Showing Posts For WithoutAssumption.7936:
Though I’m not the most experienced Engineer, I agree with Incendiary Powder being a bad trait. It’s a pretty good chunk of damage (not terribly great dps, especially compared to what other professions put out), but it’s passive (aka boring) and unpredictable (because we all love RNG). I’d be all for its removal if we could get some better damage on our base weapon sets. Particularly the improvement of the pistol AA bleed, though Engineer weapons don’t really give much in the way of damage skills. Rifle can do plenty of damage, but most of the skills come with utility that you sacrifice in order to get the damage (At least when jump shot wants to work).
As for adding a longer cooldown on kit swapping, it would basically break them in their current implementation. This isn’t so true for bomb and grenade kit, but kits aren’t very coherent effect-wise. It’s sufficiently different from Elementalist attunements to justify the mechanics change. While Ele damage requires a rotation, if you’re setting up to avoid some big damage you can camp earth attunement (or air to GTFO), or if the time calls for it you can heal up staying in water attunement. Engineer kits aren’t themed the same way, and have skills all over the place. There isn’t a “I want to run away” kit, or a “I need to avoid damage” kit. E gun is almost like water attunement, except it’s only one skill that heals and removes conditions on the caster canned with an escape/nuke, AoE party condition clear, and a snare.
To address those saying that the Engineer can do too much, or has access to too many things “for free.” That’s the label on the can, you knew that was the case when you chose what profession to play. The Engineer is advertised as having the toolkit to do a lot of things. That doesn’t by any means mean you can do it all with any one build, but the profession is designed around being able to pack the tools for just about any job, given the time to set themselves up for it (IE: build the traits and skills). That said, it’s true of most, probably every, professions that you can do just about anything, and thanks to weapon skills some of them have access to multiple “roles” even in a build meant to do something else. Just look at the QQ about Rangers now that they can CC and do damage by equipping one particular weapon.
Turrets are also pretty bad. Even if you were facing a team of 5 Turret engineers, you could just bring 2, maybe 3 if you’re not very good, people and clear every point without issue.
Though I think an Engineer would be able to engineer a turret that can roll, mobile turrets stop feeling like turrets and just turn into ranged pets… and we can look at rangers for how well pet ai works. I have a couple different ideas.
We already have reduced cooldown if we pick them up, that’s good. However it doesn’t reduce it enough to allow turret engineers to keep pace in any mobile gameplay, so we need the cooldown reduced more.
Making it instant is ridiculously OP, as you can have a turret damaged to 5%, pick it up and drop a new 100% health turret without losing more than a second or two.
Instead, scale the cooldown based on the amount of health the turret had when picked up. If it was picked up at 100% health, then it has no cooldown. If it was picked up at 50% health, then it has half the cooldown, etc. This means if you did a good job defending your turrets, you don’t really lose a lot of uptime by picking them up and moving them along with your party, but you still suffer if your turret is damaged/nearly killed.
A different idea, since we have ways to repair turrets, is to simply have their health persist when you pick them up. Since this sort of sucks if you decide you don’t want to drop them for 10 minutes and suddenly you need them and drop a turret at 3% health, perhaps it can reset if the turret is stowed for a length of time equal to its cooldown. I don’t think this is a particularly long addition to the internal character stats, since there are already profession/character unique stats in the game.
Both these changes allow turret play to be more mobile without actually allowing turrets to be mobile, meaning a turret engineer is still strongest when fights remain around his turrets, but he can actively keep up with his party and not lose his defining characteristic during battles.
I don’t think it’s right to say a profession doesn’t need/deserve “buffs.” I’ve been away for awhile ankitten ot nearly up to snuff with the ins and outs of every trait and skill, but there are still many that look useless in all but the most niche (if any) builds. It seems like we suffer from a mistaken view of how to promote versatility in a profession. We certainly have traits that synergize really well together, but a disproportionate number of these are in the same line and tier as the trait they synergize best with. This pushes us to make the “one or the other” choice (or skipping a grandmaster trait), which is good in some cases but then I find a lot of builds have spare points, where I need to pick another trait that, though it might be good, doesn’t really suit what I’m trying to do with my build when I’d really like to take a trait similar to one I had to skip over. I’d say this was intended but sometimes these traits don’t even act similar, like deadly mixture and backpack regenerator.
