Guild Wars 2

Turret hitboxes are still bugged to be massively wider radius than they used to be. They melt in 0.3 seconds in wvw when it should be 0.8 seconds etc.

Turrets melt in 1 second or less in wvw, or they are so far from the battle they are entirely worthless, the ONLY way to make turrets useable in wvw is to give them the ability to survive aoe in some fashion. There are 4 options:

1 limiting the amounts of hits per second they can receive
2 increasing their armour and hitpoints massively (that’s bad for pve and arenas)
3 giving them damage reduction versus skills not targeted at them (% reduction or seconds of immunity, % is better)
4 giving them such big range increases they can be placed safely and still contribute in a useful fashion which is the most buggable/exploitable and worst option.

Either Turrets have to be made viable for the full range of WvW play, or they should be replaced by entirely new skills for WvW (which is far too much work). Best option is 3, % reduction based.

I do agree about overcharges needing to be active skills, and not so random/mistimed immediate cast immediate use.

Personally I’d put all the blast finishers into the overcharge skills and at trigger at player location, and have the turrets drop fields (also knockback from trait) at turret location, and delete the explode skills leaving toolbelt l turrets skills always available.

People ask for mesmer. People don’t ask for engineer.

A lot of effort went into this thread. A few suggestions:
Move downed 2 to replace rifle 4 with 4’s damages but pull in and no self-cc crap.
Move downed 3 to downed 2, with 2’s timer.
Put supply drop on downed 3, with 3’s timer.
Then we have downed more in line with the quickly updated elementalist skills, our current are garbage.
Unbreak rifle 5 so the animation completed within 0.6 seconds, with out the useless hang time.
Update rifle 5 to 1200 range to be in line with warrior charge etc.
Elixir gun 3 cleanses user and 600% damage increase so it hits like a normal skill.
EG 5 changed back to decent heal.
EG2 doubled flight speed, with 2 more bounces.
EG1 doubled bleed stacks.
FT5 changed back to backdraft, or smoke field.
FT4 movement skill, ground targeted, leaves line of fire path, ring of fire at arrival.
FT1 is 10% chance projectile finisher.
Grenades are 4% chance blast finisher.
Grenades flight speed increased by 75%.
Toolkit 1 ranged auto attack, 700 range.
Toolkit 2 instant cast.
TK5 0.5 sec cast like scorpion wire.
Chainsaw kit added, something like warrior great sword.
Power gloves kit added, something like guardian mace + shield.
Kit refinement replaced with passive infinite effects while X kit is worn, no random cd crap.
Elixirs updated to work more like shouts.
Turrets 96% aoe immune. Targeted on that turret then those skills hit them normally.
All turret health doubled.
All turret cd’s under 20 secs, 60sec etc is ridiculous for stationary dumb object.
Trait revamp, over 50% of traits are currently worthless, and need replacing. Many of the other 50% need to be merged.

One aspect of engineer issues is requiring 3x as many button presses to do about the same as 1 button press on another character is a pretty bad design failure for WvW where the server load prevents reliable precision timing of abilities, especially in top tiers.

Raijinn.9065:

Well, without a doubt under the sun, we are FARRRR weaker then we were at release date. I fail to see how we’re in such a great state right now when they have successfully nerfed our strongest builds every month and pigeonholed us.

This. I don’t mind the devs changing or removing builds, as long they add new ones to compensate which this set of devs is spectacularly failing to do.

As long as there is 1 useable build left you’ll always find some forum hero who strokes his ego by saying everything is fine as long as his build is untouched. The overview is that engy choices are at an all time low now, particularly with turrets being even more broken (and ignored) this patch.

Also the Elixir-S nerf last patch hurt HGH quite a bit for everyone who knew how to use S for more than just stomping.

Major design failures like the recent kit refinement changes are shockingly inept for a game that’s supposedly not just throwing any half baked idea around during a beta process.

Engy badly needs a patch where the devs actually take some time to try and improve not further ruin the class.

