Guild Wars 2

Warrost.4895:

Samug.6512:

guildabd.6529:

Should decrease its reaction time so it starts to move instantly as you start moving.

Just rework idiotic gyros to work as PBAoE auras.

Maybe in one or two years.

Nah, I don’t think ANet plans to actually fix the engineer’s accumulating problems. I think they’ve just given up on them.

insanemaniac.2456:

Vagrant.7206:

insanemaniac.2456:

i hope pve will finally not be “skip elite, core is better dps” and thats really the only hope i have at the moment

Fixed that for you.

hmm no if its bad at dps i expect anet will fix it cuz otherwise it would be pointless so theyll make sure its good enough to one up core. if not at release, then <1 year after. they arent stupid, just too kitten slow and undermanned for the project of balance. what i dont expect is for any single forum denizen’s vision of change to impress them.

Considering how they treated the scrapper, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they nerfed the hell out of holosmith, leaving it a husk in PvE.

insanemaniac.2456:

i hope pve will finally not be “skip elite, core is better dps” and thats really the only hope i have at the moment

Fixed that for you.

PistolWhip.2697:

I mean, that’s just stereotyping. A deep voice box doesn’t make you stronger/weaker.

I’m not saying it does. But generally speaking, bigger muscles mean a deeper voice. It has to do with how our body’s natural anabolic steroids interact with our vocal folds.

Speak with strong (upper body) female athletes, and you’ll notice their voice has a bit more resonance — it’s obviously still higher pitched than most men, but deeper than most women.

Not fully true. There are scientific studies which DO confirm women are better received in the customer service industry because both men and women would rather be greeted by the female form. This is probably due to our inherent belief (whether that’s natural or society induced) that women are more attractive overall.

You realize those studies are typically conducted in modern, western societies right? You kind of pointed out yourself that this is likely a social construct. Aristotle famously described women as being “deformed men,” and there are many that cultures revere the male form over the female form.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Inner idea of your gender?

Are we back to living in the 60s and 70s? Hahaha.

I have no inner idea of my gender. Like, I dunno about you guys, but my gender or what’s between my legs is not typically something I think about, you know what I mean

I’m engaged to a trans person, and I had difficulty understanding the concept at first myself. It’s easier to explain like this — how do you label yourself? I would describe myself as a liberal atheist, for example. You’ll notice no mention of gender in there — because it’s not a big deal to me. It isn’t a big deal for everybody — just as it isn’t for you or me. But for some people, their gender is a crucial part to their identity.

Also, I want to make the distinction between sex and gender — Gender is a social construct, whereas sex is biological in origin. Gender is a social construct laid on top of the biology, and what is “feminine” or “masculine” changes based on the society. Some people who are trans don’t want a sex-change operation because they associate with the gender in their society, but don’t feel a need to change their genitals to match.

tigirius.9014:

We still haven’t received a response on this even from the community managers. It would be nice to see if someone at least said “I’ll ask the balance team about this”

The class subforums are where conversations with ANet go to die — they don’t read them. You’ll have better luck on Reddit or Twitter.

Switch.4892:

Thanks alot for the responses. This information has me helped immensely.

Another question. My team always seems to lose the initial team fight at mid. Any advise how to go about approaching that fight from a supportive scrapper point of view?

Protect the person who’s being focused down with the aforementioned advice, while trying to focus down the targeted player.

Variety of things:

• Detonating gyros raises necro life force. Do this in the beginning of a match.
• Engi puts out a lot of might with HGH. Elixir Gun 5 and 4 provide might to all nearby allies.
• Elixir Gun 3 really eliminates a lot of condis on allies if you’re fighting a condi heavy team.
• All the fields you’re putting down can assist in finishers. I like to put poison field down and blast it for AoE weakness on enemies.
• Obviously healing turret (and its toolbelt skill) and elixir 5 heal allies.
• Your gyros also aid nearby allies with whatever their effect is.
• You can serve as a shield for teammates under fire with your reflects.
• Detonated gyros provide superspeed (which is all-around really useful)
• Function gyro can be used to rez/stomp people while dealing with other issues. My personal favorite is pulling an enemy off of a downed ally and letting the res gyro work it’s magic while I have the enemy distracted.
• You can put out a large amount of AoE damage in a short period, which is really good at keeping enemies away from their allies, or from your allies.

