Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the replies/advice. I went for a Necromancer is the end.

It’s finding it surprisingly fun this time around, it’s a lot more about tactical thinking and strategically using your abilities, rather than spamming spells and button mashing like the Elementalist.

Hey, I recently started playing Guild Wars 2 again after a big break. I have been thinking of creating an alt, but cannot decide what profession I want to play, I’ve made a few and deleted them, being fickle.

I have a level 80 Elementalist and Engineer, but I also have a level 50 Thief. I deleted a level 36 Guardian, I hated it.

I find the Engineer very boring, and a bit weak to be frank. The Elementalist is kinda fun but requires waaaaay more effort than any other class I’ve played. The Thief is a bit too spammy for my liking, and I feel their range is crappy. I like the short bow but that’s about it. I deleted a level 36 Guardian, I hated it.

So, I’m a bit stuck as to what I should pick, and I’ve hoped coming on here some people might give me some suggestions.

I’ve tried pretty much all classes up to around level 12 except the Warrior, because I’m not a fan of heavy armour. I hate Illusions in games, and the Mesmer seems to be based soley around them. The Ranger in concept sounds fun, I love long bows, and the melee weapons seem good too. But I hate pets, and they seem to rely on, or be forced to use them. I got a ranger to around level 15 but they seemed incredibly simplistic and repetitive, with nothing really fun or interesting. The Necromancer has been interesting me more and more, but the same goes with Ranger, they seem repetitive, also, their pets appear to be terrible, but I could be wrong there. ATM it seems like a toss up between Ranger and Necro…

So, what classes have you stuck with as your main, what are the most fun or viable classes there are. In other words, what do you recommend for me?

Edit: I should mention that I spend most time my time atm in WvW and PvP, but I do PvE as well, casually of course.

It’s one of the many things promised, or hinted at by Arenanet that they didn’t deliver on. They didn’t ever give an excuse, or explain why it’s not part of the game. If anything I think that’s false advertising, Molyneux syndrome. I assume you’re talking about the new ‘event’, but this was something they said the entire leveling story would be like. They said your home region would change and adapt all the time based off your decisions, and that your friends would want to enter your region to see how amazingly different it is to yours, to witness your feats of strength and accomplishments. Remember the interview saying the entire region would get poorer or wealthier, cleaner or dirtier based off of your decisions? How NPC’s would sell different things. One word, BULLkitten.

The story in GW2 was a disaster, I think that’s abundantly clear by now. As you said, they were meant to feel personal, “living”. They are generic, with a few meaningless choices that effect nothing. You then get dumped on the same path as everyone else with the most boring, dull and irritating NPC leading the the story to the end. [I think you all know who I’m talking about, but I won’t give spoilers, or talk about it in depth]

Also, dat ending……I think ME3 was bad.

I’m not.

There is an extreme lack of skills, interaction and builds. The problem with Guild Wars 2 is that is is so very simplistic. By around level 20 you know the majority of what your class has to offer and you feel comfortable will all abilities available .

In GW1 you had to create your own skill bar from options available to your profession and secondary profession, which led to massive variety. In GW2, you will see a profession and know exactly what they are capable of, they will have one or two weapon sets based around a common build that can’t really change. In GW1 you could come across completely unique styles all the time. You wouldn’t see an Elementalist and think “he’s either a bunker staff or D/D’”, instead you’d get a different opponent every time in terms of the skills they are using and the ways they can play. There was so much more variety and customisation in GW1, I become bored of the skills and weapons I have in GW2, and therefore bored of the professions very, very quickly. The idea of adding a second profession in GW1 was a fantastic design choice, because it led to even more customisation and unique, VIABLE builds. That word I use a lot, the variety was absurdly good, and it’s partly what made the PVP so fun, so unique and timeless. I could be a complete noob at the game, create a build with no research whatsoever, and still feel useful, because they were all so well balanced. In GW2 however if you did that you’d get your kitten handed to you to people who have the common internet builds that are powerful as of the latest patch notes – that’s dull.

