Guild Wars 2

kristof.7182:

Eh… by “melee combat” I think: “grab a wrench and start beating people over the head with it”.
FT, EG, Bombs for melee combat? Are you just hating or it wasn’t obvious for you?

@JohnDied
Are you surprise? I want to play with my turret, but I can’t. They have very small hp, they can’t move and have funny damage. I have 4 options:

- lame in WvW, PvP, PvE,
- change my class,
- exit the game,
- join to winning train (grenades)

I want to play this game and I want to play my engi, so I have only one option, last one.

I’ve done all four of those options (except I’ve always loved grenades, even after the nerf a while back). There’s not much of a choice at this point.

The game’s been out for over a year and it’s clear that Anet have a set way of balancing the class. There’s no use fighting them on it.

So, keep in mind that If we ever do get hammers engis wont be expected to auto-attack with them. It’s kind of forbidden.

I can see it now; Anet gives engineers hammers as useable weapons, every engineer complains about how guard/warrior hammers do more damage/have more utility.

Everyone ignores engi-hammers until they get buffed several months later (for PvP reasons).

Forestnator. What it comes down to is this, range dps is not necessary in dungeons (except for two instances off the top of my head, but warrs and guards can still get through those). The game rewards melee dps to the point that ranged just cannot compare. It’s why we have zerker warrs running around the first path of half the dungeons in this game. The rest can usually use the help of a support-tank than a glass cannon.

The engineer has better group support and damage than half of the classes of this game… guess which ones? the ranged ones. Mesmer I wouldn’t say we do better than or is better than us. Mesmer’s can do alot more damage than us, but it’s usually single target, and their support is unique to their class so we can’t exactly compare it.

At phin. I get what you’re saying mate, I do take advantage of every combo field my party puts down and it’s really nice to feel like you’re contributing by booning, but there’s a question of necessity. I used to be a healing bomber, which means the whole field+blast rotation. I’ve abused on heal runes with med kit to get party wide regen, or party wide fury and might. You know what I bet was happening when I was busy running around and booning up the party? I bet the local guard was sweating bullets because he was getting focused down due to his high armor value. You seem to forget why the AH is important, it’s not because of damage (you can make way more damaging guards) nor because of boons (which is also a type of guard) it’s because it can combine the aforementioned to keep himself and the party alive with self-heals. I bet the guard in the party thinks that he needs another tank, but not one with a flamethrower who would just run away the moment he felt the focused fire that the guard feels. I bet the guard thought he needed another tank that can boon, and damage and heal as much as he can. I bet he was thinking, mate I don’t need anymore boons, I have natural regen, constant protection and might every second. When an engi comes up to him with fumigate, I bet he rolls his eyes because his conditions would be removed in two more seconds and if they weren’t he would just use a utility skill to get rid of them while booning the party.

I’ve felt that on occasion. I think, mate all these extra might stacks are really great, but what I need is another tank, because I already have might stacks. I think mate, that water field we keep popping is really nice and keeps me alive for now, but what happens when it’s over and I have to take all this damage for the team without it? There’s a reason why fractals is full of jerks who ask for two guards min. It’s because in PvE you don’t need to think about condition damage or boons like in WvW. You just need two guards to lock the champ down (or cleave through all the trash) and keep him there so the rest of the party can see what it feels like to not go down once.

Does that mean that the engineer is bad? not exactly, it just means he isn’t as necessary as a guard or a warrior. If you have a lot of guards and warriors then the engineer takes a backseat to the mesmer due to it’s unique support. I agree with you phin that the engineer has a higher skill floor for a higher skill ceiling, but what the engineer provides in PvE with that skill ceiling is a lot of “nice to haves” but not a lot of necessities.

Deniara, you can keep poison up 100% of the time in PvE because enemies are braindead. If you slap a poison grenade field on a champ and they’re going toe to toe with your local tank (probably a guard keeping him down with a hammer) then the mob will stay in the poison field and the 5 s will keep reapplying. I’ve gotten half a minute on mobs before with the +30% from the explosives line.

Burning however, can’t be kept up 100% of the time, thanks to the recent Incendiary powder change. It does however proc more often than before (if you didn’t have the necessary precision to have it up 100% before).

Like I said before, with regards to conditions you’re better off not depending on them for your dps. They get rewritten often enough by people who need to depend on them (ie necros), or people who like going full into condi-damage for the fun of it (ie bleed warriors).

EDIT: This is due to condition duration weapons/runes. A necro alone can keep up 25 bleed stacks (and poison uptime) due to +100% duration gear being practically mandatory to them if they go conditions. Same for a bleed warrior.

Actually, the same can be said for engineers. I can’t count how many times I’ve stolen burning damage away from eles who depend on it :P

I think the problem with conditions in PvE is that they can get overridden very easily. Now hold on phin, because I know you want to jump at me for saying that, I have a mate who loves his bleed warrior, and have guildies who like running their necros. When you get into a situation where a group has one or more condi-heavy classes, you start to see your own condition damage fall off quick.

