…my initial suggestion would just be accomplished by making it so you could choose your Toolbelt skills separately from your Utilities, really. The gadgets and kits in toolbelt thing is mostly Kimball. Interesting idea, though.
Anyway: Thanks for the suggestions on how to rebalance the toolbelt skills themselves.
Toss Elixir R is something of an issue, true. Not sure how to handle it; I’d probably just leave it as it is, really. Is there potential for abuse, and people possibly considering it OP? Of course there is. I just don’t know if the risk is too great.
Pretty much – it’d be a slot that could only be used for Kits, as opposed to literally anything else. Don’t want to obliterate an entire playstyle by removing the ability to have a lot of kits, but it would improve the diversity of builds and overall versatility without overly affecting balance (in my opinion – I might be entirely wrong) if the Engineer could choose to have one kit in addition to whatever else they had.
I’m currently using dual pistols – it’s weird, but I’m actually killing things faster with an Explosives/Inventions/Tools+Dual Pistol build than I was with E/I/T+Rifle.
If you’re mainly using Grenades for damage, I’d suggest going into Explosives, of course – that’s where all the Grenade traits are. Other than that, I don’t really have any suggestions.
If they do use the Independent Toolbelt Skill idea, then I’d hope they’d eventually start putting in skills specific to the Toolbelt, even if they’re skills that have to be bought, that would allow a variety of interesting effects that we’re currently lacking, or entirely new things that play off of our current loadouts in some way.
Would absolutely love a Projectile Reflect that doesn’t require either a shield or the Flamethrower, too – good idea.
Oh, and some freakin’ direct heals, especially for party members. Could really use some more of those.
Only suggesting limiting the kits in the proposed Free Kit (Secondary Weapon for Engineers Only) slot to one, and otherwise leaving them unlimited, as normal – it may have gotten garbled, I ’unno.
It’s basically just an idea so that every Engineer will be able to carry a Kit, regardless of their Utility skills (which may include, if they want, nothing but kits, it’s up to them), and without having to sacrifice their other skill slots for it.
(edited by Anymras.5729)
I would limit it to one, yes – otherwise, that’s five or more utilities available to any given Engineer, and I’m trying not to break anything.
Bombs no longer have an explosive radius they just have a puff of rainbow smoke.
Holy crap, you replaced the bomb kit with Quipbombs.
I’d suggest keeping the way turret detonation and retrieval is currently handled – it keeps a bit of a leash on Turret Engineers, keeping them from just brute-forcing their way through everything by laying down turrets and then just using Toolbelt skills on enemies in the field of fire, while also keeping the UI relatively uncluttered. Kits should stay Utility, if they’re not going to be put in a weapon slot or something, in my opinion.
I’d suggest having the initial change modify the armor sets currently possessed by the Engineers affected, replacing it with an equivalently-statted set of Heavy armor – or, for the aesthetically-minded, perhaps just changing the Armor type to Heavy, increasing the defensive values, and keeping the appearance the same, but only for the armor sets currently worn by the Engineer, as far as making the change works. Also, offer an option to transfer all ranks in Leatherworking to ranks in Armorcrafting – I’m at 400 Leatherworking, and I sure as hell don’t want to redo four hundred ranks of crafting. Yes, it’d be difficult – but Heavy Armor is what the Engineer was originally intended for, and then they changed it, for some reason.
As for hammers: It’s not like it’s necessary, but it would certainly be nice to have more options. Kits aren’t the class’s unique thing anymore (as I get the feeling they were originally intended to be, considering the multitude of little things (traitlines, runes of the engineer, the class balance philosophy, and probably more things I’m just not thinking of right now) that imply that the Engineer should probably never be without a kit, in the dev’s opinion) – they shouldn’t hold us back in any way, whether it’s weapon choices or weapon damage. Pursuant to this goal, I’d like to be able to Rocket Hammer through a group of mobs, kite them to my allies, slap down a Palisade between me and the mobs, and then…well, hell if I know. But it’d be awesome to have the choice.