Taerik.3405:

-Can we get more reliable condition removal thats not tied to a HGH build, like letting elixer guns fumigate work on the engineer also

-Can we remove randomness from things like elixer X or S, give us the choice, as in, press once for this effect, twice for this effect

-If turrets are to be viable, they need
:; enough HP to survive three auto-attacks
:; not explode in aoe
:; 1s cooldown for placement if picked up, much like a kit (this should not affect either detonate OR the internal cooldown for firing rate
:; overcharging a turrent should cause the effect immediatly

-We self CC ourselves too much

All really good questions, the conditional removal losses from medpack 4, FT and EG losing kit refinement removal have never been replaced with any useful functionality elsewhere. (healing turret is just not viable in many wvw, pve and even pvp situations – it’s quite a risk taking a skill that is often useless and now does half the healing and evaporates before the other half can trigger)

Gets two thumbs up from me! Would love to see the balance devs doing some work for actually making this class more fun, not less.

Bas.7406:

We at SOACGaming are actually working with the Devs from anet on doing a show like this. We will have our Engineer podcaster ask engineer questions, and then get to follow up. It is coming soon, probably next month once I get my entire list together.

Glad to hear it, I hope it won’t be another puff piece!

Can you have your interviewer watch some Jeremy Paxman clips to get in the right mindset. I’d love to see real interview questions, not soft balls with no follow up and no challenge, particularly when devs make glaringly erroneous statements like “turrets are fine in wvw and pve because they don’t get focused” which begs a follow up like “turrets usually evaporate into a fine mist before finishing their placement animation, let alone doing anything useful, or are so removed from the battle that they have no relevant input into the battle. They are the opposite of fine.”

Along with “why did the pets and minions patch ignore turret problems, instead breaking their traits and putting them in the worst position yet?”

I think the current balance team are simply too understaffed and over stretched for a unusual class like engineer to get any decent changes. Unless A-net can somehow be persuaded to stop making a false economy by under spending on their class balance department, we’re never really going to see class balance as a whole move to a good state for all game modes.

If devs accidentally break a skill for thief for example you hotfix it in a day. Why is it acceptible to leave engineer turrets broken so long?

Viable build diversity shrinks every patch, currently at an all time low.

JoxerNL.3752:

Would be nice if we heard something from the devs, they seem to be quite awake “in other forums”.

Devs don’t post here because they don’t know anything about the class, and it would be too easy for them to end up looking bad.

waka.9826:

Breaking news:

Anet doesn’t read engi forum.

Basically this.

Turrets are at an all time low, which is quite sad seeing as it’s the only area of many that need attention on the engineer that has actually got any dev time in months.

All that dev time on turrets is dollars in the toilet until they look at survivability and ai.

Grenades or go home.
Turrets are at an all time low point, with the hitbox and traits being broken.
FT still has crappy range and horrible retaliation and poor utility.
Bunkers took a beating last patch.
Bombs are only useful for those who record 6 hrs of them being useless to edit together the 6 mins they made a difference.
Rifle its boring and clunky and brings nothing much on top.
Elixir gun is just kitten

Everyone runs elixirs from lack of options, but instead of fixing any broken stuff devtards started targeting elixirs for nerfs now.

I have like 14 viable base builds to make versions from and no sets of armour in the bank gathering dust, all 7 sets in my bags because of the extreme versatility. Plus I love how much we can change our weapons around when we want some variation for interests sake.

After fixing all of our bug list so quickly and making turrets so awesome in WvW engineer needs some really strong nerfs to bring the engineer population down to manageable levels. Engineer is all I see everywhere and they never stop talking about how great the patches have been for them this month and how happy they are!

It’s well past time for some nerfs for engineer, you can just pick any traits at random and still win everything! plus the damage on our weapons is just INSANE!

I think some players just really want to be the last handful of masochists playing engineer by themselves.

Secondly I find it bizarre how some folks just blindly support A-net on everything no matter what.

99% of the builds affected by the elixir-S nerf needed a buff, and continue to wait (seemingly endlessly) for buffs, that’s the bottom line and that’s a big part of what made it a moronic change.

Hotfix engineer turrets please. The traits are all broken as of 30th April and they are even more laughably useless than normal. Don’t forget Supply Drop while you’re at it plz.

Plus if you could actually give the turrets the ability to survive more than 0.2 seconds in typical WvW engagements sometime this year, that would be nice. This month being the minion/pet month it might have been a nice time for example to remember engineers have also have minion problems rather than breaking the turrets still further.

It is really important to compare just how much most elementalists can still do with the mist form via dodges and healing, warriors can do during endure pain, and mesmers can do during distortion.