One thing I forgot about before, which is very important to grenadiers, is vulnerability. Playing my engi today reminded me of that, which does give the engineer an edge over the AH guard in the damage department (not to mention the conditions phin so kindly reminded me of). This doesn’t mean that the guard isn’t stupidly strong in PvE regardless, he still remains the backbone of the teams he joins. The fact that I even have to compare a support-tank’s damage to that of a glass cannon kind of stings a bit.

With regards to combo-fields. These can be really useful when you’re roaming in wvw, because of the number of blast finishers you can get, but in a dungeon you’ll find very few of these actually being “popped”. I did the whole BoB, shield, healing turret rotation for months, but the boons fall off quick in a fight where you have to dodge around a lot. Playing my guard I actually found myself blasting more water/fire fields than ever before with the hammer, but it made me notice how few other people actually take advantage of these.

With regards to turrets. I only take the supply crate, and I curse the bloody thing every time I see every turret die a second later, which is too often if you ask me. I don’t know what it is… no, actually I do. The reason why turrets aren’t suited for dungeons lies in the fact that there’s so much aoe and trash running around. When a trash mob can kill your turret in 6 hits and there’s 6+ mobs running around hitting it at once… you’d mine as well leave those slot skills empty for all the use you’d get out of them.

With regards to condi-removal… I won’t bring up the fact that fumigate does zero damage (oops I just did), or that it’s a cone and not an aoe… or that it’s not instant like shouts. It’s just such a clunky skill with one use. When do you ever have so many conditions that an instant 2 condi-removing aoe shout cant take care of things, given that it also reliably gives useful boons? I mean, I can always cleanse my party with my toss elixirs, but it’s not as streamlined, nor is it reliable (I swear I never seem to get that kitten ed stability on the kitten ed harpie fractal).

Phineas Poe.3018:

AHEM Guardians definitely don’t do as much damage as Grenade Kit Engineers. They don’t even do as much as an FT Engineer, and I will furthermore state that my FT/EG

I think you might not have read the whole post. I have both a grenadier and an AH guard. I have the grenadier in a berserker/rampager mix and the guard in near full knight gear (2 berserker pieces and rubies on my trinkets). The grenadier does more damage in the first few seconds of combat (because I boon him before combat) then his damage falls out as my boons go down, the AH is the opposite. My AH guard comes in no boons, gets a few crits, his damage is then on par with my engi, after a few more seconds my guard is a might-stacking powerhouse, his #2 doing more damage than my engi’s grenade barrage (which is on a much higher cooldown).

On top of that the guard synergies a lot better than the engineer. That whole AH healing thing? it works off of empowering might (might on crits) the reason I can keep my guard alive through the most ridiculous damage. I can essentially tank and boon the whole party through attacking alone. Include another guard to the mix (which some content seems to require) and you have double the boons and healing. Include another engi and I have some joker with a flamethrower (perma auto-attacking no less) getting all his conditions overwritten by my grenades. True, I have more fun joking with the later :P, but I can’t ask as much from him.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Engineer is way more consistent in removing conditions on allies than a PoV/Soldier rune Guardian will, even with Save Yourselves. Super Elixir and Healing Turret alone remove more than 10 conditions a minute on allies in range. I think it’s substantial enough in saying that Cleansing Formula 409 is now completely optional in even the most difficult dungeons.

Again mate, don’t talk about things you don’t know. On my guard I can remove 2 party wide conditions a shout (pure of voice and soldier runes), that’s 10 conditions per shout. It’s definitely overkill and not many people use it. If I have my shouts on cool-down I can wait for my purity+signet to remove another two on myself. You can remove 10 a minute on allies in range? I can remove 20 through shouts on a 40 sec cooldown, and 8 on myself in that same time. Most of the time, I never even slot save yourselves.

Before I get a bunch of hate, just know this. I run dungeons for my guild. Therein lies my use of the guard. I never discriminate against other classes, in fact I encourage class (and level) diversity in our runs. I leveled and run a guardian (alt remember?) so our guild runs would go smoother with badly-geared/lower-level/bad-connection/bad-fps people. Why? because they’re my guildies, and instead of running dungeons with other people I’d rather use a stronger class for dungeon content.

lastly, when I do a run with an engie, I give advise, but I never tell them how they need to play. I cheer them on in chat. Why? because there are so few of us doing dungeons, and because they already get alot of flak. I’m friendly to them even when irl I’m facepalming because all they do is auto-attack over and over with flamethrower… not even using flameblast…

So what I’m getting at is this, the engineer is completely inferior (not in gameplay, I’ll still run most dungeons with mine when my guild doesn’t need me on my guard) to the guardian in dungeons. In terms of support and dps it’s not a contest, the guardian comes out better on both than an engineer who specializes on one.

From a developer’s viewpoint, this means one of three things. Either give the engineer an edge in damage or support to the guardian, redesign dungeons so that warriors and guards aren’t as terribly better than everything else in them, or lastly, give warriors and guardians massive damage nerfs.

