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Played them all, Eng is lacking..

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

With regards to dungeons we kind of fulfill a non essential role, we provide CC in spades. Some people see this as a liability.

People see that we don’t provide as much damage as thiefs, nor do we provide as much utility+damage as mesmers and elementalists. We don’t bolster other classes’ attacks or defense like guardians nor can’t take as many as them like warriors can.

Over at the elementalist forums people complain that they can’t build full glass cannons like mesmers and still do dungeon runs. I built a support engi and wish I could provide as many boons and heals as an elementalist can. Over at the guardian forums they complain that they can’t have as much dps as a warrior, but my bomb engi wishes he had as much access to protection or any access to stability.

Maybe I’m bummed out because when I’ve done my best in dungeons, people still think they could have squeezed more out of the run if I had run one of my alts. As I play more of the other classes I start to realize it’s not that other classes are Op.

I posted this on another thread and wanted it to be here as well. To add to it I’d like to say that I do enjoy my engineer greatly, and I consider it to be by far the funnest class in this game. That being said, whenever I level my alts I always keep thinking that the other classes are horribly OP. Every time I play my elementalist or mesmer, I think to myself that these classes are definitely broken, because they have so many useful (read/not broken) skills and outclass my engineer so easily.

Sometimes I feel sad when I have to switch out my engineer because he’s my favorite character, but after trying out so many builds I just can’t find something as effective as what other classes have to offer.

engineers and extinction

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Rare in WvW? I’d say they’re pretty rare in dungeons. I’m the only engineer in my guild that even tries dungeon runs (theres 3 of us) and I’m the only lvl 80 engi in any party I’ve been. It’s pretty bad because I’m not the best so I feel like I give us a bad rep

Why do ppl hate the Engineer?!

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

With regards to dungeons we kind of fulfill a non essential role, we provide CC in spades. Some people see this as a liability.

People see that we don’t provide as much damage as thiefs, nor do we provide as much utility+damage as mesmers and elementalists. We don’t bolster other classes’ attacks or defense like guardians nor can’t take as many as them like warriors can.

Over at the elementalist forums people complain that they can’t build full glass cannons like mesmers and still do dungeon runs. I built a support engi and wish I could provide as many boons and heals as an elementalist can. Over at the guardian forums they complain that they can’t have as much dps as a warrior, but my bomb engi wishes he had as much access to protection or any access to stability.

Maybe I’m bummed out because when I’ve done my best in dungeons, people still think they could have squeezed more out of the run if I had run one of my alts. As I play more of the other classes I start to realize it’s not that other classes are Op.

I’ll end this with a quote I found today

Clearly has not tried a long range spec with an engineer.

There is one long range spec with an engineer and it is terrible. You have to choose mostly terrible utilities for your toolbelt slots, and run a glassy build with none of the useful defense mechanics that GC (thieves|mesmers|rangers) can use.

So let’s just not talk about that build like it’s anything but the apoplectic thrashing of a foundering class design.

How exactly do I play an engineer (PvE)?

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JohnDied.3476

I tried using bombs but I always have to be in melee range or near melee range to hit enemies because they explode so quickly after being dropped that they blow up before the enemy can walk into them from further away and so I get hit a lot. Is there any remedy for this?

Forceful explosives increases bomb radii. It’s an adept trait from the explosives line so you should be able to take it at level 20 if you want to.

With forceful explosives you should be able to aggro mobs and run around in circles dropping the bombs to damage them. Mind you, bomb-kit also includes wonderful damage mitigators like smoke bomb and concussion bomb so if you’re careful you can still stay in melee range with their help.

_Drop Antidote_ stealth nerf?

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

I believe this stealth nerf happened during the december update, or at least that’s the first time anyone mentioned it. I don’t know who noticed it first but I remember hearing about it from this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Catalog-of-Stealth-Nerfs/first#post1192114

Turret Suggestions

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

And don’t even get me started on dragons who, as far as the turrets are concerned, don’t even exist. Toss a turret down directly next to a dragon and it just idles, doing its best not to look at the dragon in the best game of “I dont see yoouuuuu” that I’ve ever seen.

I actually saw that today while doing the claw of jormag. Someone had to pop a turret right next to the dragon’s foot for it to do anything. After the claw changed fazes I never saw the turret again

Turret Suggestions

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Loved the suggestions, we definitely need to get turrets up to par with the rest of the game. Even ranger pets outperform these toasters.

I found this interesting.

1.) Give turrets an 85% chance to have AoE’s miss them. This is how “that other game” handled pets and other things that were getting railed by AoE and it would greatly solve turret issues in PvE dungeons and WvW.

Suddenly turrets would be a grenadiers worst nightmare (if they scaled with stats). The hunter becomes the hunted. Static objects counter-attack.

how it actually should be.

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JohnDied.3476

Well, to put it simply, fixing the class properly by going through our bad skills and traits would take the devs forever. It’s more reasonable that we get buffs to make up for those abilities (looking at flamethrower) while we wait for the class to get fixed. It takes time to figure out every bug (and we’ve had some fixed), but buffs should have been coming from the class balance team workload all along.

When I say buffs I don’t mean damage. I play support so I could care less about damage. I want our healing skills “buffed” by scaling a little better with healing power, I want our random elixirs to have their boon duration buffed so we actually use them (looking at toolbelts). I want turrets to scale with stats.

