Guild Wars 2

He spent over half the video explaining just how poor the engineer’s traits, skills and weapons are implemented, things we’ve been saying for well over a year now.

Question is… will the devs care?

Hopefully, but even if they care, it will take a long time for them to finish their work on the engi, there’s just too many bad traits/skills etc

Logged in to bump this. Waiting 6 months for Anet to let us down again with another balance pass.

They actually listen to WP, so there’s hope here.

Awesome video. Very nice, extensive sum up.
Also, WP mentioned turrets being use only to detonate.

Isn’t it the exact same thing why ArenaNet nerfed Gyro’s dazes a while ago?

I hope gadgets become viable in more situations.
But yes turrents need a rework the most.

pretty much agree with the stuff hes saying is wrong with power engi. i dont necessarily agree with the direction he thinks anet should go on all of it but really when you play even half as long as i have you form your own opinion on what they should do to fix it and its gonna be different for everyone.

Is it true Battering Ram does the same dps as Grenade Garrage?

Please tell me it is! (crosses fingers)

Ardid.7203:

Is it true Battering Ram does the same dps as Grenade Garrage?

Please tell me it is! (crosses fingers)

According to the wiki, yes you have a higher coefficient from Launch Personal Battering Ram. It does about half the damage that grenade barrage does but on half the reuse, so you get an additional static discharge. But, you don’t get the 10% explosion bonus or the potential bleed hits, and then there’s the additional skills in the grenade kit. Those additional skills (shrapnel +0.4, freeze +0.25, and poison grenades +0.25) are a DPS increase over bomb1 where the personal battering ram utility is not.

Basically you shouldn’t be using ram unless for some reason you need the extra little bit of CC, but it’s not the end of the world if you want to make bombineer even easier

Nah, I never use bomb kit. I’m from the “subpar but fun” flamethrower school, I only use grenades for the spike on barrage, and usually don’t run explosives at all.

This simply make one of my silly builds less silly than I thought, which is great.

http://i.imgur.com/dlsNHzR.png for reference, ziggy updated it for this balance patch

launch pbr is pretty high on the list but its sparse… when you take nades you get nades 2/4/5/belt which fills a lot more of your rotation. but since the idea here is to simplify engi more, well.. yeah nades definitely doesnt do that.

I frankly only use nades for barrage and freeze. The other grenades aren’t useful enough for me to overcome how boring they are (again, for me). I much prefer CC and more diverse animations.

I agree with a lot of what he said, but some of it was opinionated. It is very nice, however, to see him publicly voicing the problems of the engineer: a lot of crap skills compared to other classes.

PaladinVII.1647:

I agree with a lot of what he said, but some of it was opinionated. It is very nice, however, to see him publicly voicing the problems of the engineer: a lot of crap skills compared to other classes.

Now here you are wrong. Probably biased cause engi main. Pretty sure it gets beaten by guardian in the number of extremely bad traits and utilities. Ele isn’t far off either.

I totally do agree tho, that lots of traits and utilities do need love

Tomiyou.3790:

PaladinVII.1647:

I agree with a lot of what he said, but some of it was opinionated. It is very nice, however, to see him publicly voicing the problems of the engineer: a lot of crap skills compared to other classes.

Now here you are wrong. Probably biased cause engi main. Pretty sure it gets beaten by guardian in the number of extremely bad traits and utilities. Ele isn’t far off either.

I totally do agree tho, that lots of traits and utilities do need love

idk man

guard has sword, scepter, hammer, longbow, and staff all in at least “good” states (on a scale of bad-viable-good-meta) and like 2/3 of the utilities are viable if niche. i cant comment on traits as much as i dont main guard.

with engi its kits or bust, all other utility and weapon types being marginally viable at best without at least 1 kit already present. perhaps thats intended at least to some extent since engi has no weapon swap, but engi is at a 25% disadvantage to other classes with that utility or elite slot taken.

engi arguably has more variety because much of whats available is at a higher minimal standard to compete with kits, so a lot of things are fairly interchangeable, but that doesnt make it not a bad idea to mix any other utility types without first selecting a kit or 2.

ele though… yeah ill give you that one. ele is worse off utility wise. i feel like theyre similarly constrained by traits as engi. and the weapons are similarly limited. ele is like if an engi swaps keybinds for utilities and toolbelt/attunements.