The last one is the most controversial, but if there are only two classes which trivialize a piece of content, why not reduce their capabilities in that content? The devs keep touting this, balancing game modes separately, so why not apply it to a problem which dungeons have had for a very long time. Funny thing is, had I posted this in the guardian forum, people would be outraged about the prospect of not out-dpsing the engineer while being able to facetank a landslide.

tldr

The guardian is flat out better than any kind of engineer in dungeons. Engineers need to be either better at supporting a party or more damage to keep an edge, alternatively dungeons can be modified to benefit classes like the engineer (such as extending condition caps or introducing melee reflect).

This isn’t a QQ or buff us please post. This is just something I’ve been thinking regarding how the engineer plays out in PvE, the part of the game which I’ve played on 90% of my time since I started playing last October.

Now, the engineer is my main. It’s my favorite profession in gw2 and, in my opinion, it is by far the most entertaining and fun to play. It isn’t the most bug free, nor is it completely balanced, but everything about the engineer’s play-style appeals to me (with the exception of the flamethrower :p). This is why I’m currently bothered by how the engineer performs in PvE.

As an aside; you can pretty much run whatever you want in open world PvE. Your trait points literally don’t matter if you’re in open world PvE, everything is just that easy… unless you try to tackle an Orrian temple, but those are very (read horribly) broken at the moment. So when I talk about PvE, what I mean is dungeon content.

Going back to the engineer’s performance in PvE, it’s lacking in a very special way. You can run every piece of dungeon content on the engineer, and if you like the profession you will have a ton of fun (I have), but due to the way dungeon’s are structured, the engineer seems to fit only specific roles like range dps, support, or both if you’re a good player After months of playing with builds/gear/rune choices, I gave up on support for dungeons. I’ve tried too many builds with healing bombs, grenade vuln stacking and combo fields. Having to go through an elaborate buffing process only detracts from your awareness and all that elixir gun’s SE does is fool people into thinking that it can heal them more than that aoe fire is hurting them. I’ve come to think that elixir R is the only support you need, in addition to well timed rezzes when it’s toolbelt is on cooldown.

This then leaves me with range dps (because no glass cannon in their right mind would use bombs in a dungeon). I may be biased here, because I chose to use grenades. I don’t really understand it when people complain about grenades being boring, since I find them to be one of the only engaging weapons in gw2. Before this game I hadn’t really played any proper MMOs, I preferred action games, so didn’t find the appeal of queuing attacks. Bombs, grenades, necro marks, these skills require attention to your surroundings and make movement more challenging, making the game-play more engaging. When MF came out I found it to be incredibly difficult to aim my grenades, avoid ten firefields, and time my jumps over the shockwaves. By the end of the week I found the above incredibly fun, and MF became my favorite dungeon. In any case, my build for dungeons eventually devolved into what’s been known since launch as the boring 30 in alchemy elixir build, or more recently dubbed an HgH dps build.

It stacks boons, it has ranged dps, and it has enough RNG to infuriate me on occasion, but it’s undoubtedly a very solid build for dungeons. It even taught me something interesting about PvE aggro. For the longest time I thought that taking toughness out of my builds would leave me to crumple like wet paper in a dungeon, but as I took more and more berserker/rampager gear, I noticed I got focused down less and less. I noticed that that aggro went to other people however, and being someone in my guild in charge of dungeon runs, this became a problem. Wipes and hard runs became more common in certain situations, like when we didn’t have a warrior or guardian to take aggro. So I decided to level one of these, a guard, and cry myself to sleep from the boredom of it.

Now with my guardian alt (which I decidedly like running less than my engineer) I’ve found out certain things, namely:

1-An Altruistic Healing guardian (in full knight’s gear with some rubies) does more damage than a full glass cannon engineer with might stacking and grenades.
2-An AH guardian heals a party more than a healing bomb engineer does (through constantly applying boons to the party like might and protection)
3-An AH guardian is the backbone of most parties because it (mostly) holds all the aggro in dungeon encounters and can take the damage that comes with it.

The only things my engineer holds over my guard is that he has better range, better mobility and better condition damage. These three things do not contribute as much to a dungeon encounter than the previous three. It’s not even close. Where these contribute is in WvW and PvP.

wolfshirt.8459:

2. higher damage on Flamethrower and Elixir Gun kits.
3. make pistol 1-3 skills not the worst weapon skills in the game.

These two are tricky, do you want these to do more condition or direct damage?

I know mate, sigil of battle is great for the might stacking and a must for those builds now. Although I’d have to argue over it being the reason the engineer boon duration builds started. If I remember correctly it was Mask that made those popular (roughly some weeks before +might duration caught on) and he didn’t begin with a sigil of battle.

Mind you I don’t argue who invented things. I doubt Mask was the first to come up with boon duration on engineers, especially since elementalists had been doing this for months. I also don’t argue that +boon duration builds came before +might duration builds, I’m just saying which exploded first in the community. If I had to guess which became (way) more popular than the other, I’d say +might duration won out in the long run.

Chaith.8256:

Elixir based, might stacking Engineers reigned supreme since January-ish. Link below:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/List-of-my-TPvP-engi-builds/first

If he played six+ months ago then he’d recognize elixir builds, they’ve reigned supreme since launch. What changed in january was the HgH buff, and people finally learning to use runes to maximize their engineer builds (ie might stacking/boon stacking).

