Guild Wars 2

Mif.3471:

Jonathan Sharp:

The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.

Source

Is this guy for real? Has he played this class, like, ever? Ele is a highly versatile class, engineer is not. In fact if there’s one class that does everything engineer does but better, it would be an ele.

What are these boons he is talking about? 90% of engineer builds have next to no boons (swiftness only mostly), the only builds with boons are elixir ones. And even there uptime is kittenty for most boons (Elixir B has 10 sec duration 40 sec recharge).
“They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight”…. is he talking about ele again? Dagger/dagger eles have 5-6 boons on constantly and bounce me around like a beach ball. Engineer has elixir B with its crappy duration/recharge and doesn’t even get any good protection or stability source.

I also dream of the day when I’ll be able to choose whatever 3 utilities I please.

Amadeus.5687:

izzac.4821:

H
Our Role:

We are NOT suposed to be single run or roaming, we need to run with groups and we do MASS of conditions! and the main con is ICE CREAM when you driving in eniemies and make them crazy

I don’t agree with this at all, Engineers a one of the best single run and roaming profession in my opinion! We are fine in group play to, but saying we ain’t supposed to roam simply ain’t true! I do it all the time!
The build you have made need to be in a group, mostly cause you lack a Stun breaker!

1v1 isn’t engineer’s strong point. Best roamers are thieves and mesmers.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Also, just for clarification, the grenade kit has no combo fields or finishers

It does have a poison field. Just no finishers. Apparently according to anet, nades are not large projectile finishers (despite being affected by projetile reflects) nor blast finishers.

coglin.1496:

Maketso.5602:

Or that our Bombs have the only reliable fire/smoke field? Who uses a bomb kit these days? Never see it.

Alot of engineers I see, and I see them used all over in WvW. Do you have any actual logical to support what your getting at here?

Skilled groups thrive on using combos, so I guess the answer to who uses bombs for combo fields could be skilled players.

We have the least amount of reliable combo fields in the game,

Mmmkkaaayy.

Ice field, shows up 100% of the time I cast the ability to create it.

Fire field shows up 100% of the time I drop fire bomb

Light field shows up 100% of the time I drop super elixir

poison fields pops 100% of the time that I drop poison grenade

Smoke field shows ip 100% of the time I drop smoke bomb

Water field shows up 100% of the time that I pop healing turret

That is 6 fields that we get 100% of the time we use the skill that causes them. One and only one has a 33% chance to occur and that is not among the 6 previously mentioned.

Thieves get 5
Mesmers get 2
Necros get 4
Warriors get 1
Rangers get 5
Guardians get 2
Elementalist get 5

We also have access to all finishers. The most blast finisher, and second most projectile finishers. So please stop trying to pretend we are weak in the combo area when we are clearly one of the best professions at utilizing combos.

Perhaps you should invest some time learning about the professions comb fields and finishers before you attempt to tell us how they work

It doesn’t matter, the number of different fields and number of different finishers doesn’t matter. Why is this so hard to get through that thick skull of yours. What matters is how often and how easily you can get them. And having all different types of finishers doesn’t matter in the slightest when all my weapons and kits have close to none. 3 20% finishers on autoattacks, then it’s a leap finisher, a blast finisher and a projectile finisher on 20 sec, 30 sec and 40 sec recharges. And Jump shot is super unwieldy as a leap finisher because of all the delays and as a skill in general, but why would that matter to someone like you, you just want to chalk up that leap finisher. Let’s ignore that it’s a crap skill.

You’re constantly trying to spin facts like engineer is totally comparable in finishers to warrior. It’s not, not even close.

coglin.1496:

Kyon.9735:

I believe I just said something about the boss skill Defiant. It says it protects the target from Crowd Control Skills yet those skills which are considered as Soft CC does not remove a stack from it.

And?

Daze doesn’t effect defiant either, and it is both considered a CC ability in the wiki page you linked and in official dev post. Again you think you know what CC means but you keep defining it incorrectly and inaccurately.

Defiant only removes “some” crowd control effect, not all. This is as defined by your eternally factual wiki. So I am unclear how it supports your arguement

Daze is same as stun as far as defiant goes. Defiant prevents daze and loses 1 stack.

The whole “throwing elixirs to buff allies” isn’t effective. Elixirs have small aoe, require targetting, don’t do much (one random boon in most variants) and worst of all, have a cast time. They are far worse support than warrior shouts, which have large range, require no targetting, can do cond cleanse and heal, and most importantly, can be activated while attacking or doing other things.
I also prefer warhorn ranger/warrior and guardian shouts for support, than thrown elixirs.

The only really good support from engy in terms of buff/healing/removal is Heal turret and Super elixir. Those 2 abilities are really good.

Yes, that’s what I’m saying. We can tank melee, especially if they have to come to us, but outside that effectiveness decreases rapidly.

Judging from past experience with ANet it will take more than 2 years more before engineer is reworked into something with some actual gameplay synergy.

Walorx.5129:

Well I typically run grenade kit/tool kit/net turret for my 100nades.
And with that, here are the CCs I have.
1. Net Shot
2. Overcharged Shot
3. Magnet
4. Net Turret
5. Turret Toolbelt skill

But most people use Elixer R, so that’s still 3 CCs. That is still extremely hard to dodge all of them if the engineer times them well.

