Guild Wars 2

They still have some AI, if you are not there or don’t attack anything then they will take action into their own hands and shoot stuff.

At this point I think a complete redesign is in order to make turret a selling point for engineers. They would have to cut one of the following aspects of turrets tho:

• Long lasting
• Stationary
• AI driven

Personally I’d like to see the AI aspect go. Turrets lasting long is one of those things that fits thematically and makes them stand out from other abilities. It reenforces the engineers theme as a base builder. So does their stationary nature, it helps them stand out from other classes with minions.

The photon forge weapons did not reuse old weapon skins, they are only similar.

My point is, if I can’t stay long with all this endurance regen and not using anything but auto attack. Imaigne how low the effect of Thermal Release Value is then in a build buffed by quickness that utelizes all photon forge skills and does not build around building up more than 100% endurance regen. Or a build taking the traits that incresse heat generation while in photon forge.

Currently, this trait does not reward you appropriately for wasting a dodge. 15% heat is less then what some Photon forge abilities produce. So you dodge and get to use #1 or #2 once more before you explode anyway.

If the only viable playstyle for photon forge is to constantly swap in and out, then why have so many traits that only function while you are in photon forge.

I really like how the grandmasters for Holosmith creates build diversity, but after a good amount of testing I think [Thermal Release Value] have a too low heat reduction.

Currently it removes 15% heat when dodging as well as burning enemies in a 180 radius around you. The burning is fine and very flavor full, but I feel like 15% heat reduction does not help Holosmiths do what this trait apears to be made for, aka sacrificeing endurance (and thus survivability) for longer Photon Forge durrations.

I’ve tried a build with perma Vigor, [Adrenal Implant] and Rune of Adventure for max endurance generation without leaving the photon forge. This build ran none of the other Top row traits that increese heat generaton. Even with All this endurance regen, I can’t do anything but Auto attacking without overheating.

My suggestion is simple. Add an additional clause to Thermal Release Value: Vent twise as much heat above the heat threshold. Heat Threshold: 50%.

This way, you can stay longer in Photon forge if you hold back on the more powerfull abilities and sacrifice dodges.

TL;DR: Thermal Release Valve should reduce heat by 30% instead of 15% if you are above 50% heat.

They have announced on reddit that Bolt will get a new projectile effect soon.

The look of the arena does not correspond well with its effect. When I see a bunch of walls, I am expecting them to hold enemies inside or outside like guardian walls. Instead it acts more like a stance that is restricted to an area. The visuals also suggest that its positive function effects all allies inside, not just the engineer. I strongly belive this skill were suppose to do one thing but then got changed late in development.

If you want a faceroll easy build for open world I’d recommend Juggernaut Scrapper.
Permanent stability trivialize a lot of content.

Just take Firearms (3,3,1) Alchemy (2,3,1) and Scrapper (3,3,3).
For utilities you want Flamethrower, Elixir U and Elixir B.
Medic gyro and Healing turret are both effective heals. Sneak gyro for elite can come in handy if things goes wrong.

Stats is all zerker, tho if you can get your hands on some boon durration runes, it can help keeping that quickness uptime.

For weapon I like to use rifle instead of hammer, the perma stability lets you swap out of flamethrower to fire of a quick launch from rifle #4.

Food generally does not matter, tho any boon durration helps. For utility there is this little known consumable called Skale Venom ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Skale_Venom_ ) That adds weakness and vulnerability to your auto attack spam.

What if, and I’m just spitballing ideas here, the rifle (and maybe pistol) auto attack used the ammo system. The Count Recharge rate would be the same as their current attack speed, but the base attack speed would be much faster. Then lets say it has a Maximum Count of 5.

You would be able to “burst” fire a few shots, but if you end up spamming the auto attack you run out of “ammo” and fire at a normal rate. However, if you fire a few auto attacks then let it recharge while you fire some other abilities or swap into kits, you’ll be able to fire quickly again.

This would also open up for some interesting trait design.

Looking at the video, you can tell he is using Scrapper , Alchemy and Tools.

I can for sure see the following traits:

• Adaptive armor (scrapper grandmaster)
• Gadgeteer (tools gandmaster)
• Streamlined kits (tools master)
• Invigorating speed (alchemy adept) saw him get vigor when getting swiftness
• Self Regulating defenses (alchemy master)
• HgH (alchemy master)

I am expecting the remaining traits to be:

• Recovery Matrix (scrapper adept)
• Rapid Regeneration (scrapper master)
• Power Wrench (tools adept), might also be Reactive lenses but I never saw it pop

Arantheal.7396:

since sword is building up heat as well, I think it’s mandatory for running holosmith (unless photon forge becomes a true weaponswap eventually)…

This is not the case according to the tooltip. The sword gains higher critchance at higher levels of heat, but does not generate heat by itself. Same is true for the utility skills. The only way to generate heat is in the photon forge.

