Guild Wars 2

Lots’o skills there. I main an engineer myself, so I get where you’re coming from.

But as a raid leader, tell me, why should I bring a power engineer to my raid averaging on (at best) 26k dps, when I can bring a thief (32k for me), an elementalist (31k staff, 32k DW for me), or a guardian (27k dps for me)? All of which also brings other things to the raid, that the engineer does not.

David.5974:

How many times you see ele downed in raid? I run pugs and ele licking floor very often. My engi die only if I want. So ressing temp = loosing his dps + loosing dps other 1-3ppl. Tempest is great at gorsy, meaby bit on sabby (SD vannila engi is there amazing! Even if you must do cannons) but I don’t see reason why should go into risk and take squishy class which can lower group dps.

BTW: Running raids only with pugs, I know that there are great tempests, but not ususually in pug raids.

While this is a valid point, if people know the fights they’re at, and know what to do, they won’t die. I don’t pug, so maybe that’s why I’ve got this mindset.

When it comes to taking the safer alternative, in my opinion that’s always a good idea, yes. But it all boils down to skill. A good engineer will still be sub-par to any other class with the same level of skill.

edit: in other words, why take one with you?

Jerus.4350:

Allie.4925:

Jerus.4350:

What he listed are all unique things. Ranger is the only provider of the +150 prec with spotter, ~7.5% damage from Frost Spirit, 3.75% damage from Glyph of Empowerment, and Sun Spirit ain’t bad. Warrior is the only one to give the +150 power aura, then +170 to all damage stats from the Banners. Rev for boon duration and +ferocity aura. Mesmer and Alacrity. These are things that are unique to specific professions. Though Might and quickness aren’t unique we know warrior and Mesmer outshine the rest in those categories.

There’s a reason the backbone of a raid group is Mesmer, PS War, Druid, and Rev, from there it’s just fill in the blank. You can of course do without these, but that’s a lot of damage modifiers being left out then. For the damage spots though Engi really isn’t a bad option if played well.

The cue here, of course being “if played well”… I consider myself a good engineer, I can hit 26-29k depending on situation. I also consider myself a mediocre tempest, and post-patch I can still hit 30-35k with it.

In other words, what incentive (or better yet, excuse) do I have to choose playing a tempest unless it’s required that I play an engineer?

30-35k with staff on an immobile large hitbox target? The fact that not all targets are like that is a good incentive. From where I’m sitting we’re a very viable option for everything that doesn’t fall into the more stationary Large hitbox target category. Once things are moving a little bit or small hitbox then Ele goes over to D/W and we become competative (right there with thief>Ele>Engi as I understand though all very close). And, that’s in reference to our easy mode SD Power build. For condi we can do a little more but yes then the well played comes into play a lot. But… main reason to play an engi? It’s kittening fun! Ele lost it’s fun with this nerf more than it lost it’s damage, and while the SD engi build is much more simplistic than we’re used to, it’s still a hell of a lot more fun than Thief auto attacking.

First of all, my dps was with D/W fresh air ele, on a moving target without alacrity. It’s still basically the same as pre-patch. I agree that ele lost a lot of it’s charm (read: simplicity) in this patch, but it’s still top notch.

The engineer on the other hand, while fun (but in the long term, repetitive), is still below everyone else in terms of dps, despite being so much higher in skill-cap.

Jerus.4350:

What he listed are all unique things. Ranger is the only provider of the +150 prec with spotter, ~7.5% damage from Frost Spirit, 3.75% damage from Glyph of Empowerment, and Sun Spirit ain’t bad. Warrior is the only one to give the +150 power aura, then +170 to all damage stats from the Banners. Rev for boon duration and +ferocity aura. Mesmer and Alacrity. These are things that are unique to specific professions. Though Might and quickness aren’t unique we know warrior and Mesmer outshine the rest in those categories.

There’s a reason the backbone of a raid group is Mesmer, PS War, Druid, and Rev, from there it’s just fill in the blank. You can of course do without these, but that’s a lot of damage modifiers being left out then. For the damage spots though Engi really isn’t a bad option if played well.

The cue here, of course being “if played well”… I consider myself a good engineer, I can hit 26-29k depending on situation. I also consider myself a mediocre tempest, and post-patch I can still hit 30-35k with it.

In other words, what incentive (or better yet, excuse) do I have, to choose playing an engineer unless it’s required?

edit: some grammar (also fixed that, lol).

edit: also, the way I see it, bringing my engineer these days is a strain on my team, and I don’t like that.

I suppose, what annoys me the most is that you could remove the engineer entirely from the game, and it wouldn’t change anything.

Sure it would kitten a few people off, but what really does the engineer add to the game, that others don’t do better or easier than we do?

It’s almost painfully obvious that they have great regrets at what scrapper added as well, as it’s been more problems with it than any other specialization in the game. And they still “evaluate” the engineer… that’s just bullkitten.

I did more dps on my guardian, auto-attacking, than I did on my scrapper, with it’s insane rotation.

This patch made me sad.

bearshaman.3421:

Ging.6485:

bearshaman.3421:

Can someone who can logically and rationally and objectively do this, PM me and explain what the problem is for engineers? I will say I’m a PVE only player (maybe WvW I am becoming more interested in that too), so if it’s only pvp issues, don’t bother. But I want to understand why this is such a bad patch for us. Aside from a few nerfs (shock shield, some hammer skills, etc) I thought this was a good patch for us. And hammer was incredibly strong anyway.

This patch in a nutshell : We had our arm broken and were given a lollipop.

