Guild Wars 2

From my point of view, Xeph is one of the ones that care the most about this game. He understands dev limitations and is willing to change his point of view during a discussion. Xeph is probably one of the best candidates around for this sort of thing. Perhaps it wasn’t the right move to replace Zoose, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with Xeph.

Guru SotG March – Engineer

• Kit Refinement nerfs towards utility. “… more utility and less damage output.” 100 Nades and Super Elixir were too good compared to the rest. 100 Nades mentioned specifically, in that a 10 point trait isn’t meant to be that powerful. 24k damage mentioned, which while up in the top end of possible damage is still possible. “…we wanted to normalize how this works and make it useful for all kits.”

• Turret buffs such as Thumper gaining AoE Cripple (3s every 5s) and Rifle Turret getting more damage. “… and some other cool stuff that you’ll see.”

• Overall a lot of changes planned, mostly buff-centric. “…couple pages worth of notes…” It appeared it was data for the next patch, but isn’t necessarily the case. “… pretty heavy focus [on the Engineer]…” Globally some changes are planned in increasing the strength of the weaker utilities, so perhaps that may be addressed here as well.

• Described as mid-range skirmishers that can control battlefield in various ways such as with turrets, control skills, AoE, and other ways. “…they are going to be impactful in close range fights and have the ability to control space…” Intended on buffing the things that aren’t used as often so that they do get used as different playstyles.

• RNG toned down, but not necessarily removed. Example is Elixir U only has Frenzy and Haste variants and the Toss lacks Veil now so it always blocks projectiles in some fashion. Not much done in the March patch yet though. “… smaller subsets [of RNG].”

• Condition buffs, non-specific. Mentioned offhand during the Thief discussion, but it was in reference to Engineers and Thieves in particular.

Also, remember not to hate on their comments. Don’t overreach into what they say and take it negatively. Discussion is great and it gives us insight into their thoughts. The only negative thing here I find is Kit Refinement, but I think nerfing the effects towards utility is a better option then going through with the ridiculous internal cooldown fiasco for example.

I very much liked this State of the Game, especially in regard to Engineers. Things take time, and I think they are on the right path.

Royce.6835:

Well, essentially, they should be deleted from the game.

If you are going to start a post with this it’s unlikely you are going to get anything you intended once people are laughing and no longer taking your post seriously. I understand your frustration and the like, but to even consider deleting a profession or mechanic from the game as a valid response is just silly.

MatyrGustav.6210:

any Suggestions?

The Mesmer in this case is a Shatter Memser, not really a melee mesmer. It’s unlikely they will stay in melee the entire time. The reason being, they are incredibly squishy when they aren’t pulling off their burst and when they are in their Sword set. This changes a bit when they are with the Staff, but in general there are fantastic set of tips when dealing with them. Keep in mind though that if you are pure melee then the odds aren’t in your favor, but that doesn’t mean you auto-lose.

• Dodge roll into the clones when they shatter. This triggers their explosions. A Shatter mesmer’s damage is mostly in these shatters. Mitigate them and you mitigate the vast majority of what they can do.

• Move away from the Mesmer if possible. Mesmers need you to be close to deal their real damage. Unless they have a Greatsword they have no real way to deal damage in this long range case, and without the Staff they are incredibly weak defensively beyond the trickery. AoE slows in particular can make it very easy to pick off Mesmer stuff.

• Move all the bloody time and learn to recognize the leaping clone. This leaping clone is the very beginning of the burst combo that you are going to be hit with. If you can keep away from it and/or dodge the follow-up then you have fully mitigated the combo. The other way to start the combo is with the Magic Bullet stun, so dodge roll that projectile if possible as well and stun break it if you get caught while having that cooldown up.

• AoE is pretty key in dealing with clones in general. This won’t stop the primary combo of clones if you get caught in the burst cycle, but beyond a Mirror Images burst while you are Immobilized it’s completely feasible to cleave them down. If you do get immobilized, make sure you use whatever invuln options you may or may not have.

• Recognize Distortion. They are invulnerable during Blurred Frenzy and their Distortion Shatter. Don’t waste valuable cooldowns during this period. I’ve seen far too many people try to burst a Mesmer I have targeted with Quickness for example. They are literally invulnerable during their burst combo, keep that in mind.

Best advice in general though, is to go play one. Start with a Phantasm build for a few hours to ease into the profession and then pickup the premier Shatter build once you have adjusted to the profession. Easiest way to learn how to beat something is to play it, and in GW2 it is incredibly easy to do that. If you are too stubborn to learn how to do that, then just watch Mesmer some streams on twitch.tv. Experience and knowledge of what a profession can do and usually does is the vast majority of skill in any MMO. Targeting nightmare is accurate though, they can be pretty frustrating without tons and tons of practice.

Quickness is flat out unreliable against players that know what they are doing.

That’s a pretty big generalization with no real data. I’m personally pretty happy with the game and have certainly not lost faith. I really want solo-queue, but it doesn’t mean I’ve lost faith nor do I think they are lying. The dev interaction is something that is an extremely positive thing, and we’ve been turning into something extremely negative. It’s fine to discuss opinions obviously, but the negative tone is only something that serves to discourage them from communicating at all.

