Grenade speed was increased 10-15% in the Nov. 15 update.
Grenades need a 100% speed increase, minimum. A lot of engineer skills are completely pre-alpha in their animation speeds, jump-shot, net-shots, elixir-toss etc etc.
As title: is Forceful Explosives trait still broken?
Engineer was riddled with bugs and still in a pre-alpha state for fluidity, playability & balance at release. Shockingly it’s only got worse instead of better since release.
It’s the ongoing mismanagement, and total failure to bug fix that are the best arguments for staying clear, engineers have less viable builds now than at release.
Many of the elixir traits still don’t work with X, as well a X being rubbish. Typical engineer story, not only badly balanced, but riddled with bugs.
Engineers being versatile is a fantasy scenario that only exists on paper, and in dev minds, just like "middle range “. The only viable engineer builds are extremely specialised in trait, kit, weapon, utility etc; and each of the specialised builds lack in several areas, they are not versatile at all.
All my predictions to the engineer in the next patch:
- Weapon stats now apply to kits. Kits deal -100% damage and inflict you with every condition every second.
- Everytime you equip the grenade kit, one of your family members get cancer.
Don’t forget they’ll fix maybe two tooltips to balance those necessary changes.
The communication we want is fairly simple, either:
a) Most of our engineer players are wrong. Engineer is just how we (A-net) want it. Give up, reroll, leave game.
or
b) We realise our vision is disconnected from our engineer playerbase. We’re finally going to fix some bugs. We’re going to completely reconsider our class justification statement with regards to engineer. You don’t need to reroll or leave game, we’re listening now.
In addition all classes would be pleased to hear that for the new year, being able to enjoy your class is now an equal priority as new pve grinds, so A net will add 8 new staff one for each class bringing the balance team from two people upto ten the bare minimum such an integral area deserves.
Engineer had more variety of viable builds at launch.
Bug reported this in beta two. Fixing engineer bugs just isn’t a priority for Anet.
Engineer is in worse shape now than at release.
The communication we want is fairly simple, either:
a) Most of our engineer players are wrong. Engineer is just how we (A-net) want it. Give up, reroll, leave game.
or
b) We realise our vision is disconnected from our engineer playerbase. We’re finally going to fix some bugs. We’re going to completely reconsider our class justification statement with regards to engineer. You don’t need to reroll or leave game, we’re listening now.
In addition all classes would be pleased to hear that for the new year, being able to enjoy your class is now an equal priority as new pve grinds, so A net will add 8 new staff one for each class bringing the balance team from two people upto ten the bare minimum such an integral area deserves.
Changing from all condition removal, to one single condition removal, on the med kit, was a big move away from the versatility that we’re supposed to have, requiring significant specialisation to now gain reliable condition removal. Big step backwards.
The core of the problem is not operational complexity, it it’s that every kit requires entirely different trait specialisation to another kit or any weapon combo, and even with the specialisation it only brings one single kit upto the mediocre level. Gear and sigils need to be different often too.
Thus it’s the exact opposite of versatility.
At release engineer had access to pretty reliable condition removal via cleanse all in the med kit. Yes it required careful placement to use and not have it picked up by an ally, and was unavailable when immobilised, but it gave a route to counter conditions without having to heavily specialise into elixirs and alchemy and was available to most builds. Alchemy and elixirs is very specialised and synergises badly with most builds because of the amount of traits and utility slots it takes away.
People want their time invested into engineer to be worth a much as other classes. It is not.
Asking for a class change token for engineers is actually not such a stretch when the delivery so badly misses the description and so much of the potential is still totally bugged & totally underwhelming (hi turrets! for one example).
Removing stability on demand from flamethrower. It was the only thing engineers did that other classes couldn’t do better. Massive number of builds and combat options disappear with that one change.
The radius on explosions and heals should be more like 500 basic and 750 traited.
In practical use the heal range is simIply too small for most situations.
There are far less viable engineer builds now than at release. Major bugs and gameplay issues appear to be nowhere on the devs radar at all, there is no indication they are anything but happy how turrets play for example. Also the dev engineer philosophy recently stated leaves little room for hope for positive change, it reads like a self justification for continuing to get it wrong. The numbers of people happy with the results of serious time investment into engineer or happy with engineer in groups suggest dev philosophy simply doesn’t resonate with the vast majority of the player base
We’re nearly half a year into Gw2 counting beta, shouldn’t we have more playable builds not far less?