Grieving is Power and Condition damage main with Precision and Ferocity minor. It is a part of the expantion and we do not know how to aquire it yet.

You are most likely going to run Shield for full power build or Grieving stats pistol for hybrid. Grieving stats is a part of the expantion tho, but if it is as costly to craft as viper I’d recommend making the cheapest stat version and then stat swap. If money isn’t a concern, get H.O.P.E for free stat swap when the expantion comes.

Nilix.2170:

2) Half of the Tools line is dedicated to improving and rewarding Engineer agility.
Optimized Activation, Mechanized Deployment (which synergizes with OA), Reactive Lenses, Streamlined Kits, Kinetic Battery (both old and new), Adrenal Implant, Gadgeteer (which improves Rocket Boots and Slick Shoes). Here we have an entire line built for keeping the Engineer mobilized. Why would you have a minor that rewards/strengthens players who aren’t actively mobile in a trait line that’s working towards improving their mobility so they can push it past the limit?

All of this just reenforce what I said. Traits like Adrenal Implant and Optimized Activation give you more uptime of the old Excessive energy. Effects like Streamlined kits, kinetic battery, rocket boots, slick shoes, etc helps us repossision ourself so we don’t have to dodge. Toolkit too gives access to cripple and block to futher survive by outmanuvering our opponents without wasting endurance.

With the current version, taking traits like Adrenal implant means you have to dodge more often to get the damage bonus. It just turns dodging into busywork that you got to do to keep your damage up. Unless you are already foced to dodge, in which case, this trait might as well just read “+10% damage”.

In the end, I feel like this went from easy PvE trait to easy PvP trait. In PvP you are extreamly rarely going to be full on endurance, especially in the long fights that engineers excel at. So in PvP it went from a (maybe poor) reward for skillfull play to 0 play. In PvE it have turned into busy work.

I feel like this is a good grandmaster for pure SD builds. Might help it get back some of its old power.

Personally, I really liked the flavor of how thief and engineer were different in this regard. Thief got rewarded for spamming dodges, and engineers got rewarded for being conservative with their endurance. Engineers are not supose to be all agile like thief so it made very much sense to incentivise engineers to avoid damage by other means, like blocks or positioning. Both methods have resonable interesting gameplay implications.

Now, this trait is just a copy of what thief gets, a bit of Engineer identity died this day.
However, the rest of the patch is totally worth it.

Sounds like every issue you have is with the core class and should be solved with a balance patch, not a new elite spec. We’ll get a balance patch on the 8th, hopefully it will solve some of this problems.

Kusumura, the original rocket jump was a self lunch, this sounds more like an actual leap. Also rocket kick is the toolbelt skill and not the main utility skill rocket jump.

Personally, I’m fine with this idea. I belive that rocket kick feels clunky and should be polished a bit. However, I think a backwards evade is more fitting than leap.

Kaizoku.1298:

Woah what the hell was that? The character just stopped moving for 1 seconds and then orbital strike hit the golem, it didn’t even have an animation.

The build ran in that video contains the trait “Siege rounds”, currently it makes orbital strike hit twice. Since there is clearly no casting of the ability and the fact that it only hits once, we got 2 possibilities:

1. Someone else is casting it from outside view.
2. They rewamped Siege Rounds.

The later is much more likely since we didn’t see anyone spam orbital strike on the other class videos. I only included this alternative because it is still a tiny chance. However, most likely they have changed the trait to cast orbital strikes on hit (maybe on crit like Aim-assisted rocket). I belive they have done this since Holosmith removes the F5 ability and they wanted a good explosives grandmaster trait to fit the standard power Holosmith build.

Considering how popular the [Shoulder Scarf] item is, I’d love to see retextured versions of it. Maybe a scarf pack including multiple texture variants.

Possible new texture patterns for scarfs:

• Hearts
• Skulls
• Dots
• Glowing runes
• Asura pattern
• Fuzzy
• Guild Icon

“Purity of purpose” means the subject should excel on it’s one (or more) pupose and not be divert into other functionalities. It is generally a good design philosophy to have and GW2 seems to never use it. In this game there are so many incidental functions to abilities you’ll often get hit by CC or dmg that enemies didn’t even intend to hit you with.

