Guild Wars 2

Versitile classes or “the jack of all trades classes” don’t work. They are not competitive with any type of pure class, and nearly impossable to balance.

Take a long look at the Shamman class in WoW.

You don’t have to take away all that you have desighned for the class, just specialize the class a bit. A class doesn’t need a medioker tool for every situation, only a few good tools to get the job done.

Yes and no. The real problem is that instead of being good at everything but not outstanding in many ways, we’re stuck with being meh at everything and nerfed everytime we’re good at something. It’s because ANet looks more at the “master of none” part instead of the more-sensible “jack of all trades” thing.

And the funny thing is that even though we are the jack of all trades, there’s already a jack of all trades class (the elementalist) that outperforms us.

Really sick and tired of the D/D Elementalist…it seems that is all I see in WvW…and when you come close to killing them…they WTFOMGLIGHTNINGINVULNERABLEFLY away…only to come back in a matter of seconds at full health, while you are still trying to recover.

Half our stuff doesn’t work. Retaliation? Kinda, when Elixir B is in the mood.
Rocket boots? Well, it does the trick, but it only launches you back a LITTLE ways in WvW/PvP. It’s a clunky class, with parts that are rusted, and rarely does the Engine turn over.

I was in a 1v1 match against another Engineer, and she drew out her FT. Close range…Missed. COMPLETELY. I was in her face, and it missed. At that moment, I FELT her frustration…What did I do? I ran away. Why? Because how messed up that was. I should have been INCINERATED. But no. The whole thing missed.

Next I come up against a Thief…consistently using CnD, P/D…just chewin’ me to pieces. I’m full exotics, with Rune of the Dolyak, Tome of the Rubicon Ascended Backpiece…I did everything I knew how to do for TankCAT.. came close to droppin’ the Thief as well, but popped Shadow Refuge, and then became visible way across my screen….and came back again…Same thing happened….I came close and he ran away AGAIN…finally I gave up and just /sit. He popped up and killed me. By that time I was just tired of the dumb kitten that all Thieves seem to do.

We don’t have any damage output that can match the other classes. We should, but we don’t.

I’m pessimistic to the point that I play for about an hour, then leave.

I’m pessimistic that ANYTHING will be done for this FLAWED, FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER Class that was cobbled together without any consideration as to how it would stand against the other classes.

Simply put, I have NO FAITH in ANet…except for them to give us another nerf, and keep buffing the other classes.

SaboD.7290:

Versatile classes or “the jack of all trades classes” don’t work. They are not competitive with any type of pure class, and nearly impossible to balance.

No. That’s only true in games with classes capable of performing only one role. Every profession in GW2 is a hybrid. Some are better at certain roles than they are in others, some are better than other professions at certain roles, but every profession can build to provide some level of support and/or control to supplement the damage they deal.

The problem with the state of this game is that despite every profession being a hybrid, there are some professions that are better at every role than certain others. Worse still, as far as we can tell this is intended.

@Ejiofor.4801

Unfortunately I am feeling exactly the same way as you. Just blew a bunch of gold on getting set up a tank cat style spec and while it has some short lived fun I am having exactly the same experience as you.

I am still hoping to stay and enjoy the game some more but as th engineer is my one 80 I’m not sure if I’ll hang around too much longer.

my experience with the engineer is that it is just weak.

it has too high a skill requirement for the level of return you get. the engineer needs some serious and far reaching buffs, the beginning of which is to simple buff the damage on everything. because every weapon doesn’t do as much damage as it should.

arena net says that they like the warrior and where it is at now. the engineer has a long LONG way to go to be anywhere near as useful as a warrior.

if we are to be anything other then GW2 on hard mode then we need some serious overhauls and adjustments to how our class works.

Fiorrello.8126:

my experience with the engineer is that . . .

it has too high a skill requirement for the level of return you get.

I think that’s the problem with the engineer: the pinnacle of GW2 engineer performance is only attainable by a few (and their success gets the engineer nerfed for the rest of us).

To get an engineer to perform at the level of other classes requires both a) an encyclopaedic knowledge of the options available to engineers and how to combine them, and b) the skill to do this swapping and combining in the heat of battle. The majority of players don’t have this level of dedication and skill.

My guess is most people who play engineers do so because they like the idea (as opposed to the design concept) of the Engineer class and they just want it to perform about as well as other classes (including their alts). As it stands, in the hands of the average player (i.e. most of us) engineers are disappointing.

What to do about this?
One idea would be to tweak some traits to strengthen engineers but only when they are not using any kits or are using only a single kit.
This would create two build paths for engineers: 1) the original version with all its flexibility, and 2) a simpler, less flexible version that is better balanced for the average player.