This one is a bad change, it needs tweaks so Elixir-S isn’t a total shut-down, and anyone white knighting for it just because that’s their default raison d’etre for spending time on the forums, hasn’t looked at the situation impartially.

Most/all of the engineer turret traits are broken since april 30th, supply drop turrets are hugely nerfed etc. Can we get a hotfix please.

p.s. Even with the fixes they’ll still die to every light breeze or any splash damage, maybe the minion+pet patch could have included engineer minions with something to make these last long enough to be viable.

JohnDied.3476:

You probably say that because you play flamethrower/bomb-kit/grenade/pp/gadget engineer. Haven’t you seen the myriad of builds the devs have oppened up? Turrets are only a year’s worth of patches away from being viable.

Only a year? Woohoo! We’re saved!

Who else needs more bank space to store the latest set grinded gear that became pointless due to devtard decisions.

In this thread I’m pointing out how moronic it its to compare individual abilities and nerf on that basis, instead of comparing classes and how they operate as a whole. Mist form and elixir-S and endure pain don’t do the same things, don’t have the same traits and don’t need to be treated the same. Mist form its still pretty useful because of traits.

It’s like nerfing stealth not because of power or operation, but just nerfing stealth because not everyone has stealth, a moronic way to approach balance. Plus I hate the fact a load of UP bunker builds got crotch-punched this patch for zero good reason.

Promoting build diversity, my kitten

With the exception of toolkit 3 & 5 and the bug fix to let us use sigils, every dev action seems to make engineer more boring and mediocre.

foxtrot.6902:

lol list sounds pretty spot on to me lucky. Needs a sticky imho.

1 kit to have the same number of weapons as other professions at the cost of a utility slot. Keep that hybrid tax coming Anet.

Whilst we get a low cooldown swap, we do loose stat and sigil choices, and only 3 weapon combinations is frankly lazy.

I don’t think devs hate engineer at all, I just think it’s a huge problem that A-net decided to ‘save’ money on the class balance team and having a test server. I’m sure it actually costs them vastly more in lost revenue in the long run.

If only we had the shadowbane class design team, those guys did amazing stuff for class and build diversity across many multiples more combinations with a tiny tiny team.

Pistols have still never really recovered from the triple nerf early on, current pistol even before the 50% drop to static shot was pretty meh whatever.
Condition removal, well we’ve lost medpack 4 all, super elixir and flamethrower KR. Also I just don’t find the lock-in flamethrower good design at all.

Most of the ‘protect the poor delicate devs’ fan boys only hold that ego stroking leet pose until the first patch comes that hits their own build, then they generally disappear never to be heard from again, possibly with a big flouncy tantrum before they go.

Well class defining because it’s what little of what’s left. Class defining pistols is gone. Class defining stability on juggernaut is gone. Class defining push-pull on flamer is gone. Class defining underwater grenades are gone. Class defining condition removal is gone. Class defining super elixirs are gone. Class defining multi-kit is gone. Class defining hundred nades is gone. Class defining bunker confusion builds are gone.

All we have left is elixirs, and those evil devtards are hard at work coming up with new ways to ruin those too.

I don’t actually want a warrior nerf, I would just like to see a less inept double standards bias from the devs. Also les double standards from forum discussions, you can’t be comparing engineer to another class to justify (crappy) nerfs, and then complain about class comparison to criticise nerfs.

Personally I think each class should be judged as a whole, and on that basis nothing about engineer justifies ruining a class defining ability like Elixir-S.

Ironwill.5389:

I will have to agree that there has been some definite/focused attempts to curtail/restrict public/popular engineer trait/skill combinations.
So yes, if I were to criticize Anet, there’s some definite anti-cookie cutter hate for the class.
But I can’t be surprised; this was the same group whose brilliant solution for the lack of toolbelt skills for racials was to make the norn engineer suck eggs (literally, check them out…)
I should have taken the hint and played a mesmer.
At least they’re getting better nerfing us into the ground more subtly (I call this concept the “burff” where they pretend to buff you, but really it’s just a disguised nerf).

Barf would work too!

Phineas Poe.3018:

Who doesn’t take Cleansing Formula 409 in sPvP/WvW?

Serious question.

This question highlights what a bad job the devs are doing. Their attempts to promote build diversity are backfiring, patch after patch.