Super Riceman.8702:

And I would pick apothecary over cleric, you will benefit more from condi dmg.
Don’t buy an exotic set unless you have the money or you want that to be your main build.
There are also Durmand Priory and Karma armors with main stat Healing Power, +prec and vitality if you need a healing set temporarily.

I advise the opposite at least in PvE & WvW. Always choose cleric over apothecary, at least in PvE, since you’ll be dealing with massive damage sponges and condi-damage is less effective in this gamemode due to the caps it has. If you’re planning on supporting for WvW then go ahead, but I’d still advise you to go a mix of cleric and apothecary.

Only for tpvp will this build work with full condi-damage, though I don’t know how those heals would make much of a difference if a party member needs a peel. Even then you wouldn’t need to buy the gear anyway.

I kind of find it funny that engineer didn’t even make the list for viability in dungeons. Does that mean that no one in their right mind would choose an engineer, or that they’re fine when it comes to dungeon balance?

Honestly, I find that the engineer is really fun to run in any encounter so I do so. The problem I have with this is that even though I run glass cannon dps with grenades and kite my kitten off to rez warriors and guards that just won’t dodge, those same guards or warrs still tell me that I bring no dps or support if the run goes awry. What I mean is this, either there’s a problem with the class balance in pve (which there is) or there’s a problem with dungeon content. Otherwise the playerbase wouldn’t universally recognize that most content was easier on a warr or guard than on a necro.

If no one wants nerfs (which for the sake of balance some classes need in pve) then how about Anet introduces some new mechanics to dungeon content, like melee reflect. There’s projectile reflect, why not add melee into the mix. Just for fun, make the effigy in CoF path 1 have it up 50% of the time. I’d laugh my kitten off the day I see “CoF p1 no warr or guard” in map chat.

well mate, I don’t know what to say. My best guess is that you must rely on having no aggro at all, which I’ve noticed I get less and less of the more toughness gear I take off. I’ve never gone full glass cannon, and I probably never will. Just in case the “heavier” people in my party go down. I guess I’ll just switch a piece or two to berserker and see where it takes me.

paleeshi.1924:

Rozbuska.5263:

Engineer has the best damage output in PvE, only dumb noobs create Warriors for damage:-P
I use this build with http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rare_Veggie_Pizza:

http://tinyurl.com/cfftnq7

- by swaping kit and constant using elixirs you can keep 25 stacks of might on you and 10 stacks on rest of party pretty much all time.
- Due to trait and high crit chance you will keep 25 stacks of vulnerability on mobs all time – its pretty much 25% dmg increase for whole party
- You have average damage output around 6k/s on 1500ft range:-)

You can also try this static discharge build with: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Curry_Butternut_Squash_Soup

http://tinyurl.com/boaoy3m

- Its pretty much single target build but due to piercing rifle shots and discharge bouncing between targets you can manage multiple targets but its harder for positioning.
- This build has extreme damage spikes (about 30k in 1.5s) but you must wait 30s for recharge whole burst or 5s for partial.
- Perma swiftness and vigor allow you to kite everything.

I did fractals lvl 48 multiple times with both builds without problems:-).

Hello, can I ask how long you’ve been playing with this build and your overall experience with it?
I kinda miss my Engi (retired her since january), but I have trouble finding a build I like (looking for a rifle/power build).
I usually don’t like going full glass canon and hence I tried balance dmg with toughness and vit, but I just don’t like the low dps. I used to run grenades but I don’t like them much anymore since 33% nerf.. And also the endless key spamming.. Your build seems pretty decent though so hence I wonder how the world looks for a pure glasscanon engy xD I guess it won’t do as well in WvW though?

I have similar questions. Namely, that I’m pretty happy with my survivability but I’m trying to get more damage in my build. So I’m wondering how do you react when you’re being focused in a dungeon? because I run a similar build but with knights trinkets and I still melt from time to time (not by aoes or dodge-able mechanics, but by simple guided damage). Often I only hold out by kiting until my heal goes off of cooldown. I do this quite often actually.

This has been happening to engineers’ backpieces since launch… still hasn’t been fixed.

Was wondering if the extended date to the 14th included the secret contact/dead drops quest. I ask because the npc is no longer in the black citadel.

You just need to get the Braham and Rox story achievements first. No need for the lost & found and dead drops.

I’ve done this dungeon once with a lvl 23, and two lvl 60’s. Another time I did it with two lvl 40’s. I’ve said this before, there’s a difference between being bad at gw2 and not knowing how to dodge and being under-leveled. You can definitely do it with lower level characters, it’s just a little harder. It doesn’t mean the content is impossible, it just means it requires a little skill.

If you’re worried about not finding a group, well, just join a guild or make some friends. There’s plenty of nice people out there running MF twice a day. I do it

There’s a big difference between being low level and being bad at dodging in a dungeon. I’ve played with lower levels (last night I ran with a group with a lvl 23 engineer and a lvl 69 mesmer) and I’ve been surprised by how long they can last despite being leveled up (they would outlast the lvl 80 warrior). At the same time, I’ve played with lvl 80s who never dodge aoes and who drag the team down.

