Guild Wars 2

As long as you don’t go grenadier in dungeons you’ll be fine. If you do, you’ll draw way more aggro than a medium class is meant to take… unless you kill everything before it kills you?

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

I always thought Elixir F stood for Flubber :p

Destroyer.1306:

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…

Lord Aargadon.4135:

Make sure you are testing this in both pvp and pve, things don’t always mirror between the two. Also. Don’t. Ever. Rely. On. The. Tooltip. Ever.

Side note, if stats apply/scale according to highest obtainable, does that mean we get free ascended stats when it comes around? (:

We will but grenade kit will be nerfed to compensate for this

Also, flamethrower will inexplicably become buggier when that happens.

In the late game content this patch didn’t do much to fix our “gimped buggy class” situation. However, this patch has made a small step to fix this class and it’s made kits better for lower level engis.

Also, whoever thinks the healing turret bug fix was a buff seriously never ran healing gear before the patch. Before the patch it was a slap in the face to use healing turret and get 5hp regen (in full cleric) and not be able to get rid of it with other regens. Meanwhile, guardians get perma regen that scales with healing power.

So… I’d count it as a much needed fix to a massive bug

Walorx.5129:

This is probably good for the engineers’ POV, but what ever happened to all classes being equal and not wanting insta-gib (and bunkers) in the game?

Yeah, I agree that all classes should be equal. The only problem is that there are classes running around (thief, warrior, guardian) that prove the contrary :/

YourOwnFear.2743:

There is little to know damage difference on any kits after the patch. They never changed the damage on the kits. I have been in game for a while now and tested every kit and the damage is almost exactly the same. I believe they will fix this soon though because its clearly a bug.

I could have sworn that our kits were already supposed to be level with exotics… So maybe the change was minimal?

Can’t really tell a difference in lvl 80 maps :/
Did they really do anything to kits?

Tolmos.8395:

At this point, I’m starting to think they don’t know how to fix it. Whoever they have working on classes is incapable of figuring out what code is causing it not to work and has just shelved it until such a time as someone more knowledgeable can come give their input.

Either this or turrets aren’t very important and the devs would rather prioritize on balancing our more vital broken skills. Like how they fixed Super Elixir right away when it broke

Wish they scaled with toughness or vit. Even after this patch turrets are made out of cardboard with metallic paint on them :/

Vasham.2408:

JohnDied.3476:

~Weapons now continue to grant bonus stats while bundles are equipped.
~Bundles from player skills (engineer kits, elementalist conjured weapons, warrior banners) now have base damage that is consistent with the highest rarity weapons available at the level of the player.

So weapon stats finally affect kits, but what exactly does the second mean? Does it mean that our weapons’ damage is applied to our kits or that our kits get the damage of an exotic weapon?

It means the base damage of the kit is calculated around the highest possible item quality for your level. So at level 80 it means your kits have the equivalent damage of an exotic weapon of that level. Before I want to say kits stopped scaling before you hit 80 and were only equivalent of common items.

Thanks Vasham. I was a little confused because I thought that our kits were already equivalent to exotics. I guess I was wrong un until now :/

Ayestes.1273:

Just saying, they haven’t said “gadgets” scale with power or precision, just that the boons and conditions they apply now scale. So condition damage and healing power most should scale. We’ll have to test if it’s condition duration and boon duration.

Does this mean that they’ve fixed the healing turret 5hp regen I was getting with full cleric gear? If so that’s one big ninja-fix for me

EDIT: Wasdclick already answered

~Weapons now continue to grant bonus stats while bundles are equipped.
~Bundles from player skills (engineer kits, elementalist conjured weapons, warrior banners) now have base damage that is consistent with the highest rarity weapons available at the level of the player.

So weapon stats finally affect kits, but what exactly does the second mean? Does it mean that our weapons’ damage is applied to our kits or that our kits get the damage of an exotic weapon?

Also
~Gadgets placed by players (such as turrets) will now apply boons and conditions based on those players’ stats. Those conditions and boons will not be reduced to level-1 values when the triggering gadget is destroyed.

does it mean that turrets scale with stats or not? What do you think they mean by boons and conditions?

I don’t really endorse RNG in any skills, especially situational skills like stealth or stability. RNG is never going to compare to reliable boon skills, and so elixirs will never be as good as something like shouts. Hold the line, save yourselves, stand your ground and retreat all make our Elixirs look like garbage (exept for S and toss R which are our only reliable ones), which means that most people won’t use them and that results in the devs monitoring (and nerfing) our more reliable skills.

