Guild Wars 2

Tomiyou.3790:

PaladinVII.1647:

I agree with a lot of what he said, but some of it was opinionated. It is very nice, however, to see him publicly voicing the problems of the engineer: a lot of crap skills compared to other classes.

Now here you are wrong. Probably biased cause engi main. Pretty sure it gets beaten by guardian in the number of extremely bad traits and utilities. Ele isn’t far off either.

I totally do agree tho, that lots of traits and utilities do need love

I am biased because I am a Flamethrower Engineer main, I won’t argue that. But Guardian as a counter-argument?! What do you see more of in WvW: Engineer or Guardian? Guardian is way more viable than Engineer, sadly. Elementalist I view as an un-nerfed Engineer; it is the ultimate generalist – in the developer’s own words, while the Engineer falls in as the mediocre generalist.

I do not discount that there are crap skills in each class. I believe that there should be no “Perfect” pick, like in WP’s example of the Tools trait line for the grandmaster, where everyone picks the 50% endurance regeneration over all the others because it is just so much more viable. I believe that all traits should be viable.

try being an engi. still no grenade barrage effect for juggernaut, and occasionally the legendary effects get removed from it completely like they did in 2015 for roughly half a year. also no legendary effects while using kits, but hey, it’s not like engi’s use those a lot… oh wait…

Engi isn’t a new class either
(I am in no way bitter, more amused than anything)

pretty much agree with the stuff hes saying is wrong with power engi. i dont necessarily agree with the direction he thinks anet should go on all of it but really when you play even half as long as i have you form your own opinion on what they should do to fix it and its gonna be different for everyone.

Awesome video. Very nice, extensive sum up.
Also, WP mentioned turrets being use only to detonate.

Isn’t it the exact same thing why ArenaNet nerfed Gyro’s dazes a while ago?

Logged in to bump this. Waiting 6 months for Anet to let us down again with another balance pass.

Well engi’s has been the black sheep for years, before HoT they were in league with rangers and necros in tier of uselessness for PvE, the other 2 got a lot of love with the expansion, the engis did not(and so did thief’s).

Although i play all classes, It is sad it took them this long to buff my main class.

We’ve been asking for a unique aura for years. While it’s nice to finally have one, it’s a bit sad it took them this long to give one to us.

bearshaman.3421:

I know that kits get used heavily in the meta builds, and I think that’s because we have a basically zero cooldown on switching between kits. If the kits had the cooldown of the attunements for ele, I think we would see more build diversity in engineer (and yes this would require a massive amount of rebalancing). I like the idea of kits, but it is an overwhelming skill, to the point that all other utility skills are only used for niche situations.

Personally I prefer getting new types of utility skills, leave toolbelt as the class mechanic, and diversify and rebalance things so we have more build diversity beyond “load all the kits and the healing turret”.

Please go play ele.

The gameplay of having access too all your tools is as integral to engi as kits and toolbelt themselves.

The only place where you load up all kits and healing turret is viper engi in raids. And there are many more builds, gamemodes and ways to play engi. The reason for that specific example is only because all of our other utilites offer nothing in a PvE group setting. That is not kit’s fault for bringing damage but the fault of turrets, gyros, and gadgets for not offering anything.

I know that kits get used heavily in the meta builds, and I think that’s because we have a basically zero cooldown on switching between kits. If the kits had the cooldown of the attunements for ele, I think we would see more build diversity in engineer (and yes this would require a massive amount of rebalancing). I like the idea of kits, but it is an overwhelming skill, to the point that all other utility skills are only used for niche situations.

Personally I prefer getting new types of utility skills, leave toolbelt as the class mechanic, and diversify and rebalance things so we have more build diversity beyond “load all the kits and the healing turret”.

Agree. Kits needs to be balanced. And the way to balance them is to make them truly central.

Kits are much more than just a type of utility skill. They are part of the engineer core mechanics as much as attunments are part of Eles and pets are part of Rangers.

Kits are there to cover for the fact that engi can’t swap weapons, so you can use a kit to swap to new weapon skills to cover your weapon deficiency (range, defense, utility, AoE, Melee, etc)

Despite that, the Scraper never got a kit.

Its quite clear that no one is ever going to get a elite spec based on kits (or summoned weapons), as that would mean creating 25 new skills (5 kits), plus the new weapon ones and class mechanics…

But, I honestly think Engi should get one new kit with each elite spec.
Just like druids got new pets, engies should get new kits too!