As a veteran GW1 player, I feel very let down by Arenanet. GW2 for me was a big disappointment, it’s entirely catered to casual players – and that’s fine. Just don’t simplify and dumb everything down, casual players are not stupid, they just play less. This is a problem with game developers in general I feel, they dumb down all games. A recent example was Skyrim, it was a dumbed down elder scrolls game – less weapons, less spells, simple fights, no challenge, less armour and less interesting quests. Bethesda pulled that off by making the world engaging, adding tons of content and using addictive progression, GW2 does not do those things.

I’m a ‘hardcore’ gamer but I don’t dedicate myself to single games for too long, so in a way I’m in the same category as casual games for Guild Wars 2. Is the PVP fun for me? Not really. Messing about on WvW with some friends can be fully for a few hours but it doesn’t last. SPVP is frustrating and is more focused on what builds you have more than skill, EVEN more so than the original was, how does that even work with so few builds in GW2? To top all of this off, the abilities are so much more dull. I mained an Elementalist in the final time I spent on GW1. They had massive lightning single target attacks, giant frost and water effects. They could create massive sandstorms, meteor strikes, fire storms, on a much larger and impressive scale than in GW1. The funny thing here is that a lot of the abilities in GW2 are carbon copies, or very closely related to abilites in GW2, that’s fair enough, but they have somehow managed to make these abilities less interesting and less impactful than they were in GW1 – how they did that blows my mind.

To sum it up, GW1 PVP was better than GW2 PVP because:
- GW2 has less interesting, unique and interactive abilities.
- GW2 has less abilities and builds overall.
- GW2 has less customisation and variety
- GW2 is too simple, dull and repetitive.
- GW2 PVP rewards button mashing over tactical thinking.
- GW2 has some classes that outshine others far too much, making the ‘weaker’ classes less fun to play, because they are then put into specific niche rolls.

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy WvW occasionally, but even that was done better in Warhammer for goodness sake. There were some horrible design choices going into GW2.

To all you GW1 players out there, do you remember MM Necros? They would go around with hordes of undead, healing them with monk spells, they were powerful, viable, but balanced. Does GW2 have that? Nope, the minions are a novelty, a gimmick if you like. It’s also ridiculous that in GW2 you can only get what, 4-5 at max? You could have toucher necros, SS necros, archer necros, support necros, dominator necros, and so on.They all had completely different play styles, all looked very different and all played and felt very different. Can you honestly tell me you are satisfied with GW2 Necros? They are dull, gimmicky and have nothing interesting going for them. This is just ONE example. It’s really disappointing, I don’t think I will be buying any GW2 expansions.

Hey,

Since the patch, I’ve been having terrible graphics problems. Occasionally the screen will freeze up, then I’ll get an incredibly low FPS and everything turns green and torn. Does this every half hour or so.

I’ve never had any problems with running Guild Wars 2 on high so far, with an average FPS of around 50-70 and 25-40 in WvW zergs [which I’ve stopped playing because of nightcaps].

There’s nothing else I can really describe, but I have to restart the game. It’s not my video card drivers crashing, everything else works fine and if I tab out or play another game it’s smooth as could be. So it’s a problem exclusive to Guild Wars 2

- System –
OS: Windows 8 64-bit
Processor: Intel I7 920. 2.87GHz (8CPUs) ~ 3.8GHz
Memory: 6.1GB
Video Card: Nvidia Geforce GTX 295
Motherboard: Asus P6T Deluxe V2

Temperatures are average and the case is cooling adequately

Daecollo.9578:

How to counter a thief:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Against-Backstab-Superior-Runes-of-Earth/first#post487126

Funny, I use Runes of Earth on both my Ele and Engineer even when they are not using bunker builds, purely because of thieves. Yep, I have to build into something purely because of one class, and it’s not even that helpful.

