Guild Wars 2

So, the thief forums have this exact thread, made my Anet. So, why is it that an already-successful class has such a thread? They made it in response to so many threads about thieves, good or bad.
The overview I saw from that thread, was a lot of people suggesting all these boosts for the class. ‘’Well, this skill should have less initiative’’…and etc. I kind of laughed, in the fact that Im a main engineer and think we need such a thread, for this class especially. So…….why not start one and have a intelligent, constructive discussion on what the class might benefit from? No extreme desires or anything here people….. just good ideas. Maybe they will respond to this.

This class needs our help. That is not to say it sucks, because I enjoy it a lot, and I have quite a successful time myself playing it. But it is not without its many broken parts and missing parts.

I tend to roll with whatever I get so I don’t notice flaws, so I don’t have an extensive list of ideas. I would like to see the traits Fast Acting Elixirs and Potent Elixirs combined, because well, the alchemy tree is fairly useful imo and having to have 2 separate traits for elixir effectiveness without being able to have other (what I seem to recall as) useful traits is a bit… eh.

Medkit’s Kit Refinement is an explosion. Either make it a regenerating mist or – gasp! – a blast finisher.

You sound a little negative And if i remember it correctly we had this threat some weeks ago but if it helps here goes:

In terms of pure gameplay the engineer is by far my favorite profession.

Imo the biggest question is: Do we need a single target weapon kit? Since rifle and pistol provide a lot of utility (at every time w/o cd) the kits seem to be the “competitive damage option”.
But if AOE is supposed to be lowered all classes with a single target weapon will use them for the specific situation. But we only have AOE heavy kits which already are the best single target option (grenades etc.). I would like such an option but this would include a lot of work and rebalancing. And this would make it pretty much mandatory

The more specific thing that bugs me the most is the flamethrower 2 just because it works bad against everything melee I have aggro-ed. If the FT3 would have a small snare or FT2 would have a faster cast/flight time … Making it explode on hit would solve it, but would also lower the skill cap.
The FT just seems to have this bad reputation because 1 missed so often and 2 just was not applicable. But I didn’t have the time what this recent patch did to the FT.

Last but not least turrets, even when not instantly destroyed are not fun for me to manage. Perhaps it’s because of the CD not starting directly after turret deployment but I relly don’t feel flexible with them. Could also not be my style of gameplay.

Oh and edit:

HGH with an elixir heavy build works but is really no fun, drinking AND throwing them all the time (and just for 1 stack) so perhaps this could receive a CD and then apply more stacks at once ( I don’t know 10-15 sec CD(for the reciever) but 6 stacks? just a feeling without calculations ) this would also make other skills but elixirs not such a big punishment

I hate that Explosive Shot does absolutely terrible damage. I hate that I have to design my builds around not using my auto-attack. I have my own personal opinions on it, but I’m not even sure why it’s an AoE attack honestly. Coated Bullets could do that for the Pistol. I understand that the reason Explosive Shot does terrible damage is due to our kits and versatility, but I see no reason why it has be as severely weak as it currently is

I hate that the Glue attacks have such a short duration on their conditions. The Immobilize doesn’t even last long enough for a single bomb, and the Cripple wears off the moment they leave the field. The control with these skills is minimal. They need to be something that the enemy actually cares about.

I hate my Bombs can be blocked by a Guardian that just stands on the point. I hate that they apply zero pressure in this situation to him, and he doesn’t even have to choose to skirt the edges of a control point to avoid it. These should be one of the premier anti-bunker tools we have.

I hate that Mines are incredibly boring and not even that good the way they are setup. Some variety and potency in them would be greatly appreciated. I’d love to drop multiple types of Mines that actually mattered to an opponent who set them off. My opponents should have to traverse a mine field carefully, rather then flat out ignore it.

I hate that the duration of some of the Might and Bleed effects are so incredibly long rather then being double or triple the intensity with the duration reduced accordingly. Why can’t Elixir B be 3 Might stacks for 10s? Why can’t Shrapnel Grenades drop 2 Bleed stacks for 6s? Condi removal and Boon removal negate the vast majority of high duration abilities, and these don’t need to be that.

I hate that me stacking conditions especially in PvE creates horrible situtaions where I’m not actually doing any damage. My bleed stacks get pushed off. My burn and poison is waiting 3 minutes in the damage queue. My confusion is the only thing that even works, but it’s simply because no one else uses it. Each person should have their own set of damage condition stacks on an opponent. Conditions should work when used for focus fire, just like direct damage. On the same topic, I hate that condition duration works in a way that cuts off a portion of my damage unless I ensure the ticking conditions end on an integer value. A 3.75s bleed should do 75% of its damage on the last tick. I should not be punished so severely for not pushing it up a quarter second, nor should I feel forced into duration increases in my builds.

I hate that I somehow have a real lack of combo finishers even though I’m using Pistols, Grenades, and Bombs. Why isn’t Poison Volley a 20% projectile finisher? Why isn’t Static Shot a projectile finisher? Why isn’t Grenade Barrage a blast finisher? These are all questions I’ve asked myself.

I hate that the Elixirs I use have way too much RNG in them. I hate that even though I have the only way to spread Swiftness to my team, it’s not dependable in the slightest. Supporting my allies with Elixirs isn’t a viable thing at all the way they are designed. I seriously wish thrown Elixir H always gave Regen and thrown Elixir B always gave Swiftness. Even then, throwing a single boon would be worthless. It needs to apply more then one boon on the thrown skills. HGH can offer Might, but that’s still weak. I also wish 409 made it so the thrown elixirs had a ~1200-2000 heal associated with it. Supporting with Elixirs is not a viable concept right now. We should be able to throw down elixirs to heal and grant wonderful boon support.