Things are going to get fixed very slowly in this game (if ever) so at least we need to be competitive with the other classes.

how it actually should be.

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JohnDied.3476

Admittedly, I was speaking from a PvE standpoint.
Chilled stacks in duration, so if you land all three grenades (and you will if you have any aim) you can get off 6 seconds of chill on an enemy without any +condition duration.
If you’re wondering why chill is even useful, its because of something very important to a PvE player, Unshakable. Chill and cripple slow down champs when nothing else does because of all the defiant stacks preventing any kind of CCs.
Bomb kit adds another cc (which helps burn through those defiant stacks) and comes with two damage mitigators in the form of a blind field and and 5 stacks of confusion. I don’t know why anyone would call blinds, ccs and confusion a joke, but I assume you just wan’t big numbers to pop up and rarely pay attention to the little things.

"Engineer....psshhh"

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JohnDied.3476

well engineer pretty much sucks on every field for me except being a dungeon nurse .

It actually sucks there too. Most of our abilities don’t even get affected by the +healing on gear, I know I tried it, I pretty much keep the crit exotics on now exclusively. does the same amount of healing meh….

Healing turret now benefits from the healing stat, which is pretty significant. I would agree that there isn’t a huge benefit for super elixir or elixir infused bombs, our two main party healing abilities. They’re decent heals with or without healing power.

well if u use the trait were a kit creates a spell use #5 on it pop regen and on top of that u have bomb heal i dude that is a kitten load of regen if u ask me

The problem with SE is that this game focuses on burst and damage mitigation. Burst damage, burst healing, aegis, protection, stability. If you get locked down in a dungeon, no amount of regen or kit refinement SE is going to save you. You end up taking more damage just by not dodging and avoiding aoes than you regen with super elixir.

I still use healing bombs because they’re continual healing, and I can run as I drop them and still get my heals, but I dropped kit refinement for dungeon support while back. It does more harm than good to stay still in one spot in a dungeon, and it’s only use is to babysit bad people.

If you like stacking healing power, then med kit is still your best bet. I’ve tried post patch healing turret and it has a lot going for it; continual regen and an aoe heal on detonation, but it still doesn’t scale as well or match the burst heals provided by med-kit. If you wan’t on demand regen, then you can run with 6 runes of dwayna and giving it to the party whenever you go into your kit.

All of this being said, I can understand how people who invest 0 into healing power like SE. When all of your heals don’t add up to much, you wan’t to take as many as you can.

how it actually should be.

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JohnDied.3476

Mate, I agree with most of what you say, but I can’t help but feeling like you’ve barely given the class any time before you came on to the forums to complain.

Oh, well agree with you. The engineer doesn’t need a major overhaul (possibly) but it definitely needs across the board buffs. Unfortunately, what your post asks for is to change kits that are working great the way they are, so that they may suit you. This if done would probably break even more things for this poorly thought through class.

To pick something:

  • Grenade kit
    Sorry for beeing harsh, but this one is completely stupid. It’s OK for it to have a good damageoutput, but there are several things which makes it just beyond any logic. Like say, beeing able to throw a granade further than a mortar could. give it 600 range, should be fine. Also, it’s just stupid that you keep on throwing multiple granades. It serves no purpose at all, but beeing a reason to splash the damage on a further range. It would be way more realistic to throw only one (bigger=more damage) granade. ofc Total DPS should be buffed by, say, 20-30%, since we’re nerfing ourselves in range and splash range. Freeze granades(4) should be changed to some kind of smoke granade, since a smoke field would do a similar job defensewise, reduce movementcontrol of the engineer but making him more teamplay friendly and situational. In addition, skill (1) should definetly be autocasting, it’s never fun to have to mash buttons while others dont. F skill is fine with the abovementioned changes. Throwing multiple granades at once is definetly worth an F skill. Might reduce the amount to 3, with the buffed granades.
  • Bomb kit
    This set should definetly outdamage any other set(on multiple targets), since it’s melee range, splash and delay make i predestined for this purpose. standing in front of a stunned dragon or a destroyable building, one must feel “hey i need to switch to my bomb set, cause in this situation need pure DPS!”. (3) will be a second reason to switch to this set, since it’s a rare source for “confusion”. Smoke bomb should be changed to a “freeze bomb” kind of skill, since a melee kit will need movement control. And it’d also make this kit unique for having two movement control skills. F skill is fine, though it has very little use for a melee kit.

You’ve clearly not played with these kits enough to realize that these are our best kits for a reason. This kind of kitten analysis is what people used to do to toolkit before tankcat made it popular.

Grenade #4 is one of the best chills in the game, and it’s meant to keep enemies off you while you continue to lob grenades or do other things. Now that grenade condition builds are coming out most consider the grenade kit for the utility of its #4 and #5 instead of just spamming #1.

Bomb kit without #4 or #5 is just plain suicidal. We don’t need more control at melee range, we have plenty of CCs for that. At melee range we need to mitigate damage, and bomb kit is the only weapon choice to actually do that. If you wan’t more control in melee range then stop complaining about the toolbelt and use it for the #2.

Is there a dmg tax on engi weapons?

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JohnDied.3476

Personally still debating if I should continue lvling my engi or let it rot on the char screen… Because the last thing I want is another fully geared lvl 80 that feels useless for WvW compared to most other classes.