It’s not fun to get hurt, but it is fun to hurt enemies, it’s a balance that works pretty well, but when you hurt enemies incidentally and don’t even notice it, that balance goes away.
More purity of purpose means your accomplishments will be intentional and you can feel pretty good about them. It makes it easier to learn what abilities does both when you learn how to play with them and against them.

Gear shield have a pretty good purity of purpose, it’s job is to let you block incomming attacks as you repossition yourself. If this ability were to also grant might passivly or hurt enemies in a donut shape around you then the purity of porpose is lost and players might start using it in ways that the designers never inteded, this futher complicates balancing.

Healing turret is a good example of a failed purity of purpose. It’s inteded use (and I’m basing this of what the developers said when it got remade way back in early 2013) is to be a passive healing area for your team that you’ll all want to defend. However, the way everyone uses it is nothing like that. You place it down and quickly pick it up or blow it up. Because it have gained this new purpose, the developers can’t tweak the numbers so it works like inteded without incidentaly buffing the way players currently use it.

Edit: I’d also like to point out, buffing the damage on rocket boots is NOT Purity of purpose.

The prevously irrelevant scrapper minor trait that increase daze durrations continues to lose relevance. What happened to scrapper being a control spec? What happend to the Daze theme? Now the only daze we have on usefull weapon/utility skills the leap finnisher from hammer 3# into hammer 5#.

I’m quite salty about this patch. Calling it “purity of purpose” and then increasing the dmg of rocket boots and the physical dmg of fire bomb… wat?

Shield will continue to be irrelevant as long as pistol mainhand lacks any form of sustain damage or burst damage. It’s a step in the right direction but nobody in their right mind will take shield over pistol offhand.

Xyonon.3987:

Afaik it bugged with the auto attack, since every pierced bullet caused the aoe wich was ridiculously op in some places.

Pretty much the only senario where the multi hit was “op” was when a WvW zerg stacked in one spot and nobody had retaliation. There were no dungeon or fractal encounter where you could take advantage of it and sPvP does not have give this kinds of opportunities.

If the chance to hit 25 times on each trigger was a problem, they could limit the number of pierces it does from 5 to 2 or 1.

Xyonon’s idea would definitely make it feel good and open up for more skilled play. Rather than just mindles pushing on with all the hits, you could save the second leap for the right timing.

This is the one effect I miss the most from all of earlier Engineer balance. If piercing 5 targets is to much, just make it pierce once or twise. Write Pierce: X in the tooltip as a new template for pierce skills.

So now, if you want a fast casting heal, you HAVE to go Medic Gyro (and thus scrapper). They really need to bring one of the other two (not counting AED) healing skills cast time down. Both bandage self and Elixir H are 1 sec cast time, and now healing turret is .75 + overcharge + pickup…

It was lost way back when they converted to the new trait system. Everyone was vocal about the nade effects so we got them back some time after, but nobody uses SD anymore so they never returned our plasma balls to it.

David.5974:

I think that old marauder static discharger is nearlly back. (You know, use rifle turret and his tool belt skill with 6sec cd + static discharge). Gear sheild is here very needed kit(toolbelt for next statoc discharge) and gear sheild save me too much lives… okay i continue in my legend rifle progress

Not as long as power wrench competes with static discharge for the adept trait slot. I don’t think SD will return before a new elite spec comes out.

Here is a small addition that would probably solve the whole “gyros keeping up problem”:

Every gyro gets an ability that is a like like rifle #5 except:

• Instant cast
• no damage
• no range limit
• very short cooldown
• no pre/after cast

The gyro will only use this leap ability to get to your character, and only when you are outside it’s effect range.

I too have encountered this problem.

Sadly, only Grenade barrage was fixed, Aim-assisted rocket or Static Discharge is still removed…

This could be the utility type for a new elite spec, but instead of equipable kits, it could be like venoms. So you put down an ammo crate and players can step on it to get a unique dmg buff with charges.

Soon.5240:

above me.

But, all in all, Pistols are in a pretty good place in HoT right now.

Correction: Pistol offhand #4 is good for condi specs. Pistol mainhand is horrible now and leaves no room for pistol+shield builds.

At least with Coated Bullets (the pierce trait) we could use pistol mainhand in power builds for the double hit when attacking from above, just under max range or when your enemies are up against a wall. It was a fun playstyle, not the most viable, but it did add some unique strategies for every encounter.

I’ve completed all the 4 new maps on my engineer and have gotten 0 rewards. Would love to finish this collection for the skin.

Edit: treasure mushroom is also bugged, it only unlocks for one random elite spec weapon collection.