As for mesmers and thiefs, I don’t think they benefit from RNG either, but at least the mesmer less than others. Mesmers often put out all the available boons in a single fight just by virtue of the skills being an autoattacks. I party with a mesmer and notice it, there’s barely any RNG to it because you know they’ll put out all the boons anyway. With regards to thief though, if they had a better mechanic maybe they’d have more than two builds and were of more use to parties. The way they are now it’s glass cannon dagger dagger or dagger pistol condition tank. Not a lot to work with, so I guess the devs figure they can fix a broken class by making one build ridiculously powerful.

cottage.3274:

and as for making it like attunements well attunements got a cd so it will get one also for sure just like any weapon swap.
if kits have a cd you can forget about using bomb kit/med kit and some clutch skills like toolkit shield block,magnet or flamethrower blind/pushback ect.

I hadn’t thought about the cooldown. Maybe you’re right and we have to wait until the devs decide to fix our wonky class mechanic.

Carrion
Pros:
~Stacks power, which is good for the pistol (Because it has a really short bleed)
~Stacks vitality, which is good for you since you already have a lot of toughness
Cons:
~No precision, which means you don’t crit as often (You might be able to make up a little with crit-food)

Rabid
Pros:
~Stacks Presicion, which means you crit often. This is vital for some builds that are based on traits that stack strong conditions on crit which the engineer has a few of, like incendiary powder burns (which damage roughly the same as 6 stacks of bleed).
~Stacks toughness, which makes you more resistant to direct damage.
Cons:
~No power. Due to the short bleeds of Pistol #1 it scales poorly on conditions alone
~Stacks toughness, Since you already have 300 toughness though it may not scale as effectively as vitality would.

cottage.3274:

as i see it there needs to be a middle ground here.

as for me i would love them to leave the toolbelt as is ,make a new ui for kits outside of slot skills and let me get the 3 slots i want and the kits i need so i can play effective and be viable.
yep i know its a buff but we sure need one no?

This is honestly the best option, but what are the odds that we’ll ever get fixed that well. I would love to have kits and slot skills because we don’t get a second weapon. Redesigning the UI is probably what the engineer needs, but It’s not going to happen because the class is already out and the game has been released. Besides, a redesign of the UI would kitten off a lot of people.

What’s less likely to kitten people off and bother the devs is that the current UI should be changed, a little, to be less lackluster. At this point some skills give out great toolbelt skills (Like BoB, grenade barrage, toss elixir R), while others weren’t thought out and are really terrible. At the same time some skills are really terrible and are only taken for the toolbelts (looking at rifle turret).

How about making kits into toolbelts (like atunements) and their toolbelts into slot-skills. The kit toolbelts already resemble slot-skills, while the skill toolbelts look like an afterthought. So now bomb kit is a toolbelt-Kit and BoB is a skill you use out of your skill slots. At the same time make it so that we can choose our toolbelts and skills separately from their respective pools; being the old toolbelt skills with the kits, and the old kit toolbelts with our other slot-skills.

With this someone can run a flamethrower “tool-kit” and run around with grenade barrage in his skills if he wants to. Someone can have elixir R on their toolkit and run elixir s in their slot-skills. If the toolkit is really “balanced” then this shouldn’t be a problem, if it isn’t balanced this change will make it clear which toolkits need a buff.

What level is your engineer? Have you tried out the other kits the class offers?

That’s probably a good start to figure out what build you can use. If you like popping down turrets then you might want to pick up toolkit. If you like condition damage then you might wan’t to pick up the elixir gun or try your hand at grenades+condition damage.

We can’t really answer what gear is the best for the engineer because it is so dependent on what build you prefer. If you’d like to have some advise based on a condition pistol build I used to run then I can offer that.

Carrion gear works well with pistols because they scale best with both power and condition damage. Might want to mix with rabid trinkets if you want to get condition traits/sigils on crit (like Incendiary powder or sigil of fire).

If you go with a lot of alchemy and no inventions I recommend you use rabid armor with carrion trinkets so that your stats scale best.

What I used to run:
10/30/20/0/10
Explosives-V
Firearms-IV, VI, XII
Inventions-I, VII
Tools-IV

Ran with Carrion gear and Knight trinkets. I like being a little hardier, but if you don’t mind being squishy then you can drop the 20 in inventions in favor of getting things to make your turrets better or stack more conditions

Wow, such a good OP and the thread gets trolled right off the bat.

