Guild Wars 2

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

Be careful what you wish for >:3

Kalan.9705:

The guardian is more effective support than the max level & geared engineer.

Support seems easier and more effective to do with the guardian. I’m leveling my own guardian now as well.

On my engi I have 6 runes of Dwayna for full party regen. Cleric armor, and I alternate between cleric trinkets and Knight trinkets. I’ve been liking the knight trinkets a little more recently. Sigils, I haven’t gotten around to get just right.

Oh, one more thing. I only do PvE so I would recommend playing around a little with the build for WvW depending on what exactly you want to do for your group. You might be well off switching kit refinement for speedy kits and going with med kit to maximize your runes. If you get good with med kit you might wan’t to replace elixir gun with a stunbreaker/condition cleanse/elixir s. I really wish they’d just replace the useless fumigate with one of those :/

Brinson.7289:

1. Blowing up healing turret makes your regen only heal 5/s….This is THE biggest bug for my build. If I am in group with another engi and they use heal turret; my 250 heal/s turns into 5/s for 60+ seconds.
[…]
4. imo: Make Shield #4 block melee attacks. How come the engineer has no block against melee when using the shield? This will free up 1 utility slot if you only use Tool Kit for the block. [Please!]

My top concern right now is the healing turret bug. This thing is crazy unfair when you consider that it makes all of our regen abilities (a lot if you use EG) useless, and they’re our biggest damage mitigators when in healer-tank builds.

Shield #5 blocks melee attacks but you can’t move while channeling it, unlike similar abilities from other classes.

My worst bugs/fixes would be:

1.- Healing turret regen bug
2.-Cone attacks
3.-Kit stat scaling
4.-Deployable turrets
5.-Turret stat scaling

Heals would probably not be affected by this. Turret kit would probably only include rifle, flame, rocket, thumper and net turrets. There’s five turrets excluding the healing turret, so I don’t know where you would find the space in the turret kit. Its like they made just enough combat turrets to make a kit and decided to not make it because it would be overpowered or something.

In any case, if there were a turret kit the individual turrets would have to have longer cooldowns to balance around, but a turret build would no longer be terribly un-viable anymore

Ostricheggs.3742:

A bug has been fixed allowing users of the grenade kit to throw grenades behind them.

I nearly chocked on my coffee while reading this. Now I’m deathly afraid of devs actually considering this a bug. It would mean the rage quit of every grenadeer who draws aggro.

All I could think of was rocket boots and slick shoes. I forgot about throw mine :p

You would loose all but one toolbelt skill if gadget kit were to be made. I guess that goes into giving engineers the option to choose what toolbelt skills go up. Otherwise we would loose some interesting ones.

Most support builds revolve around certain kits and the Elixir gun. My favorites use healing bombs and cleric’s gear. What kind of kits do you like using?

Elixir gun is good if you go with kit refinement for the double Super Elixir. Also, I find that vulnerability stacking from grenades is good support, and I really like tanking with healing bombs, when I can. So I run 30/0/30/0/10 with grenade kit, bomb kit, and elixir gun. Healing bombs ensures that you do a lot of healing and get more out of the double super elixirs, in addition to this grenade and bomb traits synergize really well together and provide a great amount of vulnerability and combos.

You could also go the tankiest route and go full 30 into alchemy and 30 into firearms for the Juggernaut build trait. Might stacking isn’t the only way to go with Flamethrower as it synergizes with elixir gun with regards to traits. You can still do support with runes that trigger on heals with med kit, and apparently you can do this mid flamethrower auto attack (Probably going to get fixed when people catch on). Although I don’t really like this build, I’ve been told that if you still want to might stack you can support well by surviving and reviving others :/

Toolbox.9375:

JohnDied.3476:

Do you suggest having something like an elixir kit and turret kit?

Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshyesyesplease

Being able to have all my turrets AS WELL AS some other useful stuff would make me one INCREDIBLY happy camper!!

Imagine having five turrets at your disposal, with tool kit, AND a stunbreaker. Blows the mind doesn’t it?

BTW, a gadget kit would be the most underutilized kit ever. Kit engineers would still ignore gadget kit because it would lack synergy, and some PvPeers would be very angry about the micromanagement of having to go into a kit.

Do you suggest having something like an elixir kit and turret kit?

