Guild Wars 2

Karl McLain.5604:

Cero.5132:

I also listened to it but…
But I cringed in pain, when Karl said that, when you place your thumber turret you could still defend yourself with your toolbelt skill. I think he got some stuff confused there.

Sorry if I misspoke, I was more referring to the overcharge ability that blows enemies back, the next time the turret fires.

Ah that´s a relieve
Thanks for clearing that up.

I am certain that he only said rifle turrets. But on the other hand english is not my main language so I could be wrong there o.o

I also listened to it but…
But I cringed in pain, when Karl said that, when you place your thumber turret you could still defend yourself with your toolbelt skill. I think he got some stuff confused there.
And 100nade combo hitting for 25k…. Did I miss something?

The stuff about turrets he said seemed good … but it seems I missed out the condition-buff part o.o

I´m quite curious, what they´re about to do with our most beloved profession :O

Mad Rasputin.7809:

The engineer’s toolkit wrench is really their only source of true melee. It is not bad, coupled with the prybar, but engineers are not that great at melee.

But engineers can put out some DPS and condition damage. Lots of AoE means lots of enemies going down. While AoEs only hit 5 enemies max, I can constantly hit quite a bit more than that per attack. With coated bullets, the first target I hit has a chance to process an AoE effect from my sigil of fire. Then the next one has another chance. I routinely see 10-15 enemies in a mob getting tagged by me at once.

They are pretty good soldiers in their own right.

Funny thing I believe that engis are more suited for melee than range. Though I see myself often jumping in and out of melee. Hence the medium-range-thing ion the class philosophy I guess.
rifle #3, #4 and #5 are melee oriented. As are bombs, the toolkit, pistol #4, heck even grenades are more reliable in melee range and have a lower flight time there o.0
Whether you want to use engi in melee, range or as medium range is up to the player´s… playstyle

On topic: Did you guys know, that engi was supposedly intended to be a third heavy armor class?

RaynStargaze.6510:

Cero.5132:

Given that I don´t use HGH it´s, in my opinion, far more interesting whether it´s mathematically worth to only nade spam or switch kits in between for a prybar or a jump shot and a blunderbuss.

And am I right, when I suggest, that you only used nades #1 to get the numbers?

Switching up grenades is only good when you solo.
When in groups the vulnerability stacks lost are > the dmg increase you gain by switching. Maybe for jump shot but you shouldnt use rifle in the first place because 1 sigil.

As I see it we are currently talking about raw (mathematical) damage.
So the support through vulnerability is not reckoned in, yet.

And I wouldn´t use a set of weapons that doesnt support my playstyle only for the sake of one more sigil. I feel like capping my own utility with that.
It´s just not my playstyle. But that´s off-topic again….

Well, I´m not hitting 25 might-stacks, either. But that´s probably because I dont use HGH but Enhanced Performande with sigil of battle and 2 runes of altruism.
without might-runes I´m usually around 15-18 stacks might.
But if there´s someone in the party who´s stacking might for the grp I easily hit the 25.

Given that I don´t use HGH it´s, in my opinion, far more interesting whether it´s mathematically worth to only nade spam or switch kits in between for a prybar or a jump shot and a blunderbuss.

And am I right, when I suggest, that you only used nades #1 to get the numbers?

Haha gotta love how you practically melt other player´s faces away
And that one heartseeker spamming thief…. xD
Yap, your video made my day

As I see our opinions are not too far apart. But I think we have different ideas on what versatility is.

And you made a good point with the damage-tax. Maybe it really is needed at some point. When we equip 3-4 kits we have immensely low cooldowns on many useful skills.
There´s still a downside. No stunbreaks. Of course there are little tricks like using ft´s blind or SE while downed. But I find the lack of stunbreaks a bit disturbing.
But what about builds that dont use kits? They´re almost forced to trait into HGH or Static Discharge to come up for the loss of fast cooldowns.

On the other hand I believe it´s very hard for the devs to bring damage, survivability and support in line for engineers who like to use many kits AND engineers who prefer not to use too many kits.