I’d say that the druid was a better example but even Blizzard realized how crazy weak druids were and made them on par with the other classes.

I’m not sure whether I’d consider playing without kits to be ‘simpler.’ Easier to remember cooldowns, but it’s not like a lot of kits have overlong cooldowns to begin with, so as long as you remember what kit has what abilities, combo fields, etcetera, then you probably won’t have a hard time learning them.

Personally, I find it more challenging to not use kits (Flamethrower and Grenade, especially, make things feel easy-mode) at all, and tend to use turrets and pistols instead. I’ve tried Flamethrower/Elixir Gun, I’ve tried Toolkit/Turrets, I’ve tried Grenade Kit/Bomb Kit, and I just don’t get the same challenge from using those (“Is my cooldown done yet? Yes? Great!”) as I do from going Pistol/Turret (“Okay, turrets are out, let’s hit this overcharge-kitten, turret’s gone. At least the accelerants knocked the enemy into that guardian and my flame turret – let’s overcharge that, while we’re at it. Thumper…no, thumper stays here for now.”). I also just happen to dislike using kits in general, for reasons I’m not even really sure of (but are probably related to my using turrets from level 5 to 80, switching to kits briefly, finding them capable of turning things that would erase my turrets into red smears, and being annoyed about it).

Anyway, back on topic I consider the Engineer’s greatest problem the lack of anywhere for them to really excel. They can’t be the most versatile, as that belongs to the Elementalist – and that’s the only thing they’re really good at, aside from control (which happens to be completely useless on everything you really wish you could use it on), and both are build-reliant.

I’d like for them to make Preparation their strong point, in some way; the Engineer should have a plan, after all.

Anymras, could you elaborate on how would this preparation mechanic work?

I have two ideas, one of which would involve four new traitlines specifically for the Engineer – in short, every time the Engineer gains a Trait point, they gain an Upgrade point as well, which they can use in an ‘Upgrade Path’ to enhance a particular type of skill (Kit, Gadget, Turret, or Elixir) in a way, often more specialized (changes of condition damage, boons applied, etcetera), not offered by normal traits. However, this would give the Engineer two unique mechanics, as pointed out by somebody else, so eh.

Here’s the somewhat more in-depth version: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Give-the-Engineer-somewhere-to-shine/

The other idea, mentioned toward the end of that thread, is something of a reworking of how things function – make Elixirs more reliable (to encourage their use), make Toolbelt skills independent of Utility slot skills, and maybe rework traits (many of our traits do kinda suck, after all) and/or skills to make it easier/more useful to enter with a plan of action. More synergy between skills would also be great – there’s basically no reason to not specialize in something.

Come to think of it, it might be neat to have a set of Contingency skills, which could basically be sort of like Mantras in that they’re prepared before battle, and then used in a flash during it, but placed on the Toolbelt, with varied effects depending on the user’s loadout.

Idea for example Contingency skill:
Drone Deployment – A small number (1-3?) of miniature, mobile turrets is created (released from toolbelt), with less effectiveness but more mobility than their full-sized versions. Either have the types and/or number be based on the type/number of turrets or turret traits currently equipped by the user, or affected by combo fields. All miniturrets are affected by all Turret traits except for Deployable Turrets. Duration: 20 seconds, +5 for every Turret trait (maximum: 45 seconds), cooldown 90 seconds, cast time 5 seconds, or something, I’m not good at figuring out how long things should last/take to cooldown/cast.

Not the best thing to follow ’there’s no reason not to specialize in something’ with, and it’s entirely possible that it’s horribly unbalanced, but, well. There you go, there’s yet another idea for how to handle the Preparation idea – this one focusing on the developing of backup/blitzkrieg plans (though I think my example’s awful, to be honest).

in wvw the other day i 1v1 a p/d thief, believe me or not he was very good after a good fight i finally downed him and just before i could finish him i was smashed by a d/d ele , i did the /join so i could talk to them and that thief says to me “i was just telling my buddy you where doing things I’ve never seen an engineer do” and “i thought u were a warrior at one point” we decided on a few 1v1 dual’s the p/d thief ended up getting the upper hand on me once he started getting used to my combos and patterns.

what i’m trying to say is if i’m doing things that a few skilled players have never seen before and honestly I’ve never seen other engineers do, what does that say about every one talking about getting changes for the engineer i understand that u have your problems with the class and i’m sure that every one who plays engineer does, but before we start throwing around ideas to improve the class lets figure out the class properly, or we will just end up turning the engineer into the off putting love child of Anet and terrible players.