It’s my feeling that the Engineer was originally intended to be more similar to the Elementalist, with kits taking the place of attunements, and then was changed to being…well, whatever it is now, leading to the emphasis on Kits throughout the class’s traitlines, etcetera – the Toolbelt isn’t even mentioned in the Class Balance Philosophy. There’s all sorts of little indicators. However, now that the Engineer’s unique thing is the Toolbelt, it’s not been thought out very much at all, especially compared to kits.
My suggestions on fixing the Toolbelt skills primarily revolve around making them more predictable (Mine Field’s mines are placed randomly; this can make it difficult to make proper use of, just as the Elixirs, with their RNG effects, are difficult to properly capitalize on; I would fix Mine Field by making it fall in a particular pattern around the Engineer, and the Elixirs by making their effects 1) not rips of other class’s abilities and 2) not RNG, but context-sensitive to things like health, stats, and profession), faster to cool down (except for Surprise Shot, ten seconds is quite fast enough), and more powerful (with some exceptions).
I’m sure there’s some broken thing we’d be able to manage – but that’d get fixed. Maybe it’d involve a bit of see-sawing, but if we want improvements, we can’t be afraid of getting nerfed if the improvements accidentally go too far. My best example of a broken combination (Analyze+Grenade Barrage+Steel-Packed Power+Rocket/Rifle/Flame Turrets) is something that’s easy to accomplish now, with the proper traits; it’s entirely possible that I’m not seeing the possibilities inherent in the idea.
Yeah, that’s why it’s marked as ‘probably absolutely terrible – ’ it’s just not a very good idea.
Okay, uh, explanation of edit. Wow, I worded that badly, originally. Here we go. Currently, Engineer can only equip Kits in Utility slots, and cannot equip a second weapon due to this. The idea of the edit is to make it so that, while we still would not be able to equip a second weapon set, we’d be able to equip a kit without using any of our Utility slots, by equipping the Kit into the second weapon set slot. In this way, an Engineer – let’s say a Turret Engineer, for convenience – could have two Pistols for main weapons, a Toolkit as his secondary, Healing, Rifle, Rocket and Flame Turrets, and Supply Crate. For those Engineers who prefer kits, it would allow them to have yet another kit available. It would not, however, give a toolbelt skill.
Also: As far as making the Engineer a support profession goes…I’m against it. It feels like that would be resigning ourselves to being sidekicks.
(edited by Anymras.5729)
I think it’s mentioned in the Hints page when you first do it. About as informative as a brick to the foot.
Flamethrower’s Napalm Field + three detonated turrets + Accelerant-Packed Turrets (dubious necessity) = 9 stacks of Might. Using Thumper Turret, blast it with the Thump toolbelt ability and drop a Supply crate into it – boom, fifteen (and more turrets to cover you). Can get eighteen if you manage to get the Thumper to Thump the fire before you detonate it, too.
They really should have explained combos better in-game.
…that Gadgets change actually sounds hilarious. I would actually use the Battering Ram, just for comedy.
That should be how it was to begin with – it’d be the only explanation for the cooldowns of most of the turrets that I can think of, at least.
That eighteen stacks of Vulnerability in two moves requires one Grandmaster trait (or it’s sixteen, if you don’t have that), good aim with a Grenade Barrage, and drops off sharply after five seconds, when the Steel Powder vulnerability wears off. I can easily keep an enemy at somewhere north of 15 Vulnerability with Grenadier, Grenade Kit and Barrage, along with miscellaneous Condition infliction, in the middle of, potentially, four damage-dealing turrets and one net turret (via Supply Crate with Elite supplies and usual Utility skills), as it is – drop that to three damage-dealing turrets if I were to, say, switch in Utility goggles for one of them, to access Analyze and Fury, so I could get three chances for a critical hit at an increased rate against an enemy with 25 stacks of vulnerability. It’s not really hard to do to begin with, just requires a particular loadout. For my part, I don’t quite understand why you wouldn’t want to increase the potential synergy.
