Guild Wars 2

This isn’t a QQ or buff us please post. This is just something I’ve been thinking regarding how the engineer plays out in PvE, the part of the game which I’ve played on 90% of my time since I started playing last October.

Now, the engineer is my main. It’s my favorite profession in gw2 and, in my opinion, it is by far the most entertaining and fun to play. It isn’t the most bug free, nor is it completely balanced, but everything about the engineer’s play-style appeals to me (with the exception of the flamethrower :p). This is why I’m currently bothered by how the engineer performs in PvE.

As an aside; you can pretty much run whatever you want in open world PvE. Your trait points literally don’t matter if you’re in open world PvE, everything is just that easy… unless you try to tackle an Orrian temple, but those are very (read horribly) broken at the moment. So when I talk about PvE, what I mean is dungeon content.

Going back to the engineer’s performance in PvE, it’s lacking in a very special way. You can run every piece of dungeon content on the engineer, and if you like the profession you will have a ton of fun (I have), but due to the way dungeon’s are structured, the engineer seems to fit only specific roles like range dps, support, or both if you’re a good player After months of playing with builds/gear/rune choices, I gave up on support for dungeons. I’ve tried too many builds with healing bombs, grenade vuln stacking and combo fields. Having to go through an elaborate buffing process only detracts from your awareness and all that elixir gun’s SE does is fool people into thinking that it can heal them more than that aoe fire is hurting them. I’ve come to think that elixir R is the only support you need, in addition to well timed rezzes when it’s toolbelt is on cooldown.

This then leaves me with range dps (because no glass cannon in their right mind would use bombs in a dungeon). I may be biased here, because I chose to use grenades. I don’t really understand it when people complain about grenades being boring, since I find them to be one of the only engaging weapons in gw2. Before this game I hadn’t really played any proper MMOs, I preferred action games, so didn’t find the appeal of queuing attacks. Bombs, grenades, necro marks, these skills require attention to your surroundings and make movement more challenging, making the game-play more engaging. When MF came out I found it to be incredibly difficult to aim my grenades, avoid ten firefields, and time my jumps over the shockwaves. By the end of the week I found the above incredibly fun, and MF became my favorite dungeon. In any case, my build for dungeons eventually devolved into what’s been known since launch as the boring 30 in alchemy elixir build, or more recently dubbed an HgH dps build.

It stacks boons, it has ranged dps, and it has enough RNG to infuriate me on occasion, but it’s undoubtedly a very solid build for dungeons. It even taught me something interesting about PvE aggro. For the longest time I thought that taking toughness out of my builds would leave me to crumple like wet paper in a dungeon, but as I took more and more berserker/rampager gear, I noticed I got focused down less and less. I noticed that that aggro went to other people however, and being someone in my guild in charge of dungeon runs, this became a problem. Wipes and hard runs became more common in certain situations, like when we didn’t have a warrior or guardian to take aggro. So I decided to level one of these, a guard, and cry myself to sleep from the boredom of it.

Now with my guardian alt (which I decidedly like running less than my engineer) I’ve found out certain things, namely:

1-An Altruistic Healing guardian (in full knight’s gear with some rubies) does more damage than a full glass cannon engineer with might stacking and grenades.
2-An AH guardian heals a party more than a healing bomb engineer does (through constantly applying boons to the party like might and protection)
3-An AH guardian is the backbone of most parties because it (mostly) holds all the aggro in dungeon encounters and can take the damage that comes with it.

The only things my engineer holds over my guard is that he has better range, better mobility and better condition damage. These three things do not contribute as much to a dungeon encounter than the previous three. It’s not even close. Where these contribute is in WvW and PvP.

So what I’m getting at is this, the engineer is completely inferior (not in gameplay, I’ll still run most dungeons with mine when my guild doesn’t need me on my guard) to the guardian in dungeons. In terms of support and dps it’s not a contest, the guardian comes out better on both than an engineer who specializes on one.

From a developer’s viewpoint, this means one of three things. Either give the engineer an edge in damage or support to the guardian, redesign dungeons so that warriors and guards aren’t as terribly better than everything else in them, or lastly, give warriors and guardians massive damage nerfs.

The last one is the most controversial, but if there are only two classes which trivialize a piece of content, why not reduce their capabilities in that content? The devs keep touting this, balancing game modes separately, so why not apply it to a problem which dungeons have had for a very long time. Funny thing is, had I posted this in the guardian forum, people would be outraged about the prospect of not out-dpsing the engineer while being able to facetank a landslide.

tldr

The guardian is flat out better than any kind of engineer in dungeons. Engineers need to be either better at supporting a party or more damage to keep an edge, alternatively dungeons can be modified to benefit classes like the engineer (such as extending condition caps or introducing melee reflect).

Part of the problem with support is there’s no direct heals to speak of the regen doesn’t stack properly with +healing scores and the AOEs i swear someone has programmed the mobs and bosses to drop their AOE attacks right on top of where the AOE heal zones are making them useless.

I do agree, PVE guards and warrs are way OP and needs to be brought down across the board.

