Make damage taken while in stealth cause the thief’s silhouette to flicker, revealing his position. This means he has to choose to either be more careful about taking damage while in stealth, either choosing to dodge hits, quickly landing his abilities inside enemy AoE, or just waiting for enemy AoE to expire. Flickering =/= Revealed, so the thief can still activate his stealth attacks.
In return for the stealth nerf, buff any of the following: The thief’s utility, damage, cooldowns, traits, mobility, or team support.
You know why this should be done? Because then stealth would have ACTUAL COUNTERPLAY. It would be fun to play because it would be more risky, and it would be more fun to play against because there is at least a limited degree of straight counterplay.
Good game design requires that a mechanic be fun to play, but also be fun to play against. It’s not fun when a thief is able to reset a fight endlessly due to Infusion of Shadow and Shadow’s Embrace. It’s also not fun for the thief when he ends up being useless in large teamfights due to the class’s over-emphasis on the stealth mechanic.
Don’t let one broken mechanic pigeonhole the class into stealth-abuse and being useless in high-end pvp because of it.
-angry gimmick thieves who don’t want usability buffs incoming-
(edited by Aegael.6938)
PLEASE just increase the radius. The radius seems to be something like ~80, you need to be closer than melee range to proc the damage and even then it’s not very much even on a full glass build.
I don’t think our class is the problem, I think the problem is that perma-retaliation is so easy to get in large groups. It doesn’t just affect our class when someone decides to use a cheese strategy like this.
Personally I’m much more unhappy about being a pretty much all-ranged class. Reflects work unbelievably well against us, an effect that’s just as rampant as retaliation.
Oh, and the high-CC aspect of our class is also countered to a large extent to random AoE stability from guardians.
(edited by Aegael.6938)
Ah right. Make the inventions traitline actually useful outside of gimmick builds.
It’s the turret traitline, but turrets suck. There’s also a bunch of random crap thrown in there, plus like three decent traits that are stuck in master or grandmaster tier, those being shield CDR, Elite Supplies and healing bombs.
It’s like the traitline where they decided to throw in everything that didn’t belong in another traitline. If they condensed a few turret traits, improved them a little, and maybe added some gadget traits, it might be worthy of investing into more often.
Wish list: Anet fixes the numerous bugs and makes both power-based builds and turrets viable in actual mid to high level PvP.
Reality:
-Fixed an issue where Engineers could achieve large uptime on Swiftness.
Speedy Kits now has a 15 second internal cooldown and only activates in combat.
-Fixed an issue where Engineers could achieve large uptime on Vigor.
Invigorating Speed now has a 15 second internal cooldown and only activates in combat.
-Fixed an issue where Engineers could achieve large uptime on Protection.
Protection Injection’s Protection buff reduced to 1 second. Increased cooldown to 20 seconds.
-Improved Fumigate’s scaling coefficient from 0.05 per tick to 0.06.
Wow. Just a simple thing like reliable class mechanic activation hasn’t been fixed in a year.
Applause, please
gg OP posts immensely obvious troll and people take him seriously, continuously bumping the thread
check his post history and the troll is so blindingly obvious it could rival the sun itself
What type of PvP content is this for? How well do you do when outnumbered? Your chill rotation seems to be mostly single-target, and you don’t seem to have much AoE in general.
Playing against enemy rangers, I feel that they pretty much cover what the ranger was in GW1. Annoying, tough to kill, and will constantly poke you down at range until you die.
I would say they’re extremely strong for smaller-size skirmishes and roaming, and they’re probably one of the best classes at kiting. They’re also a strong source of mixed damage, due to the nature of their traitlines as well as their class mechanic allowing for two different sources of damage.
If pets and weapons receive some quality-of-life buffs and some traits get condensed or moved to different traitlines, I would definitely consider this an overall strong class, considering that it’s already pretty good at roaming in WvW and is currently strong in SPvP and TPvP.
I would say that for large-scale WvW fights and general PvE, it would be great if Ranger had some additional support options. Shouts are currently unviable for support due to being outclassed by options that several other classes bring, the Ranger brings no blast finishers to the table, and the evasive / defensive nature on his weaponsets are largely selfish, offering little to his allies. The only unique and powerful team utility that a Ranger can offer to his team is a 15/30 uptime water field on his heal. While fairly powerful, I don’t think the one skill is enough to justify taking the class amongst its other weaknesses.
Currently, only spirits can be seen as strong team support options. I’d like to see the ranger’s effective support repertoire to be extended to include more support-oriented pets that are effective outside of attacking and are less vulnerable to AoE spam. Someone mentioned pets that stay out of combat and provide passive buffs to the team, perfect for areas in which pets can easily be demolished through incidental AoE.
Shouts could also benefit. Trait consolidation and a more powerful grandmaster trait would go a long way towards giving us some solid team support. Maybe a traited “protect me” could protect a nearby ally instead of just yourself, or something similar. Regen and swiftness really doesn’t cut it for a grandmaster trait in my opinion.
tl;dr Rangers suffer from their selfish kits and bring little to no team utility to the table, their damage is oftentimes subpar and their condition damage is outclassed. Their niche in being an evasive kiting machine doesn’t benefit large group combat, where utility and synergy is key. If physical projectile finishers were more useful, that might also make their viability jump up.
Never hit the button more than once, the pet cancels itself.
That’s a bug too. If the skill is canceled, it shouldn’t go on cooldown.
This is not a bug, almost all skills go on ~2s CD if they’re canceled/interrupted.
Except it goes on full CD when cancelled.
I recently picked up my ranger again, and I did read in some previous patch notes that the pet F2 was supposed to be more responsive now after a change. Instead what I’m experiencing is that half the time the F2 will go on cooldown for no apparent reason (maybe I spammed the button too much) and the other half of the time my pet ignores me and does what he thinks should be done instead. Any regular rangers have advice to give me on how the F2 activation really works, or is this just bugged like everything else?