I think that this change would truly make us the most difficult class to play with the amount of cooldowns, skills, and kit swapping we would have to manage. It would also elevate the learning curve to the engineer greatly, as kit swapping would become mandatory, but it would also give the engineer a lot more potential.

This change also has the potential to be even more misunderstood by engineers and even other classes. We are already considered kings of spam (as opposed to versatility), this could make us even spamier and kitten off engineers that dislike how spamy kits are.

It would also make other classes cry in outrage when a really good engineer comes along mastering all of his cool-downs, hitting a lot of combos, and utilizing every elixir at the right time. Devs might “balance” the engineer around this and make every individual ability less effective, making the class even harder to play.

What I’m saying is that I like your suggestion, but It comes with a lot of set backs and I can’t decide if it would its drawbacks outweigh its advantages. It would be good to talk it out and detail the advantages and set backs though.

Leo.7942:

Flamethrower
Bombs
The auto-defense bomb dispenser trait (GM explosives) could probably be improved to allow smoke bomb to be dropped manually while stunned, or, even better, for it to break stuns altogether. A similar idea could be applied to other kits as well.

This would make my day. As a kit engineer (3 kits no utilities :/) I would love for a stunbreaker to be in bomb kit (or in elixir gun, just replace the useless fumigate). As it stands I consider bomb kit to be one of the better thought out kits, even if that resulted in it getting nerfed. If a dev ever reads this forum this post is what he needs to get ideas from.

Rhinzual.7861:

JohnDied.3476:

Sorry, I had a diablo 3 flashback there. I should have commented on how versatile that magikarp could be if only we could get it out of our heads to use dps and survivability as the standard of judging how good a pokemon is…

Magikarp had zero versatility, in fact, Magikarp’s only use is to soak up XP and then evolve into the rather powerful… whatever it’s called, it’s been well over a decade since I played.