Anyway, I really liked this:

Gurt.9368:

Now for the meat of my post: the changes I would make.

Toolbelt
It has long been my opinion that the toolbelt as a mechanic is holding the engineer back. It makes skills needlessly hard to balance and in practice one often ends up picking a skill simply for the toolbelt skill or simply for the slot skill, seeing the other as something on the side. In this way it feels like a good skill may be balanced by a intentionally bad belt skill or vice versa. Not only is this not bad design, it’s unfun (not “not fun” but “unfun” it removes fun that would exist). Additionally, we were given this mechanic so we could have kits and utility skills at the same time, so why couldn’t kits have just been in the toolbelt?

Yeah, I’ve kind of always thought that we should have had kits on the tool-belt from the beginning. The fact that we have to sacrifice a slot skill to have a weapon swap never sat right with me. Either give us a kit for free or give us a choice when it comes to what goes up on the toolbar. The devs probably thought last minute that it was too similar with the elementalist’s atunements, covered it up to look different and never gave it more thought than that.

Also, our skills are balanced around their toolbelts not being overpowered because other classes don’t get them. I think the toolbelt is what makes us “sacrifice damage in out mainhand weapons,” so thats what the devs think makes us versatile, more abilities that do the same only on longer cooldowns. So if we’re already balanced around not being overpowered with the toolbelt, why can’t we choose our toolbelt abilities? Wouldn’t this actually make us versatile?

Now that we’ve been shown a preview of the new laurels system, where you can buy things with the achievement points, many speculate that It’ll be a more reliable way to purchase unidentified dyes.

Couldn’t this also be a useful way of acquiring semi-rare food items like Oranges and Chocolate? Just a thought.

Our current skills on heal runes look really tempting I bet. The whole AoE might/regen/swiftness which activate on med-kit will probably be nerfed eventually, don’t know if it will be on monday though.

Does that count as a tank-cat nerf?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Mirta.5029:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to let you guys know that we’re reading this thread.

Your logic, reasons, anecdotes and ideas are being listened to. Also keep in mind, that as I said yesterday, a skill can be a balance problem in one area of the game, but underpowered in another. That’s the nature of using one set of #‘s to balance across all areas of the game. So we’re keeping that in mind as we look at this. We may need to do different tweaks in different areas of the game.

We’re also not going to make a knee jerk reaction to this. We’re still gathering data, watching player trends, and having meetings on all possible ramifications from possible changes.

thank you for the answer, it calmed me down. If you think there’s a problem with AoE in WvW, nerf it in WvW, but not PVE, because nerfing AoE in PVE when some classes already have problems would effectively kill off engineers and staff builds of mesmer, elementalist and necromancer.

No prob. Some classes have a ton of AOE, while others don’t have as much. So we’re not just going to do a blanket nerf to all AOE – that’s not fair to all classes. We’ll go on a class by class, weapon by weapon basis.

And as I’ve said, we may need to tone something down in one area of the game, but it may be totally fine in another area.

For some weapon sets, the AOE options may be too strong compared to the single target options, which is what we aim to address.

Better than no consideration? I really hope they buff our main-hand weapons and leave our grenades and bombs alone.

Zenguy.6421:

Now if Anet could find another solution to turrets being used as exploits that doesn’t involve nerfing them…

A duration on turrets before they expire? Something like a minute would make sure you had to be attentive to your turret and your pickups.

There are a lot of ways you can build your engineer for support or heals. When I started out a better healer-engi gave me some advice about a build that runs 10/0/30/20/10, with backpack regenerator, self regulating defenses, and kit refinement for survivability boosts.

KinkyPotato.4219:

This is what I use for PvE Support. All the relevant details are included in this website as well (mainly what runes to get, sigils to focus on, and armor nomenclature-Cleric’s). You get ample healing from your Med Kit Bandages/Supply Crate Bandages and Regeneration Boons (Rune of Dwayna/Healing Mist) when you stack Cleric’s gear. The Elixir Gun, while pretty weak, roughly heals for ~300 HP a second in Full Exotic Gear and coupled with Kit Refinement, spawns two which doubles that to 600 HP a second (provided your allies are standing in the circle…let them know ahead of time). Your bombs will also heal for approximately ~300 HP an explosion which while not terribly efficient for healing allies, can be used to bolster your own survival. Use the bombs to control your enemies with Smoke Bomb and Glue Bomb, the Flamethrower to push/interrupt key enemy actions (when monsters charge up for example) and blind, and the pistol/shield to daze, knockback, and blind.