I’ve fought quite a few warriors running this build, and I’ve run it myself a few times. I find the exchange to be fun on both sides. It’s refreshing, and I need to play around my opponent and predict properly, otherwise I’ll be dead.
Now, the typical warrior will run the defensive setup with PVT, or Soldier amulet, so pretty much all of their damage is going to be in their stuns. When the enemy isn’t stunned, this spec does laughable damage. Even with a full combo, you aren’t likely to be oneshotting someone.
What I figure is the main frustration isn’t even the ideal “stun on 8 second CD” argument, it’s the fact that this build has so much inherent regen built in. That on top of a few man-mode skills of your choice to deny the enemy their cc, damage, or conditions, makes you a really scary class to fight for a short amount of time. This can be pretty frustrating, and while I find it fun to fight these guys, I don’t particularly care for the fact that they can pretty easily shrug off the damage I put on them unless I’m running full burst or full conditions.
However, in a cancerous metagame of condition spam and P/D permastealth thieves, I’m inclined to give this build a pass due to the fact that it actually requires thought and game knowledge. If you don’t manage your berserker stance or signet of stamina properly, you’ll still be easily killable, even in a 1v1. Compare to a Necromancer fear/burn build or a Spirit Ranger build, specs which are essentially brainless to play and this is designed to counter. Don’t forget that this build is almost solely designed for 1v1 combat. On top of that, it’s designed to counter the tanky condi meta which is the majority of builds being run in SPvP right now. If it’s excelling in those categories, it’s working as intended.
tl;dr if you nerf this nerf P/D thieves and tanky condi.
Engineer would be the only profession to put a pile of junk in his pocket just to troll people who try to steal from him.
Make it fire on its own when not in use, make it be invulnerable or be able to take more hits, at least.
I can see a very niche use for the mortar if it becomes more tanky, you’d essentially have a reactionary stability anytime you needed it if you saw an incoming CC.
There are just so many problems with this elite. Immobility, minimum range to fire at, outclassed by grenades, low damage, can’t crit which means extremely poor scaling, squishy environmental weapon that takes away all of your kitswap and MH weapons when in use, you can’t even fire it and then switch back to your weapons since if the mortar lands a hit when nobody is operating it, it’s as if the projectile never existed and it does nothing.
As long as they’re decently thought out, most builds aren’t directly better or worse, they just depend on your playstyle. I can comment a bit on your builds and tell you which one I’d prefer.
Your first build looks somewhat confusing. You spec for direct damage but bring flamethrower, which has negligible direct damage on pretty much everything besides the 2 attack. You did spec for the +15% trait, so I assume you intend to use 1 and 2 a lot, with net shot setups. I don’t think this is optimal if you’re looking for damage, but it can work.
Rifle as a choice leaves you incredibly vulnerable to people who jump on your face, which is a common thing in wvw roaming. Due to rifle’s 2 and 4 functionality, you might do well in a duel, but I can’t see you faring well if you get ambushed from behind while in a fight. You have no stunbreaker, med kit heal takes twice as long to cast as healing turret, and your only condition removal is antidote. Between Rocket Boots and Jump Shot you have decent mobility though, so I would say that the first build has a higher chance of killing people, especially if they decide to run away, but it’s also more likely to be killed due to giving up shield and not taking enough defensive utilities such as tool kit or elixir S. Duels will be about if you can kill the other guy fast enough before he can retaliate, and 1vX situations will be hard. You might end just running away if outnumbered.
Your second build features bombs, something I’ve never been a fan of for solo roaming, but you could possibly make it work between smoke bomb for stealth and magnet for the pull. Bomb kit also makes for a great spacing tool, because as I’ve said before, most wvw roamers tend to favor melee and jumping onto your face, which plays right into your hands if you set up bombs properly. Static Shot, bomb kit, and tool kit shield let you have a decent amount of defense and you’ll probably win if you kite melee enemies properly, but you’ll have very limited defense or offense against enemies who choose to kite you at range due to giving up shield and choosing to run bomb kit. You’ll likely have trouble with rangers and condition-spamming pistol thieves. Due to the AoE nature of the skills and the defense provided by tool kit, you’ll manage better when outnumbered, but your mobility is worse. You have a decent escape in smoke bomb → blast finisher.
Personally, I would stick with the second build and run condition damage gear. It has decent tankiness with AoE control and damage. It has a nice stealth combo that can be used in a lot of ways. I might alter the build a little to be more resistant to conditions, maybe switching out OH pistol for shield as well, but that’s your call.
It’s more of a playstyle thing than anything else. I’d assume you would be talking more about PvP and WvW.
If you want to rush in the middle of a fight and deal massive damage, you best bet is to bring along a guardian for the AoE heals, condition removals and boons. The downside is that the guardian is not very mobile and can’t easily escape a fight when he’s in it.
If you want to assassinate people with massive burst damage, your best bet is to bring along a mesmer or a thief for stealth and added getaway potential. Both make for great roamers, but in a straight up large-scale teamfight, thieves especially typically make for rather squishy targets.
No matter what class you guys pick, though, you can always build around each other. The only thing I’d recommend is to not pick the same class, and perhaps not to pick the Necromancer, simply because he’s a really low-mobility class. Your call though.
On the topic of oversized hitboxes, it seems that that turrets don’t actually occupy any vertical space. What this means is that I can’t actually use them as meatshields for ranged attacks. I would be more than happy if turrets had oversized hitboxes that actually allowed them to block hits for you, but right now all that happens is that they take unnecessary damage from AoE.
Great article, hope you guys do well. I think it would be interesting if you made a similar build setup of running a team comp that everyone expects, except you guys turn out to be burst rather than condi.
It is unfortunate that most kits have similar weaknesses: Bomb kit on its own is only useful if the enemy is stupid and stands in the bombs, Tool kit on its own is easily kited, Flamethrower on its own can be countered handily by kiting. We often have to combine multiple kits in order to achieve build viability due to the inherent weaknesses of each kit.