This is an example of a completely useless response. Thanks for demonstrating what I am not looking for.

So far, the issue in my opinion is in terms of PvE. In a game where it’s all about the uniqueness of your class, and what your class can bring to your group (whether it be PvE, PvP or WvW really), the engineer brings nothing of note to anything.

The engineer is a very typical, Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none class. As was its intention when it was created. However, it being so creates a problem. Why bring something that is sub-par to anything else, unless you’re required to? And furthermore, why bring something that has a very high skill-cap, for little to no reward, when you can bring something that is relatively easy and risk-free, for more reward?

This was our main concern before this patch, and our dream was that they would do something, ANYTHING to fix it. Instead we get the standard: “We’re still evaluating it”, which basically means, “We’re not sure what to do, so here’s some random, yet sort of pointless changes to make it seem like we’re doing something”.

Edit: Like the change to A.E.D. Yes, it was crap before the patch. If they presented a change that made it viable, that would be great, but it’s still garbage, so the change they presented was in-short, pointless.

I wrote this on reddit as well, but as I can’t be bothered to write a new post, I’ll just copy-paste it here… I admit it was abit ranty, but what the heck… I’m seriously bummed and down by this patch.

Quote:

In my opinion, there is no reason, whatsoever, to play engineer anymore. I’ve loved it since the beta, logged more than 3000 hours on it, since, and was hoping on something that could potentially bring us back as something, but kitten this.

And no, I’m not talking about the pvp nerfs. I don’t give jack kitten about pvp. I’m talking about the fact that whatever the kitten they wanted the engineer to be initially, we’ve been kitten out so far from it, I can’t even begin to guess at what they want anymore.

So many incredible suggestions from the community over the past 9 months, nay, 4 years. Suggestions that with some work could have changed and altered the profession for the better, and still (again) we’re left with the kittening “we’re still evaluating it” reply we’ve ALWAYS been given.

kittening delete engineer already. It’s better than what the kitten they’re doing.

rant over.

End quote.

It’s kind of sad not more people react to this Or at least, I’d like an explanation for why it’s not been fixed…

I can’t remember it being like this at launch.

It appears on all charr, all heights, as well. It seems to be a problem with the animation, I reckon. Here’s a male mesmer.

A different class, albeit a bit hard to see, I marked it.

Aaand with a different animation.

Here’s another picture, taken with a max-height charr female.

I’ve noticed a while ago that a lot of the casting projectiles for charr females are a bit off, namely and especially those of the staff elementalist.

I’ve looked a bit around, and haven’t been able to find any response to this, and if it’s a bug or not, so here I am. I’ll post a few pictures for reference below.

Also to be noted, it’s got nothing to do with character size, as it appears on both tall and short characters… I believe the “source” of the projectiles are just a bit off. Or maybe they’re released a bit too early in the animation, idk.

Anyhows, I hope it’ll be fixed, it kind of kills my wants to play my elementalist.

Possibly the most creative post for a bug I’ve seen. Thank you for a much needed laugh.

:)

It appears it shows up in more locations every patch.

I’ll add another picture, for show.

Another bug I’ve failed to find in your known issue tracker, is the shield/backpiece bug.

Shields, as you know, disables backpieces whenever worn, which has always been the case. However, after HoT for some reason, I noticed that backpieces started sticking to my shields whenever I used them, for a few moments before reverting to your back. I’m not sure if the bug came with the expac, but at least that’s when I started noticing.

The attatched picture shows approximately where it appears, before it glides slowly back to your back.

Especially annoying is it, if you’re using large backpieces. The current attatchment shows using wings, to make it more visible.

I’ve seen a couple of reports of this, but can’t find any response to it in the known issue tracker, as such I’m posting my own report of it.

The attatched picture is taken in Queensdale, at nighttime. As far as I know, I haven’t experienced this here before, but I have encountered the bug several other places.

I’ve tried with several different computers, with different graphics settings, and the bug persists. I’ve also mixed and matched with the graphics to try and remove it, to no avail.

I can post more pictures if it’s needed.

Thanks for your attention to this matter, it’s a rather experience-altering bug.

(Arrrrgh, my eyes! I can’t play anymore!)

I’ll add a list of known locations, and closest waypoints/points of interest;

- Queensdale, Vale Waypoint
- Gendarran Fields, Almuten Waypoint
- Caledon Forest, Spelunkers’ Delve
- Diessa Plateu, Menbane’s Waypoint
- Kessex Hills, Cereboth Canyon.

There are others, but I can’t remember where.

Allow me to rephrase. My theory doesn’t consider the ED’s as good, per se, but as a necessary form of guardians of magic.

Further on, considering the many similarities between the six and the ED’s, couldn’t it be that the human gods were the equivalent to this in their old world?

Being a god or an ED doesn’t exempt you from corruption, which could explain why the ED’s are considered evil in the first place. What if they were meant to slowly consume the magic, over thousands of years instead of causing a massive extinction level event every few ten thousand years instead?

What if all that really happened, was that one or more of the ED’s got greedy and started consuming more than they were supposed to?

Let me rephrase again. What happens when a country starts expanding like crazy? Other countries places sanctions against them. In the worst case scenario, war. What is the ED conflict really? War between the elder dragons. They all want everything for themselves.

I found a post earlier, discussing the strength ratio between the elder dragons and the human gods. This got me thinking a bit. Besides the obvious similarities, why are they being compared so often in the first place? What are the similarities really? Why are they similar?

The Power of Dragons and Gods

Firstly, let’s discuss their strength ratio, which also happens to show a lot of their similarities.