There are a lot of legitimate complaints in this thread, but I think they are being overshadowed by the sheer amount of illegitimate complaints. I usually dislike being so severe and combative in forum discussion, but this is getting a little ridiculous.

First and foremost, we do deal damage. We have in my opinion the best condi-dmg in the game. No we can’t stack bleeds higher then some other classes (and yet, given the right build in PvE we can max the bleed cap anyway), but we are the only class that comes loaded with all four damaging conditions and can use them reliably. We have the best condi-burst in the game as well. When it comes to direct damage, are we on top? No, but we are a whole lot closer then people seem to think. Warriors beat everyone in PvE damage, and given the right build we are actually rather close to what they can do. 100 Nades is plenty competitive, and although overshadowed by a Thief in my opinion it brings a plethora of differing things and is a lot closer in competitiveness then seems to be played out here.

We have a lot of decent builds. Are they all competitive? No, but this is similar problem for all classes. Heck all classes need a major gunk cleaning. The Engineer is in the same boat as many. There is obviously stuff that needs to be cleaned up, buffed, and/or changed in some fashion. We don’t need a major overhaul.

Many of you have cited very good reasons people hate on the Engineer. However when it comes to damage, it’s merely perception and not actuality. 100 Nades, Condi-Burst, and many other variants are competitive in sPvP. In WvW food can give us an even greater advantage. Solo PvE we are probably the strongest period, because we can solo mobs without Defiant without a problem and we have one of best capabilities in tagging mobs in zerg PvE. In Dungeons we aren’t the best, but the amount of exaggeration when it comes out of it is excessive. It’s not all Warriors, or even Mesmers and Guardians, it usually comes down to players and gear. I can get through CoF path one speedruns with negligible differences in speed (mere seconds).

Why do people hate the Engineer? It’s perception. The perception that we are weak when we aren’t nearly as weak as people seem to think. We have some legitimate issues, but most of those issues are being overshadowed slightly by something else which is a problem many of the classes have. It’s not nearly as bad as this thread seems to proclaim.

I think the current ANet solution is fine as a temporary thing as long as the completely separation of the queues later is planned. Hopefully sooner rather then later, as fighting for what could be considered solo-queue ranking would be a phenomenal boost to the sPvP player-base. It takes time to develop new systems, but I do think they need to prioritize the eventuality of a solo-queue system a bit higher then they seem to have it right now. Then again, we have no real idea where any of these things are prioritized (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

Since I took notes and created a thread on the topic, I think you can have my assurances that I watched it. To me it’s astonishing that that State of the Game wasn’t wonderful to hear from everyone. I loved the Engineer discussion and am very optimistic of the Engineer future because of it. The patch only gave me more evidence to support my optimistic impression.

The previous Kit Refinement change was terrible, and I talked about it back then too. The rest of the changes at the time were wonderful though. We all talked about how Kit Refinement should’ve been nerfed in a different way, and what did they do? They did pretty much exactly what we all discussed back then. They nerfed it and took the internal cooldowns on top of internal cooldowns away to simplify it.

The assumption they didn’t play Engineers with Kit Refinement to me is absurd. The assumption they lack QA testing is absurd as well. It adds nothing to the argument at hand. If you want to discuss how much you disagree with the changes, that’s great. That’s real discussion and there are points to be made on both sides. Assumptions that are inflammatory and boil down to “the devs are bad at their job” add absolutely nothing to the discussion and only serve to remove any good discussion that was around. Why should a dev read a thread that is essentially nothing but “you should be fired” from what is very likely someone who has no industry knowledge at all? There are ways to discuss all this, and even if I disagree with you there are good points in what is brought up. The way it’s brought about now though accomplishes almost nothing.

The Marauder Amulet damage is fine as long as they stay on point. It’s mostly about your AoE pressure with skills like Acid Bomb and your hammer skills combined with all your traits. If you are chasing someone or fighting a Bunker it’s still going to take quite awhile to deal with someone though as that’s just the nature of it.

Confusion is still powerful, but it might not be a good idea to completely focus on it. The damage output that Confusion abilities can still be far above what other skills can do. Keep in mind that it was still pretty good in sPvP, which is where the damage level is now at.

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

I completely understand it takes time, that a patch does not fixes everything.
If you buy something tou want it to be good, you want it to be finished, I paid 60 euros.

Those 60 euros give me right to complain, it does not give arena net the right to ask us to be patient. We are the customers not they.

It’s a little bit of entitlement here though. 60 dollars does not buy a bug-free and finished MMO. It never has. Traditionally it’s been many hundreds of dollars in accumulated subscription fees that bring about a much more bug-free experience with refined content. This is the most finished and playable MMO I’ve ever played at launch (Aion, WoW, SWTOR, Tabula Rasa, and WAR), and honestly when I login and play I enjoy myself greatly.