Don’t need to dodge them all. All I need to do I press F4 (distortion) or Q (blink) or 2 (staff blink) when I see that barrage, with mesmer. If you use immobilize I can also blurred frenzy through the burst. If you can instakill mesmers, they must be pretty bad… but that expected in wvw.

And I can dodge those slow nets altogether. The ability that takes me by surprise and isn’t totally telegraphed is Magnet, but I generally go for distortion instantly if that happens.

Granted Mesmer is the hardest to kill with gimmick bursts, but other classes can counter it as well (Mist Form, Elixir S, Endure Pain…). If they have an invul skill they don’t need to dodge your CC, they just need to use it when your burst is about to hit.

Yes, I have same survivability problems with engineer.

Engineer has great survivability against melee enemies unless they have CC immunity (players with stability or champions). So it’s great vs melee normal mobs.

Another great deal of survivability for engineer comes from Blinds (nades, static shot, smoke bomb).

And once again, this works great vs mobs (they attack slowly) but doesn’t work all that well vs players (attack fast and both smoke bomb and flame turret smoke have been nerfed).

Then comes the issue that against ranged enemies, survivability decreases significantly, especially against ranged enemies that don’t use projectiles (some necros, eles, some mesmers). Ability to avoid damage against these enemies is drastically lower for engineer.

On the topic of elixir infused bombs: I tried this trait and I was disappointed. It’s heals about as much as regeneration, which would be great if I didn’t have to be in melee range of the people I’m healing and if this trait wasn’t grandmaster trait in an otherwise unpopular trait line.

Here’s the thing with thieves though. Shadow step stage 2 cleanses 3 conditions. Or they could have the trait that cleanses conditions while they are stealthed.

When they get low they will probably using their heal, which is most often Hide in Shadows, which cures burning.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad idea, but you can’t counter thieves with conditions because they don’t have to bring special skills just to cleanse conditions but they get condition removal on skills they bring anyway. Thieves have a really good skill set (unlike engy who has to bring specialized skills).

coglin.1496:

Maketso.5602:

@coglin: Look at our class , then at others. Why dont you count the projectile finishers and other finishers compared to us?
Also, all of your posts are heavily biased on using a shield. Since when should a class resort to one OFF-HAND weapon. Not to mention the insane cool-downs on the two shield skills. What are they, 30s and 40s respectively? Horrendous.

What does projectile finishers have to do with anything? We have 10. putting us at 4th out of 8. So the top 50% of all the professions. We have 3 more blast finishers then the next closest in that finisher. We can do all combo fields except “dark”. So, where are you going with this?

I am not currently using a shield, I use rifle. That is irreverent though. I am not biased toward the shield. I am biased against posters claiming our profession cannot do something that I know good and well it can. If it takes a shield to do that, it is just how it is. that does not mean Anyone has a right to claim we cannot do it.

He made a false claim. If I have no bias or a heavy one, that is irrelevant to someone claiming we cannot do something with out a kit, when in fact we can. I have to wonder why your bashing a poster for disproving misinformation though.

Accessibility and recharges on those finishers matter! There’s a big difference between blast finisher on a weapon skill with 10 sec recharge like Warrior Longbow skill and blast finisher from detonating your Rocket Turret, a skill that destroys a valuable turret that has a LONG recharge.

Engineer has very few easy and accessible finishers. Most finishers come from specific utility skills and you can slot very few of those and they restrict your build a lot more than having finishers on your weapon skills which you will use anyway.

So just counting the finishers and saying we are 4th class of 8 is just intentionally misleading, when it’s super hard to slot even some of those finishers without massively screwing with our own builds.

Another example how you just love to count everything without ever thinking about practical side of things is how you claim we have all fields but dark.
Do we now?

Ethereal field is available on a single long recharge utility skill with 60 sec recharge, 33% of the time. Hardly comparable with actual mesmer’s access to ethereal fields.
IT DOESN’T COUNT.

Nor does having a Ice field on Mortar elite. Because nobody will jump on a mortar in the middle of fight to fire off ice mortar then jump off it and go in the middle of ice field and do a blast finisher. It’s just not practical or accessible.

Another nice example of how things are far more complicated that you’re trying to make them look is water field. We have a single source for water field. Healing turret, so using this field locks down your healing skill. Hardly a small thing.

So it’s ridiculous to run around saying “we have all these fields and all these finishers, we are so versatile” when in reality some engineer builds can utilize some of this and some engineer builds can utilize none of this. And pretty much every other gun/bow user can utilize combo fields naturally, without having to take specific utilities, without having to put a lick of thought into it.

coglin.1496:

ManCaptain.3154:

coglin.1496:

Thats not true at all. With my shield I can reflect or block attacks myself, while stuning any attack one me. You do realize if they attack me with a hammer, shield skill #5 stuns them right? and I can do an AoE knock back with shield skill #4.

With those two skills, there is literally nothing I cannot counter in this game.

Until someone pops stability and tears you apart.

Stability does not make you immune to stun. Shield #5 stuns if you attack me. So I not seeing how that would happen.

Stability is for blow backs, immobilizes, knock backs, and knockdowns . Pulls like Scorpion wire, magnetic grasp, into the void, and magnet also ignore stability as I understand it, but I have not personally tested all of those, so I am going off second hand information.

