Guild Wars 2

Regardless of whether or not the quip is annoying, they should make a different skin. It’s just stupid that engineers spend all this time playing the game, then finally getting all they need for a legendary only to be greeted by some clown gun.

The same goes for the predator. It’s really a warrior skin and it would just look silly when hipfiring that. I really wonder why they went with this specific skin, because a scopeless skin would’ve been more universal.

I know that silly stuff can sometimes be funny, but at least give people a choice.

Yea, I guess you’re right. I haven’t been around this forum very long (<1month), so you probably know more than I do. Having said that, let the new turret come then!

It does seem more plausible now. The boss using those turrets popped out a healing turret, a flame turret and a net turret and on top of those that vacuum turret. I don’t know whether or not the bosses have the same limitations as players when looking at how many different skills they use, but if they do, this could mean it’s an elite turret?

The living world is a cool idea. The ever changing world is something that could introduce something fresh every x weeks.

The problem, I feel, is that we are kind of disregarding the rest of the world with this. We have different races in this game, but other than aesthatic value and a different starting personal story, they don’t offer that much. We have these factions, the vigil, the order of whispers and the durmand priory, but outside of the personal story, we don’t do much with them. We also have this personality bar (charming, fierce, dignified), but I don’t notice the effects from this. You put so much work into these things, so it’s such a waste to do nothing with it. Isn’t there some way to incorporate these things in the living world?

I really like the idea of the krait and nightmare teaming up to ruin to world or whatever they’re trying to achieve. This has sprouted up an idea for me. Every race has their enemies, such as the inquest, nightmare, krait, ghosts, flame legion, dredge and so on. Why don’t we use them for the living world, kind of how you did now, except a bit different.

We should like make some frontier against these enemies, where there is an everlasting war against them. We could make some (random) rotation on which one or more enemies break trough invading territory. This is the living world element. The players should then push them back from map to map to their frontier, and then help fighting the war giving and edge and pushing them back making them need time to recover from their blow.

Some people like to zerg, so we could let them zerg and hold off an incredable amount of enemies or destroy bases. They would be the main attack force. Others like to play more tactically in smaller teams. You could make certain missions, which require them to venture into enemy lands and sabotage their camps or assassinate important enemies. This could be in the form of the more deep you venture, the more risk you take, the stronger the enemies become, the more coordinated your team needs to be, but the greater the rewards.

It would be nice if we could incorporate the vigil, priory and whispers into all of this.

It’s kind of what happens now with the living story, but it has a returning element. After a certain period the enemy has recovered from their blow and will launch another attack.

It’s just an idea, but perhaps you could do something with it. I really like how you are trying to keep the game fresh and appreciate the effort.

edit: @the guy above me, holy crap, we were thinking along the same lines

It’s a cool idea, the extra cc is certainly welcome. Having said that, I doubt it’ll be a new turret. It would be a bad idea. If we get an additional skill (even if it is in our generally seen as broken turret line), the other subforums will flood with requests for new skills for their profession. So unless they are adding additional skills for every profession it seems unlikely. It might however replace one of our turrets, but I can see people not liking that either.

The devs are working very hard and it’s not like they broke our turrets on purpose. The devs also are only human. They will fix it, but it’s going to take some time. I agree it’s taking long, but that’s the price you pay without subs. Even without subs, they are stepping out and opening the collaborative development topics in an attempt to interact with the community to make this game better.

BTW, the map is even more interesting. Look at those tiny choke points, imagine how many people we can push off those ledges with our cc skills :P
It’s funny, last week or so, I stated that perhaps more choke points might offset the difference in manpower between wvw servers and now some wvw map with more choke points has appeared. This map might be great for smaller more tactical teams.

@Coglin
I play on SoS. It’s a nice server, but the coverage is lackin during certain times. Usually I am online during our servers downtime. Not that it matters that much, I like roaming more than zerging anyway. I haven’t had a single queu so far and I don’t mind a single bit

@Xaylin
You’re right, I really want that little extra on the pistol :P

The idea you provided is really neat. I have ran a few gadget and turret builds and they were good, but they seemed to be missing that little extra that could make the difference. This could provide that little extra.

