Guild Wars 2

I am glad to see my turrets buffed (i love using them in PvP) and this overall felt like it was going in the right direction.

Then I listened to the Mesmer talks…

It was like someone brought in their big steak dinner, all of their faces lit up as they sat up straighter ready to dig in. As they talked it was like everything before was boring kiddie stuff that none of them really cared about. I would feel bad for the guardians but they are already a pretty solid profession (I know they lack in places but in comparison to the engineers)

You know why all of that is? A single line told me why.

“…You both play Mesmers…” said the developer to the two bottom interviewers.

From then on all I heard was how they were planning on adding a new awesome ability to this fun class and how it was going to work with it’s current skills and how it sounds overpowered but “oh well, we’ll just wait and see”. They all were excited and awake and really into their discussion.

But when I looked back at the engineer it felt like they just didn’t care. There was only one question asked, and although it seemed fairly critical, it was asked with so little knowledge of the class that even after the developer brushed it off no one knew that they had been brushed off.

TLDR: sigh I starting to feel like the engineer is that red-haired unwanted stepchild (no offense meant to any red-haired stepchildren, I’m just using an analogy my grandpa uses). But not just us, the ranger has it really bad too from what I have heard, heck even the guardian (who lucky has been pretty solid since I started playing) feels like a profession that they just aren’t inspired to work on.

Ok so I have tried to do lvl 20 fractal 3 times now after the update and only once out of the 3 has it worked out. This one time was simply because we got lucky fractal rolls and a fairly balanced team.

I understand I am not the best, I probably don’t have the best gear to go with my build (that I have built after doing many dungeons and many PvE encounters). If i had to rate myself it would be at a less than average engineer who finds themselves learning something new every time I log in.

On those notes above, in my modest opinion, The OP has made a valid point if you take the time to read his wall of text (should have added a TLDR summery lol) you would understand this post.

Simply increasing the damage you can take from a foe in a game is an extremely easy way to increase the difficulty. Is it something you should not use ever? No, it has it’s moments where it is perfect. Is it something that Fractals should use? Sure. Is Anet using it right at the moment?

Not particularly.

Let me explain. In fact the OP’s example is perfect. The dredge/switch/panel room very early on in one of the fractals. There are many ways to make this already difficult encounter more challenging without ramping up the damage to 2 hit KOs from a single foe (excluding when a mob takes a shot at you). Increase the number of panels/switches that need to me used, make it a multipart panel that requires more people/time as the fractal lvl increases all with a very closely controlled damage increase and spawn rate from the dredge.

Am I complaining because Fractal lvl 20 has foes that hit hard, no. What I am pointing out is that the developers are not being particularly intuitive on how they make fractal lvl 60 (unless they added something between 20-60 that i don’t know about ><) harder from fractal lvl 1 and It seems that they feel more of a need to punish players for using viable clever methods (seriously I myself never new about these until fractals and It makes total sense that a character would carry these. it is an in-game reward that is fairly balanced and WAS extremely useful) to beat them.

TLDR (for both me and the OP I think): Instead of spending time punishing players for being intuitive Anet should focus on making fractals more balanced with more intuitive difficulty increases from level 1-60.

+1

Yes. I run grenades in dungeons and the kit on my back looks like crap. we should be able to choose the colors at least. Toggle it on/off would also be fantastic.

I know they don’t want us to because it is for WvW and PvP so others can see our kits and know what we’re using (kinda like the ele), but the elementalist looks awesome. ours makes us look like a hobo.

First off, Yes i think turrets need a buff and some trait work. They are not yet balanced to being as good as other minions.

BUT! I think I now know how to use the effectively (at least in PvP). You know how they have kitten for health and lacking damage? It’s because they are not meant to grab arrgo! The way I have found that they can rock in PvP is to place them then use them to tack on damage and CC while YOU kite the enemies about.

Example: Net turret holds them, thumper turret kicks them around, rocket turret kicks them on their butt when they try to stand.

