Guild Wars 2

I dunno ‘bout you, but I don’t read forums at all when traiting my character. \ o /

I neither rebind nor use any special mouse. I just move the mouse and click something if I need it and it’s not in easy reach of my fingers.

They don’t seem to do anything, even if they’re still theoretically live.

I run a turret engineer just about exclusively. Haven’t tried PvP.

Trait layout (at 70; that’s when I’ll be able to pick up the last turret modification trait):
Explosives 20 (for Accelerant-Packed Turrets – they won’t just be a bit squishy, they’ll be explosively so.)
Firearms 0
Inventions 30 (Metal-Plated Turrets, Autotool Installation and Rifled Turret Barrels; might be a lame amount of healing and only increase their survivability by a few moments, but they can, in theory, hit harder (it doesn’t show in the tooltip, so I have no idea if it’s actually working))
Alchemy 0
Tools 10 (Deployable Turrets – when they get this fixed, I’ll be a happy little Engineer.)

I generally run with Healing Turret, Rocket Turret, and then I switch the other two slots between Rifle, Flame, Net and Thumper. Elite skill is, of course, Supply Crate. When Deployable Turrets is fixed, Rocket Turret won’t be such a fixture, either; it’s just that Healing and Rocket turrets are the only two Deployable Turrets works with. For weapons, I use either a pair of pistols or pistol and shield. Typically geared up for Toughness.

Most of the strategy of this build comes from making sure you’re aware of where your turrets are, how they’re doing and, of course, how they interact. For example, if you’ve got a Flame and a Thumper turret right next to each other at a choke point, overcharge the Flame to make a smokescreen and then Thump it out – you’ll blind enemies and stealth allies, all while sending foes flying.

So far, I think the only things really screwing with the Engineer are:

Clumsy implementation of Kit mechanics (sigils not working with them, can’t use weapon-swap sigils, treating them as a bundle)

Buggy traits (various overlapping cooldown-reduction traits only work on a subset of the things they’re supposed to work on, like Fast-Acting Elixirs only working on Healing/Utility/Elite Elixirs and not Toolbelt or Elixir Gun Elixirs, Deployable Turrets only works on two turrets, and it’s hard to tell what Rifled Turret Barrels actually accomplishes, for example)

Other than that, the Engineer’s pretty good. They’re my favorite class. What it’s best at depends on the player, of course – some run crazy damage burst builds, some run control, some versatility and I, of course, run a Bunker Engineer who specializes in turrets.

Guess the thing the Engineer would be the king of is versatility, though – no other class can have quite as many skills available. Bomb, Grenade, Flamethrower, Elixir Gun, Medkit, Toolkit – if you decided to, you could manage to get a total of (kitten, math, how’s this work again) 5 Weapon skills, +5 Medkit skills, +15 Utility Kit skills, +5 Mortar skills, +4 Toolbelt skills – a total of something along the lines of 34 skills available at a time.

I’ve had three tiers in a row of the same kitten armor. I’m probably going to buy a Pirate outfit just so I can look different without being kitteny.

For my Turret Engineer, I’m running with Deployable Turrets (only works on Healing and Rocket, but I guess in theory the devs will eventually fix it – if they can stop rebalancing things for long enough; get this from 10 Tools), Metal-Plated, Autotool-Installed Turrets with Rifled Barrels (Metal-Plated is basically meaningless against a lot of enemies, Autotool only functions once every ten seconds, and Rifled Turret Barrels is only semifunctional and sure as hell doesn’t change the tooltips; get them at 10/20/30 Inventions, respectively) and I intend to pick up Accelerant-Packed Turrets at 70 (since Metal-Plated Turrets doesn’t help them last long against anything above 20, it’d be nice to have an auxiliary function for them, see; 20 Explosives), in the hopes that it’ll function with my triggered detonations as well.

I think the Supply Crate is affected by another Tools trait, but can’t recall; I mostly just use it to front-line support to my buddies if they’re getting outnumbered and/or outgunned. Apparently, Supply Crate turrets are not affected by any of the other turret traits, and they do vanish after a minute or two.

They could always give the Engineer signets in the form of passive gadgets. After all, they give them the ability to get Leg Mods and Adrenal Implants – Why not modify a few of the regular gadget skills to grant bonuses even when inactive?