If you’re both, well then, you’ll have to run it with nice people or guildies and try not to feel bad about yourself. You get better and better at dodging aoes with every time you run it, so you won’t always get downed quickly. You might however get once shotted some due to being low level.

idk if this helped. I honestly stayed away from dungeons when I didn’t know when to dodge, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to.

I’ll remember F&F for a few things:

-Most engaging and enjoyable dungeon in game
-Average story telling; ala gw2 style, with boring NPC’s and cheesy or cliche dialogue.
-Cutscenes! much preferred over the old ones.
-RNG loot tables; reminds me not to love this game too much.
-Actually pleasant personal quests; The braham and rox missions felt like little mini dungeons instead of the regular (boring) personal story quests. They required minimal travel (instead of go here then come back a dozen times to do uninspired quests), and had interesting enemies mechanics (instead of just a bunch of trash).
-Really terrible open world quests; lost and found quests are filler in most games, not content. They also came accompanied by very uninspired storytelling. Some refugees almost had enough dialogue to make you care, like the children, but their dialogue is so short you can’t possibly make an emotional connection. This leaves you feeling nothing for the npcs.

About NPC interaction. Gw2 is my first proper mmo. I hold it responsible for the dialogue that’s made me learn to click through all the in game text without reading due to being absolutely uninteresting. I don’t care if this is a problem all mmos have, I’m an absolute lore freak in every game I play… except this one. I wonder why?

Thedenofsin.7340:

Scavengering around two maps and gathering lost items from a group of redshirt refugees that you don’t care about (and never will) is not the least bit enjoyable.
The “dead drop” communications were only slightly more interesting, as they at least tried to frame the context of the subsequent story.
The instanced fights with Rox and Braham were decent enough and made you feel like you were a part of the action. This was decent.

I… really agree with this.

I find that Lost and found missions (normally just filler in open world games) to be some of the most uninspired and boring game content I ever have to play through. It artificially extends play time and is usually very tedious. The fact that most people just use guides to do these is very telling. I only ever consider these missions acceptable when you get them for areas you haven’t explored yet (encouraging exploration), not for areas I’ve explored completely on several characters. The fact that the story attached to these is minimal doesn’t help either.

Needless to say, I almost always skip this content, but now I’m forced to complete it if I want to be rewarded for all the other living story content I’ve done.

If I were to summarize all the qualms I have with the lost and found (and dead drops) missions its the following:

-Lost and found game content is a filler for actual game content. It artificially inflates a game’s playtime in a very tedious and uninspiring way.
-The story attached to these missions was so minimal that it reduced the activity to looking things up on the web and just trying locations (which aren’t always the same, so it becomes even more tedious).
-The maps chosen for this content are maps that anyone who’s played the game for more than a few weeks has explored completelly, sometimes with multiple characters. This adds to the tedium as we are forced through the same maps over and over again for months.
-Forcing players to do tedious, boring and uninspired content to receive rewards for other missions is a sure fire way to get players to resent your game.
-Bugs. The fact that these quests are bugged in most servers adds to the frustration.

All in all, I really enjoyed the Braham and Rox missions. I found these very pleasant quests, sort of like mini-dungeons. They had story problems as usual (something this game has a lot of unfortunately) but they were still moderately interesting, even if Rox was a little one-dimensional. I would enjoy more of these in the future as opposed to more lost and found quests.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Proof that PvE is kittening simple.

If you don’t mind taking hours to do one dungeon run. I prefer going glassy now. Higher stakes, less time wasted.

Cool vid mate. Seeing all those flamethrower auto-attacks kind of mate me appreciate the guildies I ran that dungeon with (me being the only engi). I don’t know, I just don’t see how having five flamethrowers running would make the run remotely quick.

Did you guys concentrate on doing things like buffing or weakening (I saw you use elixir gun once in the video), or was it a run-gun shoot the breeze kind of night? It would have been kind of a waste if there wasn’t at least one engi perma stacking weakness or vulnerability or might seeing as how it’s something we can do easily.

In any case, good going on the dungeon. Please share any other 5 engi runs if you do any more

borlis pass is still bugged

May patch:

-Static Discharge has a 10 sec cooldown ~ love, Karl <3

I wonder, if kit refinement were on a 5 sec timer, would this trait be on par with the others? Would it’s timer be useful?

nakoda.4213:

Johndied

Don’t get started on their turrets, its like having four warriors on your team for free.

somewhere, a warrior is crasterbating himself to sleep at how true this actually is.

I got that little gem from a ranger pet thread. Warriors complaining that ranger pets are better than them…

You probably say that because you play flamethrower/bomb-kit/grenade/pp/gadget engineer. Haven’t you seen the myriad of builds the devs have oppened up? Turrets are only a year’s worth of patches away from being viable.

