The bleeds now do weaker damage and incendiary powder is no longer on the explosions tree. The 30% condition duration was removed the explosions tree, which also means less vulnerability stacking, shorter bleeds etc. Thus the realistic dmg output of the grenades has been weakened.

At the same time the realistic dmg output of many other professions has been significantly increased.

I would be fine with the change of the medikit that u do not have to throw them anymore it was a bad ability before and still it is after the patch. Medikits are not worth to use for others but it is a nice option to heal ureself but for that u need it to be layed before u not thrown. And yes i want it back underwater! Healing turret is no option for me i never wanted it and i do not want it now as i like the medikit even it is weaker and not meta at all.

I updated my original post to reflect the balance changes done yesterday.