The advantage is it keeps many builds from specializing too strongly, but then what happens is we wind up with fewer “competitive” builds in PvE and you start to see large fractions of us using relatively few unique builds because they’re all we have if we want to keep up with the other professions (e.g. grenade kit). The tradeoff for being forced/encouraged to take versatile builds is that the profession in total is less versatile, with fewer ways to do the same job another profession can do and fewer jobs we can perform comparably at.
Mind you, a really skilled player can come up with their own build to do probably any job, but when you’re getting the hang of the profession and how it works it’s difficult/impossible to come up with your own good build until you understand a few “pre-built” builds, and many of those are so similar there’s not much to learn by switching it up.
Kits are another problem, a case of something being too good to ignore. As a personal failing I can hardly bring myself to take less than 2 kits in any build, and I’m hard-pressed not to take 3. I don’t think the fix here is to make all the other skills more powerful while nerfing kits, but I think our traits don’t give us the ability to effectively trait a kit well enough to take the place of a weapon swap while also letting us trait into gadgets/turrets/elixirs. I think giving us a few more weapon options and opening up the swap for us might be one way to fix needing to trait for a kit, especially when 3/5 of our utility kits act more like weapon swaps than skills offering us utility.
It seems to me that instead of being able to spec into one of 5-7 weapon sets and/or 3 branches of utility skills, we’re allowed to spec into 1 of 3 weapon kits, or, if the last patch was really favorable, something like turrets or elixirs. Maybe our primary weapons need to be rethought of, since they see, for me at least, more use as a utility weapon than the kits taking up my actual utility slots.
“We run 5 Engineers… Maybe that’s why we suck.”
Better nerf grenade kit.
Making the Engineer an Elementalist clone will not fix the profession. I still think unlinking the toolbelt skills from the utilities is a better way to improve our versatility.
“Toolbelt” gives me a specific flavor of skill. It has to be something you can fluff as being small/portable within suspension of disbelief. If you were slotting them in standard utility slots, you wouldn’t be limited to something that can fit on your belt. I guess our toolbelt skills don’t always make sense in that context, though.
Unlinking means that, even if we take a kit, we still have a form of utility skill to call on, as opposed to now where each kit is effectively a 6 skill weapon.
Putting the kits on the F slot just makes us Elementalists of another color, especially if you start tossing around cooldowns and cooldown reduction. We already have a profession that gives us that playstyle (It’s the Elementalist). I prefer discussion of Engineer to be focused on its capability in comparison to all the other professions, instead of just the profession it would then imitate, the Elementalist. This way we can stay focused on the important issue, like why some classes are so common/perceived as so powerful in certain areas, and why we (the other professions) aren’t. While I admit to not being the most experienced player, Taugrim’s article gives me the impression he hasn’t got much experience with Engineer. Consistency between UIs is… a laudable desire in most areas, but, with all the varying ways that profession mechanics are utilized in this game, it’s not particularly useful in this application. Furthermore, tossing kits on F1 keys and moving toolbelt skills to additional utilities forces all Engineers to take 4 kits. This decreases the number of builds available and reduces our overall ability to specialize in certain tasks. It’s also much more likely to levy an additional hybrid tax on us while bottlenecking our playstyle.
You did miss out however. The engineer becomes a PvE wrecking ball after level 25ish. Once you obtain a bomb kit or elixir gun, the game becomes easy mode. Especially if you invest in tier 10 or above trait points. Healing bombs would have put your mesmer to shame. you literally just aggro a bunch of mobs, pull out a bomb kit, then just sit there spamming your bombs and watch everything die within 10 seconds or less.
Elixir Gun used to be really high level pre-SE nerf. Now I’m not sure it’s worth carrying over something else for a durability boost. Healing bombs requires level 60+ and the coefficient isn’t THAT high. I’m pretty sure pre nerf SE was a bigger boost to bunkering than the bombs were, though I haven’t touched SPvP since the patch (bad PC).
Nakoda, you haven’t yet given your explanation how to counter players who won’t fall for your “Put your cursor in one fixed spot while you kite them.” Killing bad players doesn’t count for anything. My counter is just to have ground target spells on fast cast and, basically only for when I’m using grenades, have one of my mouse keys (I just use one of the standard Logitech mice so there’s a couple thumb buttons) set to my 1 skill. That lets you move around and choose where to cast. Not a big fan of grenades though, so I haven’t used them too much in PvP.
My Ele’s not too far along yet, but comparing leveling Ele to leveling Engi, I’d say we have a wider skill range, and probably with a lower low end and higher top end since we’ve got so few blast finishers, one of which is on an n second delay.