Stick to warriors and mesmers. Engineer is great fun but if you’re worried about efficiency (and gold spent getting different gear) then the engineer might not be what you’re looking for.

How exactly do I play an engineer (PvE)?

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JohnDied.3476

If you’re going for a power build, you should be using the rifle in conjunction with grenades or bombs. At Lower levels try using rifle turret to draw a lot of aggro and grenade them from affar (start with freeze then poison grenades), while they’re slow go and CC them with rifle. When mobs close in on you (like after you’ve aggroed absolutely everything with grenades) switch to bomb kit for the smoke/stun bombs and spam #1.

A few tips for leveling an engi.

Be patient, because killing things will take some time.
Our weapons are taxed on two fronts, because we are “versatile” and have kits (so at least take one kit), and because they are balanced around our grandmasters not being overpowered (so when you can, take a stat up to 30). So don’t be too reckless with what you take on, because you will be strafing for a while.

Try out every kit
The engineer class has a lot of variety when it comes to kit choices. Some of our kits are great while others are downright buggy as all hell. Every once in a while try out a new kit and see if it suits you, you might discover that a kit you hadn’t considered was exactly what you wanted for a build.

It is a medium armor class, so strafe and dodge.
While leveling the engineer is just as squishy as a thief, so don’t go around thinking that medium armor will save you if you aggro that champ wanting to facetank him. While playing light armor classes this always comes to mind, I’ve actually found them oddly tanker than the engineer due to their unique mechanics (mesmer clones, ele’s healing).

That’s all I can come up with. Good luck with the engineer

Skin Color

in Sylvari

Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Typical sylvari color?

Banana

Too little regular weapons?

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JohnDied.3476

Judging by how our main weapons are hybrids.

pistol-direct damage/condition weapon
rifle-direct damage/CC weapon

What other weapon would give us diversity like that? The only other weapon I can think of is maybe a hammer, but what would it be good at?

Need help with my build

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JohnDied.3476

I enjoy my main hand as a pistol but I’m up for either pistol or shield on off-hand. I would prefer to use turrets or elixir’s over weapon kits. Overall I would like to be survival focused.

Mix soldiers armor with either carrion or rabid trinkets, depending if you value crit-ing a lot (probably rabid if you want to get any use out of incendiary powder).

Soldier gear(pow,tough,vit)
+
Carrion trinkets(cond,pow,vit)
or
Rabid trinkets(cond,prec,tough)

Alternatively, if you don’t mind your dps dipping, you might want to try out some Apothecary trinkets (heal,tough,cond). I like healing power in my dungeon builds, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you keep incendiary/go for rabid, as your %crit will drop even further.

(edited by JohnDied.3476)

State of the Game on GuildWars2 Guru

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JohnDied.3476

Burn me for this but I think engineer is fine when someone fix those annoying bugs. Removal of RNG on elixir can be helpfull too

This is what I feel like for the most part. I love the engineer and find it quirky but nothing to laugh at in PvE and WvW.

I can’t however speak for PvP as the current meta doesn’t favor us.

Soooo i got 1shotted

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JohnDied.3476

trying to find him again so i can fraps it hopefully.

Dude he’s not hacking or cheating so getting a video won’t make any changes… You just got bursted by a glass cannon 100nades engineer. Trick on surviving this is actually the same as surviving a 100blades warrior. It’s 1 dodge/stunbreak away. If an engineer magnets you or fires a net shot then gets near you, pop your stunbreaker/dodge as soon as possible.

I’m not necessarily saying yet that he is cheating, thats why i wanted to fraps it first to show people and elaborate why it “literally” was over 20 nades in an instant.
A guildy showed me the build and we went sPvP (its different in wvw obv, but to get a view of how it looked like) and yeh the build he used on his engi looked similar to how the guy killed me. But even with the quickness pot that he used, it still took him 2-3 seconds to drop every single nade. But his auto attack “grenade” didnt drop 16 like the guy in the screenshot did.

The guy that killed me did it in an instant. IDK if thats how it supposed to be with specific traits or perhaps lag (even though it happened twice) thats why i wanted to fraps it and drop it here.

edit: couldnt find him anymore though, thinking about it, it might have been a macro program that spams his keys for him.

Ok, he only needed 3 clicks to unload 16 grenades(Grenade Barrage) which would take 1~2 seconds. Another 1 second and 2 more clicks for dropping 1 set of grenades which totals to 19.

Let’s assume his Toolbelt button for Grenade Barrage is F2.

1 – Press F2, AoE target pops up.
2 – Click on Ground (you).
3 – Press Hotkey for Grenade Kit.

That combo alone unloads 16 grenades. No macro needed. And BTW using a Macro is cheating in GW2 that’s why I thought you were accusing him of cheating.

Now let’s clarify it. Those 20 grenades you were telling from the log are from Grenade Barrage or Grenades? The log does not show it in seconds.

Note: Applying Elixir U makes it all possible to drop more than 20 grenades in 3~4 seconds.

I’d say it was lag. 20+ explosions in 3~4 seconds will cause that.

State of the Game on GuildWars2 Guru

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JohnDied.3476

On team composition: Ele’s are strong? Huh…we run 5 Engineers. Maybe that’s why we suck so bad.

