Guild Wars 2

Kimbald.2697:

MonMalthias.4763:

• Low Health Response System should instead apply Protection for 3-5 seconds if the Engineer is struck below 25% health. This would prolong our death against Power damage. Internal cooldown could be anywhere from 45-60 seconds.
• Low Health Response System instead cleanses 1-2 conditions at 25% health. I like this change better because Inventions is the Turret trait line, and as we all know, Turret builds have pretty poor condition mitigation. With Turrets as they are, every little bit helps. Internal cooldown could be anywhere from 45-60 seconds.

Either of these could work very well.
The condition removal is probably best given it’s already the high toughness trait line.
But I could live with a protection proc, that would be pretty awesome actually.

Condition removal has been a sore spot for Engineers ever since the Kit Refinement nerf also removed 2 Condition cleanses from FT and EG. But Turret Engineers had to struggle with a 60 second CD Condition cleanse that took 10 seconds to activate, and only cleansed 2 conditions anyway; until recently. It completely turned me off Turrets and honestly I still have a hard time fitting them into builds as a result.

I also agree with your assessment that some traits appear poorly designed, with the worst offender at current being Kit Refinement. But I’ll save that for until I get to the Tools line.

Moving on to the Major Traits of the Inventions line:
I actually have fewer criticisms of the Inventions trait line than what would be expected, but that is because some traits here are actually worth taking; just that they are, as you put it Kimbald, “not good enough”. My beefs are primarily with Metal Plating, Stabilized Armour, Power Shoes, Autotool Installation and Rifled Turret Barrels. You will note that I actually dislike even more traits than my assessment of the Explosives trait line, but that is because Turrets and Turret traits are so awful they deserve mention.

I’ll start with Inventions III – Metal Plating.
There is a saying that goes, “You can’t polish a [piece of faecal matter]” and if there is a trait that encapsulates this in GW2’s trait system, it is this one. Well, aside from Necromancer traits. But that would be in a different forum.
Metal Plating reduces damage dealt to Turrets by 30%. It would at first seem like a solid trait to take in a Turret build, until you look at the HPs of Turrets.
Thumper Turret: 11950 (x1.3 = 15535)
Flame Turret: 8960 (x1.3 = 11648 EHP)
Rifle Turret: 7470 (x1.3 = 9711 EHP)
Net Turret: 7470 (x1.3 = 9711 EHP)
Rocket Turret: 7470 (x1.3 = 9711 EHP)
Healing Turret: 5980 (x1.3 = 7774 EHP)

Please note that this is after the Turret Buffs of March and April. Turrets have no player scaling of Toughness or Vitality and have no inherent Power damage reduction through Toughness themselves. I would bring up Ranger Pets, but the mere mention of Bear pets having 26k Health should be sufficient, I think. As it stands, Turrets even with Metal Plating will still die easily to 1 AOE spell; unless you’re Grackleflint.

Proposed Changes

• Honestly, Arenanet should simply rework Turrets to be entirely disposable if they’re going to continue to make them lack player scaling, or even assign them Vitality or Toughness values. Make the Cooldown of turrets begin to tick down when they are placed, then make them self-destruct at the end of the CD, ready to be placed again.

• Metal Plating would therefore require little change. I would still recommend Anet actually assign them proper Vitality and Toughness values like Ranger pets, however. The mechanic of Metal Plating would then actually be useful because there is now a Toughness value to assign a multiplier to.

• Metal Plating should then be consolidated with Autotool Installation to reduce Trait bloat. A full Turret build requires 60 (!!!) points of investment with little return. Consolidation would bring back some Trait flexibility on par with other builds.

• If everything about Turrets is to be left in its current state, then Metal Plating should then instead contribute: 25% of the Player’s Effective HP (i.e. after Toughness and Vitality modifiers) to the total HP of the turret. Turret Engineers should be rocking around ~25-30% damage reduction already if they have 30 points in Inventions. This change would therefore contribute extra Vitality to Turrets, which is sorely needed.

The next Trait that merits discussion is Inventions IV – Stabilised Armour.
The mechanic is “You take 5% less damage if your Endurance is Full”.

This trait would have merit if we were actually playing a game where Dodging wasn’t actually so important for survival. But we are not. Every aspect of the game from PVP to WVW to PVE is predicated on timely dodging to avoid damage. To then add a trait that discourages that for a mere 5% return on damage reduction is simply absurd.

To get an idea of simply how silly the trait is, consider a boss fight, any boss fight, in PVE that features Red Circles™. With the number of One Shot Red Circles™ in the game, now think about adding 5% EHP to eating Lupicus burst in Arah or Cave Troll Shockwave in AC to the face.