Up to level 20, Ele has been much easier than leveling as a kit engineer was. This is probably partially due to D/D being pretty powerful with everything coming to melee range anyway, but I think a large part of the ease is because when I need a job done, I don’t need to attunement swap more than once or twice to do it and have relatively easy combos to set up. Otherwise it’s “Hey I need to hurt things – go to Fire (maybe combo a few finishers from Earth),” “Oh I need to heal – switch to Water.” With Kit Engi I was constantly swapping kits to counter things getting out of control, though easy one or two mob fights were just as easy to finish by camping in Bomb/Fire.
The Static Discharge build I’ve been messing around with lately is much less complex than either of those. Both professions have been easier to level than pre-40 Mesmer, since Mesmer’s a lot more trait dependent. Post-40 Mesmer will probably be much, much easier than either now that I have clone on dodge.
How to beat an Engineer:
Show up.
(Disclaimer: I’m joking)
It’s good when traveling between points. Also taking vigor on swiftness, you can have perma vigor as well which makes you a bit more frustrating to fight. Other than that it’s really just a boost to your survivability, since you’re not made to take hits.
From what little I did with it, perma swiftness actually made bomb kiting harder, though having it available was helpful for escapes.
I don’t know if it’s a bug, but I think it should boost your strafing speed, since strafing is basically running forward with your body turned.
Well… BoB is pretty good, being one of our blast finishers alongside a knockback. The other kit Toolbelt skills are somewhat disappointing.
I’m pretty sure our kits aren’t bound to F1-F4 as an attempt to distinguish us from those nasty Elementalists. The two classes do seem to step on each others toes.
As for versatility with weapon sets… We have 3 weapon sets and can use one at a time. If you take one (non-med) kit to unlock your weapon swapping, you can have up to 15 different weapon combinations you might bring. So let’s look at Ranger, who does not have the Warrior’s insane number of different weapons to swap to, and 2 weapon sets. Disregarding which of them actually works well (one would hope in the totality of things they will eventually work well), a Ranger has 11 different weapon sets it can equip in either of those slots, for a total of ~60 different combinations (Divide by 2 for interchanging the order). If you don’t like Ranger, Necromancer has 50 different combinations it might pack into those two slots, Mesmer 50, Thief ~25 (Elementalist has 5), Guardian 72, and Warrior ~180. With two kits we have 30 options, and carrying three kits we also have 30 different combinations we might make (If these numbers seem small, it’s because you have to account for interchanging the order of the kits giving you the same skills, the number is 2 and 6, respectively). I may have been sloppy with double counting (can you wield identical weapon sets?), but that is a comparably small adjustment (proportional to the square root, maybe with a factor of 2). I admit some of the weapon sets for other classes are very similar, but that really just represents the option to sacrifice the versatility of your build for more power at a certain role (having that option makes the profession, overall, more versatile).
(edited by WithoutAssumption.7936)
Personally I think toolkit should be able to repair siege as well. There’s no other way to repair siege, and it’s not like toolkit repairing is strong and would make it OP. It would just make engineer cooler and more useful. It’s pretty stupid being an engineer that can’t do anything about maintaining a base that any dumb warrior could do.
As an aside, I was all for this until I remembered Innervate in vanilla WoW. Give a class/profession a unique and useful ability, and it will be demanded (regardless of whether you accede) they perform it.
While it would be cool if Tool Kit could repair siege, I’d only accept the change happily if they added some sort of cheap, purchasable repair kit for other professions to use. There are a few similar things scattered throughout PvE as is, and it would keep us from being pigeonholed into being wrench monkeys.
Versatile classes or “the jack of all trades classes” don’t work. They are not competitive with any type of pure class, and nearly impossible to balance.
No. That’s only true in games with classes capable of performing only one role. Every profession in GW2 is a hybrid. Some are better at certain roles than they are in others, some are better than other professions at certain roles, but every profession can build to provide some level of support and/or control to supplement the damage they deal.
The problem with the state of this game is that despite every profession being a hybrid, there are some professions that are better at every role than certain others. Worse still, as far as we can tell this is intended.
We had a moderator come in here to lock the “lets talk to ANet thread” so its a good sign of things to come don’t worry.
Wow, that’s a disturbingly clear sign. The thread itself hadn’t even degenerated into name calling.
It reads to me you’re (the OP) being sarcastic. It’s a little sad that status quo leads to us making jokes about every fix/patch nerfing us. Morbid humor sounds more like a Necromancer’s thing…
I’m no expert, but that’s worth considering. How do we buff versatility, however? What exactly defines a versatile build, and in what regard?