I really dislike the profession devs.

Given the Dev’s a break – they said exactly the right thing!
Imagine if they’d said “Huh … we run 5 Engineers and we rock!”

Far from Engineers being ignored by the Devs:

  1. The Devs are actively playing Engineers.
  2. They’re familiar enough with the problems with Engineers to joke about it publicly.

This is the best news I’ve heard about the prospects for the Engineer class, yet. The more the Dev’s play Engs and the more they joke about their failings, the more love we can expect the Engineer class to get.

Go the Dev’s and their all Engineer team!

Oh man. I’d love to see that all engineer team get stomped by about any other class run by a competent player. Nerf us more why don’t ya!

EDIT: That being said, I’d like to see what other weapons they’re taking a look at. Other than elixir gun and pistols, everything else we run is pretty much level with post-nerf grenades. I would think it unfair if they buffed everything but grenades, considering that most kits are level with each other now.

(edited by JohnDied.3476)

Taugrim on the Engineer: Make our kits F1-F4

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JohnDied.3476

hmm… no, I think it is about the keybinds. I just read the critic’s blogpost and it seems like his only issue is with the layout, which is a non-issue because you have a different layout for each class. He never once mentioned the issue people have actually had problems with, which is missing out on utilities if you get kits.

I’ve actually been playing an elementalist recently, and I’m enjoying it greatly. I do find it overpowered in comparison to the engineer (look at all these useful skills! I don’t see any fluff like on my engi), but that may be the engineer being subpar at the moment. That being said, I don’t prefer the elementalist and I find my engineer to be much more fun and interesting.

Something I read on these forums comes to mind.

“The elementalist is versatile because one of it’s builds can do a lot of things, the engineer is versatile because it has many builds for the same thing”

The former is more useful for groups and effective when mastered. The novelty the later provides makes it much more fun.

Engineer - need some advise

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JohnDied.3476

Ok first off; “welcome to the engineer profession!”

Waves, shakes hand, overcharged shoots away, lands square on his bottom.

Secondly, due to having leveled so many other professions (and bringing in their experience into your engineer gameplay) you may find that your engi doesn’t seem well suited to a lot of things and very many of our weapons/kits seem like fluff. Once you get used to it, most kits (and our main weapons) will seem a lot better than they do at first glance and the bugs (looking at flamethrower) will seem minimal depending on your preference.

At the moment the engineer is underpowered in tPvP (The devs admit to this) but in WvW and PvE it is a very enjoyable profession and most who like it rarely leave it for long. As for what builds the engineer are good for, there are quite a few, but for leveling I’ll recommend you take another look at the following weapons/kits:

Rifle:
Most damage is from the #1, and may seem underwhelming, but this weapon captures what this profession is all about, crowd control. It has one immobilize (on a short cool-down) and one knock-down (very situational though). This weapon is very good 1v1, and in PvE you’ll whittle down unshakable stacks very easily with that #2.

Later down the line, if you don’t like to use kits, this is a very solid weapon for elixir builds (which rely on buffing yourself with thrown-elixirs/drinking-elixirs for might stacks and elixir effects). This is due to the riffle scaling better than pistols with strength, and the aforementioned CCs it provides.

Pistol/Pistol:
This weapon set up is one of our few options when it comes to condition builds, mostly due to the #4 skill. For leveling I wouldn’t personally recommend this set up but others find it enjoyable enough. Endgame Pistol/Pistol is another matter entirely and there are a few builds out on these forums that rely on it.

As an engineer condition builds can go a few different ways; they can rely on our accessibility to burning skills, they can go for a might stacking build and do a hybrid power/condition build, or they can go for long condition duration in conjunction with grenades. Most agree though that pistol #1 is kind of rubbish unless you have food+runes to increase that bleed duration.

Grenades:
This kit was at one point our bread and butter, and most either hated this or loved it. When I started playing Gw2 I decided to roll engineer, at the time grenades were the way to go for engis, and one of the first things I learned about this games was how to ground target effectively (I actually learned this before I learned strafing :x).

The only thing I can recommend is that you either ignore grenades or you keybind a button on your mouse to #1 for ease of spamming (or learn to press #1 and move at the same time like I do). Macros are kind of Iffy depending on who you ask and I wouldn’t recommend risking it.

If you get over the problem (for some) of grenade #1 then you’ll appreciate how good they are for scaling with power/applying vulnerability/applying conditions/setting up area denial. They’re also good for CC provided you use the #4 (which is one of the longest chills in the game). This is all assuming you go 30 in explosives and get grenadier, which is the only way to play grenades since they got nerfed.

I’ll go over bombs and elixir gun in another post, because these are good as well. Flamethrower I won’t defend because I tend to avoid it due to it’s peculiarities. I’ll leave that to others.

As a final note. Please ignore posters who will be less than useful. We’ve been having some conflicting views in the engineer forum and arguments have been breaking out. The class is fine (if a little underpowered) but the conflicts are all a forum problem and don’t accurately reflect everyone’s views on the engineer, only those of two (opposing) vocal minorities.

Healing with bombs - poer or healing power?

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JohnDied.3476

I found a good mix to be soldier armor (coglin’s advice) and cleric’s trinkets. Haven’t tried it the other way around but I have to say that I enjoy the extra life it provides. I know healing bombs don’t scale that well with healing power, but med-kit sure is great with cleric trinkets.

pistols or rifle for lvling?

