Guild Wars 2

With the data mined art for The Forge, it displays the Engi with a hammer and what appears to be drones. This poses a threat to the entire elite spec, especially if they’re AI minions and Anet makes them a large part of The Forge’s offensive or defensive kit. The countless AI complaints, and the fact that minions get cleaved to no tomorrow in any fight larger than 5 people, among other issues, all aid in rendering them nearly useless. The fact that Engi is outshined in every department by another role/class is depressing. We’re the typical jack of all trades master of none. When will we be able to go from being the “play this for fun” class to an actual “meta” class? When will we be able to participate in a GvG lol.

DISCLAIMER
This is a data mined image of what is obviously an engi. Take this image of drones with a grain of salt, as it may just be creativity or flaire added for effect by the art team. But let’s discuss the potential terrible idea of us getting an elite class with wimpy AI minions as our utility.

Anything but AI, been saying this for weeks.
It is entirely possible that this is just a visual minion but they do not count as minions.
Some people have suggested they might act as signet, and since signets are magic in nature, the engineer would need something that make it more realistic.

A signet would be interesting, or even a utility skill, like “Call in 3 drones to attack your target for x amount of damage” or something, like you said, anything but AI…

Sadly, upon thinking it over, I’m fairly confident that the elite spec will include Ai bots.

Here is my reasoning:
-A-net is designing these specs to offer something unique in terms of gameplay. The way they distinguish this, is what you focus on while playing these classes.

-One common complaint that engineers make in terms of gameplay is the reliance on kits.

-Kits are often refered to spam gameplay. And while it is not about spamming, they offer a very fast paced playstyle, that involves deep knowledge of skills and using the appropriate skill at the right time.

-AI builds are often more about positioning, since they are generally weak to 1vX, so you try and limit your fights to smaller scale.

-A build with AI would play very different than any current engineer builds.

-A-net nerfed turrets to uselessness, which could’ve offered a similar playstyle, but they don’t mesh well with the melee hammer option being released.

-A-net also nerfed the thieves acrobatics line (like turrets), in order to give them an elite specilization that resembles an older playstyle they removed. (like turrets)

Given all these things, it looks to me like A-net is adding a unique playstyle to the class, similar to one we had before but lost with the trait update. The goal will be to make bots that allow the player to focus less on utility skills and more on positioning. Our elite specilization has taken a lot of time due to the fact that out toolbelt skills are being replaced with bot control similar to ranger. This is a big rework and was done due to the biggest complaint about turrets being their low skill floor. This will give players direct control over the AI, but it will still allow a more relaxed and easy playstyle for the engineer that will likely not be viable outside of open world pve. (and off point bunker in low level pvp)

It just makes sense with how they reacted to turrets and are really trying to distinguish between our stationary AI (which sucks), and our mobile AI. I think though that the hammer is going to offer some very powerful attacks to compensate, and we’ll see the first engineer auto attack that is worth using. (possibly a 3 part chain that delivers a blast finisher), and all sorts of seemingly awesome abilities, but our new utilities will be generally passive, outside of positioning and activating their different modes.

I can one up you on the drone issue. No drones, but fast expense turrets with short cooldowns. Let me explain. So we run into a mesmer or someone who has minions and we have a hard time fighting them. We drop all our turrets and then they run out of the range of our turrets. After they are out of range we pick up our turrets for NO COOLDOWN unless they are exploded or killed. The overcharging timer would still be going, but at least you can move your turrets around as you are in combat. What do you think?

I am also on board with stationary turrets because they help me to put a “sentry” in the place of scouts. I like the idea of minion turrets too, but I think that should be optional.

Also for the record, engi is still getting the “most useless wvw” trophy because we are still picked last out of all the classes.

To be fair we really don’t know what the Forge is. What if the drones are AI pets/minions? Signets? Mantras? What if the drones are actually the elite skill of the Forge and the utility skills are completely different to what we expect? All I want is to hopefully see a teaser image on Monday.

edit: oops! sorry just read the disclaimer XD If I were to take the drones as absolutely bad AI minions yeeeeah we would be in a bit of trouble….meh I restate my original post XD

The biggest change to player controlled AI just happened last patch, and it doesn’t look like any of you even gave it a chance.