Tomiyou.3790:

PaladinVII.1647:

I agree with a lot of what he said, but some of it was opinionated. It is very nice, however, to see him publicly voicing the problems of the engineer: a lot of crap skills compared to other classes.

Now here you are wrong. Probably biased cause engi main. Pretty sure it gets beaten by guardian in the number of extremely bad traits and utilities. Ele isn’t far off either.

I totally do agree tho, that lots of traits and utilities do need love

I am biased because I am a Flamethrower Engineer main, I won’t argue that. But Guardian as a counter-argument?! What do you see more of in WvW: Engineer or Guardian? Guardian is way more viable than Engineer, sadly. Elementalist I view as an un-nerfed Engineer; it is the ultimate generalist – in the developer’s own words, while the Engineer falls in as the mediocre generalist.

I do not discount that there are crap skills in each class. I believe that there should be no “Perfect” pick, like in WP’s example of the Tools trait line for the grandmaster, where everyone picks the 50% endurance regeneration over all the others because it is just so much more viable. I believe that all traits should be viable.

I think the example of the guardian is being raised because the guardian does have a similar problem when it comes to traits – there are some traits and lines that are good to the point of being auto-selected, and some that are flavourful and interesting in theory but aren’t taken in practice. I think guardian on the whole is better off, though.

Regarding the video, it does make for a good analysis. One of the reasons I don’t play engineer more is that, well, I don’t particularly like grenades or bombs for a number of reasons, and when those are clearly the best options by a significant margin, it’s a bit discouraging.

When it comes to turrets… I suspect ArenaNet is trying to avoid a return to the days when turret engineers ruled low-level sPvP. Now that we’re getting skill splits on numbers, though, it might be worth buffing the turrets so that they’re actually worth the time it takes to drop them.

draxynnic.3719:

Regarding the video, it does make for a good analysis. One of the reasons I don’t play engineer more is that, well, I don’t particularly like grenades or bombs for a number of reasons, and when those are clearly the best options by a significant margin, it’s a bit discouraging.

I don’t like grenades or bombs either. IMO the main reason is simply how boring they are. They require you to play a flat AA continuously, and then the other skills look basically the same. There aren’t any variation in the animations between the skills: your character always make the same movements. Positioning your character don’t matter, only being within range is enough. Etc…

Ardid.7203:

draxynnic.3719:

Regarding the video, it does make for a good analysis. One of the reasons I don’t play engineer more is that, well, I don’t particularly like grenades or bombs for a number of reasons, and when those are clearly the best options by a significant margin, it’s a bit discouraging.

I don’t like grenades or bombs either. IMO the main reason is simply how boring they are. They require you to play a flat AA continuously, and then the other skills look basically the same. There aren’t any variation in the animations between the skills: your character always make the same movements. Positioning your character don’t matter, only being within range is enough. Etc…

Pretty much this. I see no reason at all that toolkit shouldn’t be buffed up to be a viable damage option. Buff up the auto to be comparable to hammer at the very least, and instantly open up a whole host of viable builds by reducing the need for so many kits.

TK could be a perfect off hand set, with bombs and grenades still melee/mid alternatives rather than mandatory picks thus leaving an extra slot available for either those or other utilities. I can’t see how toolkit being a viable damage kit could be OP, even when considering its effects on turrets given that the turrets are so awful anyway.

Either way, yay WP

PaladinVII.1647:

Tomiyou.3790:

PaladinVII.1647:

I agree with a lot of what he said, but some of it was opinionated. It is very nice, however, to see him publicly voicing the problems of the engineer: a lot of crap skills compared to other classes.

Now here you are wrong. Probably biased cause engi main. Pretty sure it gets beaten by guardian in the number of extremely bad traits and utilities. Ele isn’t far off either.

I totally do agree tho, that lots of traits and utilities do need love

I am biased because I am a Flamethrower Engineer main, I won’t argue that. But Guardian as a counter-argument?! What do you see more of in WvW: Engineer or Guardian? Guardian is way more viable than Engineer, sadly. Elementalist I view as an un-nerfed Engineer; it is the ultimate generalist – in the developer’s own words, while the Engineer falls in as the mediocre generalist.