Let’s go a couple hundred years back.

As Abbadon, the fallen god, died in gw1, his power was released and threatened to destroy the world. Literally rip everything apart. Kormir stopped this by absorbing it, becoming one of the six gods herself.

This alone is a valid argument for the gods being stronger than the dragons. Why? Because despite having killed two dragons, nothing as potentially destructive as this has happened. But stay with me for a moment.

Abbadons death tells us three major things:

1. The six gods are not infallible or perfect. They can be corrupted, and they can fight among themselves. They are, in other terms, more human than one would assume.

• This in itself, is an important argument. What if the dragons have suffered the same fate as Abbadon? What if they were originally as benevolent as the six gods (if they even are), but fell to corruption?

1. The six gods can be killed. While they can’t die of age or sickness, they can be killed.

• This too, is something we can recognize in the elder dragons. They’re eternal, but given enough of a beating, they can be killed.

1. The six gods needs and are being sustained by magic (read: worship), but also see fit to safeguard the use of it.

• Need I say more? The elder dragons feeds off of magic, to become stronger and to sustain themselves. What if the dragons were supposed to safeguard magic, much like how the gods tried to?

Anyway, let’s get back on track to the question at hand; who is the strongest of the two groups?

I’ll take a wager and say they’re equally strong. But how can that be, you may ask, as killing an elder dragon barely had any effect on the world, while killing a god nearly destroyed everything?

Well, it’s actually quite logical. I’m pretty sure the elder dragons that we face, today, are weak compared to them at their strongest. Like Abbadon, when we fought him he had been trapped in his own realm and starved of magic for decades. Imagine if he’d been starved for nigh 10 000 years instead. He’d likely be significantly weaker.

Let’s remember, that the last time the elder dragons rose, they sucked the world dry of all living things (life is magic). How terrifying is that? And now, as all that magic has been released back into the world, naturally they’re a lot weaker then they could potentially be.

The Role of Gods and Dragons

As I was looking at the power ratio, and realizing how similar the gods and dragons really are, I was became incentivized to find out more. Perhaps there’s more to it all than I thought?

I was very surprised to learn that the six gods and the human race are in fact not native to the world of Tyria, while the elder dragons are. It isn’t known where the gods or the humans came from, but it’s generally believed they passed through the mists from another world.

This not only suggests that there are more worlds out there, but also that perhaps the gods and the elder dragons once had the same purpose, as guardians of sorts to their respective worlds. It is of course, pure speculation, but an interesting concept nonetheless. This further supports the theory that the elder dragons once were benevolent, but like Abbadon fell to the corruption of magic.

And if that is the case, what would happen if we killed them all? Even worse, what would happen if the gods, at their full strength, became corrupted? Each one of them have the power to potentially destroy the world of Tyria. Maybe this is why they left in the great exodus?

Furthermore, in HoT we saw that as one elder dragon died, his power could be absorbed by another dragon, but only by a dragon as it skipped everyone in between. What if, in similarity, a gods power could only be absorbed by a human? What does this imply?

I’m not a fan of the “meta”, because optimistically thinking, only about 5% of players can play it perfectly, which is what is required for it to actually be as good as it is.

Seeing builds like this, makes me happy. I’m gonna try to go for it next raid.

Also, I’m aware there’s several posts like this, I just want to keep nagging.

So, I’ve been reading around and checking out various upgrades and whatnot, and I’ve come to realize that a personal bank (although one is accessible through the scribe station), Trading Post, and other crafting stations will never be available in the guild hall. The reason why is simple: Halls shouldn’t make cities obsolete. Which is a completely valid reason to not add these things to the guild hall.

However, I’m not entirely sure this is working as they thought out.

As it stands, halls, scribing, and everything guild related thereof is earning anet and it’s developers a lot of (quite frankly unnecessary) hate. If either for the insane costs, the sometimes ridiculously unnecessary time gates, or for the annoying lack of convenience that are present.

Henceforth, I want to make this thread to add suggestions of things that could make (not break) the halls, and make us want to use them more actively.

• Please, add a trading post, a bank, and some workstations. I know you’re afraid it will ruin your new, shiny, pretty LA, but seriously. We all want this. Not having it in my guild hall is making me hate being there. And every single time I have to pointlessly go to LA just to pick up some minor stuff is making me hate LA too, if only by association. I rather spend my days in Orr. Which I hate, because it’s gray and dull. Also, seriously, there is already a bank there, why not just add a banking npc?

• At the moment, every guild that wants to progress it’s hall is starting out kittened. All good content with the guild hall requires scribing, and scribing is simply too expensive to level for 99% of the playerbase. In order to make it, you need to have a single scribe backed by a fully supporting guild. Tough luck if that player turns out an kitten and leaves. A fully leveled scribe, my god, some guilds would pay thousands for that. I think either you need to rework the entire scribe system, or make decorations easier to get.

• Also, the whole place seems dead. Add some npc’s walking around, some purchasable guards, SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Birds, bees, whatever.

Anthony.1579:

ashern is most skilled than i am. He knows every combo, buff, trick, and skill in and out.

Allie i think our toolbelt gives us lots of awesome unique skills, more skills to play with.

The engineer has a TON of different skills 1-5 on 5 kits, over 25 tool belt skills, and an extra 15 skills on ultility slots, and 4 elite skills + a few racial skills here and there.

Ashern took my post and made a more concise informative post about how engineers are quite versatile.