I’ve played for hours these last few days on my minion necromancer and everything I attacked, they attacked, if I broke combat they broke combat, when I told them to use an ability they immediately used it on my current target. They never aggro’d anything I didn’t command them to and followed right on me. The only problem that’s really left is that they can switch targets too frequently and easily, like when you want to quickly pop a disable or something on a secondary target.

It’s been a long road but minions work fine now and I’ll welcome them if they are part of the forge.

you barely know anything about the spec and youre already saying the sky is falling?

what if they act like the ventari tablet and provide boons while you move them around and they cant be killed? theres no ai in that.

holy kitten calm your kittens. plus, you dont even have to use drones to use the spec. none of the other elite specs so far have required the use of either the new utilities or the new weapon. and 7 of 9 have been released. all forge has to do is be potent and itll carve a niche.

Conncept.7638:

The biggest change to player controlled AI just happened last patch, and it doesn’t look like any of you even gave it a chance.

I’ve played for hours these last few days on my minion necromancer and everything I attacked, they attacked, if I broke combat they broke combat, when I told them to use an ability they immediately used it on my current target. They never aggro’d anything I didn’t command them to and followed right on me. The only problem that’s really left is that they can switch targets too frequently and easily, like when you want to quickly pop a disable or something on a secondary target.

It’s been a long road but minions work fine now and I’ll welcome them if they are part of the forge.

This doesn’t change the fact that cleave damage takes them out in mere seconds while they sit on CD for x amount of time, reducing your ability to do much of anything during said CD :/

insanemaniac

you barely know anything about the spec and youre already saying the sky is falling?

I never said the sky is falling man, I’m simply speculating on the image, and given Anet’s track record, I’m fairly worried that they’ll be AI minions that can’t stand up in a zerg environment. To your other point, yes you don’t have to use the utilities they give you, but if they make these “drones” a vital part of the build, they’ll more than likely stick us with a minor or something that becomes wasted. This is all speculation, and at the same time excitement. The Forge could either bring us back to greatness, or crush all our hopes of being “meta” in a WvW environment.

Mord.9237:

Conncept.7638:

The biggest change to player controlled AI just happened last patch, and it doesn’t look like any of you even gave it a chance.

I’ve played for hours these last few days on my minion necromancer and everything I attacked, they attacked, if I broke combat they broke combat, when I told them to use an ability they immediately used it on my current target. They never aggro’d anything I didn’t command them to and followed right on me. The only problem that’s really left is that they can switch targets too frequently and easily, like when you want to quickly pop a disable or something on a secondary target.

It’s been a long road but minions work fine now and I’ll welcome them if they are part of the forge.

This doesn’t change the fact that cleave damage takes them out in mere seconds while they sit on CD for x amount of time, reducing your ability to do much of anything during said CD :/

insanemaniac

you barely know anything about the spec and youre already saying the sky is falling?

I never said the sky is falling man, I’m simply speculating on the image, and given Anet’s track record, I’m fairly worried that they’ll be AI minions that can’t stand up in a zerg environment. To your other point, yes you don’t have to use the utilities they give you, but if they make these “drones” a vital part of the build, they’ll more than likely stick us with a minor or something that becomes wasted. This is all speculation, and at the same time excitement. The Forge could either bring us back to greatness, or crush all our hopes of being “meta” in a WvW environment.

idk man that thread title pretty much screams “the sky is falling” to me.

Adding data mined skill icons:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3inc6t/datamining_engineer_elite_specialization_skill/

Definitely looks like AI. A couple weeks and we’ll know for sure.

I’m not a big fan of AI, but game wide it is getting an overhaul and Necros seem to be pretty happy with their new minions. This could be the mobile version of turrets many of us have always wanted.