I do not discount that there are crap skills in each class. I believe that there should be no “Perfect” pick, like in WP’s example of the Tools trait line for the grandmaster, where everyone picks the 50% endurance regeneration over all the others because it is just so much more viable. I believe that all traits should be viable.

Did you serious use WvW as an example? That mode is full of zergs which guardian was built for. And no, it is NOT so much more viable than engineer. Engi can be easily played in all 3 game modes. And btw, ele is not an un-nerfed engineer.
Pretty sure you play WvW and see that groups run guard for boons and eles for heals and think that they are better than engi that way. Engi is not at all a mediocre generalist, if anything, ele is, as it has to specialize heavily to stay in meta.
PvP engineer is just as viable as ele. WvW might pull ahead in zergs, but is worse in small groups or solo roaming. In PvE condi engi wins because of the current condi heavy meta and the +150 condition damage it gives out.

Very good video and shows exactly what’s wrong with engineer. On the condition side of things engineer needs no change, it’s top tier and a welcome addition to high fractals/raids. It’s perfectly fine for some kits to have a vital contribution to rotations, weather it be blast, cc’s and applying conditions is what makes the engineer unique. But equipping a Rifle or Hammer is useless and that sucks because neither have a place in any meta except hammer guard.

Tomiyou.3790:

Did you serious use WvW as an example? That mode is full of zergs which guardian was built for. And no, it is NOT so much more viable than engineer. Engi can be easily played in all 3 game modes.

i dont buy this counterargument.

“full of zergs” needs something more substantial behind it to hold water. like yeah, you can walk into wvw and play it. and guard is more wanted there than engi. ask any zergling. yes, they do represent like half of the things you can be doing in wvw.

I wish they would listen but after countless posts on Reddit and here on these forums. I don’t think they are going to do anything. I hope I am wrong, but I have all but given up hope on this developer team to really do anything 1.) transparent and 2.) anything that makes sense/purity of purpose.

insanemaniac.2456:

Tomiyou.3790:

Did you serious use WvW as an example? That mode is full of zergs which guardian was built for. And no, it is NOT so much more viable than engineer. Engi can be easily played in all 3 game modes.

i dont buy this counterargument.

“full of zergs” needs something more substantial behind it to hold water. like yeah, you can walk into wvw and play it. and guard is more wanted there than engi. ask any zergling. yes, they do represent like half of the things you can be doing in wvw.

Thing is we’re not bad at WvW at all. It’s just in mid-large scale guardians (and revs) are just so valuable they outweigh everyone. We’re not great like Guard/Rev, but we’re one of those solid group fillers with lots of options on how to make a difference for the group. We aren’t the best of those group fillers though but some minor changes like making Toss elixirs affect a more reasonable radius would help with that and some quality improvements on Gadgets could have those being useful and like WP mentioned there are a few weak traits that while having a cool idea are unreasonable, those as well could really change things in WvW too.

Jones.9756:

Logged in to bump this. Waiting 6 months for Anet to let us down again with another balance pass.

That is wrong…it’s for “Clarity of Purpose” lol

It just feels like they didnt flesh out the Engi traits well, or do enough testing. Soothing Detonation stands out for me as a key example of a trait that has the same issues as the traits in the Explosives line WP mentioned.

It is meant to enhance our blast finishers yet only has a 240 radius and not 360 like a blast. Shouldnt a trait that is meant to enhance the effectiveness of our blasts have the same radius as a blast finisher?

And that’s not to mention it’s poor scaling, I really miss healing bombs. It’s worse than an Elementalist staff 1…

AMEN, ANET LOOK AT THAT VIDEO AND FIX THAT CLASS AFTER 3 YEARS

100% agree but the video is too long, 43 minutes with 3 sentences per second, how he can hope it will make any sense in game designers mind ?

Fact is that in pvp/wvw, engineers HAVE TO take the most 3 defensives branchs. We can try anything else, it bring nothing more, just few more damages but no more effects.

In pve engineers just try to min/max dps because they have nothing else to bring.