You can’t reliably deliver particular boons to team mate just random stuff infrequently, your healing it’s so low radius that it’s often worthless, there are far less support builds for engineer now than at release so based on dev action to date you can be worried that the few remaining ones will be crippled also.
Guardian is what you’re looking for.
Experience shows that mmo devs develop thick skins to endure all the unwarranted whining, unfortunately this makes it almost impossible to communicate with them when their design decisions don’t resonate with any but a tiny stubborn handful of walk twelve miles in the snow in bare feet masochists.
The operation of an engineer can be fun, if only the balance, traits and major bugs were heading in a positive direction people wouldd be more optimistic, but it’s getting worse not better. For a supposedly versatile class, we have far less viable builds now than at release.
The stated dev philosophy for engineer is pretty demoralising e.g
. bad at everything but fictional situations like ’ middle range’.
Taxed for hybrid, when everyone else is an untaxed hybrid.
Missing weapons, swaps, on swap runes, weapon stats, weapon selection etc
No role we excel at.
Only being able to trait for one kit to medium effect at once means versatility fantasy is entirely absent in the actual play.
Based on all the class changes since beta 1, it’s safe to say don’t play engineer if you want to PVP WVW or PVE not solo. Despite any optimism you may hear from rose tinted player viewpoints, the devs stated philosophy for this class is it’s bad at melee and range and that having opportunity costs underpowered and inflexible kits is also a reason for inferior weapons.
You can only play this class if you avoid all alts or comparison to other classes, it’s bad by design, it’s massively bugged, major features like turrets and kits are negated due to tbad balanceand their opportunity costs, it’s far less versatile than other classes and can do fewer things at once.
Engineer could have good potential, it’s one of the more interesting class concepts seen in the last fifteen years of MMOs but I think only new blood on the design team could finish the concepts and make it a proper GW2 ready class.
Engineer seems a waste of space when you could bring any other class, all of whom can specialise better and multi role better.
As a WvW engineer, and considering both the snail pace of bug fixes, and awful ‘balance’ decisions I have completely lost faith in the devs ability to make Engineer a fully functional class with equal variety of builds and roles to the other classes.
I don’t think it’s worth playing Engineer any longer when it’s being balanced to be weaker in everything but completely fictional situations, like medium range. Medium range is a fantasy that only exists in the devs minds, either people close or they range, there is no such thing as medium range.
None of the important engineer bugs or issues have been addressed in the last 2 months so, nothing’s changed basically.
Another 50 hrs in WvW and progress towards another piece of gear is slow it’s very frustrating. It really does feel like time spent in WvW is massively less rewarding and massively more costly than any other game type. Unfortunately I just don’t like or enjoy the other game types.
It leaves me with really unattractive options, get a second in-game job to farm PvE to pay for my WvW, be permanently and increasingly disadvantaged as my gear falls behind the curve and I can play no variety of specs without variety of gears let alone characters or give up and stop playing?
GW2 economy is vastly too shallow, the basic necessities are hugely too expensive for some players, and there’s a big void of high ticket status items, for the super rich to show their wealth witho0ut having gameplay advantages.
I thought this was touted as the game where one wouldn’t feel as trapped in GoldGrind2.
Engy downed state is just embarrassingly bad. What I don’t understand is why it stays that way, month after month.
Hire more class bugfix/balance/design devs and stop slacking please A-net.
There’s plenty of WvW issues, but is there any signs or hints anywhere regarding when or how WvW will get some dev attention? All the other game modes are getting updates (even if balancing and class bugfixing is glacially slow), but apart from disabling orbs there’s been no sign of any sort of significant dev input into wvw though afaik.
When 1 player class can prevent 10+ players from capturing a point for many many minutes, that class needs adjusting. Anyone who says different isn’t interested in a balanced game.
I don’t mind the badge drop rate, but I am disapointed in it being pretty much a wash gold wise.
I can go into WvW for 5 hours a night and come out a few silvers up or down. If you spent that much time doing the level 80 event zerg you’d be rich.
