Guild Wars 2

Note that Predator is still bugged and won’t change the look of your Grenade Volley like it used to. The bug still hasn’t been fixed for a while now.

Throw Elixir S’s stability still does not enlarge people. This bug is a carryover since the last patch.

When having The Predator equipped, “Grenade Barrage” still doesn’t inherit the projectile of the weapon. This bug is a carryover since the aesthetic change.

Engineer is Credit to [TEAM]

Don’t stand on the rainbow bridge. It disappears after the counter expires and you fall into the acid and die.

Seras.5702:

Thorson.9218:

Engineers are “masters of mechanical mayhem” right? Well…..I vote for a Mech that we can summon and jump into that lasts for 10 seconds and we can just tear kitten up. Midi-gun, rockets…..yeah, a Mech would be “Elite”. ;-)

-Thor

I already got that…my Asura racial golem suit. And it sucks. So if they do a mech suit (an idea I actually like) it needs to be miles better than the Asura suit. I’m thinking a battle suit like the one Tony Stark made in the cave in the movie…big, clunky, covered in weapons. But steam powered.

We already have a “transform” skill: Elixir X.

However, I agree. Rather than stealing elites from other classes that even they don’t ever use, it’d be awesome to have an Iron Man suit or something we can call our own.

Regardless, that still leaves the Mortar.

If you’re complaining now, just realize that the Predator used to have a plasma grenade effect on the Grenade Volley toolbelt skill. They just outright removed that because kitten Engineers.

Confirming that the Deployable Turrets trait sets turrets to their pre-patch skills. Undoubtedly a bug.

The Elixir Gun does seem just as strong as it was a month ago pre-patch. Considering the Kit Refinement nerf greatly reducing the usefulness of the Elixir Gun, I assumed the buff was to slightly make up for the inability to have two Superelixirs anymore.

This used to be the case with the old grenade kit and they fixed it a few months ago. I can attest that the bug is back.

This scenario just happened to my party. Thankfully, they were great enough to go through another round and we got through Cliffside again with no bugs.

I was the one to hit the final seal to break it (mesmer), and it seemed that the cultist healed the seal a little just as I broke it. There was a breaking animation, and the seal disappeared, but the top right showed a sliver of health remaining. The seal was invisible yet clickable. We broke it again but the gate did not open. The enemies also stopped spawning on both sides.

We did a mass-suicide and the seals respawned, but the enemies did not spawn at all so we had nothing to charge the hammer.

Again, note that we outright reset everything with the same people in the party and did Cliffside again. It worked fine the second time.

I find use in them all, really.

Thumper Turret has tons of health. Great in the Dredge fractal to drop as a distraction so Dredge don’t pick up your bombs. Useful in the Grawl Fractal boss as well for when the elementals are summoned; your turrets are immune to the fire (but vulnerable to agony).

Rifle Turret is a staple in Static Discharge builds.

Rocket Turret actually pumps out respectable damage. Throw it on the wall when you’re feeling lazy and it’s all good. Useful for enemies that have tons of health and tend to melee such as the Snowblind Fractal end boss, The Butcher, etc.

Flame Turret, I never use. Awful.

Healing Turret, some people love, but I prefer Med Kit. I’d use the Healing Turret, but there’s a conflict of slots.

Net Turret is more of a PvP item. Too short range for WvW, I’ve found, but it’s rally great for when it works.

Only an Engineer can drop a set of supplies with pinpoint accuracy…

…in the middle of an underground facility or cave…

…and have all the turrets deploy upright on their tripods.

I tend to focus mostly on Engineer and Mesmer, and both extensively use the F-keys. I had to rebind them.

One thing I’ve noticed is that Engineer and Mesmer utilities were, for the most part, not often an emergency-use skill. However, often they are with the case of Elixir-R and Decoy and such. Therefore, I rebound my utilities to F1, F2, F3. The “use-in-case-of-emergency” skill is almost always F1.

As for the toolbelt skills, they are Q, E, R, and V. Q being my F1 heal toolbelt skill works well with Tab being the heal utility skill. Not much of a mentality shift when you stop being an engineer. Additionally, having the often-used mesmer Mind Wrack being Q is useful. As for Engineer, spamming Tab for the heal utility works great during jumping puzzles when you have Speedy Kits and want to spam Med Kit.
Toolbelt skills E and R are usually offensive (grenade barrage, throw wrench, etc) and toolbelt skill V is usually defensive (healing mist, throw elixir, etc). Corresponds with mesmer shatter skills rather well.