Anything really valuable we bring is what ? Anything else than brutal numbers ? There is something wrong with the class, we try to compounds with the random stuffs we got, but we don’t have differents logics to arbitrate between, the choice are more or less obvious, the cls is broken in the wrong way, poorly designed.

To be honest and a bit frank, it is sad that this video even had to happen. The volume and wealth of feedback that kept coming for quite a while after the expac, with fingers pointing at those areas that are under performing (traits, rifle, shield, gadgets, turrets) which when you look at those things is perhaps over 50% of the Engineer’s available kitten nal.

Unless you only ever used Kits, these issues would never come to light. Whenever people think of turrets they always assume that the turret themselves should be focused on. I suggest looking at perhaps reducing their cool-downs, returning the rifle turret to the Elite Supply Crate and then focusing on buffing the performance of the tool-belt skills associated with them rather than making turrets themselves do more. Turrets should stay as Utilities and the Tool-Belt skills become more spiking pressure and power oriented.

Gadgets come up often but their problem is that they are so niche that they don’t often fit in well with many builds. Rocket Boots needs a stun breaker. Personal Battering should perhaps Fear opponents off to your sides and back just like a real battering ram. Throwing Mine is a projectile that takes a while to arrive at point and when it does everyone knows where it is, It needs to do more damage than it currently does OR passively every 9 seconds pull opponents in towards it. The Goggles do nothing really even though the buff to it’s cool-down time is greatly appreciated, instead if it breaks stun it should give quickness, otherwise grant 5 stacks of might (as well as fury and blind resistance).

Rifle skills need cool-down reductions OR damage increases. Rifle 4 needs to do more, perhaps drop a blind field OR evade backwards. Rifle 5’s animation needs to give you more range OR cover ground faster so that you can actually kite with the weapon effectively. Rifle AA does nothing, synergizes with nothing and does not scale well with power, as a result targets with significant armor simply feel as though they out-passively-heal your ‘pressure’ and it’s even worst than what is being said here because it doesn’t apply anything else to create any other kind of pressure.

Shield looks like it could be good but if it is meant to be taking the roll of supporting group play then push it’s traits farther in that direction than they currently are. We can’t just sit there and blast all day and collect med packs that heal for 1/10 of an opponent’s auto-attack (Thief). Shield either needs to go hard-core gimmicks or needs to punish opponents harder when an Engineer uses it effectively.

Traits are garbage, let’s take the Explosives Traits line for example. Why do we have Two Grenade traits on the same level as each other and why as they split when one is a fall damage reduction trait? Merge these traits and return grenade speed back to the kit itself so as to not make Grenade Kit users curse in absolute disgust as your enemy casually walk out of range of your THROWN grenades. Add a new trait such as Timed Charge (the same skill as Harpoon Gun #4 on the Engineer) that would bring meaningful, themed damage to the trait line. Now finally if you take a look at the GM options for Explosives what am I supposed to take as a Power Build? Orbital not only takes forever to land but it hits lands like a Trump Policy, absolutely pathetic. WP said enough about the rest of the traits here, I may as well leave the GM slot empty because it doesn’t make a difference.

Do you know what else is sad about the GM issue in the Explosives line? It’s practically the same issue in every other line as well. You have one real option that everyone knows you don’t even have to spend a quarter of a second thinking about (if you are playing condi you are screwed out of a GM option in some trait lines and the same goes for power) and maybe a second if you look really hard or try something outlandish. In the cases of those with second options you often take it because frankly what else are you going to take? It’s the only other option that’s relevant to what I’m trying to achieve but it certainly isn’t what I would’ve really wanted. So when the stats get checked the desk jockeys see a bunch of traits being used that are essentially ‘all we can do’ and probably assume that it means that they are in a good place when that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The upside to all of this folly (static discharge still hits like a baby and probably does more damage to the ground than anything else unless you’ve selected the chosen few traits or aim like an FPS… and how long has it been doing this?) as well as what appears to be the complete disinterest in solving (or perhaps the lack of knowledge/appreciation for the fact that these issues, still, exist) is that I am playing other games now and having fun. I’m just collecting dailies at this stage but at some point I may realize that there isn’t much point in collecting dailies for a game that I essentially no longer (have fun) play(ing).