Chaith.8256:

Vagrant.7206:

Only if nobody is focusing you… which is pretty easy to get out of range pretty quickly as is. The problem is that if you are getting focused and need to escape, RB fails pretty spectacularly against skilled opponents.

Maybe after one out of one hundred uses of Rocket Boots during the demo weekend I was yanked back by a pull. Maybe about one in ten times I got stunned or dazed the millisecond I used Rocket Boots. But y’know what I did right after that? Used Rocket Boots again and got away. It’s seriously great, you can poopoo it because counterplay exists but it will save your life most every time.

Demo weekend isn’t exactly a great point of comparison, because everybody is testing out new content. Try using rocket boots in current pvp, and you’ll see it’s not that potent as an escape skill.

If you ran HoT builds against the new PoF builds, the old HoT builds were actually still extremely strong — I tried my DH during the demo weekend, and wrecked a lot of people. Scrapper hammer wiped the floor with holosmith in duels.

Chaith.8256:

Clearly you have not used Rocket Boots since they added two charges..

Rocket Boots is an extremely defensive skill able to disengage you from any fight with two taps. I don’t want to play Holosmith without them, practically.

I’ve tried it since then.

Typically a DH will throw a spear of justice at me and yoink me right back to where I was, if I was in a groupfight and try to lock me down because they are aware that I’m trying to escape. Not having those evade frames or a stunbreak makes it not that great of an escape option.

It may not evade but it puts you out of range really fast.

Only if nobody is focusing you… which is pretty easy to get out of range pretty quickly as is. The problem is that if you are getting focused and need to escape, RB fails pretty spectacularly against skilled opponents.

Yes, it acts like any other kit

Leo G.4501:

If you’d never kill, then in a world like Tyria, you’d just be a helpless citizen who likely would be dead or live sheltered lives among two-faced aristocrats that have no perspective of the world.

Even if you are just a farmer or a merchant, you still would have to protect yoruself and your goods from thieves, murderers or just the wildlife itself. If we’re going to be speaking about aspects that divide us and our characters, the willingness to kill isn’t one of them, at least for me.

It’s all good to consider diplomacy but to have such options, you need power. Nothing you mention of your true parallel in Tyria indicates that you would have any power at all thus when trying to talk down someone that is willing to kill you for whatever reason, you negotiate on the terms of the individual with the power.

Leo G.4501:

What does that have to do with anything I said?

See highlighted sections.

Your argument is predicated on the idea that a normal civilian needs to kill other people to survive in “wild” conditions. There are two problems with that idea:

• It’s not supported by historical precedent. The Wild West was actually relatively peaceful, and it only became unstable as the Union Army started to wage war and claim territory belonging to Native Americans. Additionally, as it moved westward, it changed existing local laws, causing instability.
• There’s a strange disconnect in GW2 between the number of visible “peacekeepers” in any city/province and what they can field as an army. DR, LA, the Grove, etc. can actually field very large armies, yet they can’t keep the areas on their front doorstep civilized.

The only logical conclusion is that this is an MMORPG, not real life.

Leo G.4501:

Danikat.8537:

Now I’m sure someone’s going to respond to this with something like “anyone with any sense understands it’s just a game. Just because you do it in a game doesn’t mean you’d do it in real life”.

And I’d agree that’s absolutely right. But if I’m playing as a person who does things I would never do in real life (and wouldn’t do things that I will do) how is that person me? Even if they look like me, they’re still a different person because they’re acting completely differently.

And if they’re not me why do they need to look like me? Or be the same gender as I am?

I’ll bite.

If you’d never kill, then in a world like Tyria, you’d just be a helpless citizen who likely would be dead or live sheltered lives among two-faced aristocrats that have no perspective of the world.

Even if you are just a farmer or a merchant, you still would have to protect yoruself and your goods from thieves, murderers or just the wildlife itself. If we’re going to be speaking about aspects that divide us and our characters, the willingness to kill isn’t one of them, at least for me.

It’s all good to consider diplomacy but to have such options, you need power. Nothing you mention of your true parallel in Tyria indicates that you would have any power at all thus when trying to talk down someone that is willing to kill you for whatever reason, you negotiate on the terms of the individual with the power.