Edit: Bad link. Here’s another site: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mzMzM9Mz0mLNlMmGNlMa0xGaczsqmsm8kiU70z7070z7kiU707kIM70V7ofF70m8of2.
Click the Skills & Traits, Stats, and Equipment Tabs to check the information you’re looking for.

While I liked his build, I stuck with my own because of the added utility of vulnerability stacking. For PvE I run full healer & vulnerability stacking support in dungeons. If you’re interested in a tanky heals build then here it is.

JohnDied.3476:

I prefer healing bombs, recently its for the utility they have with regards to combo fields and blast finishers. I run 30/0/30/0/10 in full cleric with runes of dwayna, and my skills are healing turret, grenade kit, bomb kit, and elixir gun.

My build doesn’t give you the best survivability (that’s reserved for healers that max out alchemy) but it makes you tanky and gives you utility. Depending on what you tackle, you might tank with healing bombs or support with grenade vulnerability stacking. The elixir gun is just there for a cleanse, or a double super elixir in a tight spot.

The combo fields this build gives are many. Bomb kit alone gives you a fire field, a smoke field, and a blast finisher, while healing turret has a water field and elixir gun gives an air field. So how I usually synergize these together is to go bomb kit, then big ol bomb, and either smoke bomb or fire bomb. With healing turret you get the water field and blast it right away, then super elixir and shield #4 on the air field. So I end up giving my party a lot of regen, area might, lots of blow outs, area retaliation or stealth and a load of vulnerability stacking.

Last night I came back to my engineer from a guardian. Loved how maneuverable power shoes makes you in combat, decided to switch kit refinement for speedy kits, healing turret for med-kit, elixir-gun for elixir-S, and kite around for an hour. Had a blast and I noticed I survived a lot more.

As I ran I would slow champs down with glue bomb/freeze grenades, and alternate between setting down a smoke bomb (for survivability) and a combo or running around throwing grenades (and stacking vuln).

One post, three support builds which use the same gear and runes. The last two use the same traits as well, but have vastly different play styles

What I can suggest is to try different kits out and see which ones you like. We have the tank cat build you can look up if you wan’t to really annoy people in WvW, there is the flamethrower might stacking build if you’re looking for something tanky, explosives builds give a lot of maneuverability, and we have some pistol condition builds.

One thing I find funny on my server is that I never see two engineers with the same build, although that might be because I hardly see engineers around

The way you describe yourself I’ll take a guess and say that you probably don’t want to stick to a role like glass-cannon/support/bunker. Look at the traitlines, see that there are synergies between flamethrower and elixirgun, between bomb kit and grenade kit, rifle and elixirs. It also helps to know what aspect of Gw2 you plan to use the engineer on the most, as this would change the kind of load-outs you use as well.

Toolbox.9375:

I’m on Stormbluff Isles! And I tend to stick to PvE, as well, only occasionally entering WvW, plus I’m almost always on the Bomb Kit. XD

I also rarely ever see Flamethrower! I’ve seen quite a few turret users, and I do tend to bother each and every one of them to ask how it’s working out for them. <.<; I started my Engineer out using turrets exclusively, and I’ll readily admit, that was torture. I gave up on Engineer for a while because the build wasn’t working at all. It was only once I crawled my way to 60, got some nice Cleric gear and runes, and switched all my abilities to Kits, that I started to actually enjoy the class. XD

I’d still love to be able to do a turret build (and I in fact made sure that my Trait allotment would be able to easily switch back to all of the turret abilities), but for now, my plethora of fancy abilities keeps me happy!

I tried turret builds when I was low level <40 and it worked for a while. I really wish they’d get buffed because trash mobs just destroyed them, not to mention champs. After a while I took all the kits out for a run and fell in love with how maneuverable grenades were. Post grenade-nerf I just decided to buy my cleric’s gear, craft my last ten levels and bask in the bomb heals and combo fields. Have been loving it ever since.