What specifically could be buffed without overpowering less versatile builds?
Versatility and effectiveness are two separate (but partially linked) aspects of play. A buff to any one skill/trait will be a buff in effectiveness (IE: the grenade nerf was a nerf in effectiveness). Versatility is found in the number of ways a skill/trait/build can be applied and the number of different goals (damage/control/support) it can effectively contribute to.
Elementalists are versatile not because they have skills that are particularly flexible in application (quite a few combo fields, so some are pretty flexible), but because they have a huge number of tools, each with specific applications, that work towards one goal or another. Not only do they have these tools (Engineers can be argued to have quite a few as well), but they carry a large fraction of them at all times (which we can emulate only with kit builds). We have more customization, they have more options overall… it should balance out, in practice we’re a little lacking since our versatile (kit) builds give us 5 options to pick 2-3 utilities from.
We’d have more available builds (and more builds that can avoid specialization without sacrificing usefulness) if we had more kit synergy in our traits (Things like the EG/FT or Explosives buffs being on the same traits… but not in a way that makes you spend 50 points to make one/both of them the center of your build), the ability to choose our toolbelt skills separately from our utilities (If I ever carry FT, I probably won’t want incendiary ammo), or some way to gain back utility slots when we carry kits (this sounds a lot like weapon swapping…).
To me, a versatile trait build would be a collection of traits that has roughly equal levels of effectiveness regardless of what utility/weapons I choose. A versatile set of skills would give me the option to support allies through heals/buffs or make trouble for my enemies through damage/conditions and controlling/hindering their movement without requiring me to drop out of combat to swap utilities.
Each kit gives us a little ability to do each of the non-damage roles, but not enough to be good at them with just that kit. From the standpoint of versatility this sort of thing encourages you, regardless of what role you want to focus on (outside straight easy damage, which they intend to punish us for), to carry as many kits as you can, and we wind up with fewer build options. The fact that we can’t trait flexibly doesn’t help. Bleed on crit is flexible, I can use it with any kit/weapon. Blind on crit with rifle is not flexible, I can only use it with the rifle. The same goes for things like grenadier and elixir infused bombs. Maybe kit specialization traits are good so you can claim some sort of focus with your build, but I don’t think they help versatility when only one or two show up in any given trait line. I’m under the impression that specializing kits would be better (Say I want a support option, I should have a kit, EG perhaps, that I can grab to enhance my support ability).
The forced combat stance is actually really useful for Charr, since the outside of combat running animation can make jumping hard.
ANet seems to be less communicative all around than they used to be. We were told we had a bunch of relevant points in the November patch notes, but not given any idea what they were. We were told kit sigils were coming in the Christmas patch, but none of the other things. Every reasonable player knows that patch notes are works in progress, but every interested player is still curious what the patch will probably bring. It would be really nice if they would tell players what they expect will be in the patch notes before the patch goes live, rather than run the “Better to ask forgiveness than permission” policy they seem to have now. It’s been awhile since I’ve played WoW, but I remember their early patch notes carrying the “Work in Progress” disclaimer, just to keep it clear.
I’m sure players of every profession would like to bring reality and/or discontent to the developer’s vision for us all. That sort of dialogue should be open, we don’t play in a vacuum, and if GW2 is going to live as long as the first, they could probably use the help.
I like it. Near 100% uptime on protection and easy aoe retaliation is great once I get it off. I suppose it’s a problem in pvp, but if you get the enemy away from the point you’re on you’ve done your job.
Engineers have access to all that stuff. Stealth is in Toss Elixir S, quickening zephyr in Elixir U, and the guardian wall is in Toss Elixir U. Unload… might be the Charr racial toolbelt skill or poison volley.
They are however, random and unreliable.
I second using static discharge with rifle. I think it is a lot less fun (much simpler) than my old kit build, but it’s pretty strong in solo pve. Once you hit 40 you won’t even have to give up speedy kits.
Could you also get the coefficient and range of elixir infused bombs? The wiki is somewhat lacking in information, and when I tried it it seemed to work well, but that was before the SE nerf and I haven’t touched SPVP since (I have a horrible computer, it makes my blood boil).