If they could use all their skills instead of just limited to 1 heal 3 utility 1 elite 5 tool belt skills – they would be OP.

I am not understanding how you don’t like the tool belt or kit swapping. I love it, but only because i like it with my preferred play style and role.

engineers have a higher skill cap because they have a lot of options, tricks, combos, and builds.

They also have to change up their skills in fractal and probably in raids to be a benefit to their 5 man party.

I think most people want a class that can stand on it’s own as a complete and Powerful class. Engineer doesn’t look powerful at first because there is no simple way to do mad damage and win.

Rather it’s more of a jack of all trades with decent sustain damage in zerk or conditions and lots of skills that most people think are useless. The problem is useless is when people think of their own benefit and not how to help the zerg or have battle options.

well yea that’s my opinion of engineer.

I will repeat something I’ve said many times before: do you think the flamethrower was designed to be swapped into for a single spell, and then swapped out of? No. It wasn’t even designed like that to begin with. In the beta and even during launch, kits had cooldowns that discouraged people from using too many at once.

But I digress. This isn’t about kit swapping, in my opinion. It’s about the fact that our core mechanic isn’t a mechanic at all, but rather just more skills. Sure, the more the merrier, but it doesn’t mean it’s a good design.

I’m fine with how the engineer is as it is, hell, I do three times the damage of some of my guild mates, but honestly, I would not mind it if they reworked the entire core mechanic to return to what it was originally meant to be, the tool belt that were to be a gamechanger. (Oh, and we are the only class in the game, whose core mechanic can’t be improved with traits. We have an increased recharge, and some vigor).

I really think this could make the class much more fun, and diverse, rather than just a kittenload of different skills.

If I may, while knights does provide slightly higher survivability in WvW or sPvP, the damage in HoT and Maguuma is simply so massive that no amount of toughness you can stack will help you. In my opinion, it’ll be better with slightly higher damage stats, and then go for more defensive traits and utilities. I’ve tried using both knights and zerker ascended as a scrapper, and it seems to be easier to survive in zerker gear simply because you can kill it before it kills you.

Here is a slightly modified build for you, that can help in open world:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASnUUBdehlYBGpC0ehl7jieVf1ZFshiosIciCgMB-TBRLgAv7PK/eU/BQHgvSQA-e

The healing turret provides all the condition removal you should need, especially when traited with inventions. You can even swap it with the healing gyro, for a no-cast heal with 1 condition removal.

Slick shoes provides an awesome defiance-breaker, which can also be used to keep hurtful mobs down. It also gives a stun-break.

Grenades are always nice damage.

Instead of purge gyro, I picked Bulwark. It’s got a more versatile use, while also providing a much more useful tool belt skill.

Modified ammunition is among the best damage traits in the game. I’d rather pick that, as you’re going for power damage.

I chose inventions as it’s quite useful for open world. It strengthens your survivability with increased healing and condition removal, while mecha legs gives permanent movement speed. Bunker down is actually kind of useful when you’re in the thick of it.

:)

Ashern.5328:

I see your point. With that said, I can also say the same about other classes. With what you’re saying, it seems as if you mean that Engis are just button mashers with no actual merit. However, I’d like to see exactly what you propose for Engis to change. If it’s to re-work the toolbelt, then sure — that’s not an “overhaul,” it’s just fixing the toolbelt.

To me, Engi is what makes the class itself, not it’s “core mechanic” of F1~ skills, because Engi is already in itself a core mechanic(?). Shatters don’t make Mesmers Mesmers, they are to benefit them. On that same token, Attunements do make Eles Eles because their class is built around that. The same with Engis, the toolbelt doesn’t make Engis Engis, it’s there to benefit them. Kits are their core mechanic because no other class has instant access to so many fields and different skills.

Not acknowledging kits as the Engineers core mechanic is to ignore what’s placed in front of you.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never had an issue with the toolbelt. To me, I can’t necessarily say it’s “fine,” but I don’t see it as broken or extremely messed up. I can agree, once I use up all my Toolbelt skills, I’m left with an “ok now what” type of feeling. But what is the difference between that and other classes’ F1s?

The toolbelt has always been there for what I needed it to do; pop a reflection, a field, or stealth, or whatever. It is basically it’s own toolkit up there above my own skills. I don’t necessarily see the benefit of giving it a different mechanic because I’m pretty much happy with all that Engi can do already.

That’s where our opinions differ on this matter I suppose. I can name issues with toolbelt, but I can also name issues with any other classes’ F skills or even their mechanics. So for me, Engi is very well balanced.

Thing is, I do acknowledge kits as the engineers core mechanic, that’s slightly what I think is part of the problem.

A core mechanic is defining to it’s class, and the class can’t play well without it. Remove adrenaline from warriors, clones from mesmers, shroud from necromancers, and their class becomes all too much boring for it. Even plain bad. The core mechanic, is just that: the defining trait of the class. Without our core mechanic, we can’t play well.

As engineers, we have the benefit (or problem) that our core mechanic is our kits, eating up utility slots, whereas it should have been the tool belt (as was intended from the beginning). Since our core mechanic is our kits, the more kits we use the stronger we are. And using fewer kits makes us worse for wear.

I’d like to see a change where the core mechanic is moved from focusing on our kits, to focusing on our tool belt. Make the tool belt valuable, nay, important to us again. Rather than just more buttons to mash.

I’m not saying “remove the kits”, I’m saying give us some kind of mechanic again. If kits were intended to be our core mechanic from the beginning, they wouldn’t have added them as utilities.