Combine that with the rifles net and Overcharged shot I can keep most classes on their rears for quite a while. Then with reduced cool downs for the rifle, the net turret constantly firing nets with no real cool down to worry about and the 15 passive gadget trait that resets cool downs engineers can become the masters of CC…. If the foe isn’t ready for it.

Not saying it’s an all powerful build on par with the SD builds (which I actually use a variant of with this turret build) but I loved turrets when I started playing the engineer so I am glad to find any viable way to use them besides Supply Drop.

TLDR: Use turrets to add CC and damage, not take the hits or take any kind of aggro.

+1
I would actually feel like working to get the PvP daily is worth it lol.

Neat idea. But I myself think it would be more viable for our current mortar to be turned into a kit that we can pull out and use. As it is now it is weak and highly situational. It would be awesome as an elite kit with those charges you mentioned that only go on cool down when all of them are gone.

some ideas I’ve had for it.
range of 1200-1500 (possibly longer)
gain stability but -50% movement speed
Keep the current attacks but lower the CDs and/or up the damage.

I like the sniper kit idea, but I can’t see them taking out the mortar (as crappy as it is right now) to replace it or just giving us 1 elite more than everyone else.

Nope. The devs just thought it would be a good idea. This has been posted and talked about a lot. I would recommend checking out some older posts for better info.

No. we only have 8 classes (as opposed to 100+ in LoL) and it is hard enough already to find teams for tournaments.

I agree with the ability to gain exp in PvP. We can get from 1-80 via crafting, why not PvP? I’m not saying make it quick and easy, but make it a plausible play style for those who don’t want to go grind out the world on a second character just so they can WvW.

I love PvP, but It feels like such a waste of time because I don’t have anything to really work for. It takes too long to level with no real reason to do it.

paleeshi.1924:

I see no one even mentioning Elixir S. :P

It’s because we actually have to do the drink animation before we can stomp. I “think” that’s one of the arguments here. That you should at least have to commit to the mist form/elixir S/Thief invis before, not during, the stomp.

I think… :b

Proven.2854:

Underwater combat can be very fun but it’s 1v1 balance is even worse than the 1v1 balance on land. As soon as you get a teammate or two things become a lot more interesting.

There’s also the fact that there are people out there so ignorant about underwater combat that they don’t even know you can equip utility and elite skills underwater… Yes, I met someone in one of my guilds who didn’t know that.

I was that guy when i started playing. I remember taking on the krait and hating every second of it… then a friend was like “you know you can use your turrets down here right?”

…mind blown.

Underwater is… interesting. Not a hater like some, not in love with it like others. The problem is it a completely different combat system down there, thus it is like balancing a second game.

But i must say I do love strategically placing my cardboard turrets as I hold the the ruins in PvP then laughing manicly as some poor soul gets shot from all sides by nets and rockets. or being a giant whirlpool and om noming the crap outta things.

I was beaten to suggesting it but YAY another engi!

+1

The disparity between tournaments and the browser is way to big.

It’s sad that the only way i think I might get my monthly PvP is if I join up with a group and we get lucky and end up fighting another team like us and win, or the other team DCs or something so it’s a 5v1 fight. Most often we fight a team that has been fighting together for a while, has voice chat, and is mostly mesmers/eles (nothing wrong with people who play those classes btw but cordinated they are a nightmare).

EDIT: I think they should keep the ability to make a party of 5 people and fight another party of 5… I just don’t want to be told to stay out of tournaments unless I have 4 others.

There needs to be this middle ground. If I start doing tournaments and find others who I fight well with then I will be more inclined to /whisper asking if they would be interested in doing tournaments. It’s just right now the browser pug is so “drop in/drop out” with such little investment and so must 8v8 chaos I can’t tell if we work well together or the other team just isn’t having a good day.

!
Why is this not a kit? When I fought that boss in CM, Frost or whatever his name was I was also curious why it wasn’t an Engineer thing…

I always picture my engineer to be captain of multidimensional space pirates with some large kitten ship that she either teleports this stuff from or has drop down for her.

