Guild Wars 2

6months of being patient and considered has got engineer far less dev effort than other far more polished classes. I’d love to be proved wrong with the coming patch, nevertheless A-net have to overcome their own track record from the previous patches.

Elementalist released with rubbish downed skills and had them buffed within a short time, for just one example. Why are engineer downed skills still total rubbish?

The problem seems to stem from a lack of vision and focus on the devs part. The devs only seem to have ideas of what they don’t want the engineer to be:

1. Oh no! Engineers have some class identity with their bunkers, that’s for other classes, so nerf smoke skills!
2. Oh no! Engineers have some class identity with applying conditions effectively, that’s for other classes, so nerf explosive shot!
3. Oh no! Engineers have some class identity with removing conditions, that’s for other classes, so nerf medpack4 also FT/EG combo!
4. Oh no! Engineers have some class identity with stomping people, that’s for other classes, so nerf Juggernaut!
5. Oh no! Engineers have some class identity with underwater grenade combat, it must be nerfed to no-identity mediocre at best!
6. Oh no! Some engineers specced to support heal with Super Elixir, quick nerf SE massively and then adjust it up a completely neglible amount afterwards.
7. Oh no! A few Engineers are using their class mechanic to swap kits, that’s too much class identity, quick butcher kit refinement!
8. Because no-one (not even engineers) wants to engage in some kind of rehearsed synchronised routine of ‘mid-ranged’ combat, devs can pretend we are good at something that doesn’t exist. While fixing & adding none of the tools needed for actual battlefield mobility – hello JUMP—, hang, wait, eat a sandwich, read the paper, then land, —SHOT etc

What message are we getting from the devs about what they think the engineer should do, as opposed to what it cannot do?

1. We can have some slight buffs to turrets, provided they are useless overall and their traits are stupid.
2. We can have grenades sort of, with numerous nerfs, provided they are only dangerous at close range, or to people who are afk or stupid / NPC’s at longer ranges.
3. Because our mainhand weapons are deliberately weaker by design, we can have kits like flamethrower, but because they’re a kit they not allowed to have any finishers or any range like the equivalent but superior mixed power/condi weapons like warrior longbow. Also anyone who’s ever actually played the engineer knows how suicidal their auto-attack is from retaliation. So we have a kit with traits that direct you to not swap out, but you can’t stay in kit to use the auto-attack. Genius.

Engineer that people bought into at BWE1 had tons of bugs and tons of unfinished areas, but also far more class identity and far more potential. Now we have this middle of the road mediocre mess, with very nearly just as many bugs and now masses of class defining areas watered down to average or worse. The buglist from BWE1 is still basically the same it simply hasn’t gotten a fraction of the attention it’s needed.

tl;dr It’s okay to take things away, even class defining things, as long as you give new important things to replace them to ensure a class retains an identity. This hasn’t happened so far. Also leaving the class with the most bugs, to be last for bugfixes, won’t make that class community happy

Toolkit has improved quite a bit though, so I guess that’s the devs vision, engineers use toolkit.

Patch day is almost with us again, so enjoy your current engineer builds before they get ineptly nerfed in the scorched earth approach the devs take to targeting some random facet of engineer that actually works okay and carpet bombing the entire skillset it resides in from orbit.

HGH & any boon stacking/spiking builds have to be concerned about what the boonhate changes will mean for them. Changes designed to make builds that stack boons easier to kill, aimed at bunkers but probably affecting dps builds too as it’s hard to separate the two. We have very few details about what this will entail though. Likely these changes will affect all classes, but the past shows that any classwide changes won’t get engineer specific counter balance changes that other more populated classes might get.

100nades is almost definitely going to be nuked into the dust of history, because no engineer should be allowed to burst anything like other classes, e.g. thief, even if it’s massively more complex to operate and has far less survivability. All because one time at band camp a dev’s second cousin saw a photo-shopped picture of 24k damage. You’d need a planetary alignment to get that against an upscaled level 7 player in WvW. Theif, mes, warrior would probably burst far harder in same circumstances. With the devs past record for maladriot engineer changes that are far more deadly cures than the disease ever was, let’s hope they don’t break grenade kit in the process.