The trait system needs a big rework. I dont know if any1 thought about what to put where and if sth is usefull or if the just brainstormed some traits and then randomly threw them in.
Turrents would be easy to fix in my oppinion.
Give them a fixed time they exist.
Let them only overload once (and explode at the end).
And get rid of the explode turrent that overwrites your toolbelt skill.
The recharge starts when the turrent exploded.
now you just have to balence the dmg, range and overload for PvE and PvP seperately and you’re good to go.
PS gadgets could need a lil more dmg in PvE to match the kits.

I can see why Anet wouldn’t want to buff turrets at all, given how cancerous they were in pvp before the Specialization change.

Good Lord. I watched the video and he speaks so much truth. I have always 100% hated the bomb kit and out of principle I refuse to use it, and this only reinforces my standpoint. Just buff the auto attacks of everything but bombs, and buff underused traits. Pleeease for the love of God, I would LOVE to see a non-bomb-reliant power build, for rifle or hammer, that’s actually viable.

Captain Swag.5893:

Good Lord. I watched the video and he speaks so much truth. I have always 100% hated the bomb kit and out of principle I refuse to use it, and this only reinforces my standpoint. Just buff the auto attacks of everything but bombs, and buff underused traits. Pleeease for the love of God, I would LOVE to see a non-bomb-reliant power build, for rifle or hammer, that’s actually viable.

Agreed. I’d love to run toolkit as my main kit, gearshield, magnet and prybar could be great. They’ve gotten left behind though. The kit needs a buff to it’s auto, particularly and some CD reduction. Power wrench damage buff should be made baseline, perhaps make the trait buff turret interactions with toolkit, instead. Since turrets are next to useless, there’s no point holding back toolkit’s damage for turret balance.

archmagus.7249:

They actually listen to WP, so there’s hope here.

Auto atacks need to be reduced to single target AA with lesser damage for all classes, still it would be against gw2 principles.

Can u guys imagine gw2 players putting more effort to play??? i cant.

About mechanics and tradeoffs gw2 isnt that game, its the must have freebies build, dont forget game is actually for players that want instant rewards more than put any kind of effort even on fight mechanics.

Ardid.7203:

Is it true Battering Ram does the same dps as Grenade Garrage?

Please tell me it is! (crosses fingers)

The ram adds up to 1501 dps to your rotation. Grenade Barrage alone is 1863 dps already. If you add the other grenade skills, the whole kit adds up to 4045 dps.

If you are a bomb aa spammer you could go for the ram for additional cc. If you wanna deal max dps though, the nade kit is a must.

Hanth.2978:

But equipping a Rifle or Hammer is useless and that sucks because neither have a place in any meta except hammer guard.

A well played Power Engi offers the 3rd highest dps against small hitboxes. If you add the damage other professions deal more because of Pinpoint Distribution, you’re just like a condi Ranger.

Hammer is great, better than rifle, Scrapper is garbage tho, at least dps wise and thus in Raids. It’s good for some preevents or shenanigans in general, but that’s mostly because you want a gyro. Same goes for Fractals, although there are situations where hammer is quite strong, or rather again – a Gyro.

Xyonon.3987:

Ardid.7203:

Is it true Battering Ram does the same dps as Grenade Garrage?

Please tell me it is! (crosses fingers)

The ram adds up to 1501 dps to your rotation. Grenade Barrage alone is 1863 dps already. If you add the other grenade skills, the whole kit adds up to 4045 dps.

If you are a bomb aa spammer you could go for the ram for additional cc. If you wanna deal max dps though, the nade kit is a must.

I’m neither. I just like FT and CC play, and was hoping to have a decent tool to bust my damage without having to use nades all the time.

scrapper is what makes engineer viable right now. though what was mentioned in the original post has been an issue since launch, with the only ‘remedy’ being scrapper. now i know why they’re taking forever to announce their progress on the expansion that’s a WIP.

archmagus.7249:

They actually listen to WP, so there’s hope here.

According to Anet logic next fix for that would be:

Patch 1.01

• Decrased Bomb auto-attack damage by 50% becouse purity of purpose
• Increased Rocket Boots damage by 10%
• Reduced Gear shield durration by 1 second

Problem solved, now all other skills has bigger DPS than bomb and you can use them!.