As for why I really want to be able to switch toolbelt skills around? As a turret engineer, I’m plagued by long cooldowns on most of my utility skills. Unless they reduce the cooldown, and I doubt they will, this will always be an issue – it forces me to decide whether I want to use any of my skills in a fight with random enemies or hold off in case I need them around the next corner, either waiting out the cooldown in a game where things often respawn quickly, leaving them placed so I can try to kite into them in a game where both turrets are fragile and the earlier statement about respawn is true, or going around the corner empty-handed, hoping not to run into something nasty. That’s why I picked, if you’ll notice from the “what I would probably use,” things to 1) Heal, 2) Damage, 3) Increase damage dealt and 4) Deal damage while I run in circles like an angry, drunken hamster in a sideways wheel.
Yeah, I figured that was involved – but I start having issues keeping perspective when bugs from release haven’t so much as been partly addressed (Deployable Turrets + Healing Turret, for a specific example; I can understand “We have no idea what’s wrong with it, code in PvE is the same as in PvP,” but it starts to stop making sense when it comes to the HT and DT).
‘s all good, just figured I’d point it out before it got too far.
Ahem! Moving on.
Anybody else got any suggestions, opinions, etcetera, RE:Hammers and Heavy Armor for Engineers?
I’m pretty okay with messing with skills between fights, myself – I do tend to change things around when I’m not in a lot of danger, to be fair, so I can see how it could be irritating for someone in the middle of, I ’unno, some place full of monsters to swap things around.
As for the having four awesome toolbelt abilities…well, that’s great and all, but that very thing where they all function along the lines of the Utility they’re attached to is kind of a problem, in some cases, particularly as it prevents a bit of skill synergy that could otherwise be available – like that very Analyze+Grenade Barrage+Turrets example I give above to explain leaving Detonate Turret on the F-keys. (After all, nothing says you couldn’t place the turrets immediately after using the skills.)
I don’t consider the Elixir’s randomness to be a ‘unique’ aspect of the class, but, to be fair, I don’t think any other class can’t tell what boons they’re about to give their allies. There’s “work with what you get” and then there’s “Well, great, I stealthed the Warrior and Stabilitied the Thief.”
I do like the rest of the ideas that you put forward, though. And yeah, Asura and Charr get long cooldowns on their racials, too.
Edit: Picking up the turret does reduce the cooldown by 25%, which can be great if you can get to the turret to begin with; not entirely sure what the point of removing it would be.
…actually, I think Anet’s philosophy was “Uh. This guy, uh, kitten. Where do we take this guy? Let’s make him versatile – but not more so than the Elementalist, that’ll kitten off the Elementalists, uh, medium armor, three weapon choices, reduce the damage for, uh, versatility in kit choice…which class was this again? Ah hell, deadline.”
I know I’m a proponent of making the Engineer the Prepared/Magnificent kitten class. Gotta have somewhere to be the boss.
Yeah, I was thinking it’d be restricted similarly to the default – F1 for Heal, F2-4 for whatever strikes your fancy. Not sure what builds I’d use; possibly Bandage Self, Rocket Kick, Mine Field and Analyze. Turrets explode so often that I may as well just plan for when they’re on cooldown, after all.
…I actually find the detonation pretty useful. I often use it to set off combo fields and knock enemies around (Accelerant-Packed Turrets, see), and kind of think of Healing Turret as a healing landmine/grenade. If they made the turret explode after running its cycle, that would also require a serious bit of work on cooldowns (namely, they’d have to be much, much shorter) and making the Overcharge the default state of the turret.
As for how I’d handle Detonate Turret: When the turret’s on the field, the key corresponding to it becomes Detonate Turret. It’s not a perfect solution (locking off the Toolbelt until the turret is destroyed has always irritated me), but it’s what I’ve got, and it keeps people from using Analyze+Grenade Barrage to inflict sixteen/eighteen stacks of Vulnerability on some poor sap caught in the crossfire of a Rocket, Rifle and Flame turret nest.
(edited by Anymras.5729)
Yeah, I responded in this one before I read the other one. To summarize other post: I like it (some of the turret overcharges would be amusing with gadgets attached), but I’d still rather be able to independently move toolbelt things around.
