ANET,
First of all, I would like to say, you all have done a fantastic job. I had been out of the MMO circuit for a little while, but this game is loads of fun. Much love to your world designers, and to you character designers. It is clear they put a lot of love in to this game, and it shows from every pristine vista and character model.
That being said, I wanted to say something about the Engineer class. I don’t like to gripe, but alas, you will never know what I am thinking about something unless I actually say it, so here it goes.
I like my engineer. She is cool as sin. Shes got a flamethrower, she can throw nades, I have a mortar (which I love to use), and all kinds of other cool stuff. After playing through to 80, and several dungeons, I have some suggested improvements.
First of all, whenever I drop my turrets, they seem to act like some sort of AoE magnet. It’s ok, I suppose. While my turrets are taking the hits, we aren’t, but I would like them to be more than just a metal meat shield. Perhaps give a native damage reductiont o them, or let them fire more often, or do higher damage to justify their woefully short lifespans.
Next, and I am sure this has been touched on before in this forum, but I think it bears repeating. There is a large gap in DPS output between some of our kits, weapons, and abilities. For example, I am a rifle engineer. I am geared completely for power/prec/crit is the best gear available. If I were to throw on my flamethrower, I suffer a significant dps loss. The scaling isn’t there
In addition, it would seem that, given my AC, wandering anywhere within 600 yard of a boss type will almost always result in a downed state, leaving me with 1 damage attack from range. The auto attack. It does alright damage, but it’s boring. I played a buddies 80 rifle warrior and WOW. Not only does it blow my damage out of the water, it is SO much more fun to play.
Now I know at this point some people are going to say, “Nades man! Nades do SO much damage! Just switch to nades and youll be fine!” To which I respond, ‘Nay good sir.’ This is a problem I encountered in Diablo 3 with my witchdoctor. There was a plethora of interesting builds available prior to the last patch, but only one really did anything useful. If you weren’t that spec, you did sup par damage, BUT you did have some control effects that were largely dispensable due to the nature of the gameplay. I kind of feel that this is how the engineer class is right now. We have 1 or 2 good specs and playstyle, but the class has SO much more to offer! Why not give it a little polish and show how much diversity an engineer can bring to the table!?
Lastly, and this is kind of off topic for this forum, but I feel it needs to be said. If an account is flagged as a bot, all you need do is flip a switch that allows players to hunt, and kill them. Create a vendor even, looting bot badges and turning them in for vanity items. Like a necklace of ears, or something. We could have contests to see who culled the most botters. Remember, ANET, the best type of moderation, is self moderation. What better way to answer botters than to have them lose all that hard earned gold repairing and teleporting it all away as the legitimate players reap the benefits!
Well, that’s it. I hope I was able to sum up my mind in some sort of coherent fashion. I hope this gets read, and more importantly listened to.
I am not asking for nerfs to other classes, but I am askign that some of the other available playstyles be brought up to the levels of damage and fun available via grenades.
Oh, and I almost forgot, the mortar does less damage and has less range than grenades. Kind of odd, don’t you think?