It’d be nice if a few more of our kits took after the Grenade kit. I’m not simply saying our kits should be buffed, since even the Grenade kit isn’t that powerful until after a hefty 30 trait investment. With this heavy trait allocation, the kit becomes very viable at all ranges, close or far, and comes coupled with great burst, condition damage, and control aspects. Because of the existence of the Grenadier trait, the utility slots “taken up” by grenade kit are very light, because it doesn’t require other utility slots to make it useful. This means that gadgets and elixirs suddenly become viable choices, as evidenced by the ever-popular HGH nade build.
What this means is that inherent kit skill synergy, rather than forcing us to combine certain kits and utilities for maximum effect, would really lighten up the load on our utility slots, which would be a great step in the problem of opportunity cost when taking too many non-kit utilities. I think it would be a great idea to add more powerful Master and Grandmaster traits to all of our skill lines, ones similar to Grenadier. This would ultimately lead to the player’s choice of having a few, specialized and traited utilities, such as multiple traited gadgets, or letting the player bring multiple kits without the trait specialization in order for a more jack-of-all-trades spec.
A good example would be the magnetic bomb for bomb kit: an AoE pull, it’s the perfect power-up to the Bomb Kit, something you can only get if you trait for it. Or, you could ignore the trait, and instead attempt to set up your bombs with Tool Kit’s Magnet or the Rifle’s Net Shot. he build diversity would be amazing if we just received a few more actually meaningful traits. (Now, if only Kit Refinement weren’t such a terrible trait with an exceedingly long GCD, magnetic bomb would actually be used more often. Hint to Anet: change the 20s GCD into a 10s ICD, then turn it into a master or grandmaster trait. Either that, or split up the trait into separate kit-related traits, so you could choose which kits to trait, so you would have to trait each kit separately if you wanted all of the kitswap effects.)
By meaningful traits, of course, I mean something that really feels powerful. Grenadier is a straight 50% increase in damage and condition duration. Despite it being a powerful trait, it also has strong counterplay in retaliation and a soft counter in reflects, which makes it not quite overpowering.
Tool Kit, Gadgets, Turrets, even Elixir Gun and Flamethrower could benefit from more meaningful traits. Gadgets currently have only a 20% CDR trait, which really hurts their viability. Turrets are incredibly useless even when quintuple with a full condition build to complement the scaling. The current traits need to be condensed and a very powerful grandmaster trait needs to come out to make turrets viable.
Tool Kit’s trait, Power Wrench, is a pretty good trait, but it’s not something that would make you think, “this is definitely a trait I need to build around.” It’s a more of an “eh, take it for the shield CDR if there’s no other trait that’s better.” If Power Wrench were made into a grandmaster trait that made box of nails instant cast and do double bleeding stacks, made gear shield reflect, and made magnet faster and autoattack cast faster, there would be an extremely powerful trait that would truly allow for a one-kit focus while still allowing people to take the kit for its simple baseline functionality if they didn’t want to spec so far into Tools.
On a final note…WHY THE HECK is Tool Kit’s third auto chain OBJECTIVELY worse than the first two?! It takes twice as long of a windup while dealing BARELY more than the two autoattacks would. However, it doesn’t apply vuln and also doesn’t cleave. It’s actually WORSE in most situations to use the third attack in the chain! Most good engineers will cancel the last cast with a pry bar or a throw wrench. This needs to be changed!
tl;dr: We need more strong grandmaster traits that allow for more skill specialization rather than simply spamming our utility slots with kits. Base functionality doesn’t even need to be improved that much, (other than the terribad wrench auto I just mentioned) we just need good traits.
(edited by Aegael.6938)
Is the solution to the gadget / turret problem really to buff mainhand weapons? While I agree that they could receive usability buffs, I think that most engineers will just have a slightly better pistol or rifle, and continue to use a number of kits. By itself, this wouldn’t impact the problem that you mentioned: gadgets and turrets as a whole take up valuable utility slot space. Even if these utilities are passable or even good, kits are usually better, due simply to the fact that they have more skills. Even if you have a strong mainhand weaponset with synergistic skills, you’ll eventually use up its four cooldowns, then if you’re running non-kit utilities, you’ll be left with a couple of extremely situational skills to defend or attack with. The way gadgets and turrets are currently designed, I don’t see this path being a likely fix for engineer skill viability.
What I’ve mentioned so far is a situation caused by the lack of energy costs in this game. Because there is typically no cost to using skills other than their cooldowns, more cooldowns is almost always preferable to less. Instead, I think we should look at the skills themselves:
Turrets currently suffer from long cooldowns, being squishy, immobility, to ACCIDENTAL cleave and AoE, and nonexistent scaling for power/pre, limiting theoretical usage to tanky builds or condition builds. All of this on top of low damage is a bit of a slap in the face, especially when compared to the AI of other classes, such as the Necromancer MM build. The player is basically immune to conditions while their minions are up, the minions are mobile, and they deal more damage. Some traits can be slotted that cause minions to scale with the player’s stats. Having any of that would benefit turrets and improve viability.
Gadgets suffer mainly from overspecialization. I said earlier that more cooldowns are preferable to less; the rare exception is if there is some specialized utility required, such as the boon strip from mine field, the unblockable CC component of throw mine, or the mobility of rocket boots. To demonstrate the problem, most skills have a parallel skill in kits: Ram Head can be compared to Big Bomb, Rocket Boots can be compared to Acid Bomb, Ram Head may be faster cast without a tell, but Big Bomb is AoE, on top of offering four more skills beyond the launch effect. Rocket Boots is a strong mobility skill, recently buffed, but it still faces some competition from Acid Bomb, a shorter cooldown leap that doesn’t go as far and doesn’t cure conditions, but also offers four other skills as well as a stunbreaker. While these skills aren’t exactly the same, they demonstrate the general problem of more cooldowns typically being more useful overall.
I’ve talked about weak options for the engineer so far, but there is one thing I want to talk about. Elixirs.