You haven’t tested this, if you did, you’d know you are wrong.

You seem to have this weird idea, that you can know which CCs are affected by it from its name “Stability”, and thus you came to the idea that it affects movement CCs only.

Stability:
Cannot be knocked down, pushed back, launched, stunned, dazed, floated, sunk, or feared.

Therefore, you can immobilize someone with stability (not like it matters since warriors lose immobilize when using jump skills if traited).
Pulls still work but this is considered a bug. Stability definitively stops stun and daze.

In any case when someone pops their swiftness and stability like Ranger’s Rampage as One, you as engineer will simply get killed. Can’t knock him back with rifle, can’t knock him back with shield, can’t stun him or daze him with shield. Can’t knock him back with flamethrower airblast, can’t knock him away with big ol bomb, can’t knock him away with hidden ram, can’t knock down with slick shoes, can’t knock him away with thumper turret, can’t knock down with rocket turret. All he needs now is some way to shake off immobilizies and he’s effectively unstoppable.

Engineer is much much too reliant on CC to defend himself.

coglin.1496:

Thats not true at all. With my shield I can reflect or block attacks myself, while stuning any attack one me. You do realize if they attack me with a hammer, shield skill #5 stuns them right? and I can do an AoE knock back with shield skill #4.

With those two skills, there is literally nothing I cannot counter in this game.

Until someone pops stability and tears you apart.

1. Nope and toughness is highly overrated.
2. Don’t get hit.

Pointless to mix it when crit damage % increase multiplies the power and precision contribution to damage.

Having modifier that changes crit damage % in the game is why this gear is so broken. It shouldn’t exist. Crits should do 50% more and that’s it.

is it me are engi’s in a rough spot right now

Why the “right now” part? It was kitten since the very first beta. It was always the class with the worst power scaling.

Tyaen.5148:

Goloith.6349:

Berserkers is OP compared to any other damage in this game.

It’s supposed to be. Good luck surviving in WvW against a havok squad though.

Whatever the kitten a havok squad is… going solo vs a squad is obviously not a survivability problem specific for zerker gear.

Alaztor.6918:

Hey guys my Engi is currently using Knight gear(power,precision,toughness) and I was thinking of getting a full set of berserker gear. My question is what build benefits the most from a zerker gear? are traited grenadiers still good after the 30% reduction on skill 1 compared to GS Warriors and stuff? Asking for a PvE/Fractals build.

Any power build benefits from zeker gear. I never really bother with half-way sets like knights. I go for Zerker, Carrion/Rabid, cleric sets only.

Also I want same power scaling as everyone else.
Guardian mace: 0.43 power scaling on first autoattack skill
Guardian staff: 0.33 power scaling on AoE autoattack

Both are support/defensive weapons.

Engineer rifle: 0.325 on single target autoattack
Pistol: 0.2 on autoattack

Here’s an actual engineer support weapon:
Elixir gun: 0.15 scaling on autoattack. Seriously ANet.

Power scaling has been a problem for engineer since forever and they never fixed it. They just elevated base values on some skills.

So to reiterate. Worst scaling weapons with no finishers. Balance is a joke.

Chaba.5410:

Sporadicus.1028:

Napalm, in my eyes, should be a circle of fire, just like the elementalist. I know that the reason why they made it a line is for recognition. Screw that. Give us the circle!

Napalm should be…

…all over the place!

I’d imagine napalm ability to work like elixir gun 4 but with fire field. I don’t know why this isn’t the case (and put something else on elixir gun).

Casia.4281:

Might stacking is not super useful, as the power going into the HORRIBLE scaling on FT means about nothing.

FT is a defensive kit really. As unintuitive as that sounds.

True that. I’ve noticed I get much more effect from might stacks when I switch from FT to rifle or even pistols.
With the exception of rifle, engineer power scaling is pretty bad on most weapons/kits.

Entropy.4732:

I love flamethrower. Use it all the time. But I went with a slightly different trait line that I find quite effective. 0/30/0/30/10.

We go 30 into firearms because having a high crit rate is essential to this build. Plus you are applying burns constantly, so the +300 to condition is primary. We grab “Precise Sights”, a great trait that combined with your high crit will have you stacking vulnerability on your targets like crazy. “Napalm Specialist” next because you want your burns to last as long as possible. Then Juggernaut, because this is a flamethrower build. The real strength of Juggernaut is in the might gain. At least 15 seconds before battle try to switch to the FT kit as it takes a bit for the might to build to 6.

I went 30 into Alchemy. The vitality is important as you need health to stay alive in close quarters combat, and concentration is invaluable because this build is all about keeping boons up and on. I go with HGH, Deadly Mixture, and Self-Regulating Defenses. HGH is an AMAZING trait, although not very glamorous seeming at first. HGH will actually give TWO might boons for 20 seconds every time you use an Elixir ability. So that includes Elixir B, the tool belt skills, Elixir U, and Elixir H. Between all three utility skills and their tool belt skills, you can keep your might up around 11-14 which is very strong. Deadly mixture gives you that 15% dam increase for flamethrower, but the hidden gem of the alchemy trait line imo is Energy Conversion Matrix (deal 1% extra dam for each boon on you). So if you have might up to 14, that means a 14% dam increase. Then add in all the other boons Elixir B / U/ H gives and you’re looking at an 18% increase at times.