Will 5% EHP actually save you?
The answer is unequivocally no. The same goes for PVP/WVW. Eating an Immobilise, or a Stun, or a Launch to the face that is then followed up by a repeatable burst that 100%s you or forces you to burn utilities is far, far inferior to simply Dodging the burst in the first place. Dodges are every 10 seconds, 5 if you run Vigor. Utilities are 30+ seconds.

There is simply far too much opportunity cost giving up dodging for a mere 5% damage reduction when dodging can avoid 100% of a burst.

Proposed Changes

• It’s not often that I advocate 25% health procs for Engineers because most of them are actually pretty terrible for Engineer and do little to enhance your survival. But I believe that one is in order for Stabilised Armour.
  New Mechanic – Engineer gains 5 seconds of Stability at 25% health.
  This change would finally bring non RNG Stability back to Engineers, even if it is at 25% health. It would also offer an actually competitive choice versus Protective Shield or Cloaking Device. I can see certain Bunker Builds coming back with Stability – Elixir Gun in particular for the Sustain Bunker.

• Instead of making not dodging the mechanic for Stabilised Armour, why not make Dodge part of it?
  New Mechanic – Gain Protection for 3 seconds when your Endurance reaches 0%. 20 second cooldown
  This change would be a secondary “oh kitten” trait to take for Engineers. It also takes up a Major trait slot. Compared to the 2 seconds of Protection on Rangers on Dodge in a Minor trait slot that has no ICD, I feel that this could be a viable alternative to the current state of affairs.

Penguin.5197:

When I think of bad traits I think of always prepared. Realistically, dropping junk on the floor is pointless. I know they tried to patch it with duct tape and give it a 25% boost but that doesnt really help much on throw junk which is on the condition damage side. Its like trying to give bonus power damage to pistols. It does work better on booby trap of you can ever get it to go off. I think best fix is to just cut the part where you throw junk on the ground and just make it a 50% dmg increase instead.The way it is right now it cant decide what it is so it ends up doing nothing at all.

What’s even more confusing is why do players still run with this trait. I still see discarded flamethrowers and elixir guns scattered everywhere after every world boss event. What is the point? No one’s going to pick them up anyways…

welcome.2710:

My suggestion (just some ideas, not complaining on the balance):

Leg Mods: No more backpedal penalty.
Armor Mods: Every 8 hit taken the 9’ is blocked.
Packaged simulator: You cannot take you medkit from the ground. Every med kit you drop you are healed for the half amount that med kit will heal.
Speedy Gadgets: 20% recharge and breakstun.

Just make the last trait line more cooler. what should be.
I’m agree with the 5’ and 15’ of the explosive are kind of weird but at 10’ and 20’ you can take really big traits so for me is not a big deal.

Edit:Actually i like evasive powder keg in pvp for the ability to take off blind

I had always hated traits that simply provide +\- to damage or damage reduction. I wish each trait would provide a more unique and innovative change across all professions. I love your ideas and agree completely. Make playing each build feel unique through gameplay not through numerical differences. (My opinion)

Manuhell.2759:

nakoda.4213:

this is incorrect.

Protective Shield and Protection Injection, combined with at least 20 points in alchemy, provides nearly permanent protection, whenever you need it most.

only guardians get more protection than we do.

It works just in an ideal case.
That is, if you get disabled constantly, cause your calculations are based on a rather frequent activation of Protection Injection – basically every 5 seconds . If that happens, even if you’ve got protection, you aren’t actually doing much anyway.
Only our other source of protection is elixir H/toss elixir H, and it does it randomly.
So, despite what do you say, we’ve really got no reliable source of protection. And neither one we can actually activate when we want to.

right the only reliable source I’ve ever used is the runeset that gives protection when you’re hit by something and increases it’s duration. That’s it.

Junk traits I’ve seen have been the ones that increase damage by only 5% if you’re standing on your big toe on the left foot holding a popsickle in one hand and a dandylion in the other doing the chacha when the moon is blue.

Those have got to be absorbed into other traits or improved alround. I see them improved on other classes like the ranger that combines traits like these with enhanced abilities to a skill why not on the engineer.

And one of the major setbacks for our class lies in the Speedy Kits trait seriously they need to give us some other means of increasing our speed while in and out of combat like the signets work on the ranger and thief so we can finally and at long last not have to A: spec into that trait just to move around freely and B: use kits constantly just to move around in the game space because that’s the worst design flaw ever. It’s severely limiting our builds, we could be choosing something more important more damaging or gamechanging in our combat builds if we didn’t have to worry about movement all the time.