I don’t think that our ability to multitask is worse than other professions (though our performance in the role we’re attempting to fill may or may not be), however I also don’t think it’s particularly better just because our swap cooldowns are almost nothing. I was swapping quite a bit when I was running 4 kits, where I might drop the confusion bomb, prybar the enemy, drop a super elixir, and then go back to bomb kit to finish them off (or net, use that sticky elixir, and pull enemies). It was fun even with the extra work, which is why I still post on these forums, but I’m sure I could have similar control over the fight with the right two weapons and good utility choices on any other profession once I learn it. While I was swapping back to kits well within the 10 second window, it was usually just to do the last bit of damage (since my heals and/or control skills were on cooldown), which, specifically comparing to Ele, I could do easily in 3/4 of the attunements.
Long story short, while I really enjoy being able to move almost freely between kits, what we gain from the much shorter cooldown is not that significant. I might feel otherwise if we had more finishers sprinkled in our kits. If anything, the faster swaps just make life a little easier, since we have a small tolerance toward being unobservant during a fight (say I prybar, start to bomb, and realize immediately that was really dumb and I need to block an incoming attack, when a better player would prybar, notice the attack starting, and block before kit/weapon swapping).
It rather feels that engineer has a few parallels with the early form of WoW’s druid class…
I noticed this too. Hybrid specced druids were never popular or very effective, and in this game every class has at least two roles they can specialize in (and most of them can do any of the 3 effectively). Engineer and Elementalist are apparently supposed to be GW2’s hybrids, however our trait lines don’t really support this, something I’m sure Ele shares with us, though with far less of a hit in usefulness/desirability. I think trait/talent systems themselves can only with extreme difficulty be made balanced and supportive of hybrid/versatile specs, rather than simply offering specs with slightly improved performance in a couple of possible roles. As I’ve said before, even without speccing for it, choosing the right off handed weapon set can make any profession “versatile.”
This is an opinion, but I think it’s been rather foolish of them to roll out “balance” patches at this point. There have been a few bug fixes, but any attempt at balancing the professions will be undone when/if the many remaining bugs (which create a great number of imbalances themselves) are fixed. It’s also almost impossible to say what each profession truly is capable of (since developer vision is rarely realized mechanically) when available builds are limited by issues in the code. I’m somewhat concerned that this will be a persistent pattern and don’t predict it being a good thing for this profession, not if it stays in its current state.
We might be able to swap kits as we please, but the skill cooldowns are still there (as they should be). There’s only so much extra utility you gain from being able to swap into and out of a kit two-three times in 10 seconds, especially since we’re somewhat lacking in the finisher department.
You also gain your versatility purely through carrying these extra kits, many of which have abilities that are close enough to overlapping that it’s nigh pointless to carry some kits together. Our traits specialize and improve our kits individually, barring the elixir gun/flamethrower traits, both of which still require a large investment for either a damage boost or a cooldown reduction on the kits.
Since you can no longer swap utilities in tpvp, we can’t even claim we have the right tool for the job waiting in reserve. While that’s not a problem in pve, wvw, or spvp, it will limit the usefulness of engineers in the “competitive scene” of tpvp, where everyone has a job and there are other professions who can multitask better than us.
As far as healing goes, I’m more interested in the base heal and scaling coefficient, since it’s easier to compare those than it is to find a player of another profession diving heavily into healing power to compare healing output.
I am rather certain DPS is used as a metric because it’s easiest to compare performance in different fights with. Damage per hit is unreliable because of the discrepancy in attack rates. Hypothetically, compare an attack that deals 100 dps to an attack that deals 1000 damage every 20 seconds. There are some cases (namely fighting a single mob with less than 1000 health) where the second attack (much more damage per hit) shines, but in the vast majority of cases the first one wins out (with twice the DPS).
Average DPS may be harder to measure, since it’s not directly shown to you without some third party software, but, if you find it, it gives you an easy way to estimate damage dealt in a given fight without having to resort to counting your attacks and monitoring their cooldowns (which is really just another way of measuring DPS or the sometimes used DPM).
What this ignores is support and control capabilities, which I don’t want to discuss right now.
I don’t want to derail this thread with any more semantics, so I’ll stop after this.
Elitism is an attitude separate from a player’s quality/understanding/ability in the game. I’ve met many good players who were not elitists, and many (many more) bad players who were. Your “players who tend to be pretentious” is pretty much spot on for how to tell whether someone holds an elitist attitude (which is usually unhelpful and very dismissible). Cures (in this thread at least) is almost a textbook case for an elitist, though if you look hard enough you can find some useful words in his posts.