I love these other replies though. From being Batman to Dredge minions we have entire armies behind us….

oh my goodness… we are freaking Lex Luther not Batman! We have little physical prowess but enough money to buy all this sweet crap to kill people with!

Hehe I now love this thread

As stated above I was curious if I could get some help making a new PvP build. But I do have some… personal quirks that will make this a little difficult.

parameter #1: No Static Discharge builds… at all. I’ve tried it and I have this really nasty lag delay crap that not only causes the lightning to come out about 2 seconds after I hit the key but During that time the other toolkit skills will not activate. Also the trait about equipping a kit is neat and used with SD it was pretty cool but due to the lag as mentioned above It is also out. And yes… it’s annoying as hell.

Parameter #2: Don’t Mimic me. I’ve been using a 30/0/20/20/0 grenade/Elixir build with… varying success. Sometimes it’s the neatest thing and I rock the match, other times it just fails miserably. 100nades works about as well as SD does so… yeah.

Parameter #3: If possible (I will take all recommendations) I would like to play something sturdy… like a lobster!

Ok have fun! I myself have spent to long scratching my head over a good reliable build and would like to see the fruit of others toils.

Thanks all! GO ENGINEERS!

I love the engineer, I love Guild Wars 2, I love some of the great looks at the math behind the classes i get on these forums. But god does it depress me to read just how low engineers are compared to other classes, i get enough of that in game lol.

First off, Love this class and love this game. That’s why I am here.

Bugs aside (they are what are messing with our class the most right now) there are 3 things that stand out the most to me. Turrets, kit placement and Traits. All of this has been said before on other threads I’m just repeating it here.

Turrets take up skill slots yet are weaker than the necromancers minions and the mesmer’s illusions. For stationary support they don’t do near enough damage and have laughable health. I don’t know how their cool-downs stack up to the necromancers but the mesmer’s get their’s for free so I think ours should be way more useful and have a lower cool down. The traits associated with them are good ideas but simply don’t help these already weak skills. So I would recommend buffing them quite a bit and/or reducing their cool-downs exceptionally.

This has been suggested before but I feel really needs to be considered if engineers are meant to be the “versatile” class. We should have a secondary weapon slot reserved for a kit of our choosing. We are one of 2 classes that do not get the swap weapon option during combat. The other class is the elementalist. I know what your thinking, “but we get kits!”. Yes we do, but then again elementalists get their elemental weapons that they can not only pop out but also give one to an ally. Elementalists can also swap between 4 elements on the fly. Thus giving them what we already have, plus what I am asking for, plus their elemental swap.

Lastly I ask for some trait overhaul. I remember when I first started playing I looked over the engineer tree and thought “where do i put these points…?” I was a heavy turret user at the time that was all I wanted to put my points into. But low and behold no tree had more than 1-2 traits for turrets, and the most useful one (the knock-back explosion on destruction) not only was in a tree i didn’t want to use but the trait didn’t (and still doesn’t from what I understand) even work. This kinda ties back to the turret tree, but I really feel like there needs to be some trait tree reworks. I also ask for some trait combinations, too many traits, ESPECIALLY the 30 point capstone traits, just don’t do enough to warrant their cost.

TLDR: Turrets need more bang for their buck, secondary weapon slot for a kit of our choosing only, Trait reworks to make them worth their cost.

Thanks for reading!

Mortar should be an elite kit…. yeah!

EDIT: But in all seriousness a mobile mortar elite kit would so be worth the 30 skill points and cool-down.

Could someone help me out on naming my build here? I’m sure it’s been done I just have no idea because I always have trouble getting the links to work here (and yes I copy and paste them and all that stuff). It is the way it is through trial and error in dungeon runs and such.

