Guild Wars 2

1. Automated Response
This is either useless or broken. Very good example on how to not design traits.

2. Napalm Specialist
We have enough burning already to never take this as a GM in this line. Maybe would work as secondary effect with something else.

3. Grenadier
Incredible strong but again a good example for bad design. Nobody ever runs grenades without it. The efficiency gap is just huge (+50%) so it is basically limiting build variety making every grenade build must have 30 power.

4. Armor Mods
While the effect itself is not random I wonder why we got this here. This has nearly 0 interaction with anything else engineer has (beside maybe frustrating the enemy to death together with blinds). Also it basically has the same niche as Adrenal Implants.

5. Adrenal Implants
This is basically poor mans Vigor (which we get as adept trait with kit swapping). Very random to have this that deep into tools but well, allows GC builds to dodge more I guess.

6. Autodefense Bomb Dispenser
While smokebomb is good the cooldown is still a bit too high. Also will never see the light due to Grenadier.

7. Modified Ammunition
This atleast has a place when fighting the lord in stonemist castle or some huge PvE/dungeon mobs. Beside that just a kittenty +%dmg trait which most classes have as adept trait.

8. Rifled Turret Barrels
Maybe if turrets ever would be relevant.

9. Elixir-Infused Bombs
Has a place in some bunker/pve dungeon builds.

10. HGH
A nice trait that unfortunately lost viability since every engi build has to run atleast 2 kits.

Dojo.1867:

1. Automated Response
This is either useless or broken. Very good example on how to not design traits.

+ I am assuming you feel this because it seems overpowered. Not sure it really is. It doesn’t really kick in at 25% because the “magic hit” that gets you under 25% probably gets you quite a bit under 25%. At that point you are pretty easy to burn with the direct damage component of most skills (even if the opponent took conditions). It more seems to help me survive splash AE damage than a 1v1. Powerful yes but not as much so as it reads +

2. Napalm Specialist
We have enough burning already to never take this as a GM in this line. Maybe would work as secondary effect with something else.

+ I don’t know. I think there is too little reason to go to 30 in firearms BUT if you did, Napalm wouldn’t be a bad trait. We often don’t have much burning (sometimes only the bomb) and it can give an extra tick. Not sure it really is poorly designed versus situational.+

3. Grenadier
Incredible strong but again a good example for bad design. Nobody ever runs grenades without it. The efficiency gap is just huge (+50%) so it is basically limiting build variety making every grenade build must have 30 power.

+ Absolutely. You have range. You have extra damage 50%. Some of that needs to go on the grenade baseline OR it is OP. One or the other. Having said that, I have been known to run grenades without grenadier when I want an extra set of conditions. Think a second set of bombs. Didn’t have the points for grenadier but the grenades were useful for the blind, chill etc. +
4. Armor Mods
While the effect itself is not random I wonder why we got this here. This has nearly 0 interaction with anything else engineer has (beside maybe frustrating the enemy to death together with blinds). Also it basically has the same niche as Adrenal Implants.

Yep. Aegis is a bit weird for the engineer. And blocking one attack every 15 seconds would be far more useful if I had any control over which attack that would be for a GM trait

5. Adrenal Implants
This is basically poor mans Vigor (which we get as adept trait with kit swapping). Very random to have this that deep into tools but well, allows GC builds to dodge more I guess.

Now this one I just disagree with. It is in an odd line for getting used but the idea of 50% endurance regeneration gives you quite a bit of extra dodging. Remember, you don’t have perma vigor so this improves the “downtime”. Take them together and it is quite impressive (just who wants 30pts in tools right now

6. Autodefense Bomb Dispenser
While smokebomb is good the cooldown is still a bit too high. Also will never see the light due to Grenadier.

+Pretty powerful effect which is situational. I agree that grenadier is quite a bit “must have” if taking grenades but this is exactly the type of GM that is well designed. In outnumbered fights in roaming this is great. +

7. Modified Ammunition
This atleast has a place when fighting the lord in stonemist castle or some huge PvE/dungeon mobs. Beside that just a kittenty +%dmg trait which most classes have as adept trait.

Amazing trait. There are 12 conditions. An engineer has access to 11 (torment on sigil). The ability to lay down a series of different conditions is a specialty of an engineer. You can get a MUCH higher damage increase than a traditional adapt trait. BUT, your opponent can wipe it forcing you to reapply etc. Well done

8. Rifled Turret Barrels
Maybe if turrets ever would be relevant.

The trait is designed well enough. The turrets are lacking.

9. Elixir-Infused Bombs
Has a place in some bunker/pve dungeon builds.

This is arguably over powered. You can create a great group healer with this skill. One problem with healing abilities in general is the cap on how many they affect. With EIB, you just run around with all your great passive regens and heal over times and drop bombs in different spots quickly healing large numbers of players. Probably too effective

10. HGH
A nice trait that unfortunately lost viability since every engi build has to run atleast 2 kits.

Plenty of ways to keep a HGH build effective. You don’t need to run 3 elixirs to get its value either. Even if you ran only one elixir and could get only 4 stacks of might for 20 seconds (tool belt included) that is for 20 seconds and a well designed trait.