Ardid.7203:

Allie, my post wasn’t mean to shoot down anything. In fact I do like the idea of the kits being somehow linked to the specialization lines you prposed before. All I wanted to do was to make sure we don’t forget what makes the Engie different from the rest and fun for us need to be part of any suggestion.

I understand and share the feeling that the Engie is “messy” and “wonky”. But we must ask ourselves… whitout that, will the Engie still be an Engie? There is a line there, IMO, dividing simple bad design from amazing personality, a line we have to tread carefully.

Going more specifically into mechanics.

Weapon Swap: Definitively NO.
Is not what Engie IS: Being weapon swap less is something that define the playstyle and personality of the proffession. It has become a trademark, just like kits and flexible rotations.
Is not what Engie needs: Adding an extra option that requires more balance and polishing doesn’t balance and polish the mess we already have.

Kits with cooldowns: Maybe, I really really doubt it’ll work.
Totally disruptive with Engie’s playstyle, tends to the proffession normalization I reject.
It clearly could balance things and make them more manageable for the devs, but the cost would be high: a balanced but mild, boring Engie is not worth it, IMO.

Kits linked to Specs: Yes, if done right.
IMO, it could be a really Engie-like solution, that keeps the theme and style of the proffession, and can even enhance it.
It also could properly attack the problem, effectively reducing the mess without damaging our playstyle.

A more realistic approuch:

Right now, I think the proffession is so convoluted, that truly balancing it would require enormous effort from the devs, all while heavily impacting the player base, and risking a major blow up for the entire proffession.

So I think the “solution” to the problem requires the old and simple method of meticulously polishing what we have, and replacing those parts that doesn’t fit: we need the devs to really go all the way with the correction of BUGS and ERRORS, and then all the way again just remaking those things that simply don’t work, like the grenade’s AA, the ranged game, the Gyro´s AI, or the F-Gyro.

My sugestion:
- Transform most of the Mortar skills into targeted “seeking” projectile attacks with AoE. Keep only the ally-supporting ones as ground targets. (Also replace the arquebus with a proper, over the shoulder, rocket launcher).
- Convert grenade AA into a projectile targeted attack without ground target. Lower its damage but balance with a high frequency.
- Dump Gyro’s AI and replace it with a tether, invisible to enemies, linking the gyro to the Scrapper. The lenght of the tether would be similar to the Gyro’s AoE. Gyros would float over lower obstacles, and have a slight inertia, requiring the player to apply skill and positioning to control them.
- Convert the F-Gyro into an untargetable source of passive bonuses and conditions, based on the toolbelt skills you have off coldown. If you use a toolbelt, you lose that passive bonus during the cooldown, and the election of your skills will greatly affect what bonuses you receive: Gyro, Turret and Gadget Toolbelt Skills should provide a much better passive bonus than Kits, making effectively more desirable to take them for Scrapper play.

Then we understand each other a lot better

I don’t know what would break or make the engineer. I agree that the kits are part of the engineers’ personality, and adding a weapon swap could break that. But I’m can’t say, because I don’t know for sure.

Your suggestions is (in simple terms) precisely something I’d like to see as well

My suggestion is NOT to change the entire class around, or mess it up, but rather return our CORE MECHANIC, back to the TOOL BELT as it was originally intended to be.

I honestly don’t give a kitten about kits, I don’t care, but they are NOT a good core mechanic.

#Ashern, a huge post, I’ve read it and I get your point, but I think you misunderstood me slightly. Here’s a wall of text as a response.

The engineer is the only reason I play gw2. Literally. And I have no problem with kit swapping, or whatnot. What bothers me, is the lack of core class mechanic that we have, and I am not the only one who has pointed this out. I’ve seen dozens of people complain about it. We are a class with a lot of skills, that we swap around in. That’s it. But ladies and gentlemen, more skills does not equal better or more diverse. It is simply bad design.

As it stands, our class mechanic is the tool belt, but we have no traits to strengthen them outside of the tools traitline. Every other profession in the game have some way, in every one of their trait lines, to strengthen their class mechanic, except us. There is no counter-argument to this. It is a huge flaw in our design. Instead of designing us around our class mechanic, we’re designed around the use of kits. This is a bad thing. Why?

Because we were given kits late in development as a response to this lack of mechanic. The kits would be our “new mechanic”. They were rushed and buggy as hell. And you know what? They were horrendously bad the first year or so of gw2. You would literally be insta-kicked if you tried to join a group as an engineer.

They fixed this by scaling kits off of our own weapons. This was a good change, and brought the engineer on par with other classes in terms of damage. However, it does not change the fact that we have a lack of class mechanic that nobody else have.

Yes, there are people who find kit swapping to be fun, and complex, and the whole reason they play. But let me tell you something.

Kit swapping: is the easiest, simplest, and worst designed thing in the world. Allow me to explain why.

In the beginning of gw2, kits had cooldown. Yes, they did. You had to first exit the kit you were in, to reenter another kit. This was to prevent the kits to become what they have become today. Even the developers made the kits, knowing that kit-swapping could become a problem. They removed this as they made the kits weapon scaled. Why? Because it was a simple solution to a very complex problem. Namely, that engineers sucked balls. In other words, the kits had to be made extremely strong, for the class to be viable.

Now, kit swapping is not hard. It’s extremely easy, but it feels complex and difficult because you’re mashing buttons. All you really need to do, is keep a count and swap a weapon. Is that hard? No. Even the developers tried to prevent it, because it would feel boring and unsatisfying to play.