It is possible it is simply an intended design to retrofit turrets into a mobile design in the form of mobile drone that function the same or similar to what we have now, only mobile. I see no reason to assume we would get a second set of AI utility skills. There is no evidence that this will be anything related to the Elite Specialization.

/shrug

If you haven’t been following, the people who post these have been spot on during these elite specs. It’s obviously new Engineer Elite Spec icons. No skin off my back if you choose not to believe it, we’ll all know in a few weeks.

im still hopeful that its a turret rework too

Adamantium.3682:

/shrug

If you haven’t been following, the people who post these have been spot on during these elite specs. It’s obviously new Engineer Elite Spec icons. No skin off my back if you choose not to believe it, we’ll all know in a few weeks.

You mean like when they declared they were positive thieves were getting rifles and eles were getting sword?

coglin.1867:

Adamantium.3682:

/shrug

If you haven’t been following, the people who post these have been spot on during these elite specs. It’s obviously new Engineer Elite Spec icons. No skin off my back if you choose not to believe it, we’ll all know in a few weeks.

You mean like when they declared they were positive thieves were getting rifles and eles were getting sword?

I don’t know why you feel the need to be combative and snarky about nearly everything you post. There’s a documented history of accurate data mined information on Reddit available for everyone to see, including Thief staff and Ele warhorn long before Anet ever said anything about them. Choose to believe it or not, I only provided a link to it.

I’d prefer they work more like signets, but if they operate like spirit weapons where they just blast random damage as they float around you and then provide some kind of beneficial effect when activated, I could get behind that.

I also think it’d be cool if they had a chase/return kind of system too, where you can force them to follow a target, do decent damage on a short cooldown interval, and then when wanted return to you and just passively pulse an effect when you’re not sending them out.

I always enjoyed the more active play of the engineer, and I really want that preserved regardless of what drones end up being. Even if they’re AI, they can still be skillfully deployed in some way.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I’d prefer they work more like signets, but if they operate like spirit weapons where they just blast random damage as they float around you and then provide some kind of beneficial effect when activated, I could get behind that.

I also think it’d be cool if they had a chase/return kind of system too, where you can force them to follow a target, do decent damage on a short cooldown interval, and then when wanted return to you and just passively pulse an effect when you’re not sending them out.

I always enjoyed the more active play of the engineer, and I really want that preserved regardless of what drones end up being. Even if they’re AI, they can still be skillfully deployed in some way.

That would be the best way to do AI if that is indeed what it is. Fire and forget AI is really boring even when you give it an overcharge skill. If we have to actively manage the AI that would make it better.

Honestly I expect that it will be more involved if it is some sort of AI minion. It’s an Elite Spec after all I doubt they would give us Necro type minions, which are exactly what turrets are they just move around and look gross. A simple following AI that you can overcharge. That’s way too close to turrets now. That’s not worthy of an Elite spec, it’s got to be something more complex like you said.

I would like the bots if
1: Traits generated them on crits dodges or utility skills
2: Line to trait them for heavy burst and condi application or healing explosions
3: Constant upkeep of drones none of this summon 2 and have 50 sec in between
I can see the drones end up acting like a steampunk style of mesmer perhaps giving us different types of detonations on our toolbelt replacing our current utility too toolbelt match up. As long as every utility works with spawning drones this could work pretty nice and the hammer could let us keep the pressure on them so our drone combos would be more effective.

Whatever those skills are, they don’t seem to be kits.
Thus why bother guessing the exact type?
We already know they can’t compete, anyway. Like any future kit-less elite specialization. Since we’re seemingly based upon that (not-so-optional) utility type…

Heck, elite specs are supposed to change a core part of how a profession works right? What if the drones are the toolbelt skills. That would be interesting. It would suck initially to lose some very good toolbelt skills, but the drones could offer some pretty cool new options especially if they have two “forms” as those skill icons seem to suggest.