Perhaps something similar could happen to turrets, making them give some sort of boon over time could provide an incentive to keep them up.

@Xaylin

With effectively I mean, that if you for example put 30 points into firearms, you should notice a significant difference compared to untraited. When I trait for FT, I still find it a bit lacking in the damage area. Deadly mixture trait on the alchemy line doesn’t seem that great for the EG. The EG seems more about conditions, rather than direct damage, so the 10% extra won’t really be noticed.

The firearms line, when looking at the offensive traits, gives off such a mixed signal. The rifle seems to be about precision, so it seems like it could really benefit from tools, as that gives another 30% crit dmg. The problem of the rifle is that it’s such a slow firing weapon that you really don’t want to be focused when you use it. You wont have a chance to fire it. This might however be where gadgets come into the picture.

The pistols seem to be about condition damage, but when I use dual pistols without hgh, I find it kind of lacking in damage. That might however also be because of the skills lacking, rather than the traits. The OH pistol #4 is great, #5 is good, but it’s soo slow. I think it’s the MH pistol that needs the most work.

I always wondered about pistols. The shots explode upon impact, but they’re not counted towards explosions. Same goes for FT #2, it’s an explosion, but doesn’t count towards it for proc effects.

I think we could use something along the lines of IP, but for pistols. Pistols are all about condition damage, so I think that should receive some attention.

Another problem, more in general, are conditions. I really hate how your stacks get overwritten, while at the same time loving it. I hate it because someone unraited overwrites your condition damage, lowering it while someone higher traited can increase the damage. It’s really nice to team up with a necro, stack all your conditions and then let the necro overwrite it all. The tick is amazing.

I sometimes tend to forget that this is a team game (wvw is so empty latlely, so I"m usually on my own). So being able to do a lot of cc and sabotaging with conditions while teammates finish them off would be role I’d like to fill. I really hope the changes they are going to make, will make this role (even) more viable, especially in dungeons.

@Coglin

See the post above yours. BTW, where exactly did I use endure pain as an argument?

coglin.1867:

In my opinion, the only true problem that engineers have as a professions is that when you use a kit, you lose a slot for a stun break or condition removal. I have no issue with the kit system. We have no swap cool down in trade for having to use a utility slot for our weapon swap. That aspect of the system works. What I dislike is how we lack condition removal or stun breaks in the deal. Now when they added a stun break to EG tool belt skill, they solved half of that problem right there. As of now though. to remove conditions, we either need to go very trait heavy into elixirs and use elixirs, or slot elixir C. The large majority of our condition removal is tied up in that. Granted super elixir will remove one condition and antidote will remove another, that is a lot of effort to access them.

I agree with you on this part. I think the stun breaks are oddly placed. The EG stun break was a nice deal, and I’d like to see more of that. The stun break on elixir U just doesn’t do it for me, especially when I gain haste. The other stun break is on goggles, I’d taken an untraited EG over goggles anytime.

As for conditions, perhaps it is on purpose? Perhaps they want us to pick between surviving bursts and surviving conditions.

@Xaylin

I can see what you are trying to explain. The thing is this. When the other classes heavily spec into their trait lines, they can effectively use it (and they should).

I think the same should be for our trait lines(firearms especially). For example tools, which seems to be about endurance. We should be able to spec into it and use it effectively, at the cost of other things ofcourse. So you changed my opinion from endurance is important for every engineer build, to endurance is only important for builds which heavily use the tools trait line for defense. So as long as anet doesn’t nerf the endurance regenfrom the tools kit traits (which they haven’t) , it’s okay. Of course endurance still stays important troughout other builds, but to a smaller extent.