Oxygen.5918:

press V

15 char

I get two dodges and my endurance is gone, heart-seeker leaps to the target and does damage after the split second dodge, continuing the burst losing barely any of the DPS. Steal/mug does around 5-7k crits so when I dodge away it’s bam, right back in my race again.

Don’t even get me started on trick shot spam.

Hey,

Since the first day I played PVP, back in WvW on launch, to my recent adventures into SPVP, I’ve had only one major gripe with class balance, the Thief.

Yes I know there are a LOT of posts complaining about them being OP, Elementalists UP and so on. While I do agree that the ridiculous burst, buggy stealth, initiative spam mechanic, high speed, incredible traits and utility’s and stupidly strong elites, do make Thieves very OP. I do however find the odd bad thief I can 1v1 in a bunker build. But that’s not my point.

My question is to you thief players that actually die [yeah I know that’s an hilarious thought in SPVP]. What do you guys recommend doing as an Bunker Engineer and S/D Ele to fight thieves.

When I go full bunker build, dodge around, use abilities and knock-backs as well as damage mitigation abilities like mad – thieves can still take me down in a couple of bursts while just spamming a couple of buttons.

I consider my self about average skill level and I frequently play SPVP to improve my personal combat skill as well as my teamwork and tactics. Yet no matter what I do, thieves still kill me in a couple of spammy bursts. So what exactly can I do to beat you, what crazy builds or cheesy tactics manage to take down good thieves?

Since when has WvW been a argument for class balance.

Look at Starcraft 2 – What is the game balanced around? 1v1. 2v2 and more is unbalanced because throwing more and more opponents into a battle can cause for balance issues that simply cannot be balanced.

In the case of Guild Wars 2’s 5 man “esports” SPVP, you simply cannot compare that to roaming around against mostly clueless/careless players, who are more often than not using poor builds/gear and are in most cases up-scaled, which is WvW.

You have to remember that there is a very, very vocal minority in online ‘communitys’ that feel the need to deny any balance issues exit. Everything is fine, let things flow and ignore every criticism with any aspect of the game because these people either 1. don’t care, or 2. cannot think objectively. Alternatively it could be people who truly excel with a class compared to other classes, because it is their specific play style, then causing them to become biased within that argument.

You have to remember though that if ANet truly want Guild Wars 2 to become a successful Esport, then the large majority of balancing will be placed around SPVP. Alternatively they could go the GW1 route and have the abilities do different damage and have different effects in both PVE and PVP. All the same this is a freshly released game and are there are, without question, many issues with class balance.

Simply look at the performance of Thieves compared to Elementalist. Tournament games are “they have an Elementalist, one point in our favour” or “they have two thieves, GG”. Is that really good balance? To be able to 80% of the time predict the outcome of the game based on what classes are picked? It’s a far cry from the 45-65% average wins for race match ups in Starcraft.

And why is that Mr.Strang?

It’s for two reasons:
1. Elementalists are underpowered.
2. Elementalists require far more effort/skill/learning to reach similar but mostly lower
levels of success compared to other profession.

To further explain there is currently one viable Elementalist SPVP build, the Bunker Staff Elementalist. This is likely to get nerfs sooner or later, because all but Thieves have a great difficulty killing a player of moderate-high skill using this build.

There is no option to change between Melee and Ranged for the Elementalist.

The utility skills are better on other professions.

Summoned weapons are weak and extremely gimmicky.

The Elementalist elite skills offer very little impact, with the Elemental being the only seriously viable elite for SPVP.

The trait’s on the Elementalist are more situational and less useful than those on offer to other professions.

Imagine an Ogre, lets call him Blobby. Blobby gets kited by an Elementalist for a good period of time, with the Elementalist doing complex spell combos and frantic attunement swapping to slay poor misunderstood Blobby. A warrior could simply run up to Blobby, press one button [one hundred blades] and do the same if not more damage than the Elementalist did to our now dead friend Blobby, but in half the time. A thief could run up and press 2 with his daggers out, leading to blobbys face being dissected into tiny pieces of ogre meat in a matter of seconds. All while our Elementalist is running around in circles trying not to get stood on by Blobby.