Here, I’ve made a list of the gadgets I think could be made into passive things, and how they might work (in a general sense):

Utility Goggles: A smaller boost than the regular goggles, to reflect that they’re in ‘low-power’ mode (maybe a quarter or something?), with an overcharge that’s functionally identical to the current Utility Goggles. Passive only works when overcharge is available.

Rocket Boots: Maybe they increase dodge distance or give a passive burning effect (by using the boots to facilitate movement without flying comically backward and laying there like an kitten for a couple seconds). Same as above – passive effect only works when you can do the regular effect.

Slick Shoes: Maybe a much more minor increase to speed. Not even 25%, like Thieves get with their Signet, but maybe 10% or something. Or, to keep it similar to the regular use, maybe a very short blind effect on dodge, from flying oil.

Not sure how they’d handle the toolbelt, of course. I’ve not played enough of the other classes to know what would be balanced or not.

It sure doesn’t show up on the tooltips – does it actually do what it’s supposed to, or is it another nonfunctional trait for Engineers?

http://i.imgur.com/ohdSz.jpg

Having a spot of trouble getting the image code to work properly, but here’s Veirkan, with his favorite toys. One must have class – and keep blood off the coat.

If you move while firing, you’ll end up with more success using the attack. I’m not sure why, but the darts seem to have an easier time that way.

I use no kits at all, mostly focusing on the use of Turrets. Works pretty well, though turrets are overly squishy for having such long cooldowns, but having several sources of effects is incredibly handy.

That said, I’m glad they’re finally starting to fix things. Sure, it’s things I don’t use much, but they’ve got to start somewhere. Looking forward to them finally fixing Deployable Turrets, and the myriad cooldown traits. Aboutkittentime.

The patch is supposed to have fixed it.

I usually run a turret-specialist engineer with a pistol and shield. Works pretty well – would work better with Deployable Turrets working properly.

Tried an Elixir build, but the various bugged cooldown traits bogged it down. Haven’t tried specializing in nonspecialization (kits) yet, though.

Male Asura stuff.

“I’d like to thank my college, and my Krewe…” on level-up.
“I knew I’d achieve this!” -Achievements, durrr.

Minipets don’t do anything. They don’t even have a swim animation. What Arcalas is suggesting would be cool, though – essentially, the Elite summon golems, except they actually stick around instead of “Okay, I’ve been around for forty seconds.” kbzzzzzzthoom

So, I guess, a bit more like Ranger’s Pets, except you have to buy it instead of looking for it, and you can’t change it out without changing a skill.

I also like the idea of using Asuran technology to make the Engineer fit the race better – particularly Waypoint technology. Their teleportation devices have advanced to the point where they’ve built teleportation guns, in at least one case, so miniaturized, single-purpose gates should be child’s play – literally, for them.

The Asura government is fairly lax, if you notice – the Council that ‘controls’ everything is really just a collection of smart Asura who couldn’t figure out a way to get out of being on the Council. In one personal story line, one of them attempts to off the rest in order to have all the power, and the response when you save them is “Yeah, we’ll return the favor.”

It’s also pretty much implied in a couple miscellaneous conversations that, while Rata Sum is a more civilized place, away from the Arcane Eye and the Council, the Asuran law of the jungle prevails.

In just about every instance of the Inquest meddling with the opening stuff, there is some reason you can’t go to the authorities. In one, the Inquest didn’t visibly do anything – you catch them trying to steal your stuff, but then you beat the stuffing out of them and they run away. In another, they’re in cahoots with the authorities, and in the last, they flagrantly try to steal your stuff in the middle of the contest. The authorities respond by doing not an authoritative thing. Authoritatively.

Once they get Deployable Turrets working, the turrets’ll be a more viable choice for the Engineer who doesn’t want to go running into combat, at least.

The various cooldown-reduction traits would also be really nice to have all fixed and working.

Other than that, well, Engineer’s my favorite class. I just wish it worked right.

I don’t recall much of what the Guardian had, but I had a full rack of Elixirs (Thought it’d be better for party support. Works better when I can use them without getting congalined across the room, I imagine). I do recall that neither I nor the Guardian in the example with the single enemy outdoing us both had any idea what the dungeon was going to involve (otherwise, I would never have suggested it in the first place, honestly), so we probably weren’t traited particularly well for it.