Also, I missed the part where this had something to do with the idea of Hammers and Heavy Armor for Engineers. Think you might have gotten confused on which thread was which or something.
I’d rather just move the gadgets to the toolbelt entirely, if that’s the idea, perhaps with a chain effect (resetting upon cooldown completion) to continue activating both (or all four, in the case of Throw Mine) effects or something. Some gadgets are actually okayish, and it’d be neat to be able to use them alongside some of my other stuff (definitely help deal with turret cooldown), but I don’t like kits in the least.
I think they’re overemphasized, honestly. That’s why I’m asking for ideas to improve the underemphasized Unique Mechanic of the Engineer, the Toolbelt, as opposed to That One Category of Utility Skills that Seemingly Everyone Loves and Wants to Improve.
It would be pretty cool if both kits and turrets got a bit of the Gadgetry going. For Turrets, if Kits get the Toolbelt, I’d suggest the Turrets incorporate some Gadget into their Overcharge – it would be interesting to have the Thumper Turret lay down a Mine Field, the Rifle Turret to drive enemies back a little per shot, Flame Turret to splat out an oil slick, etcetera.
…I’m not sure how, precisely, that’s supposed to-maybe I’m misunderstanding. Your suggestion about toolbelt skills being gadgets, and linked to kits in place of their current toolbelts, works as follows, if I’m understanding correctly: Equip Kit as Utility, gain Gadget as Toolbelt? If that’s how it works, then…it’s still the same end result, namely that I would have a toolbelt skill I’d equip a skill just to get, instead of using just about anything else.
I do agree with the remark about the Accelerant-Packed Turrets trait, and it’s probably the best functional Turret trait at the moment. I’d probably still have thirty points into that traitline were it not there, but that’s partly because Turrets only get bonuses from traitlines and partly because I could really use the Power boost.
Turret Engineer’s supposedly good for point defense – probably only if the Engineer is there to do all the dirty work. My turrets vanish at the sight of an AoE, and that’s with them traited for durability and regeneration.
I do know the Turret Engineer’s a great kite, though. It certainly grabs aggro like nothin’ else I’ve seen (except a dual-pistol thief, I suppose).
Yes, but that leaves people who don’t like kits in the cold. I, personally, dislike using them, pretty much only equipping them when roaming lowbie areas for crafting materials to sell, and that’s because they’re faster at killing via autoattack (no cooldowns that way, see? Makes consecutive engagements faster.) than my pistols.
Thus, I’d prefer it to be, say, a trait that just boosts Toughness or Armor or something by a decent number, either in Inventions or Tools, probably.
But what if you don’t like kits? For example: I dislike them. I honestly do. Partly due to their taking-up-a-utility-slot and partly due to how easy they make things compared to my usual, and favored, setup. (That’s right, I dislike them because I feel they’re easy-mode. You read that right. They’re not that hard.) I’d like to be able to match my kit-wielding brethren Engineers on the field without having to use kits.
tl;dr: If all modifications are to improve Kits, then either Kits need to move to somewhere everyone will have access to at least one at all times, whether it’s on their utility bar or not, or the modifications need to not just be to kits.
(edited by Anymras.5729)
Yeah, they’ve intended to do that for a while now.
Of course, they intended the same thing with Sigils on kits. Look what happened when they did that.
As the title says – it’s an open question.
Some explanation, however: For the Toolbelt being the Engineer’s unique mechanic, it gets overlooked, and isn’t very good to begin with, in my opinion. This is largely due to the skills involved, and how they’re linked to utility skills, or so I’d say – I’m sure my opinion differs from others, after all. What I don’t think can be disputed is that a class should be evaluated on what they will always have available, above and beyond what they might have available (I’m looking at you, kits, you overloved lumps) – and for the Engineer, the only thing that they will always have is their trusty Toobelt.
So, I’d like to see what kind of ideas others have to make the Toolbelt better.