Because even our small player base is very diverse, there is a subset within it that qualifies as elitist. It will be true in any diverse group of people. It’s very hard to deny that the profession has issues when there are pages of unresolved bugs, and a design philosophy that, when compared to contemporaries, seems almost hypocritical. While it’s better to have workarounds than not, in anything without issues they won’t be necessary.
The bugs can be avoided, with some excellent results.
I can ride the bus when my car won’t start. That doesn’t mean the car works.
That isn’t to say engineers don’t have their share of issues. But the constant complaint of “I’m an engi and I’m sad because I don’t do excessive amounts of DPS” needs to stop. The profession was not designed to put out huge amounts of dps like some other professions, but there pressure is pretty solid.
I’m curious how you define pressure without DPS. Last I knew, consistent high DPS (especially aoe) was considered good pressure, and applying high burst damage was considered good spiking. From what I can tell, Elementalist is better at applying pressure and support. I’m uncertain about their ability to spike, though.
I am not saying that we are fine. I am saying that we are not broken. I still think they need to really improve on the class. I agree that we don’t have a solid theme, but we can still piece together some great outputs.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Engineer-Bugs-Compilation-1/first
This thread would like to have a word with you about how not broken the Engineer profession is.
Elitism.
It looks like you’re missing a subtle point here. It’s not elitist to say “the class has problems and you need to be top notch to work around them.” It is elitist to say “this class is perfect as is and you’re just not good enough.”
This forum has both kinds.
I like staff. The phantasm on GS has the tendency to aggro things I didn’t want to touch. Staff, since your clones are a good source of damage, is easier to stay alive with since you can avoid shattering until your cooldowns are up if you pick your targets well.
Offhand set is sword/focus or sword/pistol, depending on whether I remember to switch back to pistol before I start fighting.
the early lvls are not hard at all it just depends on the weapon sets ur using, of course if ur using a sword or scepter its gunna be slow and a lil harder all you need for the early lvls is GS and Staff like my self and other mesmers have alrdy said. Also if you are utilizing you weapon swaps right and managing your clones the right way you always have at least 1-2 clones on the field
No, the early levels are not hard, they are boring. Sword is actually amazing for leveling, the 2 skill is pretty good damage and does wonders for getting you out of sticky situations, and the auto attack hits harder than any of our other auto attacks, as far as I can tell (really good against destructibles).
2 clones are easy to get out at the start of a fight, but 3 clones is a better finisher. Staff clones are your main source of damage with that weapon set, so it’s helpful to open with 3 and easier to maintain them throughout a long fight.
My mesmer is level 40, so I can only speak up to that. It was pretty bad from about 10-20. It picked up a bit from 20-30, but became painful again from 30-40. I was using staff and sword/something.
The main problem I had is that you rely heavily on clones, but your clone spawning is very slow. Survival was pretty easy (I don’t think I ever died outside when my computer started freezing). At 40 you can get clone on dodge, which means you can start a fight with 3 clones out without wasting a utility skill with a huge cooldown. You also get clone bleed on crit when you dive deep enough for clone on dodge, which with staff is very useful, since bleed stacks are one of your major damage sources.
I haven’t done much levelling past 40, since I want to experience some other classes first, but I anticipate it being much easier with reliable and fast clone spawning.
I don’t like this idea. It would make us too similar to Elementalist. I don’t like giving up utilities for kits, but I don’t want our profession to be a clone of another one, even if the other one is better all-around. I’m assuming we’re allowed to customize which kits would be on the bar, which is slightly better, but still too similar to Ele. There are some other ideas for kit swapping I’ve heard somewhere or thought of, but they were too close to weapon swapping to be considered “unique” at all.
Now, I’ve gathered from the forum that the toolbelt skills are supposed to make up for losing a utility skill when taking a kit. The problem with this is that these toolbelt skills are fixed and can be utterly useless when choosing skills/builds that complement the kit (I particularly dislike Incendiary Ammo, I’m not even certain if it triggers on the FT auto attack).
I think a better way to give us versatility is to allow us to customize our Toolbelt skills, rather than making us an elementalist clone. Would this make us overpowered? Possibly, we’d have effectively 8 utility/heal skills compared to everyone else’s 4. Now that I think of it, this complements the Elementalist’s method of versatility. Eles get more weapon skills than anyone else, which is why they are considered “kings of versatility.” Engineers could have the other side, with their versatility based on utility skills rather than weapon skills.
It’s not a perfect idea, but I’d rather see the profession keep whatever uniqueness it has, rather than just being a medium armored Elementalist. Plus sometimes it’s cool to combo regular utilities with toolbelt skills. I don’t want to lower how many toys we can field at any given time.