We need an alternative. As it stands, no amount of elite specialization will ever change how the class is played, simply because the foundation isn’t as smooth as several of the other classes.

Ardid.7203:

Allie.4925:

Also, it’s really not hard to do. The gyros have shown that it’s possible, and revenants have shown that people accept not having all their utilities available across all specs.

Please feel free to introduce those people to the fully balanced and totally inflexible Revenant playstyle. Then let the other people, who actually like to play Engie and not Rev, keep their customizable utilities. Thanks.

While I agree kits are somewhat inevitable for the commonplace engie, and I fully support the concept of the Engie being a rushed up proffession that deserves much more dev’s time and polishing, I also think some of you are missing two very important points about the Engie playstyle: 1- Personal preferences. 2- Fun. Not all people like the same things, and I’m sure most poeple that already play Engie does it because they like it as it is.

What I’m trying to say is I don’t think the solution to the “problem” is to normalize the engineer so it becomes more like the other proffessions. People who chose Engie, play and love the proffession BECAUSE it is complex, have a lot to mix and match, and plays really different from the more “balanced” ones. Please dont forget that, and pause a moment before trying to transform Engie into an Ele or Revenant. We Engies want a better proff, but one that still shines because of its versatile, customizable, frenetic and special madness.

I think you misunderstood my argument. The engineer is not at all a complex class. All you need to do is count to 5 and weapon swap at the right time. In PvE that is. We have a lot of options, but all in all, we are an incredibly messy profession. I’m not arguing that the revenant is better. I play this game because of my engineer.

My point was, a simple change (like the one I mentioned earlier) could fix a lot. Instead of shooting down a suggestion, try to make a constructive argument as to why exactly that wouldn’t work.

The way I see it, the change I suggested above would hardly change anything.

archmagus.7249:

Let’s take a count of how many skills we have:
5 tool belt skills
+5 weapon skills
+5 skills from med kit
+Up to 15 skills from 3 kits in Utility
+5 skills from mortal kit in our elite
=35 skills, which we can swap to WITHOUT A(ny appreciable) COOLDOWN
Elementalist has the most with 40 skills (5 weapon + 1 heal + 3 utility + 1 elite) * 4 attunements. Though they can raise that even further with conjured weapons, but those have limited charges, expire after a limited amount of time, and have cooldowns. Tempest can add 4 more by overloading their attunements.

I’m not entirely getting your point… Do you mean to say that we’re strong because we have so many skills?

While somewhat true, that doesn’t mean it’s a very good design. I mean, firstly, how many of those 35 spells do you actually use regularly? I find I almost never need to use more than 5-6 skills off cooldown to do respectable damage. Granted, those skills are from all the kits, but still. 1 skill per kit.

It’s not very difficult to juggle kits at all. All you need is a little practice. In some ways, the engineer is the most simple class to play, because all you need to do is weapon swap and count to 5.

Pakkazull.6894:

Allie.4925:

Oh, and let’s top it off with it not really being that well designed a class, which makes it all the more harder to play :P

Do you hold a grudge or something? I mean, fundamentally I agree with you, the class is a bit of a hodgepodge, but man, you’re in like 4-5 threads, two of your own making, hammering in the same message. We get it already.

Meh, I decided to get active.

And no, I hold no grudge. I love my engineer Though, the two posts I’ve written myself have different points. One is general feedback, and thoughts, while the other is suggestions.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all bashing the engineer, because I love it as well. I wouldn’t bother playing this game if it weren’t for my engineer. And my guild.

That’s not what I was after here though.

Most engineers I’ve ever talked to would agree that there is something off about our class. We have no core mechanic that is just ours.

Yes, we have the tool belt, but that is really nothing compared to the game-changers that necromancers, warriors, or even mesmers have to their classes (to pick a few). They’re simply some extra spells, most of which aren’t that interesting at all.

What I’d like to bring up here, are suggestions to what could make our class more unique and make more sense.

I suggested in another thread here, that we could bind different kits to different specializations, and have those specializations strengthen the playstyle of the different kits, while also still allowing synergy between them.

Explosives – Unlocks the grenades
Firearms – Unlocks the flamethrower
Inventions – Unlocks the bombs (with heals, maybe?)
Alchemy – Unlocks the elixir gun
Tools – Unlocks the Tool Kit
Scrapper – Maybe a weapon swap, to make it more comfortable without kits?

While the mortar could be available across all as the elite it is supposed to be.

From the first time engineers joined the betas, I always felt like this was their original train of thought when designing us, but never got to be done right.

It could promote more build diversity, allow people to play more to their playstyle, and shake things up a bit, to say the least.

Maybe it’s a good idea, maybe not, who knows.

I have to say though, a weapon swap idea does intrigue me a bit. Personally I like kits, but I’d like the option to play without them as well. The revenant during the early betas had no weapon swap, and people complained it felt wonky. I didn’t even notice, as that’s how I always feel whenever I try to play an engineer without kits. Why not add a weapon swap as an option for scrappers, as our elite specializations specific new ability. Combined with my idea above, it could be really fun.

Greyjoy.5167:

Allie.4925:

Another way to do it, would be to lock kits to their specializations, rather than have it free for all. Kind of like how gyros are attached to the scrapper today.

Explosives – Granades
Firearms – Flamethrower
Alchemy – Elixir Gun
Inventions – Bombs (and bring back the bomb healing, perhaps)
Tools – Tool kit

and maintain the mortar as an elite you can use across all.

Would perhaps give some incentive to get creative rather than just use the strongest skills across all. As it stands, while it works great, is just really, really dumb.

