Guild Wars 2

I’m not joking, go to the elementalist forums and look up threads dated before the current series of patches and you will see threads pertaining to the same exact level of of upsetness as engineers currently face.

Arguments between Lrn 2 Attune players and Arcane Elitest who beg Arena to make 90% of the arcane buffs standard to the elementalist(and change the tree) because Arcane is a build required to play anything(according to them). Similar pains of trait maximizing(Like our Nades requirement) in bunker specs for PVP due to the Rice Paper Canon effect of the class as well as pretty much valid summaries of how Fire and Lighting Traitline need a redesign due to lack of focus on any particular damage type or damage itself. In fact I evens saw a new thread arguing d/d isn’t OP and it’s all they have in which it’s nerf would send them down to the Ranger and Necro level that’s just above us.

Given two patches have past and things were probobally buffed, I see that something changed in ele’s that made them far more viable for PVE and PVP but I have to see what it is.

I assure you though, even if you’re right and they are a very good class at the moment, only a few months ago they were worse off then the nade engi.

Arcane is pretty much required for elem. it is a design flaw as well. they do have something to complain about.
Conjures are still weak even with stat addition.

Not really a relevant issue though. everyone has problems of one kind.
being viable/strong because of a single or select OP moves isn’t really any better, then not being viable. Either way, it needs attention.

Personally?

Gnomoria, path of exile, LoL,
war, theif alts…

Hey, beauty of GW2, is you don’t have to feel so chained to the game. you aren’t paying a sub. want to take a break? do it.

Not to degrade the topic even further into an elemental thread on an engineer forum, but how far in arcane is generally required at this point? Last time I played my ele was a very bunker d/d rig with 30 earth 30 water and 10 arcane and I had very little issues with attune swap, which is apparently the main reason for going deep arcane.

Creld.8702:

Just hit 80 on my little engy, first character maxed for me. I feel like I do passably well, running a flamethrower and elixirs, 10/30/0/30/0. Only problems come up when I need to break something that isn’t moving. You know, like a cart. Because flamethrowers are naturally inept at hitting carts. Or something.

Started playing my guardian a bit again, and it’s a world apart. Its like, I don’t need to run in circles while praying to the divines and chugging more purple potion than a gamer does do? How does that work?

Still, the style of the engineer keeps me hooked, it may not be as powerful as most other classes right now, but there’s a certain satisfaction that comes from burning a half dozen enemies to a crisp while knowing if they catch you, you die.

Also, elixir x. Because when you’re 1v1ing a noob guardian, nothing is funnier than seeing a 3 foot tall asura punching the crudnebbits out of a norn. Skilled guardies, not so much.

Flame throwers have a 75% miss rate due to a bug. If you are using them in dungeons, you’re kind of a jerk. Bomb kit is much more useful. Any other kit is. The spam-ability of blast combo finishers are the only good thing (compared to other professions) engineers can bring to a dungeon team ATM.

If you don’t want to be a fifth wheel as Isslair said, don’t bring flamethrower to anything ever. I love my engineer but if I were leading a group (in any game mode) and the engineer wanted to use flamethrower I would either convince them to switch to a different kit or kick them from the group. I’m not so mean I won’t take engineers, but they have to make an effort to work around their professions bugs. That is the minimum skill level required to play them (or any profession really).

Bard.7215:

so Elementalists are no longer the worst class? Again I ironically quit leveling mine for my engineer after realizing they can’t do pvp without a bunker and all these other bad things about the class that were ranted about in the forums. Did they get uber buffed? I thought the fire and lighting tree were still poorly designed and that they need focus on arcane just to function?(Last time I played)

Elementalists have some serious survivability issues at low levels. You will eat a lot of dirt. They also suffered from horrible downed skills and are still a little weak on the damage side. People have learned how to play them better now, so there’s less concern about how much they die at lower levels. ANet also did a lot to fix their downed state. And now they’ve said that they’re going to take a look at their damage and probably beef it up some (while reducing AoE at some point).