PinCushion.7390:

Cero.5132:

I always like to compare the engineer to our step-sister, the elementalist. King of versatility, great group support and control. That´s roughly how the elementalists class philosophy goes.
As we know the elementalist has incredible boons and can support groups like no other, do comparably good damage and has good survivability.
Somehow I can´t see a way to achieve only one of these things without a huge tradeoff. And yet it´s the engineer who has to pay the prize for versatility in damage.
Of course elementalists also use traits to push their skills but is there any attunement that you have to trait for, just to make it viable?

I main an Elementalist, so I’ll chime in here.

Elementalists have incredible boons and support if they trait for it.
They also have good survivability if they trait for it.
They can also have good damage if they trait for it.

Most Elementalists currently trait for survivability and support (because it also helps survival), and let gear choices take care of the damage. If you decide to trait for straight up damage you die a lot, and fast. Without all the boon spam and healing Elementalists are the glassiest of cannons, with the lowest health and lowest armor in the game. In exchange for that they get mediocre damage (for glass cannon), better than average burst, and carpal tunnel from all the attunement swapping and dodging they do.

They are designed to be versatile and flexible, but are forced to specialize in shoring up their biggest weak spot due to flawed trait tree design. Sound familiar?

I borrowed my wife’s Engineer for a bit, and was amazed at how similar it plays to an Elementalist.

I was merely trying to quote the elementalists class philosophy. I can only talk about what my friend can do with his ele And I´m only just leveling an elementalist and therefore I´m not very experienced with them, yet.
So thank you for pointing that out.
It seems both the “versatile” classes share a problem there.

Okay, I´ll try to explain a little what I particulary meant with “questionable”.

While the engineer doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights.

I think this is questionable in so far that I find myself often jumping between melee and range. I dont have the feeling that there´s something in between that could be called medium range. On the other hand, if one considers jumping from melee to range and back to melee as midrange….

They have a lot of control, …

This is very true. Only question that comes to my mind on this are things like stability or PvE boss-fitghts where people rather rely on DPS and doge than control. So I wonder whether it´s a valid argument.

They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.

This is a difficult one and the main reason I find the engineers class philosophy questionable.
It´s clearly awesome to have more weapons accessible during the fight whenever you want.
But personally I don´t feel more versatile with it. I simply have more skills that compliment my build or not.
I can´t switch to my Elixiercanon out of the blue and say: “Now I´ll heal you and myself like a bauss!”
or switch to grenades because the situation calls for it. In my opinion grenades need to be traited to be effective. So I dont feel the versatility with them. They are a new weapon. No compliment to the player´s playstyle.
Sometimes I even feel kitten when using these kits that promise us versatility. They completely lack a stun break and there´s no (reliable) stability anywhere near. Also, as part of this discussion, there are no boons they provide for the team except for combos.
But on a side note I also have to mention, that, if there´s a kit that´s versatile it´s in my opinion the tool kit. I think they have done a very good job with it. Defense, offense, conditions and control are in good shape in this kit.

I always like to compare the engineer to our step-sister, the elementalist. King of versatility, great group support and control. That´s roughly how the elementalists class philosophy goes.
As we know the elementalist has incredible boons and can support groups like no other, do comparably good damage and has good survivability.
Somehow I can´t see a way to achieve only one of these things without a huge tradeoff. And yet it´s the engineer who has to pay the prize for versatility in damage.
Of course elementalists also use traits to push their skills but is there any attunement that you have to trait for, just to make it viable?

These are the main questions that come to my mind, when reading the whole class philosophy. Also it´s only my humble opinion, it could be that I´m completely wrong with some of this, so please feel free to correct me, wherever it´s necessary.
And I know it´s quite the long text and currently I´m very tired x) So I´ll apologize in advance if I went too far off topic with something.

Good night

Btw, why only 1 point on class philosophy? I find the whole text about engineers questionable.

This looks… kind of unorthodox o.o
But interesting. I´m curious hw it´l work out. Even though I´m a bit sceptical about the use of rocket boots…

I awlays fear for my groups well being when a gs-zerker-warrior joins us. They usually do more damage to the group than good. Never met any decent zerker warrior.

