Guild Wars 2

Well here is one new engineer to add to your ranks!
I’ve played guardian, ranger, warrior, etc and I’ve finally come to engineer…….WHERE YOU BEEN ALL MY GW2 LIFE!?!?! I am loving this profession. It takes a bit to get all the nuances but explosions and guns, and bombs, and bigger explosions. Slick shoes, oh my I love slick shoes on the back line of an opposing WvW zerg then droppin’ Big Ole Bomb. Oh – personal battering ram when contesting points in PvP is pure troll.

Anyways I find the juggling between kits, gadgets, weapons, etc. to just be amazingly fun. Here is to many a happy engineer gaming session!

1) No Horizontal Progression. Hobo sacks eliminate a huge point of “end game” content
2) High Effort – Low effect: If you can be a decent Engineer you could be an amazing <Any Thing else> and probably be more effective

Xae.7204:

1) No Horizontal Progression. Hobo sacks eliminate a huge point of “end game” content
2) High Effort – Low effect: If you can be a decent Engineer you could be an amazing <Any Thing else> and probably be more effective

Wow, sounds like the ranger forum.

i think the reason there isnt more of us is because its not really the kind of class that youd expect in this kind of game, obviously most people will be looking towards the typical warrior/ranger/mage/rogue type thing and skipping over engineer altogether

its a similar deal with mesmer, they look at that and think. “meswhat? hmmm aha! elementalist must be the mage class!”

There are three big issues I’ve seen with engineers:

#1: It is painful to play. Literally. The amount of mashing I have to do on the keyboard has actually left my laptop’s keyboard broken, and also causes me severe wrist pain. I swapped to a SD build because it is lower maintenance.

#2: The engineer has a high skill floor, and because of this it isn’t immediately rewarding. The engineer is a hybrid in every sense, and as such they lack direction that people normally have when conceptualizing a class.

#3: Where the elementalist has skills that are powerful but hard to use well in PVE, the engineer has skills that are easy to use but weak in PVE. The elementalists utility is hard-baked into their weapons sets, whereas engineers have no weapon variety, instead relying on utilities for variety. This intensifies into a perfect storm of difficulty and an inability to impress.

I think that #3 isn’t talked about a lot, but it is important. I ran HGH grenades for so long, mostly because there wasn’t anything else to run.

Elixirs: They are good for self buffing and spots of mild support for teammates, but are invisible. Often times, if an engi is running an elixir build, you’ll never be able to tell. They also require heavy trait dedication to be effective.

Gadgets: These strange tools are tailored for specific uses you’ll rarely ever see, and don’t have the traits to become really useful. Nearly everything that a gadget does, some other utility or kit does better. That, or what the gadget does is so obtuse that there’s no point.

Turrets: This is what originally drew me to the class. They were decent once, but bug after “tooltip update”/nerf after bug has left turrets as a big mess that no one can use. They die instantly and just plain don’t work, leaving most turrets as a filler for blast finishers. Dedicated traits do nothing to ease this pain.

The end result? You go with kits. You have plenty of kits, and they each do something useful and unique that you can use.

This is a grave oversight on Anets part. The entirety of the variety and power of the engineer is located in their utility slots. Competition in utility slots is fierce, and every single utility must be compared to a kit and everything that kit offers. This is where so many skills fall apart.

For example, take Elixir S. Invulnerability period, self daze, provides stealth on toss, stun break. Seems alright? Compare that to Tool Kit: invulnerability period on a 1/3rd the cooldown that is not a self daze, 1200 range pull + interrupt, high damage + confusion inflicting skill, short duration bleed/cripple patch, stun break with kit refinement, turret repair with mild vulnerability, triggers sigils.

It is obvious that Tool Kit wins out, every time, almost regardless of what traits you pick. The same can be said of… well… pretty much every utility that isn’t a kit. Why take flame turret when the bomb kit does the same stuff, and more? Why take elixir C when you can just use the elixir gun to do so much more? Why take the rocket turret for burst AoE damage when the flamethrower can do that, but so much better? Why take the personal battering ram… at all? Why go with HGH when fire fields and Juggernaut give just as much might?