Slick shoes and elixir R were also mentioned at the same time as 100nades, so inept heavyhanded nerfs may be coming for the few people who use those.

Kit refinement will be getting another pass. Considering how asinine the last kit refinement change was, the equivalent of curing a patients headache by shooting them in the forehead with a high caliber pistol, multikitters have every right to be be scared of this change.

On the plus side, they have some awesome boosts in store for us. e.g. thumper turrets will now be able to cripple, so expect all 5 people who use thumper turret to be overjoyed.

I’m glad you like the Engineer class. I’m glad you love it just as it is. I’m glad you really enjoy it in tPvP – you’ve clearly put a lot of effort in with it there. That’s awesome.

There are also lots of people like me who either don’t PvP or do so only on a casual basis. (I don’t know the numbers, but I get the impression tPvP is the least represented area in GW2, WvW next, and PvE the most played.) For us PvE and WvW players, the Eng still needs a lot of work.

I wouldnt mind that we have to push more buttons to get to use our abilities if only they weren’t weaker than another class spamming 1-3 buttons.

The only two things that id like to change are that our rocket boots work like jump shot, at least then wed have another chase ability and not a stun breaker that stuns… and, youll hate me, weapon swap, hey..id like another block mechanic and not be kitten with damage.

( i run rifle + static discharge)

When you make a game. a certain order is required. It’s worth remembering that every aspect is equally important because all of them are important in someones eyes, and I really hope you agree when I say we’re all equally important. A good example would be the Engineer – It’s the class you developed last, and, in most peoples opinion, the class that you have spent the least time trying to perfect. It makes perfect sense to put more class focus on Engineer than the other classes because that’s the one that needs most work – That’s not what’s happening though. Instead you focus on classes much closer to being 100% functional while also ignoring a lot of bugs for the sake of catering to the most represented classes – That’s the impression I get anyways. It all smells of a blatant moneygrab, and while I understand that you need money, trying to promote the item shop will not make the game BETTER. A game that is steadily improving attracts more customers and results in more income.

You see, people actually look at your performance and development as a whole, and if you start slighting parts of it instead of trying to divide your efforts according to where there is more need to do so, you lose favor in the eyes of the consumers. I’m going to assume you’re smart enough, ArenaNet, to understand that a gleaming gem of a game is the product of working together with the customers, we paid and we still pay your bills – Remember that. But that gem is full of nicks and cuts in the edges, and we could chisel all those out together – Start looking into bugs when we tell you we find them, let us test your products, I.E patches before you release them, simply put, include US into the process. It’s worth remembering that taking a brisk step forward is pointless if you don’t have the footing to avoid falling over when you set your foot down. Sure, your step was impressive and brave, but you still fell over and people don’t want to see that.

Bear in mind that these opinions are wholly objective and intended to give helpful feedback.

Im thinking a good fix would be one “free kit” slot, instead of taking up a skill lot our ¬ key swaps our main weapon eg the rifle to 1 assigned kit and vice versa giving us 1 free “kit slot” which is like how the other classes can swap between weapons

this way we get an extra skill and having a kit doesn’t mean losing out in other builds.

Ayestes.1273:

You can argue that it’s implemented wrong or that the entire design of which it’s based around isn’t efficient , but to say that Kits have nothing to do with how the Engineer was designed is absurd. I mean I agree with the vast majority of how this needs further balancing, but it’s extremely clear that Kits were the driving unique functionality of the Engineer in the design.

You kinda hit the nail on the head right there.
Furthermore your 5th trait line on every profession enhances one of the things i listed above. I was merely showing how attunements makes sense (its not optional its core to the design of the elementalist). But kits do not. While toolbelt COULD.

While it may be because of kits, that would make it a mistake. If it was because of toolbelt, we would need to know whats so speacial about toolbelt, are the skills so good that they eclipse virtues, deathshroud, and adrenaline attacks?

Are our overall capabilities with our weapons so powerful that it would be unfair to give us the added utility of weapon swap?

But if it really was kits, then it means we have an inherent flaw in our design. Because you cannot. CANNOT. enforce a balance based upon the necessity of grabbing a line of utilitys. Otherwise everyone not using a kit is UP. Also, like i said before if it IS kits theres another problem.