I think the main reason why endurance seemed so important is that the other kits sometimes are a bit lackluster. Especially when compared to grenades and bombs, which are more offensive, so you expect to have lower defense. The other kits could use some buffs, be it trough traits.

I totally agree with the other points you make. It might kind of be along the lines of “offense is the best defense”. We can indeed ‘defend’ ourselves with CC and conditions.

But how it is now, turrets and gadgets, which both have the potential to be a big source of damage mitigation trough cc are bugged and/or underwhelming. The other thing is that CC isn’t that effective and sometimes conditions aren’t either against pve bosses. Also having a hard counter against cc makes me a bit sad. But Coglin posted that Anet was looking into those issues, so I’m hoping for the best.

The problems with turrets are obvious, but for gadgets less. They are indeed cool, but they seem to be lacking in certain areas. They also have a much higher cooldown when compared to similar skills of other classes. On top of this, you can’t really seem to trait for them. We only have a lower recharge and that is basically it.

Firearms definitely need a few buffs. I just don’t know how.

A mechanism is something you see returning in most of the skills and traits of a profession. For example, a thief has a lot of traits and skills granting stealth and initiative.
A necro has a lot of traits and skills granting death shroud life power.
Warrior has a lot of skills and traits granting adrenaline.
Mesmers have a lot of skills and traits granting clones or phantasms.
Elementalists lower trait line is all about attunements, in which they use earth for defense and water for healing.
Rangers is all about pets. Don’t know much about that.

Now tell me what do you see returning much in our traits and skills. Tell me?

If you look at our upper trait lines, there is no pattern, or repeating effect. The only returning mechanism of us is the tool belt. In our lower trait line, tools, we spec for the tool belt. This tool belt grants us endurance regen upon usage, the returning pattern in this trait line is endurance.

Why do you think we regain our tool belt skills at the 15 point trait. One of them is to use those skills to regain our endurance. Why do you think we have enduring damage, which gives us 10% more damage when we have full endurance? Because endurance is a major part of an engineer. Why do you think Adrenal Implant is put so far? Because endurance is a major part of an engineer. This is very similar to the elementalist in which the lower trait line, arcane power, gives a boost to their core mechanism.

And that is what I’m trying to make clear to you, for an engineer, his tool belt and endurance are the biggest mechanisms.

And you’re not for discussing, all I’ve seen you doing is plugging your ears and repeating yourself, snipping out words out of context.

I never said we don’t have any defensive skills and traits at all, I only stated we have no reliable mechanism outside of endurance. We are pretty much reliant on the skills and traits mentioned above, while other classes have a little extra on top of those.

EDIT: To elaborate a bit more, when you look at the traits and skills of other professions, you see they all strengthen their core mechanics. The skills of a mesmer increased the effects of his clones/phantasms, necro increases the effect of his DS and so on. But when we look at the engineer, none of our skills strengthen our tool belt skills. In fact it’s such a joke that when you take lower recharge on elixirs, our tool belt skills aren’t affected.

@coglin

Those aren’t mechanisms, but skills and traits. I mean a real mechanism, clones, stealth, death shroud, virtues.

All other profession have something similar to the above skills on top of their defensive mechanisms. The ones that don’t have a defensive one, have an offensive mechanism, such as eles(a bit) and warriors. I can’t say much about rangers though.

I never cared about the living story in the first place. I was a bit bummed by that southsun part. The settler gear seemed like it could do something cool for my engi, but nobody ever goes there anymore, so it’s impossible to get. This timed content is really bad. Why would you spend money just for content that’s there for one month or so. Do they really think people will panic because there is a time limit and buy gems or something? The living story idea isn’t bad, but the implementation is.

Cold Hearted Person.6154:

Do you people plan to discuss only about nerf/buff to 1-3 traits or rather throw some other trait to the discussion?
Engineer have crap load of traits that are usable but generaly usless and some that are rather weak when compared to cost.