Kaaboos also has a great video on the problems of fighting bosses for support and CC bosses and what Anet can do to improve combat alround so we can finally get rid of the zerker only expectations and the uselessness of CC in dungeon boss fights.

Oh and finally we really just need to be made a soldier class if they aren’t going to match our traits to the typical adventurer class traits in the ranger/thief trees.

Guardian and warrior are the two most popular pve professions (at least if you count the actively played level 80s), so I seriously doubt they will be nerfed. In fact I predict that the warrior will be buffed again in the next skill balance update. Guardian has also been buffed in recent updates. Even though neither need buffs for pve or WvWvW.

Instead of nerfing those super popular and powerful profession, I would rather see the other professions brought up to same levels.

Many guardian weapons have a very high damage multiplier. The difference is not that drastic. In the ball park of 10-15% actually, but at the same time many of the guardian weapon skills bring a lot of protective / healing utility. So lots of power packed into just one skill. Why not bring at least the auto attack of the engineer weapons to the same level? Guardians also have very easy access to combo fields + finishers using the same weapon e.g. Symbol of protection (hammer #1) and mighty blow (hammer #2). Mighty blow does really large damage and is a combo blast finisher and has a mere 5 s cooldown. I know engineers can do the same e.g. elixir gun #5 + #4, but the note how little damage the engineer’s equivalent is doing (almost none) and how much longer cool down it has.
Engineer weapon skills also often have utility, but it is often one target crowd control with some penalty e.g. overcharged shot (rifle #4). Single target skills with limited range aren’t really that powerful in dungeons or huge WvWvW fights, so this contributes to the feeling that engineer is weak.

The difference comes from these small things. Guardian can spec a lot into defense and still do good damage. If engineer goes full bunker, his damage is going to be small (besides conditions). Altruistic Healing (AH) and many other guardian traits are really powerful and synergize well with weapon skills.

The gadgets definitely need some love and reducing their cooldown by 33% would be an obvious choice.

Elixir gun’s toolbelt skill, healing mist, feels underpowered considering it has 40 s cooldown and gives roughly 1300 point heal via 10 s regeneration. It should at least be a stun break or remove one condition. Now most engineers are forced to use elixir C or multiple elixirs and cleaning formula 409 master trait to get rid of multiple conditions or overcharged healing turret and this is pigeon holing engineers towards few builds.

Engineer has the highest skill floor of all the professions and I think tiny bit added damage, reduced cool downs + some group utility (combo fields / finishers) added into the kits or weapons could be that tiny bit extra what the engineer needs to become a more accessible profession. Maybe also adjust some of the passive traits e.g. make back bag regenerator scale with healing power (would make sense).

I don’t want too much either, so that engineers would be overpowered. For tpvp engineer probably doesn’t need that many tweaks.

But it is obvious that engineers are not in the top tier in pve, nor in WvWvW, unless you count small scale roaming in a fairly empty map. In huge zerg fights and dungeons, engineers could use some love.

JohnDied.3476:

The guardian is flat out better than any kind of engineer in dungeons. Engineers need to be either better at supporting a party or more damage to keep an edge, alternatively dungeons can be modified to benefit classes like the engineer (such as extending condition caps or introducing melee reflect).

Erm, I don’t think so.

Guardian doesn’t have anywhere near as spammable Fire fields as the Engineer does, has zero Water fields, and has to specialize in several traits to get their Light fields to do what Super Elixir does for us.

AHEM Guardians definitely don’t do as much damage as Grenade Kit Engineers. They don’t even do as much as an FT Engineer, and I will furthermore state that my FT/EG Engineer is way more consistent in removing conditions on allies than a PoV/Soldier rune Guardian will, even with Save Yourselves. Super Elixir and Healing Turret alone remove more than 10 conditions a minute on allies in range. I think it’s substantial enough in saying that Cleansing Formula 409 is now completely optional in even the most difficult dungeons.

tigirius.9014:

I do agree, PVE guards and warrs are way OP and needs to be brought down across the board.

They shouldn’t nerf Guardians. They should bring up weaker classes on level with them.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Guardian doesn’t have anywhere near as spammable Fire fields as the Engineer does, has zero Water fields, and has to specialize in several traits to get their Light fields to do what Super Elixir does for us.

AHEM Guardians definitely don’t do as much damage as Grenade Kit Engineers. They don’t even do as much as an FT Engineer, and I will furthermore state that my FT/EG Engineer is way more consistent in removing conditions on allies than a PoV/Soldier rune Guardian will, even with Save Yourselves. Super Elixir and Healing Turret alone remove more than 10 conditions a minute on allies in range. I think it’s substantial enough in saying that Cleansing Formula 409 is now completely optional in even the most difficult dungeons.

What spammable fire field the engineer has besides the fire bomb (from the bomb kit) ? Not that many WvWvW engineers are running with the bomb kit for obvious reasons, at least if you play in top tier with massive melee trains.

It is true that the guardian completely lacks water fields and probably for a good reason. E.g. that mighty blow is a spammable blast finisher
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mighty_Blow

And that is something the engineers lack. Engineers have a lot of finishers, but generally they are put to useless skills (e.g. turrets or elixir X) and have longer cooldown e.g. supply crate is 180 s cooldown blast finisher, which almost never ends up being used as the blast finisher.