For Engineers to be like Magikarp, you’d have to suck for the first 40 levels and as soon as you start to get more talents opened up, bam, completely different game. You’d go from something everyone hated to something everyone craved. So like starting as an Engineer/Ranger and suddenly becoming a Guardian/Warrior.

~~~EDIT: It’s hard to convey sarcasm in text form so I’ll explain what I meant in my first post. Much like in pokemon, In some way or other dps and survivability in gw2 are what determine how good a class is. There is also support, but I keep getting told that the best support is to buff yourself so that you can revive other people, so it ventures into survivability.~~~

I think it’s quite fitting actually. For the first 40 levels you’re kind of gimped as an engineer because you don’t have access to the grandmaster traits this class is balanced around. Want to run with grenades? They’re kind of bad (now) without grenadier. What about bombs, flamethrower, or condition pistol? Same thing. The only builds you can probably do decently without high level traits are turret and static discharge builds (The later still requires traits btw). This kind of class balance pigeon holes you into going rifle if you want to do the hard stuff like skill points in lower level maps, which is kind of like the useless attack you get on magikarp when you consider how often you get in 1v1 fights in PvE (which is never).

The pokemon that little fishy evolves into is kind of terrible unless you really do your homework when raising it (pokemon games have a lot of hidden mechanics about breeding ). I think this mirrors the engineer quite well, since you think you’ll do great once you get access to those grandmasters (evolve), only to find out they’re lackluster when compared to other classes autoattacks : (

Sorry, I had a diablo 3 flashback there. I should have commented on how versatile that magikarp could be if only we could get it out of our heads to use dps and survivability as the standard of judging how good a pokemon is…

Alarox.4590:

tigirius.9014:

Forceful Explosives now is bugged reduces the radius instead of enlarging it. Causing the explosives like bombs to practically have to be inside the enemy to go off, possibly causing the same for mines, grenades and Elixir-Infused Bombs definitely affected. The splash radius is smaller then my thief’s dagger radius. Most noticeable underwater.

In my experience it does increase the radius of the bombs. At least in sPvP, the only place I’ve tested it.

I checked in PvE and only with smoke bomb and the radius goes up with forceful explosives. Maybe tigirius means the radius of bomb kit #1. I never though to check that, instead I opted to check out the easy to see bomb radii.

But he has so much potential…

Can anybody shed some light on the issue of bomb explosion radius? Because looking at the bug section of this forum tells me that forceful explosives decreases the radius of evasive powder keg, but I’ve had people tell me that bombs were stealth nerfed and the trait decreases the radius in conjunction with another trait (Grenadier I think).

The reason I mention this is because I’ve noticed that my bomb radii were bigger last night when I re-traited to a pistol+bombs/condition build. Today I traited back to my old build and the smoke bomb radius is increased by forceful explosives, only I don’t remember it the radii being this large before.

I feel a little odd about this, because I could have sworn that smoke bomb’s radius wasn’t as large as it looks now. So maybe it was a bug and it’s been fixed?

Before anyone bashes me, I could be completely mistaken. I’ve never cared what people told me about forceful explosives. I always just read the tooltip, check the bug sticky and went on with my game. It isn’t until now that I’m interested in whats up with it.

Levian.6742:

I was wondering the same thing myself.

I got to around level 12 using basically only grenades, and P/S mostly for the shield. The grenades did pretty decent damage but were hard to aim while circle strafing and it seemed like the weapons were all fairly useless. I’ve pretty much given up on my engineer.

It seems you guys are in the same boat us Necros are in

Started playing Right after the lost shores patch and loved the grenades since the first moment I got them, leveled all the way with them. Since the nerf though… I can only stand to keep them if I trait for grenadier, and even then I’ve been having more fun pulling off combo fields with the bomb kit. If you’re going for a grenadier engineer, try out bomb kit and see if you like it (read, pull off combos with BoB). I got depressed last time I ran grenades without grenadier and vulnerability stacking.

Anymras.5729:

Rifle’s got the best mobility and control out of the three weapon choices of the Engineer – Rifle Jump and Overcharge both move the Engineer, with Net Shot and Overcharge either moving the enemy or preventing them from moving. Bonus: Rifle is best for Jumping Puzzles, due to the Rifle Jump.

Yeah, but we already have so many CC skills. I understand that rifle gives you a lot of control against single targets (Even though I think #4 and #5 are terrible), but is pistol traited for longer range and pierce seriously our only option then for a long range weapon comparable to grenades? I’ve been meaning to replace grenades, but it seems like the only comparable alternative relies on going 30 into firearms. Meanwhile the buffs I get from explosives are shared between grenades and bomb kit. Is there another weapon combination that would synergize with bombs as well as grenades does?

Anymras.5729:

