Guild Wars 2

if just noticed this now and tbh its quite sad… anyway go to pretty much any zone underwater etc and start firing a few speargun homing torpedos

THEN equip the elixir gun… you will notice that it just happens to hit for perhaps even 5-10% less damage, how does that make the speargun underpowered you say? well first of all the speargun is a 1 second cast timer with only a 20% projectile finisher to go with it while the elixir gun is a 1/4 cast timer with a 4 second bleed with a 1 second weakness with a 20% projectile finisher and to top it all off a faster projectile

in summary you can do over 4 times the damage of the speargun by equipping the elixir gun underwater… which is kind of a joke realy considering the speargun is supposed to be a direct damage weapon and elixir gun a support/cond weapon

(oh and for those who argue that the elixirgun is a 3/4 second cast time youve never used it UNDERWATER the tranq dart is 1/4 underwater but 3/4 on land)

I think one element which would make #1 fun would be if the damage were unavoidable (it says !homing! torpedo).

Agreed OP terrible all round i use elixir gun because it at least fires faster..

Harpoongun is a terrible weapon. Its nr1 cannot hit anything that moves, cause its soooo slow. And even if the target remains in range it has a great deal of difficulty dealing with all the dimensions in underwater combakittens not uncommon for it to detonate as if it “hit” the target (well within range) but the blast is so small it failed to actually hit the target.

Scattermines are only good if you get to fire em off at pointblank range. Anywhere beyond that and you got no prayer of hitting anything.

Timed Charge is the only good damage ability on it, in the sense that it deals good damage and reliably works. It also has a fairly lengthy cooldown if thats the only thing you are counting on…

Same applies to the other two CC abilities. Slow, easy to spot, easy to avoid. Grenadekit is also absolutely useless. Not only are the grenades scattered in such a way its almost impossible to actually hit with all 3. Extra hilarious if you use it at close range and you throw a grenade behind you!
Grenades also go where your target is and not where its going, meaning it is litterally impossible to hit a moving target.

Flamethrower is unuseable underwater for some weird reason, goodluck using melee underwater in this crapfest and if you tried it comes down to Toolkit. Hardly a damaging kit.

So it all falls down to Elixirgun. Damage isnt very good, but atleast it can reliable hit a target at range. Best course of action is to just swim away.

Here’s my 2 cents.

It doesn’t matter what I’m running on land, my underwater build is always Elixir H, and then Rifle Turret, Net Turret, Rocket Turret and Supply Crate. Turrets are very hard to see underwater when you place them at differing depths, and most players will simply get chewed to pieces by them while you rail them with your harpoon gun. Using Retreating Grapple to pull them into your turret farm followed by Net Shot is a fantastic opener. Then I just kite around overcharging my turrets. The Rifle Turret becomes Harpoon Turret under water and hits much harder and faster. The Harpoon Gun’s attacks compliment this set up extremely well. The CC you are putting out allows for those point blank Scatter Mines shots that we like. Give it a try.

As most auto attacks on engi harpoon #1 is weak, yes. But his is part of the class design. I don’t see any viable auto attack apart from bomb #1 which is worth using it. If I play my engineer, 9 of 10 hits are not auto attack. And I am preaty sure I do it very right. This is how engineer works.

I guess Grenade #1 is viable, but obviously not an auto-attack. :S

Perhaps the engineer is designed to have substandard autoattacks, but the speargun takes it too far. The projectile is very slow, the rate of fire is very slow and the damage is terrible. Given that the only other damage dealing skills have fairly long cooldowns, it’s basically not a viable weapon at all.

Maybe I just haven’t found the right build, but my engineer in general feels weaker underwater than my other characters, and the speargun is a major part of that.

Stice.5204:

Maybe I just haven’t found the right build, but my engineer in general feels weaker underwater than my other characters, and the speargun is a major part of that.