Every single guardian weapon gives light fields, besides the focus. This gives guardian access to almost unlimited retaliation, plus also a lot of cleansing bolts using whirl finishers.

It is true that an elixir gun+ healing turret engineer can cure more conditions from his allies than a guardian can, but guardian can provide his allies a lot more boons (protection, aegis, regeneration, retaliation, might, swiftness). These abundant boons are one of the main reasons why guardians are so wanted in any party. And let’s not forget guardian has access to stability, which is perhaps the most valuable boon in WvWvW.

Deniara Devious.3948:

What spammable fire field the engineer has besides the fire bomb (from the bomb kit) ? Not that many WvWvW engineers are running with the bomb kit for obvious reasons, at least if you play in top tier with massive melee trains.

Well, that’s a choice you’re actively making. This thread is about the state of the Engineer in PvE anyway, not WvW. Slotting the Bomb Kit gives you a relatively spammable Fire field to stack Might. If you guys choose to go without it that’s your call—but don’t complain about things other classes have if you’re not going to play the Engineer to its strengths, or claim that we don’t offer anything unique to groups.

Napalm has a 10 second duration to its Fire field. At a 30 second cooldown, it’s arguably the best Fire field in the game.

Also, I play on Sanctum of Rall, FWIW.

Deniara Devious.3948:

It is true that the guardian completely lacks water fields and probably for a good reason. E.g. that mighty blow is a spammable blast finisher
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mighty_Blow

And that is something the engineers lack. Engineers have a lot of finishers, but generally they are put to useless skills (e.g. turrets or elixir X) and have longer cooldown e.g. supply crate is 180 s cooldown blast finisher, which almost never ends up being used as the blast finisher.

Every single guardian weapon gives light fields, besides the focus. This gives guardian access to almost unlimited retaliation, plus also a lot of cleansing bolts using whirl finishers.

That’s because the Engineer is better utilized as the Combo fielder in the group, not the finisher (insert joke here). Engineers actually have the most versatile collection of Combo fields of all classes in the game.

Deniara Devious.3948:

It is true that an elixir gun+ healing turret engineer can cure more conditions from his allies than a guardian can, but guardian can provide his allies a lot more boons (protection, aegis, regeneration, retaliation, might, swiftness). These abundant boons are one of the main reasons why guardians are so wanted in any party. And let’s not forget guardian has access to stability, which is perhaps the most valuable boon in WvWvW.

Again, this thread isn’t about WvW. It’s about PvE. And even though Stability is very sought-after in PvE still, so is condition removal and raw healing. Engineers have pretty consistent group Regeneration between the Healing Turret, Cleansing Mist, and Healing Mist.

If you think a Hammer Guardian’s Symbol of Protection is more useful than the Elixir Gun’s Super Elixir, that’s your opinion. But Guardians hardly do everything that Engineers do. I’ve leveled them both to 80 and enjoy them for what they both provide a group in support, but they’re very different in scope and design, and I feel that my FT/EG Engineer is significantly better at bolstering the DPS of a group while Guardian is better at bolstering the survivability of a group—though they both succeed at working in both directions. Why choose between them when you can take both, anyway?

Phineas Poe.3018:

AHEM Guardians definitely don’t do as much damage as Grenade Kit Engineers. They don’t even do as much as an FT Engineer, and I will furthermore state that my FT/EG

I think you might not have read the whole post. I have both a grenadier and an AH guard. I have the grenadier in a berserker/rampager mix and the guard in near full knight gear (2 berserker pieces and rubies on my trinkets). The grenadier does more damage in the first few seconds of combat (because I boon him before combat) then his damage falls out as my boons go down, the AH is the opposite. My AH guard comes in no boons, gets a few crits, his damage is then on par with my engi, after a few more seconds my guard is a might-stacking powerhouse, his #2 doing more damage than my engi’s grenade barrage (which is on a much higher cooldown).

On top of that the guard synergies a lot better than the engineer. That whole AH healing thing? it works off of empowering might (might on crits) the reason I can keep my guard alive through the most ridiculous damage. I can essentially tank and boon the whole party through attacking alone. Include another guard to the mix (which some content seems to require) and you have double the boons and healing. Include another engi and I have some joker with a flamethrower (perma auto-attacking no less) getting all his conditions overwritten by my grenades. True, I have more fun joking with the later :P, but I can’t ask as much from him.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Engineer is way more consistent in removing conditions on allies than a PoV/Soldier rune Guardian will, even with Save Yourselves. Super Elixir and Healing Turret alone remove more than 10 conditions a minute on allies in range. I think it’s substantial enough in saying that Cleansing Formula 409 is now completely optional in even the most difficult dungeons.

Again mate, don’t talk about things you don’t know. On my guard I can remove 2 party wide conditions a shout (pure of voice and soldier runes), that’s 10 conditions per shout. It’s definitely overkill and not many people use it. If I have my shouts on cool-down I can wait for my purity+signet to remove another two on myself. You can remove 10 a minute on allies in range? I can remove 20 through shouts on a 40 sec cooldown, and 8 on myself in that same time. Most of the time, I never even slot save yourselves.