Elite is F4 and the far key on my mouse. You don’t use this skill often, and rarely in case of emergency.

For the sake of mobility:
Z for descend in water.
X for 180 degree turn (GW1 crossover)
C for target closest enemy (GW1 crossover)
Mouse Thumb button for dodge roll

After spamming grenades for so long, I’ve gotten used to reaching for the weapon skill keys being 1-5, so no rebinding there.

Do note that during the GW2Guru interview today, they mentioned that character-specific keybinds are “on the backburner”. They’ve been considering this for a year now.

Jon Peters on Engineer when asked about the class:

• They’re looking at Engineer kits.
• Grenades are fine.
• They’re focusing on bringing things up to viability right now.
  
  Wishy-washy answers, nothing really substantial.

Yeah, I heard that too. I was very disappointed.

Revan.6259:

Chickenshoes.6250:

What about elixir F?

It cripples so I think it stands for +FFFFFF+UUUUUUUUUUU….

Patch Notes, Jan. 28th:

Engineer:

-Updated skill “Elixir F”. This skill is mandatory on all Engineer skill bars, as a way of balancing out this clearly OP class. Elixir F does the following on consumption:

• Kills Character
• Destroys all armor currently worn by character.
• Charges any credit cards on file for current player for $100.

Throwing the Elixir can only be used in WvW, and has the following effects:

• Immediately kills all friendlies on map.
• Assigns all friendly keeps and supply points to a random enemy team.

Hey, it could happen.

They would have to nerf Grenade damage by 30% to compensate.

LinkR.6190:

I don’t know, but 50% more rolling sounds pretty good to me. I have had several clutch moments where a just a little more endurance could have saved my kitten

Oh, no. 50% more rolling is fine.

But check the tiers of the two traits. THAT is disparity.

The Rifle Turret toolbelt skill doesn’t have any activation time. It’s mediocre in Static Discharge builds, and thus people use it. You can also place and detonate your turret for an additional discharge.

Tigirius may be more right than we realize.

They nerfed the underwater Rocket Boots the first month of the game to not function at all because it could launch you out of water in a comedic fashion. This was due to poor coding.

They still haven’t fixed it.

Penguin.5197:

Edit: also if other classes are getting portal, seems like engineers are the best candidates to get one

Rifle and Pistol damage will have to be reduced 30% to compensate.

There were several questions on the thread regarding Engineers with five people chain-agreeing to a question. They don’t even mention the term “engineer”.

Are there any plans to introduce more medals to the game similar to the World Completion medal next to our name?

Mif.3471:

Why are Engineers penalized for their versatility, while Elementalists, which you called the “kings of versatility”, aren’t penalized?

I’d like to second this question.

Engineers are not supposed to be viable. They’re supposed to be fun.

Giving the Engineer’s skills to other classes allows them to be fun while also remaining viable.

Most notably those “sarcastic patch notes” that are famous on Reddit, many of the overarching posts on forums tend to forget that Engineer is even a class.

Not many people complain about Engineer being unfun. It’s very enjoyable. But when I actually want to be useful for my team, I use my other characters.

I used to use the Elixir Gun because I enjoyed seeing green numbers pop up next to my allies thinking I was being useful. After that got nerfed, I respecced my Guardian using some build I found online to heal allies. Ironically, I was healing allies better than my Engineer ever could and still dealing damage without breaking my (1) key.
I used to think my Elixir Gun light fields were useful in Twilight Arbor, but then I tried a guardian, and then I realized they poop light fields as a side effect of many of their skills.

Point is, play Engineer because you enjoy their playstyle and ignore the numbers.
If you have an inferiority complex and feel inadequate, then Engineer is not for you.

Engineer is all about fun. Just choose your favorite kit and enjoy yourself. The goal of an Engineer isn’t to be effective or useful; the goal is to simply make the noises you enjoy the most while the rest of your team carries you.

Personally, I enjoy the sound that the flamethrower makes. It has a very FWOOSH sound and you can even hear the valve closing at the end. It’s great.