But in the end, I still love my Engi. And I’ll continue to play it, regardless if I could do better as another profession. I do play a Mesmer and I do know it is much easier to accomplish many of the Power builds. I’ve tinkered with a Ranger and seen the glory of what a condition build can offer. I’ve remembered fondly of the time I played a Warrior and realize how they are in mostly as bad a spot as the Engineer is. In the end though, I love my Engineer. I want what is best for this profession. I want it to have 5 to 6 viable builds. I want burst builds, condi builds, turret builds, kitless builds, survival builds, and support builds to all be a real thing we can do competitively with other professions. I want our traits cleaned up, our skills cleaned up, and our noob traps removed. I want everything to be useful. I want this for every profession, but I’ll admit the Engineer is mine so it’s closest to my heart.

I want the Engineer to be competitive. To be loved. To be feared. It’s already the most entertaining profession there is, and is more viable then most realize. It doesn’t need anymore fun. It just needs a tune up.

LittleMusing.8257:

Medkit’s Kit Refinement is an explosion. Either make it a regenerating mist or – gasp! – a blast finisher.

This is the only thing that’s stopping me from using kit refinement.
Every time I ran it the annoying blasts from constantly equipping the medkit for swiftness just killed it for me.
Not to mention that it gave my position away in WvW or PvP.

It’s a pet peeve, but it doesn’t make any sense neither. It’s a medkit, the refinement should be a defensive one.
I would be happy if they changed it to a 5 second regen or make it drop an extra bandage on equip.
Or alternatively, make it cure one or more conditions on equip.

Overall, I haven’t much got complaints about engineer.
Would love to see the supersize removed from Toss elixir S if it procs stability. (It instantly makes it obvious to enemies that you have stability compared to other classes)
And I would love to see the immobilize on glue bomb made just a little bit longer.
I can hardly make another bomb go off before the immobilize expires (and most players dodge after being immobilized).

Kit Refinement for a Med Kit should drop a Med Pack on a short cooldown or something.

Our downed state needs a second look as well. They should really offer a bleed and a burn. Our gimmick while down should be “don’t let him reach the bomb cooldown”. That explosions should be significant. Underwater needs an explosion as well attached to #3. Our downed state needs flavor. Right now every other profession has something to be concerned about, ours doesn’t.

I also think that the +20% Burn duration should just be +20% damage condition duration. Don’t get me wrong though, I do not that think that should be done in a vacuum. I think Warriors should get +50% Bleed and Burn on theirs, Necros should get +20% Bleed, Poison, and Chill on their trait, and the rest of the professions get a look at that “condition duration boost” trait as well. Duration adds so much damage it’s silly not to offer it all up in one package for any condition build in any class.

The Elixir traits in the Alchemy line really need some consolidation as well. Potent Elixirs and Fast Acting Elixirs is where it should be done. As it stands you can’t make a full elixir build because there are more then three traits.

The thieves have this thread to get all the QQ under one roof that they can enjoy while drinking their morning cup or Joe\Tea+crumpets.

The first suggestion I’ll make here is the redesign of our traits + trait bonuses to the following:
Power + toolbelt recharge
condition damage + duration
Precision + crit damage
Tough + healing power
Vitality + boon duration

Moving the traits around would take some finagling but it sure can be better than it is right now. Removing some of the worthless\broken traits would be awesome as well.
[I’m looking at you “+5% damage when endurance is full”. Good 25% of the time in PvE; never so much in PvP\WvW.]

LittleMusing.8257:

Medkit’s Kit Refinement is an explosion. Either make it a regenerating mist or – gasp! – a blast finisher.

In 99 out of a 100 situations in PvE I totally agree, but since I run CoE a lot the medkit explosion can make a huge difference in bailing myself out of crystal prisons. This is especially appreciated in groups with little experience.

Siofra Crumble.2098:

Would love to see the supersize removed from Toss elixir S if it procs stability. (It instantly makes it obvious to enemies that you have stability compared to other classes)

the supersize effect was indeed removed with the latest patch. at least I’m not getting the effect on my asura anymore, it made me confuse for a bit thinking I was missing alot of throws.

I don’t have many complains about my engie either, a few things I’d like fixed/changed are:
-make elixirs in the elixir gun count as actual elixirs
-make the tossed elixirs radius larger (480 should be the minimum) and/or remove the toss altogether and make them work as the toolbelt skill for elixir gun, an aoe centered on you.
-turn acidic elixirs into something like caltrops, at least make it so it’s something that stays there on the ground hurting whatever steps on it. As it is it makes no sense as a trait, why would anyone toss elixirs at an opponent.
-SNIPER KIT, not really, just kidding

First off, Love this class and love this game. That’s why I am here.

Bugs aside (they are what are messing with our class the most right now) there are 3 things that stand out the most to me. Turrets, kit placement and Traits. All of this has been said before on other threads I’m just repeating it here.

Turrets take up skill slots yet are weaker than the necromancers minions and the mesmer’s illusions. For stationary support they don’t do near enough damage and have laughable health. I don’t know how their cool-downs stack up to the necromancers but the mesmer’s get their’s for free so I think ours should be way more useful and have a lower cool down. The traits associated with them are good ideas but simply don’t help these already weak skills. So I would recommend buffing them quite a bit and/or reducing their cool-downs exceptionally.

