Guild Wars 2

As soon as anybody asks a question related to the Engineer in an interview, either the dev doesn’t know what to say or he’ll start talking about another class.. Kinda sad to watch, which is why I don’t bother watching what the devs have to say anymore. I recommend you do the same. We haven’t had anything significantly important happen to us since sigils would proc on kits, which is something we should have had before launch. Turrets still suck in PvE, gadgets are situational at best, when they change traits they completely ruin them (kit refinement). The devs are clearly disconnected from their own game since PvP is the only thing that seems to matter to them atm (and the living story garbunkle), as long as we’re ok in PvP they could care less how we are in PvE. With every patch since release, I’ve had to spend time that should have already been spent making sure each trait is still functioning. When we bring up an issue with our class (IE Every turret trait not functioning) they will acknowledge it but it will take quite some time for it to be fixed. Yet they can continue to waste time buffing already over powered classes, or hotfix other classes’ bugs, leaving us high and dry. Every patch this far has been “exciting” to the devs yet as somebody who plays the Engineer I have yet too see anything exciting. All I see is incompetence caused by a lack of vision and direction for our class, as well as a source of unneeded stress. I could offer suggestions on how they could fix this, but many others, including myself, have already done this since release; and most of those have been ignored.

end rant

TL:DR
Welcome to the world of the Engineer.

nakoda.4213:

yep, sweet.

my ft just got bunkier.

so excited.

I fail to see how Juggernaut is a good thing. It suffers the same design issue as Grenadier, in that having traits specifically tailored to make a kit more viable only leads to kits being unviable without the trait.

And that’s the opposite of our “Class balance philosophy”:

The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.

Requiring mandatory traits for a kit to be viable kills off multi-kit builds, limits versatility, and reduces build variety.

bhagwad.4281:

I’d just like to point out that we shouldn’t speak of thieves and mesmers in the same breath when it comes to stealth. The latter has one skill that stealths for three seconds and there’s no danger of an attack unlike with a thief. Then there’s mass invis on a 90 second CD.

Thieves on the other hand are what you really have to watch out for. Their attack from stealth is their bread and butter.

How about no? Mesmers are the most disgusting abusers of stealth, at least while a thief is stealthed he is incapable of attacking you as doing so will reveal him, mesmers are perfectly capable of attacking and applying an equal amount of pressure on you as when they’re not in stealth through phantasms. Have fun dealing with 3 iduelists scattered around the area while the mesmer laughs at you vainly trying to find him. It’s misconceptions like this that let the class slide by with it’s op mechanics while other classes get nerfed.

I never asked for a nerf, merely congratulating you on choosing the OP class in comparison to the rest.

I have played all class in WvW (which is PvE to me) and most to 80 in general PvE. I have a fairly adept understanding of all the classes and what they can do and what they can not. Mesmer is by far the worst or second worst culprit for having the most Defense for the least amount of investment.

Yes, other classes have permanent vigor through critical hits, but only Guardian and Elementalist outside of Mesmer. Guardian and Elementalist has other traits for dodges but I will not go into them. Engineers have it trough gaining swiftness. Thieves through using healing skills, but they also recoup some dodge on use. Rangers have vigor from: Being hit by critical strike for 5s every 15 seconds, also have a +50% increased regen rate as a passive, gain vigor on heal, and can have pets give aoe vigor for 5 seconds.

What does the Warrior have in comparison to all of this? Vigor on stances (which stances have 25/40/60/90 cool downs for 8 seconds of vigor, no one will ever use Berserkers Stance at 25 seconds cool down because it is a waste of a skill) and we can gain vigor when being hit for more than 10% of our health and get 10 seconds of vigor, this can only happen once every 30 seconds. Please also note that these traits are MASTER traits for Warrior where as most of the vigor traits for other classes are adept. Also, no one brings Warhorn into sPvP because it is a crappy offhand and is only good for keeping up swiftness for long intervals. Trying to argue against that is… not bright to say the least.