There are some that stand out as a unique or useful option, and you’ll see these get used alongside of kits to fill in holes that were there before. But, not enough utilities do this. You’ll almost always end up going with x3 kits, or x2 kits + additional utility because most of the utilities aren’t worth the space they occupy.

What Anet needs to do is buff a lot of the utilities so that they can compete with kits. Anet has to remember that engineers don’t have potent weapon options, or even weapon diversity. We are a class that is all about the utilities, and most utilities suck.

^ That about sums it up. If anything, they will nerf kits though. Despite all those issues engis are apparently a very strong class in pvp (I wouldn’t know), so I don’t see any buffs or fixes incoming.
We will have a reason to rely more on weapons, elixirs, turrets and gadgets once kits get their nerf which is a good thing.

edit: That list misses 1 thing:
Playing a supportrole is very undesirable in gw2. There are almost no healing numbers created by the interface, not even combat log will tell you about heal. Healing in general is not even required since most efficient heal is everybodies own heal cooldown and you will never get any visiual recognition for buffing people.
That alone kills 3-4 engi builds and a whole aspect of the class.

There are a couple of very fundamental problems with Engineers that will never be addressed. Engineers were thrown together at the last minute in beta and the developers didn’t notice that the class “core mechanics” are 100% contrary to the games “core mechanics”

1) Cosmetic progression vs Hobo Sacks
2) Weapon Swap vs Kits
3) “Active Gameplay” vs Turrets
4) No-Resource (Mana) vs Multiple low Value skills *

• Explanation: The primary resource in this game is cast time. Giving a class 20 bad abilities is not as good as giving a class 5 good abilities. This is because the primary resource you use is time. In other games they could balance based off mana/resource cost.

If you are playing an Engineer then you need to accept being a Second Class citizen for the remainder of the game. The writing is on the wall, we need to accept it. ArenaNet developers are far more interested in constantly tweaking their personal Mary Sue classes (Guardian, Warrior, Thief) than in fixing the broken classes that they do not play (Ranger, Engineer, Elementalist).

Xae.7204:

The writing is on the wall, we need to accept it. ArenaNet developers are far more interested in constantly tweaking their personal Mary Sue classes (Guardian, Warrior, Thief) than in fixing the broken classes that they do not play (Ranger, Engineer, Elementalist).

This rhetoric is so comically outdated. Spirit rangers sweep through PvP. You see one on every 5v5 tourney team. And elementalists dish out the best DPS in the game.

Going back to try another game for a couple months after a big expansion has given me perspective.

GW2 is gasp well balanced. It will NEVER be perfect in any game, but in GW2 at least every profession is useful and generally speaking has a chance to beat any other class 1v1.

The answer to this thread has nothing to do with Engis suck, or Devs hating us (why would they hate something they spend most of their waking hours creating?), it’s simply the Engineer play style. It’s a niche play style, not your typical “warrior/rogue/mage” type. It really doesn’t go deeper than that.

I agree play style has something to do with it, but it can’t be all that.
Wouldn’t there be a segment of people who look for the quirky new class that is a bit different? In other MMOs, often the unique class has a bit more of a following.

I would surmise it has a lot to do with just how freaking active this class has to play. It is more a mechanic based unfamiliarity (20 skills????) issue than not getting enough folks who would be interested in something new.

My answer would be to do a set of quality of life improvements. With as many skills as we have, couldn’t grenades (as an example) target like they do underwater where it isn’t so clunky? Couldn’t our fields have 1 or 2 more seconds of up time given how many kits we have to go into and out of to blast?

Those sort of quality of life changes I believe would change the engineer’s numbers as my working theory.

Bombsaway.7198:

In other MMOs, often the unique class has a bit more of a following.

Not in my experience. Wardens in LOTRO (my main) are just as rare as Engis in GW2. To me the Engineer being the quirky and unique class explains it just fine.