How many kits is OP? Because if we denied one weapon swap due to that being too many….is it because 3 is too many? 4? 5? how many is too many?

The reality like i said previously i think falls back to money and time. Engineer was not fully finalized on how it was supposed to function. The mine was a kit in beta. Perhaps it was originally part of our profession specific ability (like the ones i mentioned earlier) then got shifted over to just being a utility…or maybe like some people are saying ..they’re just really bad at design and had no idea and just slapped this profession in a rush for launch……all this could be wrong, but with no answers the mind begins to wonder.
I’d like to beleive there is a reason, but i have not heard one that satisfies me.

point is there is an issue, and i’d like an answer. I imagine this would take a dev 30 seconds out of his day to respond with a simple answer, if it is an easy answer.

tigirius.9014:

.. the miss thing is getting out of hand now. not only is it in all cone attacks two weapons rely on that the most are ft/eg but now it seems that everything is having that issue.

The irony is, I’ve tried ele and he has a ft-like skill, but it can be used on the run and don’t have much “miss” issues.
So anet do know how to make flamethrower work. It just seems engi is not on the priority list.

AmirTheButcher.6920:

After playing almost every class, I can assure you that the engineer is the ultimate class.
Many players tend to quit playing the class cuz :
1. Very weak at the lower level
2. Not as simple as other classes
Rather than pushing 1-3 buttons you actually have to swap kits for maximum damage.
Pve wise I’m playing as rifle engineer with grenades and bombs kits.
In spvp i am using bunker build and usually hit the 1st place.
Why would you want a weapon swap? You have kits as weapons and no cd on swapping them.
Dont ask to make the class easier… Just roll a warrior or something.

I get it, it’s ultimate, whatever. But those kits are taking up a utility slot… oen that we could use for something else. It’s unfair that it takes up a whole utility slot, when ele’s get a kitten load of skills from attunements AND utilities.

OK, so I just watched the Engineer section of March’s State of the Game and I felt a little ill afterwards. Bump.

Honestly, the Kits should have been part of the normal UI instead of the toolbelt.

this way players always have kits no matter the build.

makes up for the sacrifice.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Goloith.6349:

Also unless you have speedy kits as an Engineer your mobility is not as great as a Guardian rolling GS/Staff. Also an Aegis Guardian when seeing his party member getting face rolled can spam Aegis twice to mitigate a lot of damage before he dies.

So really what you’re saying here is that Guardian is more mobile than an Engineer is

Watch a Staff Guardian and an Engineer race each other in WvW. The Guardian has to fill up their utility bar with skills like Retreat and Save Yourselves to keep pace—an Engineer just has to swap in and out of their Med Kit.

Obviously you don’t play in Tier 1 because Retreat, Save Yourselves, and Stand Your Ground are a staple for the Guardian Frontliner build. What would I know, after all JQ is the #1 server and EMP is undefeated in Guild vs. Guild events. Personally flipping to a kit to get swiftness is nice, but again your forced into that skill tree just for the speed. If your condition build that +10 in Gadgets hurts you.

Elixir X

Option 1:

Singularity
Become a strong magnectic force that pulls enemies to you with the option to then launch them out.
(Basically the opposite of Tornado, with the blast away enemies being a skill tht ends the form after casting.)

Option 2

Holograms
Create 2 holographic projections of your character that mirror all of your actions. Holograms do light damage and confusion but cannot be killed for their duration.
You keep all of your skills.
(In the Asura story mode there is a mission where an Asura creates a big projection of herself to fight and I thought that was pretty kewl and shouldve been part of Engineer Tech)

Engineers should have had weapon swapping at the very beginning. Not only that, but ArenaNet’s notion that the main engineer weapons should be intentionally weak due to the existence of kits is baffling. Kits make up just one of four major pillars of the engineer’s utility: Kits, elixirs, gadgets, and turrets.

Why balance the entire class around kits alone? I would love running a viable build based around the main engineer weapons that had more of a focus on elixirs and/or gadgets, but that’s not an option at the moment due to the inherent weakness of our main weapons, our lack of a weapon swap, and the underpowered nature of most of the engineer’s utilities that aren’t kits.

Engineer has needed an overhaul for a long time, and it’s got a long way to go before it’s where it needs to be.