I recently took a break from engineer and was leveling up a guardian because I love doing group utility. I’ve found that the guardian’s skills/class synergies seem to be have a lot more thought put into them and they’re pretty kitten effective at what they do. That being said, last night I took my engineer for a spin and loved every minute of it. The mobility was great and the skills while spamy are really fun. You don’t realize how much freedom you have in your attacks when you can drop a bomb and have it explode a second later, or throw a well placed pack of grenades behind you when you run. I did have to switch elixir gun with a combo breaker, because no way in hell am I getting bashed on the ground after switching from a guardian.

Toolbox.9375:

Terrahero.9358:

Toolbox.9375:

Always listen to players in-game before players on the message boards, in any game.

Goodluck finding an Engineer ingame ;D Guild did a forum poll, to see who plays what as their main. 136 votes cast so far and, including myself, the amount playing Engineer can be counted on 1 hand.

This speaks volumes really. Without a doubt Engineer is the least played profession, and do you really think that would be the case if it was good? Or even if its fun-factor outweighted the badness properly?
Truth is, for most people the profession isnt enough fun to outweight the poor performance.

But dont take anyones word here for it, just go play one and you’ll see for yourself if you enjoy it or not.

I see them constantly! I have to refrain from barking at them like a territorial dog whenever I see one, I like to be the only one using whatever class I’ve chosen in a game. Amazingly enough, I see fewer Thieves than I do Engineers! I think Rangers are the only ones that I see more of than Engineer.

Wow. Your server must be odd because I see so few engineers that I have to stop myself from bothering every one I see about their builds. Most I see are flameneers though, I’ve never seen one using bomb kit.

That may be because I do PvE only.

redslion.9675:

Well, bombs work wonders without grandmaster traits. All they need in III explosives trait. The rest is handy, but not mandatory.

Honestly, you don’t really need any traits with bombs in PvE. Just drop them as you run and kite forever (and it will take forever), the mobs will always run over them. The issue is whether they’ll be any better than grenades or another skills without their grandmaster, the answer is that they’re not that great. They do more damage than grenades, but require you to be in melee range or work their delay, they’re also worse than grenades for vulnerability stacking so they have less utility discounting their combo fields. Elixir infused bombs is what makes them stand out from grenades, as they stop being these bombs I can’t throw with a second long delay and become tools to bunker down if you wish to do that. You can heal while you set up combos and add variety to your scrambling around.

I deeply hope that the devs leave our working abilities alone and focus on fixing our bugs, or buffing our underutilized skills. I wouldn’t urge others into thinking that this will happen though. Sometimes I like to think that if we prepare for the worst we will not be disappointed, and in fact we might be surprised when something good comes our way. That being said, it can be a long time before something good happens for the engineer.

Back on topic.

Bomb kit

Radius of the Aoe: I do not think it prudent to reduce this even more than it already is, as it already takes you into melee range with a medium armor class. The radius is already shorter (untraited) than most of the close combat skills heavy armor classes have available to them.

For the comparison with other classes: The bomb radius with the range of a Guardian’s mace or a greatsword. Bomb radii is 120 on a medium armor class which relies mid range combat, while mace and swords’ range is 130 for the Guardian, a heavy armor close combatant with multiple ways of mitigating damage which include passive regen, aegis, and protection.

Frequency/Damage of AoE damage: The range and delay of the bombs already balance this out and gives ample opportunity to dodge the attack.

For the comparison with other classes: I think I’ll stick to comparing the damage sustained damage or the bomb kit’s auto-attack with the auto-attack of a mace guardian. Bomb kit offers more burst damage than the mace guardian, but the mace guardian does more sustained damage because of his second and third strikes, this may seem unbalanced but the bomb kit can attack in all directions as well. With regards to frequency the bomb kit fares well enough.

Max targets of the Aoe: The engineer bomb kit can damage enemies within range at all angles, and (if live-stream info is applied literally for bomb kit) up to five opponents. This seems overpowered, but to even be able to damage with bombs the engineer needs to keep his enemy on the bomb for the duration of the delay and possibly mitigate a lot of damage to do so.

For the comparison with other classes: Mace guardian cannot attack in every direction within his range at once, but he does not have to deal with a delay in his attacks and he has his class mechanics and greater armor to mitigate a lot of damage.

I hope someone takes on the mighty task of giving out an analysis of grenades, giving that they are AoEs with less limitations than bomb kit. Also, I haven’t played much with the flamethrower so if someone would like to defend it in hopes of it being overlooked in the Aoe nerf, feel free.