This has been suggested before but I feel really needs to be considered if engineers are meant to be the “versatile” class. We should have a secondary weapon slot reserved for a kit of our choosing. We are one of 2 classes that do not get the swap weapon option during combat. The other class is the elementalist. I know what your thinking, “but we get kits!”. Yes we do, but then again elementalists get their elemental weapons that they can not only pop out but also give one to an ally. Elementalists can also swap between 4 elements on the fly. Thus giving them what we already have, plus what I am asking for, plus their elemental swap.

Lastly I ask for some trait overhaul. I remember when I first started playing I looked over the engineer tree and thought “where do i put these points…?” I was a heavy turret user at the time that was all I wanted to put my points into. But low and behold no tree had more than 1-2 traits for turrets, and the most useful one (the knock-back explosion on destruction) not only was in a tree i didn’t want to use but the trait didn’t (and still doesn’t from what I understand) even work. This kinda ties back to the turret tree, but I really feel like there needs to be some trait tree reworks. I also ask for some trait combinations, too many traits, ESPECIALLY the 30 point capstone traits, just don’t do enough to warrant their cost.

TLDR: Turrets need more bang for their buck, secondary weapon slot for a kit of our choosing only, Trait reworks to make them worth their cost.

Thanks for reading!

Maskaganda.2043:

I don’t have many complains about my engie either, a few things I’d like fixed/changed are:
-make elixirs in the elixir gun count as actual elixirs
-make the tossed elixirs radius larger (480 should be the minimum) and/or remove the toss altogether and make them work as the toolbelt skill for elixir gun, an aoe centered on you.
-turn acidic elixirs into something like caltrops, at least make it so it’s something that stays there on the ground hurting whatever steps on it. As it is it makes no sense as a trait, why would anyone toss elixirs at an opponent.
-SNIPER KIT, not really, just kidding

AMEN.

Having recently just switched off of elixirs (for a change of pace) I definitely have some of the same feelings.
- There’s no reason Elixirs in EG shouldn’t count as Elixirs. Quick fix for Anet? Rename Elixir F and Super Elixir to something else. Longer duration on Elixir F and Super Elixir would be nice, but double dipping on recharge rate reduction (with Fireforged Trigger) could be seen as OP.
- Tossed Elixirs (toolbelt) should do just this. Remove the ground targeting (or make it a trait IE: Packaged Stimulants) so that untraited it would be a PBAoE, remove the RNG from it, and increase the recharge rate to compensate. OR just remove Automated Response (or move it lower and knock out something useless (Acidic Coating), and make a trait suitable for a real “Grandmaster” Alchemist that would remove RNG from all elixirs.
- Acidic Elixirs should leave an Acid Bomb like effect on the ground with a 3-4 sec duration instead of a one time hit.

One problem is that most skill 2-5 bars have very evenly mixed damage between power damage and cond damage. Most skill 1 are either pure power damage or a 50/50 mix.
The only bars where this isn’t true are rifle (almost pure power), pistol/pistol (mostly cond damage), toolkit (almost pure power). (also holds true for some turrets like rocket turret).

This makes engineer hard to build for gear-wise.

So most engineers have 2 options for offensive side of a build:

Go power/crit/etc with some kits… and maximize damage of 75% of your arsenal.
And completely ditch improving the 25% of cond damage in your build.
Explosions trait line, which you’ll probably be taking in this case, also has nice condition duration buff which helps loads on your non-damage conditions (chilled, crippled, weakness, heal debuff on poison), and buff damage conditions a bit. This build usually entails either bomb kit or nade kit with medkit.

The other path is to realize that since you have hybrid power/cond damage on most kits, you need to buff both, and the easiest way to do it is to stack Might, which does double duty on power/cond dmg. The only good way to stack that is an elixir build, which pretty much locks down your whole 6-9 bar to elixirs, makes you extremely vulnerable to boon control (hello necros and mesmers) and it means (since you don’t have kits) that you have 1 weapon set. It’s powerful when it works. But Elixirs are also boring and come with RNG toolkit skills and they lock you into a specific spec. A lot of the time you don’t really want the specific skills you have (like you don’t want Elixir H, you’d rather have Medkit or Heal turret) but you want might from having another elixir on the build. You also miss out on the combo fields: water (heal turret), fire (flamethrower and bomb kit), smoke (bomb kit, flame turret).

Those 2 are the strongest options right now.
There’s the third option which is a defensive heal engy (bombs heal allies + elixir gun 5), which is IMO weaker and his job is better done other classes (ele comes to mind). That build also suffers from the above mentioned split in damage on most kits, since you really want to get at least some damage but you need to pick between power and CD. I guess since this build works with healing bombs, it should go for cleric gear instead of shaman or apo.

To proceed to specific skill classes.
Imo turrets are not very viable, because in pve they get crushed when they gain aggro (and they always do) and in pvp players either stand outside of range or kill them. This isn’t the only issue. Some of their toolbelt skills really add nothing (Rocket from rocket turret is like casting a +50% dmg autoattack every minute or so), and they are also unavailable while turret is deployed, instead replaced with detonate skill (which TBH I don’t use much, because I usually have enough micromanagement on this class as it is and turret might shoot another time before dying making the difference close to none).