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JohnDied.3476

grenades and bombs suck without traits.

Bombs do not suck in the least un traited. In fact, since day 1 it has been considered been considered one of the top AoE options to level in PvE. As well, the trait to extend bombs explosion radius is a tier one trait. You can solo ten mobs with bombs.

Coglin is completely correct in saying this. The grandmaster trait for bombs is a nice to have, but not essential for them in any way. In fact, If you like running around with swiftness, you may not even get your bomb heals when you run because you exceed their radius before they go off.

The traits that increase damage and range are also non-essential, especially if you’re still leveling. Just run around dropping bombs and aggroing everything (as our explosives often do) and as long as the mobs are close combat you’ll whittle them to nothing in no time.

State of the Game on GuildWars2 Guru

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JohnDied.3476

o_____o

Why is it that when the devs talk about engineers I always get really disappointed? I don’t even know that the devs are giving a talk or live-stream before I hear that they bashed-on/skimmed the engineer class again…

Terrible PR

Making Engineer versatile in reality.

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JohnDied.3476

putting things on engineer jealous view:
Eles have 4 (“KITS”) plus utilities

Yet there F-keys do nothing but arm their equivalents of kits, as you put it. While my utility choices give me 4 skills there, each having the usefulness and value of a elementalist utility skill, except as an engineer we get 4. They only get 3.

Well, our toolbelts are supposed to be balanced (damage and cooldown wise) to be less effective than slot skills. If they were equivalent to slot skills then someone rolling three utility skills (instead of kits) would have access to six really good abilities, and would be over powered in the eyes of other classes.

One problem with this idea is that some of our toolbelts do in fact have the same level of utility as a slot skill, like BoB, grenade barrage and throw elixir R among others. I guess we do pay for this versatility (ie having more slot skills) in the damage of our main attacks, but this has the effect of people viewing our abilities as spammy as opposed to effective.

Also, since we have this hybrid system where some toolbelt skills are as powerful as slot skills (those that belong to most kits, like grenade, bomb, and med-kit), and some are balanced to be weak because they’re not meant to be slot skills (toss elixir U/C come to mind) we might get taxed on both fronts. We might get taxed for having extra utility slots by doing less damage per attack (meaning we have to attack a lot more than other classes) and we get taxed by not having a weapon swap.

Or everything is balanced to be this way and we’re worrying ourselves into little old men over this toolbelt.

but we SOLD 5 weapon skill slots to get those 4!

If I give them 5 dollars for 4 bags and 4$ worth of goodies to put in that bag, I don’t want to see the bags only be able to carry 75c worth of stuff.

I’m confused

Make this happen

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JohnDied.3476

The give us this instead; Alchemy minor trait

Evasive elixir toss: When you dodge in combat you either toss elixir U or elixir C at your current location.

RNG the RNG

Making Engineer versatile in reality.

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JohnDied.3476

putting things on engineer jealous view:
Eles have 4 (“KITS”) plus utilities

Yet there F-keys do nothing but arm their equivalents of kits, as you put it. While my utility choices give me 4 skills there, each having the usefulness and value of a elementalist utility skill, except as an engineer we get 4. They only get 3.

Well, our toolbelts are supposed to be balanced (damage and cooldown wise) to be less effective than slot skills. If they were equivalent to slot skills then someone rolling three utility skills (instead of kits) would have access to six really good abilities, and would be over powered in the eyes of other classes.

One problem with this idea is that some of our toolbelts do in fact have the same level of utility as a slot skill, like BoB, grenade barrage and throw elixir R among others. I guess we do pay for this versatility (ie having more slot skills) in the damage of our main attacks, but this has the effect of people viewing our abilities as spammy as opposed to effective.

Also, since we have this hybrid system where some toolbelt skills are as powerful as slot skills (those that belong to most kits, like grenade, bomb, and med-kit), and some are balanced to be weak because they’re not meant to be slot skills (toss elixir U/C come to mind) we might get taxed on both fronts. We might get taxed for having extra utility slots by doing less damage per attack (meaning we have to attack a lot more than other classes) and we get taxed by not having a weapon swap.

Or everything is balanced to be this way and we’re worrying ourselves into little old men over this toolbelt.

(edited by JohnDied.3476)

The Engineer and its gameplay - Your Feedback

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

I have to disagree when you suggest we have issues disengaging. I use the box of nails alot. I use the EG#4+Rocket boots 5 times a day in WvW. Letely I have been using elixit infused bombs, using slick shoes to run into a zerg knocking down as I go, spam a line of bombs causing internal confusion. When I feel things are getting hairy, I doge twice (basically invincible for 3s+) hit super speed, and drop bombs as I run away from the zerg to safety. If I feel I need to dodge I can tap 9 on my keyboard for elixir R and have full endurance and dodge twice again if I need.

Elixir gun, bomb kit and toolkit with slick shoes and rocket boots.

In WvW.

“dropping bombs” and “creating confusion”.

That’s a great build for being carried. But you do have a point that we can run away if we specifically build our character for it.

And if we have 5 utility slots.