You realize the world of Tyria makes no sense, right? The Seraph can’t handle the problems in Queensdale or Kessex Hills, despite enemies being exceedingly weak and the areas are traversable in less than day. The Pact can field massive armaments and armies, but can’t handle problems at their front doors. Meanwhile in the real world, even the “Wild West” wasn’t that wild.

Surprise; it’s a game, where people do unusual things.

Zaklex.6308:

Also, you might want to consider having this moved to the Engineer forum under the Professions category as it is far more likely to be read by the team there than it would be here in the general forum.

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

Good one.

This is where threads go to die.

Chaith.8256:

Vagrant.7206:

Chaith.8256:

Milan.9035:

Chaith.8256:

Mercurias.1826:

Agreed. Holosmith skips out on Reaper’s massive health pool in exchange for truly ridiculous mobility. It’s a very fair trade off, and still extremely powerful to boot.

Holosmith is pretty slow. Core Engineer with rocket boots is ridiculously mobile.

Holosmith Holo Leap is not any significant swiftness, about as much in combat mobility as a spammable skull grinder.

holosmith with rocket boots

Yeah I guess he was comparing the tradeoffs from going from Reaper to Holosmith. Also from what I understand no EU Holosmiths went with Rocket Boots on the demo weekend..

Rocket boots still needs to be a stunbreak IMO for it to be viable. The charge system goes a long way to making them more viable, but their lack of stunbreak cripples them.

I like to picture Star Lord’s boots from Guardians of the Galaxy.

Not true at all about needing a stunbreak. Holosmith with Rocket Boots and 2 stunbreaks…..?

Why not?

They don’t provide any evade/defensive frames and they take up a valuable utility skill slot. The toolbelt for rocket boots is relatively weak already (I think 3 burning?), especially for power builds (which holo is built around).

The problem with most of the gadgets is that they don’t do enough when compared to other skills. If you feel that is unbalanced, then give the rocket boots evade frames or some defensive utility ala block.

Of all the classes, our mobility is weakest, with necros in second place. By not including any defense built into our only true mobility skill (unlike most of the other classes), it’s even worse.

Chaith.8256:

Milan.9035:

Chaith.8256:

Mercurias.1826:

Agreed. Holosmith skips out on Reaper’s massive health pool in exchange for truly ridiculous mobility. It’s a very fair trade off, and still extremely powerful to boot.

Holosmith is pretty slow. Core Engineer with rocket boots is ridiculously mobile.

Holosmith Holo Leap is not any significant swiftness, about as much in combat mobility as a spammable skull grinder.

holosmith with rocket boots

Yeah I guess he was comparing the tradeoffs from going from Reaper to Holosmith. Also from what I understand no EU Holosmiths went with Rocket Boots on the demo weekend..

Rocket boots still needs to be a stunbreak IMO for it to be viable. The charge system goes a long way to making them more viable, but their lack of stunbreak cripples them.

I like to picture Star Lord’s boots from Guardians of the Galaxy.

Doggie.3184:

Male characters onry. Playing a female or a character I can’t relate to or represent as myself isn’t as fun or immersive. I also dislike hearing high pitched grunts and screams all the time. It’s excruciatingly bad in Asian games especially since they’re into intentionally making females as loud and absurd as possible.

Yeah, games with stereotypically Korean/Japanese voice actors encourage me to play more male characters — the absurdly high pitches for a warrior/fighter (come on, they’re strong, which means deeper voices) really kills any interest in the character.

Makes me wonder, do some girls play the opposite gender too? Definitely not from my small group of friends who play games.

I’ve heard many do — for both aesthetic and social reasons.

Adamantium.3682:

I don’t want to nerf the self damage at all. It allows them room to tune the damage from PF higher. Bigger reward for a bigger risk.

If anything I could stand to see it go up a little if it brings the skill damage output higher (especially in PvE where PF is nerfed due to the way transforms work).

I think when balancing these specs in the coming months the devs should take every opportunity to go further into what makes the spec unique rather than just nerfing the unique things back towards vanilla.

Pretty much this.

The reason Reaper got nerfed so hard was that it was both a tank (with extra health to boot) and a major DPS contributor. The holosmith looks like they learned their lesson — don’t give an extra health bar AND massive DPS. It’s one or the other, which I’m ok with.