I don’t know, might be a dumb idea this too, but something.

This is an amazing idea! It is a little nerf, but it’s reasonable and suit engi well. It’s brilliant i’m in.

It’s something I really wondered why they didn’t do from launch, as our current class mechanic is rather lacking (Tool Belt vs Attunements? C’mon.) other than kits, but kits are kind of overused.

Also, it’s really not hard to do. The gyros have shown that it’s possible, and revenants have shown that people accept not having all their utilities available across all specs.

Edit: also, the grandmaster traits across the different specializations should vary more, so that if you choose one, you’re not forced to use the kit bound to that specialization.

Mine is just waiting for the map completion fix…

Darn it.

I believe there’s supposed to be a small window of “non-evade” between the jumps, as you’re technically not evading for that 1/2 second you’re standing still, but that’s just me.

Might be a bug?

Another way to do it, would be to lock kits to their specializations, rather than have it free for all. Kind of like how gyros are attached to the scrapper today.

Explosives – Granades
Firearms – Flamethrower
Alchemy – Elixir Gun
Inventions – Bombs (and bring back the bomb healing, perhaps)
Tools – Tool kit

and maintain the mortar as an elite you can use across all.

Would perhaps give some incentive to get creative rather than just use the strongest skills across all. As it stands, while it works great, is just really, really dumb.

I don’t know, might be a dumb idea this too, but something.

lorddarkflare.9186:

glehmann.9586:

Kits aren’t optimal because of the lack of weapon swap, it’s the ability to have lots of high damage attacks as well as good utilities and the ability to switch between them with virtually no cooldown. If you added weapon swap, you would change an optimal setup from one weapon and three kits to two weapons and three kits.

Kits are optimal because of how kits work, adding weapon swap would change nothing.

Allie.4925:

glehmann.9586:

Kits aren’t optimal because of the lack of weapon swap, it’s the ability to have lots of high damage attacks as well as good utilities and the ability to switch between them with virtually no cooldown. If you added weapon swap, you would change an optimal setup from one weapon and three kits to two weapons and three kits.

Kits are optimal because of how kits work, adding weapon swap would change nothing.

Seconded.

I really wonder though… Is this really what they had in mind when designing the engineer? Swapping kits every cast, to use the strongest skills on CD over four kits?

If so, anet game design is horrendous.

Always good to see people who have a working understanding of the class.

In a world with weapon swap, the hard hitting skills from hammer and Rifle would just be added to the Zerker Rotation.

I am of the opinion that the number of kits in a build should inform its role, but in the opposite direction as it currently is.

How I see it:

-1 Kit: DPS
-2 Kits: Sustain
-3+ Kits: Support

Now, the best way to do this would be to balance the traits and skills around this concept.

The easy way is just to hard bake the rules into the class mechanic.

Unfortunately, this would involve a massive overhaul to the core mechanic of the class, something which anet explicitly said they would never do when they launched.

Edit: I agree that it’s needed though.

Oh, and let’s top it off with it not really being that well designed a class, which makes it all the more harder to play :P

morrolan.9608:

Allie.4925:

Meanwhile, anet are kittenscared to buff us, out of fear for the overblown rage-response doing so will get them from the sPvP community.

We have the highest dps in PvE boss fights, we are very strong in PvP at the moment, what is there to buff? I guess support could be buffed a bit but we do have adequate support as I note above. We do have stuff that needs fixing but so does every class.

The major issue facing the class at the moment is that the scrapper class mechanic is poor in relation to other class mechanics but this has been discussed heavily here with no real response from the devs so I guess its died down a bit. But that doesn’t mean we need buffs it means they need to heavily rework the class mechanic.

Then we agree.

Sorry, that last post there was slightly off topic. What I meant wasn’t to “buff” us, per se, but to change things, in order to make them better, as our core mechanic isn’t good.

glehmann.9586:

Kits aren’t optimal because of the lack of weapon swap, it’s the ability to have lots of high damage attacks as well as good utilities and the ability to switch between them with virtually no cooldown. If you added weapon swap, you would change an optimal setup from one weapon and three kits to two weapons and three kits.

Kits are optimal because of how kits work, adding weapon swap would change nothing.

Seconded.

I really wonder though… Is this really what they had in mind when designing the engineer? Swapping kits every cast, to use the strongest skills on CD over four kits?

If so, anet game design is horrendous.

coglin.1867:

I agree that it is in a good place.

My biggest issue is with the bugs. Fixing key bugs would be a massive improvement. Then again, that can be said for any profession.

My second biggest issue would be to have some traits that I feel are almost never used, removed, and some trait aspects that were removed, to be returned. Now I only speak of my experience and discussions with engineers in my guild or that are on my server in WvW that I talk to.

I have never met anyone who says they use soothing detonation, medical dispersion field, health insurance, or gadgeteer, for example. Yet I know many people, including myself, who enjoyed, and regularly used pistol piercing traits, the old gadget trait, or elixir infused bombs.

Every class will always have its bugs. It’s not the bugs I want to pick a fight with here, it’s rather the fact that the class in its whole (while very much functional) is.. rushed and incomplete. Everything we have is a copy-paste from something else, and not even our class-mechanic is anything really… good.

With a weak foundation, even the most well-thought out buildings will eventually crumble. Without fixing some of the core issues with the class, how can they improve it in the future?

Now then. To start things off, I’ll add some of my frustrations and possible solutions.