I think they forget that, just like other classes can’t switch their equipped weapon sets in combat, we can’t switch kits in combat either.
Conversely, I think they forget that, outside of combat, nothing stops a warrior/guardian/etc. from carrying every weapon they can use and tailoring their equipped weapon sets to the upcoming fight before every battle. This is something commonly suggested to new players, and something I do on my non-Engineer characters (and on my Engineer, as much as I never really have need of pistol or shield I still carry them). That versatility isn’t paid for in damage nerfs, it’s just inherent to every profession, and only Engineer and Elementalist lose it.
I would almost trade the 1s cooldown on kit-swap for the ability to take an alternate weapon set and have my 3 utilities free (I think that’s a horrible suggestion for Engineer and would rather have the problems fixed for real, so I’ll just play something else for awhile). Having free utilities is less of a problem as the kits I used to like become less and less worthwhile (EG, mainly, is now not worth me carrying while I level since super elixir was the only new and especially useful thing it brought me, and that’s not helpful for getting me out of tight spots anymore). Playing a piano to stack confusion with bombs and tools was pretty fun, but I’m rarely in a spot where I regret making a bad weapon set swap in other classes, and in most situations I could get by with 10s in whatever kit is equipped.
I do think it would be possible to map most of the kits to some other weapon set. Tool kit would obviously be perfect for hammer or mace/shield. Elixir gun you could probably map to longbow (firing elixir tipped arrows instead of darts), though the backwards launch on 4 might be hard to justify. You could just equip daggers and have them be about dropping bombs (pretending you use the dagger as a steel to light the bombs, or just use a torch) instead. Flamethrower I’m not sure about though. Maybe that could be torch or pistol/torch. Most of these don’t work well, but they have the ability to customize skills based on both equipped weapons like they do for thief 3 skills, so you could just have kits correspond to pairs of equipped weapons.
I wonder if it could be a game engine limitation. Necromancer minions have the same issue, and one thing they have in common with engineer turrets are that they have a secondary ability once summoned/placed. Thief traps on the other hand are fire and forget. this then leads me to suspect that as long as the secondary function sits visible on the skillbar, the cooldown for the primary one has yet to trigger.
Kit skill cooldowns (like gear shield or that handy confusion bomb) don’t reset if I switch out of the kit. If there’s a limitation, it’s not in the engine, but a lack of some relevant piece of code in the skill.
I don’t care if we need to take nerfs to balance us, but when it’s clear we need so many buffs/fixes to be (favorably) comparable with other classes, let alone balanced, I don’t know why they choose to nerf one of our few builds with any power first, considering it’s not even that good for pvp. I guess it’s easier to just change a skill’s damage than fix bugs. Even our underwater buffs are half-passed. We have to trait to get projectile finishers on our underwater guns (nevermind how rarely anyone actually does stuff underwater), and warriors are thrown them for free on land weapons? Where’s the balance in that? Was this just a really poor wording of a bug fix, and somehow they were always finishers and that trait somehow removed them? That’s about the only redemption that bit could have.
I’m just really annoyed by the order in which they seem to be going about Engineer changes (and how they’re fixing symptoms instead of curing the problem). Their design philosophy is a load of hypocritical bull-skritt, as well. I don’t even use/like grenades.
I think you touched on something I was thinking of that their statement ignored. This is a game where any profession can to some degree do anything, and traits play a large role in how well they can do it.
You can, regardless of profession, spec your traits for damage, control, or support. Some are better than others, but you still have all the versatility required to do any of those roles. You can trait halfway for damage and halfway for control if you like, and then you’ll pay the price for your versatility by being less capable at either than if you specialized. EVERY profession is versatile, yet by design Engineers are the only ones paying a hybrid tax. We’re hardly better at support when traited for damage than, say, a warrior traited for damage is at support (we might be worse, now). If I pack kits I’m not traited to use, they won’t be particularly powerful, and I pay the price of not bringing a utility I’m supporting through traits, so I’m already paying a price in power for the versatility in utility choices. As soon as I pick my traits, I’m specialized and perform maximally with only a particular set of skills.
Long story short: Giving one class the hybrid tax in a game where every class is a hybrid is stupid.
Edit: I forgot to mention weapon swapping. Other professions can grab multiple offensive/defensive weapons or one of each kind, and again gain versatility without some imposed hybrid tax… So why do we have it?