Manuhell I disagree on the idea that any kit-less utility can’t compete. Our current ones, sure, but I don’t see this as a general rule. The most obvious example would be overpowered elite level skills as utilities, those would certainly compete, but it doesn’t have to be that drastic. Also it has a lot to do with our weapons, the weapon itself has to be able to carry the build since we don’t have weapon swap. Our current weapons don’t really have the capability of carrying a build on their own, although the rifle is close.

I think there’s a real possibility of the elite spec competing with kits. Not a large possibility but I could see it happening. This would take a combination of the hammer being really good and the new mechanic with drones/utilities to be good enough to not need a kit. For example if they have passive + active + aura + overcharge effects that are meaningful enough I believe that would be worth replacing a kit.

Having “overpowered” utilities in the elite specialization wouldn’t work either.
Elite specializations aren’t supposed to be upgrades, after all.
And it would end up being one, if that happened – people would just use kits along with whatever overpowered utility is good for the situation. Reaping the benefits of both. Since they can just use all of them together.
Same for the hammer, anyway. If kits can pull the other weapons, they’ll just be even better with a good weapon.

The only way to make that work would be to forcefully disable kits while the elite specialization is in use, so that they can balance the two things separately.
And even then, it isn’t like it wouldn’t pose other issues – namely, we go from a “forced-kits” core specialization to a “forced-whatever it gives” elite one, since only the new instruments provided would be balanced toward a non-kit dependant use.

The writing was on the wall since the moment we knew about elite specializations and new utility types, being a profession that is designed and balanced over a particular utility type (on the detriment of everything else).

If they’ve found a way to solve this issue, well done. But seeing as this elite specialization was one of the earliest ones they presented, and yet we still haven’t seen anything outside of some icons, i have quite some doubts about the outcome. Still, we’ll see.

the forge is one of the last announced elites of all classes and i fear that these last annouced class elites will be underpowered, cause now the already annouced elites will all get buffed somehow after a beta weekend, but how many beta weekends will the last elites get?

I like all the positive feedback, I really hope it’s done right. I would like to see an active playstyle for them as well, even though they changed AI, my concern is that they’ll be useless for anything but roaming in WvW if they have a healthpool. If they’re a static summon like a ranger pet, make them elusive, or ignore anything but direct damage, they’re flying over necro wells, and guardian symbols etc, I’m scared that they’re going to be awesome and a large part of our elite spec and that they’ll get cleaved down instantly in melee range (initiating a zerg with our giant hammer in the front line). Their usefulness will only be seen in SPVP, PvE and roaming WvW at that point, just like BM rangers and minionmancers if this is the case.

The fact that we’ll be one of the last released elites and thus see 2 less beta weekends at least is concerning too, that’s a good point. So far the elite specs have been under tuned their first week and have received damage buffs already after the first BWE. I hope The Forge is pretty well polished upon its release or we’ll be experiencing bugged traits and under tuned damage for god knows how long.
Please Anet, I want to main my engi on the battlefield once more!

I’ve already accepted AI, but I think they wont be so bad. No auto attack for them, positioning will probably be important, and best of all: I can relax a bit when playing engineer in open world pve. The drones will probably have some awesome skills. (Dome of protection, incinerate the area, etc. They will basicly be better spirits with more control.

Just a heads up but they fixed Necro minion AI recently. So I wouldn’t be maybe so salty about drones being lil minions. Still not my go-to skill type.

Necros are overjoyed.

Adamantium.3682:

Heck, elite specs are supposed to change a core part of how a profession works right? What if the drones are the toolbelt skills. That would be interesting. It would suck initially to lose some very good toolbelt skills, but the drones could offer some pretty cool new options especially if they have two “forms” as those skill icons seem to suggest.

It wouldn’t work.

Elite Spec mechanic must be available at all times for Elite Spec. If drones were a toolbelt skills it would basically mean we lose 50% of skills by using core engineer utility skill. That is unacceptable and I am sure ANet knows it full well.

I think toolbelt stays where it is and we get an extra.

Adamantium.3682:

coglin.1867:

Adamantium.3682:

/shrug

If you haven’t been following, the people who post these have been spot on during these elite specs. It’s obviously new Engineer Elite Spec icons. No skin off my back if you choose not to believe it, we’ll all know in a few weeks.

