Agreed. Holosmith skips out on Reaper’s massive health pool in exchange for truly ridiculous mobility. It’s a very fair trade off, and still extremely powerful to boot.
Holosmith is pretty slow. Core Engineer with rocket boots is ridiculously mobile.
Holosmith Holo Leap is not any significant swiftness, about as much in combat mobility as a spammable skull grinder.
holosmith with rocket boots
Yeah I guess he was comparing the tradeoffs from going from Reaper to Holosmith. Also from what I understand no EU Holosmiths went with Rocket Boots on the demo weekend..
Rocket boots still needs to be a stunbreak IMO for it to be viable. The charge system goes a long way to making them more viable, but their lack of stunbreak cripples them.
I like to picture Star Lord’s boots from Guardians of the Galaxy.
Stunbreak with Gadgeteer I think is what would really make the skill great.
I was just wondering for someone who just wants to casually raid/dungeons/solo/WvW/pvp is there a need to swap kits constantly? Is there a lot of swapping for holosmith or scrapper?
I don’t mind that part of the class but I would like to know what I am getting into before I level one, thanks!
You will almost always have at least one kit on your bar. Anything less is hurting yourself.
If you’re in high-end PvE (fractals, raids), you will probably need to learn to play the piano (4 kits) for high DPS. If you’re in PvP, you will need at least one kit, usually elixir gun. WvW you’re probably going to have mortar kit, maybe elixir gun.
As for holosmith — the elite mechanic is functionally a kit. However, it locks out some of your other kits. No idea yet on what the meta for it will be, but it’s highly likely you will still have elixir kit in PvP, and grenade or bomb kit in PvE.
See all those cool utilities with interesting ideas? Forget about them.
The last sentence hurts my soul.
It is very true, but it still hurts.
I would legitamitely be happy if every kit and healing turret were nerfed into the ground. At least then, some of the other interesting aspects of the class would get looked at.
I have been playing Engineer since beta, and I went from liking, to tolerating to loathing the Grenade kit.
Rework their overcharge effects, have them automatically re-overcharge after x seconds so that there is benefit to leaving them out and give them better defence.
Turret-permanence is actually one of the biggest issues preventing better balance.
If turrets were only around for a set period, so much more could be done to better balance them.
1- Balance base weapons and trait lines so they are viable without elite specs.
2- Balance elite specs traits and skills so they aren’t OP and have sinergy with every base weapon.
3- Balance sword and hammer so they are on par with the base weapons while highlighting their spec mechanic.
Pretty much.
Until step 1 is done, we will continue to have issues.
It’s called Grieving and its on the wiki under four or more attributes, while condi eng uses prob the most power damage out of all condi builds I’m not entirely sure how it will work considering it needs a healthy amount of expertise to max out on duration. Who knows though may find a middle ground.
Assuming burning is the condition we are trying to maximize, it might be doable. Incendiary Powder + Smoldering + Rune of Balthazar + Food gets us pretty close. 84 – 85% I think.
Uhh, balance is hard, and A-Net is not the best at it.
If the classes are underpowered, people complain. If the classes are overpowered, people complain.
Unless they get everything JUST right, people WILL complain.
Much easier to do a best effort while giving us something cool and worrying about balance later.
This is what most games do. Some companies are better at the balancing bit, but the process is the same.
Also, it is extremely disingenuous to label this pay to win. With that mentality, nothing new that comes with the expansions can ever be better than base game. That is silly.
hmm i go explosives (2/3)13, firearms 322, tools (1/2)(1/3)3, w/ “( / )” being optional and use bombs/rocket boots/throw mine
explosives and the endurance mod are absolutely not gutted and double dodging through a thing usually kills it so idk what yobculture is talking about unless he means in raids where the loss of explosive powder hits engi by about -10%. but in open world, gadgeteer and ammo systems give engi about +200% over last patch.
I have still be using my condi build since the patch, but this just reminded me that Power in open-world PvE is pretty cool now too.
I’m returning to GW2 few days ago and after playing some hours on my main character (Thief), I wanted to change a little bit because I get some difficulty with survivability. I was always interested in playing engineer because the system of kit look cool.
I started looking some forum topics and saw a lot of people complaining that engineer is not in a good spot right now. But anyway I think I can have fun with this class and start thinking about a build more fun than efficient.
My idea is to go for a tanky/condi build. I would like to try a set with Condi damage/vita/robu. I think about getting some zerk stat (or at least some power stat) with ring, earrings and amulet to improve damage.