In regards to the Engineer, I swapped through every profession recently while picking something for PvP. The Engineer is by far from being in the worst boat. We have multiple competitive builds and plenty of subtle variations that are more then viable. We are on the top end of viability for PvE and sPvP. I’m not entirely sure with WvW, but I’d imagine we are well enough off. Are there broken things? Heck yeah, just like with all professions. Is this out of the ordinary? No, not in regards to other professions nor is it out of the ordinary for MMOs in general. Context matters, especially in a game that is as large as an MMO.

I mean, to me the game is playable right now. More then playable, in fact it’s very enjoyable. I trust that they will eventually fix things that frustrate me as well. I mean don’t get me wrong, I wish they could get it right the first time, but historically and via my own experience as a software engineer, that is impossible. In general, I think there is a lot of exaggeration on these forums combined with a lack of understanding.

SilverWF.4789:

And omnomberry food!

This, while I’m sure you will disagree with me, is something that needed to be nerfed. All other on-crit effects in the game have cooldowns and not only was it exceedingly strong it didn’t make any sense in comparison. The food it still good, but it’s exceptional cases are now capped so that it performs similar to the rest of the food out there.

The way they handled Kit Refinement though, is a terrible way to nerf it. Weaker versions of the Grenade Barrage and Super Elixir from it would have been the better way. It should encourage multi-kit builds, not discourage them. Three kit builds with Kit Refinement got hampered significantly, even though Flamethrower and Elixir Gun by themselves received significant buffs. It seems counter-productive to build diversity, which is the thing they should be striving for.

Not only does it need better traits, it needs the 1200 trait completely removed and made automatic.

I strongly support getting rid of Armor Mods, not only because it’s terrible, but because a good Gadget trait could go in alongside improving the base of many of the Gadget abilities.

The build is excellent, but certainly not overpowered by any means. It accomplishes a lot of what the other professions can do for burst. A little more setup, but a bit more ranged capabilities beyond the burst combo.

On a side note, the Engineer more then fine. The despair in these forums is simply sad to see. There are a fair chunk of builds that can do very well.

I generally agree with the vast majority of what is said here. Maybe not the specific suggestions on how to fix the broken things, but what is mentioned as broken is right on the mark.

Elixir RNG does need to be toned down somehow. There are plenty of suggestions in this thread already, but if ANet really does want to keep the RNG in it then they just need to be boosted to compensate. Most of them could simply just have two of the effects go off at once instead of one. This would go a long way in improving them and make them worth the button press (especially in the case of the thrown ones). Except the Elite. The Elite should simply be broken into pieces and be Elixir X – Tornado / Elixir X – Rampage. That and the Warrior Rampage ability needs to be worth using, for both classes.

Turrets obviously need to scale and have their AI improved. A Turret build should be viable, and when it is viable it shouldn’t be absolutely necessary to have all the traits in order to run one either. If you have an extra utility slot, picking a turret should be an option.

Weapon Skill accuracy is a major issue. Much of our stuff has very difficult to land attacks, or ones that simply miss for no reason. Blowtorch is my least favorite of these, since elevation often screws with it far more then it should and if someone is moving sideways it seems to always miss as well.

The Pistol auto-attack (#1) I feel just does too little. In fact, many of our auto-attacks do far too little but I feel that this is one of the bigger culprits. A 2 second bleed is just far too short. I honestly don’t even see the reason this needs to be an AoE attack, since our Kits are better for that anyway. Piercing Shots could easily be redone to do this sort of thing anyway, for builds that lack kits for any AoE.

Bomb Kit’s #1 should totally launch a single long duration bleed or several short duration bleeds. The Bomb Kit is basically about conditions as it stands anyway, and as it stands the only time people use it is to break down objects or for the healing.

The Rifle has far too many self crowd control effects on it. Sure it’s an interesting theme that the Engineer knocks themselves around and the like, but it’s not cool to play. The knockback on #4 needs to be severely reduced or eliminated, and the animation on #5 needs to be smoothed out so there is no delay on the landing.

The biggest offenders though, are the traits! I can’t believe no one has really mentioned them. Many traits need to made useful, made automatic, or combined with other traits. Heck a lot of the issues with our utility skills could be made up in here. Here is a list of trait suggestions:

Reserve Mines – These mines should remove a boon, similar to other Engineer mines.

Acidic Elixirs – This damage should actually be threatening, as it is currently extremely weak. It should probably also persist for 3 to 5 seconds as well to give it a unique flavor.

Shrapnel / Short Fuse – Should be combined with each other to make room for more traits. Shrapnel’s effect should probably have a higher trigger chance, but a shorter duration. Something like 33% with a 6s base duration.

Forceful Explosions – Should make Bombs and Mines unblockable. Gives them some extra anti-bunker capabilities.

Empowering Adrenaline – Terrible compared to any other choices. Needs to be 10% or something. Could have a scaling increase in damage based on how much adrenaline is gone.

Exploit Weakness – How about Cripple, Weakness, and five or ten stacks of Vulnerability for five seconds? I mean if you want this to be anything substantial it’s going to have to be actually meaningful.

Target the Maimed – Should be 10% damage, since that is what any trait should offer. Especially a Grandmaster one. Direct damage on a bleeding opponent isn’t really something that is that fearsome anyway.