Fallesafe.5932:

Yea, I agree OP. You can’t enjoy the game or become immersed in it unless you identify on a fairly deep level with your character. Guys who play female characters are just feminine men in RL (which is fine I guess).

Gotta disagree with you there. My identity is not bound to my gender, so playing a male or female toon doesn’t make me any more or less immersed. I just prefer to play female toons because I like their voices and appearance more.

Additionally, if I wanted to make a generalization about guys who play male characters… are you interested in men? That’s the kind of generalization you’re making.

Years ago a friend of mine said these words

“Well, if i have to play a game and watching my character’s kitten then i prefer to watch a female one”.

Well, i do agree though i play also male characters.

That’s always been pretty much my feeling on the matter. I’ve heard some people call men “gay” for playing female characters in games… but who exactly is staring at men’s butts all day?

Fallesafe.5932:

Simple… the unconventional races correspond to particular aspects of temperament and personality. Asura appeals to people who idealize intelligence or humor. Sylvari appeals to people with a naturalistic and/or aesthetic ideal. And Charr appeal to people who idealize/admire strength and the projection of power.

So wait…

• Four ears
• A tail
• Fur
• Very large and sharp canines
• Claws
• Walking on all fours
• Talking like you smoked 6 packs of cigarettes

Those are easy to identify with… but some boobs and makeup aren’t?

Fallesafe.5932:

Selecting a character is a very personal process. And men who play female characters are responding to feminine aspects in their nature. Don’t be afraid to admit it.

Actually, it’s relatively impersonal to me. I like looking at women’s butts, so I play female characters.

Why do you like looking at men’s butts?

Odokuro.5049:

Does anyone else feel uneasy playing a toon of the opposite gender, I do.

I’m a guy, and even though most female toons are more pleasing on the eye to look at, playing one just makes me feel, “Strange”, not to mention the countless guys hitting on my toon, only to find out I’m a guy, and calling me well, some unpleasant names to say the least.

Nah.

I feel weird staring at a guy’s backside when I play games, so I prefer my toons to be female. Most of my male toons end up being walking jokes (IE cartoon-ish), but I prefer the female toons.

Dragon.4782:

Vagrant.7206:

Reads like an earth ele mashed with a warrior.

Aren’t elite specializations supposed to feel like something different from the vanilla? I mean yeah it is sort of like an earth elemental and warrior but that is the point: to give engineers something different to work with. It isn’t as squishy as the elementalist but it isn’t as straight up and offensive power housing like the warrior. Sort of a middle ground between the two that the engineer can have for itself.

Right, but it feels like what you designed would be better suited for either of those two classes (or revenant). It doesn’t quite match up with the engineer’s overall aesthetic, and I think it’s kinda limiting. We already have a bruiser design, and it’s called scrapper.

I think armor repair should only apply in open-world PvE, where dying should be an inconvenience to encourage players to learn the mechanics better.

Dungeons, fractals, and raids already have repair stations right where you respawn, so it’s not exactly a punishment for dying, just an annoyance. Any instanced content should not have armor damage, IMO.

Sathus.7532:

I was just wondering for someone who just wants to casually raid/dungeons/solo/WvW/pvp is there a need to swap kits constantly? Is there a lot of swapping for holosmith or scrapper?

I don’t mind that part of the class but I would like to know what I am getting into before I level one, thanks!

You will almost always have at least one kit on your bar. Anything less is hurting yourself.

If you’re in high-end PvE (fractals, raids), you will probably need to learn to play the piano (4 kits) for high DPS. If you’re in PvP, you will need at least one kit, usually elixir gun. WvW you’re probably going to have mortar kit, maybe elixir gun.

As for holosmith — the elite mechanic is functionally a kit. However, it locks out some of your other kits. No idea yet on what the meta for it will be, but it’s highly likely you will still have elixir kit in PvP, and grenade or bomb kit in PvE.

See all those cool utilities with interesting ideas? Forget about them.

AlphaWolvesGamer.5790:

Crinn.7864:

Why did you continue queuing into the loss streak?

Never queue after multiple losses you just get tilted and play worse which makes you lose more.

I always stop after two losses.

You forgot to add that you’ll queue into the same pool of people, and will probably end up with the same teammates that caused you to loss.