Lastly, I put 10 points into tools. Tools is a weaker trait line but that 10% to crit dam is VERY effective with our high crit % and Adrenaline Pump helps when we need to leap back to safety. The big pick up here is “Speedy Kits”. This instant speed boost when you switch to Flame Thrower is VERY useful for rushing in fast and chasing down foes. Or you can do kit refinement and use the nades kit with the FT kit, switching to nades when you need a quick blast.

Boon and condition stacks count as 1 boon or 1 condition as far as removal and “gain X per each condition/boon”.

Napalm specialist is pointless if you don’t stack constant burning. Because the FT autoattack burning will last 15% longer, it will last 1.15 sec, which does exactly the same damage as 1 sec burning.

I just posted in another thread an easy to play FT build:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Pistol-or-Rifle-FT-build/first#post1339260

This could be played by a drunk monkey. Faceroll your elixirs and autoattack.
But playing this build a bit has alerted me to the core deficiency of FT, and why in my opinion it will never be seriously powerful. Because its autoattack needs to be channeled and there’s a big packet (burning) attached at the end of it.
Normally I play like this: fire an ability, dodge, fire an ability, switch kit, fire an ability. This pattern gets much more difficult with 2 sec cast abilities. If you dodge in the middle of flamer autoattck you lose a lot of damage, especially because the burning comes at the end. Then there’s also the fact that it only hits 3 enemies, that makes it less useful at clearing adds (like grubs spawned from undead giants).

Feel free to drop 10 points in explosives and put them into tools and get Static Discharge trait. Instead of boon duration food (can be expensive), you can use ghost pepper poppers which are dirt cheap.

I call this Babby’s first engineer build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQJAqelspSXn1SeF17IBoH1vu3V0jH34J/pAbB;TkAA2U5YCSEkVHXOSdGQMrA

Note that runes give 60% might duration. Use boon duration food.
Then you will have easy 13+ stacks of might just sitting in flamethrower kit.
Spam elixirs on recharge and autoattack with flamethrower and just facetank things. You can reach 20 might stacks for 700 power/condition damage bonus, making your FT and pistol skills hit really really hard.

kismet.5347:

I would love moving turrets as little devilish golems that scream wiiiiiii and go harass your opponent you could explode them with toolbelt skills and have different effects. While the engi staying back lobbing grenades and cackling like a maniac.

So a combination of League of Legends Maokai sapling toss and Ziggs sounds? I’m all for it.

You know what’s another giant rage-inducing “kitten you” to engineers from ANet,?
Let’s take our rifle and pistol kits and see how many finishers we get.
Dual pistol:
Skill 1 is a 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2 not a finisher (multishot ability)
Skill 3 not a finisher
Skill 4 not a finisher
Skill 5 not a finisher

Rifle:
Skill 1 is a 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2 not a finisher
Skill 3 not a finisher
Skill 4 not a finisher
Skill 5 is a leap finisher

Note that of the bomb kit, grenade kit, tool kit, flamethrower and elixir gun, there is a single 1-5 skill that a finisher on all those kits and a weak one at that (20% projectile finisher on elixir gun autoattack).

Let’s see what other rifle, pistol and bow users get, shall we?

Ranger Longbow:
Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2: multishot 20% projectile finisher
Skill 3: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 4: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 5: is obviously not a finisher, because it’s fire and forget long range huge aoe damage

Ranger shortbow:
Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2: Not a finisher
Skill 3: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 4: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 5: 100% projectile finisher

Warrior rifle:
Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 3: 20% multishot projectile finisher
Skill 4: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 5: melee ability
Adrenaline skill: 100% projectile finisher

Warrior longbow:
Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher (fires 2 arrows), 100% finisher traited
Skill 2: 20% projectile finisher (fires 3 arrows), 100% finisher traited
Skill 3: 100% blast finisher (because arrow explodes, unlike engineer skills which never involve explosions)
Skill 4: Not a finisher
Skill 5: 100% projectile finisher
Adrenaline skill: not a finisher, but a fire field

Thief shortbow:
Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher
Skill 2: Blast finisher
Skill 3: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 4: Not a finisher (combo field)
Skill 5: Not a finisher

Thief pistol/pistol

Skill 1: 20% projectile finisher, 100% if from stealth
Skill 2: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 3: 20% multishot projectile finisher
Skill 4: 100% projectile finisher
Skill 5: 100% projectile finisher

If that isn’t a definitive proof that ANet made engineers weak “just because…. you know… they can’t be on par with others, being hybrids and all (in a game full of hybrids)”…. There’s no reason whatsoever that Engineer gets none 100% projectile finishers on weapons and no 20% finisher on Poison Dart Volley either. There’s no balance reason, no thematic reason (it’s fricken bullets), none at all. It’s just plain old “Engineer tax” bullkitten.
Everyone else gets 20% projectile finishers on autoattacks and multishot skills and 100% or a blast finisher on everything else that isn’t a damage over time/combo field ground targeted aoe. Warrior longbow even gets a blast finisher on 10 second recharge and if traited, 100% projectile finisher on autoattack. Note that 100% projectile finishers are especially valuable on skills 2 and 3 because they have shorter recharge than skills 4 and 5. Why isn’t pistol autoattack a 20% blast finisher?