Adamantium.3682:

Bombsaway.7198:

In other MMOs, often the unique class has a bit more of a following.

Not in my experience. Wardens in LOTRO (my main) are just as rare as Engis in GW2. To me the Engineer being the quirky and unique class explains it just fine.

Wardens were also released years after the other classes and have a bit of a “quirk” where you have to completely relearn your entire class and class mechanic in the low 50s that irritates people and drives them off. Also for the longest time they were viewed as a solo-only class.

Quirky is quirky, I don’t think they reasons for why each class is quirky is relevant. The fact of the matter is both Warden and Engineer are the odd man out compared to the other classes in their respective games. It shows in the population of each.

Bombsaway.7198:

I agree play style has something to do with it, but it can’t be all that.
Wouldn’t there be a segment of people who look for the quirky new class that is a bit different? In other MMOs, often the unique class has a bit more of a following.

I would surmise it has a lot to do with just how freaking active this class has to play. It is more a mechanic based unfamiliarity (20 skills????) issue than not getting enough folks who would be interested in something new.

My answer would be to do a set of quality of life improvements. With as many skills as we have, couldn’t grenades (as an example) target like they do underwater where it isn’t so clunky? Couldn’t our fields have 1 or 2 more seconds of up time given how many kits we have to go into and out of to blast?

Those sort of quality of life changes I believe would change the engineer’s numbers as my working theory.

it has way to do with more then play style.
gw2 is a fantasy based game engi is a science based class. engis render all legendaries worthless as when you equip a weapon kit you can’t see your legendary.
a lot of people do not like engis backpack when they have a weapon kit. engi is not a simple to play classwhich will turn people off.

some of these anet has admitted to and is working on one thing that a anet mod said is that one idea suggested for the backpacks would be giving a engi a fanny pack to remove the sack. a lot of these will simply never be resolved gw2 is not gong to all at once become a sci fi based game which means people will still most likely want to play classes like warrior guardian etc. i highly doubt that the engi skill cap falls any as well.

Honestly the only reason I have yet to make an engi is the hobosacks.

A lot of my fun comes from making outfits with (almost) complete freedom. The hobosack ruins that.

Engineers are certainly the oddball of the classes.. that without arguing, but to have an engineer arround is always welcomed (from my personal experiences). Alone the literal rainbow of stuff you can pull out of your sleeve often can turn the tide in battles. Healing your group members, removing their conditions, buffing them and reviving them via potions before maybe putting out a healing turret for good measure, holster your E-gun and spazz out with your flamer and explosive kits. Its just glorious. Maybe pull out your tool kit and force feed an enemie your prybar of justice or carefully selecting them out and pulling the “pain in the rear” guys over with your magnet for your guys to gang on it in peace. Skill wise the engineer is overall (in my opinion) just the coolest class ever…minus the sad excuses for turrets and the really pitifull excuse for a flamer damage..but heh hopefully that gets fixed sometime soon. The only real issues i got is the lack of stylish armor ,specially if you wanna pull of a charr iron legion engineer…geez really we practically build the citadel and mass produce tanks and stuff so dont tell me an iron legion member cant hammer together some proper medium armor that looks like it was made for engineers. Like.. silly said look at this… http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7022lPMIR1rqq8qeo1_1280.jpg
A-net MAKE IT HAPPEN. The other issue i got is the obvios… the ugly kits.. well over the time you sorta get used to it.. but its still a thorn in my eye. Its obviosly charr tech..but even thats not spot on it misses the “charr feel”. The lack of gears on them grinds my gears big time …so yea lets project that on other races.. SPECIALLY the poor azura and sylvary…geez those things clash big time alone design wise with those guys. Sorta glad i went with charr.. there the kits atleast dont look 100% out of place…but man..
Well.. in short:
- More engi type armor (for all races)
- Kit apperance fix (for all races)
- Turret fixes
- Flamer dps buff
And this class would be perfect to the max. For those who didnt try the engi yet do it but ignore the ugly kits and lack of proper cool engi armor. Sure its not the most straight forward class.. but man is it rewarding to play it

Ps: excuse my long ramble XD

Bombsaway.7198:

I mean this as a serious topic.