The Class Mechanic Problem

As it stands, the engineer has two unique class mechanics. The first being our Tool Belt, and the other being our Kits. While I love the concept and idea behind this, it is somewhat broken in my opinion. Firstly, the tool belt is very weak, compared to other class mechanics in the game, and not very interesting at all. Unlike every other profession, there are no “improvements” that can be made to it, other than using the Tools specialization, and even those improvements are quite lackluster and sub-par. Whereas other class mechanics have various traits and improvements over several specializations, ours is just… not there at all almost.

Secondly, the kits we have are too strong. A lot of our utilities simply aren’t good enough to compete with the kits, and are only strong in niche situations. However, paradoxically the kits cannot be made weaker without making the profession as a whole weaker, nor can our other utilities be made much stronger. Why? Because for the time being, our viability and strength is reliant upon using a lot of kits, and the other utilities can’t be made stronger out of balance concerns.

As it stands, the engineer is on a finely balanced scale, whereas we’re capable, but still extremely messed up.

The Class Mechanic Suggestion

We’ve just been given a new specialization, the Scrapper. I’ve tried it out for several weeks now, and while I agree it does well in sPvP and WvW, it is sadly very underwhelming in PvE and World. I’ve come to realize this is because of the aforementioned problem with our class mechanic. As of now, we are the only profession whose elite specialization don’t change or completely revolutionize how its core class mechanic works. The necromancer has its reaper shroud, the warrior has its berserker-mode, the guardian virtues are now physical, etc. What changes does the Scrapper bring to our core mechanics? To our Tool Belt, or our Kits? Can we strengthen our tool belt skills, like the dragonhunter can his virtues? Can we overcharge our kits, to make them stronger like the tempest? No.

We’ve been given a function gyro with an extreme niche usability. That is it.

To the point, and suggestion on how to fix this, overall, I believe the engineer needs a complete overhaul. It works, yes, but try playing the revenant and you’ll see how much different a finely tuned class feels compared to the mess that engineers is and have been since our introduction.

Yes, a complete overhaul could risk destroying the class altogether, but could also end up making the class so much better for it. Great rewards, comes from taking great risks.

I believe, for instance, that a weapon swap can greatly benefit the scrapper, without necessarily weakening or overpowering us as a whole. That being, of course, at the cost of at least one kit.

Further on, our kits could have it’s own bar, like the elementalist, limiting how many we can use. Why not? Does anyone know why they didn’t want this at launch?

I don’t know how to fix this, all I know is that it needs a fix.

Hello there.

I wrote a little thread here a couple of days back, where I discussed possible problems for the future of the Engineer, and more accurately its Scrapper specialization. While a lot of people disagreed with my reasoning that the engineer is technically weaker then most other classes, I’d like to start a new thread looking at some ideas for alternatives that can, ultimately, change the class for the better. Not break it apart, but change it.

Some people feel the engineer is in a really good place, and needs no change, while others feel it’s the most broken profession in the game. Share your experiences as to why, and suggest a change or two that can fix it.

This is actually very simple.

The engineer works as it stands. That much is true. But you cannot deny that the entire profession is… rushed. Incomplete, and rushed. The same goes for our “elite” specialization. Once again, engineers ended up being last in the line of priority.

Our kits are the only things that really allows us to play on par with any other class, and that’s really only if we’re juggling them like crazy. Which is impractical.

Allow me to strengthen my point.

This is a game, in which every profession (or class, if you prefer) have it’s own unique class mechanic. A class mechanic balanced to make it a lot stronger.

Revenant – Legends
Warrior – Adrenalin
Guardian – Virtues
Thief – Steal / initiative and movement
Ranger – Pets and swapping
Mesmer – Clones and shatters
Necromancer – Life energy
Elementalist – attuments

Each of these mechanics can be strengthened and evolved throughout EACH and EVERY one of their specializations (and now their elite specializations).

Revenant – Legendary Dragon, a new and different set of kitten that’s pure awesome.
Guardian – The virtues are reworked in their first minor trait, and much improved.
Warrior – Berserk-mode, with adrenaline. With new buffs, everything is stronger now.
Ranger – Further synergy with their pets, and pet swapping over druid.
Thief – Dodging and initiative use has been improved, improving their mechanic.
Necromancer – Death shroud gets completely reworked as an awesome new reaper.
Elementalists – Overloading their attunements, for nice new effects.
Mesmer – Alacrity, strengthened through their class mechanic: clones and shatteres.

Now. I’ve played all these classes, and I’ve read up on what people like and don’t like… And I’ve realized that the engineer really don’t have a class mechanic.

We have the “Tool Belt”. Yes. We do. But is that really a class mechanic worth mentioning? Is it even a mechanic at ALL? There is nothing, NOTHING, other than the Tools specialization that even effects our Tool Belt!

Where every other profession have options to improve their mechanics in different ways across the specializations, we have literally no other way to affect it other than going through Tools.

Not to mention, even after the feature changes in April, our specializations are a complete mess of things that don’t work or are insanely underperforming in most situations.

The engineer is, and will always be, the least liked profession in gw2, simply because it’s half a mess that someone put together in a week or so.

Which makes me sad.

I’ve tried to make a build that utilizes other things then kits. Still the “strength” of our kits are such that… for lack of better words, NOT using them would render us rather useless.

Do you have to use kit swapping? No.

Do you have to use kit swapping if you want to be on par with every other class? Yes.

If you want to avoid it, I suggest you make a revenant and keep to it.

And if you’ve tried any of the new PvE content, or raids, you KNOW that using a set DPS rotation (Edit: that our condition build requires us to do, flawlessly) just won’t DO anymore.