See, what I truly don’t understand is why the system tends to put the same people on the same sides over and over again, instead of randomizing the teams. There are some players who I’ve played against for 10+ matches and have never had them on my team, and same goes for teammates who I’ve never fought against.

Arantheal.7396:

they should closely orbit us, as the function gyro does in its idle animation.
shredder, stealth and blast should be throwable directly like mines, although with a greater range (since rotors’n’stuff)

+1

The simple fact is that unless it’s the blast gyro, they should stay next to us. The shredder gyro might actually be useful if it could follow us. The stealth gyro wouldn’t suck if it could stay with us. The purge gyro would stop dying so quickly if it was hovering near us instead (and dodged with us!). You wouldn’t even have to make them tougher — just give us tiny little health bars above the main bar so we know how they’re doing, or the gasoline mechanic that was proposed.

The blast gyro is just bad AI — it needs to act like a projectile, not a minion. Stairs are the blast gyro’s worst nemesis, not stability.

Remove AI from the gyros, and they will be WAY better.

uhh I don’t think op has tried purge gyro in pvp because if he had he wouldn’t have said it sucks. it is a staple against condi. you are unkillable in a 1v1 while you wait for a +1. you can stall out 2 people if one is condi while your team gets a 4v3. purge is excellent.

In a duel, the purge gyro is super OP (3 condi removal every few seconds? Holy cow!). When you’re getting focused though, it’s total trash. It dies in a second or two if you’re getting focused, which kind of defeats the purpose of saving your life.

Also, watch the purge gyro get murdered by enemies who do lots of AoE damage. It’s just a sad little gyro. Half the time the superspeed it gives me heals me more than the gyro itself.

Reads like an earth ele mashed with a warrior.

MrForz.1953:

Arantheal.7396:

-snip-

Excellent. I’ve just finished perfecting my pirate looks.

“Does this look familiar? It should! I got it off of that pirate you slaughtered mercilessly OVER AND OVER AGAIN!”

Just wait for the gem store skins to change your jackal into a corgi.

Arimas.3492:

I posted this in another thread but basically I always thought mortar should have been the power option and grenades the condi option.

Put the fields on grenade kit except water and make mortar full power save the 5 skill being a water field, take the old concussion barrage and put that on the kit as well and make up a couple new power based skills for the mortar, like a pulsing damage field as said above. Increase the velocity of the projectiles by 50% because hitting anything beyond 1000 range is near impossible unless the thing isn’t moving.

Is it sad that I actually miss the stationary mortar for the reason that it had actual damage?

RedSPINE.7845:

Another thing, and a big thing, is the fact that a Charr running with no weapon in hand and actively trying to equip weapons (that you don’t have) will run with the head in the ground, top-half body froze.

If you want to check it out, just unequip all weapons, run and hold down the key you bind for “equip/unequip weapons”. It’s a thing I’ve used a lot over past years to make people laugh and now … Well it’s automatic on a Charr in Photon Forge mode that runs. It’s funny when you want to look stupid, but not when it’s uncontrolled, please Anet, fix this too.

Please, PLEASE post a video of this for posterity’s sake.

It would be cool, and I fully support this change, but sword is pretty pathetic as is. You have PLENTY of reason to continue using Rifle and Pistol. In fact, I think most ‘meta’ Holomancer builds will continue using Rifle and Pistol.

Which is saying a lot, because all of our core weapons are pretty crap compared to other classes.

It’s almost like their engineer “theme” is “weak.”

Yeah if in fact heat damage is limited to sword that has GOT to change definitely because it pigeonholes the class into a single weapon and many people including me, hybridize our elite specs to suit our needs. Losing that damage to rifle for example is simply unacceptable.

The funny thing is all the people claiming it would unbalance the class. Umm… have they seen our core weapons? They’re all bad. Giving them heat buffs would only bring them up to an acceptable level. Considering that these core weapons absolutely require kits to be useful, and PF locks us out of kits, there needs to be work done.