Having a single mook enemy of lower level (Guardian was level 43, I was level 50, not that it matters all that much with the deleveling) out-damage and out-last both us and our golems simultaneously beating on them, though – sure, maybe turrets would’ve dealt a bit more damage, but I have difficulty believing that we could possibly have made that something not stupid. Anything we could’ve done would’ve just been a time-buying tactic, when the enemy has that much health, damage and speed. I even used Elixir X to try to fight one enemy, and still found myself drastically outmatched.

The other members of the group were also a Guardian (all I know about their build is that they were using Tome of Courage and a Greatsword) and a Mesmer (Signet of Undeath and I have no idea what weapon). Not a whole lot of anything any of us did accomplished anything – we tried targeting the Separatist Bomber in the last encounter, he responded by hurling bombs when we got goonswarmed and couldn’t get to him. Our retort was, of course, “Oh god ow.” and death. Ours, specifically.

I don’t remember any roaming packs of dogs, though. Probably a good thing.

It’s been a little while since the game came out, and half my Engineer traits still only half-work – whether it’s the Deployable Turrets only working with two things if I’m not in a particular PvP mode, or cooldown reduction abilities completely failing to function with certain abilities that appear to qualify for them, it’s saddening.

I’d just like to be able to do everything that I’m supposed to be able to, if I spend the time getting to the point where I should be able to do it.

When are these things going to be fixed? I’m beginning to get the impression that there’s no point hoping for actually getting bugs fixed, because the devs are too busy rebalancing/breaking everything else. Precisely one bug related to the Engineer has been addressed – and that was just a stopgap.

You can take your dungeons and eat them – what comes out the other end will be more fun to play through than Caudecus’ Manor currently is.

TL;DR version: I don’t know what happened, but somebody needs to tone this dungeon down.

I’m not sure what happened to Caudecus’ Manor, but I think the devs must’ve been offended by this thing with people speedrunning it.

Why?

I’m just going to list the encounters that I saw; was running it with a four-person party.

1: Prototype Golem: Not so bad. Took most of the party down several times, but nobody died and eventually victory was won.

2: Door Guard: Wouldn’t have been so bad if he didn’t spam Thousand Edges or whatever, with a ludicrously gigantic hitbox (as in, I’m halfway across the room, he’s looking in a completely different direction, and I’m having to watch this from Downedcam because he killed me from that distance).

Now, both of these were single, strong bosses. We did, admittedly, go rushing into them without a whole lot of thought, and so they could probably have been made easier with more strategy, so maybe the only issue is with the Door Guard being able to hit from across the room and spam Thousand Edges nonstop.

The next couple encounters were the ones that have some serious issues. Like, “I’m pretty sure the devs are offended about this speedrunning business” kind of issues.

3: Separatist Sergeants, Snipers and Fighters: Okay, so there’s three snipers/sergeants. Whatever. They hit hard. Go fig, they’re snipers. If they hit for nothing, I’d think they were bugged/the victims of poor design decisions. The fighters, though? I don’t even know how many fighters there were. Too many to count, though if I went back through my combat log and counted how many times Interrupted popped up within the space of ten seconds, I could maybe make a guess. Achieved party-wipe enough times to damage every single piece of at least one party member’s armor.

Problem with this one: Too many people with too many interrupts. Reduce the number of enemies, the frequency of their interrupts, maybe their damage/hp, and it might be an okay encounter. Loot acquired post-battle not kitten worth it.

4: Separatist kitten This kitten Gang: Bombers, Fighters, Snipers. I’m not even sure where to begin on the problems here. I guess I’ll start with the bombers, with their ability to hurl knockdown-and-burning attacks that deal ludicrous AoE damage to begin with. And then move on to the fighters, who make a second appearance on this list of problems – only now, they’re worse. They heal when you’re not actively in combat with them, so you can’t even chip them down. They have a movement speed buff that lets them get in and ruin your day (literally – this awful dungeon has put me in a foul mood and burnt me out on the game itself for at least today, and I love this game). They also have too much HP, too much damage – you know what? It’ll be easier to give an example.

Party member 1 and myself were fighting a single Separatist Fighter. Both of us are Asura. 1 is a hammer-wielding Guardian, I’m a gun-and-shield Engineer. 1 manages to bait the Fighter into coming alone, and then summons a golem; I follow suit, as soon as I arrive from the last waypoint.