I disagree with the only two things that I read (because they grabbed my attention:) Elixir Builds can be done with 1 Kit-I’m running a Build where I can maintain 15-20 Stacks of might and quite a huge amount of Conditions-WITHOUT THE ’NADE KIT.

Rifles Turret Barrels are good for when you place your Rifle&Rocket Turrets in hard-to-reach places like on ledges. You can pretty much focus on keeping you and your teammates alive whilst your Turrets are out with Rifled Barrels, allowing nice Ranged DPS on Targets when you might be outnumbered-this skill alone has saved me many times…

I don’t get it. Some of the traits you claim as useless or not functional, work so well they are generally considered borderline OP. Yet you do not even list some traits that do not even function. Yet others are great traits that function well. Your list is baffling to me.

Which one is borderline OP? Everyone is saying that some traits are borderline OP – but which one in your opinnion are OP? I would add crazy cooldowns to some traits making them utterly useless. Stabilized armor should also have knockback and knockdown + stuned. The list is great!

i do agree with some grandmaster traits being poorly designed, but i feel like the op has marginalized his own point by turning his post into more or less complaining about op or up traits.

take grenadier. does it define your build? yes. if you wanna use grenades, you take grenadier. if you dont take grenadier, you dont take grenades. it misses its goal because its overcentralizing, not because it doesnt define your build, but because the entire grenade kit is so much better with the trait than without that players feel like using grenades without grenadier is a trap.

look at adrenal implants. this is the opposite of grenadier. it is neither unique nor strong enough to justify its use. either energy sigil or vigor-on-swiftness replace its niche, and for 20 or 30 less trait points. energy sigil alone is equivalent to perma vigor, and the vigor trait gives 55% vigor uptime with no other boon duration… both of which are twice as fast at recovery as adrenal implants.

rifled turret barrels. a 3rd completely different issue: its a waste of a trait until turrets are improved. maybe it isnt so poorly designed, maybe its fine. maybe its a good enough buff to turrets that its build defining. but its a trap as long as turrets have huge opportunity cost and ineffective ai.

that other explosives trait that isnt grenadier. really, a smoke bomb with a huge icd? build defining? no. somewhat similar issue as adrenal implants, but its definitely its own situation. its simply outclassed as a trait. and its outclassed because its a beneficial effect that your opponent controls. and you have to ask yourself, am i gonna be able to take advantage of this on my terms when it only procs on the enemy’s terms?

i’m not sure if these traits are poorly designed. some of them might affect abilities that are poorly designed while others are just ignored in favor of other, better traits. automated response is poorly designed though. anet should redesign all these condition immunity traits and abilities.

Couple of things to keep in mind here insane:
-I believe infused precision is being nerfed in line with invigorating speed – at least I think I read that somewhere in the profession balance forum. So 10 seconds of swiftness when you crit, 10 second ICD.
-50% uptime on vigor is about the same endurance recovery over time as adrenal implant
-adrenal implant has no conditions for improving endurance recovery – it’s always on. This can be more valuable than some give it credit for.

With the upcoming completion of nerfs to vigor generation across classes, adrenal implant seems a reasonable trait choice in any case. Then again I’ve been running 30/10/0/0/30 for an awfully long time so I’m probably biased.

maciora.9542:

Which one is borderline OP? Everyone is saying that some traits are borderline OP – but which one in your opinnion are OP? I would add crazy cooldowns to some traits making them utterly useless. Stabilized armor should also have knockback and knockdown + stuned. The list is great!

I was referring more specifically to Automated Response and the suggestion that it was useless. Honestly, this truly struck me as odd, as I cannot even imagine how anyone can consider it useless. There are many many threads demanding it get nerfed because it is, in fact, so useful.

icewyrm.5038:

Couple of things to keep in mind here insane:
-I believe infused precision is being nerfed in line with invigorating speed – at least I think I read that somewhere in the profession balance forum. So 10 seconds of swiftness when you crit, 10 second ICD.
-50% uptime on vigor is about the same endurance recovery over time as adrenal implant
-adrenal implant has no conditions for improving endurance recovery – it’s always on. This can be more valuable than some give it credit for.

With the upcoming completion of nerfs to vigor generation across classes, adrenal implant seems a reasonable trait choice in any case. Then again I’ve been running 30/10/0/0/30 for an awfully long time so I’m probably biased.

im awaiting an energy sigil nerf tbh

coglin.1867:

I don’t get it. Some of the traits you claim as useless or not functional, work so well they are generally considered borderline OP. Yet you do not even list some traits that do not even function. Yet others are great traits that function well. Your list is baffling to me.