Almost all professions need to have a rework of their traits in my opinion (I don’t think ANet implemented them very well). Elementalist still needs to trait deep into arcane. Even classes with fairly well built trait lines need work done to them though so everybody is in the same boat.

Elementalists have an important role in every part of the meta, dungeons, PvP and WvW. What makes the elementalist so useful is attunement swapping. They can do a lot of things in every build plus they can specialize into bunker, AoE, DD, SD or whatever.

They along with necromancers, guardians, thiefs and mesmers are pretty much always wanted. These are all my opinions/observation though. While I’m sure I have the gist of it, I may not be entirely correct in every statement (I know I’m the only person on these forums that doesn’t know everything right?). But you get a general idea.

The only professions I would caution people against are ranger and engineer. Ranger is a mixed bag, some great stuff, some terrible but engineer is in a really sad state. It just brings nothing to the table that somebody else doesn’t do better and they can’t do them all at once like the elementalist, they have to trait to perform a role and are still inferior once they do since they have so many bugs.

Zonzai.2341:

Flame throwers have a 75% miss rate due to a bug. If you are using them in dungeons, you’re kind of a jerk. Bomb kit is much more useful. Any other kit is. The spam-ability of blast combo finishers are the only good thing (compared to other professions) engineers can bring to a dungeon team ATM.

If you don’t want to be a fifth wheel as Isslair said, don’t bring flamethrower to anything ever. I love my engineer but if I were leading a group (in any game mode) and the engineer wanted to use flamethrower I would either convince them to switch to a different kit or kick them from the group. I’m not so mean I won’t take engineers, but they have to make an effort to work around their professions bugs. That is the minimum skill level required to play them (or any profession really).

I use my flamethrower build for just about everything I do now, including dungeons. I don’t experience anywhere near 75% miss rate. I am way too survivable and do way too much damage using this build to put it away because of another player’s personal downfalls with the kit.

A suggestion for those who’re having major issues with constant misses. Turn off “target on skill” and use your camera direction to point the flames of destruction. It isn’t hard once you get used to it and it solves ALL of these “miss” issues.

My Eng was the first to lv 80, and is still my #1 go-to for soloing in any PvE map, or grabbing some PvP trophies [I don’t WvW at the moment). When it comes to running dungeons though, I log into my Ele faster than you can say “nerfed”. I have yet to meet an Eng that can act as a decent tank (I’m calling anyone a liar, I’m just saying I personally haven’t met you yet). I love using my grenades underwater to blow the kitten out of the risen, but despite tinkering with my build and trying some of the “recommended” builds, I find that the Eng just falls short in 4 major dungeon capacities:
1) being able to remove conditions (I stand corrected: with a heavy investment in alchemy/elixer skills, this can be rectified)
2) not being a 1-hit wonder to most bosses
3) being able to destroy environmental targets (i.e. AC’s burrows)
4) Resurection ability – (i.e. if an ele goes down, they can mistform themselves, escaping further damage for a few seconds, and boogie back towards their group improving chances of a resurrection. A mesmer can teleport backwards as well, and leave a clone behind to be chewed upon. An Engineer? We have a weaka** attack, and the ability to pull an enemy closer to us so they can kill us faster. Needless to say, against any kind of boss, neither the harpoon skill nor the explosion power cause any kind of interruption or knockdown).

It’s been my theory for a while that certain classes are simply better in certain situations. Is there anyone that would argue that a Mesmer’s skills are better suited to PvP than dungeons? Or that Guardians rule the dungeon but are rather tedious to use for map completion? It’s not that any of them are unplayable (except for my Eng in Twilight Arbor… that was truly a horrible experience), just that not all classes can shine in all situations.

Like Forty Seven Ninjas.6982:

I use my flamethrower build for just about everything I do now, including dungeons. I don’t experience anywhere near 75% miss rate. I am way too survivable and do way too much damage using this build to put it away because of another player’s personal downfalls with the kit.