Some people like to come to these forums to theory-craft, personally this is my favorite thing to do for most video-game forums. Look around the other class forums, you have the majority of threads being about sharing builds, discussing play-styles or sharing videos.

I’ve had people bring up selection bias in other video game forums (Diablo 3) and how it just happened to be because people who enjoyed the game wouldn’t find the need to come over and complain. While this view has merit, it is also based around assumptions that may not be true. It may be that a vocal minority, trolls, are making the engineer class to be something much worse than it actually is, but it may also be that the number of trolls is increasing because the majority of the playerbase is unhappy with the direction the engineer is taking.

The diablo 3 forums became a cesspit because a large percentage of the player base became dissatisfied with the state of the game. Likewise, there is a large percentage of players who find their engineers to be unsatisfying (due to bugs or nerfs) or underwhelming compared to other classes.

One thing I’ve found interesting, is that looking at the other class forums you don’t get this much of a “Troll” feel from them. What I mean is that over the months it seems like the people who go to the engineer forum have gotten embittered with the lack of communication/bug-fixes/improvement and the forum begins to mirror this mood. First it was complaints about bugs, then became unrest with the nerfs, followed by self criticism/dark humor. This behavior has actually begun to dance around the fine line of blatantly trolling people willing to work around the issues and discreetly (or not) badmouthing Arena Net.

Reserving space

This is a community feedback thread, not a controversial complaint/self pity topic. I just wanted to make sure that if the devs check these forums for community feedback, they’d see what we think about the prospect of our AoEs being nerfed. I wan’t to keep this topic civil and to the point, so no engineer self pity/bashing or L2P nonsense.

In response to:

Matt Witter.6982:

There are a few different knobs we can turn in regards to AoE some of the bigger ones being:
Radius of the AoE
Frequency of the AoE Damage
Damage of the AoE
Max Targets of the AoE

Currently, some players causing the AoE are able to do more damage to one person while also controlling a portion of the field, compared to a player with single target damage.
In our balance discussions we always look at what these changes could do to PvE as well as PvP. Any changes we make will undergo a lot of testing, both internal and by our trusted alpha team. It is important to understand that we are not doing a blanket nerf to all AE’s or a dramatic adjustment of the damage AoE’s can do. There may be some cases where players can build for AoE damage, but are just not viable or other cases where AoE is clearly the dominate way to build, and as such the other builds get left on the side lines. Its these classes/builds that we are concerned about.

What do engineers consider a fair reduction in the radius, frequency, damage and max targets of our AoEs? These were already thought to be balanced due to the Grenade nerf, but I wan’t the community’s opinions on this.

Ok, this topic will be a discussion, but I will take the feedback I get from other engineers to edit the OP to the following structure:

AoEs we’re worried about

Grenade Kit
Bomb Kit
Flamethrower
Rifle #3 and #5
Pistol #1

Do we consider these AoEs to be effective/have synergies with our other skills?
How do these abilities fare in comparison to our single target skills?
How do these abilities fare in comparison to other classes AoEs?
How do these abilities fare in comparison to other classes single target skills?

Matt Witter.6982:

There are a few different knobs we can turn in regards to AoE some of the bigger ones being:
Radius of the AoE
Frequency of the AoE Damage
Damage of the AoE
Max Targets of the AoE
[…]
There may be some cases where players can build for AoE damage, but are just not viable or other cases where AoE is clearly the dominate way to build, and as such the other builds get left on the side lines. Its these classes/builds that we are concerned about.

Yeah reassuring… especially the “or other cases where AoE is clearly the dominate way to build”

I’m still bracing myself for my bomb/grenades nerf, but hey, at least they’re buffing elixir gun :/

Specterryu Quipter.8412:

Med Kit: Good healing, and the kit itself has condition removal, speed boosts, and more healing. If you’re an Engineer and not using this, I would dare say, you are acting uneducated. (Or playing Russian roulette)

Small thing I know, but Med kit’s condition remover is bugged or ninja-nerfed+bugged. It used to remove all conditions, now it only removes one… sometimes.

EDIT: Also this

Elixirs:
Elixir Gun: The only thing that is (was?) useful about this kit is the Super Elixir. The DPS is outright pathetic, hitting an opponent with a stuffed teddy bear would do more damage than this kit. The dps needs to be increased by 25%-50%. The tool belt ability needs to have its cooldown reduced by 20%ish. The toolbelt and kit, both need to have their healing increased by 30%. This kit, just needs help.