Here’s a couple of mine:
Unbind Toolbelt Skills from Utilities – Don’t buy anybody any proverb books, this is one situation where I think this mix-and-match kitten’s got to be. There’s skills I only even look at because they give a better-than-others Toolbelt skill, some I look at the Toolbelt skill and go “Well, that’s…just dandy, I guess, if you’re in the mood to screw around.” I’d like to pick what skills work best for me, without having to go “But the toolbelt skill for this one sucks, compared to this other one…”
Rebalance Toolbelt Skills against the Unique Mechanics of every other profession – Yes, including the ones that seem okay or actually seem powerful. It’s important to achieve balance with the other professions, and the Toolbelt is the one thing every single Engineer has at all times.
I also had an idea involving contingency skills that are only available to the Toolbelt, but I’m not sure how that would really work.
big changes in the near future for eng? I think not after this:
Hey guys,
Just to help provide some clarity on this, we’ll be releasing within the next couple of weeks a high level summary of our big plans for the first half of 2013 to help provide more transparency into our plans with the game going forward. This will include providing more details about our goals for the game, information about the stories and features that you’ll see in the Jan/Feb/March releases.
To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond. Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.
More details and specifics to come in the next couple of weeks, but I hope that helps provide some more insight into what to expect at a very high level.
While I don’t see anything to really suggest that there’s nothing coming the Engineer’s way, I did see what I just bolded – which seems to imply that there’s some work on the existing game on the way.
Here’s hoping that it’s going to involve hella bugfixes.
I’m just going to hope that there’s some serious bugfixing. At least for professions.
I run a full Turret build, so I guess there’s that. Trying to make myself as tanky as possible with Vitality/Toughness gear, as well. As for Traits…well, it takes seventy points to gain all Turret traits, and most of them suck/don’t work/don’t work with what they should work with. If they’d redo traits to network between each other (so, say, Rocket Turrets could inflict Vulnerability, bleed, and/or extra damage, and then the detonation could similarly benefit, for example, and do something about the various cooldown traits that don’t work on the Toolbelt), then that’d improve the viability of a lot of builds.
At the moment, I find myself most useful as a decoy and condition dispenser.
With my current playstyle and gear, I’m pretty much doing it – staying alive long enough to win, being smart about dodging and mean about attacking.
I would honestly suggest not worrying about versatility. That’s the Elementalist’s gig. Find what works for you and run with it – the Engineer is not in a good place right now, with no idea where it’s supposed to shine, what it’s really supposed to be good at, or anything; until the devs figure that out, it’s pretty much up to the player to make something of it.
Yes engineers damage is pathetic compared to every class in game. Yes engineers pay a “hybrid” tax on their damage and healing because apparently engineers are the only hybrid in game. Yes the reason you see12325342 threads on engineers sucking is because compared to other classes they do. Yes if you time 37 keypresses in a specific order you can do as much damage as another class who presses 2 buttons.
Yes your survivability is less, yes elementalists can bring more utility then engineers, but are not taxed for it…and yes the engineer class design makes no sense as if it was thrown together just to get the game out in time.
Disagree. Guardian is hybrid profession as well. Engineer survivabilty is good enough, 3 seconds blocking, 3 seconds invulnerable, 3 sec invulnerable again with trait in elixirs, a lot of control.
His point with the hybrid remark was “Everyone in this game is a hybrid. Why are we the only ones getting reduced in damage for it?”
I like the idea of the armor boost trait, I think. I don’t like the idea of it being part of Juggernaut, though, as I’m of the opinion that kits are overemphasized in just about every way for being just another Utility skill type – our Toolbelt skills are our unique ability, they should get some work done on them to bring them up to par with every other class’s unique abilities. Not sure where it should go, on that note, but I would dearly like a boost to defense and to be able to wear some armor that doesn’t look like Ranger/Thief/Pirate gear.
Hahah, rocket hammer would be hilarious. I can just imagine giving the Engineer a hammer, a Rocket Hammer line-damage strike (with high damage on the target/enemies at the end of the line, burning throughout) and a Palisade skill allowing them to put up a physical wall (only one at a time, perhaps with Retaliation, and a long duration, reparable with the Toolkit/successive hammer smackings, maybe). Be a great combo.