You mean like when they declared they were positive thieves were getting rifles and eles were getting sword?

I don’t know why you feel the need to be combative and snarky about nearly everything you post. There’s a documented history of accurate data mined information on Reddit available for everyone to see, including Thief staff and Ele warhorn long before Anet ever said anything about them. Choose to believe it or not, I only provided a link to it.

Combative? Because I pointed out that facts that countered what you said? Why do you have to make accusatory remarks simply because someone disagrees with you.

There was quit the debate, particularly over thief, when it came to the subject of rifle.

I am a little unclear on your comment about believing it or not. No one debated the drone skins, so I am unclear why you are creating unnecessary conflict there. Do you not agree that it is reasonably possible that the drones are nor directly linked to the ES, and could very possibly be a rework of turrets to give them some mobility? they could very well be fulfilling popular demand for mobile turrets by turning them into the equivalent of that, and we could still be getting something other then AI as our new utility set.

Just wanted to pop in to let everyone know (at least people that don’t follow Reddit) that the Forge skill icons have been datamined. Might shed some information on how it might work (and perhaps imply Forge will be the next Elite revealed, with Druid last) !

I think that everyone is going to jump on the change train and accept whatever they drop whether it trashes all of your armor and builds or not. ‘Remember what they change is what they change and if you don’t like it, its your fault’. Thats what some people on here want you to do so be careful.

paladinecho.3024:

I think that everyone is going to jump on the change train and accept whatever they drop whether it trashes all of your armor and builds or not. ‘Remember what they change is what they change and if you don’t like it, its your fault’. Thats what some people on here want you to do so be careful.

You can’t please everyone. There will always be someone who’s complaining and someone who doesn’t like it. The opposite is also true.

Killyox.3950:

Adamantium.3682:

Heck, elite specs are supposed to change a core part of how a profession works right? What if the drones are the toolbelt skills. That would be interesting. It would suck initially to lose some very good toolbelt skills, but the drones could offer some pretty cool new options especially if they have two “forms” as those skill icons seem to suggest.

It wouldn’t work.

Elite Spec mechanic must be available at all times for Elite Spec. If drones were a toolbelt skills it would basically mean we lose 50% of skills by using core engineer utility skill. That is unacceptable and I am sure ANet knows it full well.

I think toolbelt stays where it is and we get an extra.

I meant that our toolbelt skills are replaced by drones regardless of what utilities we use. It would be similar to Dragonhunter replacing the “normal” Guardian virtues.

Ouch, I would hate that.

It would break slick shoes, where would the stun break go?

EG Healing mist stun break, what happens to it?

Med kit, the main heal would be gone?

BoB from the bomb kit, wouldn’t we lose a blast finisher?

What would we do about the damage lost from grenade barrage?

Double blast finisher from mortar kit?

No more burn from incendiary ammo?

How would we overcharge and blast turrets? (assuming drones are not simply replacing turrets)

Lose of water field from healing turret? (assuming drones are not simply replacing turrets)

No more rocket kick?

No more AoE moa from Toss Elixir X?

No more Med Pack Drop?

Sorry, but that is a terrible idea. Behind kit swapping, the tool belt functionality is the best thing about the profession. I doubt half, if not more of the players who like engineer, would avoid the Elite Profession entirely if they lost the tool belt functionality.

No more Healing with Medkit

Icons look like mobile turrets to me, with corresponding toolbelt skills (healing blue ‘drone’ and corresponding blue ‘force field’ that’s likely the toolbelt heal).

The issue I have with this is that no matter how responsive the AI is, it will never be viable in the current PvE unless the minions are invulnerable, or have practically 0 cooldown, which would make them overpowered in PvP and thus unlikely.