Engineers are what happens when you have a Heavy Armoured class that the Devs are having trouble balancing. So they just downgrade to Medium Armour and let pass.

90% of the Engineers problems come from being centered around having higher armour.
That is why Engineers are so hard to play, all of their Survivability comes from user-activated skills whether its blocks, dodging or invulnerable.
Our invulnerable skills arent ground covering and they remove our skill bar. (unless you requip a kit while invulnerable for 1-2 “free hits”.

When you see the vids of Elite Engineer players like Maska or TankCat you can see how much good blocking/dodging and mostly knowing when to disengage and re-engage factors in to how well they do.

Even going full PVT with Toughness you are still too squishy for the amount of time we have to stay at close range.

Engineers are an awesome concept and Anet gave a good try but just play any other profession and you will see how much easier it is while earning much better results.

So sad.

Actually, I think a weapon swap will add alot more build diversity. Engineers have lots of utilities but they need those kits to be viable. Kits takes up a utility slot and those toolbelt skills have long cool downs. Swapping kits is pretty slow and many of them have pretty situational abilities. With this added weapon swap, engineers will have access to more skills and will be able to use more of their utilities. In fact, equipping 3 kits will be counter productive since engineer will have 2 weapon sets on default.

i believe engineers can live with a 15 weapon swap cd but dont add a swap cd to kits

Some good Elixir X possibilities in here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q3em9s5I4c

I vote bacon form. Turn into delicious bacon that your enemies can’t bear to kill.

Orion the Cursed.1206:

Engineers use utilities to compensate for lack of weapon swap.
Elementalists use their class mechanic to compensate for lack of weapon swap.

I’m sorry…what?!

Elementalists get 4 different attunements for a total of TWENTY weapon skills per weapon combination.

Engineers get nothing for their weapon combinations giving them five skills per combo(and have the lowest amount of weapon possibilities in the game).

To even TRY to say kits make up for this and I will point right to the fact that Elementalists get Frost bow, Hammer, flaming greatsword, etc. They get ‘kits’ on top of already having 20 skills at their disposal AND gave give those ‘kits’ to a friend. Honestly, I think the entire reason Elementalists don’t have weapons swapping is purely because they would then have 40 abilities and that’s just insane.

I think the highest I’ve ever gotten an engineer is the mid teens. I have an 80 Thief, Guardian, Mesmer, and Elementalist. I will tell you right now: Engineers need help. I used to have an old 5-man dungeon crew and we had an engineer. They decided to retire the engineer and make a Warrior so that they would feel useful. And it actually helped a TON.

Something needs to be done to bring Engineers and Rangers up to the rest of the classes. Shoving your fingers in your ears and going ‘la la la’ isn’t going to change that.

The only thing about giving us weapon swap right now is that we have so few options that aren’t necessarily going to work together cohesively in a build—and since you can’t bounce between them as rapidly as kits, I’m finding it hard coming up with something that would actually make us more viable than we are just because we can now flip between a pistol and a rifle (pistol/pistol and pistol/shield might be more functional, but that’s still leaving out an entire weapon that might see better use depending on the build).

It’s a nice idea but I don’t see how it’s actually going to help us be more versatile—not until we actually have at least two viable weapon sets for a build (who runs a power build with a pistol?

… But I would totally love getting a hammer to compliment my rifle in a power build though).

That kits have to take up our utilities while being the official reason we don’t weapon swap is pretty shoddy design though. I liked the idea I saw before of having the weapon-swap be a special kit-slot, and any additional kits you wanted would go in your utilities. It would do a lot more for giving a lot of builds some breathing room, I think.

A lot of toolbelts are pretty lacking as a utility replacement, too.

