Guild Wars 2

mauried.5608:

I really wonder why people play online games.
I play games to have fun.
I play Engineer to have fun.
I coudnt give a stuff how much or how little dps Engineers have or how they compare to other classes, or how useless the skills are.
As long as playing the class provides entertainment , thats all that matters.
Remember you cant win an MMO.

To some of us our enjoyment is greatly deminished by the shotty mechanics and traits that don’t synergize and lack of viable weapons… underwhelming damage etc…

We love what the class is, which is why we choose to play Engineer and are so passionate about seeing it improved.

Panda.1967:

mauried.5608:

I really wonder why people play online games.
I play games to have fun.
I play Engineer to have fun.
I coudnt give a stuff how much or how little dps Engineers have or how they compare to other classes, or how useless the skills are.
As long as playing the class provides entertainment , thats all that matters.
Remember you cant win an MMO.

To some of us our enjoyment is greatly deminished by the shotty mechanics and traits that don’t synergize and lack of viable weapons… underwhelming damage etc…

We love what the class is, which is why we choose to play Engineer and are so passionate about seeing it improved.

+1

another reason why engineer will never be successful is because everyone else got used to engineer being sub par so if it gets buffed and starts performing good all of a sudden everyone will call for nerfs and that engi is op

Rezzet.3614:

another reason why engineer will never be successful is because everyone else got used to engineer being sub par so if it gets buffed and starts performing good all of a sudden everyone will call for nerfs and that engi is op

Aren’t we meta? Last I saw Engi is now one of the better DPS options with only condi Thief outperforming on small hitboxes in general, but it has it’s own limitations. Condi Ranger being more popular because people are frightened by kits and think the ranger rotation is easier (it is easier than the optimal rotation, but the simple rotation yields similar results but engi has pinpoint).

Jerus.4350:

Rezzet.3614:

another reason why engineer will never be successful is because everyone else got used to engineer being sub par so if it gets buffed and starts performing good all of a sudden everyone will call for nerfs and that engi is op

Aren’t we meta? Last I saw Engi is now one of the better DPS options with only condi Thief outperforming on small hitboxes in general, but it has it’s own limitations. Condi Ranger being more popular because people are frightened by kits and think the ranger rotation is easier (it is easier than the optimal rotation, but the simple rotation yields similar results but engi has pinpoint).

Indeed… Engineer DPS from kits is amazingly high… honestly a bit too high… our DPS from everything else though is rather underwhelming… all other classes have multiple viable routes of doing high damage, but the Engineer has only one… and it’s rather annoying to know that you are either identical to every other Engineer out there or doing such low DPS that you are barely even contributing to groups and struggling in solo…

Panda.1967:

Indeed… Engineer DPS from kits is amazingly high… honestly a bit too high… our DPS from everything else though is rather underwhelming… all other classes have multiple viable routes of doing high damage, but the Engineer has only one… and it’s rather annoying to know that you are either identical to every other Engineer out there or doing such low DPS that you are barely even contributing to groups and struggling in solo…

That is not true.
There are high condi dps builds with just 2 kits or one kit (using rocket boots and flame turret)
And power dps only uses one kit (bomb), with others (elixir and nades) quite optional minor improvements on dps.

lLobo.7960:

Panda.1967:

Indeed… Engineer DPS from kits is amazingly high… honestly a bit too high… our DPS from everything else though is rather underwhelming… all other classes have multiple viable routes of doing high damage, but the Engineer has only one… and it’s rather annoying to know that you are either identical to every other Engineer out there or doing such low DPS that you are barely even contributing to groups and struggling in solo…

That is not true.
There are high condi dps builds with just 2 kits or one kit (using rocket boots and flame turret)
And power dps only uses one kit (bomb), with others (elixir and nades) quite optional minor improvements on dps.

Power optimally uses grenades as well, but yes. Xyonon knows better, but we have quite a few options that are pretty darn good. The idea of a no kit build is just unreasonable, but the quality of 1 kit builds both power and condi are very high. Hell you can get 28k with a FT build.

Engineer kits and style is totaly awesome. Especially scrapper-hammer is way more powerful than most professions. Weapon swap is redundant with all these kits. Engineer is a jack of all trades, a dude that can do anything. You know, if your party needs something except from a portal, you can do it. Given time, you can do anything, like a wizard in DnD games.

What engi needs in my noob opinion is a good bug fix, and a balance adjustment (some skill reworks too) but all professions need those. And a friggin accurate gap closer for wvw.

alain.1659:

Engineer kits and style is totaly awesome. Especially scrapper-hammer is way more powerful than most professions. Weapon swap is redundant with all these kits. Engineer is a jack of all trades, a dude that can do anything. You know, if your party needs something except from a portal, you can do it. Given time, you can do anything, like a wizard in DnD games.

What engi needs in my noob opinion is a good bug fix, and a balance adjustment (some skill reworks too) but all professions need those. And a friggin accurate gap closer for wvw.