I would like to see some significant buff to Turrets as they are almost useless in WvW,sPvP or dungeons :
-Fix obvious current bugs
-Make them scale with our stats and increase their base health,armor and damage a bit.
-Keep current cooldowns and make them mobile like pets? I don’t know, just give them some form of mobility (Though it would make deployable turrets a bit insignificant) OR Keep them immobile but reduce their cooldowns (Way too long, imo)
-Increase rate of fire
-Maybe increase the repair turret rate with the toolkit (Too little currently, imo)Any other ideas?
It seems like a lot of buffs, but it is maybe what we need to make them viable :/
This. I like the idea of a trait for making turrets able to move, not really sure how it would be handled in relation to Deployable Turrets – and we’re not supposed to go making up new traits, anyway, so, moving on.
Toolbelt skills: These are what the class should be evaluated on, being the class’s one unique ability besides bad mimicry of others via randomized effects and ability pastiche kits or spammable AoE effects via Bomb and Grenade kits.
How I’d handle improving them: All of them need re-evaluated, rebalanced and/or replaced. All of them. Aside from that…it would be excellent to have them not be bound to the things in the utility slots. Keep Toolbelt skills and Utility skills separate, but able to be swapped around – want to have a Healing Turret, and Bandage Self? go for it. Full turrets, Healing Mist, Analyze, Regenerating Mist and Throw Elixir R? Whatevs, bro. However: In the event that a turret is placed, it still replaces that toolbelt skill with the Detonate Turret ability.
Additional idea (probably absolutely terrible one): Allow the placement of kit attacks, unaltered, into the Toolbelt, with the exception of the 1 skills – which would be altered by adding a short cooldown.
Edit: Also: allow kits, one at a time, to be equipped as secondary weapons. For the Engineer, every skill slot counts – which is why I rarely run with a Toolkit, or Power Wrench, despite being, primarily, a Turret Engineer. It feels like a waste – either I can have another turret, or I can have a lackluster repair skill with a few nifty abilities in close range combat.
(edited by Anymras.5729)
None of them work in our favor because, oddly enough, the ones that do upset the balance of things, in the dev’s opinion.
Sure, the rest basically cripple us, but that’s no big deal, right? Right?
As an Engineer, my weapon choice is limited. Severely limited. Just Shields, Pistols, and Rifles. Recently, my girlfriend brought up the idea of trying for Legendaries…and I figured I might as well see what they have.
Quip. The Flameseeker Prophecies. And the Predator.
So, as an Engineer, my choices are limited to, essentially, “Comic relief confetti bubblegun,” “holy book on a shield” and “sci-fi sniper rifle.” I’m sure these could appeal to me less – but that would take some work.
Therefore: It’d be really pretty cool if there were 1) A less comical legendary pistol, 2) a less sniper-y/sci-fi rifle, and 3) a non-Guardian legendary shield.
Yeah, I was thinking it’d be three offensive turrets (rifle, rocket, flame, probably – range issues) and then the Engineer taking their Healing turret to the last event to get the fourth.
Hahah, wow. This is a pretty funny troll thread. Most of the points are (when run through the sarcasm translator) pretty okay.
Also: Yeah, turrets are good for that. Not even gonna lie – I did it to deal with the high materials cost of crafting. Haven’t tried it for karmafarming. Could probably get contribution to three or four different events simultaneously, if turret placement was intelligently done.
Currently, the only contribution your weapon makes to your kits is the sigil on it – if you have a weapon capable of carrying the best sigil for your level, and you never don’t use kits, then it’ll be best to just go with that.
However, they do intend to put weapon stats on kits eventually.
We could use a proper long-range weapon, too, it’s true – I tend to find myself in the fray quite often, due to the amount of aggro I generate, so I don’t often really think about it. If they gave us both heavy armor (with a free replacement of equivalent quality to our current set of medium) and hammers, though, I would probably not consider being stuck in close-range much of an inconvenience.