Most of you don’t’ seem to understand how powerful Blurred Frenzy is in comparison to anything else in this game. There is literally no other skill with such a short cool down that makes you completely invulnerable to attacks while still damaging a foe. The fact you have a SPAMABLE invulnerably is just stupid. No other class has this. This is not stealth, this is not blocking (which a lot of skills are unblock-able anyway), this is more like evading. Rangers have spam able evades if you want, but that is as close as you will get. Even then, the Rangers only have a short 0.5 second window of evade on their attacks, nothing that last 2 seconds. They can also be stunned/stopped before the evade take effect unlike the Mesmers. They are also locked in place before and after the evade happens, unlike the Mesmer who has free control until the invulnerable state kicks in and then free control after the 2 seconds (or before if they choose to end the state early). The Ranger is stuck in his attack until it is over, you can choose to end yours.

I have been thoughtful and considered all the classes and looked at all weapons for all classes. There is not another weapon skill in this game that is overly defense and offensive as Blurred Frenzy. Not just this one skill makes the class the best in the game. It is also, what most of you said, your “Faulty Clones that deal almost no damage” is also a huge problem with the class. They are ranged projectile blocks for no sacrifice that also deal decent damage, constantly, and until shattered or killed will stay on target. It is the fact that these phantasm can live forever unless they are: Shatter/killed or the target dies. Only one of those three things is negative and even then, they are easily replaced. As a dueling class this plus all the rest is over powered.

Like I said before, I am not yelling nor raging that this is in game. I understand that there will always be a class on top of the rest, there has to be. This game will never achieve perfect balance, but they can certainly do a lot better than what is in the game now.

As it stands, Mesmer is by far the most OP class for 1v1 in this game. Hands down. Now, for 1vX I might hand it to Guardian, but that is only because I think he would live a little bit longer than the Mesmer.

This thread was just made to highlight the ease of which it is for a Mesmer to kill people versus Warrior. There is a stark difference in attention required/skill needed in order to down and stomp someone. While playing Warrior I had to be on my feet at all times identifying what I thought the other players could through at me and dodge or block it ahead of time. With the Mesmer, I just offense until I see a number on me then use one of my five “oh crap” buttons then proceed to offense again. I don’t really need to pay attention nor try very hard to predict what they are going to do, because I have the resources to negate and deny the damage while it happens anyway.

Anyway, best of luck with drops and what not in the game. Enjoy it and best of luck in sPvP.

take this post as an example of what happens when you rely on an overpowered class rather than actual skill

with that said i still see d/d eles stomping groups in wvw and pvp so its a L2 kitten ue.

Seriously at this point, delete the trait and put up a “under construction” sign in it’s place.

Fuschia.6573:

There are a couple of things that are very good at dealing with Mesmers…

1) Awareness. Always know which is the real Mesmer.

2) Conditions. Most Mesmer builds don’t run a ton of condition removal, and Shatter builds often have none whatsoever.

3) Count CDs. Mesmers have two powerful active defenses in Blurred Frenzy and Distortion. Don’t blow your 100B when they have them up or you will probably end up quite unhappy.

4) Run away. When all else fails, remember that Mesmer builds often have low mobility over long periods of time. Blink, tons of dodges, and Phase Retreat often make it look like we’re highly mobile, but we’re actually pretty bad at covering wide swaths of terrain quickly.

To be fair, 2 and 4 aren’t true of all builds, but they are of most. If you wander around the forums you’ll find lots of suggestions for 1, and 3 is dead simple if you just take a little time.

Also, remember not to do something stupid like start channeling a bunch of projectiles into Feedback. It’s really all just learning how things work and not tossing all your skills at them right away, kind of like dealing with perma-stealth Thieves.

I am not playing a mesmer and I am going to QQ a lot in this thread.
I am not a new player, I play mostly PvP from the BWE and I have to say that the last 3 days I have not killed a single mesmer.