That’s a big part of the problem, mostly you can get gear by playing the game type you like, economy, DE’s, dungeons, crafting, puzzles and completions, SPvP is automatic which is brilliant. However if you like WvW, you have little chance of getting gear by doing something you enjoy.
Also rewards being terribad in WvW is paired with MASSIVELY higher costs than other game modes, compounding the problem.
I mostly play off peak times for my server and am often very outnumbered, but I don’t log out.
Getting groups that stay together is hard, everytime someone leaves you can’t kick them at all and have to reform.
Some unfixed bug means I can never join a commander squad, ever.
I’ve never server hopped to increase my rewards.
I have no urge to do PvE stuff, which I find utterly boring, unfortunately that includes super mario jumping.
I try and do strategically useful stuff, to help my side, not only play if there’s a winning zerg or log or server hop.
It seem demoralising that to start getting either cash or badges in anything like a useful time frame (like even 10% as fast as they announce new gear tiers) I need to start being more selfish in playstyle and/or pay for my limited playtime with much of it spent not having fun, but with a second job in PvE, earning in game gold wages to buy gear for WvW?
Thanks a lot for all the nice replies btw, but I’m still confused how low playtime, not server hopping, WvW players are supposed to end up with even 1 gear set, let alone several?
Another evening with a truckload of WvW cash drain, and close to sod all badges to show for it.
After 3-400hrs in WvW I still can’t afford even 1 piece of exotic badge gear, the badge drop rate is ridiculous. I have about 3% of my end-game gear-sets, (only just a few pieces/runes from broker – cash rewards in WvW are also abysmal) nowhere near even 1 gear set completed, not a single weapon and soon we have ascended grind coming to add insult.
Isn’t there room in the market for even 1 mmo that isn’t an insane grindfest? Why does the basics subsistence costs need to be so incredibly expensive, and why aren’t there top-tier cash sinks for the super rich instead of insane cost of basics?
GW2 is like an economy where it costs £150,000 a year just to use the bus, and there’s no equivalent to supercars/private jets etc for the truly rich, just hideously painful costs for the base tiers of playtime.
Living up to the original promises of no gear grind treadmill, would be even better, but with that promise broken, the OP’s suggestion would be an improvement on the current situation.
Hire 20 new devs, and start getting this done, it’s happening at least 10x too slow currently. Get more manpower on it. If possible find some of the Shadowbane class design guys and hire them, they got masses done, very quickly, even with a tiny team.
With A-net’s resources, and so much high standrards in most areas, this crucial area should not have such low productivity.
The engineer fluff that came last patch makes me feel as if I took my car in to the garage because the brakes wouldn’t work while turning left, and after 3 months all they have done is change the wiper blades and write down an itemised bill with 30 individual steps about how they changed the wiper blades.
“took new wiper blade box off shelf”
“opened new wiper blade box”
“removed new wiper blades from plastic housing”
“placed new wiper blades on bench ready to be attached”
“located old wiper blades on car”
“walked over to old wiper blades at car”
etc etc etc……….
After 440hrs of playtime, mostly in WvW, and selling everything for the best prices I can get from players of brokers. This has allowed me to acquire to date:
3 out of 24 pieces of exotic armour I want
3 out of 24 superior runes
0 out of 15 exotic jewellery
0 out of many exotic weapons
I can buy 1 miserable piece of wvw badge gear, but I don’t much like the stats and there’s no point running a survival build with only 1 piece of gear.
WvW rewards are utter rubbish, unless you stop being useful to your side to go harvest and do jump puzzle crap, only travel in a steamroll group when actually pvp-ing and log out or server hop any time you don’t have a huge advantage.
The prospect of ascended gear makes me feel like there is no point to ever trying to gear up to play WvW, I’d have to spend so much time doing stuff I dislike that it far outweighs the time I might eventually get doing WvW without my un-grinded gear penalty.
Totally demoralised by the savage amount of gear grind WvW players face.