Imagine if crapper had a kit called “remote control” that would send your function gyro to do things around (attack, buff, block, refuel an active gyro, etc), finaly you could have a use for it in PvE.

So, do you think engi elite specs should get new kits, as part of their class mechanic?

you mean 30/30/10 or 6/6/2 as it was changed to…

With or without novice, master and grandmaster leveling tomes?

Or the one needing 150 gold for all traits?

In the end most vanilla builds are still more or less viable doing 10-15% less dmg…

Condiranger, condimesmer, terrormancer and some other builds still work. Provided you have acces to the present stats….. Most builds are still the pre HoT builds just expanded upon… most pre-HoT builds used 2 trailtlines and 1 which seemed to fit better then the other 2.

If you take the vanilla build and compare the HoT builds and tune the vanilla builds with optimum gear you’ll notice some thing might be missing but in a lot of cases this is less then problematic.

Druid, chrono, tempest and berserker rely most on the new traitlines… they were more powerfull, mostly in mechanics. But old builds can do the jobs as well, just losing some modifiers…

After so many class nerfs since last xpac launch, I take it’s safe to assume they’ll become useless when the new ones come out?

I remember clearly what devs were saying right before xpac was launched, that the base classes would retain their identity and usefulness, only to be ridiculously nerfed to force builds around the elite specs. Poor revenant is the king of nerfs, what makes it even more hilarious is that it was “the expansion class”.

Don’t take me wrong here, I know balance is necessary for the health of the game but somehow it got to a point they devalued base classes in favor of elite specs. It makes me highly doubtful the current e-specs will survive long after the new expansion is released. Also, I am mostly sure it’s not just the balance team decision.

We’ll have to see what else they’ll bring to their large, messy table.

Heh. I know what you mean, magnet causes some strange things.

Strangest thing I ever had happen with a pull (or was it a push, I don’t remember) was near the spawn at the north side of EBG. Someone used a push or pull CC on me and I hit some invisible terrain and went skyward! I went so high into the air that I DIED from falling damage when I hit the ground!

Whoever did it to me came over and stood near my corpse, and I swear I could have heard him say “Dude, what the heck happened there?!”

So i made this montage of magnet / the severs being wonky for my guild mates thought you fellow engi would get a laugh out of it as well or just really bad PTSD…idk

oh kinda NSFW not too bad though

Really? thats weird, the Meta Builds of Engi has not changed at all, and there wasnt a direct buff to boon duration, unless you are going against engineers who use full elixirs and no gyros, that doesnt make sense.

Legit Prep In.5893:

[…]
why..just WHY?

You know the answer, it is engraved in the heart of every engineer, the bane of our existence….

Purity of purpose…

Tbh, I am highly dissappointed about the changes I saw today…
Gadgets and turrets are still untouched.
They changed flamethrower to a condi kit to “keep up burn stacks”…. why didn’t they add a small tick of burning on every damage tick of the flamethrower like many people suggested instead of just increasing the burn on the end of the channel by 2 seconds?

Doesn’t seem to fit the “purity of purpose” really well for me. The channel is doing 9 power based strikes in a row without any condi and just the very last tick is providing a condition.

Vagrant.7206:

Fricking seriously?

Post gets moved to the graveyard within hours of being posted, despite explicitly pointing out that this is a graveyard.

I lawled. >< The past few days of Moderation seem somewhat … inferior different. I wonder if Gaile is unwell

Sigh.. too late. Someone moved it to the post graveyard engineer forum.

What do we have to do now to get someone’s attention? I propose racial slurs and swearing until a mod notices.

Phineas Poe.3018:

PaladinVII.1647:

This shows and proves the disconnect between the developers and the community in regards to the Engineer.

Just because they don’t reply that doesn’t mean they’re not reading.

See (2) and (2a). It has been over a year and a half. There is still a sticky of beta weekend 3 on the top of this forum. It is my belief that this is evidence that this forum is dead. I would be delighted to be proved wrong.

PaladinVII.1647:

Oh, the irony. They moved this from the general chat where there was a chance it could be read to the unread Engineer forums. That speaks volumes for the point I made above.

Edit: more irony – Guild Wars 2 does not uninstall properly.

Well that’s just forum policy. It’s a thread specifically about Engineers, therefore it belongs in the Engineer forums. Highly doubt this thread would of received any more dev attention on the general forum than it would here in the engineer forum.