1)If the opponent mesmer is pro, he can vanish within his illusions and use invisibilities, it is almost impossible to keep tracking a mesmer , specially with “Target” reset when he vanishes.Also it is pretty hard to kill the illusions with the recent signet boosts, since the illusions are harder to kill ,most of the time, than the mesmer itself.

2)The best way I could counter a mesmer in the past was conditions indeed.Lately everybody uses Null Field.It does exactly what 2 skills of my necro do, combined in one.Rips all boons instantly from enemy and cures ALL conditions within a blink of an eye.

3)Count CDs?It is hard to keep track of the mesmer himself, you want me to start counting his cooldowns too?He has 3 clones casting skills around me, when I finally manage to target him all I want to do is nuke him down as fast as possible, I wont try counting his CDs also…

4)Run away?!A mesmer can rip my health pool from 1200 range with a single skill(berserker) that will KEEP FOLLOWING ME! He can also cripple me and he can even have swiftness.HOW am I supposed to run away from this?“Go back to the heart of the mists”?Sounds fair!

Also, kitten is wrong with Moa? ONE elite skills that cancels EVERYTHING.
10 seconds of doing NOTHING, you can’t break out with any skill, it cancels any transformation like Plague form or Rampage , KILLS YOUR MINIONS , you can’t heal , the “5” skill was nerfed to the floor, it only runs like 2 meters away, and all you can do is DODGE! 2 dodges for 10 seconds! Sooo fair!

Congrats mesmer, you are not OP!
Sincerely, a very kitten necro.

Ruufio.1496:

Will this thread even count since I’m playing a Necromancer?

I just had a 13 minute fight with a Mesmer on my Necromancer which eventually ended up with me dying because my health slowly dwindled over time until I couldn’t do anything about it. Meanwhile, the Mesmer had pretty much every boon beyond the kittening sun up at all times.

He did catch me with crappy utilities up though because I was traveling. Necromancer everybody! You have to use Signet or Spectral Walk in WvW no matter what woohoo!

I even tried to get out of the fight 2 different times because it was taking kittening forever. Both times I used Spectral Walk-jupe trick where you run far and then recall. It confused him for like 3 seconds until he turned around and caught up with swiftness.

Any time I got him below 50% health a whole bunch of “Block block block” came up.

Oh yeah and any time I would try to disengage and I turned around, he would just stand there casting auto-attack with ~4 other clones. So fair. Throughout the entire fight there was at least 3 clones at almost all times because destroying was useless since he would just create more 0.5 seconds later.

Every other class in the game is fun to fight except the Mesmer.
Before I fought the Mesmer I had a 1v1 with a Guardian which lasted 5 minutes. It was a fun fight and I actually did the /bow emote because he was good.

What did I say to the Mesmer? I told him to play a class that takes kittening skill. I don’t think opponents can hear you though.

TL;DR
Mesmer is the worst class to fight against and the most overpowered.
And Necromancer needs some kitten buffs already.

You are completely right. They are over powered at the moment and everyone knows it. More so over, the people who play the class.

Sure it might take some skill to do what that person did, but it is super easy to keep up 3 clones forever (even if you shatter them every 15 seconds).

It is no mystery why so many people play them. it is a skill cover. You can be bad and still do decent with a Mesmer. If you are good, you can do great. If you are great, well then you are basically unbeatable unless you get ganked (and even then you have a high chance of survival.

I highly doubt they will nerf the Mesmer because it is the poster child of this game. It needs to be nerfed, but all the Mesmers here will laugh and cry “L 2 P noobzer LOL so badz”. When in reality they fear the nerf because for once they might actually have to try to play the game like the other classes.

Edit: How was he infracted for that post?

Cloaking device was ONLY one viable adept trait in that line. Healing turret. They said “heal slightly reduced”.. 50% is kittening slightly? Healing turret is now even more useless than before.