What?? From all my experiences and all I have heared from other engineers under water it is the most kittening awesome class there which totally excels . Speargun #2 and #4 are crazy burst skills, speargun #5 is a great fight opener an slow down for grenades. Really – only speargun #1 sucks. Swapping a lot is – as always- the key

I never, never felt such strong under water even with mesmer.

You dont fight an Engineer underwater by hugging him. You fight him at 600-1200 range where all his attacks are super easy to avoid without even having to use dodge. And you can easily see the pulls comming that you can avoid them.

Number 4 is the only reliable damage on the Speargun. number2 is stupidly easy to avoid, if you get hit by the full burst of this ability you are basicly letting it happen. Thats the equivalent of letting a 100B warrior walk upto you, not bullcharge but walk, and then 100b you to death as you stand there eating it.

Just because those people exist that let that happen doesnt mean its good.

Terrahero.9358:

You dont fight an Engineer underwater by hugging him. You fight him at 600-1200 range where all his attacks are super easy to avoid without even having to use dodge. And you can easily see the pulls comming that you can avoid them.

Number 4 is the only reliable damage on the Speargun. number2 is stupidly easy to avoid, if you get hit by the full burst of this ability you are basicly letting it happen. Thats the equivalent of letting a 100B warrior walk upto you, not bullcharge but walk, and then 100b you to death as you stand there eating it.

Just because those people exist that let that happen doesnt mean its good.

You miss the point. You can always avoid engineers skills. On land and under water. This class is designed to slow ppl down before bursting them. And this class has enougth opportunities.

Additional, why ppl always talk about “avoid everything”? You can’t simply avoid eveything. I don’t know what game you are playing or maybe my playstyle is much more superiority but you definitly can controll enemies movement making him “avoid everything” until he – not long time until this – can’t avoid anymore.

Avoiding if it costs something isnt a bad thing, its most of the time a good thing because it involves counter-play and a choice. For example, if i dodge an ability i spend Endurance. I cannot do it all the time, my endurance can run out.

However, to avoid Harpoon 1 and 3 all i need to do is sidestrafe at a distance that isnt in your face. Ideally at 900range. And neither of these ability will hit me. I can sidestrafe all day, doesnt cost a thing. Your main damaging abilities on Harpoongun are hard-countered by my A and D key.

the skills you might want to employ to keep me still, or pull me close i can easily avoid with a dodge. My endurance regen is more then fast enough to evade, twice even if you wish to use Magnet aswell. So with just A and D, and a dodge ever so often, i can stay out of reach of your Harpoongun (and grenadekit) and the only ability you will ever have a chance of hitting me with is Timed Charge.
Which alone, with that cooldown, will not win you a fight.

It takes almost no skill to fight an Engineer underwater and the only saving grace for us is that most people do infact have no skill when fighting underwater. Cant blame em, its an unbalanced mess best avoided alltogether.
But as i said earlier, just because you can beat on unskilled players that dont even know what their own profession can do underwater, let alone someone else’s, doesnt mean something is working fine.

If the Elixir Gun auto-attack is used to show how weak another weapon is… dam, than it must be really bad.
EG hits slow and soft as it is.

Under water I use grenades, even unspecced allthough I usually have 30 points in Explosives anyhow these days. So it’s easy to trait grenadier on the spot for me.
If not grenades, than my healing bombs but being melee underwater is the most disorienting thing ever.

Other than grenades I use Elixir Gun indeed, but I simply hate the way EG5 Super Elixir works underwater. Still, I use EG in my normal build, so I keep it underwater.

Speargun? It has some nice utilities, but that’s about all I do with it. If I remember to use those at all…

Terrahero.9358:

It takes almost no skill to fight an Engineer underwater and the only saving grace for us is that most people do infact have no skill when fighting underwater. Cant blame em, its an unbalanced mess best avoided alltogether.
But as i said earlier, just because you can beat on unskilled players that dont even know what their own profession can do underwater, let alone someone else’s, doesnt mean something is working fine.