Before I get a bunch of hate, just know this. I run dungeons for my guild. Therein lies my use of the guard. I never discriminate against other classes, in fact I encourage class (and level) diversity in our runs. I leveled and run a guardian (alt remember?) so our guild runs would go smoother with badly-geared/lower-level/bad-connection/bad-fps people. Why? because they’re my guildies, and instead of running dungeons with other people I’d rather use a stronger class for dungeon content.

lastly, when I do a run with an engie, I give advise, but I never tell them how they need to play. I cheer them on in chat. Why? because there are so few of us doing dungeons, and because they already get alot of flak. I’m friendly to them even when irl I’m facepalming because all they do is auto-attack over and over with flamethrower… not even using flameblast…

JohnDied.3476:

My AH guard comes in no boons, gets a few crits, his damage is then on par with my engi, after a few more seconds my guard is a might-stacking powerhouse, his #2 doing more damage than my engi’s grenade barrage (which is on a much higher cooldown).

Regardless of how good your Whirling Wrath/Mighty Blow is, the Grenade Kit still totally outclasses them both in the #1 skill and everything else. Traited properly, the kit—and the build that uses it in general—applies Poison, Bleed, Burn, and Vulnerability. Permanently.

By just eating Rare Veggie Pizza you should easily be getting 20+ stacks of Bleed and Vulnerability. Seriously. There is something flawed with your Grenade Kit build if an AHEM Guardian is even sniffing remotely the same output in DPS, especially if you have any trouble maintaining Might or Fury on your Engineer. Ascended Berserker jewelry or not.

When tailored more for DPS, I’ll swap out my Healing Turret for the Med Kit. Between Elixir B, Toss Elixir B, Drop Stimulant, and Runes of Altruism, I can stack almost 2 minutes of Fury on myself at full potency. And give some of that to others.

JohnDied.3476:

On my guard I can remove 2 party wide conditions a shout (pure of voice and soldier runes), that’s 10 conditions per shout.

Yes. I am aware. I run the same setup.

But Healing Turret’s overcharge cures two conditions on everyone in the vicinity and only has a 15 second cooldown before it can be used again when you pick up the turret. Compare that to a skill like Stand Your Ground, which has almost double the cooldown even with Superior Aria.

Engineers have substantially more condition removal than Guardians do, especially since we have Projectile finishers that additionally cure conditions on those in vicinity of the target hit so long as they pass through the Light field.

Engineers have plenty of blast finishers. When the update to the healing elixir was made, I managed to make a rotation that made the best out of the 3 second water field. I could use 3 blast finishers inside of that field. First, from the off-hand shield. Second, from the Elixir Gun. Third, from the turret detonation. Not factoring in the regen that gave, that put out 3960 healing from the water fields with no healing power, plus the 2520 that came from the turret’s overcharge for a total of 6480 in healing in an instant. All without healing power.

In theory you could get more. If you use the thumper turret’s detonation + shockwave alongside of the detonation from the land mine, you could get 6 blast finishers off in that water field by yourself. Though the timing with the elixir gun is difficult, so it might be worth it to just time Big Ol’ Bomb instead if you wanted to go with a full healing spec. Probably wouldn’t even need healing power, since at 0 you’ll be healing 10k HP in an AoE.

Anyway, the Engineer and the Guardian play very differently from each other. There are a few things the engineer does that the guardian can’t, though. One of them is conditions. The guardian can burn, but the engineer is the only class with access to all damaging conditions, and can very easily maintain a permanent burn. Engineers can also stack a lot of vulnerability, and in more ways than once (from grenades and from Sitting Duck). I also believe that, with kit swapping triggering sigils, and the might on heal trait, engineers are better at stacking might than guardians. Though guardians do it in an AoE better, so it is less selfish.

The engineer also has some better controls. They have more access to immobilize and cripple, and grenades also have more access to chill than Glacial Heart gives. Though guardians do have quite a few stuns/knockdowns, I think engineers might have more. Especially if they’re running a turret build.

All in all, I think the guardian is better at direct support. The engineer’s skills are quite random, and you’ll never know what the elixir will give or what the engineer even has on their belt. They might be better at cleansing conditions for the group, since Fumigate from the elixir gun when used right is basically an entire team cleanse on a 12 second cooldown.

When looking at it, it is amazing how similarly these two classes fulfill these roles. They have a lot of the same tricks, like projectile reflection, blinds, vigor, healing, knockback, similar combo fields, plenty of finishers, might stacking, and team support. Considering that they play nothing like, this is an amazing feat. I’d say that the guardian is more reliable in their support, while having better boon support and higher damage (especially against single targets), whereas the engineer is more scattered while having more selfish boons and higher versatility in any single setup. All in all… I’d recommend taking both. If you have an engineer, great. If a guardian comes in, the engineer can just alter their spec to do something different really quickly. It’s not like having more boons or more reflection walls is a bad thing.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Engineers have plenty of blast finishers. When the update to the healing elixir was made, I managed to make a rotation that made the best out of the 3 second water field. I could use 3 blast finishers inside of that field. First, from the off-hand shield. Second, from the Elixir Gun. Third, from the turret detonation. Not factoring in the regen that gave, that put out 3960 healing from the water fields with no healing power, plus the 2520 that came from the turret’s overcharge for a total of 6480 in healing in an instant. All without healing power.