Grenades will need to be brought down another dozen times before they’re balanced. The other day I was on my ele and an engineer threw a grenade at me. It hit so hard that it uninstalled guild wars and my pc set itself on fire.

google.3709:

yea, bro I didn’t mention WvW because i don’t WvW much so anything i would say would be more speculation of how it might affect more than anything, just mentioning my personal experience which i’m sure PvP/PvE players should feel something similar once they get some time hands on with the new changes.

and hahahahahaha ikr! people are going mad on those forums, specially ele! they just been spoiled so much that they don’t know how to handle a real nerf!! RoTL from 15c to 20s cd was nothing! now this is the real deal, and yet no where near KR treatment

I can’t stop going to the thief and ele forums. They must have been crazy spoiled on good abilities. If RtL got the engineer treatment it would get turned into something like:

“thunderclap” -A thunder strike propels the elementalist forward but knocking him down.

OP is right guys. Engineers are too powerful right now. They never get nerfed, all their weapons and kits do massive damage untraited, and they stay in medium range all day where they take no damage at all. Don’t get started on their turrets, its like having four warriors on your team for free. Engineer is beastmode right now.

I can’t tell if this is an actual complaint thread or a thread that uses sarcasm to complain about our shortcomings. I’ll assume the later.

google.3709:

Engineers are suffering from the We have nothing to complain about, so we try hard to find something to complain about syndrome.

IP: longer burns, no RGN 100%!!!! and unless you’re running a 1 condition build, it shouldnt be as easy to remove as people make it to be.

and for PvE, i just completed a frac 48.. Med kit is still my main but Healing turret + Elixir gun felt amazing on any fight where I wanted to support my team, even at 0 healing! soo good

Elixir S was the only nerf. but.. it isnt skill breaking. it still works and not nearly comparable to the grande nerf? how about smoke bomb or who can forget about KR :] we made it out winning this patch!

I don’t know mate, you’re forgetting about WvW in your assessment.

Honestly, I’m fine with the engineer forum complaining about nerfs whenever we don’t get some things buffed in exchange. I wouldn’t exactly call the healing turret rework a buff unless you’re in PvP (or not getting aoe’d), so be mindful about who you bring it up with.

To tell the truth I had always thought this to be the most toxic subforum here because of all the complaining every patch. Wow was I wrong. The Ele/thief/warrior forums are terrible this patch. The anger and entitlement is palpable. The engineer forums is more like sulking when compared to their full on tantrums.

Okok, I have a concern I’d like to add to the list.

For a few months now the engineer kit and weapons have been modified to do less direct damage and do more conditions, however, most kits and weapons still scale better with power than condition damage.

For the last two months the community has taken this to mean that the devs want us to go mixed direct/condi damage. The builds which excel at this kind of damage are HgH builds due to might stacking.

Other engineer builds during this time have been either changed to fit in with this direct/condi model or have been made inconvenient like multi-kit builds. This doesn’t remove other builds (except 100nades), it just makes them look like they aren’t as good as HgH builds due to every weapon now being a mix of direct/condi damage.

Now that a large amount of engineers (and FoTM players) have started playing HgH the devs seem to think that this build is too strong despite having its own weaknesses. It isn’t a burst build, nor is it a bunker build. Its just a mixed build which suffers the weaknesses other mixed builds suffer. If someone has a lot of condition removal we still have direct damage with it, if someone melts in conditions then they probably needed condition removal. We can’t take the damage other builds can because we aren’t bunkers (looking at naks flamethrower builds) yet we aren’t glass cannons so we don’t get killed too quickly.

We use boons to keep ourselves alive in fights, as per the design philosophy the devs have shown us. We can complement our medium armor (remember, we are mid to close range fighters) with protection and regen, and complement our reduced damage (due to being versatile) with might stacks and fury.

My question is essentially this, if HgH builds are bad or overpowered, how do the devs want us to play engineers? What is the new class philosophy we should be adhering to? If all the changes (nerfs/buffs) have been leading us here, why is it that the devs consider these builds negative for the proffession?

I know this is probably too much for grouch to ask a dev without overstepping some kind of boundary, but this is the situation a lot of the old (pre grenade nerf) engineers find ourselves in. Some of us just want to know why it is that when asked about grenades devs just sigh and start talking about taking them down again, or when asked about HgH it seems like the devs consider it overpowered.

I guess I could have worded this in the Op but I’m fairly certain its too late now. What I’m trying to say is this: It doesn’t seem like the way engineers deal with warriors and thieves will be greatly changed in this patch. There has been no word of an HgH nerf and the buffs to thieves and warriors are very niche and hard to pull off, as in nothing engineers need to worry about.

While I say this, I do absolutely agree with you CrisPeH. I don’t consider the devs to be handling engineer balance adequately. Just from reading your post I came up with two questions grouch could ask in the next state of the game. I just don’t consider this the thread to bring this up.

I do think you should use your valid points to write up some questions for that thread however.

nakoda.4213:

yes google, the engie forum sounds like the ele forum, every kitten day.

it is our small victory I suppose, since misery loves company.

grenades need balancing. period. (both for <ie travel time> and against <ie excessive proc opportunity>).

you may now resume your regularly scheduled mewling.