Altho i know that firearms trait line wont be worked on this time around here is some interesting idea for coated bullet trait.
Let the bullet increas damage for every pierced enemy by 10% and add one more bleed whit the same duration as the skill have
1st target will get normal dmg and 1 bleed but every next target pierced will recive +10% more dmg and +1 bleed, since aoe can hit only 5 targets, max dmg will be 140% and 5 bleeds at 5th pierced target.

and before anyone say that its too much or too op, hiting 5 targets in line is rather hard and rare in spvp as for wvw it will only matter in zerg fights wher condition are cleansed ever 1-5 sec and water fields take care of almost any damage, on the other hand it will be great in pve.

It sounds like an idea, but it won’t help that much. We need multiple enemies lined up into range, which will rarely happen against human opponents unless in wvw zerg. I earlier said to increase fire rate or make it fire bursts, but with less damage.

Another idea, would be to make them shotguns, with pellets. We need to use rifles from medium range anyway and get close for the other skills. Might as well give us more damage when we get closer, like a real shotgun. I think it would fit better to the engineer.

coglin.1867:

They are basically cutting vigor up time by 50% if you use speedy kits to get vigor. This is both in line with their philosophy of limiting endurance regeneration across the board, and giving everyone who was demanding speedy kits duration extension.

As long as the continue to consistently propose similar changes to the other professions, which they appear to be doing. I do not see a problem with it.

I noticed that Jon made a post in the general topic on Dec. 10 proposed changes.
One thing he mentioned caught my eye.

" We want control builds and condition builds to have more of a place in high end PvE."

This makes me curious about how any changes would offer either one to the engineer as a profession. The only thing they could change in my eyes, to benefit enginer CC is to change access to stability. As far as condition builds, I do not see how any mentioned changes will benefit any of our (or any other professions) condition builds, because the problem stems more from stack limits and conditions that stack in duration and and those with caps.

That sounds interesting. CC and condi damage are two strong points of the engineer. I always feel bummed when the bosses get that buff, that make them immune for CC, same goes for the stacks.

As for the vigor, I think the reason the most engineers are bummed, is because dodging is our only defense mechanism. The 5 point trait of tools shows this. Engineers are largly dependent on endurance. Nerfing endurance regen all across the board hits engineers the most. I hope they keep this in mind when nerfing vigor. It’s a bit more acceptable now I know they do it all across the board. It’d be even more acceptable if they moved down adrenal implant.

I really like the engineer. I discover new things everytime I play and my opinion about certain skills constantly changes. Lately I’ve started paying more attention to the tool kit and have found it lacking in a few areas. Some of the skills have a way too long cooldown and others are just plain bad.

The toolbelt skill of the goggles seem to have a long cooldown on them. As a comparison, warriors have brutal shot. Brutal shot gives 2 stacks less, but for 4 seconds longer, and only has half the cooldown.

Toss Elixir U has the same problem. The guardian skill only has a 40 second cooldown and the thieves skill has a 30 sec cooldown. while not being random. I don’t know how long our screens stay, but the cooldown of 60 seconds, for a random effect seems too long. On top of that, the main skill should ditch haste entirely. I think it depleted my endurance bar today, which is just stupid for a profession that relies on dodge rolls. Like a thief stealth trapping himself.

Throw wrench seems okay. It does as much as the rifle turret, but does it double if you aim it right. I think the cooldown should be a tad lower, or some additional effect should be added.

Super speed from the slick shoes is nice, but it hasn’t really gotten me out of trouble. Leaps from other classes are just superior and take you further. I’d rather have it on a bit longer duration, or perhaps make us skid forward for like 600 range. As long as it really makes me escape, because now I can just get netted/crippled and still die, while others can leap away.

The mines are just bad, really bad. They have a tiny radius and also show up on the enemies screen and they just spread randomly. It needs to be more reliable, perhaps let us make a little minefield, like how we throw the big mine.

The incendiary ammo of the flamethrower should defnitely have a shorter cooldown. Guardians do it better with their virtue.