In theory you could get more. If you use the thumper turret’s detonation + shockwave alongside of the detonation from the land mine, you could get 6 blast finishers off in that water field by yourself. Though the timing with the elixir gun is difficult, so it might be worth it to just time Big Ol’ Bomb instead if you wanted to go with a full healing spec. Probably wouldn’t even need healing power, since at 0 you’ll be healing 10k HP in an AoE.

Anyway, the Engineer and the Guardian play very differently from each other. There are a few things the engineer does that the guardian can’t, though. One of them is conditions. The guardian can burn, but the engineer is the only class with access to all damaging conditions, and can very easily maintain a permanent burn. Engineers can also stack a lot of vulnerability, and in more ways than once (from grenades and from Sitting Duck). I also believe that, with kit swapping triggering sigils, and the might on heal trait, engineers are better at stacking might than guardians. Though guardians do it in an AoE better, so it is less selfish.

The engineer also has some better controls. They have more access to immobilize and cripple, and grenades also have more access to chill than Glacial Heart gives. Though guardians do have quite a few stuns/knockdowns, I think engineers might have more. Especially if they’re running a turret build.

All in all, I think the guardian is better at direct support. The engineer’s skills are quite random, and you’ll never know what the elixir will give or what the engineer even has on their belt. They might be better at cleansing conditions for the group, since Fumigate from the elixir gun when used right is basically an entire team cleanse on a 12 second cooldown.

When looking at it, it is amazing how similarly these two classes fulfill these roles. They have a lot of the same tricks, like projectile reflection, blinds, vigor, healing, knockback, similar combo fields, plenty of finishers, might stacking, and team support. Considering that they play nothing like, this is an amazing feat. I’d say that the guardian is more reliable in their support, while having better boon support and higher damage (especially against single targets), whereas the engineer is more scattered while having more selfish boons and higher versatility in any single setup. All in all… I’d recommend taking both. If you have an engineer, great. If a guardian comes in, the engineer can just alter their spec to do something different really quickly. It’s not like having more boons or more reflection walls is a bad thing.

Oh jeez. I knew I was forgetting something. Fumigate!

Removes up to 5 conditions per channel, and only has a 9.5 cooldown with Fireforged Trigger. Yesplz.

I think the problem with conditions in PvE is that they can get overridden very easily. Now hold on phin, because I know you want to jump at me for saying that, I have a mate who loves his bleed warrior, and have guildies who like running their necros. When you get into a situation where a group has one or more condi-heavy classes, you start to see your own condition damage fall off quick.

One thing I forgot about before, which is very important to grenadiers, is vulnerability. Playing my engi today reminded me of that, which does give the engineer an edge over the AH guard in the damage department (not to mention the conditions phin so kindly reminded me of). This doesn’t mean that the guard isn’t stupidly strong in PvE regardless, he still remains the backbone of the teams he joins. The fact that I even have to compare a support-tank’s damage to that of a glass cannon kind of stings a bit.

With regards to combo-fields. These can be really useful when you’re roaming in wvw, because of the number of blast finishers you can get, but in a dungeon you’ll find very few of these actually being “popped”. I did the whole BoB, shield, healing turret rotation for months, but the boons fall off quick in a fight where you have to dodge around a lot. Playing my guard I actually found myself blasting more water/fire fields than ever before with the hammer, but it made me notice how few other people actually take advantage of these.

With regards to turrets. I only take the supply crate, and I curse the bloody thing every time I see every turret die a second later, which is too often if you ask me. I don’t know what it is… no, actually I do. The reason why turrets aren’t suited for dungeons lies in the fact that there’s so much aoe and trash running around. When a trash mob can kill your turret in 6 hits and there’s 6+ mobs running around hitting it at once… you’d mine as well leave those slot skills empty for all the use you’d get out of them.

With regards to condi-removal… I won’t bring up the fact that fumigate does zero damage (oops I just did), or that it’s a cone and not an aoe… or that it’s not instant like shouts. It’s just such a clunky skill with one use. When do you ever have so many conditions that an instant 2 condi-removing aoe shout cant take care of things, given that it also reliably gives useful boons? I mean, I can always cleanse my party with my toss elixirs, but it’s not as streamlined, nor is it reliable (I swear I never seem to get that kitten ed stability on the kitten ed harpie fractal).

Phineas Poe.3018:

Well, that’s a choice you’re actively making. This thread is about the state of the Engineer in PvE anyway, not WvW. Slotting the Bomb Kit gives you a relatively spammable Fire field to stack Might. If you guys choose to go without it that’s your call—but don’t complain about things other classes have if you’re not going to play the Engineer to its strengths, or claim that we don’t offer anything unique to groups.

Napalm has a 10 second duration to its Fire field. At a 30 second cooldown, it’s arguably the best Fire field in the game.

Also, I play on Sanctum of Rall, FWIW.

