Guild Wars 2

So I know I am only level 26, but I am very much enjoying Engineer, which I was scared I wasn’t seeing as how so many people on here say they hate it or feel it’s broke. I would even say it is more fun then both my Elementalist and Guadian and they are both 80. This will for sure be my 3rd one. So what parts am I missing of people saying it is weak? (Btw I only play PVE so far)

Check out my “Feedback and Opinion on Skills” post. Pretty much sums up the problems in the class. It’s a fun class, no doubt. It just has a lot of issues, both in design and coding.

Pretty much the same thing for any class that can’t trait up both critical chance and critical damage on the same traitline. It’s difficult to get a build at 80 that gives high power/crit%/critDmg while preserving hp and toughness.

It builds on condition damage quiet well but a LOT of PvE running involves structures and/or timed runs where high DPS wins over high DoTs.

If you are having fun with it then you are having fun with it and I would suggest disbelieving folks that tell you it’s a “bad” class.

The biggest problem you might run into is scaling… Levels don’t treat the Engineer too well, as the various bugs tend to get in the way, and the playstyle becomes less forgiving.

Engineer is fun, but it has a lot of weaknesses that become more obvious as you keep going. It’s certainly not bad, but it does need a little love.

At level 26 you probably won’t have much problems if you’re used to a mobile class like the elementalist. A lot of the problems engineers face is that as you level up you find certain builds oddly difficult to use.

In higher zones turrets start crumbling like sandcastles, grenades draw a terrible amount of aggro, and bombs are too close for a medium armor class unless you pay to update your armor often. At around lvl 60 things get better again with access to grandmaster traits (which are what this class is balanced around) so things pick up from there on.

The reason a lot of people complain about the engineer is probably because they find the class fun but ineffective. If people didn’t find the class fun they wouldn’t complain at all and would just re-roll to something more satisfying. I admit, it can be feel rather satisfying some times when you nail every move and set up all your combos properly with your engi but when you slip up once that’s it. Suddenly you’re the weak link in the party, you feel like the other classes are carrying you.

A lot of people also complain because the class isn’t really good at anything. We can mimic roles other classes do, but we can’t fill those roles as well as those other classes. That’s why people post builds where they literary dedicate every trait, utility skill, rune, sigil and equipment choice to fullfilling a role (static discharge glass cannon, might stacking flamethrower, full cleric bomb healer). Because we need to do that to compete with classes which had those roles designed into them from the beginning.

It doesn’t matter how much cleric gear and runes of altruism I get on my engi, how much regen I stack and bomb blinds I put down. My engineer will never be as good as a guardian is at support/tanking. No matter the build, a condition engi is still worse at condition damage than a necro, or even a ranger.

People play engineers because its fun, but still feel bad because in a game where every class is a little good at everything, but very good at a few things, the engineer only does the first. The longer you play the more it hits you :(

Thank you all for the replies, guess I’ll see when I am higher levels. And thanks a lot @JohnDied for the thorough explanation, it helped!

People are also upset that engineer is much worse off now than it was at release or BWE1. Engineers used to have a few cool things, but those have pretty much all been taken now (though there’s a tiny few the devs haven’t ruined yet). That might be acceptable if any real progress had been made into engineer game play breaking bugs, or engineer wasn’t second best at all roles, but almost everything needing fixing or tweaking upwards have basically been ignored and only our good stuff has been removed.

It feels like a bait’n’switch, the class we have now, versus the class we used to have. When most of us anticipated getting fixes to our bugs and problems areas we got the exact opposite.

JohnDied.3476:

A lot of people also complain because the class isn’t really good at anything. We can mimic roles other classes do, but we can’t fill those roles as well as those other classes. That’s why people post builds where they literary dedicate every trait, utility skill, rune, sigil and equipment choice to fullfilling a role (static discharge glass cannon, might stacking flamethrower, full cleric bomb healer). Because we need to do that to compete with classes which had those roles designed into them from the beginning.

Well said.

On one hand, I hate how this forum has so little substance, and so much complaining. On the other hand, the complaints are often valid, and it’s difficult to have substantive discussions about a class when its plagued by bugs and design issues.

The crux of the matter is what John said above. It’s not that the class isn’t “good” at anything; it’s decent at a bunch of things. The problem is that to attain any level worth mentioning in any particular role (damage, support, etc.) we have to devote everything to that end. Traits, gear, skills, runes, and sigils. Now, that would be fine if the payout was commensurate with the investment. But it isn’t. An engineer that devotes 100% of his or her resources to being a glass cannon will still be inferior to almost any other class that does the same. Inferior in damage output, inferior in mobility, inferior in defense. The same can be said for almost any other role.

Furthermore, other classes can put less than 100% of their resources into a certain role, to bolster a secondary attribute. In other words, another class could trait and rune for damage, but gear for defense, and still have damage as good as or better than an engineer’s, plus the added defense or whatever it is they want to pick up on the side.

Most of the complaints you’ll find are end game concerns and you’ll see this, around level 60 the toughness, resistance, vitality of all mobs almost doubles from what they were at level 50 because it’s a huge difference between those mobs and level 60+. Once you reach level 80 it’s really bad (unless you are a warrior with a rifle or a two handed sword) especially in Orr. You’ll see what we mean. I had no problems while leveling, when I reached level 80 and tried to use bombs FT or EG I was basically SOL. The bugs certainly don’t help but what REALLY doesn’t help and you’ll notice this immediately if you play a ranger, necro, mesmer is that every other class that does condi damage does an initial hit of damage when applying those conditions but the engineer does not, it becomes apparent when you reach level 80.