Rifle:

• Garbage damage in PvE.
• Serious projectile hate in PvP and WvW.
• Single-target, moderate damage, moderate CC’s = weak in PvP and WvW

Pistol:

• Acceptable damage in PvE, when combined with kits, but worthless compared to grenade kit
• Serious projectile hate in PvP and WvW
• Condi-only, vulnerable to heavy condi removal or reversal by virtually any necro
• Auto attack is trash, only skills worth bothering with are blowtorch and lightning shot

Shield:

• Actually ok, but cooldowns are crap

I’d also point out that engineer is the class worst affected by projectile flight times (by rapidly strafing many of our shots can be avoided), but that seems like piling on at this point. Hell, a heat bonus affecting projectile flight times might actually be a serious buff.

I just need to ask… why? Druid is way better for healing if that’s what you want to do.

zealex.9410:

Vagrant.7206:

Is engineer ever going to see its legendary weapons reflected in its kits or photon forge? At this point, it feels like our legendaries don’t even matter, we’re all identical…

Cought cough Rifle and grenades have specific trails cough cough

Only one of the grenade throw toolbelt skills does? The rest of our kits don’t see any legendary effects, and PF definitely doesn’t see them.

wolfyrik.2017:

Vagrant.7206:

lighter.2708:

problem right now is there’s no way to self defense, sure you can trait for 3 to get stab so you dont get CC’ed

but brute power build can still reckt you when you are close and in forge mode when they pop immune or blocks

i suggest giving number 2 or something an evade

3 provides stability when traited.

The rest is about having such a strong offense that defense isn’t necessary — people will run away from you when you pop your nukes, so use that to create an opening.

What worries me is that this is exactly the principal behind Reaper. Look what happened to that elite. High damage always gets nerfed. Always. Well, for any class other than ele.

My hope is that they learned from HoT and aren’t going to make the same mistakes. I think the mechanic behind the heat generation is probably their solution — Reaper gave necros such massive health bars that they were some kind of crazy tank in addition to the damage.

Rising Blade.9206:

Sobin.5947:

Im trying to relearn the game after not playing for a long time. Is rifle in a good spot for engie in wvw? Everything i see makes it seem like the sky is falling and rifle sucks

yes, the rifle is in a good spot next to hammer. Pistols in other hand, barely see anyone play it.

What game are you playing?

Rifle is in a terrible spot for any game mode. Single target, moderate damage is not the way most WvW battles are fought.

lighter.2708:

problem right now is there’s no way to self defense, sure you can trait for 3 to get stab so you dont get CC’ed

but brute power build can still reckt you when you are close and in forge mode when they pop immune or blocks

i suggest giving number 2 or something an evade

3 provides stability when traited.

The rest is about having such a strong offense that defense isn’t necessary — people will run away from you when you pop your nukes, so use that to create an opening.

Is engineer ever going to see its legendary weapons reflected in its kits or photon forge? At this point, it feels like our legendaries don’t even matter, we’re all identical…

What I do is double tap the grenade button — that also acts as a cast, so I don’t need to click the mouse. It also helps prevent making errors that the press and release method has.

Aomine.5012:

Saying engi is in a bad position atm is just ridiculous.

Quoting fringe cases is a strange way to make your argument. Builds like the one you describe require the entire build dedicated to making that happen, and in the end, they are only useful for specific fringe cases. I assume you’re talking about the drunk engineer, which is more of a gimmicky build than anything else.

Many of our weapons and utility skills are extremely lackluster. Our traits are often designed for a meta that doesn’t exist, and many of them are buggy. Hell, a lot of our skills are buggy too.

Sure, every class is more than the sum of its parts, but the fact is that because so many of our parts are busted, we are pigeonholed into only a few builds with very little variation. Scrapper variation often boiled down to “Do I take Purge Gyro or something else?” and that was it.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Okhu.7948:

Holosmith Damage is fine. Its high rish and high reward. Everyone saying “the damage is too high” has no idea what they’re talking about.

The damage isn’t too high, but its cooldowns are way too low. Holo Leap needs to be a 4 or 5 second cooldown at least. Having a 2 second cooldown on such a high damage skill is simply absurd.

The cooldown is fine (need a way to keep up with people), the damage might need to be tweaked lower though.

The trouble is though… if you nerf holosmith’s damage, what else does it have? It’s a purely DPS spec, with very little in the way of support.

Adamantium.3682:

I’m thinking pistol for meta DPS PvE builds in raids/fractals.

Shield for everything else.

Pretty much this.

The CC for shield is too weak to be effective in PvE, so all PvE offhands will likely be pistol.