The engineer is a very balanced and useful class in almost all situations, but there seem to be far too few people playing it.

Why?

Is this because there is something inherently uninteresting about the lore, style, look, etc.? (Yes I know hobo sacks annoy people but is that the root cause, really?)

Likewise, there seems to be so little understanding of engineers. For example, I have commanders amazed that an engineer can provide water fields or can quickly provide a quick group stealth to get folks inside a gate etc.

There is no anti-engineer sentiment, just a lack of people playing the class and a lack of folks understanding what those that do play can do.

Any ideas why engineer could be uninteresting? Difficulty to learn? Just not “fantasy” enough? Doesn’t fit prototypes players coming from other MMOs already know and therefore worry they will pick a class that doesn’t match their playstyle?

Reading comments, I don’t think this is an isolated server experience. It seems to be an underpopulated class without any real class mechanic problem.

because it’s harder than average. why do you think there are a ton of warriors? a 3 year old could master it

You realize that that’s hardly an argument? That is why people at lvl80 would quit the profession – and even then it’s a minor thing, because the imbalances just aren’t that big.

Rather, Engineers are a complex profession at first glance, with a lot of buttons, lots of abilities, the kits, everything. It’s confusing at first, and that makes people stop at 15-20 and do something else.

Except for that fact that, you know, they really are not.

My gut tells me the #1 reason is it is simply harder to play.
Other top reasons, lack of familiarity and lack of aesthetics.

But, to fix the #1 reason, wouldn’t simple quality of life issues help? Make grenades target as they do underwater etc?

As an engineer, it isn’t that I am ever not welcome. Misunderstood? A lot (many don’t know we have a water field even and less that we can help stealth).

It isn’t people saying the class has no value, it is something where people are saying I don’t want to play the class.

Celestina.2894:

Except for that fact that, you know, they really are not.

It doesn’t matter whether they are, it matters whether they appear to be.

The engineer has incredible variety…but unfortunately most of that variety isn’t viable in gameplay. Where all the other classes (except the thief) can find ways to participate in anything from close-long range, the engineer is ALWAYS pushed into a mid range role. The flamethrower may be a closer-ranged weapon, but there are many other options that are much useable over the flamethrower, such as grenades, plus the flamethrower has attacks designed to keep enemies away, or to blind them. In essence – players who like extremes (like close combat or sniping) can’t do those with an engineer.

Also most builds of other classes make use of at least one signet. I know I love having signets for both the stat-boost (or other passive boost) and the active ability, especially when you perk into them a little. Engineers lack signets.

Continuing on from the lack of signets though, engineers also have +4 skills to think about, some of them that are very situational or that seem to contribute well only when timed perfectly. It makes the engineer an incredibly complex class to play. If you bring kits as well (which I don’t simply because I’m vain and hate hobo-sacks) there are suddenly another bunch of skills to have to think about; how they sync with your other weapon options and kits. Usually kits are vastly different from anything any other class has available. They sometimes don’t sync well with the weapon options available to engineers.

Then there’s the issue of supporting other colleagues. Generally…Engineer as pure support is very difficult. My favourite builds in Guild Wars 1 were support based, such as Paragon or Ritualist. Really if any class were to be branded as a support based one it would be the engineer…yet we suffer to contribute really besides chucking down a healing turret or using health-infused grenades to heal our friendly melee troops.

To summarise the Engineer lacks viable diversity. As I said before; we have options but not all of them are viable. What we need is a proper damage weapon (that isn’t a kit) and more skills that sync together like other class-skills do. For example – I love the mine skill, but really it’s just a standalone knockdown/BOOM skill. If you wanted to be an explosives based character go bomb or grenade kit. Thus we have skills that are awesome, but are trumped by the presence of a kit or another skill that does mostly-the-same job better.

We need more useful variety.