Elixir Gun: Elixir F deals decentish damage with an added cripple-swiftness combo, Fumigate’s good for removing conditions from party members, and that poison splatter thing is a decent escape technique.

Do you gear for condition damage? Does condition damage make pistol & elixir gun as good as rifle/grenades/bombs?

I’m kind of at the point where either I switch my builds or I take a break from the engi until we get tweaked again.
:(

I only do PvE dungeons, haven’t got into WvW yet and not really interested in s/PvP. My main is engineer but I’ve checked out other classes and recently I’ve been working on a guardian alt. My concern is, when I look at other classes I instantly miss my engineer kits, but I can’t ignore something which I find superior in the attack options for other classes, which is the purpose of a specific weapon set.

Just by playing my ranger I can tell straight away what that a shortbow is good at stacking bleeds and that a sword is good if you go with power. On the guardian I know when to use greatsword and when I need a hammer. I don’t have much of the same luck knowing what I can use on the engineer.

Sometimes I just feel like there wasn’t much thought put into our kits and mainhand weapon attacks. I can’t seem to find what a lot of them are good for and only use select few coupled with the better planned out kits. I run three kits (which isn’t that great of an idea) which are bomb kit, grenade kit, and elixir gun. This is because I don’t use our main hand weapons at all. Right now I only use pistol/shield for its #4 blast finisher (for my bombs) and elixir gun for its double super elixir. I used to use rifle before I used bomb kit and I only ever used #1 and #2 in very specific situations.

Bomb kit is great at what it’s for (I only wish our healing skills scaled better/ weren’t bugged) and seems like it was actually planned out and designed properly. Grenades are all right if you spec into them, although they only damage slightly more than bombs and don’t give you as much survivability (the range is wasted in most PvE).

Basically what I’m wondering is what the following weapons particularly effective at in PvE:

Pistol/Pistol – I never use it, I find that the shield is better coupled with bomb kit

Pistol/Shield – Again, I only use #4

Rifle – Only use #1 and #2 against single targets

Elixir gun – Super Elixir only.

I don’t really think the half second water field is the worst problem our healing turret has, although I could argue against how irregular it seems some times (I swear, I think I have the bugger timed and then I end up missing on the odd occasion). I think what makes healing spring so much better than the healing turret is that it regenerates more health on a shorter amount of time.

EDIT: Oh yea, and the terrible frustrating bug on the healing turret also makes it kitten. 5 hp regen with full cleric? bugger me.

Don’t get me wrong. I run a full healer engi and a condition damage ranger, I do envy that heal when I’m on my engineer, but we have Super Elixir to pick up conditions, and engis have a lot more combo fields than Rangers. Just take bomb kit out for a spin.

What I’ve suggested in the past is that the healing turret should have a duration wherein it will expire, but It would have stronger regen and a longer water field (though not too long, want to keep the cooldown shorter than healing spring). We can leave our conditions to double SEs (refined kits) and elixirs.

I can’t believe no one is talking about how turrets are used to E X P L O I T E !

All engies can just go afk and bake cookies while turrets do everything, its not like the things draw aggro at all.

Wait… no, the opposite.

Wasdclick.1764:

OFF-TOPIC EDIT: Engineers need a new kit for single-target.

Ray Guns!

1. Death Ray: Damage… Yay.
2. Channeled Ray: Damage over time, inflict burning?
3. Freeze Ray: Immobilize 2s or Chill 3s with damage.
4. Stun Ray: 1s Stun with small damage.
5. Transmatter Ray: Switch places with target, if no target, massive forward movement ala Ride the Lightning.

There’s a perfect skin for this in the asuran starting zone. When I first went through and found the kit I thought that it looked like the perfect engineer weapon.

Letting us choose our toolbelt skills would also be good, just saying : 3

Tankcat? I don’t personally play wvw but the build has been very popular on these forums for a while.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/The-TANKCAT-build-Prybar-some-faces/first#post870491

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.

I have an engineer in full exotics (Only one suit though, cleric) and a ranger in rares. My mind boggles trying to understand why my engineer gets downed constantly (having to get rezed by my party) when I’m in full healer armor traited for another 300 in toughness and healing, while I can solo champs on my ranger specced for damage and not get downed once.

The best I can come up with is that Rangers have their pets to mitigate all damage (while the pet is up) and have the single best heals in the game. Engineers on the other hand have no ways to mitigate damage (besides weak bomb heals) while we do our best damage closest to harm.

I also always party with a mesmer so it totally doesn’t feel like my engi’s being carried when she has to revive me a dozens of times : (

When someone says that engineers are versatile I’d like to think that they’re talking about the class as a whole. Engineers seem to be able to fulfill a lot of specific roles, whether we outperform other classes or not. The way the class has been fashioned up until now, versatility in a single build doesn’t seem to be encouraged.