The nerf was completely unwarranted, the goal should not be to make everything the engineer has worse than another classes equivalent. Balance it’s achieved by keying every class do a few things best, that gives balance and class diversity. All the same means why bother having classes.

Less of the blatant bias. Elementalist invulnerability still allows attunement swap and all of the goodies that come with. Warrior invulnerability still functions like the non crap version of Elixir-S.

Elixir-S was one of the things giving engineer class identity, there is no good reason to take it away.

Elixir-S was one of the class defining skills. Anyone who says different wasn’t using it right.

Crappy patch for WvW engineers.

A lot of aoe cleanses and the reduction in uptime reduces burning damage by 50%-100%

Confusion isn’t only a mesmer condition, engineer got zero to compensate for the loss, especially to our very pitiful bunker damage, RIP tank cat etc.

Loss of elixir-S and auto-S is massive, they were class defining for what you could do in big engagements. Anyone who says different wasn’t using their potential.

Cloaking device change used to give engineer class identity, now it’s just mediocre crap that’s not as good as possibilities for other classes. There is not 1 decent skill in that entire half kitten line now.

Turrets are kitten in aoe, and small time window multi-tap skills non-viable in skill lag.

Horrible patch, just really crap. But engineers by now have that whole battered wife complex and tend to say “it’s our own fault for making the devs angry” “the devs are under so much pressure at work” "the devs keep promising it will be better, next time it will be “

If we complained like other classes, they would bother to spend some time on our changes, bother to give us some positive things, not ruin class defining stuff for sweet F A in return. We don’t complain so they spend time on the classes that do.

These changes only work on paper and sometimes in arena modes, the timings and requirements just don’t work well in WvW with the aoe splash damage and lag flying around. Also the idea of ‘trying to protect your turret’ is just hysterically out of touch. Stack problems and delayed to maybe never healing isn’t a good change.

If all turrets were aoe immune, then finally turrets could start to have any potential in WvW.

If only the concept of a test server was known in the MMO world. Oh wait…

Nerf to S is not a minor nerf, it’s gone from a class defining skill to a moderately crappy skill, particularly when you take into account the Low Health Automated Response double nerf.

AsmallChicken.9634:

The new Healing Turret is terrible in large scale WvW fights as the skill lag will ensure that you will never be able to get off your overcharge burst (if the turret isn’t melted instantly in the first place).

Anyone who actually plays the engineer in all game modes knew that the proposed Heal Turret changes would have problems off paper and back in the reality of game use. Which is of course why our balance devs had absolutely zero clue.

The water field is only possible if your turret survives longer than 0.2 seconds, and that doesn’t happen in anywhere it might actually be useful in WvW. Plus the whole WvW skill lag issue.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

So Warriors got 2 kitteny GM traits compressed into 1 and got a new one that isn’t terrible.
What’s an engy gotta do to get some of that?

Be a class that A-net plays :P

Kontrolle.3514:

incendairy powder overnerf.
Elixir S overnerfraped
retal/confusion cut in half.
cloaking device nerfed.
Boon hate and super buffs to every other prof except Ele.

And you guys are even happy with this patch.
Im tired of this game, played since beta but coupled with the KR disaster last patch they have gone to far. They actually nerfed my desire to log in. Have fun.

Another moronic patch from the devtards, zero surprise at this point.

Slomo.1029:

Ok I Did It.2854:

All these changes and yet Ele’s will still beable to Vapor Form through the portals into keeps/towers etc when in downed state and cannot be attacked, this is the only clIass that has the ability to escape downed into a safe location. Are you going to boost the others classes so we can escape into a portal to avoid death too????

Holy poo, calm down a bit.
Anet is really trying to make all classes the same to prevent any interesting compositions in groups or different options of playing your own class.
RTL with 40s cd1 if you dont hit anything? Better place a TON of ambient creatures around on the WvW maps. And take every single skill from thief and warrior that can help their mobility! And take the rush from the snow leopard too!
Better take the support out of the staff ele too! Oh wait, he cant remove more than 1 condition with his 45s cd water field!
At least its a buff to necros and engies.

Confusion nerf is ok, retaliation nerf not needed in any kind or form. Warrior new super-trait wont find any use because of the placement.

Guildies were calling me crazy when I said ele will get really boring soon and I rather try to lvl a guardian now. Cant do anything wrong with a guardian! Never in this game!