“Step back! Watch me push a button! Uh or maybe I´ll even switch a lever!”

And there used to be a sound bug in hotw path1 where the Kodan NPC finds his sons.
“Wh-Wh-Wh-What is Wh-Wh-What is this – What is this?”

That one always made me laugh

If I understood right it´s the same issue I have sometimes.
But people explained to me, that it´s because the game is animation based.

For example: Your skills have a castbar that runs down. Exactly at the moment, when it´s run down you use another skill. The skill won´t work. Why? Because the skill´s animation is most likely not over yet. There´s practically a small delay of 0.25 – 0.5 seconds.

Another example: You see the animation of a player attacking you. All indicators say that he hasn´t hit you yet. So you try to protect yourself through aegies/roll/whatever. But the player´s skill still hits you. That´s because he was already mid-animation when you tried to defend yourself.

So when an animation is already running the game tries to push it through, no matter what.

I feel like Anets class Philosophy is almost contradicting to the ingame mechanics.
I almost feel like a lot of classes (not every class) can give more (defensive) boons to their group than the engineer. Even classes which are not particulary dedicated to do that.

It´s more like the engineer is not using boons to keep the group alive but rather to weaken the enemy so it´s far easier for the group to take it down.
Yeh, that somehow sounds more correct to me.

Currently I try a condition build on my engineer. While I shouldnt have problems with condiremoval of most classes (except ele or condimencer) I have huge problems in pve.
No, not only with the bleed cap. But with other classes that burn and poison the enemy like Ele, Guardian, some thieves, necro and whatnot.

I now feel much more comfortable in longer fights. I´m not pressed to attack all the time to maintain damage and therefore play much more defensive and supportive and therefore I stay alive much longer.

Now… If dungeons weren´t such easymode-areas that playstyle would be worth something but as it is right now….. Zerkers and face- sry I mean … DODGEroll for the win <.<

Okay, as an engineer, I know Im not exactly right in this class-forum, but sicne engineers were mentioned I want to give my 2 cents :P

But first off: This thread gives me a good laugh.
The same is debated over and over on the engineer forum. They say the exact same things about damage, about fun, about how it´s often a l2p issue and about the issues with traits and their synergies. Just replace the words “pet” with “turrets” and of course “ranger” with “engineer” and … voilà! You have the exact same discussion about the engineer and the profession´s problems.
Except for the problems with RnG, Kit-viability, no reliable stability, some really lame projectiles and… other.
But as I read in other threads I guess ranger also has some more problems than the above stated So I think problem- and bug-wise engineers and ranger are nearly even.

Rocket boots.
Use rocket boots to clear your stun from the rocket boots you used to remove your stun to remove the stun you got from the rocket boots that you used to remove your stun.
Rocket-boot-ception!

Haha seems like you came to like the net turret
But I´m still wodnering: What´s the build you used in your recent videos? Something like 10/20/xx/10/20?
Asking because it doesnt seem to be your above posted builds o.o
I´m so curious! :O

Btw I really liked that fight against the mesmer… You made it look so easy O_O

Soooo there we got it, the inetrnal CD.
But not every weapon seems to be affected by it.

I could, for example, swap to toolkit, get its kit refinement skill, then immediately swap to grenade kit and still got a grenade barrage.
Elixier gun also seems to trigger the internal CD. directly after swapping to elixier gun flamethrowers flame blast and grenade kit´s grenade barrage wont work.
But if swap to grenade kit for the barrage and swap to elixier gun directly after, I still get both, the barrage and the field.
flamethrower also seems to trigger it, but that needs more testing.
Also, toolkit seems completely unaffected by it.

So, what´s your experience?

vgfanatic.1049:

ALL of the kits are effected by the global cd (I don’t think it was intended for med kit and bomb kit to get it), but only flamethrower and elixir gun actually trigger the global cd. If you use elixir gun first and then grenade kit before 10 secs, you won’t get the grenade barrage effect. If you use grenade kit first and then elixir gun, you will get both.