It seems like the engineering class has been balanced around extremely specific builds. Grenades now do decent damage with grenadier and vulnerability stacking, but without investing at least 25 into explosives they’re not so good. Bombs don’t get good until you get the (Barely adequate) survivability healing-bombs provides, and pistols have been balanced around their grandmaster trait as well. It kills me to look at the investment people make just to stack might for the flamethrower.

The engineer class may look like a Jack of all trades class, but engineers themselves take huge investments into specific traits and utilities to make their builds.

JohnBell.4823:

I think this class was meant to defend(turrents) and heal( turrents, exlisers).

Nope, you’re thinking of Guardian. What engineers are currently good at (PvE) is blowouts and support in the form of stacking vulnerability. Sometimes, If you’re desperate and lucky, we can draw champ aggro and run around throwing grenades over our shoulders.

We offer decent support, just not vital support : (

I’m not bashing the class unnecessarily. I run a support build myself and my engi is still my main, I’ve just come to an understanding on how to best perform my favorite build.
EDIT: Scratch that. I’m not that jaded yet. I’ve come to understand an adequate way to perform my favorite build, I still like taking advice and trying things out.

JohnDied.3476:

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.

It’s a lot to pull off. Some times I screw up a combo field and leave myself wide open to be downed by a big boss, but if I pull it off I feel like I’m vital to my party. I think it’s like this for a lot of engineers. You have to scramble a great deal and use a variety of abilities to be a little useful, yet If you make mistakes you’re the weak link in the chain.

Just dug up a few great posts on healing abilities and I’d like to get their highlights on this thread for the sake of clarity. I don’t mean that Wasdclick should edit all of this into the OP but that this post should help anyone looking for a few good suggestions to engineer healing abilities.

First is a detailed improvement for med kit by Rozbuska.5263:

Here is my idea how to change all 5 skills.

1. Heal channel – this skill merge current skills 1,2,3 and make them pulse channel what heal every second of channeling. Cooldown 12s (same as now)
2. Protection – skill with 1.5s cast (can be interupted) what provide 5s of Protection and Retaliation. Cooldown 15s
3. Boon booster – skill with 1.5s cast (can be interupted) what double (stacks) all boon what are currently on you. Cooldown 30s
4. Cleaner – same system as skill one but for condition remove – 3 pulses, remove one condition every pulse (can be interupted). Cooldown 15s (same as now)
5. Stimulant – No much changes to current (Swiftness and Fury) just 1s cast pulse instead flask on ground (pulses dont glith into ground right?) Cooldown 20s (same as now)

All skills can be casted while moving (we are in dynamic game right?)

And now that most imporant thing.
Revamp of Packaged Stimulants trait. – New trait will make all Med Kit skills AoE. So we can provide simillar support as Guardian or War with shouts.

One more thing for Kit Refinement trait. Now equiping do dmg whitch is wierd. Small AoE heal will be much better.

Next is an alternate improvement for Elixir gun’s Super Elixir, so that it may be more like the elementalist ability Geyser:

KinkyPotato.4219:

Super Elixir (Current):
Launch an elixir orb, healing allies on impact and creating an area of continual healing.
Impact heal: 380
Pulse heal: 140
Duration: 10 s
Radius: 240
Combo Field: Light
Range: 900
Recharge: 20 s
[…]
Super Elixir (New):
Launch an elixir orb, healing allies on impact and creating an area of continual healing.
Pulse heal: 808
Duration: 2 s
Radius: 240
Combo Field: Light
Range: 900
Cooldown: 20 s

On the healing turret. I had this suggestion about giving the healing turret a better immediate regen, bringing it closer to a Ranger’s healing spring.

Current Turret
Heal: 4920 (self)
Regen: 8 s
Life Regenerated: 1040
Combo field: water (For a second out of every 8 )
Radius: 480
Permanent

New Turret
Heal: 4920 (self)
Regen: 8 s
Life Regenerated: 2340
Radius: 240
Combo field: water (For 2 s out of every 4 )
Duration: 15 s
Cooldown: 25 s

This change would make the healing turret temporary, but still make it just as appealing to keep for its duration than to blow for the aoe heal combo.

For healing bombs a general suggestion would be to double (or improve by 50%) their scaling with healing power. As they are now it is difficult to use bombs in larger fights due to damage overtaking healing very rapidly. On trash mobs they are fine, but get in front of a champ and you see how terrible you are at tanking when compared to other classes.

ps. Hope no one gets upset about the heavy quoting. Just wanted to confine really good suggestions to this thread.

There are a few choices for engineers who run healing gear in PvE, although I wouldn’t know what works best in WvW. You can max out alchemy and run conditions builds, maybe include flamethrower if you’re willing to max out firearms. You could also run a healing bombs build. One thing to keep in mind though, is that some of the things engineers are best at is staking vulnerability, staking aoe regen, and blast finishers. I’ve noticed that this game is very mobile, so the best utility an engineer can give a team isn’t straight up heals. This is because our healing fields are weak, long lived and static.
So our best utilities end up being our aoe combos and crowd control.

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.