People say that grenades got nerfed or something, but I really didn’t care. They still make the same sounds and are just as satisfying to watch. With the new buff to Engineers regarding sigils, I can actually do fun and silly things like summon creatures and make electrical noises too!

Long story short, shoot for fun and ignore the effectiveness.
If you want effective, make a Guardian, Warrior, or Mesmer.

Arenanet already gave us a method of playing better.

While on your Engineer, press F12 on your keyboard. Mac users have to do some funky fiddly thing; look it up.

Then, click a blank spot on the page you see. If you have no blank spots, throw money at Arenanet.

The details of the next couple screens are mostly unimportant, but just choose the options “mesmer”, “guardian”, or “warrior”. THIS is the important step.

Suddenly, your versatility as support and damage will increase severalfold. You will actually be an asset to your team, as well.

Spread the world. Engineers need to know this super secret tech.

I agree with Isslair.
Leave the “tanking” to the Guardians and somewhat to the Warriors that can not only tank better than you, but also deal respectable damage as well.

Engineers can “tank” for the sake of tanking, but the cost is the sacrifice of everything else.
It’s much better to focus on the control aspects of Engineers which we’re not awful at; in a sense, this freeze/knockdown/immobilize/blind/etc will help the team much more than an Engineer that deals negligible damage.

Long story short, I’m of the belief that Engineers should be in heavy armor, and that if there was any carryover class from GW1 for expansions, it’ll be the Dervish. I know it’s a bit difficult to retroactively change the armor of a class, but bear with me.

Of the classes planned and existing in GW1, most have been converted over to GW2 just fine with minor changes. All the core classes are here except for monk. The assassin is essentially the Thief. When/if we visit Cantha, the ritualist could work flavorfully as a necromancer, and mechanically the Engineer has many old rit skills. The paragon is very much the Guardian. The planned Utopia class chronomancer has influenced GW2’s mesmer and the summoner can be emulated by elementalist skills and many racial summons.

That leaves the Dervish. In GW2, it was essentially a very high-health caster in medium armor. It had the highest health in the entire game. Its class gimmick was also the application and removal of enchantments (boons) for extra effects while using a scythe.

As it stands in GW2 currently, both Engineers and Rangers have medium armor and medium health. Thus, the new hierarchy retrofitting Engineer and fitting the Dervish would be:
Heavy Armor: Warrior (high hp), Engineer (medium hp), Guardian (low hp)
Medium Armor: Dervish (high hp), Ranger (medium hp), Thief (low hp)
Light Armor: Necromancer (high hp), Mesmer (medium hp), Elementalist (low hp)

This makes every class nicely fit into a unique ‘slot’. In addition:
The Heavy Armors have Guardian at melee, the Engineer at range, and the Warrior at either.
The Medium Armors have Thief at melee, Ranger at ranged, and Dervish at either.

Considering specific skills aren’t the main point of this thread, I’m not really going to post them. What’s more important is the flavorful theme and mechanical niche the Engineer and Dervish can fill.

How does the Dervish fit flavorfully and mechanically into all this?
Essentially, the Dervish would be a medium-armor caster with a high health pool. It could support/heal with the staff (currently the niche of heavy Guardian and light Ele), it could melee with the scythe (signature weapon), and utilize scepters, foci, and other items. Essentially, it could fit the flavorful niche of an eastern Shaolin Monk and a western Monastery Monk that was the monk in GW1 when wielding caster weapons. However, when wielding martial weapons like the scythe, it would act more like the middle eastern holy warrior from GW1. Overall, it would still deal extensively with enchantments/boons, but the depending on the weapon equipped, it would have different strip effects used offensively or defensively.
Unlike GW1, however, the human gods are no longer here. Thus, fitting the Dervish into a more general medium-armor boon-affinity caster role would work great. Guardians don’t use the human gods for their magic. Dervishes don’t either. If you’re a Human Dervish, though, feel free to use the Avatar of Grenth or Blessing of Dwayna.
As for armor, once we go to Elona, I’m sure the current fashion of trenchcoats wouldn’t exist there.

