Guild Wars 2

Phineas Poe.3018:

Keen.9253:

As they are today, kits dmg are not influenced by your equiped weapons or stat, but have a flat dmg by your lvl.

This is not true.

Kits have their own Weapon Strength, which is why Ascended weapons aren’t an important factor for us. Unless you truly value +4 Power upgrading your pistol that much.

They absolutely scale by the rest of the stats of the weapon you wield and the armor you wear. Kits absolutely scale by Power. Why else would Juggernaut stack Might?

I carry with me multiple sets of armor: Celestial, Berserker, Rabid, and Soldier, depending on the build I’m running and whether I’m in WvW or PvE. The output of my kits absolutely change depending on what gear I’m wearing.

As for the “only scaling by condition damage,” I think you’re confusing kits for turrets.

Yes, it was a missexplaination from myself, it was inaccurate. I wanted to spoke about weapons strengh value of course. So ascended and legendary weapons do not transfert their weapons strengh to kits, resulting them being near useless for engi. That why a lot of engi ask for a kit rework.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Keen.9253:

— kits dont scale with power

Yes they do?

As they are today, kits dmg are not influenced by your equiped weapons or stat, but have a flat dmg by your lvl.

Only conditions dmg is affected, but they are close to non-existent due to last patch.

If you try to equip different weapons, or even no weapons at all, you will note that your kits damage is flat and not affected by your changes.

This imply that ascended weapons bring nothing to engineer, as legendary weapons. You will just gain a little bit of passive stats, but no more dmg.

I’m just afraid to see JonPeters delay change to engi far away, when we are already awaiting for long enough.

I really hope he will spare time for this patch preview to discuss with us and explain their opinions on our awaited changes.

It seems to me that Elems, Rangers, Thief and Necros have the highest priority for them. And I can only agree with the actual state of Elems, ands the final touch on Rangers, but I’m sure Engi deserve the same attention.

coglin.1867:

Keen.9253:

Seems your are missing the point, maybe read again my post.

What is there to miss? You are arguing against players suggestions of buffing MH pistol to its previous state. Did you use it during its previous state? Why are you so against positive changes? I do not agree with your assessment at all. In bomb build without grenades, pistols are often the ranged weapon. I do not see how it would not be good to fix the damage of your ranged weapon in this case simply because you feel the bombs are strong.

Like I said, you totally miss the point here.

Here is what Maskaganda wrote :

"
both are bad options in my opinion.
plainly buffing autoattacks and increasing the power of skills overall is a bad move when the general consensus is that some toning down is necessary.
besides, by giving just a flat increase like this you’d be buffing already strong builds like bomb/nades along with it.
like I said before, I think a solution would be to buff or remake coated bullets. make it work better over all pistol skills, add another effect.. something.

"

Like I said, I disagree with him, because I think trying to buff pistol and rifle through traits is not a viable options. They should be flat buffed through their auto-attack first.

I was trying to demonstrate to Maskaganda than if you buff pistols/rifles, this will not, or just give a minor improvment, to grenades/bombs builds, and provide the decent awaiting good improvment for all others builds.

Maskaganda here though it will be better to not flat increases pistols/rifle, but to do it through traits, because nades/bombs are already strong enough.

I disagree with this. Maybe was I not clear enough, but apologies, English is not my main language.

EDIT : Yes, I have played with pistols during its previous state at release, and its seems we share the same oponion, I wants them back too. But not through an obscure traits manipulation to compensate their damage, but through a plain flat buff. like you.

— kits dont scale with power, implying no usefullness for acended weapons, passively penalizing engi

— weapons lacks of base damage(rifle) or conditions duration(pistols)
— kits FT, EG & TK lacks of base dmg or have limited usefullness

Thoses 2 points are limits builds diversity by implying only grenades/bombs have enough base dmg.

— turrets lack of resilience and dmg, or have not appropirate CD regarding their mobility/thoughness

— numerous of bugs like remains and adds to the sligth builds choices : elite mortar, XII inventions trait, etc….

— numerous skills have no clear purpose or utility, like elite elixir, remote mines, etc…
maybe still the problem here that Engineer core role have never been clearly defined

All thoses points are adding or implying weakness and restricted choice for engineer builds, greatly limiting his traits choices.