Fighter still kills us both. Fighter is still at 50%+ HP.

I quit after that, so I could attempt to just not be frustrated for a bit before work. 1 did, too, due to repair bills. I unequipped all my gear between 3 and 4 to avoid that.

I’ve noticed one thing about racial skills that makes them a bit less useful than they could be: None of them are classified as anything.

Now, obviously this is because, well, they’re something that each profession gets, but due to none of them being classified as anything, none of the cooldown or enhancer traits are of any use with them.

So, my suggestion: Classify them according to profession. For example, an easy one: Asura racial skills with Engineer classifications.

Skill 1: Pain Inverter. Obviously a Gadget.

Skill 2: Radiation Field. Also a Gadget.

Skill 3: Technobabble. For lack of anything better, call it a Gadget as well.

Skill 4: Summon 7-Series Golem. Not a Gadget – a Turret. It’s basically a mobile Turret with more abilities and a short duration. The various enhancements to Turrets would also be pretty handy with this thing.

Skill 5: Summon Power Suit. This’d be a Weapon Kit. Not sure whether Backpack Regenerator should apply, but I’m no balance guru.

Skill 6: Summon D-Series Golem. Also a Turret, just like the 7.

My suggestions for Turret functionality being improved are as follows: A health readout in the window of the turret utility skill (so, for example, you place your Rifle Turret, and can then see an HP bar/gauge in the Rifle Turret Overcharge window, while clicking will still trigger the Overcharge), and a way to zoom to view the turret – perhaps right-clicking the overcharge skill window or something.

Oh, and I guess an ability to tell the turrets where to aim would be nice. Nothing like fighting a Champion Warbeast while your turrets focus on bringing in Centaurs from outside instead of hurting the monster. Would also be handy for, say, Necromancers, come to think of it.

(Edit: Hahahah wow. Did I really say that I was almost completely happy with these?)

Elixirs have one major problem, which leads me to only ever use three of the several available. This problem is unreliability. I only use Elixirs H, B, and X, see, because every single other elixir is too mired in unpredictability. I can rely on Elixir H to heal me – though I keep it swapped out for the Healing Turret, because it can’t be relied on to heal allies. I can rely on Elixir B to Buff me, and it’ll usually do something beneficial for allies. Elixir X, as well, can generally be relied on to get me out of a tight spot.

Elixir S, R, and I suppose C can all be useful – but they can’t really be relied on. There’s not much point to giving the Warrior a Stealth effect, is there? I haven’t unlocked R yet, so I’m unaware of what uses it may have aside from the one in the tooltip (Edit: Having unlocked it, it’s ironically the best Elixir, as it is a ranged revive), but C is far too, if you’ll excuse the pun, conditional, relying entirely on me having it equipped, and having a condition inflicted to me. I’m fairly free about changing my utility set, but things that situational are things that I avoid – though it does at least have one reliable use (the elimination of conditions).

Let’s not even get started on Elixir U.

So, my suggestion: Give the Elixirs a bit of a context sensitivity. I’ll just go ahead and list my thoughts on each that I actually have thoughts on:

Elixir H: Perhaps it should determine its effect based on health percentage – when used while at 75% health, perhaps it gives Swiftness, at 50% Protection, and at 25%, Regeneration (along with whatever heal effect it normally grants ). Oh, and perhaps a bit of a guaranteed healing effect for allies? It’s difficult to support allies in the pursuit of being not-dead when you have, I’d surmise, about a 33% chance of managing to heal them.

Elixir B: Just make it work like the tooltip says it does, or have it function based on the traitlines or statistics of the character affected in order to properly compliment the character’s strengths, in addition to Swiftness for all affected. If they’re specialized for Power, then give them Might. If they’re focused on Precision, then give them Fury. If they intend to outlast with Toughness or Vitality, then Retaliation.

Elixir S: I’m not sure how to put this one besides "It’s really silly for Warriors to get the Stealth effect and Thieves the Stability. " I guess I’d suggest that characters with greater Toughness get Stability, and characters with higher Precision get Stealth. This is one of the ones I rarely use, due to it taking me effectively out of the fight for three seconds of “Well, I guess I’m tiny now.” and not even having a particularly useful party-support effect.