I will probably use Flamethrower and grenade kit.
Do you think it’s a good set to kill mobs fast enought without searching for big number ? What weapon should I equip ? Any advice about spec ?
For the moment I am just looking for playing PVE open world, not aiming for raid stuff.
My engineer is 80 and I’m going to farm the HoT hero point to get the HoT spec even if I don’t know if I will use it
Go look at the other classes forums. Everyone thinks their class isn’t in a good spot. From my understanding, engineers are viable in pve content and pvp content, but they’re not currently in the meta for wvw zergs.
Unless I am mistaken, this is more like a glorified gambling system, not a replacement for drops.
We would need developer confirmation, but I would bet my left kitten that unidentified items are not ACTUALLY items until they are salvaged or identified. Essentially they are tickets to allowing you to gamble or not at getting a nicer item.
The fact that normal loot continues to drop points to this.
This is no different than choosing one black lion chest over another. They do not actually have contents until you use a key. It is why opening a chest, not matter how old it is, still, has access to the most recent items.
I am still not sure how I feel about it, but at worst I think it is just another item added to the loot table not a replacement for current loot.
mh pistol has 1 must use skill and 1 single target filler skill and the auto should basically never be used. the condis that are worth using arent condis that engi even has traits for. nearly all of condi engis weapon set damage is in pistol 4, which isnt mh pistol. thats not great at all. the reason its meta is because its the only option, not because its actually good. if sword were distinctly condi instead of hybrid, every condi engi looking for dps (which is what you go condi engi for, not control, support, tanking, healing, etc) that unlocks holosmith would use sword. since sword is a hybrid weapon, people will be divided on it, but from how it looks right now imo its really not a worse option than pistol dps wise and it brings extra mobility.
rifle has no useless skills. despite 2 and 4 being bad damage and 3 and 5 taking up so little of your time, there isnt a skill on rifle that you can say just plain hurts you to use like pistol 1. not that rifle is in a good spot compared to hammer when it comes to how well the weapon fills your time and multitasks, but it certainly is better off.
i dont know if you were around for turret engis in pvp. it literally erased skill at all tiers of gameplay. that is why turrets are kittenty today, and deservedly so, but a case can easily be made for skill splits. perhaps there are old youtube vids you can look up.
now why do you think hes joking?
Unfortunately, that’s all in the past now. Sure, Rifle and Turrets were good several years ago, but that’s not gonna change that they’ve been at a weak state. So knocking on how they’re nerf is needed at this moment is unwarranted.
And yes, I’d believe he was serious if he made that statement before HoT. Now it’s just beating on a dead horse.
I am definitely serious.
MH Pistol and Rifle are both ‘bad’.
With Shield being bad because it HAS to associate with MH Pistol—for now.
The only reason MH Pistol gets more play is because it is the ONLY condi option whereas power has the ridiculously good hammer.
Technically speaking, Rifle is worse off because in any build you would use it, you should use hammer instead, but on a pure ‘what value does this weapon bring to my build’ basis, MH Pistol is much, much worse.
I guarantee you that the minute Engie gets another MH condi option, MH Pistol is going into the trash. Hell, the hybrid sword my actually manage to do it.
I’m tired of the hybrid failures of the Engineer. Turrets never needed a nerf, but that’s not how balance team saw it. So for the engineer the class lacks a decent ranged combat and the rifle is by far the worst weapon in the game. The Holosmith is just a weapon swapping engi that does a lot of burst, but if the risk mechanic isn’t tuned well or too overbearing it will strip the engi of sustained damage. In short fights it’ll be amazing, but in long drawn out fights it’ll fall behind meaning raids won’t want them.
MH Pistol is much worse than Rifle.
Also, turrets needed a nerf. Sure you can argue it may have been too harsh, but it needed to happen.
Shield doesn’t need any changes. It’s probably the best one aside from chronomancer’s in the game. The only reason it isn’t used in PvP or WvW is because the main hand pistol is just about the worst weapon at our disposal.
Alchemy and Inventions don’t really need changes, and this balance patch wasn’t meant to really change Scrapper all that much. Explosives and Marauder is a fun time, but these changes are really more for Holosmith. We’ll get a better understanding of how good these changes are after the second beta weekend.
Agreed 100%.
Especially about WHY shield is ‘bad.’ Pistol is a very sad case of the devs being gun shy after the Pistol-mayhem from the early days of the game.