Elixirs, on release, were mocked the same way turrets and gadgets are mocked today. They were RNG and typically had long cooldowns. They also suffered from the same opportunity cost that plague turrets and gadgets, in that they take up a valuable kit slot. However, the thing that made elixirs different, and actually, in the end, viable, was the fact that they had meaningful traits.
20% CDR and cleanse conditions on usage. After that, all elixirs needed was a small HGH buff to push an all-elixir build into viability.
Due to the precedent that the HGH elixirs build set, I would say that the first step to viability for gadgets and turrets is meaningful traits. Gadgets currently have only a 20% cdr trait, and turrets are pretty clunky and squishy even when double traited for survivability, and still deal low damage even with Rifled Turret Barrels and full condition damage. Their utility is lacking compared to kits, and turrets currently don’t offer much that other skills can’t.
I would say that meaningful traits are more important at this point than MH buffs for skill viability. Being able to trait a skill line is somewhat essential, it provides an element of unpredictability to a build as well optional upgrades that can be played without. For example, if you wanted to specialize in gadgets, all you would have to do is take all of the gadget traits. If you just wanted Rocket Boots for the mobility, you wouldn’t need to trait it. If you wanted to go all turrets you would do the same thing, pick up all the related turret traits.
tl;dr: Turret traits need to be vastly improved, Gadget skill line needs more traits, MH weapons could use numbers changes and quality-of-life buffs, but they aren’t in the dreadful situation that some of Engineer’s utilities are in right now.
(edited by Aegael.6938)
Biggest problem is that the thief has no cooldowns, and so he can remain in one weaponset as long as the situation is right for it. The situational nature of the thief’s weaponswap on top of the shortbow’s insane utility means it always win out as his backup set.
What would probably fix the problem would be if thief had less initiative, around 10, but regained all initiative on weaponswap, so he would function under similar constraints that other classes follow, while creating interesting new builds due to the fact that he would effectively be rewarded for weaponswapping.
It’ll never happen though and if shortbow becomes any more of a problem Anet will just nerf the weapon rather than the underlying problem.
Actually, the main gimmick of the Skullcrack fotm isn’t so much the skullcrack duration, it’s the idea of being tanky sustain while still dealing passable damage. What this means is that they won’t be dealing nearly as much damage as the old full glass warriors. The typical soldiercrit spec deals laughable damage except to stunned enemies. Unless you are glass, you should be able to survive a full stunned hundred blades from them. If you can’t, either you or they are pretty fragile and you need to capitalize on that in order to win.
It’s a tough skill-based matchup that goes to whoever uses their skills the best. It’s extremely scary to duel a warrior who, at any point, can go immune to CC, conditions, and damage by clicking a button. But those all have long cooldowns, so you just need to draw out the fight to win.
(edited by Aegael.6938)
Would be nice to be a part of a mono-class guild, but I can’t afford a 1600gem serverswap.
Would prefer CD if it matters.
Sounds like a learn to play issue.
I wasn’t good at managing 1vX until I learned other classes. You might know your own class, but you have to know what your enemy is going to do, too. You have to know their big attacks and when they don’t want to be blinded or CC’d. Timing your skills and predicting your opponent as opposed to just guessing when you should use your skills makes a vast difference. It’s an extreme challenge to do this for multiple people, which adds in the factor of enemy rez potential as well as typically creating a situation where you must choose a target to focus on. Practice with all classes will let you have good decision making in these situations.
On a spec level, the current meta is to build tanky and stack condition damage and sustain, which is typically HGH nades nowadays. You’d be a bit late on the bandwagon with that, though, with the suspected nerfs to HGH as well as the slight meta-shift being caused by Warrior’s brand new immunity to conditions trait.
Personally, I think the three most powerful traits for skirmishing that the Engineer can get are Backpack Regenerator, Speedy Kits and Invigorating Speed. Backpack Regenerator provides you with powerful sustain for drawn-out fights, and perma vigor/swift is almost non-negotiable for most engineer builds. From there, you might try Incendiary Powder, which is an extremely powerful sustain damage trait, even for a power spec engi. Healing Turret is probably your best bet unless you’re going Elixir spec, due to the sustained heal, low cooldown, utility of a healing field and blast finisher as well as low cooldown condition removal. At this point, if you took all of those things, you should have 30 trait points and three utilities left to decide on. At this point, it’s up to you to decide between mobility, CC, survivability, stunbreaks, condition damage and direct damage.
I have several ideas for each weaponskill on the hammer, and I think implementing any of them would make the hammer feel more responsive, rewarding, and satisfying to use.
Backbreaker could cleave, have a shorter cooldown (15-20s), do more damage, or apply the weakness/cripple from the 2 skill. I think implementing any one or two ideas from that list would make it a fantastic skill. I don’t advocate lowering the cast time, I think that that makes for a very flashy skill that is both satisfying to land and interesting to play against. It’s clearly telegraphed as a dangerous skill, so the warrior should be rewarded for landing it and the enemy should be rewarded for avoiding it. Personally, due to the largely AoE nature of the hammer, I’m inclined to prefer a cleaving backbreaker as a change, for more AoE control.
Staggering Blow could have a shorter cast time, be used on the move, have a longer knockback, or have a lower cooldown. I think this skill could benefit greatly in a spec designed to cause havoc among multiple enemies, especially in WvW. You would run directly at the enemies like a maniac, swinging your hammer around you, knocking people around like ragdolls. I don’t like the idea of increasing the damage, I like the idea of hammer being something similar to the Rampage elite – rather than being directly powerful, you focus on causing chaos on the battlefield. Being mobile while casting would aid this skill greatly and would be much more fun to use, even if the cast time stayed the same.
I don’t have many suggestions for skill 3 – I think it’s a boring skill that attempts to counter the weakness of the melee nature of the kit. Besides the F1 skill, there aren’t any easy ways to close the distance with your enemy, and the cripple does fit into the AoE control theme of the weapon rather nicely.