Firearms Weapon Specific Traits – A very good spot to push some traits together. Pistols, Rifles, Elixir Gun, Flamethrower, and the Harpoon Gun have a whole lot of stuff in here. Any CD reduction trait should offer a side effect as it is. Mix Rifled Barrels and Fireforged Trigger together as well as Hair Trigger and Rifle Mod.

Coated Bullets – This could easily have a different effect on each skill turning them into more of an AoE, rather then the general Piercing Line. Static Shot could bounce more, Blowtorch could be a wider effect, etc.

Protective Shield – So the cooldown on this compared to the duration is just insane. Needs to be toned down.

Metal Plating / Autotool Installation – These need to be combined, so if you do specialize in turrets you actually can pick other things

Stabilized Armor – Should probably be 10%, but even then it’s only when Endurance is full so… 15%? As it stands 5% is meaningless.

Power Shoes – Personally I don’t know what to do with this. It needs something out of combat, but 25% all the time just sounds like too much. Not sure here.

Energy Conversion Matrix – This should really be 2%, to be in line with other classes type of increases. I mean, it’s a Grandmaster trait that probably only ever offers 5 to 6 percent increase in damage.

Fast-Acting Elixirs / Potent Elixirs – This should probably be combined to free up room for some other interesting traits.

Acidic Coating – This should really be 100%, given the cooldown. I think it even needs more as it is, but I’m not sure what.

Backpack Regenerator – This should scale with Healing Power. It’s otherwise fine as it is.

Cleaning Formula 409 – Thrown elixirs with this should actually have healing attached to them as well. It’s possible it could have it’s own unique trait for that, but if I think of an elixir healing support Engineer then this would be the perfect place for it so they don’t need to overload on trait choices.

Automated Response – This really needs to be cleaned up somehow, as it really doesn’t work as the trait reads for most people.

Adrenaline Pump – 10% just seems far too weak here. It’s something you hardly ever notice, if ever. 20% seems perfectly reasonable.

Always Prepared – 25% damage boost is okay, but the conditions should also be more threatening as well. Not sure what the best way to do that would be.

Speedy Gadgets – Why not give Fury and Swiftness for some duration on their use as well? 20% cooldown reduction isn’t enough, even for a Gadget build. The tool kit versions could give Might or something instead.

Deployable Turrets – This should also give them an AoE damage effect when they land. Right now it doesn’t seem to really do enough.

Packaged Stimulants – This should reduce the cooldown of Med Kit skills by 20% as well. Gives a Medic more reason to take this.

Elixir Infused Bombs – This should have a much larger heal based off a cooldown rather then a tiny one every bomb use.

Scope – Standing still is incredibly dangerous. If this trait is to be meaningful, it should be far more significant. Personally I’d rather have it be 20% damage increased. Heck maybe even offer a range increase while standing still.

Leg Mods – 10% is just overridden by almost everything. Especially in the world where an Engineer already has a lot of Swiftness. Honestly, it should just remove Immobilize, Cripple, and Chill with a 5 to 10 second cooldown or something.

Armor Mods – This is absolutely terrible. I honestly don’t know what to do with it. We already have a skill that gives us something on a critical hit anyway. Throw it out, give us something we can actually use in return. Tools is about burst damage anyway and Adrenal Implant is already defensive.

Adrenal Implant – This should make our dodges cost only 33% of our endurance, instead of increasing our Endurance regeneration rate by 50%. This would let it actually synergize with Vigor.

To fill any trait gaps, we have a notable lack of on-interrupt, on-blind, and gadgetry traits. A trait that buffs the Pistol & Rifle at the cost of preventing kits from being equipped would be great as well.

Since expanding some of the profession specific stuff is on the table, I really think Engineers should be one of those that receive usable boon removal and a portal mechanic. Boon removal should be sprinkled on some toolkit skills/gadgets such as Blind Grenades and Utility Goggles. Mine Kit should actually be a Kit again too, with a variety of different styles of Mines with an array of conditions. Shrapnel Grenades should apply two stacks and half the duration they currently have, as otherwise it’s way too long to be effective. We should access to a few more finishers, and our Downed State especially underwater needs to be looked at.

If we are looking at 5 to 6 optimal builds, then some of the new ones should probably be a Bunker Turret build, and an Elixir Support build. 100 Nades (Explosives Power) and Explosives Condi-Dmg are already pretty close to competitive if not already too. Making a Sniper with a Rifle and Gadgets should be something worth looking at too, with the Scope trait. Beef up the Control Bunker build and Tools Static Discharge build that we currently have and we’d be golden for useful builds.

If the Toss Elixir S had both Stealth and Stability instead of 50% one or the other, this wouldn’t be an issue.

Shatter Mesmers, Sword / Dagger Thieves (possibly any with Bountiful Theft, but it could take too long), Condi-Grenade-Bomb Engineers, and Condi Necros can beat the bunker Guardian builds on a point in a reasonable amount of time. Boon stripping and/or condition removal without much vulnerability to Retaliation is how you beat them.