The healing mist on the elixir gun is vague. Does it also break stun for teammates? I think now, and for that it’s kind of lackluster. I know it’s a stunbreaker, but it could use a little extra.

Net attack has a kitten cooldown…really? There are stuns of other classes with lower cooldown.

Regenerating mist barely does anything. The water field has such low duration and the regen isn’t worth mentioning.

The other toolbelt skills have a too long cooldown imo, and some need a little extra. Only a few don’t need any real work. I think the devs need to take a closer look and change some things here and there, but don’t touch the grenade and bomb toolbelt skills…unless it’s a buff.

Other than that, they really need to look at turrets. The disposable turrets idea you hear here and there seems like something that might work. If the devs really want us to keep turrets alive, they need more defense and perhaps give boons every x seconds. Kind of like healing turret. For example, flame turret gives anybody in it’s radius incendiary ammo every 20 seconds.

Mork vom Ork.2598:

Two adept traits do not define a specific build. A requirement for at least 60% crit chance and 50% boon duration does.

Also the already announced change for elementalists vigor trait from adept to master tier has been removed again.

This is pretty much what I’ve been saying. I don’t know how coglin plans to get unlimited vigor, without investing heavily. Perhaps coglin can give us an example of a build? The only way I can now think of is getting vigor from teammates.

The swiftness is no buff. It’s exactly the same. We have unlimited swifness now, and we we still have it after the patch.

So umm, Jon. You still haven’t told us what the core of the engineer is.

Can you also tell me how I am supposed to defend myself? All the other classes have their mechanics, thieves have stealth, mesmers clones, necromancers death shroud and rangers their pets. Warriors have a crazy health pool, with banners and guardians crazy defense from boons and healing. I don’t really know what eles have, neither do I know what defense mechanic engineers have. The tool belt? Now with the vigor nerf, we’re even more forced to either take elixir s, elixir r, shield or TK. Don’t you think we need a buff when we need to abuse HGH to get similar attack damage to other classes, except we have to give up a lot of our defense.

You talk about balance, but so far the engineer has only received nerfs. The IP nerf is not understandable for me at all. Were we overpowered because of this? It seems like you know nothing about the engineer at all. Have you even played with an engineer?

Overall I feel that the engineer is underpowered. I feel like I am outclassed by every profession out there. I feel like I have to work three times as hard for half the reward.

But don’t worry, the engineer players will still own. You can nerf us all you want. We have done it so far, even after all the nerfs, and we will keep doing it. On the more positive side, I guess we engineers can see we finally got our hammer. Too bad it’s a nerfhammer.

@people saying the vigor isn’t a nerf
Learn basic maths. At this moment, we can get vigor with a 100% chance on demand when swapping. With the crit trait, you need to crit. To get it, with 100% chance as before, you need 100% crit chance and you need to be attacking an enemy. We also only have 50% chance to get it on crit. Which means the chance to get vigor = chance of attacking * chance of crit * 0.50

So if your chance to crit = 10% you need to calculate 0.5*0,1 = 0.05 = 5%
You then have to multiply that with the probability of you attacking, since you aren’t always attacking, which means at best you have a 5% chance to get vigor with 10% crit chance. With 100% crit chance, you, at best have a 50% chance to get vigor. Most of us probably have between 4% and 50%, so you have even less chance than that.

Smaller numbers can be an advantage. When you have smaller numbers you should use a more mobile style. As mentioned before, hit and run tactics are one option. At the moment it is a bit difficult to execute such tactics. What if the outnumbered servers get additional spawn points? These spawn points could spawn at every edge of the map. This would make it easier for smaller servers to use hit and run tactics. For example, they could attack bay to get the enemies attention, then quickly port to the other side and cap lake or hills.

Another point is that I feel that it that shouldn’t be able to pvd a gate down. This is no fun to defend against, as you can’t do much against them. Sure you can put up a few siege units, but you need a lot of them to defend against much larger numbers. When fighting against superior numbers, you usually don’t have much supply. This creates a situation where you are defenseless.