For hammer 2, I strongly advocate reworking this skill, perhaps replacing it entirely. What I suggest is working the weakness of this skill into Backbreaker, which would simultaneously free up a new interesting skill slot while making Backbreaker a more valuable skill, especially in comparison to OH mace’s Tremor. I honestly don’t think there is space on a kit for two attacks that pretty much only deal one condition with no secondary effects such as cc or high damage. Therefore, my suggestion is to replace the 2 skill with yet another control attack.
Hammer in GW1 had a skill called Belly Smash, which was a followup attack. If it hit a knocked-down enemy, all nearby foes were blinded by the dust cloud. If the enemy was not knocked-down, it failed. So, my suggestion for the new attack would be this:
Belly Smash
(XX Damage)
(1/2 second cast)
This skill does x% more damage to knocked down and stunned foes. If this skill hits a foe who is knocked down or stunned, all nearby foes are blinded.
This skill would make for a fantastic followup to backbreaker and the F1 adrenal skill. It stays true to the AoE nature of the weapon, would be a unique, satisfying mechanic that isn’t just “this attack applies damage and a condition.” It also provides counterplay. As a combination attack, it punishes enemies who get hit and stay on the ground, but enemies who dodge the CC and enemies who stunbreak will be safe from the followup attack and the blind. Despite being a combination attack, it would also function decently on its own, as a quick damaging attack.
I believe the autoattack is fine, although I think the chain could cause some kind of condition or blast finisher. Most autoattacks provide some form of utility, either through finishers or conditions. Hammer is an exception, and it could apply weakness or cause blast finishers to make the autoattack more interesting. However, the autoattack is of much less concern to me than the rest of the kit.
In the end, this is the kind of synergy and thought process that I believe makes certain kits fun and other kits stagnant. You can apply this thought process to any other kit, too: Does the kit have synergy with itself, do the skills make sense? Is it balanced compared to other options the class has, and options other classes have? Does it have and follow a theme? Is it fun to play? And is it fun to play against? I asked myself all these questions and that led me to believe that the current 2 and 4 skills are of questionable use and the 5 skill of hammer does not feel especially rewarding to land. Hammer 5 is also outclassed by some other CC abilities such as Tremor, and does not stay true to the AoE nature of the rest of the kit. Finally, the 2 and 3 skills do not do much and are boring to use, due to having singular mechanics that do not synergize well. The suggestions I made would solve all of the problems I mentioned.
(edited by Aegael.6938)
Would be willing to join you if you sent me a tell anytime I’m on.
Rifle is great. The 5 skill can now be used for general mobility after the responsiveness changes, a single-target launch on a short cooldown is immensely powerful, as is a single-target immobilize on a short cooldown. 3 is boring but does decent damage.
The main problem is that shield for engineer is so ridiculously good that builds will rarely forego it. You essentially get access to 2 hard ccs, a block, a reflect, and due to the mandatory pistol mainhand, you get a bouncing blind on a short cooldown. This is incredibly strong, and addresses the main shortfall of the rifle – mostly single-target control abilities, whereas P/S 3 4 5 skills are AoE. P/S is also significantly more responsive, Rifle cast times are generally sluggish.
After everything is said and done you could have similarly asked “Why does nobody ever use P/P” – it refutes your comment about P/S being chosen for condition damage due to the fact that pistol 4 does some impressive condition damage. It’s a short cooldown AoE burn ability, but people rarely use it – due to the fact that shield is just THAT strong.
Condition builds in general will suffer against someone who specs against conditions. Most Engineers right now take about 6 condition removals.
Add on top of that his AoE grenade damage which he can spam at his feet and you’re going to basically just have to walk away any time you see an Engineer.
I can tell you that most Engineers have the biggest problem with burst damage, due to how their kit leans towards attrition battles in general. In speccing for condition damage, you basically took away your biggest advantage against the Engineer.
I can tell you that besides burst, of pretty much any Engineer in the game, and that’s hard cc. Like Necromancer and Thief, he doesn’t have any viable access to Stability. However, unlike Thief, he doesn’t have a lot of stunbreakers, usually only one. Chain CC is your friend when fighting any engineer. That’s why burst thieves function so well – catching anyone off guard with basilisk venom and an instagib backstab is pretty much the biggest cheese in the game and usually works unless you’re up against either a player with decent reaction times or a guardian. However, besides bvenom, thieves don’t have a lot of access to CC in the first place.
In other words, you don’t have a hope if the player is decent. It’s like trying to beat a bunker guardian in SPvP as a condition warrior.
Triple Gadget is absolutely hilarious no matter which gadgets you choose.
There’s nothing better than doing Ram → Overcharged Shot → Mine and watching your opponent flail around on the ground while you get autoattacks in as you chain cc them.
Slick Shoes was recently buffed so that it can knock down enemies 3-4 times as opposed to 1-2 times, and Super Shoes is now a stunbreaker so triple gadget has access to a stunbreaker now.
Engineers have access to perma vigor, multiple blinding abilities, and a host of cc abilities.
A lot of the Engineer’s defense comes from knowing his enemy’s big attacks and nullifying them with an attack of his own. Once you learn to do this, you realize you have a lot of tools – is a thief stealthed waiting for a backstab? You can drop a smoke bomb, or you can activate shield 5, or you can doubletap shield 4 in order to prevent yourself from getting attacked in melee range. You also have a lot of dodges if you slot perma vigor, so knowing which attacks to dodge is a great thing. Overall, I didn’t feel my Engineer was strong until I learned a bit about other classes and knowing which skills I want to interrupt.
You also have to know which classes have what negations – you mentioned that players have a lot of defenses, but usually one single class won’t have every single one of those. Enemy Necromancers and Thieves don’t really have access to Stability, only Guardians, Warriors and other Engineers really have access to blocking. Also, don’t forget that you have really great boon-removal and block negation of your own in the Mine gadget, if you’re having trouble with stability and blockers. Dodging is something you have to learn to predict, it’s not exclusive to any class.