Heck, that’s like my entire role on a team now. I either roam as my Engineer or rarely now, hold a point with my Mesmer that a Guardian is likely to try and hold while I kill him repeatedly. Chill, Poison, Condition Damage in general, and Boon Removal are generally the best ways to beat them. Heck Bunker Guardians are easier to kill then Bunker Ele’s because they have less get out of jail free cards in comparison.

Whenever you click a ground targeted skill with the mouse and you have Fast Ground Targeting activated it throws it at your feet. If you are using an XBox controller, couldn’t you just set your mouse in the middle of the screen and it would always target where the mouse is?

As for single targeting the Grenades, this is something I’m adamantly against. It would make them very strong in low skill areas and extremely weak in high skill areas. This would be a bad way to move them, and it would remove many of the uses it has outside of a direct 1v1 fight such as lobbing them up onto keep walls.

The sigils I’ve been using on my dual pistols have never been halved in anyway shape or form. I’ve used Earth, Geomancy, Battle, Corruption, and I’m sure many other kinds as well.

I’m impressed, I actually agree with the vast majority of this.

I think it’s great as advice to point out that you can find your own team and do the same thing, but I do not think that is justification to leave the system that way.

There are many people who simply cannot find teams whether it be because of their own time, their social situations, or simply because they think they are significantly better or worse then whomever they have access. Not to mention, there are going to be times that you play the game and your team is not around.

Giving people something reliably competitive to do with ease is one of best solutions I’ve ever seen. Things like the League of Legends solo queue have introduced a phenomenal method of giving people an answer to this problem. Right now you have people who don’t like hotjoin, don’t like the fairness of frees, and lack the tickets or team to play in paids. At least when I’m among my peers guildmates, this makes up a significant portion of whom I talk to.

It’ll take time to get there, but I really think the final solution is to simply have a solo queue and a team queue. With tickets only being used to qualify for QP and amping out the rewards. Artificial restraints on allowing someone to be competitive for whatever the reason be it needing a team or tickets are things that only serve to damper the sPvP population.

It’s also notable, that it’s usually the top players of teams that would most be affected by queue times that are the loudest advocates of separating the team queue from a solo/duo queue.

We all (should) understand things take time, but we seem so close to what is desirable in this situation it’s a admittedly frustrating. It’s only frustrating because we love the game and what it could be with this type of setup.

The only underrepresented professions right now to me appear to be Engineer and Warrior. This is primarily because their only viably competitive builds (100 Nades and 100 Blades) are overshadowed by what the Thief can currently do. The rest of their builds are slightly overshadowed by what others can offer.

There are a lot of professions remaining though that only have one competitive build. All professions need five to six competitive builds, and that’s still a long road ahead. One of the primary issues a lot of the lack luster builds have is a lack of disengage and/or mobility. Which is one of the defining traits of the best builds out there right now.

The community tends to think Necros are on the low side of balance, meaning they feel they are underpowered.

I should point out though, that community beliefs aren’t necessarily correct. I have no experience as a Necro, so I’m not in the right position to analyze it. I’ve seen good Necros though.

The lack of solo queue plans was my only disappointment personally. It’s pretty much the key in unlocking a massive sPvP crowd. My time is limited, I have children and a career. I can’t play as much as I used to. I don’t have the ability to run a 5-man team with any reliability, but I do have the time to play a game or two of what would be a solo queue a day. My competitive drive is still here, and I want to be able to release it reliably.

I’ll be honest, every profession has these problems. There is a lot of absolute garbage traits scattered throughout the entire game. This isn’t just an Engineer issue.

As to the evasiveness issue in a Ranger and Engineer comparison, I really can’t come up with a clear opinion. I don’t think we need more evasiveness though. I for example would prefer we be more capable at supporting our allies with elixirs.

Gilgamesh.2561:

1. Make a glasscannon Rifle engineer (Berserker’s), and attack golems in the sPvP lobby. Watch them die slowly.
2. Make a glasscannon dagger Thief (Berserker’s), and attack golems in the sPvP lobby. Watch them melt in sub 4 seconds.

I’m pretty sure both the Thief (Backstab) and Engi (100 Nades) can melt those golems near instantly. Your example sucks, but I agree that Thieves do more damage then Engineers regardless.

I don’t think HGH really left. It just became less popular when Necros received their boosts way back when. I’ve been HGH for what feels like a year (might actually be? I’d have to look at patch notes) and I would generally agree that HGH is still plenty strong. Losing a few extra Might stacks in exchange for some extra bleeds is the only really concern with the patch. The damage still feels roughly the same, but the Might stacks don’t get as high.

I still tend to use the Geomancy Sigil and aim for +50% duration with Lyssa + Nightmare though. I’ve generally noticed that more sources of damage are better then extra Might and those runes and sigils do that. The only reason I never looked at Shrapnel before is because of how low the chance is on it. That is probably the only thing that drives me nuts about it, because I never know if it’s working.

To me the Engineer isn’t the master of Bleeding or even necessarily Burning, but it’s a master of dumping conditions like a thick gravy over the opponents until their condition bar is a beacon of red light.