Couldn’t agree more with that last paragraph. Thing is if med kit was decent we could be a quality healer. If our quickness application could be shared making those abilities stronger (they’re not worth it out of solo play) they’d help the group. And, our gap closers suck donkey kitten, Rocket boots that sends of flying in a selectable direction but then bounces us often in random locations as well as a slow as molasses rocket charge that with any kind of lag has us bouncing randomly…. yeah… screw that.

We’re a versatile profession, but the versatility is 2012 era and hasn’t really been updated to fit the current game. Hopefully the elite spec helps, but without that the versatility, while there, is so underwhelming that the idea of “jack of all trades and master of none” is kitten as we aren’t even adequate at most trades, in the end we’re DPS or kitten just for fun.

For some mysterious reason, Anet does not fix bugs in some professions. I have no hope for a good rework but QoL changes would be ok too.

Jerus.4350:

Power optimally uses grenades as well, but yes. Xyonon knows better, but we have quite a few options that are pretty darn good. The idea of a no kit build is just unreasonable, but the quality of 1 kit builds both power and condi are very high. Hell you can get 28k with a FT build.

The idea of a no kit build shouldn’t be unreasonable… that’s one of the biggest problems with Engineer… if you wanted to make a no kit build you really can’t… and for viable builds you’re pretty much locked into either grenade spam or bomb spam…

Personally I’d like to just use Turrets… they were what drew me into the class in the first place… and at launch when most people were still learning what worked well it was fine, turrets didn’t seem that bad… they felt a little weak, but we were told there would be fixes to come… as time went by it became pretty obvious that Grenade Kit was one of, if not the strongest option for engineer… and I remember people dismissing it early on, I actually had one guy try to tell me it was the weakest power we had… yea, killing entire groups of enemies before they can react just by spamming ¹ at their location is totally our weakest power >.>… I wonder how many of you realize how disappointing it is to find that one of the most boring powers we have is one of our strongest…

I love what the engineer class is… but honestly I hate playing it… I want to love playing it, like I do every other class… but being forced to use Bomb kit or Grenade kit, just to have a competent build is the most disappointing and boring thing ever… there is no skill, there is no uniqueness… it’s just spam ¹ and occasionally use another power for an extra burst, some DoT stacking, or a little CC…

Honestly I’d be happy with just seeing kits take up their own power slot bound to our weapon swap key… personally I see no harm limit us to one kit at a time… in fact it could result in some serious improvements, like seeing our actual weapon skills get some much needed buffs… like swapping Pistol 3 & 4 to make offhand fully a utility and mainhand full offense… buffing shield to be more useful… and if we’re lucky getting a mace added to our weapons, without an elite spec…

Sad truth be told, we’ve been balanced around our kits so much, that everything else that we have has been either nerfed into the ground or designed from day one to be so weak that it’s not worth using.

Personally I find grenades to be one of the most intresting skills we have in that it actually requires activity. There’s no chillling in an auto attack situation, you HAVE to be actively hitting skills.

As for play with grenades, even the simple rotations with grenade/flame turret/rocket boots is just as active as any other profession, if not more.

As for the idea of 1 kit at the time on a weapon swap… yes, that’s probably how I would design it if I were to make the Engi from scratch with hindsight, but that change would either be VERY detrimental to engi, or require a whole hell fo a lot of reworking/balancing other skills to get it dialed in. Basically being an unrealistic goal. And, that’s why I say it’s unreasonable to expect a kitless build. They’re simply too powerful to work around, and too vital to nerf. It’s just not going to happen without MAJOR MAJOR reworks and possibly kittening off a whole hell of a lot of people, possibly including me because I do love grenades.

All that said though, things like FT solo builds are still kitten awesome. Self buffing with Juggernaut plus scrapper and/or alchemy for high if not maxed might plus fury and quickness… it’s wonderful. And, in groups you can run just grenade condi for 30k potential damage, or bombs for a tad under that, or even FT kit for 28k… hardly something I think should be complained about.

Personally, I have two problems with grenades:

The first is that I don’t really enjoy needing to manually aim the autoattacks. I understand that’s enjoyable to some people, but it just isn’t to me – and when that’s well known to be the most viable option, it’s a bit disappointing.

Second, and bomb kit suffers from this as well, they have the flaw of the skills mostly feeling the same. Grenade skills 2-5 are all throwing three grenades, but they have different power coefficients and inflict different conditions (and, in some cases, fields). Similar for the bomb skills. Granted, there are tactical situations which call for using a particular 2-5 skill, and it’s logical for them to be that way, but I find them less interesting than kits like flamethrower and elixir gun where the 2-5 skills have very distinct behaviours.

Which is unfortunate when these have been the best kits to use, for PvE DPS anyway, pretty much since launch. YMMV, but the dominance of grenades and bombs has generally turned me off considering my engineer to be one of my main characters.

Totally agree, Draxynnic. While Grenades do require continued dedication to place the attacks, I don’t think that is enough to make them interesting (or the right way to do it). On the contrary, I think they are the second most boring skill set to use with Engie, only surpased in dullness by the bomb kit.

For me FT is that kit. When I want to do some effortless PVE farming, load up the FT build and semi afk my way to victory.