The Engineer’s greatest strength probably comes from his AoE Control aspect. While most classes have some amount of control abilities, almost all of the Engineer’s are AoE – Big Bomb, Smoke Bomb, Static Shot, Flash Grenade, his shield abilities and his Supply Crate are all really good examples of this. If you’re good, you can control multiple opponents at once, perfectly locking down high value targets that try to burst you down and surviving attrition fights against multiple people by virtue of your mixed condition and straight damage. However, if you’re inexperienced, you should know that I find him less forgiving of a class than an Elementalist or a Guardian due to his lack of access to Stability, which means that pretty much any Engineer that gets CC chained will usually only have one or two escapes depending on how many stunbreakers they slot. This means above all, you have to avoid getting CC’d.
Finally, it’s sort of needless to say, but you have to make sure your build is workable. It’s less prevalent than before, but the Engineer used to have some of the worst traits and skills out of any class, which caused a lot of noob trap builds that people fell into while going through PvE, then thinking they could take whatever they wanted into PvP. As an example, I would still say Rocket Boots and Battering Ram are skills I would never take in the current PvP format. Despite being recently buffed, Rocket Boots is a spacing tool that either closes a gap or creates distance between you and your enemy. This is largely pointless in PvP point capture other than traveling between points – the points in each map are so small that using Rocket Boots will shoot you off the point, and you will lose point contest. A skill like Battering Ram, while hilarious, fun, and very viable in duels, suffers from being a single target skill. As I mentioned, the Engineer’s greatest strength is his AoE control, and 5v5 / 8v8 PvP format is rarely a simple 1v1 on top of a point. Usually you’ll be fighting multiple people. If you’re having trouble with a decent build, I would look at popular ones and see why they’re good. Take the aspects of the build that you like, and incorporate them into your own.
I think we all need to take a step back here and look at the bigger picture.
Out of all the threads on the Warrior subforum, JP decides to answer ONLY the one regarding one of his precious signets.
Nice.
This isn’t a case of “my class is bad”, but as you say, more like “I’m a bit inexperienced at the game”. There are a lot of things you’ll need to learn no matter what class you’re playing, beyond just learning the synergy between your own skills.
Something like how you mention you get CC-locked into death. You do know there is a boon called Stability, which makes you immune to all CC? It comes on the utility skill Balanced Stance for warrior, as well as his trait 20 in the defense traitline, “Last Stand”. This should fix a lot of your cc problems. And also, there are skills in the game called “stunbreakers” which break all CC effects on you and allow you to regain control of your character. If you opt not to take any of these in your build, you’re making a conscious choice to be vulnerable to CC.
Overall though I would just keep playing the game. You’re way too new to make any blanket statements about a class or how viable it is yet. Just keep playing, keep getting trashed by better places, and think, “How could that encounter have gone better for me? What could I have done to make that fight go more in my favor?” That’s how most of us get better. If you don’t have an answer to that question, even win you win a fight, you probably are doing something wrong.
Finally, just as a side note, you should know that fighting in a 1v2+ situation, the odds are immensely against you, even if you are amazing at the game. The reason being that if the enemy is smart, they will just rez anyone you manage to down before you can get the finishing blow on them and they will just wear you down slowly.
The problem is that it doesn’t even last for 6 seconds. It lasts for 4. Please read my post next time.
They claimed to have extended the duration to 6 seconds to compensate for nerfing the pulse rate.
The duration has actually been SHORTENED, on top of nerfing the pulse rate.
(edited by Aegael.6938)
I’m sure most dedicated engineers were aware of the fact that smoke bomb was recently stated to have been changed to a duration of 6 seconds, up from 5, but changed to pulse every two seconds rather than one.
So why now does the smoke bomb’s tooltip now list its duration as 4 seconds? The tooltip isn’t wrong, either.
Was this yet another stealth nerf to the class? Was this implemented in the follow-up post to the Nov. 15 update which had a tiny bullet point that said “cleaned up tooltip on the smoke bomb”?
I’m glad you asked.
The answer is no.
It does less damage than a pistol autoattack. It’s a completely useless trait.
Then why is Engineer the only class with a designated skill line that’s a “crutch”?
Minions and spirit weapons are no such thing when used properly.
Not to mention that most gadgets are hardly more useful than turrets – meaning we have two defunct skill lines that we have to contend with. Then we have the ever-popular elixirs of questionable value.
It’s no wonder you never see engineers in serious TPvP any longer.
I actually really enjoy the mechanic of the 2 skill – you have to line up enemies perfectly, but when you do, there’s a high reward. The only problem is that the reward isn’t great enough for the work you have to put in.
On top of that, many people are disappointed by the fact that the 1 skill, while fun to use and see, actually doesn’t do a whole lot of damage.
What I would do -
Switch attacks 1 and 2. The work you have to put into setting up a flame blast for maximum damage is now offset by the fact that’s a spammable autoattack with no cooldown.
Flame jet is now on skill 2. It is more powerful as a consequence, perhaps applying a short burning on each tick. This would make a lot more sense than currently. The only downside I can see would be that we can no longer spam this skill for fun.
Just tested. Neither of those things appear to have been fixed. Evasive powder keg and kit refinement bombs both have effectively zero range when traited with forceful explosives, and forceful explosives doesn’t affect turret explosions.
Tested with turrets by standing just outside untraited explosion radius and then equipping the forceful explosives trait.
I’ve made a similar build before. It’s definitely more for fun rather than actual viability, since anyone worth anything will either just pop stability and run through a burst combo on you or he will just pewpew you from range, since the knockback range on turrets is atrocious.
Speaking of which, have you actually tested that forceful explosives increases the explosion radius of the turret explosion? Last I checked, it didn’t. If it does now, great.
My build used throw mine instead of the net turret, and the toolbelt skill was insanely good with static discharge. It’s just the worst idea to give up static discharge in this build since you have so many ways to proc it.
As to the lack of a stunbreaker – turret exploding and mine exploding is instant cast. Instead of stunbreaking, this type of build’s main defense is to stick near your turrets/mines and simply explode them anytime someone tries to stunburst you. That’s also the main reason this build lacks defense against a stability burst combo, though.