So please add me ingame and we try out some under water duells. Let’s see if you can avoid me. I will record it to prove my statement.

It is not just underpowered and slow, but if fails to hit certain targets 100% of the time. I created another thread of engineer underwater bugs:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/BUG-Engineer-underwater-bugs-and-features

I’m so glad, with the plethora of weapon choices on the Engie, that I got the Frenzy legendary harpoon gun.

So powerful and loads of special effects.

Hahaha I never use spear gun #1! It sucks, I agree! I almost always spec into nades if I know I’m going underwater. Otherwise I like to use E.Gun since it has long range and shoots fast but not too much dmg either.

Terrahero.9358:

Harpoongun is a terrible weapon. Its nr1 cannot hit anything – EVER

^fixed

dont listen to forestnator hes a troll

Harpoongun is horrendous – one of the reasons i never play any underwater content.

RaynStargaze.6510:

Terrahero.9358:

Harpoongun is a terrible weapon. Its nr1 cannot hit anything – EVER

^fixed

dont listen to forestnator hes a troll

Harpoongun is horrendous – one of the reasons i never play any underwater content.

I dont say harpoon #1 is fine. It is horrible indeed. But harpoon at all is fine. And engineer under water is a beast, everyone else talking he is weak for under water content… sorry this must be troll.

When I first started playing my Engineer and went underwater for the first time, I couldn’t kill a Veteran Skale underwater. The thing would literally heal faster than I was damaging it. Heck, even normal Skale took silly amounts of time to kill.

Thankfully someone in map chat told me about the wonders of Grenade Kit underwater, and for the longest time I would immedietly swap to Grenade Kit every single time I went under.

I’ve got a better understanding of the skillset and the profession now obviously, so I’d probably do just fine at this point, but I think that illustrates just how bad Harpoongun is, ESPECIALLY the basic attack.

Th speargun needs a buff. You can use the speargun at the moment, but you use it more like a kit than anything else.

Skills #2-5 are alright. Scatter Mines has high AoE damage and short recharge, Retreating grapple puts distance, timed charge is fast and also does decent damage, and net wall is good mobility denial. Essentially it is like most kits: You pop in to use the appropriate skill, and then pop out to your main offense.

In most builds I make, I have an alternate kit for primary offense. Grenades, Elixir Gun, Bomb kit, usually one of those. The biggest problem with speargun 1 is that it is so slow, and does less damage than the rifle. If anything, it should only have a 0.75 second delay on attacks instead of a 1 second delay.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Essentially it is like most kits: You pop in to use the appropriate skill, and then pop out to your main offense.

That’s exactily how engineer works, how I use rifle, pistols, shield. The point is: if u buff the weaopns on engineer – maybe people who don’t get or don’t want to get how to play with engineer will become better and maybe competitiv. But: for those who already behind those mechanics engineer would change to the most overpowered class in theri hands.

Anyway, a sigthly buff on harpoon #1 could work. But #2-5 are definitly fine. Okay not fine compared to any necro build. But that’s another topic.

Speargun #1 is indeed very weak underwater but with full zerker gear Speargun #2 is just so much damage. In spvp it’s hilarious to see people lose half their hp if you hit them with all 3 mines. Finish them off with grenades.

Only #2, 4, and 5 are of real use. I only really use torpedos as an option when I have nothing better to use. The #3 pull ability is arguably even more useless than the auto-attack. If the person is swimming away from you, you basically have to be right on top of them for it to pull them properly. It has a slow wind up that pauses your movement, and shoots you back so far that if it misses (which is usually does), you’ve just given your opponent the distance they wanted.

They can maybe work ok in PvE, but so does everything.

Homing torpedo seems to be bugged currently and hitting for half the damage that the tool-tip states.

In addition to a bug fix, it should probably get; a 3/4ths attack speed, or deal more damage + have a larger explosion to make up for the slowness.