Engineer has 2 finishers on shield skills but that’s 30 and 40 sec recharges right there. That’s utility skill level recharges.

And that’s just comparing skills of bows, rifles and pistols across professions. Take a look at all the blast, leap and projectile finishers other weapons of these professions have, while engineer’s options outside rifle/pistol (i.e. kits) offer no finishers.

Oh and another thing… what’s the point of skills like Acid field on Elixir Gun, when Elixir gun is mainly used on people stacking defenses/healing power (and perhaps some cond damage). Pure damage skills have no place on a weapon like that. On top of that it’s got a ridiculously small AoE. It’s hard to keep stupid mobs in it, impossible to keep a player in it.

Another whole class of skills that don’t get used in any serious amount are gadgets.
There several reasons for that:
- I need slots for kits
- Some are weak
- Some do things I can already do with other abilities

Example of weak is Goggles. Fury is good but not on that recharge, I can get Elixir B with same recharge and same fury and other stuff. Blind immunity is highly situational.

As for the third item on the list… why would I get Personal battering ram when I already have multiple options for movement control on engineer with better effects/recharges? I’d much rather take something like elixir S or U or C which plug some holes in my build and have effects that I don’t already have in abundance. If I have rifle launch and personally battering ram launch, they both become useless the second someone pops stability or they are a champion with CC immunity. I would be better served by an elixir S or R, throw elixir S. Personal battering ram would be much stronger on a necro, who doesn’t have launch skills (but obviously it would be a wrong flavour).

Engineer is missing some effects like reliable stability and some others, which makes RNG elixirs particularly irritating. I can live with Elixir U having random downside on quickness, but throw elixir U has 60 second recharge to spawn effects with 30, 40 and 90 second recharges. If it’s gonna be random, at least it needs to have shorter recharge than the effects it’s spawning. On top of that, Smoke curtain is always worse than Wall of Reflection and Veil does something else entirely.

Another general deficiency is that engineer is full of low impact skills that do very little, but you have a lot of them e.g. Rocket turret toolbelt, Throw wrench, Throw nails, Throw elixir B, Throw personal battering ram etc… and I find myself simply out of time to cast them. When jugling some kits, there are ALWAYS some powerful skills on some kit that just got recharged, even if you’re casting non-stop. I simply don’t have the time to cast “do a bit of damage and a minor effect skills”.

These need to be reworked to be more powerful and more situational. There’s no point in having “fires a rocket, does medium damage, 60 sec recharge” on my toolbelt. That’s called an autoattack and I don’t see a point in having them strewn all over my skill bars.

“Fires a rocket, does 0 damage, 1 sec daze 60 sec recharge” would be tons and tons better than what we have now.

I won’t be going too deeply into traits as this is long enough as it is but let me say this:

This applies to all classes in GW2: Having traits that improve Skill Group X in the game is a LARGE design mistake. Traits should improve effects and aspects not skills

I cannot stress this enough.

Traits that improve a specific utility group either promote degenerate builds or a worthless for everyone else. Ever seen warrior running around with 5 signets? I have, many times. I’m not saying that it’s OP or the god of all builds, but it’s ridiculous. (and at lower levels you could reach 100% crit chance if you took +precision per signet trait).
It promotes players not thinking about “what goes well together” but “what has the same tag”.

Bad trait
Thief trait: All poisons have +1 proc.
Mesmer trait: All signets recharge 20% faster.

What kind of a build is Signet of Illusions, Signet of Inspiration, Signet of Domination? That’s just random skills thrown together.

Such traits either balanced to be worthwhile with 1 signet and then are OP when someone slots 3. Or they are balanced for 3 skills of the same class and they are pointless when you play with one.

Another lesser offender than traits that improve utility groups are traits that improve a specific weapon in some general way. Weapon X recharges Y faster. Weapon X has longer range. Weapon X does Y% more damage. These simply put pressure on the player to stay in a specific weapon.

And both cases also promote players stacking up on these kind of traits. You don’t take 1 bomb kit trait, you take 3. You don’t take 1 elixir trait, you take 3. And then you’ll find it hard not to sit in your preferred kit, because it’s been traited up the wazoo to the expense of everything else.

Good trait
Engineer trait: When you immobilize an enemy the enemy is crippled for 5 sec.

When I say good trait I don’t mean “powerful”. I mean well designed.
This trait promotes thinking about the way you’ll play your character. The immobilize can come from any source rifle, glue bomb, glue shot, net turret etc. It doesn’t limit the player to a skill tag.

We need more traits like that on ALL professions

Anet pls

One problem is that most skill 2-5 bars have very evenly mixed damage between power damage and cond damage. Most skill 1 are either pure power damage or a 50/50 mix.
The only bars where this isn’t true are rifle (almost pure power), pistol/pistol (mostly cond damage), toolkit (almost pure power). (also holds true for some turrets like rocket turret).

This makes engineer hard to build for gear-wise.

So most engineers have 2 options for offensive side of a build:

Go power/crit/etc with some kits… and maximize damage of 75% of your arsenal.
And completely ditch improving the 25% of cond damage in your build.
Explosions trait line, which you’ll probably be taking in this case, also has nice condition duration buff which helps loads on your non-damage conditions (chilled, crippled, weakness, heal debuff on poison), and buff damage conditions a bit. This build usually entails either bomb kit or nade kit with medkit.