A lot of their overcharge abilities suffer from problem that they are hard to land on specific target at specific time (they are not responsive). For instance it’s hard to stop a stomp with stun net from net turret, because it has potentially massive delay.
It’s hard to hit anything not standing still with overcharge ability of Rocket turret (fires ridiculously slow rocket in ridiculously large arc). It’s less bad in water (rocket still slow, but at least the arc is gone). Hard to use in pve, impossible in pvp. Thumper turret is especially bad with really miniature AoE, lackluster damage and even though it has more health/armor it still gets wiped easily by mobs. And the recharge is huge, also on it’s toobelt skill which is blast finisher with minor damage. It’s pretty much strictly less useful than flame turret (more range, more damage, easier defend against mobs bumrushing it because of the smoke field). There also seems to be balancing with recharges going on (rocket turret is strictly stronger than rifle turret, but has much longer recharge)… which isn’t warranted. Either mobs don’t bumrush it and it stays up the whole fight or it keeps getting agro and getting smashed in seconds and shorter recharge isn’t helping much.
That’s a whole class of skills that are not played.

Another whole class of skills that don’t get used in any serious amount are gadgets.
There several reasons for that:
- I need slots for kits
- Some are weak
- Some do things I can already do with other abilities

Example of weak is Goggles. Fury is good but not on that recharge, I can get Elixir B with same recharge and same fury and other stuff. Blind immunity is highly situational.

As for the third item on the list… why would I get Personal battering ram when I already have multiple options for movement control on engineer with better effects/recharges? I’d much rather take something like elixir S or U or C which plug some holes in my build and have effects that I don’t already have in abundance. If I have rifle launch and personally battering ram launch, they both become useless the second someone pops stability or they are a champion with CC immunity. I would be better served by an elixir S or R, throw elixir S. Personal battering ram would be much stronger on a necro, who doesn’t have launch skills (but obviously it would be a wrong flavour).

Engineer is missing some effects like reliable stability and some others, which makes RNG elixirs particularly irritating. I can live with Elixir U having random downside on quickness, but throw elixir U has 60 second recharge to spawn effects with 30, 40 and 90 second recharges. If it’s gonna be random, at least it needs to have shorter recharge than the effects it’s spawning. On top of that, Smoke curtain is always worse than Wall of Reflection and Veil does something else entirely.

Another general deficiency is that engineer is full of low impact skills that do very little, but you have a lot of them e.g. Rocket turret toolbelt, Throw wrench, Throw nails, Throw elixir B, Throw personal battering ram etc… and I find myself simply out of time to cast them. When jugling some kits, there are ALWAYS some powerful skills on some kit that just got recharged, even if you’re casting non-stop. I simply don’t have the time to cast “do a bit of damage and a minor effect skills”.

These need to be reworked to be more powerful and more situational. There’s no point in having “fires a rocket, does medium damage, 60 sec recharge” on my toolbelt. That’s called an autoattack and I don’t see a point in having them strewn all over my skill bars.

“Fires a rocket, does 0 damage, 1 sec daze 60 sec recharge” would be tons and tons better than what we have now.

I won’t be going too deeply into traits as this is long enough as it is but let me say this:

This applies to all classes in GW2: Having traits that improve Skill Group X in the game is a LARGE design mistake. Traits should improve effects and aspects not skills

I cannot stress this enough.

Traits that improve a specific utility group either promote degenerate builds or a worthless for everyone else. Ever seen warrior running around with 5 signets? I have, many times. I’m not saying that it’s OP or the god of all builds, but it’s ridiculous. (and at lower levels you could reach 100% crit chance if you took +precision per signet trait).
It promotes players not thinking about “what goes well together” but “what has the same tag”.

Bad trait
Thief trait: All poisons have +1 proc.
Mesmer trait: All signets recharge 20% faster.

What kind of a build is Signet of Illusions, Signet of Inspiration, Signet of Domination? That’s just random skills thrown together.

Such traits either balanced to be worthwhile with 1 signet and then are OP when someone slots 3. Or they are balanced for 3 skills of the same class and they are pointless when you play with one.

Another lesser offender than traits that improve utility groups are traits that improve a specific weapon in some general way. Weapon X recharges Y faster. Weapon X has longer range. Weapon X does Y% more damage. These simply put pressure on the player to stay in a specific weapon.

And both cases also promote players stacking up on these kind of traits. You don’t take 1 bomb kit trait, you take 3. You don’t take 1 elixir trait, you take 3. And then you’ll find it hard not to sit in your preferred kit, because it’s been traited up the wazoo to the expense of everything else.

Good trait
Engineer trait: When you immobilize an enemy the enemy is crippled for 5 sec.

When I say good trait I don’t mean “powerful”. I mean well designed.
This trait promotes thinking about the way you’ll play your character. The immobilize can come from any source rifle, glue bomb, glue shot, net turret etc. It doesn’t limit the player to a skill tag.

We need more traits like that on ALL professions

Anet pls

Oh and another thing… what’s the point of skills like Acid field on Elixir Gun, when Elixir gun is mainly used on people stacking defenses/healing power (and perhaps some cond damage). Pure damage skills have no place on a weapon like that. On top of that it’s got a ridiculously small AoE. It’s hard to keep stupid mobs in it, impossible to keep a player in it.

I often think AoE radius of some things in PvP need to be re-examined in comparison to PvE.