Sorry for going a bit off-topic. I am more of a WvWvW player myself. Your server SoR has a very big guild, Iron Triangle [IRON], who moved from Desolation to SoR.

I know very well that those fire fields are used for stacking might. I have been observing how Iron guys play.

I would still argue that Lava Font is the best fire field in the game. 1200 range, mere 1/4 activation time, 4 s duration and 6 s cooldown. You can trait its radius to 180.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lava_Font

But a guardian doesn’t need fire fields to give 12 stacks of mights to its allies:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Empower
Besides giving 12 stacks of might it also does very good healing when combined with Altruistic healing if you have 5 allies near you.

I would argue that using a skill like that is easier for most beginning players than using a combo fields. I am not claiming that engineer is a useless profession when it comes to pve or WvWvW, but it does have accessibility problems. Skill floor is clearly higher than e.g. playing a warrior, guardian or thief.

Elsewhere in this thread you claimed that engineer can maintain permanent burn using grenade kit alone. Well, how?
Incendiary power was changed to give 4 s burning on a single target with critical hit with 10 s internal cooldown.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Incendiary_Powder

+30% condition duration from 30 points in explosives trait line
+40% duration rare veggie pizza
2x rune of flame legion ( + 15% burning duration)
2x rune of balthazar ( + 15% burning duration)
2x rune of baelfire ( + 15% burning duration)

Even with +115% burning duration it still won’t be 100% burn uptime. Did I miss something?

I haven’t experimented it, but I think with a similar rune, trait + consumable setup a guardian could keep up permanent burning with Zealot’s flame (note it gives considerably longer burn that the tooltip claims)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealot%27s_Flame

Maintaining permanent poison with grenade kit alone would be pretty kitten hard as well. Yes, I know you can swap to pistol, bomb kit and flamethrower to achieve that 100% uptime in pve.

Deniara, you can keep poison up 100% of the time in PvE because enemies are braindead. If you slap a poison grenade field on a champ and they’re going toe to toe with your local tank (probably a guard keeping him down with a hammer) then the mob will stay in the poison field and the 5 s will keep reapplying. I’ve gotten half a minute on mobs before with the +30% from the explosives line.

Burning however, can’t be kept up 100% of the time, thanks to the recent Incendiary powder change. It does however proc more often than before (if you didn’t have the necessary precision to have it up 100% before).

Like I said before, with regards to conditions you’re better off not depending on them for your dps. They get rewritten often enough by people who need to depend on them (ie necros), or people who like going full into condi-damage for the fun of it (ie bleed warriors).

EDIT: This is due to condition duration weapons/runes. A necro alone can keep up 25 bleed stacks (and poison uptime) due to +100% duration gear being practically mandatory to them if they go conditions. Same for a bleed warrior.

Actually, the same can be said for engineers. I can’t count how many times I’ve stolen burning damage away from eles who depend on it :P

JohnDied.3476:

So what I’m getting at is this, the engineer is completely inferior (not in gameplay, I’ll still run most dungeons with mine when my guild doesn’t need me on my guard) to the guardian in dungeons. In terms of support and dps it’s not a contest, the guardian comes out better on both than an engineer who specializes on one.

From a developer’s viewpoint, this means one of three things. Either give the engineer an edge in damage or support to the guardian, redesign dungeons so that warriors and guards aren’t as terribly better than everything else in them, or lastly, give warriors and guardians massive damage nerfs.

The last one is the most controversial, but if there are only two classes which trivialize a piece of content, why not reduce their capabilities in that content? The devs keep touting this, balancing game modes separately, so why not apply it to a problem which dungeons have had for a very long time. Funny thing is, had I posted this in the guardian forum, people would be outraged about the prospect of not out-dpsing the engineer while being able to facetank a landslide.

tldr

The guardian is flat out better than any kind of engineer in dungeons. Engineers need to be either better at supporting a party or more damage to keep an edge, alternatively dungeons can be modified to benefit classes like the engineer (such as extending condition caps or introducing melee reflect).

That’s what I have been thinking for awhile now, it isn’t that we are under powered. It’s that certain classes out preform us immensely. I want my Warrior, Guardian, and Ele to be nerfed into oblivion, the amount of dps they can pull compared to other classes is insulting. Insulting to the point where I don’t even want to use them anymore, because it feels too easy mode. Granted the Warrior takes a huge tax in PvP due to their effectiveness in PvE. But I don’t even care at this point, I feel that the gap between the aforementioned classes and the rest is so wide, that it brings up the question as to why to bother playing anything else?

Phineas, the healing turret won’t ever stay alive a minute, especially in dungeons. They get shotted in seconds by any enemy with ranged/aoe attacks. That is, everything in dungeons.

Manuhell.2759:

Phineas, the healing turret won’t ever stay alive a minute, especially in dungeons. They get shotted in seconds by any enemy with ranged/aoe attacks. That is, everything in dungeons.

That’s why you drop it, overcharge it, and pick it back up.

Even if you detonate it for an Area Heal or Area Might in a Fire field, it still only has a 20 second cooldown.