We have Bleeding, but we can’t apply it that thickly. We have Burning and are even one of the best at applying it, but it isn’t enough damage on it’s own. We have Poison and again are one of the best at applying it, but the primary purpose of this is anti-healing and not the damage. We have Confusion and again are one of the best at applying it, but it can be unreliable in it’s damage output. All of these powers combined give us incredible sustained condition damage output that makes it difficult to regenerate and causes action use to be heavily penalized.

Not to mention, one of the biggest difficulties in dealing with our condition builds is they often supplement it with a slew of control conditions. Heck, the build I use can apply literally every condition to someone in the game. Even Fear through Nightmare Runes and Weakness through the Poison Blast combo. It’s not uncommon for someone to have far more then six conditions on them from me, and they are incredibly easy to reapply. If their condition wipes only clear off one, two, or three at a time then they aren’t going to get anything done at all.

I’ve tried the condition builds of other professions. It’s just not the same. The unholy union of all the damage conditions assisted by multiple control conditions gives us incredible damage output and utility. That and Blind is probably my favorite condition in the game and we have a ton of it on very short cooldowns.

Haha, I can’t say I do it myself though. I tend to pick on Thieves, Warriors, and Mesmers first and foremost. I tend to undervalue opposing Engineers, and for whatever reason that tends to be right.

It just meant you cherry picked the traits out of each tree with 10 or 20 points in every line. It wasn’t that great. Consider now with most of the traits being as bad as they are with only a couple of good ones how quickly everyone would be the same build even more then they already are.

What I’d really like in general, is just a major cleaning up of all the bad stuff in every profession. The skills that aren’t often even worth a key press and the traits no experienced player would ever take. Each profession is littered with these noob traps that sounds good on paper to someone new to the game, but are absolute garbage.

I honestly think you should be able to steal a portion of your opponents score by taking Keeps.

I’m not sure you guys understand how running an MMO works. Unfortunately you can’t fix everything all at once, it takes time. The kit issues, garbage traits, garbage skills, and bugs are annoying, but you need to remember that for every profession they have these outstanding issues yet to fix. It’s not going to be done in a day, a week, or even a month.

I’m sure you think it’s just a simple numbers change, but quite frankly it isn’t. Every single change on those patch notes consumes much more time then you realize. Meetings, testing, problem solving, analysis, collaboration, coding, more testing, theory, and even more testing. I’m sure they are aware of many of the bugs you are are all worried about, but bugs in particular are the hardest of things to squash. You have to fix it without breaking anything else, and that requires an incredible amount of testing that I don’t think a non-programmer would understand.

Short and sweet, it’s evident they are working on it. The Engineer isn’t the only profession with problems. Things will get fixed, but every patch won’t fix “everything”. Just have some patience, which needs to be on the order of many multiples of months. Actually, I think the best advice would be to not even wait for patches. Play what is here, if you don’t like it move on.

We don’t need an across the board damage buff, nor do we need an overhaul of the mechanics on everything. We simply need our gunk made useful. The bad traits, bad weapon skills, the bad utility skills need to be made as useful as all our other useful stuff. Turrets and Elixirs are probably the only things that need somewhat of a mechanics overhaul in terms of Turrets need to scale and Elixirs need their RNG reduced and/or removed when possible.

In terms of PvE, the only change I desire is making damage conditions stack per player and per target, rather then just per target. Meaning other player’s burns won’t mess with my burns. Mathematically, we do phenomenal damage with a condi build, but of course the damage is delayed and due to the stacking methods often just completely missing.

Max Damage - Blowtorch -> Geomancy -> Shrapnel Grenade
Highest damage in shortest amount of time.

Grenade Volley - Freeze Grenade -> Shrapnel Grenade -> Poison Grenade
Freeze Grenade hits lead to much easier hits for other Grenades.

Blind Control - Static Shot -> Geomancy -> Shrapnel Grenade -> Blind Grenade
Sometimes you just don’t want to take damage. Excellent opener against any burst that isn’t watching their conditions.

Anti-Kiting - Glue Shot -> Geomancy -> Shrapnel Grenade -> Freeze Grenade
For those ranged opponents that don’t like to stick around.

Solo Condis - Poison Volley -> Static Shot -> Max Damage Combo
Typical damage combo that loads someone up with six condition types.

AoE Condis - Static Shot -> Blowtorch -> Max Damage Combo -> Poison Grenades
Typical damage combo when you just need the AoE damage instead of single target.

Kill Combo - Just add Supply Crate.
Add in a Stun and long Immobilize and you can light someone up. Best used right before Geomancy.

Concerning that third build, I’ve found that Geomancy will actually output more damage then Battle. Although without Battle you will no longer see 150+ bleed ticks. This of course means you have to run in and intentionally trigger Geomancy though. Just Blowtorch, Geomancy, and Shrapnel Grenade alone puts out incredible pressure on top of the still okay direct damage. If it was uncleansed IIRC it’d do over 20k damage.

Other then that, that last build is pretty much exactly what I run now, and it’s vicious. I couldn’t be happier with how it plays.