At least there’s a few more reasonable people over here. Over there the percentages are a little more in favor of the QQrs.

In any case, I wouldn’t mind grenades being balanced in WvW. I just don’t wan’t to have to lob hundreds more per dungeon run again. It was hard enough adjusting after the first nerf. I like this new idea of keeping thing separate, lets ride it out.

Zaviel.1245:

GuilguiS.2738:

My only concern with Incendiary powder is it’s use with the FT because it was basically a necessary trait. If they are nerfing that they should make the FT burn oportunities.

EDIT: Now that i’ve stopped to think about it i guess this change will be kinda good. Even if FT misses a lot we can still get that 4s burn if we crit once and give it 2 more seconds with air blast. I can see a good future for FT builds.

As a condition engi who uses rifle instead of flamethrower I much prefer the new IncPowder.

Do share mate

I do admit that it feels like the devs have a hate-bonner (had to miss-spell) for grenade kit.

Jzaku.9765:

NevirSayDie.6235:

And really, the only reason the engineer trait is bad is that most of our decent toolbelt skills are un-useful. 30% CD reduction is actually quite nice in a power-nade build because of barrage, but who wants to be able to throw elixirs 30% faster? No one.

HGH Engineer loves being able to throw elixirs 30% faster. Really having 4 skills cooldown faster is amazing.

Engineers spend 60 trait points in traitlines that aren’t tools (30% faster toolbelt). 30 points go into getting HgH, and another 30 go into not doing terrible damage. See, engineers are balanced around those GM traits. Its like this:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Like google siad , if u want Brawn to increase burst bonus by 30% , they have to nerf evething and <<force>> any warrior to spent 30 points in that tree if they want burst

But for any kit/weapon. Engis have had everything nerfed already (at least once)

I think your damage will be fine without +30%, maybe it should go somewhere else like killthehealersffs said.

@luthan

Calm down mate. Eles have RTL, burning speed, updraft and (I know no one likes this) magnetic leap.

Most classes have one opener/closer and use swiftness. Most mobility skills on other classes (like rocket boots) are only as good as burning speed or magnetic leap. D/D Eles get twice the mobility of any other class in the game, a longer cooldown on one skill wont change that. Maybe it’s time to take a minute and check your privilege.

Mate, you didn’t read the threads at all. This thread is trying to get people to think rationatelly and not overreact, you are doing the opposite of what it asks…

In any case. Warrior burst doen’t matter if they can’t touch you, and they melt with conditions. That is why they are worried about survivability. In WvW a lot of warriors get melted without landing a blow, the boon-hate won’t change this.

In fact, the boon hate will be a very niche build meant for fighting boon spiking builds only (maybe it’ll help against guardians). The trait will be a GM for a glass cannon tree which means even less survivability against conditions, and it doesn’t help their mobility and attack range problems. I don’t think engineers will have trouble with warriors, even with this trait.

What I’m not so sure about is the thief boon stealing. Lets hope that this build will also be very niche due to the high initiative cost to steal a boon (3 initiative to start the chain then 1 to get the skill off, if the chain is interrupted then the first 3 initiative is lost). Something I am very happy about is the fact that mug will no longer crit, further weakening the backstab-mug kill chain.

p/p grenades and bombs are really good for leveling. The later two may be an acquired taste to a mesmer, but they hit hard during those early levels.

(or do they? I leveled pre-november, so things might have gotten nerfed)

One thing I’ve noticed for the last five months is that the engineering community gets nerfed, alot. Well, this patch is a little different. We aren’t getting too great of nerfs, and as usual we get one change that doesn’t really make sense yet.

What I’ve observed in the engineer forum is that we are getting “nerfed” because other classes are becoming hard counters to HgH, one of our few strong builds left after the march nerfs. There’s a lot of talk about boon stealing thiefs and boon hate warriors curb stomping HgH or any engi with 5 point in alchemy.

I wanted to share some things that have made me feel better about the situation, and realize that things are not hopeless.

From the thief forums:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/New-Flanking-Strike/first#post1908730

Volrath.1473:

hi,
From what I could understand it is now split into 2 abilities, the first one “Flanking Strike” that strikes the opponent and evades behind it costing 3 initiative and the second called “Larcenous Strike” that will cost 1 initiative and will steal a random stack of boons from the opponent.

my question is, will it work like auto attack automatic rotation or will we have to hit it twice to connect Larcenous Strike?

if we have to hit it twice, it can be very dangerous for thieves to use it. if by any chance you are blinded/blocked or simply miss it you will be losing 6 initiative with zero results or 7 init for 1 Larcenous Strike, and that is the death of a thief! if you miss it once you need to get out of there asap and come back when you have more initiative.
Also if it takes the 2 key hits for the full effect. ppl will ALWAYS press it twice in a row, no one will hit it once and wait to see it it actually hits to press it again so if it misses the first one we will ALWAYS lose the 6 initiative…

With the amount of passive blocks and invulnerabilities in game atm we will be wasting initiative on thin air…

as it is atm if we miss it for some reason, we lose 4 init and would not spam it since the animation is long and the risk of doing 2 Flanking strikes back to back is very low, but like this, will surely be a initiative drain… high risk of losing a lot of initiative for very little benefit.