It’s a lot to pull off. Some times I screw up a combo field and leave myself wide open to be downed by a big boss, but if I pull it off I feel like I’m vital to my party. I think it’s like this for a lot of engineers. You have to scramble a great deal and use a variety of abilities to be a little useful, yet If you make mistakes you’re the weak link in the chain.

Wasdclick.1764:

What would you all think on this idea?

General/Weapons: Fire Selector
When an engineer has a weapon, they should learn to use it in every way possible, and improve on as many aspects as they can. So what if when you equip a weapon of any type, on the Hero Information Screen Thingy™, you could click one of two checkboxes next to each of your weapon icons labeled modes 1 and 2? Depending on what you have, you’d get different weapon skills.

Rifle Mode 1: What we’re used to, our controlling/melee rifle of awesomeness.

Rifle Mode 2: A full suite of 1200 range, single target skills designed for primarily damage and little else.

I think this is a great suggestion. It seems like it would appease both sets of engies that have been arguing over our rifle skills. I was going to come up with some suggestion skills for rifle mode 2, but after comparing the engineer and the warrior rifle skills, I wish the devs would just give us theirs. Like it or not, the warrior’s condition rifle skills would work great with our current firearms trait-line bonuses.

I don’t know if the range on those skills would conflict with Anet’s philosophy on the engineer though.

The greatest and most comprehensive suggestions thread I’ve read in a long time. Sections like Elixirs and turrets are the kind of thing that devs need to read and see merit in. Engineers have been begging for stronger turrets and RNG-less elixirs very fervently for a while now, and it’s not something that would make engineers overpowered or go against the design philosophy. In fact, it would actually make those abilities more reliable, allowing for more versatility in play.

The way turrets and elixirs are now, there’s no way I’d take them over kits. Turrets just get three shotted by trash mobs and the benefit of most elixirs (except s) don’t outweigh the value of the slot they take. Just looking at the “boons keep you alive” thread is enough to see that many consider elixirs to be inferior to warrior and guardian utility skills. The fact that elixirs are too unreliable for support always gets mentioned.

I believe that the general and weapons suggestions will probably never happen, although I’d like to see it, and some of the trait suggestions seem too good (under the impression that all classes have some useless traits). Other than that, everything else seems like a great suggestion. The suggestions about gadgets, toolbelt skills and heals would definitely make engineers into a more complete profession.

On Healing.

People may argue that medkit is just fine, but one has to look at what the skill is meant for and if it does that well. Looking at the skills it looks like its meant for offering heals to a party and one’s self, which would mean it should be used to self heal and support others. When was the last time some other player actually sought out one of our medibags we drop? There needs to be a bigger indicator to where these heals are dropped and a better reason for others to get them. The channeled aoe heal would also make this kit serve a better utility.

When it comes to elixir H I tend to choose everything but it, on land and underwater. I don’t see it as a useful heal when our other healing abilities do a good job on shorter cooldowns.

Healing turret is currently bugged, and the only time I debate whether to keep it down or pick it up is when I desperately need that bug to not punish me. When I pick up healing turret I get stuck with this long unstack-able useless regen. Most of my healer engineer abilities consist of stacking regen, but the healing turret pick up punishment overrides this.

All of the gadgets and kit suggestions make the respective abilities more attractive, which would result in more people using and enjoying them. I’d consider these great changes, but they might seem a little too good when implemented.

To other posters.

After having read all of the suggestions made in this thread, I have to say that a good number of these are really good and deserve consideration. Wasdclick has been very detailed and methodical in his suggestions to better the numerous problems and lackluster abilities that the engineer possesses. This deserves praise.

Further, please don’t be to harsh about the suggestions that seem overpowered, in fact it would be good to point these out and propose alternatives so that devs may see what the engineer community would like to be the most. Hopefully we can help construct a list that if viewed seems to ask for fair changes that won’t overpower us.

I use a similar build only I run full cleric gear + runes of dwayna, take 10 in tools, and kit refinement for a double Super Elixir. Right now the healing bomb engineer isn’t really good at being a static tank. Depending on the boss, I can go from thinking healing bombs are alright to outright resenting how weak they are when I tank. So my play style comes down to this, If my health runs low on a boss then I let a guard or a warrior do the tanking and I support him with grenade vuln staking and SE heals. If I can take the heat then I keep at it with healing bombs.

It irks me a little that I have to go support the “true” tanks sometimes, but I run these dungeons with guildies so there’s never any bad blood. In fact, the vuln stacking I do is appreciated.

Anyway, as a final say on the healing bombs I deffer to a better healer engi on their issues:

KinkyPotato.4219:

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).