I think all our suggestions revolves around thoses points in a way or another, but maybe I’m missing something here, feel free to copy & edit.

coglin.1867:

Powerbruce.6710:

yes but it’s a trait based on %, and you can use a over 50 greandes in the time you throw a single mine. same problem but with ratio 1:3 for bombs

Umm, no, just no. the ratio is 15 :11 for grenades to bombs. bomb 1, 2,, and 3 all have one explosion. Smoke bomb and Glue bomb both have their initial explosion plus three pulses. Each pulse has the opportunity to crit.

Keen.9253:

Buffing pistol and rifle will not be buffing already strong nade/bombs builds. Theses builds are strong because they are using grenades/bombs, and then when you are using it, your are not using your gun. kits are like are weapons swap.

Something is weird in your logic, I disagree strongly. Your not making a lot of sense to sit here and say buffing MH pistol would not be a buff to bomb build.

“Barkeep, I will have what he is drinking please.”

How would having a ranged weapon like main hand pistol improved, not buff my bomb build? Pistol is my ranged weapon, bomb is my melee. You will have a tough time justifying an argument against fixing up the MH Pistol. Especially when you take the illogical approach of stating that it will not positively effect builds.

You should take a rest
Seems your are missing the point, maybe read again my post.

Maskaganda.2043:

Ision.3207:

But Pistol #1 is in a very bad place. This skill desperately needs either 1 more second of bleed, or a good 5% to 7% increase to its direct damage.

both are bad options in my opinion.
plainly buffing autoattacks and increasing the power of skills overall is a bad move when the general consensus is that some toning down is necessary.
besides, by giving just a flat increase like this you’d be buffing already strong builds like bomb/nades along with it.

like I said before, I think a solution would be to buff or remake coated bullets. make it work better over all pistol skills, add another effect.. something.

Something is weird in your logic, I disagree strongly.

Buffing pistol and rifle will not be buffing already strong nade/bombs builds. Theses builds are strong because they are using grenades/bombs, and then when you are using it, your are not using your gun. kits are like are weapons swap.

As an exemple, if we follow this logic, pick the warrior and just say than since his longsword is OP, then made his longbow subpar because he can swap.

This is an exemple, I dont feel GS especialy OP, but that mean if nades/bombs are OP, they should be balanced, but not by nerfing to ground pistol/rifles, which end to be here we already are today, limiting other builds who dont uses nade/bombs.

Traits manipulation will not improve our weapons, unless a complete rework, and even then, it will put more mess into engi traits. Buffing pistol/rifle is more natural and open onto more builds.

We should have an answer from JonPeters to know if they have considered it.

Maskaganda.2043:

@jon

a related issue that many of us stated is that our mainhand pistol skills are subpar. thats why we take stuff like IP.

I know you guys are working towards making autoattacks not as significant and I know that from a class design point of view our equiped weapons are supposed to be weaker but something needs to be done about it. the 3 mainhand pistol skills could use a buff and since you’d want to avoid having way too much condi pressure from a nade/bombs condi build buffing coated bullets slightly would be a decent way to go about it.

Having autoattack not as signifiant as other class is a faillure from the very start, due to a false starting statement.

They though engineer would have theorically more weapons due to kits, but they overdo it when nerfing all weapons and kits to the ground. Engineer will rarely carry more than 1 kit because he need utilitaries like every other class.
Moreover, not having decent weapons dmg have deprived engineer from flexibility, forcing him to use more vital utility slot, and finally only building strong mono kit efficiency, leading to this lack of diversity, since only nade and bombs are decent.

Again, we should claim more decent auto-attack dmg on our pistols and rifles.

JonPeters.5630:

zaragoz.6351:

pheroth.5306:

JonPeters.5630:

Keelin.5781:

Wow. Just wow.

“Oh most engineers take this trait. This limits build variety. Let’s make it harder to get”

How do you arrive at this instead of :

“Oh most engineers take this trait. Maybe the other traits are just really bad compared to it – we should balance things”

This is hopeless.

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

I would say this is not what you are accomplishing

I mean its clear that you guys are doing this “zero-sum” sort of balancing, but what you doing here doesn’t make sense.

If you buff a trait to compete with an already awesome trait, the player has to pick between the 2 traits and the strength of the overall engineer should be around equal assuming you can make those traits about even. It’s not like if you buff the trait they also add the power of that new trait; no they have to pick, its either or.

IP is probably the best trait in the adept tier. The other traits in adept are pretty insignificant. The master tier in explosives has strong traits.

Moving IP to master tier means I must pick inferior traits. This is not “zero-sum”, clearly this is negative; a nerf.