So I started watching the guru video about the new patch, and I was immediately disturbed that they were leaving the numbers for PVE retal and confus exactly the same as before, they were definitely entirely too low for engineers using bomb kits which is why people will often see no engineer using it to help their defense. In the first month (when we were supposed to see the separation of skill behaviors) the engi had a viable build where he could use retal and confus with the bomb kit and do enough damage that the enemies would kill themselves off as quickly as the three shot trap condi rangers could. It was nice but because of the nerfs to explosives and the explosive radius, and the nerfs to confus/retal they pretty much broke that build entirely. I hope they realize this and return it to it’s former glory since they now have admitted to it being weak.

Looks like HGH is going away from something they mentioned about it being over the top, which i have a problem with because here we are again getting another build nerf which was probably one of the few ways that engis could actually do damage. If they do it to pve as well, that’s just insane because PVE is the biggest issues right now/is severely weaker then pvp builds.

They mentioned having pet AI improvments and improvements to pets toughness and double the hitpoints but I didn’t hear them mention anything about turrets AT ALL which is disturbing in the slightest.

We are getting a water field finally! Overcharge on healing turret. Finally. Altho they didn’t mention increasing the defense or the hitpoints of the turrets to compensate for the longer uptime needed for the same effectiveness it had before. We’ll see.

They claimed that bombs don’t need an improvement even tho they admitted they didn’t do as much damage as grenades and that grenades should be getting another hit (hopefully pvp only in this case since they are so weak in pve due to misses and flight time) here’s to hoping they change that because bombs in pve really need a boost considering the damage differences between grenades and bombs there really should be an enhancement to the trait for multiple grenades to improve bomb damage in pve.

They claim PVP Elixir S is the only other nerf however considering their track record i doubt very much that this was the only build crushing change.

Also last minute they realize that gadgets and turrets aren’t strong enough but apparently they don’t have any solutions yet.

oh buddy! Engineers will gladly trade you 30% recharge for your 12k esviserates or 18k+ killshots ANYDAY!

Die a little bit more inside, find another build that works for me, which invariably will end up being popularized and nerfed into the ground again.

Rinse and repeat.

In all seriousness though, I’ve been looking at switching to a power build involving Toolkit and bombs… oh wait, it was also HGH dependent too. Nevermind (patch results pending of course)… Feeling like Kit Refinement all over again.

Sigh, uninstall, and unbookmark everything GW2-related.

The biggest problem is stealth. Stealth mechanically denies the opponent information needed to fight properly. Yes, autoattacks can be used to find them (except when they can’t ie Ele and Engy not even HAVING a melee weapon with an attack chain without bringing a utility) but even then it’s swinging in the air hoping that you correctly guessed which direction they went. Even mesmers, the class intended to fight by manipulating information in the fight, only distract and confuse their opponents (barring stealth use), which can be countered by paying attention. Stealth mechanically removes the information from the player’s screen.
Maybe it’s not even OP, but it certainly is not fun. Losing can be fun, but really only when you feel you were outplayed, which is rarely a feeling you get when you are mechanically denied information.
And games are for having fun.

Fenrir.4237:

Zenith.7301:

swinsk.6410:

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d or engineer arrives.

I fought a condi/confusion mesmer the other day in wvw.

We dueled like 4 times and I lost all 4. I almost killed him once but the confusion+bleeds was too much even for shadows embrace.

Thieves are not OP. They are just frustrating to zerging noobs who feel entitled to stomp roll anything they see because they are 100 and you are 1.

That’s dumb. Why would you choose to die when you can disengage, wait for him to engage something else/blow cooldowns, and then kill him?

There is no reason to die as a thief. Nobody can win all their 1v1 setups, but you can decide which fights to participate in.

Ego got you stomped. Good thieves don’t care about the ego boost of fair 1v1’s. They care about making it alive while everyone else is dead.

So what if they disengage? What about it? Is it really that big of a deal? Why is it?