Idk about you guys, but i use the instant aoe placement option, it pretty much trhansforms the grenade skills into spamming them, just like the rest, you just have to put the cursor inw ehre you want to make it land.

So, if the manual aim thing bothers you, you could try the instant cast option.

Jerus.4350:

For me FT is that kit. When I want to do some effortless PVE farming, load up the FT build and semi afk my way to victory.

While the FT can be very lazy if you just 111, it also requires a lot of things nades don’t, if you want to play it well: Knowing how to correctly plant Napalm in the floor so more mobs got caught in the burn, when and to which direction use air blast so your group get the most from the CC, where to put yourself so Flame Blast crosses the most foes and explode causing the more damage, where and what to combo with the blast, etc. You can use it smartly to attack through obstacles, but being medium range means to get close to foes, so you need to be moving all the time.

All the 5 grenades are the same attack, no positioning needed, no real CC, no interesting animations. In the end, Nades are nothing but damage. Best strategy is to find a good protected position and just attack from afar, whitout even moving, while the rest of the group holds the mobs in position.

I know how to play with FT I just find the FT based builds to be dull. Perma stab, and near perma quickness, fury, vigor, and some decent vuln. I love it when I want to take things easy, but in general it just doesn’t play in a way that is very engaging to me.

mauried.5608:

I really wonder why people play online games.
I play games to have fun.
I play Engineer to have fun.
I coudnt give a stuff how much or how little dps Engineers have or how they compare to other classes, or how useless the skills are.
As long as playing the class provides entertainment , thats all that matters.
Remember you cant win an MMO.

I would agree if I played by myself in a single-player game. Play how you want.

But as you said, this is an MMO. You get rejected for things like raids or fractals if you can’t cut the muster.

Jerus.4350:

Rezzet.3614:

another reason why engineer will never be successful is because everyone else got used to engineer being sub par so if it gets buffed and starts performing good all of a sudden everyone will call for nerfs and that engi is op

Aren’t we meta? Last I saw Engi is now one of the better DPS options with only condi Thief outperforming on small hitboxes in general, but it has it’s own limitations. Condi Ranger being more popular because people are frightened by kits and think the ranger rotation is easier (it is easier than the optimal rotation, but the simple rotation yields similar results but engi has pinpoint).

Benchmark tests are never accurate for realistic scenarios. Tell me the truth — how long can you maintain a perfect rotation while fighting that boss? Because if you’re off by half a second on the benchmark condi engi rotation, you will see massive drops in DPS.

In my guild runs, I tend to score DPS just under the elementalists, but I’m not playing the benchmark meta build, because I realize how ludicrous the proposition is. Instead, I’m playing a modified meta build for more realistic DPS. And this shows when I try to benchmark — I’m 10k DPS below the “benchmark” in the testing area, yet my score in raids is on par or below the elementalists. There is a huge difference between theoretical damage and realistic damage.

You’re absolutely right, benchmarks just show potential damage. When you add mechanics in of course people won’t match them. Hell even getting those benchmark numbers consistently is unreasonable on test dummies!

I thought we were still a meta option for DPS though between solid condi damage and pinpoint distribution, but maybe I’m wrong (hence my post starting with that question )

As for rotation, I generally just use the easier variety now, between internet issues and just the fact that it’s so much easier with quality results it just seems like the better idea. Just go down pistol-bomb-ft-mortar-grenades hitting all relative skills and hit toolbelt skills while in grenades instead of 1 skills when available skipping FT when napalm isn’t up. I generally get ~29k when I jump into the training area to play around a bit but I’ve hit 31k with it same as the best I’ve done with ranger.

Remember that guy who published the simplified rotation for the meta condi build?

I have been using his rotation for raids, and its so very effective, however.

I still scratch my head how the hell he reached 34-35K with the golem.

My best has been 31K, similar to your results Jerus, i have done the rotations exactly like the guy did, and i cant figure it out where the hell are those 4k missing.

Infusions?, is the geomancy sigil that important? those are the only 2 things im missing, yet, im quite shocked if these 2 little things provide the 4k im missing per second.

Infusions make a decent difference, Geomancy sigil is like 1k dps itself, and then some lag/delay and that explains it pretty easily. It’s pretty surprising how fast fractions of seconds add up and drop your damage.

Jerus.4350:

I thought we were still a meta option for DPS though between solid condi damage and pinpoint distribution, but maybe I’m wrong (hence my post starting with that question )

We are definitely seen as a meta DPS option, at least as far as condi goes, but there are better options (like condi ranger). Pinpoint precision is great for mostly condi teams, but for bosses that emphasize direct damage, we’re pretty hosed.

Infusions make a decent difference, Geomancy sigil is like 1k dps itself, and then some lag/delay and that explains it pretty easily. It’s pretty surprising how fast fractions of seconds add up and drop your damage.

In my benchmarking tests, I’ve noticed this as well. The difference in fractions of seconds is staggering — I can gain or lose 5-10k DPS based on latency alone. The benchmarking videos I’ve seen have no latency, and it (almost) looks like a macro is running the rotation.