I actually went soldier’s amulet with this build so I didn’t have to worry about crits and I would have immense survivability without a stunbreaker. I also went into vit to grab self-regulating defenses for a last-ditch survival attempt.
In the end, chain-cc builds are lots of fun against people who don’t know what they’re doing, but they’ll fall off in usefulness as you fight better players.
I’ve been saying for ages that every single buff to this class is really just a nerf in disguise.
Nobody listened until their precious grenade kit got nerfed.
Why are we bringing up kill shot when we’re talking about the thief? Is kill shot imbalanced? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, that has absolutely no bearing on whether the thief is unbalanced or not.
In addition, coming up with numbers out of nowhere is always going to be pure conjecture. That’s another stupid thing. If that’s “exactly what you meant perfectly and simply”, perhaps you have absolutely no clue about what you’re talking about.
Except that a legendary costs ~2400g on the trading post while a bell costs 40g.
No need to play the lottery when others have already done it for you.
I think whoever wrote the build philosophy really has no clue about engineers OR elementalists.
I can assure everyone here that Elementalists aren’t the “kings” of versatility. Know how I know this?
The VAST majority of all of the elementalists I’ve seen since almost the release of the game have been 0/0/10/30/30 build elementalists with triple cantrip. The reason why extremely few elementalists stray from this build is because they suffer from major survivability and general viability issues when they don’t spec heavily into water or arcana.
Imagine for a moment if Engineers had an 8-10 second cooldown on each of their kitswaps. The only way to reduce this is to spec into the Tools traitline.
Almost every engineer build would then spec into the tools traitline, regardless of how horrendous the stats or the traits that the traitline gives.
Also, imagine an Engineer that wears light armor and has roughly 4-6k less health. If you don’t have a protection boon up or some impressive toughness or vitality, you’re going to die to a light breeze.
What this means is that unless you spec HEAVILY into survivability in utilities, traits, and armor, you can look forward to eating dirt on almost every single encounter.
In my opinion, being pigeonholed into 3-5 viable utilities and two traitlines doesn’t really say “versatility” to me. It just says that the elementalist faces similar problems to the engineer in terms of build variance, and that whoever wrote the build philosophy hasn’t played either class.
Am I the only one tired of the skill developer’s constant attempts to make Throw Mine a useful, balanced skill? Originally, Throw Mine was actually a Mine Kit, where you threw out five mines and the toolbelt skill was to remote detonate them all at once. While its newer incarnation, Throw Mine, is undeniably more useful, it just doesn’t feel right. Nor does it find widespread use despite multiple buffs to the skill and the toolbelt skill. I feel that half the reason it never sees use is actually because of the toolkit skill. The toolkit skill attempted to recapture the original Mine Kit’s ability to toss out five mines at once. At first it was five blast finishers at once, just like the kit was. Now it’s not. Oh, but they buffed it to give us the ability to…remove five boons at once? While this can be situationally useful, and while I do enjoy the skill, I’m going to say that I would still prefer a buffed up Mine Kit instead.
I’m going to come right out and say why I think that way. Because it’d be cooler.
Okay, well that and it would make more sense. What do you think of when you say “mine?” Personally, I think of landmines, or traps, that you don’t want to step on. Not something you THROW at your enemy point blank. The engineer is a pretty crazy guy, though, so we can’t be sure exactly what he’s thinking.
In any case, I’d just like to know – how many people think like me, in that they’d prefer to actually be able to lay out a minefield in preparation for the enemy? Mines would get the DESPERATELY needed buff of staying on the ground for longer than 60 seconds, and preferably just as long as Ranger and Thief traps. Different mines would have different effects. I’m imagining it as a trap version cross between Grenade and Bomb kit, perhaps giving chill, poison, and bleeding. Each mine would do something different. The mines would probably lose their AoE circle and become hidden to the enemy. That’s another problem with the current skill – attempting to actually use the mines like a minefield just means the enemy is going to roll over them and take no damage. Making them more like traps would benefit the skill a lot. Actually, just making it so that they can’t be triggered by the enemy and only by the engineer’s hand would make them a great fakeout tool.
Does anyone else have thoughts on this skill and what they want it to be? I know it’s a longshot to ask for a new kit when the current ones are so far from being balanced, but I’d like to hear ideas.
…Regardless, I’ll still try to have hope that Arenanet is a competent developer and won’t do that. Let’s continue on.
Tool Kit, which recently received a token buff in return for heavy nerfing on Grenade kit, is generally only used for its OP block duration. It was rarely used before the buff for a reason – it’s boring, it isn’t flashy, and it just doesn’t have the power or general utility of the bomb kit or grenade kit. You can’t stack conditions with it, since Box of Nails sucks at stacking bleeds or cripples. You can only use that to get away. You can’t control multiple foes at once – in fact, you can barely control one foe. Magnet is on more than a 1 second cast time with a very noticeable animation. The only reason I’d say it’s used now is for a laugh when using the 1200 range pull, or the shield. The pry bar is pretty good too, but I would say that’s almost a problem in how the kit is designed – Pry bar is just a better autoattack. That doesn’t seem like good design. Make the autoattack better, make Pry Bar do something different. 1 and 2 are yet again extremely situational skills that rarely see use.
Oh right – wasn’t Tool Kit supposed to be based around healing turrets? I completely forget about that function of the tool kit since nobody has even tried that since BWE1 – everyone quickly realized that was a completely useless thing to try to do.
In any case – It quickly becomes clear that on at least three of our kits, there are going to be useless skills that we never touch. We end up bringing a kit – which is supposed to function as another weaponset – just for one or two skills. What this means is that, in the current incarnation of the engineer, we aren’t giving up our weaponswap for kits. We’re giving up our weaponswap for HALF of a kit in many, many situations. This is the reason why I called bomb kit and grenade kit the two solid kits we have. The skills on those kits feel solid. They provide combo fields, provide an array of control, condition damage, direct damage, and generally every single skill on those kits gets used.