ManCaptain.3154:

Oh and another thing… what’s the point of skills like Acid field on Elixir Gun, when Elixir gun is mainly used on people stacking defenses/healing power (and perhaps some cond damage). Pure damage skills have no place on a weapon like that. On top of that it’s got a ridiculously small AoE. It’s hard to keep stupid mobs in it, impossible to keep a player in it.

I’ve used EG with Berserker gear before with pretty good results. Stacking Condition Damage on EG is like stacking Cond Dmg with a FT. You’ll get much more bang for your buck from direct damage stats. It’s a great kit for kiting and condition removal, and healing was sufficient without Healing gear. For “stupid mobs” cripple with Elixir F and drop Acid Bomb, and with ranged mobs don’t even needs the cripple. For players the same applies, but just like any AE they’re gonna get out of it if they have half a brain.

Haha Eremus, no, I am not negative. Honestly im just trying to bring together engineers, let them voice what issues they have, and maybe we can deliver a list of possible outcomes. Thats all. In fact, from what I have read all of these ideas and issues are consistent, and there is no ridiculousness going on. People are understanding about their requests and I love this. They take into consideration if it were to be OP or not. GJ all.

But of course, I love my engineer as well. Wont stop playing him for nothin.

Here is a general consensus of what I have seen come up as issues:

i) Change the Medkit Kit refinement ability. Why is it a offensive skill?
ii) Lack of useful kits. I say this because of a few posts, also because of my own input. E.g. Bombs, Mines, are very limited in their use. This is frustrating.
iii)The Explosive Shot auto-attack skill on the pistol. Very low damage.
iv)Glue Shot skill with dual pistols. The effects are far too minimal and is not very good at all.
v) Lack of combo finishers
vi)The randomness of many elixir skills. Toolbelt abilities for elixirs are all random, and extremely insignificant. Same goes for a few other offensive toolbelt skills (ex. Rifle, Rocket) This is a major issue I find as well.
vii) Elixir Traits in Alchemy line need a tune-up. Ex, Fast-Acting Elixirs and Potent elixirs need some sort of combination.
viii) Downed state is extremely poor and ineffective. One of the worst, if not THE.
ix) Acidic Elixirs trait . This is a joke. The damage is absolutely pathetic and is such a waste.
x) Everything turrets is not viable and is a lot of wasted skills/traits.
xi) Elixir gun skill #4. AOE is too small.
xii) My favourite:
The first suggestion I’ll make here is the redesign of our traits + trait bonuses to the following:
Power + toolbelt recharge
condition damage + duration
Precision + crit damage
Tough + healing power
Vitality + boon duration’’ * Credit to Brinson for this*

I find the efficiency of everyone here is great. Im simply trying to pull together everyones ideas, so if I missed a very important one, let me know.

Lets keep the ball rolling! This is glorious. I also enjoy how nobody here has complained about the class to the point to say its bad. True engineer love here

so ManCaptain just pretty much summed it up.
/closethread
lol

….He talked about the elixir gun? I dont follow your opinion on ‘’summed up’’ this thread.

you must have missed the 2 giant posts before that one about power/condition mixing, weak gadgets and useless toolbelt skills….

No, I already read those and summed up previously. I am saying, it doesnt need to be closed from that point. Theres always more discussion to be held.

I wasn’t actually suggesting that the thread be closed, I was sarcastically saying ‘/closethread’ in reference to how good his points were and encapsulated what I think. Proceed to discuss

xD. My bad…. oddI usually catch that kind of thing.

Anyways, my own additions to what could use some help:

- The magnet on the tool-kit misses ALOT. The stupidest things also negate it, like a raise in ground level, but their still 100% in range and ability of being pulled.
- Already stated, but its just silly to have the elixirs drop ’’random’’ booms when their such insignificant skills that way.
- Either improve turrets in some way or drop them…..their the worst things in this game right now. Why put them down when 1 or 2 hits kills them? Let alone the poor damage, and rate of fire.
- Make the Net shot ability from the Rifle to have a little faster shot. The net fires quite slow …. and can become useless.

Here’s my opinion (Warning: As a Turret Engineer, I’m mostly giving suggestions about Turrets):

• Not all skills are Kits. Don’t reduce the damage of a class because of a set of Utility skills, especially if there’s another class who can access four weapon skill bars and not take the same penalty, or use their Utility skill slots to get them.
• Make Turrets scale to all stats – the addition of Healing Power, Condition Duration, Condition Damage and Boon Duration to the Turrets makes them much more viable, but only the ones that inflict conditions or grant boons.
• Make Turrets more mobile. There’s a multitude of threads on the subject for consideration, ranging from letting them be picked up like Banners to letting them fly, roll or otherwise locomote.
• Turrets need a cooldown-reduction trait. Maybe add it to Autotool Installation, as AuI is basically useless in any situation where your turrets get attention – sometimes they’re not out for ten seconds to begin with, or Metal-Plated Turrets, which doesn’t do much at all. AuI needs a tune-up, besides.
• Turret AI needs work. Also, it’d be nice to be able to designate targets for them – possibly using the Mark Target command, or a version thereof.
• Toolbelt skills, in general, need redesigned – if the cooldowns stay as long as they are, they need to give more effects. If cooldowns were much, much lower, these skills might actually be useful. Turrets, of course, seem to get the short end of the cooldown stick with some long kitten cooldowns for little effect.

I love that we are getting different playstyles to discuss things in here. I myself didn’t want to step on territory I’m less familiar with then what I do, so it’s good to see the rest of what I’m concerned with in here.