I agree with the OP, that the most recent patch proved the company has absolutely no clue about the game they are developing, or they do and they make it a mess on purpose. I am out of ideas as to why would someone intentionally overlook the much needed changes.

e.g. everyone knows condis are OP, what does NC… sorry ANet do? Buff them more…

#Logic

Oh, the irony. They moved this from the general chat where there was a chance it could be read to the unread Engineer forums. That speaks volumes for the point I made above.

Edit: more irony – Guild Wars 2 does not uninstall properly.

My thoughts on the changes:

1. The rifle change is a far cry from making Engie-Rifle playable in any sort of format. Very oddly, the condition damage on the skill (at close range) increased about 56%. This makes almost no sense to me since the rifle hasn’t any other condition capability, so you’ll never use it for the condition damage (although the longer bleeding duration does synergize with Hematic Focus.) However, the rifle still pales in comparison to Scrapper’s hammer. If you are doing physical damage at close range (where the Rifle is at full effectiveness), you really should just go Hammer. If you’re doing long range physical, you run a kit.
2. A 33% increase to condition damage for Fragmentation Shot. If you’re playing Condi Engie, you should not be auto-attacking with your pistol (especially after some of the nice Condi buffs in this patch).
3. Uhm… wh-…what? Why did Blowtorch get buffed? Blowtorch was the skill you wanted to use as much as possible and they buffed it by 33%? I won’t complain, but I am confused.
4. Both buffs to Elixir U are very nice. With HGH, you can get a cooldown of 32 seconds on both the drink and wall. The buffs provided aren’t particularly amazing, but nice none the less. However, the wall can be a great defensive option; 12 seconds of negating projectiles for 12 seconds every 40 seconds is nothing to sneeze at.
5. The “buffs” to Shredder Gyro are an absolute joke. At level 80, the Gyro does approximately 1k damage every second. This sounds pretty decent, until you realize a) the average DPS drops to about 300 when you take cooldown into effect, b) not all of the hits may actually land if the target moves/kills the Gyro, c) the utility provides very little functionality beyond the damage, and d) the Gyro DOES NOT SCALE WITH YOUR STATS. The final point makes the Whirl Finisher almost entirely useless. Each flaming bolt that hits (and it won’t be a lot), will only deal 131 damage at most. You cannot increase this except by Vulnerability. While this is still the case, I do not know. This utility is an interesting idea in the sense that the Whirl Finisher seemed to be the main selling point of the thing; however, the execution does not match this idea as ArenaNet seems to keep pushing the physical damage up. This not only makes the skill boring, but it also makes it severely difficult to balance as the expected damage will vary entirely by how long the target remains in the AoE.
6. The changes to bombs seem mostly like bug-fixing, but increased Immobilize on Glue Bomb will not be unappreciated.
7. Shaped Charge, Glass Cannon, and Static Discharge have all been directly buffed. These changes can be combined together to increase physical damage by a fairly hefty amount, but I would say that the tools aren’t quite there to make physical damage great.
8. Shrapnel has effectively been upgraded. A bit more than double the proc chance but half the duration of the conditions will net-gain Engineers who use explosives. As a side-effect, Shrapnel will be a bit more “bursty” in terms of damage. However this seems more like a smoothing out of RNG. The 15% chance was fairly uncommon to occur so this new version should make things more consistent (which is always nice).
9. The tooltips showing which skills are considered “Explosive” will certainly be appreciated, as will making Gyro self-destructs explosive. However, I will miss crippling smoke bombs, though I will entirely admit that interaction was unintuitive and certainly a bug.
10. Pinpoint Distribution. THIS NEW VERSION LOWS YOUR CONDITION DAMAGE! (Though, I admit, not by too much.) With the old version, you were guaranteed 100 Condition Damage and it only went up from there. In a reasonable build, it would net you between 163 – 200(ish) extra points which was nice! But now it’s set to 150, losing you stats (though it gives it to other players, too). HOWEVER, giving condition damage is nothing like giving power. Power will always be useful, as will precision or ferocity since all skills scale off of those three stats. Condition Damage though? Not all abilities scale with it. It’s a net-gain most of the time, but this still rubs me the wrong way quite a bit.
11. These Flamethrower buffs are actually quite nice. It pushes the FT a bit more into a hybrid kit, which isn’t bad by any means. Flame Blast, which was fairly respectable burst, is now improved by a fair amount from the damage increase, not to mention 9 seconds of extra burning if you can time your blast well. These changes likely aren’t going to increase FT’s use at all, but they will push the numbers up a bit for people who do use it. Okay, so I somehow misread the FT patch part no less than 3 times. It made sense to try to push it to a Hybrid kit sorta place that ALL the other kits are at, but now…. I mean I guess it gives you some reliable burning.