Gyros inability to follow you is not thanks to their slow movement speed, it’s that they are not responsive to changes in your movement and the fact that a tiny bump in the ground stops them (so much for flight).

Attempting to pick up healing turret but accidently use function gyro on a dying enemy. No thanks, the F key is not a suitable key for skills, and we do not need any more keys to press.

My post release scrapper feedback:

Hammer

• #1 Attack Chain, feels like the last attack should be a tiny leap, like how #3 is when used in melee. Would work great with the first adept trait and add more value to using the attack chain.
• #3 Rocket Charge, much better than in the betas, but can still doom you if the enemy charge up a heavy attack while you are stuck in this skill. I’d like to see it split into a 3 step attack chain so we can stop it when we want or change target easier.
• #2, #4 and #5 are all in a good spot.

Gyros

• Detonating gyros needs to go away. Sacrifice is in flavor for Necromancer and is the mechanic of Mesmer. Engineers should be about creating life, not blowing it up.
• In place of detonating, add a ground targeted command skill that sends the gyro to a specific location and changed to a Return command that returns the gyro to orbit around you.
• Gyros gets to easily stuck in terrain and sometimes decides to run away because they can’t find a proper path to the player. For example, jumping ontop of a bed inside a house can make gyros run upstrairs to the floor above.
• Why is the fuel “mechanic” here in the first place? Are there any cases where long lived gyros are to powerfull? They die right away in PvP/WvW anyway, so the fuel is only there for PvE.

• Shredder Gyro feels like a turret, it acts in no way like a gyro.
• Blast Gyro does what so many existing engineer skills already does more effectivly and suffers from to many downsides of beeing a gyro. I would remake this skill completly into a suportive dmg buffer that buffs you or allies like how the purge gyro removes conditions.
• Purge Gyro is fine in very specific cases, but lacks utility. Could be worth using if the toolbelt skill did something.
• Medic Gyro would be good if the Purge Gyro was worth taking on it’s own. As it stands, we need the condi removal from Healing Turret.
• Bulwark Gyro is pretty great.
• Stealth Gyro suffers a lot from the general gyro problems listed above, but works well in niech situations.

Toolbelt skills

• I feel like all the Gyro toolbelt skills (except Detection Pulse) should act like Reconstruction Field or Defense Field (medic and bulwark toolbelts). In other words, a field that follows the scrapper and is activated instantly.
• Chemical Field lacks utility to make Purge Gyro worth the slot, I’d rather just take Elixir Gun for the stunbreaker, escape, range option and condition removal.
• Bypass coating is undertuned in so many aspects, the cooldown is long, the radius is short, the super speed durration is short. It also have a cast time so it only works as a stunbreaker if you are hit CC that don’t move you.
• Detection Pulse does nothing in PvE, even when it’s supose to. This skill needs to reveal stealthed NPCs.

Traits

• The traits are all to focused on Lightning fields and super speed, this makes most of them useles on their own.
• Function Gyro is lacking in functionality. There are tons of good ideas (and bad) for how to improve on it so I won’t go into that here. The visual indication needs to be larger (especially on Asura).
• Shocking Speed don’t need the cooldown and is to focused on the hammer (we have a hammer trait in the grandmaster slot, no need for more).
• Recovery matrix should trigger on Cleansing Burst instead of placing Healing Turret, it should also not trigger on A.E.D before the heal happens.
• Decisive Renown is terrible and the cooldown does not help it. It feels like an empty trait slot
• Mass Momentum power converter is decent, but the might on stability feels like it is balanced around Juggernaut. Having a Elite-spec trait balanced around another trait in another traitline that only works with ONE utility skill is a waste and bad design. This trait is unfit for any other build.
• Impact Savant and Expert Examination does very little when we don’t have much stuns or dazes. Both feels like another Hammer trait.
• Final Salvo and Perfectly Weighted should not be in the same tier. Final Salvo does very little if you are not running hammer for leaps, Shocking Speed for super speed on leap and Rapid Regeneration for health from super speed. I would remake this trait completly into something more simple like improved gyro stats (cooldown reduction, life time extention, passive boons for the gyros, etc).
• Perfectly Weighteds dmg incresse is boring. The evade for stability is nice, but the stability should not last shorter than the traits cooldown.

If Super Speed should get the boon treatment, it needs something to differentiate it from Swiftness. I think a good effect could be that superspeed also removed the movement speed reduction from walking backwards or sideways.

Maybe viable, but not reliable. They should get ride of the whole “detonate” aspect of gyros and replace it with a “go here” ground-target command. Then make it stick properly to the player. This way, we will have proper control of when it stays with us and when it stays behind.