The other path is to realize that since you have hybrid power/cond damage on most kits, you need to buff both, and the easiest way to do it is to stack Might, which does double duty on power/cond dmg. The only good way to stack that is an elixir build, which pretty much locks down your whole 6-9 bar to elixirs, makes you extremely vulnerable to boon control (hello necros and mesmers) and it means (since you don’t have kits) that you have 1 weapon set. It’s powerful when it works. But Elixirs are also boring and come with RNG toolkit skills and they lock you into a specific spec. A lot of the time you don’t really want the specific skills you have (like you don’t want Elixir H, you’d rather have Medkit or Heal turret) but you want might from having another elixir on the build. You also miss out on the combo fields: water (heal turret), fire (flamethrower and bomb kit), smoke (bomb kit, flame turret).

Those 2 are the strongest options right now.
There’s the third option which is a defensive heal engy (bombs heal allies + elixir gun 5), which is IMO weaker and his job is better done other classes (ele comes to mind). That build also suffers from the above mentioned split in damage on most kits, since you really want to get at least some damage but you need to pick between power and CD. I guess since this build works with healing bombs, it should go for cleric gear instead of shaman or apo.

To proceed to specific skill classes.
Imo turrets are not very viable, because in pve they get crushed when they gain aggro (and they always do) and in pvp players either stand outside of range or kill them. This isn’t the only issue. Some of their toolbelt skills really add nothing (Rocket from rocket turret is like casting a +50% dmg autoattack every minute or so), and they are also unavailable while turret is deployed, instead replaced with detonate skill (which TBH I don’t use much, because I usually have enough micromanagement on this class as it is and turret might shoot another time before dying making the difference close to none).

A lot of their overcharge abilities suffer from problem that they are hard to land on specific target at specific time (they are not responsive). For instance it’s hard to stop a stomp with stun net from net turret, because it has potentially massive delay.
It’s hard to hit anything not standing still with overcharge ability of Rocket turret (fires ridiculously slow rocket in ridiculously large arc). It’s less bad in water (rocket still slow, but at least the arc is gone). Hard to use in pve, impossible in pvp. Thumper turret is especially bad with really miniature AoE, lackluster damage and even though it has more health/armor it still gets wiped easily by mobs. And the recharge is huge, also on it’s toobelt skill which is blast finisher with minor damage. It’s pretty much strictly less useful than flame turret (more range, more damage, easier defend against mobs bumrushing it because of the smoke field). There also seems to be balancing with recharges going on (rocket turret is strictly stronger than rifle turret, but has much longer recharge)… which isn’t warranted. Either mobs don’t bumrush it and it stays up the whole fight or it keeps getting agro and getting smashed in seconds and shorter recharge isn’t helping much.
That’s a whole class of skills that are not played.

Lowered damage is not reason to ditch nades. Frost grenades are just massive burst of damage and debuffing. I find it hard to justify going away from the only Chilled source of the class (apart from far less useful mortar elite).

coglin.1496:

ManCaptain.3154:

Weakness is a crap debuff. It doesn’t work on crits, and since every glass cannon has 50% crit chance, 70% crit chance with fury, it’s actually half as good as it would imply.
I’d rather switch to my nade kit and do some more damage and debuff them with blind and chilled than autoattack.

So even if the unlikely case that everyone has 50% crit chance, that is still 50% of 50% of their damage. That is a lot of damage mitigation. You also seem to seem to think this discussion only refers to PvP by they way you make your references.

Its not unlikely. and your math is way off.
If you’re targeting any, any glasscannon they will have 50% crit chance on average.
Weakness reduces 50% of damage 50% of the time on non-crits.
So with 50% crit % that is 0.5*0.5*0.5 = 0.125. But that doesn’t account for the fact that crits do double damage on zerker builds and thus represent more than half of his DPS.
So we have 0.5 * 1 + 0.5 * 2 without weakness = 1.5 times normal damage without crits.
If we throw weakness on this player we get 0.5*(0.5 * 0.5 + 1 * 0.5) + 0.5 * 2 = 1.375 time normal damage without weakness and without crits.

So inflicting your regular and QUITE COMMON zerker build with weakness makes them do 1.375/1.5 = 92% their normal damage.

Weakness reduces damage of a zerker build by 8%. If we also account for any conditions which he inflicts, that don’t get reduced either, it becomes even smaller.

What about when enemy isn’t running power/prec/crit% build? Then they are probably running a condition damage build. Conditions don’t get reduced at all, and a lot of condition builds also run high crit % to proc condition on crit sigils and traits.

So weakness doesn’t do anything there.

So the only players where weakness reduces damage in appreciable fashion are ones that don’t build damage and don’t use primarily conditions anyway, and even then it’s max 25% damage reduction (0% crit, no cond damage).

Weakness is kitten. You said “unlikely scenario where everyone has 50% crit”. Who are you gonna target (cos this ain’t aoe)? The guy #1 with zerker build? His damage doesn’t get reduced very much. #2 guy with cond build? His damage doesn’t get reduced either? #3 guy who is build tanky and doesn’t do real damage in the first place? LOL

Also pertaining to your “pvp isn’t everything” comment. Bosses a few levels above the players have just dandy crit %.

