Guild Wars 2

Hi guys! Some suggestions for engineer 1 handed weapons that are in serious need of love.
Most of these are PvP orientated while keeping the PvE side intact and functional.

The goal of these suggestions are as follows.
Disclaimer: these suggestions are based of rudimentary understanding of balance and to preserve counterplay but may be over/undertuned. Please do not shoot the ideas down because of these numbers that could be adjusted to allow for balance.
1. Solidify the identity of each of the main and offhand weapons.
2. Establish synergy between engi main and offhand weapons whcih is currently non-existent.
3. Slightly alleviate the PS/PP build on kit reliance without making PS/PP overly oppressive when running kits as well.

Now for the skills themselves.

Pistol 1 – Fragmentation shot.
Increase power scaling by to 0.6(up from 0.4).
Bleeding duration increase to 5seconds(up from 3seconds).
Increase explosion radius to 150(up from 120).
Pierce is baseline, and all targets hit creates the explosion.
Decrease effective attacks per second to 3/4 of a second(down from 1.208 per second).
Possible change to preserve balance, remove projectile finihser chance, more on why with skill 2.

These changes solidifies the pistol auto as a basic attack that can compete with grenades at medium range with a bit more reliability. It also differentiates it as a more offensive option to the previously stronger elixir gun auto which has a 4sec blled, weakness 1sec and a similar 0.4 power modifier and is only single target.

Pistol 2 – Poison Dart Volley.
Increase power scaling by to 0.6(up from 0.4).
Reduce poison duration per shot to 2seconds but the final hit applies 10 seconds of poison.
100% projectile finihser.
Increase cooldown to 12seconds(up from 10).
Reduce cast time/channel to 1 second(down from 1 3/4).
Normalise projectiles to remove RNG at 400+ range, attacks will not miss for no reason the way they do now.

Some changes to it to preserve balance, overall damage will be about the same assuming all your attacks previously hit, but the final hit will ensure counterplay is present. This skill is the cornerstone of the synergy i am trying to create between mainhand pistol and offhand weapons.

Pistol 3 – Static Shot
Power scaling remains 0.4.
Damage increases on each bounce in increments of 25%. Base damage before power scaling 142/178/222/277.
Third and fourth bounce both daze for 1 second instead of blind.
Increase cooldown to 16seconds(up from 12seconds).
Retains 3 confusion per bounce per target.

This skill has always been mostly utility, I have augmented it as a skill that excells at outnumbered fights while keeping it balanced in a 1v1(without considering pets/clones/minions).

As you can see the mainhand pistol now functions more as a hybrid(higher power damage than before and similar condi damage)while having MUCH better utility.

Now to the offhand weapons.

Pistol 4 – Blowtorch.
Reduce power scaling to 0.75/0.50/0.25 depending on distance (down from 0.1/0.66/0.33).
Possible balance preservation change, revert cooldown to previous 14 seconds rather than current 12.
Increased reliability on moving targets by allowing it to cast in a larger arc (180degrees infront of your character instead of the current only forward facing), will miss less often on moving targets as long as you are facing them.

The pistol will have quite a bit more power so I don’t want it to be overpowering when combined with offhand pistol.

Pistol 5 – Tormenting Glue (change from Glue shot).
Remove aftercast.
Increase projectile speed by 50%(this might be overtuned.)
Now is a dark field.
If the target is directly hit it applies 5 stacks of torment for 6 seconds, additionally it will pulse 1 stack of torment every second for a 2second duration inside the dark field.
Reduce cooldown to 24seconds(down from 30)
Unblockable skillfact might need to be removed to preserve balance.

I made this a field to promote synergy between the main and offhand. The projectile finisher on P2 and this dark field increases the sustain possible(projectile+dark = life leach) on this weaponset in a unique way that engi does not currently have access to, allowing it to compete with sustain that other builds and elite specs currently have.

These offhand changes solidifies offhand pistol as an offensive CONDITION weapon with a little bit of utility while reducing the power scaling a little.

Shield 4 – Magnetic shield
Reduce duration to 2seconds(down from 3).
Decrease cooldown to 24seconds(down from 30).
Melee attacks will immediately trigger the knockback and blast.

Small changes to allow more frequent use but more reactive gameplay.
These changes are to differentiate the skills and foster smart skill usage rather than spamming.

Shield 5 – Static shield.
Reduced cooldown to 32seconds(down from 40).
When attacked it will not automatically proc but instead allow you to reactivate it up to 1 second after the cast to complete the daze.
Upon activation it creates a Etherial field(4seconds) that does not do anything but can be combod(obviously).