I honestly don’t see why if ever it would be a bad thing for you neccesarily if a Thief disengages. He can avoid every fight he wants, and? What’s so “OP” about being able to disengage a fight? You lose nothing, he loses nothing (Except for losing time if you’re going to be stupid and chase a Thief as a non-Thief, even as an Ele).

+1 to everything Dasorine said aswell. In higher-tiers it becomes a game of who can outsmart the other when the Thief is in stealth, of which favors the Thief, which it should, as the Thief spent the rescoures to go into stealth.

The point is, he can kitten up and get out. Another class kittens up, they die. You use your kits poorly on engineer or miss a prybar? Goodbye.

Kind of bothered by this.

As a thief or ele. Now, regardless of your talent or ability to play, they can contest the point for a good bit longer with tele/mist. Also its unstoppable, nothing you can do will stop these actions from taking place.

As a warrior: Vengeance has a ungodly low proc. I hit it maybe 1 out of 10 times on average. Secondly, if you don’t hit that proc you just stand around and wait to die. Its so stupid.(Personally I believe if you down a person you should either refresh the timer or hit the proc. pvp only though).

As a mesmer: Generally this only comes to play in khylo, but you can teleport a couple floors and essentially 600 straight through several walls. At times its just silly.

Necro: Shouldn’t life drain eventually regen me to full health instead of making it tick slightly slower?
————————————

Damage is also very odd. I mean 1-2k auto attacks? Heck, thats more than your normal AA on some classes. Down state shouldn’t be a “let me do 80% dmg now” state, it should leave you in a state where you can’t pull off that much damage but are stuggling to survive.
————————————————

In general downed states should not contest the point. That would solve a lot of ele/thief problems of extra-bunkering after downed. Rally should be trait-only for pvp. Its so ridiculous because this turns the tide of the battle AFTER people have already been downed.

@Ostricheggs

That’s prolly your fault man.

We called it on the forum, Anet killed 100nade, they nerfed KR to oblivion, they nerfed smoke bomb ect. Now most people have to play HGH in tPvP, and people finally see HGH is one of the strongest build in the game right now.

100nades was subpart to HGH, yet people on the forum cried about it and posted erronous screenshot, making Anet REMOVE it.

Now you guys are stuck with HGH condi burst, it’s your own fault!

Seriously, I think HGH will get nerfed. It got nearly everything you need in a single build. Just like a DD elem but I bit less mobile/tanky.

I’ve never played a tournament where I felt that we were at a disadvantage if we weren’t running an engi and the other team was. It’s a strong build, but it’s not overpowered, especially compared to some other professions.

Punkins.2087:

HGH is OP in the condition damage context. Should be nerfed.

I think HGH is greatly overrated.

Very unlikely this build will ever be nerfed. this is the build they want everyone to have. doesnt do too much damage, its 123 simply and not too hard to be killed by thief and mesmers

static discharge builds that offer a bigger damage burst will get a 2-5s internal cool down very soon

To be honest, HGH isn’t even that good on its own. It’s the entire build together that is good because it synergizes so well. With HGH you get +30% boon duration for your elixirs boons, plus other great trait options in that line for condition removal and decreased elixir cooldowns, which means everything is working together nicely for your elixir utilities to be as powerful as possible.

I really don’t care if it gets nerfed a bit, as it is a really strong build. I just hope they don’t try to ‘rework’ it, as that involves destroying the synergy and usability into a trait that doesn’t work well with anything, even if the abilities themselves are cool.

There’s always a bright side: maybe ANet will mess up other classes as much as the Engi, and then we’ll all be on even ground again.

Daxxter.8920:

Nothing much except that I got tired of this class being so tedious compared to anything else on my roster.

This, at least, is pretty inarguable. Engineer is easily the most tedious class.

Grenade spam = carpal tunnel invitational.
Bomb kit = sloppiest way to “melee” ever invented.
Flamethrower kit = suicide if anyone is running retaliation.
Turret build = largely immobile concept in a game built around mobility. The trait to deploy them is neat and handy but also greatly increases the tedium of the build.