Disagree. I liked the old Kinetic Battery, so I definitely see the argument to bring it back as a master, but this new trait is better and a lot less niche.
We would be better off if the kits were redesigned so that they could fit better with the idea of elite specs.
Right now, they barely fit, and will always compete with future specs.
My preference:
1) – On activation Kit skills replace the toolbelt skills rather than weapons skills.
2) – Weapon Swap with with 10 ~ 25 seconds cooldown depending on kit load and traits
3) – Kit Cooldown of 0 ~ 10 modified by traits and kit load
After even more thought, I think this change was great and I would actually like to see more like it.
Relegating every kit to SPECIFIC purposes is step one in re-balacing the class to be less wonky.
I am actually looking forward to the day when the grenade kit gets nerfed into the ground or gets a re-work. That thing has hung like a specter over the class since day one.
EDIT: God I want to see more shield changes that give it synergy with pistol.
I think if they moved blowtorch to pistol 3 and moved static shot to pistol 4, it would go a long way to make shield more viable…
It would make pistol MH a condi dps weapon, Pistol OH a soft-CC with some condi, and shield a defense with some hard-CC. So they can all work better with each other.
I’m not saying it would solve the problems, but it would not harm the pistol dps so much by taking the shield.
Good start:
-Bake Modified Ammunition into Pistol 1; add new MUCH less passive trait in its place
-Make Pistol 5 actually worth using: Should apply around 3 debilitating conditions, not just one. Either further increase its efficacy or reduce its cooldown.
-Swap Blowtorch with pistol 3. Moderately Decrease damage of blowtorch, but make it much easier to land. Now being on offhand, significantly increase efficacy of static shock.
-Significantly Reduce cooldown on shield skills. Ding some durations if you must, but allow it to be used more often.
The new version of function Gyro is bugged as far as I can tell. The gyro does not acquire the 2 stacks of stability as advertised in the description for the skill when sent to turn someone’s lights out.
That is not advertised. I think you are mixing up the old stabilization core’s ability.
Nope it still sux. Engi is at its best with decents support through elixir gun, healing turret and mortar. Any more investment into healing power and support is wasted.
Just play a support tempest or druid in comparison to see how (s)crappy it is.
They seem to be pretty adamant about making sure that we dont get healing bombs back. I can’t even remember when it was the last time that i saw bomb played in PvP/WvW.
Healing bombs would not be a good reason to take Bombs in PvP.
Not as bad in WvW, but similar issue.
yeh they needed a buff, not a removal :/
I actually wanted it removed, or at least severely changed.
Requiring the engineer to camp a kit to really get any use out of the skill is…problematic.
In the exact same way that health insurance and juggernaut are problematic.
Nope it still sux. Engi is at its best with decents support through elixir gun, healing turret and mortar. Any more investment into healing power and support is wasted.
Just play a support tempest or druid in comparison to see how (s)crappy it is.
They seem to be pretty adamant about making sure that we dont get healing bombs back. I can’t even remember when it was the last time that i saw bomb played in PvP/WvW.
Healing bombs would not be a good reason to take Bombs in PvP.
you want to distinguish scrapper from engi and to do that you want to swap gyros with their toolbelts and turn them into passives?
for one thing, passivity is what got turrets nerfed. for another, relabelling a hotkey does not create distinction.
No not turn them into passives. Under the proposed change clicking a gyro once and it does exactly what it does now except it circles around the engineer only(similar to this part of the expansion announcement trailer)https://youtu.be/IOUk2y0K2m8?t=1m42s
Notice how the gyros move in sync with the scrapper? In the above changes they just rotate around the scrapper as well. With a second click it goes into “automatic” mode which operates how gyros currently do(finding enemies/allies on their own). This gives options and flexibility. It also frees up more utility slots for kits. It seems like they had this idea and scraped it(pardon the pun!)
Good analysis, wrong conclusion.
Kits are ridiculous and class defining, but if new utilities and weapons are designes around their existence, then they can be made to work as they are.
The biggest barrier to meaningful elite specs and class mechanics is the toolbelt. It has ALWAYS been the toolbelt.
The best hope for a good class mechanic at this point is to directly modify kit functionality as part of the elite and/or find a way to do more interesting things with the interact key.
Either those or base the entire class’s uniqueness around the new weapon. But I do not think that this trick will work the same twice.