Haralin.1473:

No more Healing with Medkit

BAHAHA! didnt even think about that one 10\10

So an idea here is since we rely on kits a lot what if the elite spec gave us utilities that could stand on par with kits? not in terms of abilities, but in usefulness and constant buffs I can honestly see the drones being signets of some type so we get a strong passive an on use and a toolbelt too match. We might even get a resource added like heat or something that while active passive effects or toolbelt skills damage/effects are doubled or just increased for short bursts? Would be kinda cool..

IF Forge does get AI minions, just be thankful that they actually move. Ranger has stationary spirits since they were nerfed.

Ranger spirits r different kitten, they don’t actively take part in the combat. they just sit behind boosting ppl so people need to actually think where it’s best to place them to benefit the most. It is good like that.

I can see drones working like a turret rework in the way that they fly a little behind the engineer/ forge, following him and attacking whoever the engi attacks. Also being drones and flying they shouldn’t be affected by cleave damage, maybe just take reduced damage from SOME aoe fields (engi bombs, ele frostbow 4 etc) and be attackable only by ranged weapons/attacks (since they fly)
Also the option to take direct control over them and micro each or al las a group to go to point X and do stuff would be cool. Control would be like the drones are considered a different character u can select with a hotkey and right clik where to go and who to attack.

My hope (and prayer) is that they function like the Force Unit/Bit Devices from the side scrolling shooter R-Type (high durability and damage interception) mixed with the functionality of the Aim Assisted Rocket trait where they occasionally fire on your target with a high cool down as you attack.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

IF Forge does get AI minions, just be thankful that they actually move. Ranger has stationary spirits since they were nerfed.

Oh, you mean just like engineers turrets? The existing minion type for engineers, which get easily destroyed since their last update? Sure, why shouldn’t we give engineer another easily dying ai, to give them another skill type which will be useless in PvE and WvW (and most of PvP). ^^

I know we don’t have any information about our drones and so I hope they won’t be another minion type. Engineer needs something viable, what isn’t a kit and feels fun to play with. If you want to have your own private army, just use turrets. Why should we give engineers the same things with just 1 difference, mobility?

I badly wish for something new and hope Anet isn’t disappointing me.

Kodama.6453:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

IF Forge does get AI minions, just be thankful that they actually move. Ranger has stationary spirits since they were nerfed.

Oh, you mean just like engineers turrets? The existing minion type for engineers, which get easily destroyed since their last update? Sure, why shouldn’t we give engineer another easily dying ai, to give them another skill type which will be useless in PvE and WvW (and most of PvP). ^^

I know we don’t have any information about our drones and so I hope they won’t be another minion type. Engineer needs something viable, what isn’t a kit and feels fun to play with. If you want to have your own private army, just use turrets. Why should we give engineers the same things with just 1 difference, mobility?

I badly wish for something new and hope Anet isn’t disappointing me.

No, I don’t mean like turrets. Turrets attack things. I mean like drones that fly around you and give passive buffs, like spirits used to do, but now they are stationary. I’m not advocating them actually giving Engi minions… They all suck. How could you possibly think that from my post? It just seems that since engi already has turrets and there are these drone things datamined, they are AI/minion type things and if you already have a turret that attacks, seems to me they would be passive buffing tools. As such, if Engi does get them, at least be thankful that they move with the Engi and don’t just sit there. Just saying.

Personally, I think that is an abysmal idea.

Spirits need to be reworked anyway, because the passiveness is counter to the games apparent philosophy.

Passive buffing drones would be a pathetic addition. We need less passive, not more. This game is designed for active game play,

dancingmonkey.4902:

Personally, I think that is an abysmal idea.

Spirits need to be reworked anyway, because the passiveness is counter to the games apparent philosophy.

Passive buffing drones would be a pathetic addition. We need less passive, not more. This game is designed for active game play,

http://imgur.com/a/foIKX

the icons look pretty active to me.. sorta like commands

Imho, the droids won’t end up being the actual mechanic.
I guess we may get an energy bar that gives us a way to use upkeep skills (with both the hammer and the “droids”). It would fit, especially if the hammer ends up also having electrical-themed skills (one of the icons seems to point at that).
And those “droids” could end up with a control scheme similar to turrets. As in, they have a skill on the toolbelt, that skill is replaced by that control command while active (it could give us an aoe pointer to move the droid in the selected position) and we use the utility to activate/deactivate it.
And keeping it active it may consume some energy (thus, the upkeep).