What I want is for every kit to be like this. Make it so every skill is useful rather than providing one “pretty good” skill and four mediocre skills.
I love the idea of having something extremely unique to our class like having Utility Goggles see through stealth.
Just these cool little things would add a lot of flavor and viability to the class. It would make a lot of sense too and add in an additional component to the “cannot be blinded” that is a little too situational to take advantage of currently.
I agree with your general point, and I also feel that engineers don’t feel intuitive in many aspects. For example, the flamethrower 1 skill is shooting FLAMES over your enemy, and yet only the final pulse of the skill deals burning.
Instead, if the devs wanted to limit burning stacking on an autoattack, I feel like they should have just made every tick of the autoattack deal a very short amount of burning – way under a second. Since burning damage only ticks on the second, it would be pretty similar in function – you need to hit for close to the entire autoattack duration to deal burning damage, and yet it would seem to make more sense as well as providing extra versatility in how the burning is applied, rather than just fighting a smart opponent who would just dodge at the very end of the flamethrower attack and not receive any burning damage at all. (and that’s assuming Flamethrower 1 ever becomes viable for anything other than literally burning through guardian blocks.)
In general, I feel like we need more solid improvements to kits as well as improved traits (Useless Inventions traitline, anyone?) for turrets and gadgets.
I feel like the Grenade kit is a good example of where a kit should be. The skillset is extremely solid – Poison, chill, blind, bleeding, and triple the usual chance to proc sigil effects. These are all very interesting and varied uses for just one kit. You could fashion a build based around any one of these things, like attempting to keep perma chilled on a foe by increasing condition duration, or kiting your foes around your poison field while taking advantage of the combo field.
The reason why many people were unhappy with the successive grenade kit nerfs over the past month wasn’t because they were all just whiners who failed to adapt, nor was it because the Grenade kit nerfs were unjustified. It was because Arenanet failed to give us much of anything in return. It may have been slightly overpowered, but everything else we have is extremely underpowered or broken. With the Flamethrower kit in its sorry state, it only ever sees use on Bunker or Hybrid engineers that primarily use it for the 3 CC and the 5 AoE blind. The 4 skill is an occasional amusement. The 1 and 2 skills are never touched because they are useless. Don’t forget the unreliability of the 1 skill to actually hit anything.
The Bomb Kit is pretty similar in function to the grenades – every single skill on the bar is useful, and most of them see use when the kit is chosen. However, it’s pretty more situational to use this based on the fact that the bombs have a pretty noticeable explosion delay. Smart people tend not to stand in bombs. It usually only sees use in TPvP, where people have to stand on points to contest, or PvE, where mobs, for some reason, stand in all AoE without even flinching. Regardless, I’ll say this is a pretty solid kit since most of the bar gets used pretty often whenever you take it.
And on to more useless kits.
The Elixir Gun primarily sees use for two things: Exploiting the weakness duration on the autoattack and for the Super Elixir. The other skills RARELY see any use. Fumigate is great, except for the fact that Super Elixir already removes conditions. And most engineers will trait to have two of those. – Oh god, I can already the patch notes coming.
“Fixed a bug where Super Elixir was unintentionally removing conditions. This will make Fumigate more useful.”
You have to consider where the actual issue comes from. Adding more incentives to defending or making defending even easier would make the issue even worse. First, you have to ask yourself: Why do people zerg?
It’s because there’s no real effective way to capture a point with a small amount of players. There are no effective backdoors or secret shrines that can be accessed by only small groups of people. For almost every siege, it’s going to be more effective based on how many people you have.
You can’t just say “improve rewards for defending” or “make defending easier”, since it’s already extraordinarily difficult to take a point unless the siege vastly outnumbers the defense, or the defense is incompetent. It will mean even less exciting games than we already have, placing more value on capturing early and just sitting on points for the entire week.
I feel like the fix should be the reverse direction – Making it harder to defend capture points, and adding in secret entrances or backdoors that are possibly made more difficult to access with more people. In addition, reduce health of all gates and walls, or improve siege weapon damage.
When it’s easier to take a capture point and harder to defend it, you’ll have exciting turnover play and you will have to make more interesting gameplay decisions – do you want to stay to defend a place or do you want to take one of the enemy’s keeps while they’re busy assaulting yours? Do you want to secretly send small groups of players off to take key points while your zerg fakes an assault at Stonemist?
Currently, none of these options exist because it’s incredibly difficult for even a large zerg to take a fortified position if there are just a handful of defenders with siege equipment. If a gigantic group can’t do it, I fail to see how you expect smaller groups to try the same thing.
Paragons, which hardly saw any use at all in competitive GvG, got one of their best shouts, “Stand Your Ground” nerfed. The reason given was that it caused gameplay that was “boring to watch”. And they never gave any compensatory buffs to the class in return. It was just, here, let’s take away the only reason anyone even takes you in GvG in the first place.
I look forward to some fun-filled years of senseless nerfs and the special snowflakes attempting to defend them, making out like everyone else is stupid for not trying to adapt to nerfs and a lack of meaningful bugfixes.
The Grenade nerf is ok, guys! Let’s just use our other kits that haven’t been nerfed yet!
Like Bomb Kit…Oh wait.
What about Elixir Gun? No, that got nerfed too.
Flamethrower? Oh right, the “Miss” bug, which is 3 months old, still hasn’t been fixed.
Well, we can use turrets, the RNG elixirs, and the Tool Kit! Oh, and don’t forget our ever-useful gadgets. Who needs Shadowstep when you can self-cc yourself with Rocket Boots?
What a great class, right guys?
No one is “just” complaining about one skill that gets nerfed. One nerf is fine. Three nerfs are fine. Nerfing our class every single patch without even making appropriate bugfixes for three months in a row is a slap in the face. Please don’t talk like you’re the most special snowflake in the world for trying to work around the numerous nerfs to the class.