I list every single grandmaster trait engi has.

The ones at the bottom of the list are okay (because people say HGH still works, yes that is why it is at the bottom of the “bad design list”).

Also you don’t get when AR is useless? Obviously when you are fighting a power build. This is why I called it “either useless or broken”.

I can appreciate where you are coming from, but just because something has a counter does not make it useless. Even power builds have chills, cripples, and immobilizes, all of which are conditions.

1) The effect of grenadier has to stay, although I I understand it is a very powerful trait (maybe even OP). The thing is other classes have such overpowered GM too (just think about what ele’s got in the exact same slot). On the over hand it is really a poor decision to force anyone who wants to run grenade kit to invest 30pt into power.

Hower, I don’t think the grenade kit is able to compete with other kits or regular weapon skills if there weren’t at least 40% bonus damage around for it. Untraited grenades just don’t hit hard enough (if they even hit in pvp/wvw). Same goes for the 1500 range. that range comes with an insane traveltime for the projectiles and most of the time I need 1500 range so I can lead a my target in ~1000 range if it’s running straight away.
So yea, split it into a Gm and some other trait but don’t take away from the effects in general.

2) RTB awesome trait (or let’s say my kind of trait) but what does it do in that trait line? Is there even a possible build which would utilize it – given turrets were great and not bugged?

The traitline holds healpower/toughness, healing traits and power. That leads to a support / semi heal build. Turrets don’t scale with power anyway and elixirs or elixir gun are def the way to go for a support build, so RTB can obviously suck it. Even if I would still prefer turrets for support (maybe as tanks), infused bombs is a way better support trait. It would be stupid to pass on it so my turret tanks can deal 15% more damage (like 100 per hit?).

They could easy just make untraited grenade kit say “throw 2 or 3 grenades”. Would be an example of when RNG would not be toxic. And if you don’t want any RNG you could still go for the trait which makes it 3 all the time.

It really wouldn’t be hard to design stuff like that better, they just don’t care enough about class skills (pvp).

Dojo.1867:

1. Automated Response
This is either useless or broken. Very good example on how to not design traits.

2. Napalm Specialist
We have enough burning already to never take this as a GM in this line. Maybe would work as secondary effect with something else.

3. Grenadier
Incredible strong but again a good example for bad design. Nobody ever runs grenades without it. The efficiency gap is just huge (+50%) so it is basically limiting build variety making every grenade build must have 30 power.

4. Armor Mods
While the effect itself is not random I wonder why we got this here. This has nearly 0 interaction with anything else engineer has (beside maybe frustrating the enemy to death together with blinds). Also it basically has the same niche as Adrenal Implants.

5. Adrenal Implants
This is basically poor mans Vigor (which we get as adept trait with kit swapping). Very random to have this that deep into tools but well, allows GC builds to dodge more I guess.

6. Autodefense Bomb Dispenser
While smokebomb is good the cooldown is still a bit too high. Also will never see the light due to Grenadier.

7. Modified Ammunition
This atleast has a place when fighting the lord in stonemist castle or some huge PvE/dungeon mobs. Beside that just a kittenty +%dmg trait which most classes have as adept trait.

8. Rifled Turret Barrels
Maybe if turrets ever would be relevant.

9. Elixir-Infused Bombs
Has a place in some bunker/pve dungeon builds.

10. HGH
A nice trait that unfortunately lost viability since every engi build has to run atleast 2 kits.

i agree with some being flat out stupid

1.automated response: activation is just too low at 25% hp an engineer is a mere 1-2 hits away from death or about to die to previous conditions
25% hp for an engineer is around 4000 hp

2.napalm specialist: why is it even a grandmaster why would non pistol users even use it now that incendiary power got kicket up a tier i mean it would be cool if it gave something like 10-20% burn damage or something besides the duration

3.Grenadier:i think its actually fine because it grants 50% damage and 300 range

4.Armor mods:its just extremely lack luster the whole reason aegis is effective on guardian to begin with is because it is passively up negating the first hit they would take what good is aegis gonna do if the hit before aegis activates was a stun or knockdown

5.Adrenal implants i dont even know how to feel about this one why is it a grandmaster mayor trait for us when others have it as signets or simply as Adept Minor traits

6.auto defense bomb: this trait its pretty obvious what happened developpers dint had any idea but had to fill every class with 2 grandmaster traits so they slapped whatever they found

7.Modified ammunition:its actually good for pve however being a grandmaster makes it worthless

8.Riflet turret barrels:would be great if metal plating and turret regen were a single trait

9.Elixir infused Bombs:needs a teeny bit better healing scaling i think
the only way to make it even somewhat effective is by going Full healing power and by full i mean over 1600 healing power so you get around 350 heal per bomb

10. Hgh: its still somewhat viable