As for PvP… I’m not sure yet. We may not see a condi meta in PvP for engineer. I tried messing with one during the demo, and it was really finicky.

Dawdler.8521:

Sometimes when you pull people, then immediately Pry Bar them, it’ll miss even though the animation shows it connecting. This might be lag or server side lag.

I dont think its merely lag, it’s complete desync. When roaming with a guildie some time ago, we actually got to see what was going on. I pulled someone and my wrench just didnt hit. No miss, no block, no nothing, like swinging air. So I went “did you see that?! I just pulled and missed point blank!” and he said but you never even pulled him. Neither of us was experiencing any lagging at the time but still what I saw wasnt the same thing thing he saw. On my screen I pulled him successfully. On his screen (and obviously the server) he wasnt pulled, just frozen in place instead.

I am starting to wonder if this is actually the “jerking” we see. The player isnt being pulled because of missing, passive trait, something triggered but on our screens we see him being pulled just a bit until the server catch on and goes “wait a second…”.

Either way that kitten is broken.

It’s definitely a desync. It’s not on the server’s end either — it’s only on the client end. On the client, it shows what should actually be happening, but the server doesn’t recognize it (for some reason), and so when the game resyncs, the enemy will magically reappear wherever they were.

Chaith.8256:

Vagrant.7206:

Chaith.8256:

Vagrant.7206:

I agree with this idea — weaver got all of their weapons revised for their new class mechanic, why can’t we have our existing weapons revised to match our new class mechanic?

Chaith

A lot of buffs, would probably have to accompany nerfs to the Photon Forge

Not necessarily. Many of the suggested buffs are QoL improvements that would make our core weapons not be as weak as they currently. It would also be an incentive for people to buy PoF.

If you look at our core weapons and current meta builds, you realize we spend almost no time on our core weapons, because they are so pitifully weak compared to our kits. This would help bring them up to par without being OP.

If PvP meta Holosmith build runs Rifle it will mean a lot of buffs, I used it all weekend and you’re using the Rifle half the time.

I found sword/shield to be more useful — even against rifle holos. I would lead with sword 3 for quickness, rapidly switch into PF and burst, then throw elixir S, rinse and repeat til enemy was dead from nasty spikes.

I also found shield to be hilariously effective against rifle holos. I would reflect most of their shots back/block them, and then proceed to whomp hard on them.

I had the opposite experience.. shield reflects once every 30 seconds and when they’re in Sword/Shield, Photon Forge obliterates it with Stability & Melee strikes slicing through the reflects or stun.

Interesting. I had the mentality of a nuker — I would go in, hit HARD, and then disappear. After a fight, if the enemy was still standing, I’d pop into stealth or use shield then to defend until my heat level dropped and I could start nuking again. Hard light arena proved exceptionally useful for this strategy, given the near permanent protection and regeneration it provides when overcharged.

Also, shield could block nearly everything but PF 5 — which has an obvious tell. If an enemy engineer was about to pop their nuke, I would usually either dodge the CC or pop elixir S and wait til they were done (thus forcing their heat level to rise, regardless if they were attacking).

Chaith.8256:

Vagrant.7206:

I agree with this idea — weaver got all of their weapons revised for their new class mechanic, why can’t we have our existing weapons revised to match our new class mechanic?

Chaith

A lot of buffs, would probably have to accompany nerfs to the Photon Forge

Not necessarily. Many of the suggested buffs are QoL improvements that would make our core weapons not be as weak as they currently. It would also be an incentive for people to buy PoF.

If you look at our core weapons and current meta builds, you realize we spend almost no time on our core weapons, because they are so pitifully weak compared to our kits. This would help bring them up to par without being OP.

If PvP meta Holosmith build runs Rifle it will mean a lot of buffs, I used it all weekend and you’re using the Rifle half the time.

I found sword/shield to be more useful — even against rifle holos. I would lead with sword 3 for quickness, rapidly switch into PF and burst, then throw elixir S, rinse and repeat til enemy was dead from nasty spikes.

I also found shield to be hilariously effective against rifle holos. I would reflect most of their shots back/block them, and then proceed to whomp hard on them.

It’s been super buggy for a very long time, and I doubt ArenaNet has intentions to fix it considering how little attention they’ve paid to engineer QoL over the past several years.