It’s usually something like this: ^^^

Edit: Just use Powerr’s link, it was the same build anyway and you don’t have to copy paste the link.

Honestly I think tickets should be optional. You use tickets to amp up the rewards returned. As an example, in 1v1 you can enter with or without tickets at your choice. If you win with tickets you get a gold chest, but if you lose you get a silver chest. Conversely, if you don’t pay then you get a copper chest for winning and not a thing if you lose.

If they haven’t loaded the by the time they kill you, there isn’t much you can do to make it any different. You could load up on Vitality and Toughness Gear, but that probably is going to make you worse in many other situations.

If they have loaded by the time they start to have their burst, the burst alone won’t necessarily kill you. You then have to avoid the Heartseeker spam, which is predictable albeit still not a cakewalk to deal with. Use your blinds, invulns, and heals to stay alive. These glass cannon Thieves are probably the glassiest thing in the game, it doesn’t take much to kill it at this point.

I’ll be honest, the primary reason I attend these forums any less then I used to is because of the pessimism around here that I feel is unjustified when looked at in a mature and rational way. I understand where it comes from, but I think it’s absolutely silly and makes me feel ashamed to be apart of this community sometimes. Even if it were as bad as it were to be made out on these forums, adding to the pessimism isn’t helping anyone. I’d rather we be constructive and have some real discussions and it’s becoming rarer lately.

Conditions in general are bad in groups, but in particular the burn on crit option is very strong for us.

I honestly don’t see it as risk when we are looking at primarily improving 2 second durations to 4 second durations. No one has enough condi-removal to remove them continually without either running out of cooldowns or spending too much time not dealing damage back. It wasn’t the case when I had 50% duration, and it isn’t the case when I have 100%. It does mean if someone lacks condition removal though they get absolutely crushed with the incredibly high durations though. WvW Confusion makes this pretty silly too. Honestly I dislike Tool Kit, but it’s so bloody effective with a Pry Bar hit it’s silly not to use it.

One of the bigger parts I like about condition duration increases in general is it buffs all the control conditions as well. Glue Shot is pretty threatening with 2 second durations.

Now if only I had a Giver’s Jewel to pick from in sPvP or something.

JohnDied.3476:

Well, to put it simply, fixing the class properly by going through our bad skills and traits would take the devs forever. It’s more reasonable that we get buffs to make up for those abilities (looking at flamethrower) while we wait for the class to get fixed. It takes time to figure out every bug (and we’ve had some fixed), but buffs should have been coming from the class balance team workload all along.

When I say buffs I don’t mean damage. I play support so I could care less about damage. I want our healing skills “buffed” by scaling a little better with healing power, I want our random elixirs to have their boon duration buffed so we actually use them (looking at toolbelts). I want turrets to scale with stats.

Things are going to get fixed very slowly in this game (if ever) so at least we need to be competitive with the other classes.

I think we said the same thing. Fixing all the gunk to me is the same as buffing the things that need buffing. I just didn’t want to use the word buff, because people interpret that as damage somehow. It’s obviously going to take time too, I hope everyone realizes this. There are 7 other classes with the same gunk issues.

Nothing was promised, it was merely mentioned. Discussing possible changes in a State of the Game is by no means a binding contract for the next patch. It could be in a later patch or it could be decided against completely.

The only condi-buffs I think we need are in Explosive Shot and underutilized builds anyway. Our strongest condi-builds are actually pretty competitive as they are. Heck, they are seen as fully competitive in today’s tPvP metagame.

I hate that Explosive Shot does absolutely terrible damage. I hate that I have to design my builds around not using my auto-attack. I have my own personal opinions on it, but I’m not even sure why it’s an AoE attack honestly. Coated Bullets could do that for the Pistol. I understand that the reason Explosive Shot does terrible damage is due to our kits and versatility, but I see no reason why it has be as severely weak as it currently is

I hate that the Glue attacks have such a short duration on their conditions. The Immobilize doesn’t even last long enough for a single bomb, and the Cripple wears off the moment they leave the field. The control with these skills is minimal. They need to be something that the enemy actually cares about.

I hate my Bombs can be blocked by a Guardian that just stands on the point. I hate that they apply zero pressure in this situation to him, and he doesn’t even have to choose to skirt the edges of a control point to avoid it. These should be one of the premier anti-bunker tools we have.

I hate that Mines are incredibly boring and not even that good the way they are setup. Some variety and potency in them would be greatly appreciated. I’d love to drop multiple types of Mines that actually mattered to an opponent who set them off. My opponents should have to traverse a mine field carefully, rather then flat out ignore it.

I hate that the duration of some of the Might and Bleed effects are so incredibly long rather then being double or triple the intensity with the duration reduced accordingly. Why can’t Elixir B be 3 Might stacks for 10s? Why can’t Shrapnel Grenades drop 2 Bleed stacks for 6s? Condi removal and Boon removal negate the vast majority of high duration abilities, and these don’t need to be that.