I am still waiting for the day when jumpshot won’t have dumb delays and I’ll be able to use it for damage not just jumping around ledges.

More like:
Elixir S
Elixir C
Elixir R
Elixir U
Elixir B

I think ANet wants to tell us something about players using minor buffs and RNG abilities.

Don’t know what to say to you…. but if you ever played a mesmer or a thief, then when you’ll play an engineer and people will start piling CC and their bullkitten combos on you, you’ll die a little bit inside. Just so much easier to avoid whatever they throw at you if you can stunbreak+blink with a single click. Sure you might be able to cleanse that immobilize, but what if an elem slams into you launching you then combos that into another cc… etc… if they have their CC+damage chain thought out, you are in real danger.

2 more things:
1. I hate taking Toolkit just so I have a shield skill. Apart from using magnet now and then, I really have no use for it in most builds. It also takes more time to respond with it in those twitch split second situations because you usually also have to switch into the kit.

2. Cloaking device is really bad. Going invis won’t stop players from piling damage on top of you. It really only works in pve, and even there, if you’re solo it will reset the mob. Against players pretty much any other buff but invis would work better when immobilized. Against players I’d rather invest in things that counter CC, like prot on CC. Engineer really needs more abilities that can be activated while stunned.

Seriously, who the hell from ANet thought: you know what really helps when opponents make you immovable? Invisibility. They’ll never figure out what empty space to swing their sword at!!

Yes it is viable. In fact it’s the most viable kit right now if we’re talking pve and wvw.
Skill 1 outdamages rifle skill 1, while also being AoE. Skill 3 and 4 are amazing, chilled is the most amazing debuff in the game and it works vs everything, while rifle only works well vs melee opponents and loses a lot of effectivenes against bosses, players with stability and those unstoppable undead abominations. On top of skill 4 being an amazing debuff it also deals a lot of damage. In fact out of whole engineer kit, the only thing that counters those unstoppable abominations is blind and chilled, which are both plenty available on nades. I highly highly recommend running power build with nades.

coglin.1496:

Sporadicus.1028:

• Skill #1Tranquilizer Dart has good range but needs more power behind its bleeding effects. The duration and rate of fire isn’t good for one bleed stack. Add another stack (or even two more if traited) to the bleed and it might work.

Weakness is a very powerful debuff. You cannot reasonable add alot of damage without throwing balance off. Secondly, it has better bleed duration then explosive shot. In my opinion, I can agree with evaluating traits for it though.

Weakness is a crap debuff. It doesn’t work on crits, and since every glass cannon has 50% crit chance, 70% crit chance with fury, it’s actually half as good as it would imply.
I’d rather switch to my nade kit and do some more damage and debuff them with blind and chilled than autoattack.

Sporadicus.1028:

Sporadicus.1028:

• Skill #4 Acid Pool actually works for what it does, and does better than Overcharged Shot in the keep away game. It’s a keep away that punishes melee users. But I think it could add something else. Give the acid pool a 1-2 second immobilize effect.

The ability is great, asking for an immobilize as well is irrationally gready. This is why it is hard to take a vast majority of complaining or improvement discussion seriously in my opinion. You guys always want to fix what isn’t broken instead of working on what really is. Just my opinion.

Still, the AoE is too small. It’s miniature.

Here’s another delightful thing:

Rocket turret, Rocket (toolbelt) and Rocket Turret overcharge all claim to have a 240 radius explosion, but they never damage multiple mobs (except maybe, just maybe, overcharge skill).
Also thumper turret is utter trash.

Most of engineers defenses work against melee opponents who don’t have stability.
Without getting bogged down in skill details, this is generally how I determine if a class is good:

- how much damage it can deal
- how much healing it can do
- how much CC it can do
- how much of this CC will work on people/bosses who are resistant to CC
- recharges on all of this
- how many uncounterable defenses do I have
- how many defenses will worke while CCed
- how many different effects can I do
- how much time does it take to field my abilities (do I have abilities/proc that are casted/happen while doing other abilties?)
- how much of this can I fit into one build

Engineer scores pretty badly, mostly because he has tons of chaff skills (irrelevant “me too” skills that just add a bit of something) that just take time from more important skills.

An example: Rocket turret toolbelt skill, does about 150% rifle autoattack damage. Takes about the same time to cast, so I cast it instead of autoattacking. It doesn’t involve any decision making, it’s just 50% extra damage over an autoattack every x seconds if I remember to press F3 on recharge. That is a bad skill, it’s total chaff, doesn’t add anything to the class.

An example of good time compression (abilities/procs happening while doing something else) is ele who buffs/damages while switching attuenement while casting other things. Another example is mesmer shatters which can be used while casting other skills.

An example of uncounterable defenses is invuls, blocks, invis, jumps/blinks (vs melee), movement blockers (guardian line and ring that prevent crossing). Engineer is kitten poor in this department.

For instance on my mesmer when stunned I can use any of 4 shatters, 1 being a daze and 1 being an invul, 2 stun breakers one with invis and one with blink, and blink on my staff and chaos armor (protection boon, chance of blinding on hit).
Blink and blink with staff work even against immobilize (even when combined with a stun).

With engineer, I might have a stun breaker in my build. Pretty much nobody slots more than 1. Against immobilize you’re pretty much a sitting duck.