Correction it’s not a engineer buff this patch, it’s a big nerf. As standard every patch since Bwe1 but 1, the devtards select several best loved feature of engineer and destroy them, while pretending they are helping.

Last time included deleting our only half decent power build from the game, and making all multikit builds wothless random crap (and lots more).

This time includes ruining our best remaining utility elixir S, ruining our best remaining trait IP, indirectly hurting our bunker builds only source of damage, hurting damage with confusion changes, creating counters to anyone stacking boons when our passives stack boons and active boon stacking is the only remaining viable damage route for engineer.

This months nerf disguised as a buff is to healing turet, by reducing the initial healing that matters, listing the crappy overcharge mechanic that may our may not already remove conditions a if it it’s a new thing, listing the water field that we already explode the turet in a if it’s a new thing, and pretending that increased healing over time potential isn’t irrelevant to reality. Even if the turet didn’t instantly evaporate to any splash damage, even if survival didn’t mean it’s so far from the battle it’s irrelevant, we detonate the turet in the water field to get it’s heal.

The reason I know the devs are doing a crappy job with engineer for certain is that every patch or 2 I have to farm pve (which I personally detest) for new gear, but all the old gear sets just sit in the bank with no worthwhile new builds opening up to get it out for. If the devs gave new possibilities I’d understand, but they don’t, they just break more of what little works from the half finished engineer mess each month without offering anything useful. Our only buffs come by accident, eg fixing runes givers weapons etc leads to a brief window for HGH.

I expect a bunch of ill thought out semi broken changes clearly only based on hearsay from non-engineer classes and representing zero actual experience with playing an engineer, especially in PvE or WvW.

I expect this because it what we have consistently gotten for months.

Our devs can only accomplish extremely simplistic tasks for engineer like finally getting sigils and runes to work after several months, and they can’t even do that without pulling ’ kitten crap like pre-nerfing grenades.

All turret changes are garbage until turrets are smarter and survive splash damage e.g. aoe immune. So the heal turret change is probably a significant nerf, that only looks like a buff to a paper theorycrafter – we need to see the specifics to be sure of course though.

Zenguy.6421:

To be fair, ANet reduced (not eliminating, but at least reducing) a little of the Eng randomness in the last patch. That they are still heavily attached to randomness as a core Eng mechanic sucks, as the only people that seem to be disadvantaged by the Eng’s random skills are the players who use them.

I take your point but personally I’d consider another perspective. The kit refinement idiocy added a lot more damaging randomness than was removed in the U changes (so damaging that people don’t really consider multi-kit builds as options anymore). The U change was also removing i.m.o. the weakest of 3 potential debuffs and leaving the 2 stronger ones, so not so cool.

Sometimes I wonder if engineers suffer a little from ‘battered wife syndrome’.

“It’s our fault we made the devs angry by trying to find something workable.”
“Maybe they should punch us in the grenades next, we’re bound to deserve that too.”
“Those poor balance devs they’re under so much pressure at work, you have to understand”
“They keep promising us it will be better, they won’t nerf us again.”

If you fell down a mineshaft and broke your leg, I’d wave a mobile phone for calling help at you, but just out of your reach, and then hand you a sword.

If you were just about to be savagely bitten by a rabid dog, I’d taunt you with a sword, then hand you a mobile phone to fight it off with.

Both times I’d tell you “See how much more fun it is to have random skills that are totally unreliable!”

Is there any chance you might finally listen about random skills? Stop adding yet more random unreliable crap like the ridiculous random hidden cooldown new kit refinement. Also clean up the sins of frustrating random skills you’ve already committed, make those random skills do all options, or the best of the options.

Engineers have learned to expect little and get even less. Ironically if we complained more we might not get such badly thought out crap for changes. Or a test server.

Nord.5360:

Kalan.9705:

Snip.

I read your feedback – I hope that counts for something.

It does and it counts for more that you post a reply. Truly though, it would great to see you go in with some pre-prepared tougher questions, and not give the devs a totally free ride when the spout total theory craft nonsense that has no bearing in reality e.g. turrets don’t take much damage in wvw.

Please more Jeremy Paxman style, and encourage your guests to do it.

Confusion is getting a 50% reduction in wvw, so that hits some mesmer and engineer builds the hardest. Toolkit prybar.