(edited by WithoutAssumption.7936)
Discussing grenades got them nerfed, and, since they were about my only offensive option other than bomb kit, I had an idea. Since Flamethrower has some trouble (ok, a lot) and no coming fixes have been mentioned, we can fill a thread with pictures of it missing stuff (like melee range targets, stationary objects, etc…) and maybe it’ll actually get some love.
If you’re really feeling helpful and have a computer that can handle recording, you could even post videos of mobs one-shotting turrets, and maybe they’ll get some needed fixes too. Hell, any sort of media showing the many parts of our profession that don’t work as well as they should, if at all (like stowing medkit…), would be appreciated.
I know we’ve got a bug thread, but it just doesn’t seem to be working. I’d open with a few pictures myself, but I haven’t taken any screenshots and I’ve got to leave.
WoW tried to do that “versatility at the cost of damage” thing way back in vanilla. What it resulted in was every “hybrid” class (already pretty underrepresented) being pigeonholed into healing/support roles (and even fewer people playing them). I think we pay for our versatility in the complexity of play. A warrior shouldn’t do more damage than us because he only has one alternate weapon, he should have fewer options available because all he needs to do is stand still and mash buttons to do enormous damage. This is even ignoring the Engineer builds that don’t use more than one kit and have the same (or fewer) number of weapon skills as everyone else (plus toolbelt skills, but you can’t choose those so I don’t think they count as replacement utilities any more than a mesmer’s shatters). It’s like they’re assuming we’re going to be taking at least 2 kits and forgetting our other utilities even exist.
I’m also not sure where they get medium range from. Rifle’s auto is long ranged, but all of its other skills may as well be melee if you’re looking for damage. Neither of those is medium range. Pistol skills are pretty long ranged, and the only skill they have that require close range is the offhand flame burst. As for kits, grenades and EG are long range, bomb and tool are melee range. Flamethrower might be medium range, but a weapon that’s obstructed by empty space isn’t terribly useful. I guess we’re “comfortable in medium range” because our main-hands require us to duck in and out of melee to do any real work.
Edit: As for the people commenting on Grenade’s damage being nerfed to balance against kits – Grenade drops multiple attacks at a time, giving it more chances to trigger a Sigil or more attacks that will benefit from said Sigil. Without Grenadier, it still has greater range than an Engineer’s Rifle or Pistol, and with Grenadier, it has the same range as a Mortar traited with Rifled Turret Barrels. I don’t know if that makes the damage reduction necessary, but it’s what I can see as possibly being the explanation.
The issue with this explanation is that it’s not grenades being too good, it’s everything else being nonsensically bad.
Kits can be switched, equipped but not stowed in mid air. The error being : “You cannot drop bundles while in the air!”
I’ve noticed this too. The catch is, if I press the hotkey I use to equip the kit again (7, 8, or 9 default) the kit will unequip, but if I press the drop bundle key (default ~) I get this message. It’s a particular problem for Med Kit, since the drop bundle key is the only way to unequip it short of equipping another kit.
It appears that swapping to a kit in sPvP changes your equipped PvP weapon to your equipped PvE weapon in the Hero screen. While this isn’t really a gameplay issue now, it will be when weapon stats are applied to kits, at least for those of us without legendaries.
For specifics, I’m pretty sure I was equipping Bomb kit with a Rifle (for both PvP and PvE) when I noticed it (The only ones I had equipped were Bomb, Healing, and Elixir Gun). I didn’t notice it until I was messing around in the Mists, so I’m not sure whether it shows up in the actual matches or not. I haven’t extensively tested if it’s just a bug with the UI though.
-snip-
Can I get some clarification, I thought PvE skills weren’t allowed in WvW.
I have also leveled a Ranger some, and combat is completely different. Your bear tanks and you bleed the enemy to death. With a guardian, you can usually stand still for the most part, healing yourself and killing things. Warriors are similar. Obviously there’s more to them, but it makes sense. NONE of these PvE strategies, involve running around in circles, dodging, dropping bombs and slowly killing the enemies that chase you.
I think part of the problem is you’re comparing apples to oranges. Warrior, Guardian, and Ranger (bears at least) are designed around tanking and taking some hits while dealing damage. Engineers are not. You can spec/gear for it, but medium armor is not built for facetanking. Without your skills, you’re like a ranger without a pet, more like a slightly more resilient Thief or Elementalist. Kiting is just something you have to do as a pet-less, sub-heavy armor class, and dodging is an integral part even for those professions.