Because they are overpowered.

It’s a bug, it will be removed in due time. Stop defending players who exploit game mechanics and get off the forums :]

Might as well rename Guild Wars 2 to Nightcap Wars. Replace Auguary rock with Kodash and you’ve got the three biggest night cappers all rolled into one sad and pathetic battle. Have fun!

Xaoc ruined our match last week [Gunnar’s Hold], by night capping and glitching into AB. Typical Blacktide guild

Because there are no factions, and the PVE is casual. /Thread

IMO Bunker staff is the only viable SPVP weapon. build Thiefs burst you down in 2-3 seconds. There is nothing you can do. Mistform? He’ll stealth and kill your right after.

Even without the staff he is far superior in damage and survivability.

I find it hilarious they are just shoving all discussion topics into this sticky. One place where they can ignore all the complaints and remain bold in an unfair and uncaring attitude. It’s okay for you American developers, to once again not care about your European players.

To those talking about night capers. Yes, fun is subjective but fun for the minority over fun for the majority is the worst kind of game you could possibly design.

Until they fix night capping or time-zone issues, WvW is dead.

Elementalists are underpowered and require too much effort for pay-off.

They are fun IMO, but only when fighting content or players lower level than you, when you can actually do a decent amount of damage.

Mesmers can 4v1 players without the use of the Elementalist’s ridiculously hard combos and spells that barely hit.

@Snort – you say that but they still have a substantial amount of players on during our time zone, even massive zergs, so they have server queues during our prime time. The problem is that their time-zone benefits them, they are awake during our prime time and theirs, where as we miss theirs. Plus there is a large period of time in the day when most people on GH are working or studying in which the seemingly large amount of unemployed players Blacktide has are online and capturing EVERYTHING. Mostly the guild Xaoc.

Either Anet fixes this issue or people will start leaving servers like Gunnar’s Hold in mass, causing massive population and server issues.

I find this hilarious. Blacktide are notorious off-peak cappers. So much for fair battles and strategy, you guys take everything when normal people are working. In prime time hours we DOMINATE you. Yesterday evening, 5:00pm – 1am GMT, we owned around 90% of the map at times.

But oh look, surprise surprise, when we go to sleep there are countless members Xaoc online, capping and upgrading everything we worked hard for. We have outplayed all but desolation so far, and lost because of night and morning capping. It’s really sad and pathetic.

It’s completely unfair and your world ruins the fun of WvW.

I wouldn’t want time zone-restraints. I feel it would be nice to have as many people playing as possible. One solution could be to limit the points earned in WvW, based off how many players are on the opposing worlds. For instance, if a world had no players in WvW, the other world would not gain any points from the places they capture. If a world is half full, your world should gain only half the points you would normally get from captured locations. While this solution would in no way stop the over night bunkering and capping, it makes the point system fairer on those who sleep and go to work at in that time zone.

Another solution would be to limit the number of player allowed to enter each world, based off how many people are in the opposing worlds. The problem with this is it increases queue times for those high population worlds, but would go a long way in balancing this issue in WvW.

I apologise in advance for any spelling mistakes, typing errors or bad wording. The bright white background on this website really hurts my eyes.

I saw there was a sticky post with a bold fist stance on night capping from ANet, however I thought I’d put my two pence in.

I play on the EU Server ’ Gunnar’s Hold’. When the WvW was set to daily battles and server changes, we were a fairly successful server. Rarely we were beaten by a large margin and often competed first or second place. However since the weekly switch we have come into huge problems.

During the day-time running off GMT London time, we are a very successful world. Our highest performance comes mostly around the 17:00-23:00 time zone, when your average Joe is out of work. But we are losing, by a very substantial point gap. “Why is this?”, you might ask. Well to sum it up, we don’t have the overnight power of other servers.