Ahhhhh that explains a lot
Proves that I ahve to do even more testing.
Thank you

vgfanatic.1049:

Only elixir gun and flamethrower. Grenade kit does not.

Huh, I couldn´t use elixier guns kit refinement and immediately after grenade kit´s.
It was something like this: I swapped to elixier gun, then swapped to grenade kit. No grenade barrage happend.
The second time I swapped to elixier gun for the kit refinement and as soon as the field was gone(after 10 seconds) I swapped to grenade kit and the grenade barrage was working.
So I figured both of them are affected by the internal cooldown.

Petezahut.3068:

Cero.5132:

Not true, google. Look at it more closely. Only Elixier gun, grenade kit and flamethrower trigger the internal cooldown.
So the patch notes are a lie! :o

can i get a confirm?

You´re welcome to try for yourself anytime It takes less than 5 minutes to figure out whether it works or not.

Not true, google. Look at it more closely. Only Elixier gun, grenade kit and flamethrower trigger the internal cooldown.
So the patch notes are a lie! :o

I´ve done some testing now and it definitely is not a nerf. There are more fixes than anyhthing.
Deployable turrets working, 100 nades is still viable because toolkit doesnt trigger the internal cooldown (only grenade kit, elixier gun and flamethrower do), less traveltime for netshot, flame blast and elixier F.
But I think it´s not intended that elixier gun and grenade kit still have their old cooldowns.

I´ve also done some testing and foudn that only elixier gun, grenade kit and flamethrower are affected by the internal cooldown, while bombkit´s kit refinement now has a 10 second cd. But it still doesnt seem to applay the inetrnal cooldown.

That means that the 08/15 10 nades combo with the toolkit pull and burst is still viable.

And either I´m dreaming or net shot, Elixier F and Flame Blast now really are faster. Need more testing.
But Grenades are… as I see it, still slow as ever…. or does anyone disagree? o.o

Âh and I just figured, that toolkit doesnt count in to the new 10 second inner cooldown thing.
I can still use toolkit with its kit refinement and immediately switch to grenade kit and the kit refinement still goes off.
Only Grenade kit, elixier gun and FT seem to trigger the internal cooldown.

I just tried elixier gun in heart of the mists.
First without any healing stats, then with 30 points into inventions and clerics amulet.

Without healing stats:
Initial Heal: 700
Heal on tick: 204

With healing stats:
Initial Heal: 1189
Heal on tick: 326

It´s a nice change for support engis, really.

What´s bothering me is that there´s now the internal cooldown AND ne normal cooldown on kit refinement.
I could work aroudn the patched internal cooldown but…. internal cooldown and normal cooldown is silly.
Personally, I dont even think, taht it´s intended that way.

Deployable turrets is deinitely working.
And healign turret nwo activates its own waterfield if you destroy it directly after casting it…. dont know if it did that before the patch.

I think it will take some time untill I adjusted my playstyle to the changes but I dont think they´re all bad….
I´ll only have to make a 10 seconds timer, so that I dont accidently use kit refinement, when I only want to use it the next swap.

o great -.-
Why, o why didn´t I expect something like that to happen?

Hum… if one would only focus on eg that would mean that we get an all the time (buffed) super elixier and 50% of the time 2x (buffed) super elixier…. if anyone would do that….
I think I´ll try xD
Didn´t like smelly grenades anyway… sniff ;(

I still wonder, whetehr it is a buff for 2 kit or 3 kit builds or if it´s a nerf for 4 kit builds and 100 nades….

I can already guess how I am going to play with four kits now but…. it´s going to be more complicated now….

houndmd.4360:

I am now basicaly COMPELLED to jump every time I switch on my MedKit, because refinement skill on it is the most useless skill ever and will only buck up cd for insta Super Elixir. Acid finisher is good though.

Share your build then! No more medkit for me :c

Kit Refinement: This trait now has an internal cooldown of 10 seconds globally for Flamethrower, Elixir Gun, Grenade Kit, and Tool Kit.

As far as I can read they dont say, that the inetrnal cd applies to med kit.
So I guess it wont be affected.

