Play another class: Warriors with buffing banners and shouts, Guardians with AoE defenses and shouts, Mesmers with with AoE pulls, condition/boon removal, party swiftness, and then play an Engineer. What is missing?
Utility– the first thing that comes to my mind with an Engineer class, and we have almost none. Instead, how do Engineers contribute to a party? Stand in the back; throw grenades. We could be so much more.
Versatility could mean more than random effects from elixirs. We could be the swiss army knife that requires skill to achieve cohesion. Instead of, say, a Guardian with all their defenses or a Thief with all of their stealth, our skills could allow us have a little bit of everything— a true jack-of-all-trades.
Take Inventions, for example. The Guardian’s reflect wall could’ve been the Engie’s force-field. The Mesmer’s portal could’ve been the Engie’s teleporter. The Inventions line could’ve been exactly that— devices useful for groups, providing a wide variety of utility, instead of one deployable thing with different types of ammo.
Rather than the Engie as misnomer for an artillery class, explosives could’ve been one part of a much larger utility. Perhaps a single set with a grenade, a mine, a bomb, a little bit of everything that doesn’t relegate you to one position on the field, but instead requires you to traverse all— true versatility and utility.
Engie weapons could’ve consisted of more than guns. What about a hammer? The entire Toolkit could’ve been rolled into a hammer packed with gadgets (think Inspector Gadget’s hat or King Dedede’s mallet). With at least some ability to melee, Engineer would move throughout the battlefield as most other classes do.
I really wanted to put a commander flag on my Engie, but in its current iteration there’s no point. A WvW Engie can either run mostly alone, dueling with condition pistols and flipping camps, or hang at the back of a zerg, tossing grenades. What should’ve been one of the most enabling classes is instead one of the most selfish. And for this reason, I’m shelving my most beloved character in wait for improvements.