In the last 15 years of MMO playing, I’ve never seen total overview all-class-combo balance so quickly, for a vast number of viable builds, for a far higher number of race/class/base/rune combos, across many roles (recon, ambush, anti-infiltration, healing, support, dmg absorbing, dps, spike damage, aoe etc) , in many settings (solo, group, flying, skirmish, openfield large scale and seige). With a tiny team, Woflpack was getting vastly more complex builds, across vastly more build combos, and in many more settings, complete orders of magnitude better balanced, and they were doing it about 15 times faster.
A-net’s current class balance team desperately needs more help. The best business investment A-net could make is to find and hire those Wolfpack people who were responsible for the class balancing/design.
Turrets just got worse – rofl.
Grenades our main option just got worse.
Nothing about kit stats & runes got fixed.
None of the important bugs got fixed.
None of the important weapon and kit skill balancing happened
miss miss miss issues were missed…
Looks like various of the very few engy builds took a range of nerfs, without new worthwhile builds becaming viable.
I think A-net need to source some devs (e.g. class balance guys from Shadowbane) and hire them in to fire-fight their balancing process. A-net sorely need some really experienced devs who can get a lot of viable builds across many classes into much much finer balance inside weeks not years.
Extremely disappointed by such a lack luster patch that covers none of the areas I think are actually important for our class. Having previously been really excited for this ‘30points of engineer fixes patch’… I’m now feeling very little motivation to log in.
No explosive traits work with (1) explosive shot from pistol.
Orbs are awful.
A-net made masses of great design decisions, it’s so surprising that they got this one so badly wrong and yet seem so attached to a terrible snowball mechanic that turns even more closely balanced matches into far less fun, far less balanced matches
Some solid suggestions here.
If I could press a button that would destroy all orbs forever I would do it in an instant. Their snowball effect can make winning feel hollow and recovering from losing far less likely.
The undermanned buff should be more like the orb bonuses (and actually activate and work properly) and orbs could either be deleted entirely or have some PvE karma/magic find % stuff.
People’s circumstances in WvW will vary widely, it’s not just a “play safe” issue. In my server matchups at the late night times I get to play currently, we are ALWAYS heavily outnumbered by as many as 10-1, every single night, it’s handful of us trying to keep or retake anything on all 4 maps vs hundreds of 1 particular server for hours and hours.
As title.
Rewards from WvW are craptastical unless you have a steamroll going. Repairs costs are completely out of balance with the number of deaths that occur accomplishing useful stuff rather than just hiding in a big zerg or logging out.
Repairs should no longer be a feature of WvW, seige blueprints already costs plenty.
Move/Remove players from WvW maps to keep all 3 sides within 10% population
in WvW
Posted by: Kalan.9705
Also show in game queue time data for queueing all WvW all maps, displaying all involved servers, so people can see where to server xfer.
Move/Remove players from WvW maps to keep all 3 sides within 10% population
in WvW
Posted by: Kalan.9705
The only good solution for the spiralling time-zone influenced imbalances in population, is to have population dynamically cap, so the most populated side never gets more than 10% more players than the least populated side. Start shifting players from map to map, or move them out of WvW entirely.
Also remove orb buffs, anything that makes a winning side more likely to keep winning is terrible game design for a 3-way WvW system.
Keep server transfers free, and the population will start to rebalance itself.
Having an unopposable zerg leap around from map to map at will, 10-1 steamrolling and capping everythingm, then upgrading it all night, while nearly everyone from the other 2 servers is asleep is a spiralling problem, that drives people out of WvW at unbalanced times, making the problem get steadily worse and worse.
I can do okay-ish with engineer which I’ve played a lot (with the exception of underwater where we’re great) but however I can do great with any other class I’ve played with in much less time.
Turrets don’t really work.
Kits don’t really work.
A lot engineer traits don’t really work.
Engineer as a flexible swiss army knife class concept, just doesn’t work for 2 reasons:
1) many roles aren’t really viable (e.g. compare engin burst power/crit dps possibility with many other class).
2) Our traits actively oppose diversity, our builds are very narrow and often single kit specific.
The fundamental flaw is the opportunity costs of kits (loss of utility slots, loss of weapon diversity, loss of weapon swapping, loss of weapon stats, loss of weapons sigils, needing to trait spec for a particular kit) is far too high when the kits are generally so specialised (grenades) and/or weak (flamethrower) etc.