After around 23:00-16:00 on a weekday or Sunday, I have NEVER had to queue for a borderland or the eternal battlegrounds. If you take a look at the pie chart around this time is is more often than not completely DOMINATED by specific servers -around 90% of the map is there’s. Now you add up the points they get from those say, 17 hours, there is no chance what-so ever of competing.

You might think that there are not really many people complaining about this but I’ve already seen the massive drop in people joining WvW. On Gunnar’s Hold we have the official ‘PC Gamer’ Guild, this was originally led by players such as ‘olgit’ who used their large guild and commander status to help us out. But they are near non-existent in WvW lately. Why? Because there is currently no point playing, it’s a time sink. All the hard work we put in the day-evening – from sieges, defences, ninja groups and zerg’s is all undone when people are sleeping. There is no point playing if everything we work for and accomplish is simply worth nothing by the next time we play. That is TERRIBLE design no matter how you look at it.

I remember hearing that the large European server ‘Desolation’, has a large number of Australian players. Their guilds come on when we are asleep and at one point, owned the entire map except spawn zones. They build full upgrades on the surrounding keeps and had ridiculous amounts of siege weapons placed on them to make them near un-cappable. Is that fair? It’s a European server, you can’t look it in reverse, it simply doesn’t work that way. I know my server has suffered, I only have to look at my Guild Roster to see about 10 players in our’s alone that have moved to large servers, such as Desolation, Blacktide and Aurora glade. These three servers in particular, seem to dominate night-play.

This is true as of now in WvW. It’s 4:43pm GMT. Blacktide own over 70% of the map on their own, with 130k points, Gunnar’s Hold owns the smallest section with 126k points, Aurora Glade owns the rest with 70k points. In regular hours that pie chart is split more evenly, with Gunnar’s Hold often edging certain areas, thus our high score. But our world has barely any players over night. Blacktide was way behind us but the last two nights they have completely undone all of our accomplishments. This is losing us players fast. We are losing entire guilds and there is constantly people complaining. At this rate WvW will end up destroying the server population, with the overnight WvW servers becoming full and the others suffering greatly. This bad design for pvp will overflow into the rest of the game if not dealt with.

ArenaNet have said that it would be unfair to put time restraints on WvW, for those players who play over night. Well that’s hardly fair for your average guys. Your large majority should suffer for the benefit of the minority?

Why do people from US play on EU server? They argue it’s unfair on them if they were not allowed to play during their day hours. It’s a weak argument when there are servers specifically tailored for a players region, and at their own cost if they play on a server in an entirely different time zone. Not only do these people cause lag but they also destroy the balance of WvW. London time, or give or take a couple of hours is generally the norm for European servers and if you want a pleasantly experience time zone wise, your best bet is to join the servers closest to you. Games should NEVER be tailored to fit everyone. Every game has a target audience and ideal demographics. Nothing can ever be ideal for everyone so don’t try and pander, it hurts your core player base.

Solution Below.

TLDR: Night capping is unfair and causes problems.

I just wanted to post here to thank ArenaNet for the recent changes to the Guardian.

The new great sword set-up is the best change to the game yet! It feels so much more natural and I love the way they are now organised by cool down. Thanks to this change I actually have to think when pressing buttons with my greatsword!

The new retaliation mechanic looks to be epic amounts of fun! I can’t wait to show off my hardcore Guardian skills!!!!!

Thank you so much, this is why you are the BEST video game developers!

07 ArenaNet

A terrible class and I re-rolled Engineer a long time ago. With that class I can spam elixirs and auto attack everything to death. It takes me about four crits in a row to kill an Elementlist in sPVP and they are just a laughable easy kill. “Free kill”, is what comes into my head. BUT OH NO THEY CAN SPIN AROUND SPAMMING BUTTONS. Heh, no. The amount of CC other classes get compared to the Elementalist is hilarous, hell I get a turret that will do it for me if I can’t be in the mood to click on more than one button.