Traits are: 30(V,VIII,XI)/0/20(V,IX)/20(II,X)/0
Skills are: Elixir H, Grenade Kit, Elixir B, Elixir S, and then for Elite either supply crate or Elixir X

What is a permanent is: Power/Vit/Con on my exotic amulet, and Power/Precision/Toughness for both my exotic rings.
Until I buy/get something better: Rare Charr back warmer(precision/toughness/con, and precision/con/power) and 2 revolutionary flyers (Power/toughness/Vit, and Power/Crit. dam/Vit)

My armor changes between Whisper’s set of the afflicted and Furnace Reward set(the power/precision/toughness set) of the undead.

So what am I?

I don’t think we need more weapons.
BUT WAIT!
What I do think we need are kit revamps so that they scale with our stats (or just hit harder). Or if they do make them scale better. Switching between my armor that I made for con damage and armor for hitting hard and my grenades still hitting about the same is not a good feeling…

Thing to add: I love you all, none of what I say is to be taken in a mean spirited fashion. We all collective think that the engineer is the bees knees. these forums are to talk about how awesome it is and how awesome we would like to see it become.

In reply to Maskaganda: The reason I don’t like RNG is to make it as effective as non-RNG you have to spend important trait points. For instance: I spent my 20 points in alchemy to make my thrown and drunk elixirs remove condition. an invaluable skill no doubt, but I don’t like how that is the only thing i can count on when i toss one of them puppies. the base effect is a “meh” that might happen to help in the fight, but more so i just want to get these 10 stacks of bleed off me.

To Brimstone: I agree that you have to look at things on a hole, which is why you see people listing out so many effective engineer builds (static discharge build, tank cat, etc…). But even then we still fall short in comparison to other classes due in most part to the RNG and cool-downs. The static discharge build for instance is meant to be a burst damage build, it can be a great one at that! The problem: due to cool-downs and such the thief class can do more burst damage with a higher success rate AND can stealth away immediately due to having 0 cool-downs.

Yeah you need to look at the big picture, not just the little pieces. I totally agree. The problem is that from both views the engineer comes up short. The OP is just trying to look at the little ways to improve the engineer and thus make the big picture work.

Did that make sense? Or did I just kinda ramble…. either way GO ENGINEERS!

^what has been said! I agree. PLEASE DEVs READ AND UNDERSTAND!

These Ideas are a great start. RNG needs to die. It is just counter-intuitive. Also our cool downs are just plain crazy so I’m glad you pointed that out. I LOVE engineer gear I just hate the RNG element and the cool downs.

Also… if they don’t want to change the range on the mortar (1500 range seems to be the max they wanted to hit outside of WvW) make it a mobile elite kit with the damage boost. Make us slower than usual sure, but give us the boosted HP and slight damage increase. I really don’t like how I can out dps my mortar with my grenade kits while still moving. :/

Edit: only RNG I think partially works is the one that throws down the wall. But please just decide between a defensive wall or a swiftness or invisibility buff. it really has so little strategic value when it’s RNG.

Problem with RNG: there is normally ONE (possibly TWO) things you want when you use an RNG skill, and most of the time you will not get either.
I should not rely on luck for a skill that is taking up a slot to work. This is not something you build a class off of. You might as well have my tool-belt elixir skills make a FAIL noise whenever I get might instead of swiftness or retaliation instead of regeneration.

Even the thief’s “steal” skill has a few constants that people can rely on and if fact do rely on more than the RNG. They get a teleport (and whatever else they attached to it via traits), the only thing i can ensure i get from my tool-belt elixirs right now is a SINGLE condition removal.

^what has already been said about why people should not be banned for this.

Only thing I have to add- I don’t mind hard work to get the best gear. What I do mind is when it requires you to do the exact same dungeon and paths multiple times in a game that has claimed and fought against the mentality for grind in mmos.

Sadly this is the only guild I am in.

I was also asking because we have almost 5000 influence. I just think it would be neat if we began heading down that upgrade tree so that anyone like me who is exclusive to this guild could represent like that.

Just a request. Thanks again and go engineers!

QUESTION!

Sorry caps :b

When/if can we get those neat back pieces that show our guild emblem? I really want to represent when i am out and about!

PS: If this is the wrong place to put this i apologize. I asked… Penguin? Yeah i think it was penguin…. but got no reply.