Hey all,

So Anet is trying to make turrets better and the forums are trending with turret suggestions. I enjoy creating interesting builds, and I recently decided to try some WvW rather than just tournaments. I wanted to make the net turret a central part of the build. Here’s a list of simple observations:

1. Immobilize is very strong—I used 30 points in explosives and pizza, meaning even in a power build, every net hit for a 5 second immobilize. That is powerful, even at the expense of so much additional damage or condition removal I could have had. Sure, the turret died easily, but it was worth the risk for the reward of landing a potentially fight-ending immobilize.
2. Turrets always shoot at the closest target, whether that’s a minion, a clone, a wolf, or a thief. Fun fact: when fighting another engineer, net turret will target closest turret the engineer drops from supply crate.
3. Turrets continuously fire at gates when in range. I was hoping to use my net turret to control the area in front of a keep or tower. Unfortunately, the gate was not harmed by the immobilize.
4. Turrets have no concept of LoS. As an experiment, I attempted to set a trap for a lone mesmer I predicted would be coming through a stone arch to gank me while I was soloing the SE supply camp in a nearly-deserted borderland. I was correct—the mesmer came exactly where I thought he would. Unfortunately, the turret fired as the mesmer came within 900 units on the other side of the wall. Ambush failed.

tl;dr—Net turret is already great in some situations, it just doesn’t work when fighting near mobs, objectives, archways, mesmers, necros, rangers, or rock dogs.

As for general turret buffs? If I were Anet, I would use mesmer phantasms as the model for turret balance. Phantasms are already very similar to turrets in that they can’t move from fight to fight and have a fairly slow rate of fire. However, they have some things that turrets do not have: they’re built into weapon slots, target your own target, and scale with your damage. I recommend that turrets function the same way, or, if they need to continue to cost a utility slot, they be made noticeably stronger than phantasms to make up for it. For example, they could have the same damage/health but also retain the blast finisher and knockback trait.

Seras.5702:

Whether you agree with it or not, the simple reason is because of our access to weapon kits. If we equip 4 kits (6-9) we effectively have access to 5 weapons bars + 4 toolbelt skills. That’s more weapon sets that even elementalist. Of course, if you’re comparing those 2 you could say “yea, but ele’s ge to have access to their 6-8 utility skills in addition to attunement swapping.” True, but we make up for not having our 6-8 utilities by having our F1-F4 toolbelt. Same exact thing, only we get 1 more weapon set. I’d say we come out on top.

Now, we could also equip no kits. In which case, yes, it does suck a little. But our trade off is that we get our 6-8 utilities (like everyone else) but then 4 more utility skills (F1-F4) as well. “But Guardian has virtues!” Only 3 and they don’t synergize with their various builds as well as our chosen toolbelt skills. “Rangers have pets with 4 skills and they’re changeable!” True, but we don’t have to rely on the pet’s AI, inability to hit moving targets 100% of the time, and we don’t lose 40% of our damage output if our pet dies.

Weapon swapping would be sweet, but we’re not hindered because we can’t do it.

viable or not, an ele could equip 3 or 4 conjured weapons on his utilites+elite have have access to 15 more skills than us while also giving his friends another possible of 15 skills.
Sure they aren’t proper weapons swaps or permanent but hey they aren’t balanced around having them…

If our toolbelt skills would be on par with either utility skills or a propper weapon to offset the lack of weapon swap it would be fine, but it really isn’t atm..

Atleast we have more almost viable builds in pvp than eles ;x

edit: forgot about mortar. And i’m mostly fine with how engi is, just wish turrets,gadgets, some kits were abit stronger so i burry nade kit somewhere deep(i hate it but it’s soooooooo goood)

Most people who have an engineer probably follow the sentiment I heard expressed and widely agreed with in map chat the other day:
“My engineer sits under the offscreen arrow for character slots”
“My engineer is parked at a node”
“I’m not playing my engineer until A-net do something major to them”
etc

There is no real reason for engineer not to have weapon swapping and the VERSATILITY that gives in terms of changing stats and sigils.

Right now our weapons are designed deliberately weaker, we suppose because we have kits, abut yet our kits are weaker because they’re not weapons. Look at the combo potential of our kits… it’s just dreadful for example.

Either we need to get weapon swap:
adding new weapon sets for 2hand hammer(wrench)
maces
focus
torch
daggers

Or we need to stop halfarsing the kit route and do it properly:
with all elixirs placed in 1 kit and random crap removed (elixirs are low power, multiple slow slow cast and keypress, slow flightime, 240 not 1200! diameter, not supported by armour etc etc compared to shouts so this should be ok)
all turrets in 1 kit (& big improvements to power, responsiveness, ai, short term invuln on placement so they do something before evaporating etc)
a gadget kit (and traits to properly support gadgets)
an actual longer range single target kit (sniper gun?) and can hit people who aren’t asleep or afk or npc guards etc
flamethrower that is more similar to warrior longbow for e.g. finishers range aoe area burning application all massively inferior for flamethrower
Elixir Gun overhaul.
Grenade kit flight speed doubled? allowing it to be balanced properly as a greater range aoe kit, without hitting stupid opponents much harder, and hitting smart opponents barely at all.

and big trait overhaul

and finally the 10page buglist looked at.