Yep… Its basically 4 grenade barrages in 25 seconds now… if my math skills dont let me down on this….
at 0 seconds greande barrage from kit refinement and toolbelt, 10s kit refinement, 20-25 s kit refinement and toolbelt… wait, that´s 5 O_O
Only problem is with toolkit. Now engineers cant swap all too mindlessly…. I now consider using net turret for some extra hold.
And I guess engineer got way more melee oriented with this patch…. wlel at least in my opinion

That´s it… I am now really considering to use a 10 second timer to play my engi xD

paperplay.6941:

imo, the highest dps engineers is all about chucking grenades all day.
so and the end of it all , pure dps engineers don’t take much skill to play.

This is definitely not true.
Grenade #1 may be a nice skill to maintain some damage but definitely not the very best way.
If you want to play proper full dps as an engineer you´ll have to use many different cooldowns.
Given a 30/10/0/0/30 setup with 4 kits it could be something like this:
rifle #3 → grenade barrage → grenade #2 + #4 → prybar → throw wrench → elixier gun #4 → rifle #5 → rifle #3 → grenade #1 when absolutely no CD is up (which you´ll find is quite the small timeframe)

Does it take skill? You need to memorize your cooldowns. Nothing more. But some people already seem to be overwhelmed by that.
Does it do more damage than only grenade chucking? Definitely.
Is it riskier than only throwing grenades? yep.
Is it more fun? Definitely

Hah that´s nice to hear and thanks for the quick answer

o and I forgot. I think your videos are amazing, inspiring and very motivating. Please keep up the good work

I´d probably be an engineer.
I mean common, who doesnt want to blow stuff up, throw grenades and literally melt the one guy´s face off who tried to hit you, because you were looking at him in a way he didnt like, with an acid bomb?
AAAAhhhhh…. but it wouldn´t be good for my reputation… for my fun sure, I´d laugh like a maniac if I could do the crazy things a gw2 engineer could do in real life but…. I´d see an asylum from inside mcuh sooner than preferred.

I was wondering… D/D eles seem pretty scrweed when you take away their movability. Do you think net turret is a valid option against a d/d ele?

I ask because a friend of mine (d/d ele… and a bit lacking in skill) told me how he was in w3 the other day and was holded for ~5 seconds by an engi. I didnt believe him first, but I found that the engi must´ve been using the net turret.

So… would that be valid against good ele players?

I also got bored with the game some time ago… Then I came back and was set on trying out another profession.
Guess what? Now I´m stuck on an engineer and gameplay and bug-management got so complicated that I´m bored to death when I play any other profession or game. And now I´m set on mastering one of the (here I quote a majority of the community… my opinion is completely different) most lacking professions in the game.

… Well what I wanna try to say is: Give it time, try something else and if you want to play again, then play. That´s what a game is for, isn´t it?

W = forward
S = Evade
A = Turn left
D = Turn right
Q= Utility #1
E = Utility #2
R = Utility #3
7 = Elite
J = Autorun Most important feature haha

I´m pretty sure that the devs said something about versatility comes at cost of damage on our mainhand weapon.
And yeh, that´s the issue you try to address if I´m not completely mistaken.

While other classes get their slotskills to support and compliment their builds, they´re the engineer´s bread and butter.
I don´t mind that, but as you said: We don´t have a stunbreak if we run 4 kits. Which I find to be a little bit fatal at times.

And yes, maybe a little increase of damage on our mainweapon would probably be a good thing.

O, and you forgot the might-stacking 4 kit engineer ;D

The biggest problem on engineers is that they´re definitely harder to play than any other profession. That´s why I can´t stop playing my engineer because I´ll fall asleep playing my guardian and mesmer.

Geotherma.2395:

“JonathanSharp
ArenaNet Poster

1. - 2012/11/20 06:28:40 PM (2012/11/20 13:28:40 UTC-5)
   A while ago Jon Peters said something that has been taken out of context. He said that only two people were working on the things he was working on (which was true – but he meant it differently than how it was received) and people have taken that to mean that we only have 2 people working on balance, or PvP, or both (at this point it’s morphed into different things in different threads).