In particular, the ability to go Kitless (without the damage penalty associated with kit access) should be a real thing. Easily could an accessible trait that further reduced the cooldowns of Rifle and Pistols by 20% while increasing Explosive Shot’s bleed by 2s and the Rifle’s auto-attack by another 15% or so damage. I mean I personally would probably still never go Kitless, but all the builds that choose to go this option should be capable of doing so.

I’d also really like Flash Grenades to have something more. The cast time associated with it makes it essentially I waste my attack and they waste theirs. Obviously it can have it’s uses when timed right or when Immobilized, but it still seems underwhelming. If Boon Removal were ever to be spread more prominently to the Engineer, I’d love to see each Flash Grenade remove a single boon.

I ran all-turrets before, but that was months back when I was really bad in choosing my traits. Auto-repair and Metal Plating hardly kept my turrets up, and I remember just how useless they were during the last part of SE story. Kept hearing them explode.

Yes, downed state needs to be reviewed. One time I can tell that the grappling line was useful was when Kholer refused to enter another room to attack the troll and since he had no stacks of Defiant and I got downed by bloody traps, I pulled him over and we continued on our merry way.

I’m fine with Medkit’s explosion refinement for the most part, but if it explodes why isn’t it a cheap blast finisher? Or is that too OP now…

Edit: By the way does Fast Acting Elixirs apply to Super Elixir now? I took it out in favour of Backpack Regenerator but I can’t say if that actually helps or not either.
(Might think of more later.)

I think that the base direct damage of explosive shot should be doubled.

I feel that we need A LOT more damage out of our shield skills.

Elixir C, in my opinion should be 30s not 40s.

Picking up turrets resets their CD to 0 except for healing turret

At least one kit needs a stun breaker. Kits are the only utility sets we have with no stun breaker on any of them. I would like to see Elixir Gun #4 skill get a stun breaker and Tool kit #2 a stun breaker.

coglin.1496:

I think that the base direct damage of explosive shot should be doubled.

I feel that we need A LOT more damage out of our shield skills.

Elixir C, in my opinion should be 30s not 40s.

Picking up turrets resets their CD to 0 except for healing turret

At least one kit needs a stun breaker. Kits are the only utility sets we have with no stun breaker on any of them. I would like to see Elixir Gun #4 skill get a stun breaker and Tool kit #2 a stun breaker.

Turrets also lack a stunbreaker, though a few of their skills can be used while stunned (Surprise Shot and Detonate Turret, for certain, though I don’t recall whether Overcharges can).

I kinda think they should add secondary effects to Turret toolbelts, like a stunbreaker on Shockwave (with a lowered cooldown) or Surprise Shot (with an increased cooldown).

Anymras.5729:

Turrets also lack a stunbreaker, though a few of their skills can be used while stunned (Surprise Shot and Detonate Turret, for certain, though I don’t recall whether Overcharges can).

I kinda think they should add secondary effects to Turret toolbelts, like a stunbreaker on Shockwave (with a lowered cooldown) or Surprise Shot (with an increased cooldown).

Good point, never occurred to me. .Make shockwave a stun breaker, that sounds good to me.

I agree. No kits have stun-breakers. Honestly the whole fact that we cannot switch out weapons on whim to another set like most classes, is becoming dumb now. Kits are becoming less useful which is really annoying. Only ones I have ever used are Grenade and Elixir gun kit. Toolkit on occasion. But even then, their not without many disadvantages. This brings to my point now:

- Allow a switch from main weapon ( i.e. Rifle, Dual pistols, or pistol shield) to a kit. Or something along these lines!!!

I would also be happy if they made the kits more useful. Honestly, as of now Anet did a poor job on turrets and kits. Especially when compared in both PVP environments.

That amazes me, I posted in that thread. My opinion of the engineer is almost the complete opposite of the thief in every regard.

Zonzai.2341:

The thief is a very powerful profession that is deadly in good hands and fatal in poor hands. It punishes players for every mistake but rewards them moderately well for playing wisely. Most of the skills fit well with the thief both conceptually and in terms of synergy. It still needs improvements and fixes but I wish every other profession struck the balance of high-risk/high-reward playing that the thief has.

Applying that to the engineer, it would go like this…

The engineer is a very weak profession that is adequate in good hands and fatal in normal hands. It punishes players for every mistake but rewards them well for playing wisely. Most of the skills do not fit well both conceptually and in terms of synergy. It needs to be completely redesigned and I am grateful that no other profession suffers the imbalance of high-risk/low-reward playing that the engineer has.

Just my two cents:

-On kits

Would it be nice if all Kits provided passives on equip? (Not just Juggernaut on FT or Grenadier for grenade kit – ALL kits)

-On turrets

Movable turrets sound like a good idea. Maybe have a trait that transforms them into minions? (Or does it overlap with the necro’s skill makeup?)

-On elixirs
To not overlap with shouts, maybe make them longer in duration?

I would love moving turrets as little devilish golems that scream wiiiiiii and go harass your opponent you could explode them with toolbelt skills and have different effects. While the engi staying back lobbing grenades and cackling like a maniac.
Traits could boost their HP to benefit from their attacks, make them do more dmg, give condis, swarm around you and heal you bandaging your wounds with.. aaaa.. goo? etc.
But maybe it would be too much like a necro minionmaster or mesmer shatter mechanic.. dunno.
What I know though that it would make me actually USE turrets.