I hate that me stacking conditions especially in PvE creates horrible situtaions where I’m not actually doing any damage. My bleed stacks get pushed off. My burn and poison is waiting 3 minutes in the damage queue. My confusion is the only thing that even works, but it’s simply because no one else uses it. Each person should have their own set of damage condition stacks on an opponent. Conditions should work when used for focus fire, just like direct damage. On the same topic, I hate that condition duration works in a way that cuts off a portion of my damage unless I ensure the ticking conditions end on an integer value. A 3.75s bleed should do 75% of its damage on the last tick. I should not be punished so severely for not pushing it up a quarter second, nor should I feel forced into duration increases in my builds.

I hate that I somehow have a real lack of combo finishers even though I’m using Pistols, Grenades, and Bombs. Why isn’t Poison Volley a 20% projectile finisher? Why isn’t Static Shot a projectile finisher? Why isn’t Grenade Barrage a blast finisher? These are all questions I’ve asked myself.

I hate that the Elixirs I use have way too much RNG in them. I hate that even though I have the only way to spread Swiftness to my team, it’s not dependable in the slightest. Supporting my allies with Elixirs isn’t a viable thing at all the way they are designed. I seriously wish thrown Elixir H always gave Regen and thrown Elixir B always gave Swiftness. Even then, throwing a single boon would be worthless. It needs to apply more then one boon on the thrown skills. HGH can offer Might, but that’s still weak. I also wish 409 made it so the thrown elixirs had a ~1200-2000 heal associated with it. Supporting with Elixirs is not a viable concept right now. We should be able to throw down elixirs to heal and grant wonderful boon support.

But in the end, I still love my Engi. And I’ll continue to play it, regardless if I could do better as another profession. I do play a Mesmer and I do know it is much easier to accomplish many of the Power builds. I’ve tinkered with a Ranger and seen the glory of what a condition build can offer. I’ve remembered fondly of the time I played a Warrior and realize how they are in mostly as bad a spot as the Engineer is. In the end though, I love my Engineer. I want what is best for this profession. I want it to have 5 to 6 viable builds. I want burst builds, condi builds, turret builds, kitless builds, survival builds, and support builds to all be a real thing we can do competitively with other professions. I want our traits cleaned up, our skills cleaned up, and our noob traps removed. I want everything to be useful. I want this for every profession, but I’ll admit the Engineer is mine so it’s closest to my heart.

I want the Engineer to be competitive. To be loved. To be feared. It’s already the most entertaining profession there is, and is more viable then most realize. It doesn’t need anymore fun. It just needs a tune up.

I used the Bomb Kit as part of my main build since launch. I always felt it was missing something, but I didn’t think it was that terribly much. It works great in solo PvE and in hotjoin sPvP when people don’t move out of the bombs, but beyond that it has a lot of trouble against anything that isn’t just mindless melee. I thought switching it just to being unblockable would be good enough.

Now however, I don’t even think that would be enough of a boost to validate picking them up. I dropped them about a month ago now, and haven’t missed them at all. I can maintain Burning uptime in PvP combat just fine, which means the only thing I’m missing is Smoke Bomb and Concussive Bomb. Both of which just suffer from being terribly inaccurate. These would be okay being inaccurate, but they force a trait to even become reasonable accurate. Effectively by dropping Bombs I’ve lost very little and gained a trait slot.

Now it has a purpose in PvE, because it’s guaranteed to be accurate. Even without the AoE trait you can use it with the Shrapnel trait and it works pretty well and maxing the Bleed cap and maintaining constant Burn. But it is still lacking in other situations, and the only two bombs worth even a little damage in that incredibly optimal situation is Concussive (Confusion in PvE is still meh though) and Incendiary (because it provides Shrapnel bleed ticks potentially). Smoke is great against trash, but it’s trash. Glue is nearly worthless, because it’s worse then Glue Shot and Glue Shot isn’t even that great.

Honestly, I think the AoE Bomb trait should be innate and Bombs should always be unblockable. I think that is an excellent start to making the kit more viable. I also think Glue in general needs to be buffed so that it lasts 5 seconds and the Immobilize and Cripple durations need to be a base of 2s. Incendiary Bomb needs a 5s duration as well, and really now that I play without it I think Smoke Bomb was overnerfed, but I’m not sure what to do with it. The most controversial idea I have for Bomb Kit would probably be to make it so the auto-attack Bomb was no longer auto, and rather was a 10s cooldown Bomb named Shrapnel Bomb that sprinkled out a x3 Bleed to whomever it hit. Would it be overkill to do all of it? Probably, so I think one step at a time with the innate increased AoE radius and making them unblockable is a good start.

Basically, I love the Bomb Kit. I’ve always thought it was a little weak, but now that I play without it I don’t miss it at all. It needs some serious changes outside Solo PvE and niche uses in Dungeon PvE.

There are plenty of 10 point trait adjustments and/or trait swaps, but here is one of the variants of a 100 Nades build.

http://www.intothemists.com/calc/?build=-V70;0B-sPVg0l6cQFx0;9;4TJ;0J46A38;535-L;2N0-Ewk2Ewk25BK (copy and paste the link if you are new to it all, gw2 forums doesn’t like long links)

Awesome work.