Basically what I want is more coordination, making it easier to execute hit and run tactics and get appropiately rewarded. It is unfair that a larger server automatically wins because of bigger numbers. There is no challenge in it.

Perhaps we need to overhaul the point system and reward them differently. I don’t know how the system works internally, but if it is clear beforehand whether or not a server is going to be severely outnumbered, you could change the way points are rewarded. For example, issue objectives. Hold hills for 24 hours (in a week) and upgrade it to tier 2.

The objectives could be expanded and tied to the earlier mentioned commander/general ranks. General receive objectives on a more short time span and commanders on larger timespans. Commanders work out strategies, and generals execute them using their own preferred tactics.
Perhaps you could make the war continuous. So for example, the previous red server had to hold hills and upgrade it to tier 2. If they succeeded, the new red server will start with a tier 2 hills. It’s just an idea, it needs to be thought out more, because I can already see issues, as it might actually make the outnumbered issue worse.

These are just some ideas, which definitely need to be thought out a bit more, but perhaps you guys could do that. I also have no insight in what the time, costs and effort will be in implementing these things, so it might be stupid. Sorry for my bad english.

I think another issue is the lay-out of the map. The defenses of most structures make place for open field battles. For an outnumbered server, this is very bad. It is quite hard to win against superior numbers head to head. Creating a few more choke points could resolve this.

Another point is the coordination. As said before, you can not make alliances. Making alliances between guilds, could create more coordination.

Perhaps making more ranks could also help. Now you only have a commander. Making one or more ranks, to make it possible for commanders to create task forces could help coordination. Then you would have something like a general, with different people following different generals. Commanders and generals should be able to issue orders or something.

There is a little problem though. Bad commanders. A solution for this, might be a some sort of commander ranking system, where each rank provides different buffs. You could even expand this, giving commanders their own fighting style. The commander can pick his own buffs, such as bonus supplies, higher running speed outside battle (faster than swiftness), faster speed inside battle, building siege faster, and so on. Basically the buffs should complement certain tactics, such as hit and run, defending, open field battles, underwater fights and so on.

Battlemarkers are the second issue. I don’t mean the orange ones, but the white swords around a keep icon. I feel that whenever a small group attacks, it shouldn’t be shown as fast as when a bigger force attacks. This would make it possible for smaller coordinated servers to attack without meeting a zerg when the gate/wall is halfway down. The problem is that the bigger servers can also take their advantage of this…but pehaps you guys can work it out a solution.

(more in next post)

I don’t think locking people in a server, or not making it possible to transfer to a higher populated server is going to work. It might even have the opposite effect. People might be afraid to transfer because of the risk of coming in an outnumbered server. Another thing is that server population and wvw population aren’t that dependent of eachother. An server with a high population doens’t have to have a high wvw population.

There are several issues in wvw at the moment. One of the is coverage.

Not every server has as many…enthousiastic players staying up all night to defend their borderland. Merging EU and NA servers is one solution, but there might be lag issues. Other than that, I can not come up with another solution.

There is also the issue is the difference between wvw populations, even during uptime. The problem is that a larger server will always win, when evenly skilled. This is because there are no mean to defend yourself against a zerg larger than yours. You could evade the zergs and sneakily cap other structures, but there is little fun in that. On top of that, if evenly organized, the larger numbers will still win. I’d wish there was a way for an outnumbered server to defend theirselves, and perhaps even go on the attack, fighting against odds and winning because of better tactics. Numbers shouldn’t be the deciding factor, but tactics and strategy should.
—
Another solution against overly dominating servers could be the meddling of skritt and harathi. Because if the increased presence they feal threatened and join the offensive. Whenever a server controls the largest parts of all maps (over 60% or so) the harathi and skritt will launch an offensive. They will attack the controlled structures causing damage on the walls, gates and perhaps also draining the supply. Perhaps they whould even be able to cap structures, not only denying the dominating server points, but even retracting points from them. Then when an not dominating server runs along, they can just waltz in and cap the circle. The mobs will stay to help defending, unless the other non-dominating server attacks. Then they will remain passive as they don’t care.