How does the Engineer fit flavorfully and mechanically into all this?
Firstly, the Engineer is quite underpowered as a class altogether. Giving them heavy armor grants them a role they seem to be going for anyways. With all the traits that give them an toughness from the Shield to Juggernaut, Engineers enjoy toughness. Additionally, Engineers have a plethora of condition-skills that Warriors and Guardians both lack. Engineers would be the “condition” class of the heavies, rangers of the medium, and necromancers of the lights. With all the bombs, grenades, pistol shots, and miscellaneous traits that trigger conditions, Engineers seem to enjoy conditions. With bunker builds becoming the only niche of Engineers, the move would allow them to at least be as good as Guardians in this role while allowing them to branch out.
Additionally, the move to heavy armor would differentiate the taxed-due-to-versatility Engineers from the untaxed-due-to-versatility Elementalists even more.
Finally, the heavy-armored Engineer could use a the hammer as a main weapon that people have been clamoring for. They need a melee option, and perhaps with heavy armor, they may get the chance to take an acceptable amount of damage in melee-range without their damage being taxed so heavily.

Any engineer that holds a bundle and changes skills automatically drops the bundle. Not only that, but occasionally the bundle outright disappears or bugs out.

Notably, in the Swamp Fractal where you have to carry the wisp, swapping skills makes the wisp disappear.
In the Colossus Fractal, you cannot change skills without dropping your item.

Some specific events or consumables grant you a bundle that, upon switching skills, it automatically destroys the held bundle.

I understand that this coding is in place to prevent Engineers from being powerful and swapping skills after equipping a kit, but why are ALL bundles altogether dropped when an irrelevant skill is changed? It’s an unintended side-effect of the coding innate to the Engineer.

I’d be nice to have an official word on this.

Maybe it’s intentionally missing because it intrinsically deals fire damage rather than… not-fire damage…
This means it operates differently than other skins.
Regardless, it’s a meaningless difference.

This bug still hasn’t been addressed or changed.

Even if Engineers as a whole are a low-priority class, it still affects the small percentage of people.

Engineers are meant to be versatile, but then they released an sPvP patch that prevented classes from swapping their utility skills after the round began.

Slick Shoes got nerfed recently so opponents MOVING through the oil get knocked down. Clearly they’re already balanced.

If you want to add a Megazord to slick shoes, expect the knockdown duration to be reduced by 30%.

The melee Ranger is currently pretty much what you want.
Sword especially has what you’re looking for with the autoattack being a swipe-kick-leap chain.
Even the greatsword has an attack+attack+evasiveattack chain.

(2) and (4) are Ranger sword (2) which is an attack huge leap backwards and a huge leap forwards+attack+cripple. All while evading due to agility and not stealthmagic.

(3) is Ranger sword (3) which is an agile leap behind the enemy. Poison is involved. All while evading due to agility again.

(4) is also Ranger Dagger (4) which is an attack+poison+evade.

Ranger also has a utility skill Lightning Reflexes where you dodge backwards and dead damage.

(5) is essentially the Warrior Sword (4) where you impale your enemy for bleeding on hit, and can use (4) again to rip the sword out for extra damage.

Even in GW1, they were still timed and not permanent. The Norn you fought at the resurrection shrines would channel and become the bear for a short time and then fight as normal after that. Even the GW1 skills such as Ursan Blessing that were granted to humans worked under a timer, but those didn’t transform you.

They don’t actually become the animal, they are so in-tune with the spirit that they channel their host spirit into them and change their outer form.

One thing that worked really well was the Volfen Blessing skill from GW1 in a specific mission:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Volfen_Blessing_
For those uninitiated, you had energy degen when in this form, but for every attack you successfully hit with, you’d gain energy. The form ended when you ran out of energy.
Long story short, you could maintain the Wolf Blessing as long as you kept attacking.

Perhaps if the Norn forms here had certain conditions they had to fulfill in order to be maintained.
Example:
Raven Form currently turns you into a horrendous anthropomorphic raven. Perhaps when you activated it, there would be a 30sec countdown that would decrease so long as you were not moving. Thus, Become the Raven would encourage you to be mobile to stay in the form. Become the Wolf would decrease so long a you weren’t attacking. Become the Snow Leopard would decrease so long as you weren’t moving. Become the Bear would decrease so long as you weren’t being attacked.

It may be clunky, but it would encourage you to act as the animal in order to maintain that form. Hence it would add much-needed flavor to the forms that otherwise aren’t really being used.