If you take grenades you get one of the best chills in the game, go bomb kit and you get an immobilize and cripple. Both kits offer great damage, combos and utility. Add in any elixir for stun-break (I usually R for dungeon runs) and we have a few different ways of disengaging (and crowd controlling considering all of those CCs were AoE). The only place we could have problems disengaging is in PvP and we all recognize that the engineer is a little weak there at the moment.

Engineer 'Back' pack

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

It would be nice if we at least got some nice backpack models when we get our exotics. The old ragged bumpy look our backpacks have really ruins any kind of nice armor you’re wearing.

Engineers feel so unrealistic

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

I always imagined that there was a charr somewhere with a massive cannon that would blast out my supply crates whenever I emitted the signal for them. Maybe it’s the cattlepult guy’s night job :p

EDIT: OP made me think up something I would really like to see hanging off my backpack, turrets!

(edited by JohnDied.3476)

The Engineer and its gameplay - Your Feedback

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

They need to make p/p damage more condition based. So increase condition, lower damage.

More condition based? How so? Every weapons skill except for Glue Shot is extremely condition based.

Yes they are, but the condition damage needs to be much higher. People running p/p are rolling condition damage to begin with (unless for just sigils). If this means giving up damage for condition damage that’s fine.

The pistol #1 already does half the damage of rifle. A better option would be to take the aoe away and replace it with another two seconds of bleed.

Engineers: Only for Elite players?

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

What aspect of the game are you referring to? PvP, WvW, or PvE? Because the efficacy of the engineering class varies depending on which you play.

The engineer does have a good number of bugs that need to be fixed, and probably will be fixed in the future, but once that occurs I believe that the different classes will still be tweaked so that everyone can be good at each different part of the game. I can understand that it feels bad to feel like your party is carrying you in a dungeon, or that you’re not as effective as other classes in PvP, and when you come to the forums to post suggestions someone tells you to L2P (It happens to all of us).

Other classes have similar balance issues. Look at how broken the thief is; It’s a monster in PvP and WvW, but it only has two (monstrously) good builds and it’s use is limited in dungeons. At the moment every class is overlooked in dungeons when you compare them to how guardians perform.

It all comes down to waiting for Anet to balance this game some more and work on those bug fixes. The engineer is UP at the moment but it’s also fun and definitely not unplayable.

The Engineer and its gameplay - Your Feedback

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

We could also use an option for fighting enemies with Reflects or Absorbs Projectiles that doesn’t involve the use of a kit. As it is, we’re the only class that doesn’t have an option in that regard without using a Utility slot just to get around it. (c’mooon, hammer)

Are you saying we do not have the option to reflect or absorb projectiles?

Or are you saying we do not have a counter for that?

Saying we don’t have a non-Utility counter for it. Every other class can equip a melee weapon, or has attacks that just don’t count as projectiles, while we have to use a Utility slot for the same effect.

Don’t other classes (except elementalist) have to use a utility slot to have reflect projectiles? I’d call it even that we take a utility slot to avoid it

Thinking about rolling an engineer!

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

I disagree that PvE is easy no matter the class. Thief is an absolute kitten underwater and against many skill points, at least until the 30s-40s where the horror lessens a bit. I also had a nightmare in early levels of asura Engineer, mostly due to personaly story bugs, where I’d get ganked my masses of mobs, because npc allies stood around doing nothing for pretty much all of the fight.
My limited experience of engi is that it’s heckuva lot of fun. Play the class with a light heart but going into battle with preparation and you’ll have fun. If you want to play for a laugh, go asura starter. If you want people to underestimate you, then experience the true terror of your blasphemous, fiery countenance and despairing at the horrific visage of their impending DOOM! – cough sorry – Move on to Charr.

From experience from myself and friends, the engineer, thief, mesmer and elementalist have hard times in lower levels because of the way the classes are built and balanced. Elementalist has a high learning curve in lower levels (due to having access to all atunements), while mesmer, thief and engineer have a hard time because they don’t yet have access to their full arsenal until about level forty (sixty for engineers). Meanwhile Rangers, guardians and warriors tend to have an easysause time at lower levels.

Higher level open world PvE evens out as you get better at playing your class.

How to understand the engineer forum

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Well, back in November the thief forum got an official (and much needed) ANet thread for discussion. I bet that might help.

We had a thread like that, the “Do not roll an engineer thread.” It kind of did the opposite of the thief grief thread though. Instead of containing all the flame/trolling and keeping it from reaching the rest of the forum, intelligent players went to that engineer thread to get really angry with each other and then they went on to ruin the rest of the forums.

It’s been going on for two weeks and I’m glad that the mods have started to crack down on them. Hopefully things will go back to normal and we will be able to share suggestion/oppinion/question threads without getting our heads chewed off by other posters.

Until then we’ve just got to hold tight and be civil :p

Rifle build - damage or crowd control

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Is vulnerability that important? I mean, it makes someone take %1 more damage. I would think that unless you can stack fifteen in a few attacks (like with grenades) your time would be better spent with something else.

How to understand the engineer forum

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

NevirSayDie you fool. You can’t tell people that there are different aspects to Gw2. It’s unheard of in the engineer forum, where either you are a QQer or an appologist. There can’t be friendship here, it must be flame bating and trolling that prevail!