Agreed 100% you are taking the best adept trait in the explosives line where there aren’t any other great traits and moving it up to master tier where there are great traits, and justifying it by moving down accelerant packed turrets which is useless as turrets are basically in a really bad place right now. And as ostricheggs has already said you are only hurting fringe builds by doing this such as hybrid users who have limited access to burning. Bomb builds will just grab forceful explosives and IP in the master trait and lose nothing for it, further making people want to run it. So please do tell how this helps build diversity which was your reasoning for moving it in the first place?

For condition engineers we have left Shrapnel intact here as the alternative. For power engineers we have left Empowering Adrenaline intact here as the alternative. No need to argue that these traits are worse than IP, we know that, this is why IP was moved. The real question is why are these not Adept tier worthy, which we think they are…

- Shrapnel is not an alternative, this trait have the only purpose to add dmg for grenade and bombs kits. Then you are removing a condition for FT, EG, TK kits builds, and eventually end to contradict yourself by reducing viability of already subpar builds.

- Empowering Adrenalide is not a decent trait, because power engineer have no other decent choice to play with grenades and bomb kits, since they have the higher dmg ratio. Then, this traits stay still subpar to Shrapnel or Forcefull explosive, which end up to provide higher dps with thoses same kits, even without any condition dmg bonus.

This answers your question. There no alternative in adept tier traits because you have no alternative to choose kits when you want a decent dmg dealer.

If you wants to create another alternative, you will have to make weapons and other kits viable. Thus will provide other builds, then other requierment influings on traits choices.
This is not the case actually, so to reach your goal of balance, the faster way is to improve thoses weapons and kits.

Have you already considered this, and why have you not retained this option ?

PS : improving blunderbuss is not a rifle improvment, since blunderbuss himself is subpar in dmg and usefullness, it will stay the same regardless his range. Its the whole base dmg of pistol and rifle you should improve, strating with their first auto-attack ability.

Here are answers from JonPeters on main thread about balance :

ENGINEER
Increased the range of Blunderbuss from 400 to 500. (700 when traited)
Power Shoes is going to function outside of combat.

I really hope that this is not just all you have kept from our 250 posts of whining.

That cannot be true, that cannot even exist.

Trinity has never been a smart system or a coherent one.

To begin for, just keep in mind than trinity was originaly a glitch, a fail, just a biased way to use specific class for doing things easier. At his start trinity was ugly as hell and gamebreaking.
Then recently (10 years ago), MMos have started to build their game mechanics around trinity, in the purpose of become more accessible to mainstrain gamer.

GW2 combat system is smart and coherent, and is actually the closest system to good old rpg. And there is no other MMOs atm with a combat system as decent as gw2 for pvp and rvr.

PvE is still fun, just more easy than at release, when we were all with bad gear and had no clue about boss tactics. Today Anet is trying to push it deeper with event like Tequalt, or just remenber Queen’s Arena.

So after one year, their combat system is more refined and mastered by players, and Anet is adding new challenges. On the other hand, take a look at WoW or stuff similar : Trinity is still a kittenty system unable to achieve something else than Dungeons.

purecontact.1680:

Hi,
- Reset CD when you pick it up.

Traits :
- Add a Master traits that reduce turret’s cooldown when they are destroyed (In my mind, replace Invention X : Autotool Installation).
- Improve Invention XII – Rifle Turrets Barrel : Turrets deal more damage (change from 15% to 35% or 50%) and have a longer attack range (from 33% to 50%).

This. Turrets dont need a lot of changes to reach a decent usefullness. Give ’em more life or more resist, add a little more damage, and very important : fix the rifled turret barrel grand master trait which do not improve range and reduce damage of rocket turret.

Yes it benefit from your sigil effect now, it a great improvment, especialy with on crit proc sigils because of high hit rate of FT, but that just all it can do. Dmg are sill subpar.

JonPeters.5630:

By difficult, I mean time consuming from either a technical or testing standpoint.

This argument seems just fallacious. In the very same patch you plan to up ranger long bow and add damage to guardians…

How can you have here any technical reasons for not doing this for engi ?

What kind of mystical and improbable justification can have you to prevent engineer from being treated like other class ?

NevirSayDie.6235:

Keen.9253:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Keen.9253:

but if you take a closer look, there is no engineer a top tier pvp tournament.

Chaith, Steamhawk, Got Might, Google, and Ostricheggs disagree.

I was talking about top tier pvpplayers, not guys doing videos…

Moreover what about builds variety ? As all engineer, thoses guys are just using the 2 or 3 builds available for engi, nothing more.