You misunderstand, I’m not basing this on my “personal experience.” It’s a confirmed bug that has nothing to do with targetting. Somebody did some tests and found out the miss rate was about 75%. Couldn’t find the exact post for that though.

From the bug list stickied in this section…

*Flamethrower’s Flame Jet and Elixir Gun’s Fumigate will often miss targets and destructible objects (when the player and its target are at even slightly different elevations). It also appears to be affected by camera angle.
*Flamethrower’s Flame Blast will often be obstructed after using Air Blast and will not explode when hitting the environment.
*Flamethrower’s Flame Jet will often miss targets and destructible objects (when the player and its target are at even slightly different elevations). It also appears to be affected by camera angle.

-EDIT- Read the whole engineer bug list. It’s four full posts long.

Bard.7215:

I’m not joking, go to the elementalist forums and look up threads dated before the current series of patches and you will see threads pertaining to the same exact level of of upsetness as engineers currently face.

Arguments between Lrn 2 Attune players and Arcane Elitest who beg Arena to make 90% of the arcane buffs standard to the elementalist(and change the tree) because Arcane is a build required to play anything(according to them). Similar pains of trait maximizing(Like our Nades requirement) in bunker specs for PVP due to the Rice Paper Canon effect of the class as well as pretty much valid summaries of how Fire and Lighting Traitline need a redesign due to lack of focus on any particular damage type or damage itself. In fact I evens saw a new thread arguing d/d isn’t OP and it’s all they have in which it’s nerf would send them down to the Ranger and Necro level that’s just above us.

Given two patches have past and things were probobally buffed, I see that something changed in ele’s that made them far more viable for PVE and PVP but I have to see what it is.

I assure you though, even if you’re right and they are a very good class at the moment, only a few months ago they were worse off then the nade engi.

Bard.7215:

I’m not joking, go to the elementalist forums and look up threads dated before the current series of patches and you will see threads pertaining to the same exact level of of upsetness as engineers currently face.

Given two patches have past and things were probobally buffed, I see that something changed in ele’s that made them far more viable for PVE and PVP but I have to see what it is.

I assure you though, even if you’re right and they are a very good class at the moment, only a few months ago they were worse off then the nade engi.

I hadn’t done anything with my ele in months because, though I hated to say it, I found her virtually unplayable in PvE. It seemed I like it would take a ridiculously long time to kill even a single mob, and if I accidentally kited or AOE’d the wrong way and agro’d another mob or two, it was game over… Then I gave her another shot when I noticed my eng starting to bottom out last week, and was amazed that all of the sudden, I was rocking PvE, not to mention dungeons. I thought “wow, i must have really improved as a player in the past few weeks! It MUST have been my fault that I sucked so bad with my Ele before…” Now, reading these comments, I realize that it was more likely that A.Net fixed ele’s and crippled engineers in one fell swoop.

I realize that this must be one of the most difficult tasks for ArenaNet, to keep all of the classes balanced while still trying to give them a unique niche. This seems to be aggravated by the fact that PvE,PvP,& WvW play so differently.

Therefore, as a player, the only surefire strategy is to buy 3 extra character slots, roll with the punches, and play whatever is “hot” atm. Rather than sitting around trying to salvage a class that’s been nerfed to the point of extinction, take a little vacation somewhere sunnier until the hand of fate comes back along and rebalances the scales

Go over all the patch notes and you can clearly see no other profession has had as much development (read: BUFFS) as the Elementalist has.

They had a bad downstate, and that got buffed months ago to be one of the best downed states. THE best in WvW without a doubt.
They had more control and damage slapped on them, bugs fixed and whatnot.