He suggested a 10/0/30/20/10 to me (for backpack regenerator and self regulating defenses). It boosts survivability but takes away the vuln stacking.

I’ve always loved the explosives side to the engineer. Never liked how quickly turrets go down or their terrible damage. Grenades and bombs have always been my favorites, although grenades more than bombs. Bombs don’t get good (In PvE) until you get healing bombs, and even then only because grenades just got nerfed.

Bombs are “good” if you like to PvE tank for a short while in full healer gear. The engi healing scales horribly with healing power but we don’t have anything else that gives us that kind of survivability. I’ve tanked “some” champions for a long time using healing bombs, then heal turret, then double super elixir (kit refinement) with healing mist. After that I usually go down. I write “some” because depending on the champion I might last the whole fight or I might go down in seven seconds after using all my heals and while skills get off cooldown.

One thing that makes me feel like the tank build on the engineer is kind of broken is that there’s always a point where I’m still standing strong against a boss but my health is just ground down while all my heals are on cooldown. Also, Its infuriating to be paired with such weak heals on a boss battle where you might get three shotted.

For tank engineers to ever be good (In PvE) we would need to have more healing abilities at our disposal, or make the current ones stronger. Super Elixir is too weak, healing turret doesn’t scale well, and healing bombs don’t heal enough to keep you alive for long in dungeons.

Door is currently bugged on Borlis Pass

Numot.3965:

Except, engineers still do good damage outside of the grenade kit. People have pointed out a few times that rifle, bomb, and heck even the flamethrower now that we have sigils (though targeting can be buggy) do good damage when built properly. The grenade kit still does solid damage now, just not so much as it used to, and still stacks vulnerability like a champ, improving everyone’s damage.

The problem I’m seeing with the engineer right now is that we have to obligatorily spec into something very specific to be able to be good at anything. Before this patch I didn’t need to go 30 into explosives just to have decent damage with grenades, now I do. I might want to use flamethrower now and again but I don’t want to spec all of my traits for a flamethrower might build + sigils. I like pistols but I don’t want to go 30 into firearms.

I used to be able to go around with support builds and still contribute with a little damage from grenades. Now since I can’t do SE heals, I have to go full 30 explosives and stack some condition damage to have a decent grenade build. If I don’t then I have to aim 7+ grenades at something my low level ranger could kill easily with auto attacks.

I like challenging games but going on my engineer now feels like masochism. What engineers have right now isn’t versatility. Its the ability to fulfill a single role at a time at the expense of everything else and still do it worse than another class.

What kind of build do you play? I run 30/0/30/0/10 but I haven’t gotten any exotic armor yet. I couldn’t make up my mind between Orr (pow/vit/toughness) armor or cleric gear. Based on what you’ve said I should mostly value healing power for self heals, do you think thats a better bet than getting more vit?

I had been looking forward to healing bombs for so long, so it was a really big let down when I got it. They really scale that badly with healing power?

Also, why doesn’t healing turret scale with healing power? This whole time I thought that it just needed a little boost. When I noticed a better healing field on my ranger (who is not specked into healing) I assumed healing turret just wasn’t strong enough, not that it doesn’t scale.

Hello, new poster here. I started playing during the lost shores event and I ended up choosing a grenadier elixir gun build. Welp… didn’t think anything was bugged or imbalanced but then again I’m new so that build probably felt like cheating to others.

Anyway, since I like playing a support role (healer + conditions) I wanted to see if I could get some help finding a useful build for dungeons (I don’t play PvP WvW).

I would love to see something like this happen to the Super Elixir. After this patch I can’t see how being a healer engi is even possible anymore. All I ever see is people dying around me because all of our aoe healing options are too weak. Just look at healing turret:

Turret
Heal: 4920 (self)
Regen: 8 s
Life Regenerated: 1040
Combo field: water (For a second out of every
Radius: 480
Permanent

I know it’s supposed to be a self heal, and its permanent, but what else do we have? Healing bombs? What are the stats on those because I haven’t noticed them do much good other than getting me killed.

It seems like our aoe heals are meant to be long lasting (maybe for area control with turrets & bombs?) but so far that has just been a work in frustration for most support engis. We need stronger heals, even if they’re shorter, to be any good in dungeons. This new super elixir is just what we need, coupled with a healing turret similar to a ranger’s spring.

Spring
Healing: 4920
Regeneration: 3 s
Life regenerated: 2340
Radius 240
Duration: 15 s
Combo field: Water
Cooldown 30 s

Maybe make healing turret regen more and have an active water field for 2 sec pulses every 8 sec (so other people can combo with it), but give it a 25 sec duration as well. After that time the healing turret can blow up for no damage and no combo field.

Turret (New)
Heal: 4920 (self)
Regen: 8 s
Life Regenerated: 2340
Radius: 240
Combo field: water (For 2 s out of every
Duration: 15 s
Cooldown: 25 s