Anyway, we’ll see. Guess we’ll have to wait two weeks at most, after all.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Personally, I think that is an abysmal idea.

Spirits need to be reworked anyway, because the passiveness is counter to the games apparent philosophy.

Passive buffing drones would be a pathetic addition. We need less passive, not more. This game is designed for active game play,

If spirits need a rework for that reason, then banners need one even more. But AI is even worse than either; it is inherently a ‘fire and forget’ weapon, which is more passive than placing spirits. MM necro, while not a terribly effective PvP build, is certainly one of the most passive (along with turret engi, actually). Reliance on AI pretty much ruined the ranger from the beginning of GW2, and given the considerable strength of the current elite specializations, we’ll need something good (and not AI dependent) just to keep up. Unfortunately, we’ll have far fewer BWEs to give feedback on than most of the others…I just feel really bad for the rangers here; they’re in worse shape than we are already, and without a rework of their core mechanic I don’t think they’re going to be competitive in PvP for the foreseeable future.

So, in summary, if Forge is not AI-based, I think we’ll be fine. If the new utilities are minions, we may just need to ignore them (like the necros and eles already do).

Edit: The only circumstance I can see which would really give us trouble is if the new toolbelt mechanic is AI based. That really would be a problem…

We heard you like turrets, so we got you some turrets to go with your turrets.

thatll be my thread title if worse case scenario happens and the drones are a new set of mobile turrets or minions.

there are 15 icons, 5 for each f1-5, 2 for 6-0 deploy and overcharge.

better scenario is the first minor in the forge trait line says something like… all your turrets are now drones; or w/e and there are more new skills yet to be released.

worst idea is to get them the same defenses turrets currently have where they get cleaved and aoe’d to death.

theres no ez middle ground, do you make the drones untouchable but balance with mediocre abilities or actually effective but made of paper mache?

so I thought maybe the drones will be untouchable but shunt dmg from the engi to themselves acting like extra health pool or shields. this idea (in my mind) complements this front line hammer engi who has medium armor/health, limited stability – condi cleanse – stun break, etc… theres no way they could do melee with out a rework.

if it turns out for the worse, theres always berserkers to play instead >.>

My personal opinion (positive one ) is that we are gonna get a sort of energy/heat bar that will be charged fighiting… More it charges more damage/condition we do with the Hammer… But at the same time we become more vulenerable. ( a sort of war hammer online’s Slayer for who remember it). And the drones will be a new kind of skills… Between minions and signets.

Maybe someone already suggested this and I missed it, but I don’t think the drones will function as minions OR signets. Why hasn’t anyone suggested Mantras? The drones could be a passive visual ONLY effect, just orbiting around you. You use the drone skill to summon (“build”) it, its active has a couple uses before it deconstructs and then it goes on cooldown. Just like Mantras. Obviously each drone serves a different purpose, just like each Mantra on Mesmer is pretty different.

I could be totally off with this prediction, but it doesn’t seem that unlikely to me.

chaosdurza.3291:

Maybe someone already suggested this and I missed it, but I don’t think the drones will function as minions OR signets. Why hasn’t anyone suggested Mantras? The drones could be a passive visual ONLY effect, just orbiting around you. You use the drone skill to summon (“build”) it, its active has a couple uses before it deconstructs and then it goes on cooldown. Just like Mantras. Obviously each drone serves a different purpose, just like each Mantra on Mesmer is pretty different.

I could be totally off with this prediction, but it doesn’t seem that unlikely to me.

I was thinking that way for a while too. But there are some datamined icons for forge skills, which includes something like a skill to move your drone in a specific direction. And this doesn’t really fit to the mantra idea. It seems to be something we can actively control its movement.

icons: http://www.guildnews.de/news/datamined-skill-icons-fuer-den-ingenieur/13242/