Running dungeons with an Ele smooths things so much, had a guildie help me with my dungeon runs for the Legendary. Loved having him with us. He added control, a lot of (aoe) damage and consistent boons/healing (from attunement swaps and blast finishers). And he just never went down. Seriously, in the 5 runs he went with me i cannot recall him going down more then a single time, which was our only wipe aswell.
And in WvW, kitten near immortal as they have almost as much mobility as a Thief, so they can escape very well. And they really are very durable without sacrificing damage. Going from 20% health to 90% without even using their Heal-ability. Perma-protection, stability, several stunbreakers, passive health regen, active healing (on top of their Heal), several condition removal. Yes, all of these in the same build. And with stacks of Might, and Fury on top of a well scaling set of damage abilities with a solid baseline, the damage isnt compromised.

Ele is infact difficult to master. On one hand because it is a profession with a ton of buttons, on the other because you arent challenged to your full potential while leveling. I think a lot of fresh lv80 Ele’s hit a brickwall because of this.
But when you start to know your Ele it is a profession that really rewards skill and scales very well up to the high skill ceiling. Something Engineer most certainly does not.

And this wasnt all because everyone suddenly learned to play, this has been due to wave after wave of buffs and bugfixes thrown at the Ele. Subtle things like adding a blast finisher to an ability can turn a whole build upside down as it opens a lot of new potential, dont forget that.

wickedgreen.4685:

My Eng was the first to lv 80, and is still my #1 go-to for soloing in any PvE map, or grabbing some PvP trophies [I don’t WvW at the moment). When it comes to running dungeons though, I log into my Ele faster than you can say “nerfed”. I have yet to meet an Eng that can act as a decent tank (I’m calling anyone a liar, I’m just saying I personally haven’t met you yet). I love using my grenades underwater to blow the kitten out of the risen, but despite tinkering with my build and trying some of the “recommended” builds, I find that the Eng just falls short in 4 major dungeon capacities:
1) being able to remove conditions
2) not being a 1-hit wonder to most bosses
3) being able to destroy environmental targets (i.e. AC’s burrows)
4) Resurection ability – (i.e. if an ele goes down, they can mistform themselves, escaping further damage for a few seconds, and boogie back towards their group improving chances of a resurrection. A mesmer can teleport backwards as well, and leave a clone behind to be chewed upon. An Engineer? We have a weaka** attack, and the ability to pull an enemy closer to us so they can kill us faster. Needless to say, against any kind of boss, neither the harpoon skill nor the explosion power cause any kind of interruption or knockdown).

It’s been my theory for a while that certain classes are simply better in certain situations. Is there anyone that would argue that a Mesmer’s skills are better suited to PvP than dungeons? Or that Guardians rule the dungeon but are rather tedious to use for map completion? It’s not that any of them are unplayable (except for my Eng in Twilight Arbor… that was truly a horrible experience), just that not all classes can shine in all situations.

We have several ways to remove conditions, should be a non-issue. Even if your just swapping in the Elixir for a specific encounter but you can also trait for some of the best condition removal available to any class.

Your being 1 shotted? what are you running? 40+ Fracs? I run mostly glass cannon for my dungeons and I have no issues… try not getting hit

Destroying the world objects is only an issue to condition specs… not just to our class, all condition specs.

Our downed skills do kinda stink but the key is to not go down, or if your an elixir man just learn to pop your self res.

Preacher.9526:

We have several ways to remove conditions, should be a non-issue. Even if your just swapping in the Elixir for a specific encounter but you can also trait for some of the best condition removal available to any class.

Several ways, which are in terms of effectiveness for the number of trait points used are worse than most other classes, the only decent condition removal on an engy is if you build in some way for elixirs, the other optons are weak compared to most other classes, which for an allegedly versitile / jack of trades class is pathetic.

Zonzai.2341:

Like Forty Seven Ninjas.6982:

I use my flamethrower build for just about everything I do now, including dungeons. I don’t experience anywhere near 75% miss rate. I am way too survivable and do way too much damage using this build to put it away because of another player’s personal downfalls with the kit.