All in all we should all be focusing on making Anet fix the problems that we already deal with, then look towards changing the class for the better, and hopefully with the changes that come with the next update they fix those bugs, and i hear that the op classes are getting the nerf they need which will really put my engineer in a league of its own.

ukuni.8745:

in wvw the other day i 1v1 a p/d thief, believe me or not he was very good after a good fight i finally downed him and just before i could finish him i was smashed by a d/d ele , i did the /join so i could talk to them […]

Noob question: How do you do the /join, if you don’t know their account names?

Anymras.5729:

I have two ideas, one of which would involve four new traitlines specifically for the Engineer – in short, every time the Engineer gains a Trait point, they gain an Upgrade point as well, which they can use in an ‘Upgrade Path’ to enhance a particular type of skill (Kit, Gadget, Turret, or Elixir) in a way, often more specialized (changes of condition damage, boons applied, etcetera), not offered by normal traits. However, this would give the Engineer two unique mechanics, as pointed out by somebody else, so eh.

Here’s the somewhat more in-depth version: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Give-the-Engineer-somewhere-to-shine/

The other idea, mentioned toward the end of that thread, is something of a reworking of how things function – make Elixirs more reliable (to encourage their use), make Toolbelt skills independent of Utility slot skills, and maybe rework traits (many of our traits do kinda suck, after all) and/or skills to make it easier/more useful to enter with a plan of action. More synergy between skills would also be great – there’s basically no reason to not specialize in something.

Come to think of it, it might be neat to have a set of Contingency skills, which could basically be sort of like Mantras in that they’re prepared before battle, and then used in a flash during it, but placed on the Toolbelt, with varied effects depending on the user’s loadout.

Idea for example Contingency skill:
Drone Deployment – A small number (1-3?) of miniature, mobile turrets is created (released from toolbelt), with less effectiveness but more mobility than their full-sized versions. Either have the types and/or number be based on the type/number of turrets or turret traits currently equipped by the user, or affected by combo fields. All miniturrets are affected by all Turret traits except for Deployable Turrets. Duration: 20 seconds, +5 for every Turret trait (maximum: 45 seconds), cooldown 90 seconds, cast time 5 seconds, or something, I’m not good at figuring out how long things should last/take to cooldown/cast.

Not the best thing to follow ’there’s no reason not to specialize in something’ with, and it’s entirely possible that it’s horribly unbalanced, but, well. There you go, there’s yet another idea for how to handle the Preparation idea – this one focusing on the developing of backup/blitzkrieg plans (though I think my example’s awful, to be honest).

That is an interesting idea. maybe be harder to balance with other classes though. Nice.

ukuni.8745:

in wvw the other day i 1v1 a p/d thief, believe me or not he was very good after a good fight i finally downed him and just before i could finish him i was smashed by a d/d ele , i did the /join so i could talk to them and that thief says to me “i was just telling my buddy you where doing things I’ve never seen an engineer do” and “i thought u were a warrior at one point” we decided on a few 1v1 dual’s the p/d thief ended up getting the upper hand on me once he started getting used to my combos and patterns.

what i’m trying to say is if i’m doing things that a few skilled players have never seen before and honestly I’ve never seen other engineers do, what does that say about every one talking about getting changes for the engineer i understand that u have your problems with the class and i’m sure that every one who plays engineer does, but before we start throwing around ideas to improve the class lets figure out the class properly, or we will just end up turning the engineer into the off putting love child of Anet and terrible players.

All in all we should all be focusing on making Anet fix the problems that we already deal with, then look towards changing the class for the better, and hopefully with the changes that come with the next update they fix those bugs, and i hear that the op classes are getting the nerf they need which will really put my engineer in a league of its own.

Did he mention how rare it is to see an engineer in GW2? If that is so any engineer could be easily unique. Especailly in wvw

Pannonica.5378:

ukuni.8745:

in wvw the other day i 1v1 a p/d thief, believe me or not he was very good after a good fight i finally downed him and just before i could finish him i was smashed by a d/d ele , i did the /join so i could talk to them […]

Noob question: How do you do the /join, if you don’t know their account names?

/join and /invite will work on the person u have selected

ukuni.8745:

Pannonica.5378:

ukuni.8745:

in wvw the other day i 1v1 a p/d thief, believe me or not he was very good after a good fight i finally downed him and just before i could finish him i was smashed by a d/d ele , i did the /join so i could talk to them […]

Noob question: How do you do the /join, if you don’t know their account names?

/join and /invite will work on the person u have selected

Thanks.