Please clarify this, do we need to press the key twice for the full effect of the ability or will it do both hits (Flanking + Larcenous) on one key press?

From the warrior forums: (This one’s a lot harder to read, I suggest ignoring the entitlement/QQing if you value your sanity)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Ok-I-m-confused/first#post1908940

PistolWhip.2697:

Ok. I know this is going to sound extremely simplistic but I’m honestly confused here.

So, largely most people I encounter claim the largest weakness warrior has is staying power. Sustained healing, condi removal and such.

They give us Dotted March (One minor buff-as far as I can tell right now-to sustain, that’s extremely situational and more an anti CC than anything.)

And the rest is more DPS buffs?

DPS was never the issue with Warriors, boon hate or not, you could easily overpower bunkers with the extreme damage, it was just hard to stay while doing so without getting downed. Even blocks didn’t matter, because when they didn’t block, their HP melted.

Warriors need sustain, Anet gives them DPS? Don’t get me wrong, its great they finally acknowledge it needs improvement, and we haven’t got it bad this patch at all… I just…I’m confused.

I haven’t posted this because I wan’t engineers to swarm these threads with complaints. I just want us to have some context to understand the changes thiefs and warriors will undergo.

Thiefs and warriors won’t have an automatic “destroy engi” button on their f-keys. These skills and traits have their own drawbacks, and those drawbacks are kitten -ing off their respective communities.

I paraphrased the devs a few hours on this:
To help diversify engineer builds, they have been looking at the hgh builds because of the intense condition pressure.

They think we put out too much condition pressure. I don’t know what to say. In a game where two classes burst anything down and the others don’t, I can’t see why they’d be bothered with a full condi build.

If I were to give my honest opinion, I didn’t like how engis could apply 10 seconds of confusion (with runes and gear of course) and wreck people. Then again, nor do I like how thiefs can get free rides to take out most of our health if we’re not careful. It all comes down to how the devs want this game to be played. If it doesn’t go their way, they’ll make us.

Well, I’ve asked some mesmers who had rerolled engi and they found the class fun. Maybe a few will stay because of that…

Also, we don’t know how often thiefs will be able to steal boons or how many. One boon on a ten second cooldown doesn’t sound so bad. We could cover our might stacks.

Anything more though, will be over powered.

Mif.3471:

So basically they expect every Engineer to give up a utility slot and bring tool kit because they can’t be bothered to design the game with any intelligence.

I agree with your sentiment, but I disagree with how you said this…

Still made me laugh though

I wonder if our community of PvP engis (the FotM HgH’eers) will help us lash out if we get nerfed again. Or will they just reroll warrior/thief?

Kain Francois.4328:

Incendiary Powder = This helps with build variety, how exactly?

This change seems to stem from a WvW/PvP balance perspective. Mostly WvW as condition damage can get crazy there. It’s a shame they keep pushing PvE (and PvP) around because of things that need addressing in WvW. Especially right after they tell us that they plan to balance these separately.

I know PvE is considered the “easy” content (I personally don’t find fractals easy, but then again I haven’t had a lot of time to play recently) but it’s kind of bad that every time someone breaks WvW with their engineers, we get a damage reduction across the board.

As google has said. We don’t know if they’ve changed the delay on the overcharge or any of the healing turret’s mechanics. We should probably calm down and wait a bit. It may not be that bad of a change if it adds more group utility.

Grackleflint.4956:

Ostricheggs.3742:

Penguin.5197:

Ostricheggs.3742:

EVERYONE CHILL THE kitten OUT!

Don’t start with the hyperbole again, please.

We have no idea outside, of what they’ve already said they’ll change, what’s going to happen.

They’re just my initial impressions but so far nothing really good from what they have said.

The healing turret change is going to open up a LOT of builds for engis in tourneys. The lack of condi cleanses forces us 20 up alchemy, 15 up tools (with R) or 15 up inventions (with healing turret).

It’s a good change.

I don’t mean to sound hostile, I just know that people naturally react like idorts when faced with nerfs.

Health
On Level 80:

Thumper Turret: 11950
Flame Turret: 8960
Rifle Turret: 7470
Net Turret: 7470
Rocket Turret: 7470
Healing Turret: 5980

This turret is always better when detonated for the AE heal, or picked up for the reduced cooldown for a reason. Jon Sharp saying that now the other team has something to focus on and counter is the overstatement of the year. They just need to keep using cleave and AE abilities and there’s their counter.

Until Turret longevity is addressed, this is a nothing buff that is going to go nowhere.

I think the change to healing turret was to help it out in PvP. Not in PvE or WvW. As you’ve said, healing turret doesn’t really hold up to anything due to how excessive aoe is in dungeons and WvW. I personally only used it for the double heal through blast finishing it’s water field.

This means that this change was only done with PvP in mind. I can see that healing turret will bring a lot of support for an organized team if it has a stable water field, it’s just a shame that this change also makes it less useful in the other aspects of the game.

Lets hope they make few of these changes in the future.