In the event that I did feel it utterly necessary to equip a ranged kit: I’d probably go with the Grenade Kit. It’s got the best range of any attack the Engineer can have. Haven’t tried PvP with it, or at all, for that matter.
Most of the ‘big’ changes are probably the Underwater changes, where the Speargun can now get blast finishers if you have Rifled Barrels, or the Grenade 30% nerf. They also boosted HGH by one stack of Might.
The heavy armor wouldn’t really do a ton, but it would give us a higher Armor stat, which can be handy when you run out of Endurance or are saving it for a particularly nasty attack.
So is kiting something that everyone can do?
Elementalists are the kings of kiting. But engineers are good at it too if you build for it. Elementalists have more ways of kiting more often. Unfortunately, they can do pretty much everything engineers can do only better. They’re probably not as good at spamming aoe in the WvW zerg but don’t worry, there will be another nerf to our AoE spam damage soon.
I dunno, they do get an awful lot of ranged attacks. Sure, they don’t get a spammable ground-targeted AoE, but they also aren’t getting their damage reduced by 30% because something they’d been trying to get working finally started working.
I’ve played a warrior, ranger, and ele to level 80 (all geared with exotics), got bored of my guardian at level 70, then recently got my engineer to 80 and got him fully geared. The engineer is amazing.
In WvW (which is pretty much all I do now), no other class I’ve played has had 1500 RANGED AoE burns, blinds, bleeds, chills, and poison. No other class can have that kind of range AND can run through a zerg without dying. With the build I use, I have access to 3 blocks, 6 seconds of invuln, 6 seconds of stealth to get away with…
When I’m chasing someone down I have access to a 1200 RANGED PULL, a cripple, chill, knock back, stun, daze, immobilize…not enough? Well I also have access to every condition in the game except fear, I can put 25 stacks of vulnerability on people 1500 feet away, and I can put down an AoE heal every 15 seconds, and burst heal with my shield’s blast finisher…In PvE, dungeons and mobs are a joke. It’s pretty dam difficult to hit people even with 1500 ranged, but mobs are just too easy. If they get close to you just cc the kitten out of them, get back to 1500 ranged, and nuke away.
The only reason why I think people don’t like the engineer class is because it takes time to understand the insane amount of kit-swapping and utilities available, then utilize all of it effectively in an actual fight. Such as a 1v5 situtation (which is easy once you get the hang of it!)
Here’s the build that I use both for PvE and PvP (WvW), it’s beautiful (copy-paste)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqiYnvSyF17IyIFdmoJSRlRZfe8WpFEC;ToAA1Cno8y4lwLrXOvkeNKZuA
I’ve never had a whole lot of trouble understanding the number and usage of kits and swapping. I actually dislike them for how easy they make a lot of things, compared to turrets (my favored skill set) – never have fully understood people going “kits are so hard to use, but they’re what make the class awesome.” They’re easy to use, not that difficult to learn, and the two most useful are also the most boring, with the same attack over and over, with different special effects and conditions being applied. Try using Turrets instead. You’ll start understanding. Elixirs? If you like random chance determining the effects of most of your skills, you’ll have fun. Gadgets? …I can’t actually think of any really glaring issues with Gadgets, come to think of it. Don’t use them enough.
Also: In my opinion, no class should be built/evaluated entirely around a specific subset of their skills, in this case Kits, if that subset requires utility slots. Elementalist isn’t built around Conjures, Necromancer around Minions, etcetera – the skills most professions have as their defining feature are always available, because they’re not in any changeable slot. They’re just there, where the Toolbelt is for us. I don’t have to tell you that, of course; you’ve seen it on all of your characters.
Of course, if the Toolbelt were what the Engineer were evaluated on, instead of their Kits, we probably wouldn’t have as many problems with the ‘balance’ of the class. Weapons wouldn’t be gimped, for one, because it’d be recognized that the Kits are not the class’ unique mechanic, and thus not something to nerf the weapons over.
What the title says – from what I hear, the Engineer was originally intended to be a Heavy Armor class.