I’m not sure why mobile turrets is so oft-suggested on the forums. XD The appeal of turrets, to me, is defending a set area. What I’D like to see is a sort of “upgrade” system, where the overcharged is replaced with a stackable buff that ramps up the turrets health, damage, rate of fire, etc. Just an overall increase in effectiveness. The longer it lives, and the more times you hit that buff button, the more powerful the turret gets, until it’s a real area defense tool.

kismet.5347:

I would love moving turrets as little devilish golems that scream wiiiiiii and go harass your opponent you could explode them with toolbelt skills and have different effects. While the engi staying back lobbing grenades and cackling like a maniac.

So a combination of League of Legends Maokai sapling toss and Ziggs sounds? I’m all for it.

You know what’s another giant rage-inducing “kitten you” to engineers from ANet,?
Let’s take our rifle and pistol kits and see how many finishers we get.
Dual pistol:
Skill 1 is a 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2 not a finisher (multishot ability)
Skill 3 not a finisher
Skill 4 not a finisher
Skill 5 not a finisher

Rifle:
Skill 1 is a 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2 not a finisher
Skill 3 not a finisher
Skill 4 not a finisher
Skill 5 is a leap finisher

Note that of the bomb kit, grenade kit, tool kit, flamethrower and elixir gun, there is a single 1-5 skill that a finisher on all those kits and a weak one at that (20% projectile finisher on elixir gun autoattack).

Let’s see what other rifle, pistol and bow users get, shall we?

Ranger Longbow:
Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2: multishot 20% projectile finisher
Skill 3: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 4: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 5: is obviously not a finisher, because it’s fire and forget long range huge aoe damage

Ranger shortbow:
Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2: Not a finisher
Skill 3: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 4: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 5: 100% projectile finisher

Warrior rifle:
Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 3: 20% multishot projectile finisher
Skill 4: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 5: melee ability
Adrenaline skill: 100% projectile finisher

Warrior longbow:
Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher (fires 2 arrows), 100% finisher traited
Skill 2: 20% projectile finisher (fires 3 arrows), 100% finisher traited
Skill 3: 100% blast finisher (because arrow explodes, unlike engineer skills which never involve explosions)
Skill 4: Not a finisher
Skill 5: 100% projectile finisher
Adrenaline skill: not a finisher, but a fire field

Thief shortbow:
Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2: Blast finisher
Skill 3: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 4: Not a finisher (combo field)
Skill 5: Not a finisher

Thief pistol/pistol

Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher, 100% if from stealth
Skill 2: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 3: 20% multishot projectile finisher
Skill 4: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 5: 100% projectile finisher

If that isn’t a definitive proof that ANet made engineers weak “just because…. you know… they can’t be on par with others, being hybrids and all (in a game full of hybrids)”…. There’s no reason whatsoever that Engineer gets none 100% projectile finishers on weapons and no 20% finisher on Poison Dart Volley either. There’s no balance reason, no thematic reason (it’s fricken bullets), none at all. It’s just plain old “Engineer tax” bullkitten.
Everyone else gets 20% projectile finishers on autoattacks and multishot skills and 100% or a blast finisher on everything else that isn’t a damage over time/combo field ground targeted aoe. Warrior longbow even gets a blast finisher on 10 second recharge and if traited, 100% projectile finisher on autoattack. Note that 100% projectile finishers are especially valuable on skills 2 and 3 because they have shorter recharge than skills 4 and 5. Why isn’t pistol autoattack a 20% blast finisher?

Engineer has 2 finishers on shield skills but that’s 30 and 40 sec recharges right there. That’s utility skill level recharges.

And that’s just comparing skills of bows, rifles and pistols across professions. Take a look at all the blast, leap and projectile finishers other weapons of these professions have, while engineer’s options outside rifle/pistol (i.e. kits) offer no finishers.

All of this is not important since carebears and girls didnt have movable turrets and skins for kits ^^

Still wondering why no any spells of Grenade kit and Mine kit didnt have blast finisher...

• Give a mechanic to remote-detonate turrets that doesn’t lock their toolbelt slots down.
• Negate (or significantly reduce) cooldown on turret if it is picked up rather than detonated.
• Have Elixir Gun #5 (Super Elixir) deploy a Water field rather than a Light field.

I can kinda understand not having the Grenade and Bomb weapon slots not having Blast finishers because it’d be too strong at 100% and there probably is no code for a 20% Blast Finisher. I just think it’s necessary to put finishers whey they are deserved, such as a single Blast finisher in the Grenade Barrage. Each tool kit for example should have at least one 100% dependable finisher, and should especially be on the lookout for more dependable projectile finishers since that’s pretty much entirely what our class does.

I still think giving us better support options are in order. If we are supposed to be the profession that hands out boons and healing to supplement to create our versatility then it needs to be an actual possibility. The thrown elixirs should at least create two boons for the duration, and one of these boons should be dependable.

• Formula 409 should create a splash heal (1000 – 1600) on thrown elixirs.
• Infused bombs should create a much larger splash heal, but with a cooldown (1200-2400, 15s). This encourages the Engineer to actually swap through kits while supporting!
• Thrown Elixir H should always create Regeneration, and additionally provide either Vigor or Protection.
• Thrown Elixir B should always create Swiftness, and additionally provide either Might, Fury, or Retaliation.
• Thrown Elixir U should indicate which spell it’s going to create next. What you want is not dependable.
• Thrown Elixir S should simply do both Stealth and Stability, especially considering its cooldown.
• The cast times and radius of the thrown elixirs need a second look. The drinkable ones as well. Especially in the case of C, that should be instant cast and maybe even a stun breaker. Right now elixirs are extremely difficult to land in PvP.