I rolled a Mesmer to compare the difference, learnt a few of the skills, went in with default traits and weapons. Beat an elementalist, guardian and ranger at the same time.

This game is one of the worst I have played for launch balance.

Elementalist = Irelia

Better nerf Irelia.

Well it’s blatant by now that Elementalits are sub-par and warriors are too powerful in trade off to their low skill cap. But ANet did say they would work on bug fixes and smoothing out the game before they delve into class balance.

If you hadn’t noticed by now, there have been no balance changes, no number/stat changes. The only work done on professions are bug fixes, mainly to skills that do not work as originally intended.

While there will always be people who argue otherwise when something is in fact underpowered or overpowered. ANet would most likely prefer to have all the statistics and information before they do any work on balance.

It is however frustrating when people will refuse to accept that balance is an issue and will find situational issues or uses for professions and skills. The engineer mortar is a perfect example of that. “It has the same range as grenades!!! Yep, but does less damage, is immobile, is easy to kill and no other skills can be used while using the motar”.

The elementalist profession is clearly not there in terms of damage, and while it is possible to reach similar numbers with unique builds, you must sacrifice extreme amounts of survivability and health/toughness to do that, which is something other professions simply do not have to do. It really reminds me of how Shaman were for a long time in WoW. All other classes would say they don’t need a buff while they underperformed in everything and lost their utility to other classes [time warp mage, paladin/hunter buff overlaps].

It would be really nice to see the trait set up you’re using. I’m a big fan of D/D elementalists since the Staffs suck so much atm, but I can’t seem to get the right sort of build/set up.

Good video btw, we all know they are up scalled and can’t compete gear wise but it was pretty funny to watch all the same.

Lmao you can’t be serious. Warriors are by far the most powerful class in PVP currently. PVE wise they don’t have to think, stand still whack away.

In PVP they have a rifle ability called volley, that killed me and my other level 80 friend whoo stood next to each other, almost instantaneously. The hammer is like a knock down death machine. The great sword does ridiculous crits and if a warrior is tanky? Good luck killing him. Everyother class is either a glass cannon OR tanky. The warrior does both at the same time, he’s the supreme killing machine who rarely dies….brings back memories of my W/Mo from GW1, impossible for people to kill me even 2v1 in that game.

At about 2am [yes I was up too late], I 100% completed an entire zone.[Timberline falls]
When I logged into my account today I found that I was two levels lower and had lost about an hour to an hour and a half of play. I even had the explores mail for completing the zone.

This is the third time this has happened now, it’s a little bit ridiculous.

Bump for help please? :[

I thought that but I’ve had him practically standing on top of her, I ran around for about 10 minutes clueless.

And here’s the last screenshot…

Here is another screenshot

On the mission “A Light in The Darkness”, I followed Trahearne up to where his Spirit gives a speech to the spirits of all the orders. After this they proceed to charge down and engage in battle. We kill all of the risen and the two risen giants, but then nothing happens. The army splits into two small groups and stand blobbed up on each other, but the story does not progress, there is no one to talk to and I can’t continue.

If I remember from the first time I did this mission on another character, the Eye of Zhaitan is supposed to spawn, you kill him and proceed to talk to the pale tree, but this does not happen. Instead if I just get the green ring on the map where you’re supposed to fight the Risen. If I leave it for about 5 minutes it actually changes to a green quest marker. Upon reaching the marker the Pale Tree is there, but I cannot speak to her and Trahearne does not trigger a narrative either.

Then nothing happens, so I have to leave or sit there forever…

I have tried this mission five times and it does exactly the same thing, and yes I’ve tried restarting the game. It might be important to note that every time I kill an undead grub in this mission my screen gets spammed with "This content is temporarily unavailable, please try again later. "

Some interesting points brought up here.

