Guild Wars 2

Play another class: Warriors with buffing banners and shouts, Guardians with AoE defenses and shouts, Mesmers with with AoE pulls, condition/boon removal, party swiftness, and then play an Engineer. What is missing?

Utility– the first thing that comes to my mind with an Engineer class, and we have almost none. Instead, how do Engineers contribute to a party? Stand in the back; throw grenades. We could be so much more.

Versatility could mean more than random effects from elixirs. We could be the swiss army knife that requires skill to achieve cohesion. Instead of, say, a Guardian with all their defenses or a Thief with all of their stealth, our skills could allow us have a little bit of everything— a true jack-of-all-trades.

Take Inventions, for example. The Guardian’s reflect wall could’ve been the Engie’s force-field. The Mesmer’s portal could’ve been the Engie’s teleporter. The Inventions line could’ve been exactly that— devices useful for groups, providing a wide variety of utility, instead of one deployable thing with different types of ammo.

Rather than the Engie as misnomer for an artillery class, explosives could’ve been one part of a much larger utility. Perhaps a single set with a grenade, a mine, a bomb, a little bit of everything that doesn’t relegate you to one position on the field, but instead requires you to traverse all— true versatility and utility.

Engie weapons could’ve consisted of more than guns. What about a hammer? The entire Toolkit could’ve been rolled into a hammer packed with gadgets (think Inspector Gadget’s hat or King Dedede’s mallet). With at least some ability to melee, Engineer would move throughout the battlefield as most other classes do.

I really wanted to put a commander flag on my Engie, but in its current iteration there’s no point. A WvW Engie can either run mostly alone, dueling with condition pistols and flipping camps, or hang at the back of a zerg, tossing grenades. What should’ve been one of the most enabling classes is instead one of the most selfish. And for this reason, I’m shelving my most beloved character in wait for improvements.

I see your point.
But for me it doesnt seem THAT bad. I feel very versatile.

For melee (kinda) I pack the tool wrench. Elixir X can add some fun, too.
For group buffing (and zerging withouth grenades) I’m using the elixir gun, throwing toolbelt-elixirs like crazy. I love that elixir gun and its Combo Field. You can combine that with a variant of the dual-pistol-condition-build and be both, groupbuffer and duelist, at the same time. No specialist, true. But you were asking for a jack-of-all-trades anyway :P

Your hammer would be the Personal Battering Ram. Or the gadgets in general. combine them with the rifle (and/or flamethrower/elixirgun) and you get some serious mobility).

I really don’t want to say that I am as experienced as you are or as dedicated as you were. I just don’t feel so useless as you seem to feel.

I’ve never felt that I have no utility. I have plenty of knockbacks, slows & cripples. I have tons of condition damage. I have almost nothing but aoe. I have party buffing elixirs and turrets and med kits. I can fight melee with toolkit or midrange with my guns. I can build for survivability, conditions, or raw power.

I don’t want my entire repertoire of skills to be gadgety knock-offs of every other class. I want originality and that’s what I got. A flamethrower, turrets, elixir gun, a bag of tools, and med kits.

I am actually happy with the engineer, though between 60 and 80 I had a depression and created a Necro (whoa! That damage!)… but after hitting 80 I am happy to see I can really survive a lot of kitten with little effort (well, I am used to the class… so little effort to me) and actually heal up random people I meet in Orr while they fall into traps of mass pulling (yes, I am referring to greatsword users making muscles on me just to realize I am slower, but last longer :P )
I have altism and here and there play alts, but always come back to the Engi. So much stuff to play around with.

I’m with the OP on this one. I love playing classes that are a “jack-of-all-trades” but the way traits and kits are set up I feel I have to specialize too deep into one kit in order to bring anything remotely effective to the group. I don’t mind specializing but not when it kills my biggest selling point as an Engineer, Versatility.

Turrets are still wildly underpowered as they don’t last long enough to contribute properly in almost any scenario. They also don’t fully match ANet’s description of turrets and I quote

Turrets
Engineers can also deploy turrets, immobile devices that help defend and control an area. For example, engineers can plant thumper turrets to cause damage to all foes in the area, or a healing turret that regenerates the health of nearby allies. Engineers can pack up and move turrets at will, and only one of each type can exist at a time.

This gives me the impression that if I’m to use turrets, I’d be able to dominate a small area and if I choose to pack up and move away, I can do so whenever I please. The only thing that should hamper me is the setup time.

If they had made the cooldown of turrets drop down to 5 seconds if you pick them up, while having normal cooldowns if you choose to blow them up, it would have been much better. They also need to be much tougher than they currently are. Having an NPC or Boss use 1 AOE ability to take them down is pretty silly given that they’re immobile.

well, I see where your going with it and i like it. Kinda like how the TF2 engineer aids the battle through his utility via teleporter, ammo/healing thingamabob and turrets.

If you play new shooter mmo firefall their engineer is more like what you described and incredibly fun. Actually every game/mmo that put in an engineer was funner than this one….not to say i hate it, but if we’re comparing, this is probably the first one i felt dissapointed in after creating. They went with their own idea of an engineer (which i think was incomplete) luckily, you can toss any old crap together and as long as something about it feels useful in a group…or feels fun even if it sucks, you’ll make the masses happy. Hell, people liked the chanter in Aion, literally only had 3 buttons on your bar….to me that’s boring, but they were powerful..and that was enough for most people.