JohnDied.3476:

With regards to combo-fields. These can be really useful when you’re roaming in wvw, because of the number of blast finishers you can get, but in a dungeon you’ll find very few of these actually being “popped”. I did the whole BoB, shield, healing turret rotation for months, but the boons fall off quick in a fight where you have to dodge around a lot. Playing my guard I actually found myself blasting more water/fire fields than ever before with the hammer, but it made me notice how few other people actually take advantage of these.

Why would your boons fall off quickly? If you have 30 points in Alchemy, your Area Might stacks should last well over 25 seconds each.

If your group is not taking advantage of Combo fields then you’re just not playing with very good players. Good players will use Projectile or Whirl finishers in Light fields. Good players will use Blast finishers in Fire or Water fields. What separates a good Warrior from a great one is that he’ll not just pick up his Banner of Discipline, use #2, and drop it. He’ll pick it up, use #2, and then use #5 in a Combo field—preferably my Napalm.

JohnDied.3476:

With regards to condi-removal… I won’t bring up the fact that fumigate does zero damage (oops I just did), or that it’s a cone and not an aoe… or that it’s not instant like shouts. It’s just such a clunky skill with one use. When do you ever have so many conditions that an instant 2 condi-removing aoe shout cant take care of things, given that it also reliably gives useful boons? I mean, I can always cleanse my party with my toss elixirs, but it’s not as streamlined, nor is it reliable (I swear I never seem to get that kitten ed stability on the kitten ed harpie fractal).

So the “State of the Engineer” in PvE is dictated by laziness? Fumigate removes 5 conditions on allies. It has, with Fireforged Trigger, a 9.5 second cooldown. It’s not clunky.

Like your argument with Combo fields, why are you even entertaining bad playing in this conversation? It’s a skill we have—a skill that works efficiently at cleansing conditions while additionally stacking Vulnerability and Poison.

Like someone else’s response to the Bomb Kit’s Fire field, if you don’t use it that’s a choice you actively make—but the Engineer totally outclasses the Guardian in condition removal.

Deniara Devious.3948:

But a guardian doesn’t need fire fields to give 12 stacks of mights to its allies:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Empower
Besides giving 12 stacks of might it also does very good healing when combined with Altruistic healing if you have 5 allies near you.

Well, therein lies the rub. Empower only has its Might stacks last 10 seconds each. Area Might stacks from a Fire field last twice that. And because most Engineers have a lot of points in Alchemy and run with rune sets like Hoelbrak/Fire/Strength or Altruism, our Might stacks last significantly longer than Empower’s—because how many Guardians actually roll with more than 10 points in Virtues in PvE?

Deniara Devious.3948:

I would argue that using a skill like that is easier for most beginning players than using a combo fields. I am not claiming that engineer is a useless profession when it comes to pve or WvWvW, but it does have accessibility problems. Skill floor is clearly higher than e.g. playing a warrior, guardian or thief.

Yes, and? The Engineer is also a class that can group stack Regeneration, Might, and Fury, provide a projectile wall, a Fire field, Water field, Light field, several condition removal skills, and permanent Poison and Burn on top of moderate Bleed and Vulnerability stacking all in the same build.

The skill floor is certainly higher for an Engineer than it is a Guardian, but so is the skill ceiling.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Maintaining permanent poison with grenade kit alone would be pretty kitten hard as well. Yes, I know you can swap to pistol, bomb kit and flamethrower to achieve that 100% uptime in pve.

Well, that was what I meant. What I said was: traited properly, the kit, and the build that uses it in general, applies Poison, Bleed, Burn, and Vulnerability. Permanently.

Maybe it was poor word choice, but between Poison Grenade and Poison Dart Volley, you can sustain Poison no problem. Any Engineer can, actually, so long as they use the Elixir Gun too—or just have Hair Trigger traited. Poison Dart Volley then gives 10 seconds of Poison on an 8 second cooldown.

Engineer and Guardian are also my two most-played classes, and Engineer is alright as it is. However, I only have one wish for WvW: Do something to retaliation and ’nades. Engineers are pretty much unplayable in zergfests.

Engineer is your first choice for range dps – much more powerful then ele, necro, ranger, mesmer. We have awesome offensive support (blind, chill, cripple, immobilise, poison, vulnerability), decent group support and nice damage.

Good post – except the last part…tbh i must have missed the step when a “Why Engi is bad in pve” (which would lead to a “what needs improvement”) thread became a “Nerf other stuff”, but w/e. :p

Forestnator. What it comes down to is this, range dps is not necessary in dungeons (except for two instances off the top of my head, but warrs and guards can still get through those). The game rewards melee dps to the point that ranged just cannot compare. It’s why we have zerker warrs running around the first path of half the dungeons in this game. The rest can usually use the help of a support-tank than a glass cannon.

The engineer has better group support and damage than half of the classes of this game… guess which ones? the ranged ones. Mesmer I wouldn’t say we do better than or is better than us. Mesmer’s can do alot more damage than us, but it’s usually single target, and their support is unique to their class so we can’t exactly compare it.