In all seriousness, this post highlights something that more people should realize. Mind you before the flame war begins (and he who flames all threads gets here) that this thread is based off of what NevirSayDie has observed. NevirSayDie’s ranking of the engineer class is an opinion, others may (will) have differing opinions. What this thread addresses instead is a problem the engineer forum has had in the last few weeks, which is the conflicts we’ve been having and the flaming that’s been affecting our more open threads.

So please be kind people, we’re all engineers here

Grenade build viable?

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Sorry mate. My mistake :p

Anyway, I’ve taken some initiative from what coglin’s said and looked through the grenade threads in the last few pages to filter out some good ones. So that if anyone wants to find those threads they may look no further than this thread.

~Grenades still broke after patch; Not a very informative one, mostly flame bait, but has a little information on grenades post January patch.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Grenades-Still-Broke-After-Patch/first#post1310468

~is grenade kit still viable; From before the January patch. It has some information, even if it gets a little side tracked from the start.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/is-grenade-kit-still-viable/first#post1307725

~Darth Nader build; Its a build. Had little feedback and the Op ended up with more questions than answers. Maybe people could help him out?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Darth-Nader-build/first#post1349441

~Five Gauge’s 100nade guide; Infamous build, a lot of feed back.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Five-Gauge-s-100nade-Guide

There were others, but they had no content and were just flamed on. If I missed a good one feel free to add to the list

Grenade build viable?

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Coglin mate, chill out. We’re all friends here. This thread has already surpassed the other recent grenade threads in terms of information (excluding the 100nades thread, but that’s about a specific build and has become a rage-fest).

To Scora. It is as Rika and kamahl have said, the grenade kit has evened out as a well damaging kit in the recent patch. It has always been a very useful kit because of it’s range and utility in terms of crowd control (through it’s long chill), and now it works well with condition builds through its shrapnel trait.

This is all in terms of PvE. In WvW and PvP it is best to run grenades if you are a very able player, and most of the time you’ll want to use them at point blank range so as to not miss. In PvP specifically, you might want to look into bombs as opposed to grenades, as the skill requirement for them is much lower.

Something to be done about down skil

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Our number #2 should be a reverse rocket boots. You activate it and propel forwards to fall flat on your face. Even fits in with the profession’s gimmicky style :p

Thinking about rolling an engineer!

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

All the negativity is because of all the nerfs and bugs this class has had, and a lot of people see the devs’ hybrid-tax philosophy on the engineer as detrimental seeing as how the elementalist doesn’t suffer from it. That being said, this class has picked up since the last patch and we’re more viable than we were last month due to some much needed bug-fixes. Don’t expect playing to be easy though, engineer is a very difficult class to excel at, especially when you compare it to other classes which are at their best when playing a certain aspect of the game (ie guardians, warriors and thiefs).

When it comes to PvE, soloing is always going to be easy no matter what class you take. You will have to kite and work harder than other classes as an engineer, but most engineer builds do fairly well in open world PvE. Just don’t expect it to be as easy as a warrior or a ranger. Dungeons however, are always based on player skill. You can run glass cannon engineer and do decent damage if you’re great at avoiding damage. If you’re not that good at avoiding damage, then you’re better off going for a bunker build. If you do badly in dungeons, people might think they’re better off with another guardian in the party. On the other hand if you’re good, then people will appreciate it.

Medkit Kit Refinement and Runes

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

I like med kit because it removes a condition when I swap to it with “Bowl of Saffron-scented Poultry”

Been crafting it ever since. Great advice, no more conditions

How do you keep enjoying Engineer?

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

I’m looking forward to when they finally fix the Engineer to bring it more into line with the other classes. If you’re good with the class now, and it really is possible to do some crazy-seeming things with it as it is, when they make it better, it’ll be hilarious.

it is not even as close to being out of line with other classes as you often try to paint them in my opinion. You have made comparisons to warriors in the past. Comparing rifles, and comparing shouts to elixirs. Yet most people who have played both through 80 learned that warriors are only OPish in PvE. You get them in WvW or sPvP, and any competent engineer is at even odds.

I think one of the problems we have is that this game keeps getting balanced around PvP and WvW and those balances affect how each class performs in PvE. If you compare how a thief performs in a dungeon party with a guardian, you can see that the guardian is obviously the better choice, meanwhile in WvW most consider the thief to be competitive as their kill ratios are greater. Warrior on the other hand needed some buff in the other aspects of the game, but not by any means in PvE, where he can solo dungeons if the player is competent enough. The engineer is in this odd spot where depending on his build he can be really mediocre at dungeons/WvW/PvP in comparison to every other class in the game. At the same time though, we can be really competent if built properly, but our usefulness isn’t always obvious and we often go overlooked by some parties.

What seems to happen a lot is that, since the engineer has such a diversity in builds, people may want to force their build into an aspect of the game it isn’t suited for. In any case, I think the engineer is on the right track. The devs have shown us with the last patch that they’re willing to fix the problems our class has, so hopefully we will be good at all aspects of the game and not considered a “support class” for the others.

EDIT: As a final note, Guardians are definitely overpowered in dungeons/PvP, and thiefs are a broken class that’s only good at two aspects of the game (only with two builds). To remind everyone, while being more boring than the engineer, Ranger is still a way stronger class, at least in PvE.

(edited by JohnDied.3476)

All kits can be stowed in the air now.

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

This is broken again…

Med Kit or other kits?
Because Med Kit was never fixed.