SD berserker ? check
HGH grenadier ? check
Tank miner ? check

other builds are subpar, but sure moving IP to master tier will change everything, yes…

ho wait, no !

Well, you could have just checked the leaderboards. For example, chaith is currently fifth on the team leaderboards. Got might is first on the solo leaderboards. To my knowledge, no engineers in the top 100 team/solo use HGH regularly. One of those players uses SD. None of them use a tanky build.

I’m not saying the proposed changes are amazing, I just felt I needed to provide some clarification. If you feel the changes are bad, explain why. A blanket statement like “there are no engineers in top-tier tournaments,” even if it were true, is usually unhelpful.

So I cannot be here just ranting ?

Everything about engi have been said for long already.

Engi cannot swap weapons because it was supposed to use kits instead. Unfortunately it seems Anet have considered this as an good excuse to design his weapons as a subpar of any other prof weapons, with the lowest dmg and efficiency. It will be nice if kits were OK, but no, only nade and bombs are decent, and TK as utilitaries, and only at the cost of a strong build spec.

You just end with a little bunch of decent builds, greatly relying on gear and runes, etc…

No other prof have to rely as many as engi on gear and runes to buile a decent spec.

Because of this, the traits choices is vital, and moving random traits just put more mess in this. Choosing a traits when you are a warrior, or anything else, is like saying :

“will I pick a little more dmg here, or adding an effect here ? "

Engi choosing traits are more like : " Should I cut my rigth arm or my legs ? "

We need more reliable kits, more reliable weapons, with a decent base dmg or utilities pool to pick in, not a bunch of situational skills who force us to build our role on gear and runes only.

Ho, and fix bug too.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Keen.9253:

but if you take a closer look, there is no engineer a top tier pvp tournament.

Chaith, Steamhawk, Got Might, Google, and Ostricheggs disagree.

I was talking about top tier pvpplayers, not guys doing videos…

Moreover what about builds variety ? As all engineer, thoses guys are just using the 2 or 3 builds available for engi, nothing more.

SD berserker ? check
HGH grenadier ? check
Tank miner ? check

other builds are subpar, but sure moving IP to master tier will change everything, yes…

ho wait, no !

Unhinged Carrot.3849:

Lupanic.6502:

We have a hard time to 1on1 any class. With this nerfs it does not get better.

Are you mad? Engineer is among the best classes for dueling at the moment (not that the game is balanced around this anyway).

False, this is just a feeling your are performing well, because engineer, as the hardest profesion to master, make you plays better, and you feel just you are good cauz your are killing horde of random pvplayer, but if you take a closer look, there is no engineer a top tier pvp tournament.

At least engineer should have his weapons and kit reworked and dmg increased to be balanced compare to other profession.s Playing at randomly change traits is the worst fix to engi issues actualy.

Ho wait, you should fix all our bugs too, but I have really no hope at this part, since a lot of ’em are here from release…

Most of what has been said up is true. However, if you want to keep playing a turret engi, I can share you my build and some tips.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VWRw;2cPFw0Q63TFx0;9;59TJ9;15;026B58-1;08o;4Q;52Fe

This is my current engi build, which I’m using for everything.

Since Pistol / Shield are IMO better combined with turret and for support, you will have to find condition damage gear. I personnally choose a full Carrion exotic gear and Rabid for accessories.

Rune of the Undead is a cheap and decent choice for your set.

Then your turrets : Heal turret is a strong choice, and you can clean conditions and burst heal with your magnetic shield. You should already know it a lot.

I choose both Rifle and Rocket turret, because well placed, they will aplly a constant dmg inside a large zone, and rocket turret provide you a nice stun.

Tool kit is used to provide you more control and toughness with his magnetic grab, shield, and bleeding/crippling aoe. You will find it usefull and even providing a little dmg burst when your other skills are on countdown.

III and XII in Invention are quite essential for your turrets, but you can swap VII or IX at your convenience.

In alchemy, VI will add to your toughness since you have no decent stun breaker, and IX give you passive regen with your Tool kit.

II in Tools will provide you a dmg boost when your turret are not ready.

IMO III, XII in Inventions and II in Tools are essential for a turret build.

I have been roaming around in every dungeon and even PVP with this build, and it is decent at both damage dealing and damage control, even if your are not the “best” profession around in a lot of situation.

Hope this will help you to play a turret engi.

Sry for my bad english.