At phin. I get what you’re saying mate, I do take advantage of every combo field my party puts down and it’s really nice to feel like you’re contributing by booning, but there’s a question of necessity. I used to be a healing bomber, which means the whole field+blast rotation. I’ve abused on heal runes with med kit to get party wide regen, or party wide fury and might. You know what I bet was happening when I was busy running around and booning up the party? I bet the local guard was sweating bullets because he was getting focused down due to his high armor value. You seem to forget why the AH is important, it’s not because of damage (you can make way more damaging guards) nor because of boons (which is also a type of guard) it’s because it can combine the aforementioned to keep himself and the party alive with self-heals. I bet the guard in the party thinks that he needs another tank, but not one with a flamethrower who would just run away the moment he felt the focused fire that the guard feels. I bet the guard thought he needed another tank that can boon, and damage and heal as much as he can. I bet he was thinking, mate I don’t need anymore boons, I have natural regen, constant protection and might every second. When an engi comes up to him with fumigate, I bet he rolls his eyes because his conditions would be removed in two more seconds and if they weren’t he would just use a utility skill to get rid of them while booning the party.

I’ve felt that on occasion. I think, mate all these extra might stacks are really great, but what I need is another tank, because I already have might stacks. I think mate, that water field we keep popping is really nice and keeps me alive for now, but what happens when it’s over and I have to take all this damage for the team without it? There’s a reason why fractals is full of jerks who ask for two guards min. It’s because in PvE you don’t need to think about condition damage or boons like in WvW. You just need two guards to lock the champ down (or cleave through all the trash) and keep him there so the rest of the party can see what it feels like to not go down once.

Does that mean that the engineer is bad? not exactly, it just means he isn’t as necessary as a guard or a warrior. If you have a lot of guards and warriors then the engineer takes a backseat to the mesmer due to it’s unique support. I agree with you phin that the engineer has a higher skill floor for a higher skill ceiling, but what the engineer provides in PvE with that skill ceiling is a lot of “nice to haves” but not a lot of necessities.

Imho, we have basically two problems as far as pve/dungeons go.
1)Control. We are good with that, but defiant stacks make such skills quite useless.
2)Conditions. We’re good with those, but conditions in pve aren’t comparable to direct damage.

Phineas Poe.3018:

tigirius.9014:

I do agree, PVE guards and warrs are way OP and needs to be brought down across the board.

They shouldn’t nerf Guardians. They should bring up weaker classes on level with them.

Either or, either way they need to do something right now it’s ridiculous.

Manuhell.2759:

Imho, we have basically two problems as far as pve/dungeons go.
1)Control. We are good with that, but defiant stacks make such skills quite useless.
2)Conditions. We’re good with those, but conditions in pve aren’t comparable to direct damage.

That too is a problem, and we don’t have specs that combine condition damage well with healing especially not on the engineer. If we trait too much into healing then we end up with only 1 real enhanced condi choice and that is overshadowed easily by every class, bleeds.

Forestnator.6298:

Engineer is your first choice for range dps – much more powerful then ele, necro, ranger, mesmer. We have awesome offensive support (blind, chill, cripple, immobilise, poison, vulnerability), decent group support and nice damage.

I dunno which game you’re playing but engineer is definitely not the first choice or better at ranged dps then ranger or warrior. when the grenades hit they do more damage but they are not consistant like the put-you-to-sleep-faceroll nature of rangers or rifle warriors. We are medium range only, we don’t even have a sniper option for our rifles much less a standard range on our pistols.

add to that all of the tools we use to actually increase damage output have been rendered useless like retal, vuln, might when we need to stack them to 25 and above just to make them work well and you’ve gotta problem in pve that no other class has to contend with.

It’s pretty obvious that a lot of classes need some of their utilities & traits sorted out in order to be wanted as part of an organized group.

Guardians, Mesmers & Warriors are always wanted, the other classes, not so much..

tigirius.9014:

Forestnator.6298:

Engineer is your first choice for range dps – much more powerful then ele, necro, ranger, mesmer. We have awesome offensive support (blind, chill, cripple, immobilise, poison, vulnerability), decent group support and nice damage.

I dunno which game you’re playing but engineer is definitely not the first choice or better at ranged dps then ranger or warrior. when the grenades hit they do more damage but they are not consistant like the put-you-to-sleep-faceroll nature of rangers or rifle warriors. We are medium range only, we don’t even have a sniper option for our rifles much less a standard range on our pistols.

add to that all of the tools we use to actually increase damage output have been rendered useless like retal, vuln, might when we need to stack them to 25 and above just to make them work well and you’ve gotta problem in pve that no other class has to contend with.

Grenades are amazing simply because they’re moderate damage from range, each grenade (if traited, which it should be) applies vuln for 5 seconds, which in turn boosts your damage, and your groups, and if you have just one warrior in your group, you can pretty much keep 25 stacks of vuln up 100% of the time.

JohnDied.3476:

I bet the guard in the party thinks that he needs another tank

If a Guardian thinks he needs another Guardian in the group then he is a terrible Guardian.

I have a Rampager geared Nade engi running 30/30/0/10/0 (Perma Swiftness and Vigor but no HGH and Might stacking) and I can assure you she heavily outdamages my Tanky Healy Guardian that runs Power/Heal/Tough gear.