Poe: I think your stance over the last several pages of back and forth can be summed up fairly succinctly. I’ve seen you around and I have read your informative engineer guides in the past so I’m not going to question your understanding of the class. The thing is, I don’t think one would play such a class unless you’ve got a Johnny streak to some degree, to borrow the old M:tG player archetype terminology. I think the issue is that you also self identify as a Spike and right now that concern is overriding any joy you’re deriving from playing a unique class. You want to win and you want engineer to be the best at some kind of role so that it can presumably have a place in team compositions in team based game modes by edging out some other option. And that’s a perfectly valid aspiration to have.
I think, however, I’m going to agree with Obtena’s general view that A-Net shouldn’t balance based on player perception of the current metagame. Instead, I just think they should start regularly throwing wrenches into everything for the competitive scene while tamping down outliers. Changing it up in ways that will scramble the tiers and roles of classes in order to keep PvP interesting. It doesn’t tend to be fun anymore when the outcome is known for every matchup. There should always be tech to discover or revisit. In the future, there may be a role for jack of all trades classes like the engineer. Or there may not.
In the meanwhile, keep practicing when you feel like playing engineer but if you want to win more consistently with less effort, switch it up. No shame in that, except if you really want to Johnny and Spike at the same time in which case, you’ll have to be patient and wait for the winds to change. You could always just not give a skritt and play engineer no matter what. Take the L occasionally and feel good when you squeeze out a win over the current fromage of the month.