Guild Wars 2

I think you’re misunderstanding the concept of versatility somewhat; if anything that build is less versatile than the warrior build I run. The reason I posted all the CC skills my warrior can do was to show that person that warriors have a similar skillset to bunker-mode bomb engineers for keeping people off of nodes.
Either way, as I was saying that build isn’t versatile at all, because it lacks burst damage, has subpar long range damage and lacks damage in general and is extremely vulnerable to condition wipes and flips.
On the other hand, my warrior can also knock people off nodes, wipe conditions, block, stack vulnerability 5-9x (in a feasible way), cripple, stun, daze, snare, aoe res teammates, do powerful burst damage, do high ranged and melee damage and have 27k hp in glass cannon gear. And it can do that without investing any talent points.

The point I’m making isn’t that one class is better than the other, it’s that most classes have setups that can do similar things to what the what the engineer can do with kit stacking.

I think that the main strength of the engineer right now is its complexity and mediocrity. My alt warrior is easy to play and easy to win with, but I find myself having less fun without the challenge that engineer abilities bring.

“Once competent play is achieved, engies have no counter class; teams must 2v1 you, opening opportinities for your team.”

The hyperbole on this forum is really starting to get out of hand, frankly. Every class has versatility in spvp; my warrior has two knockbacks, two cripples, a daze, an aoe knockdown and a stun in addition to high single target damage, decent melee range aoe and okish burst and I can get an aoe criple and aoe knockback if I grab a Hammer instead of maces.
The engineer isn’t special in terms of versatility or self-sufficiency and if anything riding solo and not using a build that leans towards a specific role is going to hurt your performance and hurt your team.

If the pets are what is attracting you, go ranger for sure.
Using turrets gives you an extremely inflexible, weak built that isn’t fun to play for most people and doesn’t really work in a lot of pvp and dungeon scenarios (e.g. turrets being one shot by boss aoes and siege engines). Engineer’s current strengths at the moment are more along the lines of explosives and guns rather than pets.

Flamethrower is really only good if you’re firearms/elixir specced and need to kill lots of trash in an instance. In wvw and pve, the only consistently effective damage ability is the autoattack, which is noticeably subpar compared to grenades, bombs and guns and lacks the range to be useful 99% of the time for wvw. For spvp, the airblast is the only useful ability. I wouldn’t call it the worst kit, because the tool kit still exists, but it’s definitely trying.

Loco.4561:

On my mesmer, I got crit for 6.5k by a Blunderbuss, so far that’s the hardest any class has hit me for (in one hit) in WvW.

With analyze, elixir B and jump shot’s vulnerability up the actual blunderbuss ability crits light armour for ~3-3.3k damage, with another 1k or so as bleed damage. So that engineer must have had some pretty impressive boons to crit your for 6.5k in one hit.

People really need to start differentiating between HIT and CRIT. If you rock a full glass cannon build and stack power, crit, crit damage your rifle can start hitting for 6-700 and critting for 1500 with 60-70% crit which is nothing special at all compared to most classes. Do not be surprised when thieves and warriors start consistently critting you for 2-3k when you step into spvp. A warrior crit me for 5k with kill shot yesterday, which is nearly a quarter of my health without alchemy.

It wouldn’t as bad if the random effects were similar, but as it is you can end up with boons that are useless to you in a specific situation. H is a great example of this, since has the regen boon that makes it slightly inferior to the healing turret, but it could also give you swiftness which is not only pretty worthless in an enclosed space, but is something that you are guaranteed to get from the med kit every 20 seconds anyway.

1) Turrets need much shorter cooldowns and/or to be able to be picked up without putting the turret on cooldown. Turrets also need to fire more often, shoot at your selected target, use player stats and and have better ranges.
2) The mortar also needs to be able to be picked up, have a longer range and do substantially more damage. Currently the #1 damage is substantially worse than just using grenades.
3) The flame thrower almost always misses while strafing and hitting anything with the #2 explosion comes down to luck more than anything else.
4) The kits need auto attack.
5) The kits need to retain the stats provided by your weapons.
6) The random effects on elixir H, U, S and B are too different from each other to rely on.
7) Many of the gadgets, such as the ram, utility goggles and slick shoes have cool-down lengths that make them undesirable compared to other skills. Particularly so given that some are otherwise very similar in effect to other skills e.g. mine vs battering ram.
8) The rifle’s reliance on close range skills for the majority of its damage abilities renders it ineffectual in many WvW scenarios, e.g. keep sieges.
9) The general lack of effective ranged damage across the majority of engineer skills and kits funnels engineers into a choice between grenades or pistols for WvW.