You misunderstand, I’m not basing this on my “personal experience.” It’s a confirmed bug that has nothing to do with targetting. Somebody did some tests and found out the miss rate was about 75%. Couldn’t find the exact post for that though.

From the bug list stickied in this section…

*Flamethrower’s Flame Jet and Elixir Gun’s Fumigate will often miss targets and destructible objects (when the player and its target are at even slightly different elevations). It also appears to be affected by camera angle.
*Flamethrower’s Flame Blast will often be obstructed after using Air Blast and will not explode when hitting the environment.
*Flamethrower’s Flame Jet will often miss targets and destructible objects (when the player and its target are at even slightly different elevations). It also appears to be affected by camera angle.

-EDIT- Read the whole engineer bug list. It’s four full posts long.

Ah, I gotcha, well I’d definitely say that my experiences are different from the test results in regards to the miss rate. The difference may be in the way I control the camera.

I agree 100% tho that camera angle corresponds with hit rate when you have people targeted and that elevation ruins the #1 attack. The reason I choose not to auto target on skill use is so that the cone of damage corresponds with the camera angle. This change has really helped me mitigate that miss rate.

Alternating between getting the last 10% world completion for my Eng and levelling a Guardian.

The Guardian is sooooooo much easier/tougher/more powerful than my Eng – everything dies faster, his health stays higher and he can solo groups several levels higher than the Eng ever could.

One benefit of starting with an Eng – I’m better at keeping my Guardian alive if/when he does get in too far over his head.

My female Asura bought some sm3xy T2 cultural armor but then found out that there were no good condition damage builds to wear it for. She is very depressed and has moved back to her parents at Rata Sum.

Sylosi.6503:

Preacher.9526:

We have several ways to remove conditions, should be a non-issue. Even if your just swapping in the Elixir for a specific encounter but you can also trait for some of the best condition removal available to any class.

Several ways, which are in terms of effectiveness for the number of trait points used are worse than most other classes, the only decent condition removal on an engy is if you build in some way for elixirs, the other optons are weak compared to most other classes, which for an allegedly versitile / jack of trades class is pathetic.

Warriors would like to have a word with you.

Sadly, my guild quit weeks ago and since I’m not in the mood to lvl a third char to max I don’t play anymore.
Torchlight 2 is disappointing for me ( I don’t think games without talent respec options are up to date), which is also sad bc the gameplay seems promising.
So, basically I cruise through inferno mp1 or try to improve my c++ skills

cheers guys

[quote=1198862;Preacher.9526:]

Preacher.9526:

Your being 1 shotted? what are you running? 40+ Fracs? I run mostly glass cannon for my dungeons and I have no issues… try not getting hit

Thank you for pointing out that I should be trying NOT to get hit in the first place! That concept simply hadn’t occurred to me before, but knowing that there are helpful players like you just waiting to offer such valuable insight has completely reaffirmed my faith in the concept of an online communtity.

I’m sure you are entirely right to infer that my personal lack of skill is the sole reason for my [recent] dissatisfaction with the engineer’s performance.

For that matter, every player with a complaint about engineers must also be lousy players, because I have certainly noticed that when running dungeons with my ele, when I am accompanied by ANY combination of other ele’s, guards, or wars, the dungeon is completed in 20-50% less time, and with fewer player downs, than when said party is comprized of several engineers. Maybe they just didn’t get your memo either…

Perhaps you could also elaborate on the engineer’s “self res” trait?

[/quote]

The ‘self res’ thing is just the Throw Elixir R, which lays down a small AoE raise effect once per two minutes. By using it just before going down, the user can pop back to their feet nigh-instantaneously. Not one of my favorite skills; I prefer to have a skill set that keeps me from going down in the first place.

My rifleCAT is taking a small break watching my warrior reap the benefits he wouldn’t have been able to do by himself.

After reading some builds, I might use my engineer once real life stops being demanding.