• Rarely the physics will freak out and launch players into the air. I accidentally killed a person in sPvP this way once. It’s very similar to the underwater Rocket Boots bug that existed at launch (physics didn’t know how to handle it)
• Generally (when successful) it will only pull them part way, but the server will lag and not show the character location accurately. I’ve missed many a Crowbar because of this, even since launch.
• Usually a person is autotraited with stunbreak or stability, and they’ll move all of two inches.
• A pull started outside of range will succeed if you move into range while casting, and vice versa.

Also, I just remembered this:

Rocket Boots

September 17, 2012
This skill is no longer usable underwater. This is a temporary change until we can figure out why players can launch themselves into the sky using this skill.

“Temporary”

I agree with this idea — weaver got all of their weapons revised for their new class mechanic, why can’t we have our existing weapons revised to match our new class mechanic?

Chaith

A lot of buffs, would probably have to accompany nerfs to the Photon Forge

Not necessarily. Many of the suggested buffs are QoL improvements that would make our core weapons not be as weak as they currently. It would also be an incentive for people to buy PoF.

If you look at our core weapons and current meta builds, you realize we spend almost no time on our core weapons, because they are so pitifully weak compared to our kits. This would help bring them up to par without being OP.

Still, prepare for the eventual nerf. There’s no way they’re going to let our damage stand.

Panda.1967:

PierPiero.9142:

Phineas Poe.3018:

leviathan.2148:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Shield doesn’t need any changes. It’s probably the best one aside from chronomancer’s in the game. The only reason it isn’t used in PvP or WvW is because the main hand pistol is just about the worst weapon at our disposal.

Shield isn’t used anywhere.

I’ll repeat myself for emphasis: The only reason it isn’t used in PvP or WvW is because the main hand pistol is just about the worst weapon at our disposal.

I don’t find Pistol main hand so bad especially for spvp. I play usually condi with p/P and it does not seems to me bad . What in my opinion was the real problem of condition engineer was that it was hard with rabid or wanderer to survive to a condi burst for the low health pool. Now with reduce cd on AED i find much more easy to play condi engi

Your running P/P… try running P/S and then say pistol mainhand isn’t bad. The real power behind Pistol is from pistol offhand 4 Blowtorch. Main Hand does next to nothing… honestly mainhand pistol is only used because there is no other main hand option.

Yeah, I’ve been trying to explain that. Pistol mainhand is garbage when compared to the offhand. A sword stepping in (and not sucking) will make shield viable.

tigirius.9014:

Pistol is alot better than rifle because rifle has an unnecessary non-damage shot, net shot.

Pistol also has condi damage that doesn’t require that you wait for the full animation to complete. I’ve had nothing but success with pistol.

Shield is basically used only to reflect enemies shots and then do a pushback or blast finisher really.

Vagrant.7206:

leviathan.2148:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Shield doesn’t need any changes. It’s probably the best one aside from chronomancer’s in the game. The only reason it isn’t used in PvP or WvW is because the main hand pistol is just about the worst weapon at our disposal.

Shield isn’t used anywhere.

That’s not a fault of the shield, actually. It’s the fault that we only have one mainhand weapon (pistol) and it’s crap as far as a mainhand. Sword might resolve that issue. Then again, it might not, only time will tell.

Run P/S and you’ll see how bad mainhand pistol is (its damage is bad). Most people run P/P for Blowtorch, the most powerful pistol skill. And don’t tell me glue shot is all that useful either — because I use it, and it’s not that great.

Shield has reflect, knockback, block, and stun (4 -> 4, and 5 -> 5 respectively). The only changes that need to be made to make it more competitive are to reduce the cooldowns on it, and give us a decent mainhand weapon.

leviathan.2148:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Shield doesn’t need any changes. It’s probably the best one aside from chronomancer’s in the game. The only reason it isn’t used in PvP or WvW is because the main hand pistol is just about the worst weapon at our disposal.

Shield isn’t used anywhere.

That’s not a fault of the shield, actually. It’s the fault that we only have one mainhand weapon (pistol) and it’s crap as far as a mainhand. Sword might resolve that issue. Then again, it might not, only time will tell.

It looks like the intent of these changes was to give some slight buffs to power engi and a few slight improvements to gadgets.

A single step in the right direction, but not much else.