They should replace the stupid useless fumigate with a stunbreaker or something.

I have no idea what goes through the devs’ heads when they consider balancing this game. First they release half the classes with a massive amount of bugs and therefore unviable/boring/ineffective builds/weapons/class-mechanics. Then when the players make do with what we have and use the most effective things at our disposal, the devs nerf us because that’s not how we’re supposed to play the game and our abilities are imbalanced.

Our class balance goes back and forth from isolating the engineer in a little box and nerfing things that are better than the rest of our abilities, due to bugs and design flaws, to handing out blanket nerfs because other classes are too good at something, like AOE. The first case is bad because when they consider our class balance they don’t consider what those ability nerfs do to our standing with regards to the other classes, and the second is bad because when considering class balance in general they don’t consider the engineer at all.

Terrahero.9358:

Honestly i doubt they are going over every single ability and retweaking it for the purpose of balance. What we will most likely see is a blanket change across the board.
[…]
So im bracing for another round of nerfs, and having the Engineer fly under the radar yet again when it comes to getting the neccesary attention.

Pretty much. More people will leave the game or reroll after the grenade+bomb nerf, but the engineer community will continue without us. The devs will get around to overhauling the engineer eventually, although it might not be until late this year.

At this point I’m kind of at a loss as to what the devs want us to do with engineers. I mean, if they think its bad when engineers use aoes on single targets (like a dungeon champ for example) why would they make over half of our weapons aoe?

I thought we had a choice of how to play our engineers. Now I feel like they’re going to try to pidgeonhole us into single target static discharge, or condition pistol/elixirgun. I’ve played both after the grenade nerf and decided that I didn’t like them much, tried out bombs and loved them. If this next nerf is as bad as the last one, I don’t think I’ll be able to use my bombs again.

People can tell me L2P and that the engineer is fine, but I still remember how I felt the first time I tried post-nerf grenades. It made me feel disappointed and I missed the old ones. I don’t want to feel that same way about my bombs or for people who love the flamethrower to get kicked as well.

I played diablo 3 and I agree with Zaphael. The diablo devs chased away all but the craziest people who live and breath that game. When it comes down to it, people play games to be happy. You know something is wrong when you log in and sigh because playing on your characters is unfulfilling and disappoints you. I don’t really want to stick around with an engineer if that happens.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

How do know this is going to happen? I tried googling this but nothing but guesting news came up.

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

Follow the links to the first part of the livestream.

11:58 is when it all goes awry for engineers.

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

Rifle 4 and 5 are AoE, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

I didn’t know that!

JohnDied.3476:

Welp I dont know if we’ll get buffed, but grenades and bombs (all AOEs) are certainly getting nerfed in the future.

You know, to balance out the massive damage they do in comparison to all those weak single target skills no one uses, like backstab and killshot.

posted this in another thread

Only an Engineer gets half of his weapons nerfed in order to balance AOE vs single target damage.

At least they’re buffing our single target skills! like flametrower, oh.

Pistols? nope.

Hmmm… bombs, grenades are getting nerfed… which leaves us with our mighty Rifle!

Think of all the different builds that will become viable, imagine the versatility.

“Im rage quitting”

~said half the engineer playerbase

Welp I dont know if we’ll get buffed, but grenades and bombs (all AOEs) are certainly getting nerfed in the future.

You know, to balance out the massive damage they do in comparison to all those weak single target skills no one uses, like backstab and killshot.

uh oh. Looks like grenades are getting nerfed fixed, and backstab, and killshot are getting buffed.

Totally balanced to make the game enjoyable for everyone

You get used to it. Personally, I prefer the current grenades over auto-attacking things with any other long range weapon. Since medium range doesn’t really exist for long in this game, I like to rely on weapons that don’t require you to be facing your target. Grenades and bombs are perfect examples of this and I wouldn’t have them any other way.

I know people are sometimes upset with having to press the key for each attack but I can’t imagine grenade targeting being any better with auto-target. If the devs were to change the grenades into a longbow, that would actually hurt what they do best, which is lobbing them at the right spot as you run around you’re enemies.

It depends what you like and what build you’re running. If you like 1v1 crowd control then go for rifle, if you like stacking conditions then go for pistol/pistol. It also depends if you like kits, but that goes down to preference as well.