Med kit is fine the way it is, as in really good for buffing yourself. Try any rune that activates on heal and you’ll see why a lot of people would be upset with this “fix”

Post Jan 28th kit builds status

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

I would rather have something that worked more like ride the lightening then a blink.

I wish our rocket boots worked like this

Bomb heal question.

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

80 with full healing gear? What level are you and which zone were you in? When was this data from?

The wiki is riddled with inaccuracies.

I am giving you numbers from accurate testing since monday.

Super elixir is healing me for 140 exactly (per tic not initial drop) with 0 healing stat. And bombs healed for 176 (to get to the trait you get a default 300 healing). Regen does 168

at 1388 healing super elixir healed for 279 (per tic not initial drop) and bombs healed for 285…….regen does 304

So a 10% ratio for healing stat doesn’t fit a reasonable cost/benefit value in my personal opinion.

I think he misunderstood you because everyone was saying that they run healer gear and he thought you were as well. It must have seemed odd to him because with the recent patch we’ve been getting closer to 320 with our bomb heals, which is not much more than before, but you notice the small difference when you’ve run healing gear for over a month.

When it comes to cost/benefit? Unless you have mechanics for a specific stat choice built into your class, you find that going all the way for one stat doesn’t improve it by much more than half. Go through the month or two old posts in the engineer or guardian forums, we’ve all known for a while that healing is limited. Some of us just like being able to take a hit and heal it >:3

That being said, I’ve recently found conditions to be particularly annoying when dungeoneering (Full cleric here). What healer gear/build did you use to run Coglin? Is the new one much better and would you recommend it?

Bomb heal question.

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

A lot of healer engis always come out of the woodworks for these kind of threads :p
I dredged up my own from another thread. It is less statistical in it’s approach but it makes up for it in advice I got a while back from a good healer engi.

Elixir- Infused Bombs have a 0.1 coefficient and with approximately 1700 Healing Power, the most I saw them heal for was ~300 health a bomb. This is also a ridiculously low amount and it goes to show you how limited, weak, and un-rewarding our heals are. Coupled with the fact that allies are constantly moving and you have to be standing extremely close to them for the bomb to land (as well as the delay for the bomb to explode), makes this an incredibly difficult trait to work around as well.
[…]
For now I use Med Kits which are pretty powerful in of their own…if you want to support allies, I suggest using Med Kit for now (with ~1700 Healing Power, each bandage heals for ~1800 HP. Placing a stack of 3 of them gives a burst heal of roughly ~5400 which is excellent). However, there is a very high burden of knowledge with Med Kits since the visual cue is incredibly small, the area is also incredibly small, and the audio signal is low. If you want to support allies in dungeons, try using the Med Kit. I wouldn’t recommend taking the Elixir-Infused Bomb Trait as it is far too weak for a Grandmaster Trait and generally not worth it for ally support. Furthermore, combine the Medkit with a Six Piece Rune of Dwayna which should give you near permanent AoE-Regen (and surpassing the Healing Turret).

This was about a month ago when healing turret was mega-bugged so it’s up to your preference what heal you use. If you like stacking boons every few seconds (with runes of dwayna or altruism) then heal kit is still very viable.

One thing I’ve been wondering since this update is if healing turret is now better than med-kit when it comes to healer builds. What I mean is, now that heal-turret is fixed, does it provide more utility than medkit without runes? and if its regen outweighs the benefits of med-kit with runes of dwayna.

My engineer is in his 30s.

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Play engineer if you find it fun. When the endgame comes around… remember what you read on the forums and wait patiently, like the rest of us, for some bugfixes.

We all level alts after some time, but once you get used to the engineer’s playstyle its hard to find another favorite.

Grenades Still Broke After Patch!

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

After some maths (Weapon Rating = Attack Rating – Power Rating), our Kits have a weapon power of 969, regardless of whether blues or exotics are equipped “underneath” them. (Quick testing — definitely could use verification from other Engineers.)

This is lower than exotic weapons usually have — Greatsword 1100, Hammer 1111, Rifle 1205, Pistol 1029, Mace 1010, Longbow 1080, Shortbow 1000, Axe 1048, etc. But a few are lower than 969 —Focus 883, Shield 909.

So our kits’ damage scales to do a little more than a shield…

Yeah, sorry I took this down – I suspect it’s not accurate, the part about blues and exotics giving the same Kit Weapon Dmg. I did maths for about 45 minutes and I was flummoxed. I leave it to someone more mathematically inclined.

I’ve been reading around and the conclusion I’ve come up with is to not trust the in-game tooltips/UI. My gut reaction is that, if there has been a change, it must affect the lower lvls because at the higher level zones there isn’t much of a difference in damage.

Turrets not Scaling with Power

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Posted by: JohnDied.3476

JohnDied.3476

Oddly enough we also wield the best weapons against those toasters, aoes that are made to hit immobile targests

It all makes sense now! Engineers are building their tools using turrets for testing. That’s why the “enemy movement” variable isn’t accounted for! Furthermore, the turrets were never made for actual combat; they are simply for testing purposes! Can’t make them deadly, or else the testing environment would be unsafe.

The two devs who do class balance must be a turreteer and a grenadier/flamethrower. The turreteer goes afk while the other checks out our damage :p