Coltz.5617:

ukuni.8745:

in wvw the other day i 1v1 a p/d thief, believe me or not he was very good after a good fight i finally downed him and just before i could finish him i was smashed by a d/d ele , i did the /join so i could talk to them and that thief says to me “i was just telling my buddy you where doing things I’ve never seen an engineer do” and “i thought u were a warrior at one point” we decided on a few 1v1 dual’s the p/d thief ended up getting the upper hand on me once he started getting used to my combos and patterns.

what i’m trying to say is if i’m doing things that a few skilled players have never seen before and honestly I’ve never seen other engineers do, what does that say about every one talking about getting changes for the engineer i understand that u have your problems with the class and i’m sure that every one who plays engineer does, but before we start throwing around ideas to improve the class lets figure out the class properly, or we will just end up turning the engineer into the off putting love child of Anet and terrible players.

All in all we should all be focusing on making Anet fix the problems that we already deal with, then look towards changing the class for the better, and hopefully with the changes that come with the next update they fix those bugs, and i hear that the op classes are getting the nerf they need which will really put my engineer in a league of its own.

Did he mention how rare it is to see an engineer in GW2? If that is so any engineer could be easily unique. Especailly in wvw

that’s true i guess, but how often do you hear of people re-rolling away from the engineer, I’ve put lots of time and effort into my engineer so maybes this is more towards the right people just arnt giving the engineer class the attention required in order to reach a standard of play that puts it on par with other classes, of course there’s no way of proving that its just my opinion.

Ejiofor, I completely agree with your post. I find my self feeling the same way. While I can be completely perfect in my rotation and completely out play a thief, Mesmer or elementalist (the new wvw trinity) the cheap tactic of coming in and out of combat completely ruins the experience for me. What A Net doesn’t seem to understand is that this game involves a lot of cool down, and when you use your skills and someone can just pop out of the fight and return in less than 15-20 sec while all of your utilities are on cool down its completely trash. Is one thing to lose to good players that push you to learn and improve your game, but losing to a particular profession/build because of a blatant game imbalance is not fun, challenging for the other player and it just leads to frustration and people just moving to easy professions. I have a huge problem with how our skills are not really on part with other professions. For example, warrior endure pain and our elixir s, same skills yet warrior last two extra seconds and they are allow to attack unlike the engineer. Also, I can’t say for sure but I don’t think thief skill that provide quickness is on part with elixir u, I think we are punish more severely for gaining quickness than other professions, but I am not completely sure on this one.

ryodanspider.4180:

Ejiofor, I completely agree with your post. I find my self feeling the same way. While I can be completely perfect in my rotation and completely out play a thief, Mesmer or elementalist (the new wvw trinity) the cheap tactic of coming in and out of combat completely ruins the experience for me. What A Net doesn’t seem to understand is that this game involves a lot of cool down, and when you use your skills and someone can just pop out of the fight and return in less than 15-20 sec while all of your utilities are on cool down its completely trash. Is one thing to lose to good players that push you to learn and improve your game, but losing to a particular profession/build because of a blatant game imbalance is not fun, challenging for the other player and it just leads to frustration and people just moving to easy professions. I have a huge problem with how our skills are not really on part with other professions. For example, warrior endure pain and our elixir s, same skills yet warrior last two extra seconds and they are allow to attack unlike the engineer. Also, I can’t say for sure but I don’t think thief skill that provide quickness is on part with elixir u, I think we are punish more severely for gaining quickness than other professions, but I am not completely sure on this one.

I know this saying concerns thieves but

how about thieves have to be out of combat to sneak? For you will not see people suddenly disappear [unless cloaking is developed]

Sporadicus.1028:

And the funny thing is that even though we are the jack of all trades, there’s already a jack of all trades class (the elementalist) that outperforms us.

I think that’s very true. Elementalists and engineers can’t both be the jack of all trades class. The engineer needs to specialize more in support. Their damage is insignificant already so it’s a good choice.

Zonzai.2341:

Sporadicus.1028:

And the funny thing is that even though we are the jack of all trades, there’s already a jack of all trades class (the elementalist) that outperforms us.

I think that’s very true. Elementalists and engineers can’t both be the jack of all trades class. The engineer needs to specialize more in support. Their damage is insignificant already so it’s a good choice.