With my build I find that because I run with grenade kit and bomb kit, I don’t really find the riffle all that good. Traits enable explosives to do more damage, grenades have better range, bombs give close range heals, and I really hate the rifle skills past the first two. Plus, I already have crowd control with a chill on my grenades and a immobilize/cripple on my bombs. With how much aggro I draw using those kits I don’t stay in one spot anyway, so more 1v1 crowd control is wasted.

I do however like how I can stack conditions with my pistol (I don’t use #1 only #2 and #3) when everything else is on cooldown, and I love the combo blast finisher shield #4 gives you.

Run pistol/shield if you run bomb kit. Bomb kit has two combo fields and only one combo blast finisher, with shield #4 you can make that up.

All in all, I have to say that I find mainhand weapons really lackluster and bad on the engineer. When I use them I feel like a ranger using greatsword, that is to say a class using a weapon set that isn’t fun or satisfying. Its a shame we don’t get better skills on these as we’re stuck with rifle/pistols/shield. If I could ever replace my mainhand weapon with a kit and take on another utility skill I would do so in a heartbeat.

Eastcorn.5901:

This is why I empathize heavily for rangers. They’re in a pretty bad state, AND their skills don’t seem as fun to use (in a nerfed state) as the engineer’s are.

I wouldn’t consider Rangers to be in such a bad state. I love stacking conditions with my short bow before going into melee range and dancing around my opponent with sword and torch. It is really satisfying to do good melee damage then evade powerful attacks at just the right time (with the in built sword abilities), or maybe get back into using short bow. I wish my engineer had that much maneuverability with his main-hand weapons, instead of having to use kits to be able to have some fun.

I do admit that rangers need a lot of fixing, just like the engineer, although they seem to be underpowered for reasons opposite to those the engineers have. Engineers are balanced around doing moderate damage when specked completely into a traitline (ie grenadier, might stacking flamethrower, etc), so they’re kind of kitten poor at things they’re not specked into. Rangers are balanced around doing moderate damage with their main weapons without the use of traits, mostly because most traits and skills are really lackluster and boring. I love both classes, but I find it funny how they can be broken for such different reasons.

EDIT: I do want to emphasize that as someone who loves playing both engineer and ranger, I consider engineer to be more broken (because of nerfs). The sword buffs and having the best heal in the game don’t mean the ranger is fixed (that will take a complete overhaul of their really boring traits/skills), but it’s made them competitive, unlike the engineer. At least in dungeons I consider rangers to be way better than engineers (that isn’t to say that some people don’t do better with engineers :3).

At level 26 you probably won’t have much problems if you’re used to a mobile class like the elementalist. A lot of the problems engineers face is that as you level up you find certain builds oddly difficult to use.

In higher zones turrets start crumbling like sandcastles, grenades draw a terrible amount of aggro, and bombs are too close for a medium armor class unless you pay to update your armor often. At around lvl 60 things get better again with access to grandmaster traits (which are what this class is balanced around) so things pick up from there on.

The reason a lot of people complain about the engineer is probably because they find the class fun but ineffective. If people didn’t find the class fun they wouldn’t complain at all and would just re-roll to something more satisfying. I admit, it can be feel rather satisfying some times when you nail every move and set up all your combos properly with your engi but when you slip up once that’s it. Suddenly you’re the weak link in the party, you feel like the other classes are carrying you.

A lot of people also complain because the class isn’t really good at anything. We can mimic roles other classes do, but we can’t fill those roles as well as those other classes. That’s why people post builds where they literary dedicate every trait, utility skill, rune, sigil and equipment choice to fullfilling a role (static discharge glass cannon, might stacking flamethrower, full cleric bomb healer). Because we need to do that to compete with classes which had those roles designed into them from the beginning.

It doesn’t matter how much cleric gear and runes of altruism I get on my engi, how much regen I stack and bomb blinds I put down. My engineer will never be as good as a guardian is at support/tanking. No matter the build, a condition engi is still worse at condition damage than a necro, or even a ranger.

People play engineers because its fun, but still feel bad because in a game where every class is a little good at everything, but very good at a few things, the engineer only does the first. The longer you play the more it hits you :(

I just posted this on another thread.

Explosive traits affect pistol #1
(ie steel-packed powder, shrapnel, and explosive powder; So +10% damage, 15% cause bleeding, 5 sec vulnerability)
Pistol skills do 33% less damage

(Hidden bonus+; The patch bugs out rifled barrels and coated bullets traits for a month :3)