And I’m not convinced that engineer abilities having random effects is really of any value to us. Thank goodness they restricted thrown-elixir-U to two things that stop projectiles, at least. I guess the idea was like a Chaos Mage — “oh no it’s an engineer! Who knows what crazy stuff he’ll do next!” But none of it’s THAT crazy. In a chaotic environment like WvW I’m pretty sure nobody notices or cares about what random effect we just threw because with 20+ players fighting there’s essentially random effects happening all the time anyway. All it does it harm our own ability to plan our attack.

Really I think the engineer is an unfocused class in general but that’s beside the point.

That most of our builds are tedious relative to how other classes play seems inarguable.

Steampunks [PUNK]

Took me 539 hours over 2months to realize something and thats this… To me the engineer is a sampler class, it can do everything and the majority of the time its fun. Then you enter a pvp environment and realize how kitten compared to other classes you can be that are specializing in the same field as you. It also takes a lot more button presses for a lower result than other classes need to. Well thats the way i feel, tis a shame.

Lvling a necro now, dont tell my engy. Funny fact is that most of the people i play with had an engy as their first class.

Kabro.6518:

what are you talking about? they “fixed” KR, er…..NO they “fixed” our turrets! Quit whining or we’ll get fixed some more. SShhhh

Thieves get hotfixes. We get the same kind of “fixing” that you can get at the vet…

All classes have bugs and useless traits/utilities/weapon skills. All classes get nerfs at one time or another. What matters is the state of the class overall.

Mesmers, Eles and Guardians are the top of the GW2 class tree. They have builds that are reliably powerful and useful in PvP, WvW and PvE. What’s more, they feel like finished classes, with traits/trait lines/weapon skills/utilities that synergise well and still have a little room for personalisation.

Next down the tree seems to be Thieves. They have some very powerful burst damage builds and for a while their were considered OP killers. Their 100% stealth build has been considered hard to play against (possibly because it’s so frustrating to fight). Their peak effects have been nerfed a bit, (which explains the complaints on their forum) but they are still a powerful class. They still further balancing but otherwise seem reasonably finished.

Warrior and Ranger have a mixed reputation. They each have their strengths (Warrior are considered the top dps in PvE; Bow Rangers and their pets can be effective in WvW), but are considered weaker in PvP. These classes are reasonably well put together, but Warrior in particular seems to be suffering from balance problems, and the differences in their performance across PvP, WvW and PvE seems to be impacting perception of these classes.

The bottom of the tree seems to be occupied by Engs and Necros. Eng’s are fun to play and can be very effective in PvP and WvW roaming, but require high skill levels and mastery a very complex class to achieve that (until you achieve that, Engs are often considered easy kills). Engs are generally weaker in PvE, although recent buffs to Flamethrower have improved their lot there, and as a result there seem to be more Engs in PvE atm. Engs suffer from the law of unintended consequences, with nerfs in patchs often affecting builds that didn’t warrant nerfing – expect to have to respec and/or regear after each patch (only Pistol/elixir builds seem to be exempt from that this year). Engs have more build options than any other class, and while all but a couple are marginal at best, it is possible to get surprising results out of an unconventional build if you have enough skill.

Necros are probably worse off all classes. They are considered average performers at best, and don’t seem to have the potential to reward expert play the way the Eng does.

Another factor is how the ANet seems to treats each class. Mesmer, Ele, Guardian and Thief seem to be the darling classes. They get nerfs occassionally, but they seem just as likely to get buffs as well. Warrior, Necro and Ranger have been relatively neglected for a while; when they do get attention it seems to be with some understanding of how people play the class. Engs have received extra attention in the last two patches, however, aside from Pistol/Elixir builds, ANet have shown little understanding of how people play this class at higher levels.

Major nerf with minor things that don’t make up for it. Large enough to break classes all together

Played this class since Beta, Ill switch over to my Elem now as main. Thanks for wasting my time. I normally don’t rage post but honestly what the hell are they doing