Elixir C: I don’t even know. It’d probably be nice for it to also be context-sensitive in a manner similar to B, but I’ve never used it due to its highly situational nature. I’d probably have only had it be a 3-point skill, as well, for the same reason (you’ll only get a use out of it once in a while, except maybe in PvP, I guess; haven’t done any of that).

Elixir U: I never use this one, either, because its usefulness is offset by A ) I have cooldowns, thus rendering it essentially useless except for quickly starting them all and B ) I really don’t like being squishier, impossible to heal, or having no endurance regeneration while I’m starting all my cooldowns at once, likely leading to me running like a bat out of hell. The random effect field thing could also use some work, as its randomness prevents any attempt to even figure out what the hell the use of whatever field it puts up is without extensive testing outside of battle. Perhaps a similar context-sensitive effect, where it gives allies passing through the field context-sensitive boons and Swiftness, while giving enemies context-sensitive conditions and cripples them, though that may be a bit much – perhaps enough to qualify this one for taking Elixir C’s 6-point slot.

Elixir X: I’m actually just about happy with this one, except perhaps for how little explanation is given for some of the things (I still have no idea how that kittening tornado works, but it sure as hell is awesome). Also, that the only way a Condition-effect Engineer is going to be able to access Conditions with it is that they have to be the Plague, which requires water to start.

Speaking of things with which I am almost completely happy with: Turrets. Again. Yeah, that’s right, there’s more to this long, rambling post. Anyway, here we go.

Before you read, or skim, or glance-and-click-away: I don’t make these suggestions without some hint of trepidation. I’m still waiting for the Deployable Turrets trait to begin working as it should, for cooldown-reduction traits to function properly, etcetera. I have no idea what kind of glitches possibly incorporating any of these suggestions would cause, particularly the later, functional ones. Not that I expect these to ever actually see use – it’d be nice, but honestly? I’d just like mykittentraits to work right.

I’ve noticed one thing that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense about the Engineer class – its looks. Particularly when it comes to races besides the Charr. See, while I like the Charr, their technology has a distinctly industrial feel to it, an industrial feel I think doesn’t quite fit many of the other races.

Reasons I don’t think it fits, organized by race:
1: Asura: The Asura don’t even use the same kind of technology as the charr. Why are their turrets and so forth the same? Surely, a race of such brilliance could come up with something. One of your character’s backstory choices is “What was your first invention,” with the choices being a magic eight ball (or something), a weather-control device and a golem with noncombat uses. The culture’s areas are saturated with amazing technology – and they’re using Charr turrets. Why not small golems, like the ones that give directions, ported in with miniaturized Asura Gate tech and equipped with weapons appropriate to their purpose?

2: Humans: These might seem an odd group to go “Wait, why are they using those?” about, considering that they’re the most equivalent to the Charr in terms of both technology advancement and type – but I think it’s strange that a race that’s been semirecently curbstomped by the Charr hasn’t at least changed how their turrets look to distance themselves from them. The humans worship several gods, and have shrines to them; they consider them to have great impact on their lives, as far as I’ve seen (though I’ve only played through the tutorial with one). Why not have their turrets be designed to reflect their faith? Perhaps the Flame Turret is emblazoned with symbols of Balthazar, and so forth, instead of whatever pattern the Charr use.

3: Sylvari: These are actually probably the ones I could most see making sense as having the Charr-style turrets, if only because they’ve only existed as a race for a quarter-century. However, they grow their own kinds of turret as a racial skill – why not expand on that, and have them be able to do so as Engineers?

4: Norn: Similar to the Humans, the Norn have several Spirits that they worship, and believe to have much impact on their lives. They don’t have nearly as much against the Charr as the Humans, but they’ve still got their own culture, so it seems a trifle strange to see a Norn dropping a Charr thumper turret instead of, say, a portable shrine to Bear or Minotaur, or some other earth-shaking beast.

These suggestions have all, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, focused on the turrets, though the Kits could also use a similar modification – the Charr just look silly, being industrialists, with an Elixir Gun, while the Asura, a race of alchemagicians, make it look like it belongs, for example.

Speaking of Elixirs, that brings me to the function portion of my suggestion – which, as you may have guessed, is going to start with…Elixirs. Imagine that. It’ll be the next post.