Effectively, Elixirs need a tune-up. They are pretty much self-only right now. That’s all anyone uses them for.

I second the stunbreakers on kits. Running all-kits myself, it’s either

• time it right and bring out Gear Shield to block mow downs and wait and dodge for the CD
  OR
• die (not really but close)

I’d love mobile turrets and have them spin around you as say a Grandmaster trait in Inventions. Static ones would be good for trolling people by contesting their WP in WvW as it attacks random crap. Now if only Deployable Turrets was actually working…

I haven’t actually experimented much with various utility combinations so my ideas are rather lacking. Planning to try out a gadgeteer for wvw so I’ll see how that works out!

Also I want same power scaling as everyone else.
Guardian mace: 0.43 power scaling on first autoattack skill
Guardian staff: 0.33 power scaling on AoE autoattack

Both are support/defensive weapons.

Engineer rifle: 0.325 on single target autoattack
Pistol: 0.2 on autoattack

Here’s an actual engineer support weapon:
Elixir gun: 0.15 scaling on autoattack. Seriously ANet.

Power scaling has been a problem for engineer since forever and they never fixed it. They just elevated base values on some skills.

So to reiterate. Worst scaling weapons with no finishers. Balance is a joke.

Need skills to reflect condition duration bonuses that are from runes, weapons, etc. Think this might be more than an engie problem though.

I love the engineer, I love Guild Wars 2, I love some of the great looks at the math behind the classes i get on these forums. But god does it depress me to read just how low engineers are compared to other classes, i get enough of that in game lol.

Ayestes.1273:

• Formula 409 should create a splash heal (1000 – 1600) on thrown elixirs.

I completely disagree. This trait is really powerful by being such a solid condition removal. A splash heal on top of that is way OP.

I agree it’s a fantastic trait as is, but I have a couple reasons I like the idea. For one, I disagree that a single condi removed is solid condition removal. It’s great in PvE, but a single condi removed isn’t really all the effective in the PvP environment. There is pretty much always more then one condition that needs removal. I also strongly would support the idea of getting heals somewhere within the thrown elixirs, but as it stands there is absolutely no room to place that as a trait on it’s own. Thus I’d pick 409 over any other trait out there because it fulfills the same goals of support.

Effectively, I want to make it much more worth the actual throwing of the Elixirs for support, rather then as something you do in between combat or instead of using auto-attacks. Even at it’s most utilized state, which would be maxed out healing gear it’d be a mere 4 thrown elixirs at once, and only two of them have reasonably low cooldowns.

The condi removal is a great choice now, but that’s because it’s our primary sources of condi removal and one of our strongest choices of it. I think the condi removal is weak, but I’m okay with us being weak to condition overload unless we slot Elixir C. I’m merely advocating that the thrown elixir actually be a enough to be thrown. The only situation currently it’s great in is if your allies are very light on the condition variety, but high on the intensity. As it stands, this a very unique situation that most people do not experience in PvP and when they do they often have the situation covered themselves. A light splash heal adds more functionality to it.

A full Alchemist would still have much less splash healing and splash condi removal then the Ele or the Guardian. Since I’ve seen Dev interest in us being more versatile and being able to aid with boon support and general support, I think this is a smart idea in leading us towards that. I totally understand the argument that it’s already being placed a trait that is strong (to us, at least) and used often. I however don’t see anywhere else to actually put it in, without screwing over what would be a Support Alchemist build.

The biggest thing IMO is just to fix Engi scaling. The recent kit fix was nice, but what about giving us some real power scaling on our autos? They could blow the base to hell and I wouldn’t care if they’d give us, for example, the ranger’s longbow scaling on our rifle.

Im also extremely disappointed that the rifle has such little condition spec. The auto attack should have some kind of condition. Bleed for one.

Second, I still cant get over how little combo finishers and blast finishers ETC that we have. Its scratch to nothing. Bloody disgrace. Come on ANet, lets make this class viable.

-Grenades still throw way too slow.
- Kits take up utility, and most kits are extremely under par. ALSO they are specific to a situation.
- We deserve some kind of weapon swap. Maybe to a kit? Extremely fair and viable option, there.

We could also use an option for fighting enemies with Reflects or Absorbs Projectiles that doesn’t involve the use of a kit. As it is, we’re the only class that doesn’t have an option in that regard without using a Utility slot just to get around it. (c’mooon, hammer)

Anymras.5729:

We could also use an option for fighting enemies with Reflects or Absorbs Projectiles that doesn’t involve the use of a kit. As it is, we’re the only class that doesn’t have an option in that regard without using a Utility slot just to get around it. (c’mooon, hammer)

Are you saying we do not have the option to reflect or absorb projectiles?

Or are you saying we do not have a counter for that?

Maketso.5602:

Im also extremely disappointed that the rifle has such little condition spec. The auto attack should have some kind of condition.

Absolutely not. They need to do the exact opposite. The need to remove all condition damage from rifle.

They need to make p/p damage more condition based. So increase condition, lower damage.

Goloith.6349:

They need to make p/p damage more condition based. So increase condition, lower damage.

More condition based? How so? Every weapons skill except for Glue Shot is extremely condition based.