It’s a gun held by a class whose sound-staple is tons of explosions.

I’d be offended if Engineers didn’t make loud noises.

There’s something that has been slowly being suggested to us this whole time. It’s kind of a secret. You have to decide whether to make your character more suited for WvW or PvE, but the process is mostly the same.

When playing your Engineer, press F12; you’ll see a menu pop up. Choose the middle button.
When you’re on this page, you may see some empty slots that you haven’t filled up yet. Click one of them.
The details don’t matter, but if you want to be good at PvE, choose the “mesmer” or “guardian” or “warrior” option.
Play as normal. Just note that your autoattack and other skills are much stronger now. It also removes the bugs from the majority of your traits.

This is NOT an exploit and I’m pretty sure it’s completely legit. Plenty of Engineers I know have done this, and they’re still having fun.

It’s arguably one of the strongest builds available to Engineer at the moment.

You should have seen the trade spam in the game before the TP went online. Everyone that found an item of green or gtreater would spam map chat in pretty much every zone.

I believe a majority of my block list still consists of those people.

The Tradepost is cross-server and cross-map. Player-to-player trading encourages map-spam and only works within the server.

I rather like the levelup effect. It’s almost entirely positive with a knockback, heal, and cooldown reset. It’s also hard to plan around.

Just making it so that numbers pop up when you deal damage to a stealthed target would go a long way. As it stands, if a thief stealths and I hit them in melee or with an AoE, they do take damage, but I have no idea that they took this damage.

Blind AoE or wild melee swings should be a soft counter to stealth.

Flamethrower needs power and not condition damage, but even then the power-based damage is rather lacking. Flamethrower (1) only burns on the last hit.

Elixir gun is nice, but as a damage-dealer, it’s also lacking. Pistol does almost as much damage as the EG autoattack, but it benefits from weapon stats. Additionally, the bonus AoE damage and the option to switch to the penetrating pistol trait makes it better.

If you’re going for control and want to use pistols, stick with pistol+shield. Pistol+Pistol has only one immobilize/cripple skill and a decent-damage burn skill that ONLY benefits from condition damage. The shield grants you a melee-stun, a daze, projectile reflect, and an PBAoE push; you can’t get more control than that in two skills.

Pistol is medicore, but shield is great.
Debatably, the burning and immobilize on the off-hand pistol aren’t worth not taking the amazing utility behind the shield.

I wondered what you were talking about, but after a simple search…

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/15dfzg/which_profession_should_i_pick_up_mesmer_or/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/15ddem/alternative_class/

Yeah, people rather are simply quitting Engineer. I remember it being the least common profession after Mesmer, and we all know how that turned out.

…which is problematic in dungeons that force you to be transformed.

Does anyone know if the trait is bugged for the Charr area in FotM as well?

EDIT: Now that I know what I’m searching for, found the main thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Mesmer-Deceptive-Evasion-doesn-t-work-when-transformed-Merged

Donut.6914:

Lol the Engineers in GW2 are not smarter than any other profession. Sure they have more imagination, but 90% of the Engineer’s tools don’t work properly. Turrets blow themselves up to do damage, half of the rifle skill bar involves blowing up your rifle, the elixirs are random and unpredictable, the rocket boots just throw you backwards, etc etc. Even though the description for the Engie pins the word “genius” on them, Engies in game are far from genius. They seem to me like average people with a crazy imagination and a knack for scrappy fighting/chaos. Those dialog options make perfect sense to me.

Engineers are still geniuses in that they have the intelligence to build those things.
Their curiosity just overrides their sense of safety.

It’s more like book-smarts over common sense.

I know I can’t be the only one that encountered this bug. I did AC again, and it’s reproducible.

A rather niche scenario, but in AC path 3, you go through some of the dungeon and get transformed into ghost form. The Mesmer’s Deceptive Evasion trait does not work when in ghost form.

The Deceptive Evasion was working fine in combat before becoming a ghost, and after the final boss was killed, it worked after being reverted to normal.

For some of us that enjoy the clone-factory shatter mesmers, it makes an enormous difference.

It’s not a major issue at all, and I’d imagine changing around existing zones would be a hassle. It’s just a consideration for Anet to take that I’m sure has been on many people’s minds.