Meanwhile in the other borderlands, the mobs could also launch offensives against the owned keeps by the dominating server, damaging their keeps, making it easier to attack for the losing servers.
—
A different idea might be to change who you are going to fight. Perhaps guilds from all three servers can pick a certain color preference. At the end of each war, all the different guilds get allocated to a color and battle eachother. There are some problems though. What if a person is in multiple guilds? What if someone is not guilded?
—
Lastly, a more expensive idea, could be altering the wvw maps. At the moment, when you have lesser players, you can choose between focusing your numbers and only owning a few structures or disperse your numbers, for the same effect.

What if there were several layers of defense in each home borderland. Each layer would concentrate the defending forces more and more, while doing the opposite for attacking forces. People who like to zerg could join the frontlines, while people enjoying smaller scale battles could go on more tactical missions.

These were just a few rough ideas, but I just wanted to throw it out, perhaps you can do something with these ideas. I don’t want a ‘solution’ that denies access to wvw for players. I also don’t want to force people to play in a way they don’t want to. The goal is to make wvw more fun, not more right.

Adamantium.3682:

While I have defended our traits in the past when compared to other professions (because each profession is different and they all use traits different ways) the list of what we get compared to other professions is pretty long and it seems we always get the short end of the stick. As a long time Engi since the game started, it’s starting to get frustrating. I don’t think the Engineer is weak, but it takes SO MUCH effort just to be at the level of other professions. If we have to put in that much effort and manage so many skills we should be stronger than we are I think.

This is basically it. The effort/reward ratio is just so low. As an engineer you have to pick between doing little more than moderate damage at the cost of all defense, or being a bit of a bunker at the cost of all offense. If you want to do both you have to be quite skilled to achieve it, but this is kind of wrong compared to how most other classes can do both effectively without as much effort.

As for the firearms trait, it’s just that rifles aren’t that good. We have to get up close with that weapon, putting ourselves into danger.

I’ve ran a CC build with rifle, gadgets and mixed knights/cavalier gear, but due to all the stability the other professions had, it was nearly useless, leaving me with okay-ish damage. When the CC did work, you didn’t do enough damage by yourself to effectively make use of the CC. The problem is that with the firearms trait line, I also have to spec into condition damage, while I’m not even going to use conditions.

When you look at our firearm traits, it becomes obvious that the rifle traits are heavily reliant on precision and crit hits. This makes the tools line, with increased crit dmg a perfect combo. The problem is that the rate of fire of the rifle is so slow, that these crit activated traits can’t be used optimally. One solution would be an increased rate of fire for the rifle. For example, make it shoot three round burst, or let it have a more constant increased rate of fire. Both with lowered damage ofcourse. This would make it more easy to proc those crit effects, but only with an investment into precision, thus firearms. This would also make the engineer a bit more unique.

Another problem, this time with the use of gadgets, is that you can’t really trait for them. Nearly none of the traits directly affect gadgets. You can only get a reduced recharge and a specific trait for the mine.

Lastly is the problem with turrets, but I’ll save that for some other time, since this has little to do with the actual traits.

The biggest problem for me, is that we have so many skills just lying around shadowing other skills. I don’t want the other skills to be nerfed, but rather have the shadowing skills buffed (gadgets, turrets, rifle).

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a pretty decent list of master tier traits that I still find underwhelming.

Explosive Powder, Enhance Performance, Power Showes, Elite Supplies, Deadly Mixture, Potent Elixirs, Packaged Stimulents, Power Wrench, Leg Mods.

I’m happy that we agree on this part. On top of that, other underwhelming traits (imo). Acidic Elixirs, Exploit Weakness, Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, Precise Sights, Go For The Eyes, Coated Bullets, Modified Ammunition, Napalm Specialist, Acidic Coating, Always Prepared, Kit Refinement, Leg Mods, Packaged Stimulants, Scope.

Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, Napalm Specialist and Modified Ammunition aren’t grandmaster tier worthy imo.

Always Prepared and Packaged Stimulants are useless and a waste of your slot. The med kit isn’t that great for this kind of play, the healing isn’t enough.

Kit Refinement gives such short boons, spells or attacks, that they seem useless. Timing is also something difficult.

Some of these are quite nice, but they are so specific that you pay a hefty price for it. Merging some of these traits (with others) would make them more viable.

As for our skills, most are okay, with the exception of turrets.
I think it’d be better if haste was removed from Elixir U, only making you frenzy. As someone said before, it makes no sense to break your stun only to have no dodge so still have eat all the damage coming after the stun.

Our elites need some work. We only have the supply crate, the other skills are only for laughs and actually cripple you more than doing helping. The mortar still jams and has quite low damage and utility. The only nice effect is the knockback, and that one is only situational.

Elixir X seems like a lazy skill. It’s just a copy of other professions.

As for the firearms, it could indeed use some reworking. I do have a build which heavily invests into the firearm trait line, together with gadgets, but it comes at a very expensive price, no condition clean. That while I’m not even dishing out that much damage.

Turrets get destroyed so fast, it’s not normal. They usually break before they can do anything. The overcharge rotation has been a nerf for us, not to mention it often being bugged often. Perhaps you should just delete them. It is clear that you have no intention of buffing their health and defense (skipped us with the pet/minnion buffs) and I assume you aren’t going to overhaul them either, so we’re just going to be stuck with a broken mechanic.

On a last note, I’d like to ask you what the role of the engineer is. We can do pretty much anything other classes can, except we literally have to work at least three times as hard for it.

Yup, the turrets are fairly useless when they get hit. The targeting is also bugged. My rocket turret didn’t target siege the other day, despite being right next to it. The overcharge cycle is the biggest joke ever. Turrets have always been bad, so this big nerf is unjustified.

The traits are kind of stupid too. If two hits cause 150%hp of my turret to drop what good is a 6% reduction going to do. The same goes for auto repair. Turrets never stay up long enough to do anything. I’d rather have some trait which caused my turrets to have (rechargeable) shields. To actually dmg my turrets, you’d have to concentrate fire and take down the shield.

The exploding trait also is useless. It’s misplaced and lackluster. I’d rather have it cause a static combo field or something like that.

I don’t see why a turret needs to get on cooldown when picked up either. It’d be better if they copied the ranger system for this. Picking it up should cause the health to recharge bit by bit. When picked up, you should get a small cooldown, but no more than 10 seconds.

The rifle turret barely does noticable damage.
The fire turret has bad range, causing it to get downed after one shot.
The thumper is evaded so easily, people barely ever get into range and if they do it gets destroyed within seconds. Thanks to the overcharge cycle, you can’t even overcharge it.
The rocket turret had miserable damage, yet got nerfed. The fire arc of the overcharged rocket is the biggest nonsense ever. I’d rather have it fire straight causing a knockback similar to the pbr or overcharged shot.
The healing turret is okay, I’d only wish the toolbelt water field would stay for a little longer.

EDIT: Actually played with the mortar, and have to say it’s not that bad. It’s a bit meh. The range could certainly be a bit further and perhaps a little bit more damage (traited if it has to).

Furthermore, the jamming should really be fixed. Don’t forget to report the bug, assuming Anet actually does something about it.

Another issue is that the projectile doesn’t always make the right arc. When shooting something from over a wall, you often hit the wall itself, because on shorter distances the arc isn’t high enough. That could also use a fix unless it’s “working as intended” (which I highly doubt).

The last issue is, of course, the issue all turrets have. Insane hitboxes. If someone would sneeze on the other side of the map, my mortar would break.

It could be a great supportive weapon in big fights, as the #5 basically means mass cc and mass interruptions. The fields are pretty awesome too.