@Moddo
the difference is for mesmers, for the builds that dont simply wanna burst damage, there are other ways to shatter the clones for utility instead of damage.

and grenade nerfs are simply that…if you grab grenade kit you prob should trait for it, if you trait for it you cant be too powerful.

But weapon swap means every viable option for an engineer is UP unless they use one of their kit abilities. This is on a much larger scale. Not to say what you were suggesting is wrong. But i dont see that as comparible. A huge profession function is being removed incase you grab a couple select utilitys vs a single utility is nerfed incase you grab its defining trait. Big difference.

I want to say the official reason is our access to kits, which take up utility slots, which are then give back as our class trait as toolbelt skills. However, toolbelt skills aren’t as good as utilities and we don’t have a definite class mechanic because of it. (Some people would say toolbelt, others kits, etc.)

As for why so few weapons, again kits. We can have a rifle, pistols, a shield, grenades, a bomb, an elixir gun, and a flamethrower, which on paper looks like a lot of unique weapon choices. However, they also thought that access to up to 4 of these weapons/ weapon sets at once was too versatile, and then put a ‘versatility tax’ on our main weapons, making us one of the weakest (if not the weakest) class by default.

Many people have claimed engineer was a rushed class, I can’t say if this is true or not, but it is in human nature to stick with bad choices rather than admitting you were incorrect. Our traits often seem unfinished, with some utility skills receiving 5-7 traits focused on them, and others receiving only one or two. While other classes have similar problems, none are quite as pronounced as the engineer.

Still, it seems like engineers are moving towards being a better refined class, as we’re no longer considered the worst in pvp, many of our bugs have been sorted, and we’ve received numerous buffs to various aspects of our gameplay.

It doesn’t matter what you use on your ele. Elementalists can access 20 different weapon skills and still take whatever they want for utilities. If they had weapon swap they would have access to 40 weapon skills.

Also engineers could really benefit from having weapon swap. It wouldn’t be over powered. It would just make use what arena net actually wanted us to be, versatile. Because as it stands there’s nothing an engineer can do that can’t be done better by another class. I love my engie but show us some love, devs.

Simple Answer is that Eng was last class made and was barely out Alpha stage when game was launched.
You can see it in fact that Anet calls Eng a “mid-range” fighter. Like that even makes since. What good is it to be at mid-range vs full range anyway. In WvW being Mid-Range is more of death than being good. That is why alot of engines go Grenades in WvW.

Lack of thought went into the rushed class. And it will probably never be fixed because Game Devs never like to admit a class was not finished.

Creld.8702:

Beyond this, the information I’ve said based on what I’ve read, I can’t offer further explanation as to why we don’t have weapon swapping. However, one minor point of contention, weapon swapping is technically optional. As a warrior, you can stay with a rifle out 24/7 and still do passably well. Any class/weapon set can do this, engineers are simply forced to if they choose to forgo a kit. Still, I shudder to think how anet would ‘balance’ us if they gave us more weapons and a weapon swap…

This is true. On my warrior rifle build I use sword/Warhorn off hand to add escape and versatility to my warrior. Imagine that. Eng king of versatility is less versatile than other classes. Well except if you give up utility slots.

I picked this class up and did well, no problems with using it. Sure, it’s a bit glassy, but nothing vitality and some toughness couldn’t fix. After doing so well with it in sPVP and WvWvW from the get-go, I’m baffled with conflicting statements from the forums and my experiences with the class.

Dedalus.3065:

MajorMelchett.6042:

Yeah compaired to a standard mmo mage type they really aren’t hard at all, i mean in Rift on my mage i had full bars of stuff to manage (it really wasn’t a macro friendly class/build).

It is quite silly to think that the amount of skills is proportional to the difficulty of a profession.

Thank you. Someone finally said it.