What wasn’t changed:

• Med Kit. Oh lord, Med Kit. Another balance patch and yet again, no change to Med Kit. The numbers are theoretically there, but the difficulty of using it and the loss of a player’s DPS while using it just makes Med Kit a complete joke. Literally the only use is in a Static Shock build for the F1 ability.
• Turrets. Turrets need love. While not as kittenhredder Gyro, they’re still pretty far down there (except healing turret). For most of them, their use is outweighed by “losing” a utility slot for something better.
• Gadgets feel like they’re on the cusp of usability, but for the most part, anything they do, you can get with something else better. Blast Gyro makes Battering Ram look like a joke, Utility Goggles isn’t as flexible as either Elixir B or Elixir U, Rocket Boots is just out-matched by the hammer’s #3 (though the tool belt skill is respectable), etc.
• Shield. I bet most of you forgot that Engineer can even equip a shield. I know I did. This weapon is so intensely over-shadowed by the Hammer, I honestly cannot think of a reason why you would want to equip it.
• General Trait balancing. Things are certainly better after this patch, but there are still a number of lines where I feel there is only one choice (and sometimes not even that). For instance, if I want to use Elixirs in an offensive build, I either have to choose a dead trait (unless I’m using elixir gun), remove myself from combat for 4 seconds when I hit 25% health, or have a worse regeneration on me when I’m using a kit. Tuning some traits up and maybe even tuning others down would certainly diversify builds.

If you made it through this tremendous wall of text, wow! Thanks a bunch for reading all of this. If you didn’t…
TL:DR; Engie got some nice changes, some confusing ones, and still needs a lot of work.
Either way, feel free to share how you feel on these changes.

Wasn’t the old mechanic to cc and kill the oozes as they spawn and then return to bursting the ooze ? The fight still requires you to do the same thing just now theres a big fat golden one yelling “im gonna kitten your kill if you let me” like the rest used to before the update. I’m not sure how the old start doesnt work here but oh well.

And im sorry but how is anet at fault if you encountered a teribad group exactly? its not bad design its clear and polish design yu just got unlucky with your pug run.

so maybe stop using alt+f4 and quit the game properly instead?

edit to add: the game often ‘forgets’ where you last were, especially if you were last anywhere near pvp (or activities). this can cause crashes, or loading you into random places in the world. if you have an alt character you can get around it by loading that character first, then your first ‘forgotten’ character. the game will ‘remember’ where you really were then.

NineLives.8725:

But you all don’t understand : engineer should have NO purpose, this what they meant by “Purity of purpose”, in the case of engineer it did mean to reach the great “NO purpose” final state they worked on last years.

Everyone would agree those nerfs were a great success : we had few purposes lefts, and this was absolutly not right, so they removed some.

I believe next patch is the good one, few incoming nerfs will now be enough to make the last ones playing engineer definitly drop the class.

Congratulation Anet, good job

Exactly this. Scrapper was designed and SOLD with an actual theme behind it.
Big part of the theme was control, interrupting enemies with dazes and stuns.

Many people already said back then that the trait which improves stuns and dazes by 25% will be kinda lackluster.
Now they just removed 6 dazes from scrapper. The disruptor theme got officially removed.

Anet is removing any uniqueness and any theme from engineer bit by bit.
And you are totally right, scrappers purpose is to have no purpose.

Seems after some time Anet thought “you know what….. his name is scrapper. His theme should actually be to be as worthless as his name is implying!”
And here we are, you did a great job, Anet.

“Purity of purpose” in this context makes the balance team look even more out of touch than they are already.

In the same paragraph outlining the purity of removing the daze they buff the PHYSICAL damage of two skills whose primary roles is CONDITIONS (Fire Bomb) and MOBILITY (Rocket Boots), this isnt even mentioning that the toolbelt on rocket boots is a CONDITION SKILL!

Seriously ANet has absolutely zero clue what to do with Engineers. The last two balance updates have done NOTHING but nerf our meta builds while buffing skills that are STILL and will CONTINUE to go unused because they do not fit with the rest of the class.

GG ANet, GG.

After multiple nerfs gyros running out of features.