I think this would be preferable to it using Medium armor, partially due to the nerfed damage dealt by weapons and the absurd amount of aggro I generate. Lately, I’ve been wondering if the reason the Engineer’s gimped in so many ways is because he was intended to be more durable.
Also: Hammers. I think it’d be awesome if we could use some, possibly with some skills involving the modification of the terrain (like, say, a stone wall effect) to make it easier to funnel enemies into things.
Thoughts? I know there’s been a few threads on hammers, but I don’t know of any on Heavy Armor.
I do find myself getting tons of aggro. All the time. It’s either hilarious or frustrating, depending on the results. It is, in fact, why my current mission is to become a walking tank.
And the funny thing is that even though we are the jack of all trades, there’s already a jack of all trades class (the elementalist) that outperforms us.
I think that’s very true. Elementalists and engineers can’t both be the jack of all trades class. The engineer needs to specialize more in support. Their damage is insignificant already so it’s a good choice.
And then we’re more sidekicks than anything, unless our support is sufficient to make us great on our own. They need to ditch the hybrid tax (which makes our damage so low) and figure out somewhere the Engineer can be the best – as it is, we’re second-best at being the Jack of All Trades, leaving us in a sad place indeed.
I have two ideas, one of which would involve four new traitlines specifically for the Engineer – in short, every time the Engineer gains a Trait point, they gain an Upgrade point as well, which they can use in an ‘Upgrade Path’ to enhance a particular type of skill (Kit, Gadget, Turret, or Elixir) in a way, often more specialized (changes of condition damage, boons applied, etcetera), not offered by normal traits. However, this would give the Engineer two unique mechanics, as pointed out by somebody else, so eh.
Here’s the somewhat more in-depth version: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Give-the-Engineer-somewhere-to-shine/
The other idea, mentioned toward the end of that thread, is something of a reworking of how things function – make Elixirs more reliable (to encourage their use), make Toolbelt skills independent of Utility slot skills, and maybe rework traits (many of our traits do kinda suck, after all) and/or skills to make it easier/more useful to enter with a plan of action. More synergy between skills would also be great – there’s basically no reason to not specialize in something.
Come to think of it, it might be neat to have a set of Contingency skills, which could basically be sort of like Mantras in that they’re prepared before battle, and then used in a flash during it, but placed on the Toolbelt, with varied effects depending on the user’s loadout.
Idea for example Contingency skill:
Drone Deployment – A small number (1-3?) of miniature, mobile turrets is created (released from toolbelt), with less effectiveness but more mobility than their full-sized versions. Either have the types and/or number be based on the type/number of turrets or turret traits currently equipped by the user, or affected by combo fields. All miniturrets are affected by all Turret traits except for Deployable Turrets. Duration: 20 seconds, +5 for every Turret trait (maximum: 45 seconds), cooldown 90 seconds, cast time 5 seconds, or something, I’m not good at figuring out how long things should last/take to cooldown/cast.
Not the best thing to follow ’there’s no reason not to specialize in something’ with, and it’s entirely possible that it’s horribly unbalanced, but, well. There you go, there’s yet another idea for how to handle the Preparation idea – this one focusing on the developing of backup/blitzkrieg plans (though I think my example’s awful, to be honest).
(edited by Anymras.5729)
There’s only two elixirs that heal people, and only one of them is any good at doing it reliably for people that aren’t the user – and even that one only heals them when they’re down.
Also: basically every class can do these things to the same, or greater, extent that the Engineer can, perhaps with less Regeneration being thrown around.
The problem with CCing things is that a good few things (particularly the ones that you really wish you could CC – Champions, for example) are immune to it, instead gaining stacks of Defiant, or are tagged with Unstoppable or something.
If our entire role is basically support…well, that’s stupid. No class should be the designated sidekick.
For my part, I mostly spend my time being a decoy, if I’m running with a party (not all that often). Turrets everywhere, pistols to kitten things off and do damage, and then a lot of time spent kiting. I’m also kitted out as a tank, and intend to run with it unless aggro gets reworked.
(edited by Anymras.5729)