Once again a field on skill5 for consistency and synergy with mainhand pistol. It can be combod with P2 to apply confusion.
The activation changes is to have consistency with other skills of similar functionality.

Right so what do you guys think?

These are a boatload of changes that would help PP and PS in the PvP scene without making it too strong in PvE as it already is in a good position.

shield changes seems good to me .more reliable and meaningful use for full skill chain .

but as for pistol ,if you want to add this much damage to engi weapon set, please remove traits like IP first,its already not fun to play against the rng condi application from engi nades (despite its not op ).
other players after this changes will have to dodge torment ,confusion and poison all in shorter cooldown .

i really think condi application should balance around two playstyles :
burst condition application with high damage condition lilke burn and torment.but overall less cover condition for that build.
sustain condition damage :overall more damage but slower with various cover condition like bleed ,low duration confusion .
poison should stay as a counter to heal .its already stupid on necro .

so as i said , i dont think anet could balance engi weapon set alone without touch the traits line otherwise some combination with kits after changes will be certainly op.

nades + IP is already the sustain condi build for engi .anet should change IP to every 10th attack applies burn(with icd 5s and a bit shorter duration ) and buff mainhand pistol 1 and 3 condition duration a bit . .skill 3 could change to a simple single target skill while it hit the target it also apply the aoe blind around the target .
shield could get some trait to counter cc like when you get stun /dazed your shield skill4 will be recharged and free to use(icd 40s) .

and add some trait to change the function of blast(like the superspeed one but more for burst condition) on engi ,blast on fire =plus aoe burn ,blast on water=weakness ,blast on ice=torment etc .(only except smoke field )
so shield could have more use with boom and elite field .

Good ideas for several skills. Pistol 2 change to a projectile finisher would be an excellent potential DPS booster to both PP and PS, especially when combo’d with Bomb Kit / Flamethrower.

The change to Fragmentation Shot would make it too strong. Pistol 1 needs to apply 2 bleed stacks instead of 1 or improve the after casts so that you can actually reproduce the figures that this skill claims it can do.

The changes to Static Shot I feel are unnecessary. This skill when used correctly is effective, an increase in it’s cool-down would dramatically reduce a P/P engineer’s ability to defend itself against melee opponents, especially thieves.

The changes to Glue Shot also make it hard for a P/P engineer to keep distance with targets. Remember that the style of this weapon is mid range and effectively once an opponent gets close to you these changes don’t allow you to be able to make more distance between you two.
Instead I would suggest increasing the base immobilization to 2 seconds on initiation as well as the field to Throw Gunk instead and keeping the unblockable skill fact. This would give you another combo field and more conditions to work with.
The skill cool-down time should be reviewed as well.

As for off hand shield I feel that it requires force multipliers to make it relevant. Shield needs to take on a stronger retaliatory focus but before we discuss that we need to look at why shield currently does not perform in PvP.

For the most part shield at the moment won’t protect you against much since a lot of skills are unblockable and if they aren’t the classes that it could offer you protection against can make their next x duration or x number of skills unblockable. The long cool-downs of these skills also mean that there is little means for you to out-play the select opponent (Ranger LB) that these skills could counter since those classes could use those skills probably 3 times over (cancel when you do the reflect and restart shortly afterwards) before you can use shield skills effectively again.

Let’s say we wanted to improve the performance of these skills that currently do not function. Magnetic Shield and Static Shield should both be on 25 and 30 second cool-downs respectively. Magnetic Shield is in effect no different from a traited Shield Stance on Warrior expect you do not block anything. Static Shield is effectively the same as Shield Bash on warrior as well except the durations or the stuns and daze are weak since it effects multiple targets instead.

The duration of the effect of these skills can be reduced to match the active durations of ranged channeled skills. The shield trait also needs to push out resistance as well as protection, otherwise you will still get dominated while using these skills.

Outside of their current state I would like to see both shield skills keep score of hits while these skills are active. According to the total score when the second portion of these skills are used then the damage modifiers are scaled to a total of possibly 2500 base damage.

I know it sounds high so let me briefly defend this position. This change is similar to Gadgeteer (GM trait, Tools) except it rewards the Engineer for skilled use as well as allowing shield to function as it should. It therefore now encourages opponents to use the correct interrupt skills instead of just face rolling their keyboard on top of an Engineer that is casting Shield 4/5 OR they accept that they are willing to take the resulting retaliatory spike in damage.

An “Overcharged” Magnetic Inversion, adding “Overcharged” to Engineer Shield skills that have their score at max, should knock back foes by 450 range as well as carry 2500 base damage. An “Overcharged” Throw Shield should Daze for 3 seconds and carry a base damage of 2500 as well.