In reply to ‘Spracket’ – the idea behind a sniper kit is that we are ‘mechanical masterminds’, we build the latest weapons and machinery, a simple blunderbuss seems a bit backwards when there are already sniper rifles in the game. Without naming and spoiling, there is a Charr Engineer within a story arc that actually uses a massive Sniper Rifle. Surely it would make sense for tinkerers to build scopes on their guns? A 1500 range sniper rifle would make really fit the glass cannon play style the Engineer can adapt, without making them too strong. Slow firing, high damage and some utility – perfect.

If engineers are made out to be high-tech inventors, and warriors are made out to be soldiers, then surely the Engineer would use something to give them an ‘edge’, while being physically weaker and with less combat training. So many people mention this Sniper Kit because it seems like a complete no brainer, both in terms of gameplay and lore. It would amaze me if it’s something the developers hadn’t thought of, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it added within an expansion.

Aesthetics are merely down to opinion but that’s simply the general consensus I have gathered from reading forums, in game-chat and my personal opinion.

Let me make myself clear, I am not complaining about the game, I’m not whining or hating on ANet. I loved GW and I love GW2. I’m merely sparking debate on launch specific class issues which I’m sure developers would be interested in – player feedback.

I do however feel that two classes have been rushed or not thought through/tested thoroughly enough. The Engineer and the Necromancer [which I won’t go into on an Engineer forum nor do I have much personal experience with]. All classes have their problems, except for the Warrior, but I feel the Engineers performance has suffered among the most and there are various tweeks, polish and changes it’s in need of, I DON’T think it’s underpowered, I just feel it under performs in certain scenarios.

TLDR[good idea]:
– Sniper Fits Engineer
– Aesthetics are personal opinion
– Engineer is not the only class with problems
– Engineer needs a lot of tweeks and polish
– ANet are awesome.

I really like the steam punk look they have already, it is perfect for Humans in my opinion. However it would make sense to have the Slyvari have aspects of nature in with their designs, the Charr pure black metal, the Norn and icy look and the Asurans a techno-magic look.

I can’t imagine this happening though, other professions will start asking for racial specific designs, where do they stop? I’d much prefer the game developers to focus on balance and bugs for the time being.

Level 62 Human Engineer :]

Am I the only person that feels the Engineer elites are far worse than the other professions?

The elixir is random and unreliable – it feels very out of place with the class.

The mortar is stationary, low damage and it’s range is terrible – grenades go further and do more damage, PLUS you can move while throwing them. It is bad in PvE and in WvW you are far too frequently hit by enemy AOE which has a better range than you.

The supply crate, while the best elite we have available is very lacklustre, dull and nothing really special. As is the case with Engineers, the turrets feel very worthless, adding little to your damage or survivability in comparison to other abilities. This on top of ANOTHER stationary move, an unnoticeable stun, a lack of damage or real support/utility. So our best elite is a 10 point weak support ability?

These weak elites go on top of an already [IMO] gimmick profession. The sound of blowing things up, using gadgets and rifles sounded awesome. But in reality you build around one weapon kit or gimmick and have no real in combat versatility that other classes do. The rifles should be swapped with the warriors skills, or we should at least given a Sniper Rifle kit.

The Engineer does less damage than other classes, it has less versatility, less survivability, less damage sponging and worse skills – In other words it’s a jack of all trades but master of none, you’d think? Well when you have to build around one of it’s trades, which is sub-par to other classes, you wonder what the point is.

I love the Engineer’s uniqueness but I feel it is in need of dire need of care. As someone who played Guild Wars Proh all the way to EoTN, I didn’t really want to play an old class with some new tricks – So the Engineer was nice and fresh. By I constantly feel drawn back to my Elementalist when that profession far exceeds the Engineer’s performance in every aspect [except the extreme squishiness even on full earth traits].

In addition for those that really care, we have poor aesthetics. We got the short-straw with armour and weapon designers and our skill effects and ‘spell’ particles are borrowed or forgettable.

Thoughts?