^I was there! It was awesome!

so what is the main server we’re on again? i just got the invite but people are all over the place. it looks to be fort aspenwood, but i don’t want to get it wrong and have to wait another week before i can engineer together lol.

Engineer is my first and main class. i will soooo join this guild.

Never done WvWvW, one match of PvP. and don’t know half those builds your all talking about but i would love to learn and go nuts with a team of engi’s!

send me an invite! I am currently on GoM but will swap when my swap dates are done (just switched).

So wake up, Mr. Engineer. Wake up, and smell the ashes!

Half Life 2

Ok the engineer was my first class and after a brief break to a thief It is back to being my most played and invested in.

From a minimal understanding of the math behind it all, little to no PvP and WvW this is what I have noticed from trying most of the skills in open areas and dungeons.

I am by no means an expert, just a player who stating what i have seen (or thought i saw).

So please, feel free to educate me and give me tips. Everyone knows i can get much better.

Rifle is the best base damage weapon and utility wise (with the net and kick It’s easier to stay alive than P/P or P/S). Pistol seems to be the best with condition type damage (poison, bleed, burning), shield is good in a pinch with it’s bubble power and shocking block but the cool-downs really hamper this as they seem a little long.

I am a turret junkie, I admit it. Unless I am trying to run past foes and have the time to swap to elixirs and such for speed/stun break My 9 will always be my rocket turret and my 8 vaires depending on my mood but it will be a turret. 6 is the HP turret. For My 0 I keep either Elixer X for random CC needs for or if I just wanna Tornado/Hulk OM NOM NOM something, or supply drop for more turrets.

Either way i do wish that turrets would either last as long as the necromancers minions or just do more damage, But I still love them for their distraction and support value.

Mortar is neat but i cannot speak for it’s effectiveness because the only time I could use it without it breaking after about 2 seconds was the Lost Shores against the Karka because there were lots of others to keep Karka happy. I loved how it’s cool-down being equal to it’s lasting time though, seemes fair.

As of now My 7 is the grenade kit. I want to say I am running a… 30/0/30… and some points somewhere else. either way all traits are for grenades or turrets, they vary. Damage is the best I’ve seen with bleed/poison stacking like nuts.

Armor is the full whisper’s set (wanting to get the SE medium with power/precision/toughness) of the afflicted (way more bleed/poison damage).

Thoughts? Tips? slaps to my face? post a reply or message me

Username: XerxesBlack
Engineer name: Beaks N Talons

Thanks for reading :b

this seems like it was meant to be an alternative reward… and this hole 1/3 seems to be more like 10% or less.

I really wish that they would just make it a guarantee that we get the endless. This process of paying 10+ gold is really unfair. Yes… this is a free event, but those who don’t like minis (they go back to the bank whenever you hit the “deposit all collectibles” and do nothing) and want a tonic instead really get screwed if they have bad luck. I spent 9 GP here and still only have 2 of them.

Please Areanet, Fix this!

1/3 huh? so either i have incredibly bad luck or that statistic is wrong. 6 tries to get princess, 14 for ventari, 6 so far for griffin. That was all my holiday stuffing and glue and around 9 gold…

Look, Areanet, please take out this “chance to get” the endless where the mini is a given. It’s arbitrary, stupid, and just a waste of time and gold that leaves unlucky players (like myself) with nothing at the end of your suppose to be happy holiday. I understand luck in some aspects but since we are dealing with something that seems to be built as an alternate reward for participating this chance thing just leaves your players with less gold and possibly nothing at all!

I’m sorry to come across as whiny, but honestly I am feeling a bit robbed. Where people around me get it in try 1-3 I am on try 6 (after 14 to get my last one) and still have nothing! I spend 9 gold and get nothing where others have to give nothing but what was given to them via the holiday events.

So please Areanet change this. I would love to get my gold back but just knowing that the next time I try this I will actually get something in memory of this event other than a frame that never amounted to anything would be enough for me.