Also making it work on stealthed enemies in PvE would help. It’s ok if it don’t trigger on enemies you need the stealth detection mastery for, but other enemies… come on.

The Inquest gear dropped for me on Golem Mark II (first time kill since the Expantion).

I’ll work my way towards it slowly, but I plan to do that with all elite spec weapons at some point. Not sure if I ill use it or not yet.

They went back on it and reduced the cooldown by a flat amount instead. I’m not personally a fan of it, it promotes blowing the gyro up and that is not in flavor for Engineer. Necro is all abount sacrifice and death for it’s minions, and mesmer have this as their class mechanic, Engineers should be about creating life, not sacrificing it.

Xyonon.3987:

But hey, at least we had one BWE…

The only thing that changed since that one most important beta weekend was:

• Function gyro got an almost invisible little tiny gyro next to your character (Have you seen it on Asura? Because I main Asura and I havn’t, it’s that tiny).
• Reduced cooldown on Function Gyro (noticable , still won’t save it).
• Les aftercast on Hammer Auto attack

Gyro cooldown reduction don’t matter since they don’t function properly at all, just like we said before and after the beta.

Adam.3716:

Warrior would like to have a word with you. At least your specialization is moderately original. Guardian traits don’t even synergies with the core traits at all. Just be happy you got something that works.

There isn’t nearly as much synergy with the core proffesion as most people thing. Engineer don’t have much daze or stun, we have more knockback and launch. Yet we got 2 traits that only does things with stuns and dazes (Impact savant & Expert Examination).

Core engineer only have access to 1 lightning field for Shocking Speed, and that is tornado (aka 50% chance when activating a long cooldown elite). Talking about Shocking Speed, we only have 1 leap finisher besides the hammer (rifle #4).

Not forgeting how weak Mass Momentum is without Juggernaut. Engineers weakness have always been the lack of stability, and here we have a trait that procs while you have stability.

Same problem here, I could run way over 1500 units before it even starts to move.

Don’t forget that the patch that added back the range to rifle also removed legendary effects from Static Discharge and Aim-assisted rocket . I’m more concerned for them personally since having a consistent theme on all your bullets felt amazing. Now I feel like a mess when playing SD, some shots are normal bullets, some are fire bullets, some are lightning bolts and some are rockets.

Manuhell.2759:

Weapon swap should just be given to the base engineer and the whole class shouldn’t be balanced over kits.

How is balancing with weapon swap any better than kits? You just end up with the same situation, forcing players to run two weapon sets and swapping between them is almost worst than kits since I now HAVE to slot another weapon. Just giving engineers weapon swap would make more of a mess than we currently have, players would still have to run 4 kits to max out dmg, the rotations would just hit 60+ steps.

When compearing Engineer to more basic classes like, lets say Warrior, you get the following setups:

• Warrior may run one ranged weapon and one melee weapon, both designed around the existance of the other, excelling in their role but lacking in the other.

• Engineer have one general use weapon that works well in both melee and range, and can equip a variety of kits for more specialized roles and situations.

This difference in playstyle is what makes engineer unique. It is why I fell for this class in the first place. If they want to make les kits more viable, then the solution is to move power from the kit skills over to the weapon sets, not to make us into other classes. Or to buff non-kit skills so they stand up against their kit counterparts.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Are.1326:

No, not more buttons! There are to many buttons, I can’t even access them all anymore.

I think you can handle 1 more button?

I could not handle one more button when they added F5, I had to drop my push-to-talk key. Now I’m all out, and no, you should not have to run with a 12-key mouse to play Engineer.

No, not more buttons! There are to many buttons, I can’t even access them all anymore.

So with the scrapper we are getting another “On heal” trait that is not only completely useless with A.E.D, but also makes A.E.D harder to get right if you take it. In an effort to make non-healing turret heals viable on engineer, I belive ANet should take a look at when “On Heal” effects triggers with A.E.D.

My idea is simple, A.E.D should trigger “On Heal” traits and runes the moment A.E.D’s unique buff expires. In other words, when the actual healing is done.

This way, Cleansing Synergy won’t remove the condition that would bring you down to leathal health. Heal Resonator won’t keep your health above lethal with regeneration, but instead help keeping you alive while A.E.D is on cooldown. Same with Recovery Matrix, it would be a lot more usefull if it gave protection while the A.E.D is on cooldown and not while you are trying to take lethal dmg. Stimulant Supplier as well won’t heal you up so you don’t take leathal durring the A.E.D window.