Based on what was said, I understand how it could have been construed, so I wanted to be as transparent as I can be, so that you know what’s happening inside the studio.

PvP
On the PvP team we have programmers, designers, QA and an environment artist (Darrin Claypool – he’s the guy who just finished making Temple of the Silent Storm). Many PvP features need all members of the team, but some are programmer intensive, or art intensive. For example, while we’re still working on custom arenas and other core features (which involve server programmers, UI programmers and gameplay programmers), designers and artists were able to build the recently released “Temple of the Silent Storm”. Because the map required no code, we simply worked with art, design and sound in order to support this map’s needs. Work on custom arenas requires zero environment art, so those two features (custom arenas and a new map) don’t impact one another greatly, as far as work flow goes.

WvW
For WvW, we have a similar setup. We have designers, QA, programmers and environment artists. WvW is a massive piece of the GW2 pie, and the WvW team is able to focus on WvW needs. While many of us in the company may give feedback/ideas/suggestions to the WvW team, they are the ones who actually implement and carry out those changes.

Balance
When it comes to balance, we have multiple people who give feedback/guidance/suggestions, even though a smaller subset actually implement those changes (which is what Jon was saying in his post). After we have balance meetings, a few of the designers implement the changes. If it’s a WvW change, the WvW designer will implement that change. If it’s a PvP change, one of the PvP designers implements it (again, this is what Jon was saying). If it’s strictly a balance change, then we have a designer do it that has the bandwidth (sometimes it’s me, sometime it’s even Izzy, but usually it’s Karl or Peters). Currently, when we have balance meetings, the following people are present in various combinations, depending on the topic:

Jon Peters – game designer
Karl McLain – game designer
Representatives from the WvW team, including QA and design
Representatives from the dungeon teams, including another game designer
Representatives from the live response team, including QA guys who play ALL aspects of the game A LOT
Other representatives from the PvP team, like Tyler Bearce (designer) and Roy Cronacher (QA)
Izzy – lead designer
Myself – game designer
When we’re in those meetings, we’ll talk about hot topics, and issues that are currently a big issue for a certain piece of content. We also listen to high level players, we read the forums (sometimes we even take the best-written posts, print out 10 copies, and bring them to a balance meeting), and we play the game to get a feel for ourselves. Just because you don’t see a change that YOU want, keep in mind that someone else may disagree. Just because we don’t do every single change YOU want, doesn’t mean we don’t care about you or the game. We just try to make the best changes for the greatest number of players.

I just wanted to clear this up to let you guys know a little bit more of what happens here inside the studio so you understand more of what Peters was trying to say. He’s just as busy as we all are, and with a lot of us gone for Thanksgiving (he’s not here right now), I just took it upon myself to try to clear this up a little.

Cheers"

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/245674-the-teams-that-work-on-pvp-wvw-balance/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-teams-that-work-on-PvP-WvW-Balance

…. I love you _
No, I mean: This was the post I was talking about. Thank you for putting it up.

I apologize in advance if something I write isn´t quite clear. English is not my main language.

Ever since I´ve found that our autoattacks are comparably low in damage I wondered what order of skills my fellow engineers use.
Because the engineer has many skills, because of their ability to use kits, there are a lot of combos and orders of skills. So I´m very curious, what other engineers like to use and whether they´re successful with it.

I´ll start with my current setup.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0picHxSfF17IyoHfmotZgKkXfewWPIEC
Battle sigil, 2x rune of altruism.
So my favourite skill order goes like this:

" rifle #5 -> rifle #3 -> grenade barrage -> switch to grenade kit (kit refinement) -> grenade #2 -> grenade #4 -> grenade #5 -> switch to toolkit -> prybar -> 3x toolkit autoattack -> switch to rifle -> rifle #3 -> grenade kit -> grenade #2 -> grenade #1 until a CD is up again (approximately 2-5 seconds)"

I didn´t mention my swaps to medkit, simply because it´s quite the fast swap inbetween.
This is if circumstance are optimal. In a real fight I run in and out of melee and use dodge and block, which then normally leaves no time to spam grenade #1.