And then we’re more sidekicks than anything, unless our support is sufficient to make us great on our own. They need to ditch the hybrid tax (which makes our damage so low) and figure out somewhere the Engineer can be the best – as it is, we’re second-best at being the Jack of All Trades, leaving us in a sad place indeed.

ukuni.8745:

in wvw the other day i 1v1 a p/d thief, believe me or not he was very good after a good fight i finally downed him and just before i could finish him i was smashed by a d/d ele , i did the /join so i could talk to them and that thief says to me “i was just telling my buddy you where doing things I’ve never seen an engineer do” and “i thought u were a warrior at one point” we decided on a few 1v1 dual’s the p/d thief ended up getting the upper hand on me once he started getting used to my combos and patterns.

what i’m trying to say is if i’m doing things that a few skilled players have never seen before and honestly I’ve never seen other engineers do, what does that say about every one talking about getting changes for the engineer i understand that u have your problems with the class and i’m sure that every one who plays engineer does, but before we start throwing around ideas to improve the class lets figure out the class properly, or we will just end up turning the engineer into the off putting love child of Anet and terrible players.

All in all we should all be focusing on making Anet fix the problems that we already deal with, then look towards changing the class for the better, and hopefully with the changes that come with the next update they fix those bugs, and i hear that the op classes are getting the nerf they need which will really put my engineer in a league of its own.

What are these “things he’s never seen an Engineer do,” if I might ask?

Ironically, I was just told this last night after the 3rd time I Magnet’d someone into a full Mine Field.

The bottom line is yes, Engineers CAN be successful, but as it’s already been said, the amount of effort you have to put in is not worth the reward you get relative to other classes.

I’ve played Engineer since day 1. I know a fair amount about the class. I’m very comfortable with it. I’ve successfully utilized everything the Engineer has to some degree (except a full turret build in PvP, but that’s not something I want to do.) But literally any time I want, I can make a Thief or Mesmer, slap a spec together with traits that look half-decent, and succeed. No subtleties, no real effort involved. Sure, both of those classes can be played to a much higher level than I play them, but the fact that I can have almost as much success with a class that I’ve played for 4 hours as a class that I’ve played for 400 hours is a little messed up.

@Phuriocity.9218

i tend to agree with you it is annoying that other class’s have a much easier time but i really feel we need to be looking at engineer in a different prospective maybe other classes can do things we can do lots easier but we arnt those other classes so why do we judge the performance of an engineer on the class and not the player i don’t want to start a fight here about who is the better player that’s simply not the case but at the end of the day its the players decisions that decide the outcome and not the class so maybe i’m just naturally suited to the engineer and your skills allow you to play a better variety of class’s ill be honest ive given every class a shot in spvp just to learn there skills and how i can counter them and ive learnt that me and melee chars is not a good idear im terrible at it but all the ranged on my engineer works well for me and i really shine with it, and ahhh 1 does not simply give away there secret for victory lol maybe in a thread that’s more towards engineer strategy and not engineer vs everything else

ukuni.8745:

@Phuriocity.9218

i tend to agree with you it is annoying that other class’s have a much easier time but i really feel we need to be looking at engineer in a different prospective maybe other classes can do things we can do lots easier but we arnt those other classes so why do we judge the performance of an engineer on the class and not the player i don’t want to start a fight here about who is the better player that’s simply not the case but at the end of the day its the players decisions that decide the outcome and not the class so maybe i’m just naturally suited to the engineer and your skills allow you to play a better variety of class’s ill be honest ive given every class a shot in spvp just to learn there skills and how i can counter them and ive learnt that me and melee chars is not a good idear im terrible at it but all the ranged on my engineer works well for me and i really shine with it, and ahhh 1 does not simply give away there secret for victory lol maybe in a thread that’s more towards engineer strategy and not engineer vs everything else

…You kind of contradict yourself here.

I have plenty of success with my Engineer. I don’t really know how to convince you of that, because saying I can 1v1 Shatter Mesmers and Backstab Thieves doesn’t actually prove anything, but you’ll have to take my word for it.

I’d like to ask what perspective you think we should be looking at?

Burst damage? Thief/Mesmer/Warrior. SD builds DO have good burst, but it takes an EXTREMELY high level of play in comparison to these classes to do anything more than jump in, unload burst, and hope you can get out or die trying.
Condition Damage? Not very strong in PvP with Bunker Guards/Eles running around with OD removal, but Engineer isn’t a terrible choice here. Necro still does it better.
Bunker? We CAN do it, but a Guardian or Ele is the better choice 99.9% of the time.
Support? Ele has more than we could ever dream of, and we’re far more heavily taxed for it.

The one thing that I think Engineer has over every other class is what I like to call “downed state control.” With all of our knockbacks/pulls/stuns/dazes on top of our invulnerabilities/stealths and our rez elixir, I don’t think anyone can come close to the rezzing and stomping potential of an Engi. (Guardians come close on the stomping portion with their amount of stability, but only just.)