And please keep this thread free of the obligatory “engineer has problems”-stuff. There are already enough threads out there to discuss the issue.

In the wrong hands an engineer is definitely UP.
A person needs to bring lots of patience, knowledge and timing for the class to get their combos done and be successful… hell I´d even say they need that to be viable.
But once a person got that and builds he´s comfortable with I´d say that an engineer can definitely keep up the pace. (maybe not the pace of warriors…. But honestly, which class can keep up with them over long time? Haven´t heard of one, yet)

I´d say: try the engineer.
Even if you dont like it in the end, it´s most likely that you will be so used to fast swaps and random bugs in the end, so that the other classes seem to be extremely easy to play in comparison.
That´s why I still stick to my engineer… My guardian and mesmer are simply too much of an easymode.

So… play engineer to get better at other classes… hahah…. awesome logic

only 2 people on class balancing?
I guess you guys missed the threat, where anet gave a statement about it being a misunderstanding. They made that statement shortly after that rumor came up.

What I´m going to write now is completely PvE-based.
I´ve only played guardian, mesmer and engineer yet, whilst the engi is my alltime favourite.
Why? Because the others are too kitten easy to play. Especially the guardian…
Yet, the engi is still far behind.
The engis damage-skills are practically MADE for melee-combat. See Toolkit, Rifle´s #3, #4 and #5, grenadekit´s kit refinement and bombkit.
Whereas I dare say that only traited bombkit (10 into explosives and 30 into inventions) is made so that an engineer can afford to stay in melee range without biting it all too soon.
Let´s see… What do I do with my engineer, when I want to squeeze out the highest damage I got over “long” time?
Traited 30/10/0/0/30 (The usual 100nades build except for some heavy might-stacking)
Using rifle, grenade kit, toolkit and… whatever the situation calls for on my third slot.

grenade barrage – switch to grenade kit for kit refinement – throw wrench – grenade #2 – grenade#4- grenade #5 – switch to toolkit – prybar – switch to rifle – rifle #3 – rifle #5 – switch to grenade kit – use grenade #1 until CD´s are up again – repeat

(dont forget that the game is animation-based and even when the cast-bar says that the skill is through, when the animation isn´t by only 0.5 seconds, and I try to swap kits and use skills as fast as possible to not create a too big delay between my hits, the skills or the swap just wont happen)
Why so many swaps? Why not simply use a weapons #1? Because they do, comparably, low damage. And if I ever have to use a #1, it´s either toolit´s or grenade kit´s for vulnearability stacking.
And still, that´s only on a not-attacking dummy. Now take defensive abilities, dodging, movement, etc into account, too.
Hell lot of fun (I´m being serious there) But soemtimes so daaaaaaamn……..!!!

When I hear from my guildies that their warriors do supposedly 3k+ crits on a normal hit…. I feel sick! I have to play on my keyboard like Beethoven on his piano to avoid using most of my #1 and to keep decent damage up…. just…. grrr!!!
Damagewise I´d say that I can, at least, definitely keep up with my shatter-specced s/p mesmer, yet I do not have the defense(mesmer: 1/4 of time invulnearable), nor the battle-mobility, nor do I have enough stunbreaks to stay anywhere close melee range over a long time, whilst my mesmer only needs to yawn to remove a stun.

Now… on to se secondary skills except for kits…
I think I don´t have to mention that turrets are either trash or too situational to truly shine?
Gadgets… some are okay but there are a lot of gadgets which are completely obsolete. (rocket boots. remove stun to stun yourself for 2 seconds)

And dont get me started on comparing my engi to my guardian T-T

That just screams for some balancing.

(p.s. even if the post seems to bash engis a bit, and I have to admit I started raging there…. I just love my engineer! Currently leveling my second engi to its 80´s x) )

Definitely charr.
It fits well lore-wise and story-wise.
And charr´s racial “hidden pistol” may be not so useful on any other class but its toolbelt skill is actually pretty nice.
Plus I feel like some skins on charr look more engineer-like than medium armor skins on humans, for instance.