Things like that really detract from his viability. If you’re ranged/have stability you’ve pretty much defeated an engineer, because his defenses are his (mostly anti-melee) CCs. Bosses and warriors with stability stance don’t care about your knockbacks.

Another example of ability that looks good on paper is Medkit… so much healing and utility (cond removal, fury, swiftness) but in reality it just takes too much time to cast all the abilities, so you cast just some of them. Same goes for most 2 or 3 kit builds. You don’t really cast all the abilities in kits, there’s just no time.

And this is just one example. I’m too lazy to describe all the ways in which engineer is inferior to pretty much everyone else (can’t do kitten about boon stackers, turrets are crap, grenades do more single target damage than everything else. Nades and bombs do lots of condition damage, but since they are your only bet for doing power damage, you won’t spec cond dmg anyway, and many many more).

If you’re gonna play this class, here’s my advice… stick to WvW and stick to nades.

The whole “no-weapon swap you have kits” idea is a failed design. Most people would be fine with 2 weapon sets. And you can still have kits. But right now, every build pretty much has to take a kit, which really bites if you want to run a gadget or elixir or a turret build.
If engineer had 2 weapons/kits by default, that would really open up more builds.

kerona.3465:

Squad mates in WvW used to get mad at me because I couldn’t keep up on Mesmer as hard as I try.

I predict this will now be worse.

Thanks?

Hahahaha. Anet should play mesmer in wvw just to see how horrible the class is in it.

Acidicore.3264:

Signet of Inspiration: Increased swiftness duration from five to ten seconds. This passive effect now works outside of combat.

Temporal Curtain: Increased swiftness duration to 12 seconds.

There ya go!

So utterly worthless and irrelevant. And signet of inspiration is still kitten in general.

ManCaptain.3154:

JonPeters.5630:

Got some movement improvements coming for Mesmer also. Mostly more reliable swiftness.

Doesn’t matter.

Other classes get swiftness + 25% speed buff. Mesmer’s snares are horrible and useless. It will still be impossible to catch people or to get away from them.
In order to have any ability to chase or get away from people, mesmer needs to waste a weapon slot on focus (and it’s still way worse than mobility options of some other classes).

If you actually want to help this class in any real way, make 25% speed buff passives not stack with swiftness. This is the only meaningful change you can make.

Aaaaand there we go…. 0 meaningful change. Have fun roaming with mesmer in wvwvw when you can’t catch anyone and everyone can catch you.

Aazo.2841:

Well an eng needs to put 20 points into Inventions and 20 points into Tools to get those speed boosts. Which for any eng to spec that way (both) would limit them severly. So I would not consider those two as speed benifits for the most part. I even tried out the 25% in combat speed tonight on my eng, and it was only marginally usefull. Not enough for me to spec Inventions that high.They do have a med kit speed, and potion they can use. So they do have more options than a mesmer. But I still feel my mesmer is faster overall, even though I still wish we had a “more reliable swiftness”.

Engineer is easy. “Gain 5 sec of swiftness when you equip a kit” – practically perma swiftness when running around. Especially if that kit is Med Kit which has a swiftness skill.
So it costs 10 points in tools.

As soon as you take mesmer out of 1v1 into environments with multiple enemies, effectiveness of his defenses drops dramatically.

JonPeters.5630:

Got some movement improvements coming for Mesmer also. Mostly more reliable swiftness.

Doesn’t matter.

Other classes get swiftness + 25% speed buff. Mesmer’s snares are horrible and useless. It will still be impossible to catch people or to get away from them.
In order to have any ability to chase or get away from people, mesmer needs to waste a weapon slot on focus (and it’s still way worse than mobility options of some other classes).

If you actually want to help this class in any real way, make 25% speed buff passives not stack with swiftness. This is the only meaningful change you can make.

Embolism.8106:

Restorative Mantras + Mantra of Pain. 2.6k group heal every 5 seconds. Is that healer enough for you?

And yeah, to do that you completely shut down your own DPS, since you can’t do very much else while channelling a Mantra.

This not only shuts down DPS, but it also requires you to cast all the time (that is no clones and other stuff). Even though 2.6k group heal sounds a lot, I think heal eles and various classes with aoe spam or strong regen provide much more in terms of support (boons, cond removal, some damage) even if they heal slightly less.

Taking damage from first attack severely diminishes usefulness of the skill in pve, because a lot of mobs attack with slow powerful attacks. For instance in orr it’s pretty useless against phantom bows (or whatever they are called) with their daze attack, it’s useless against the guardian mob with it’s one ranged pull projectile. It’s useless against risen villager with it’s one ranged attack (thrown torch), it’s useless against the mob which throws green blades, it’s useless against risen pirate with it’s one crippling dagger etc…. most mobs just don’t fire rapidly enough that you’d be able to reflect more than 1 attack (and you take the first one).

I didn’t get to see the Guardian video but I did play staff Guardian in BWE1 pvp.
Staff autoattacks 2 shotted clones and now it 3 shots (while also hitting mesmer for 700-1k).
It was hilarious against mesmers. I just kept the target on the mesmer, hitting him for about the same or better damage than he would hit me and clones were dying pretty soon after being spawned. Short of getting in melee range with me and using Mirror Images + shatter, I was pretty safe from shatters.

Carkara.1846:

since beta I knew mesmers would be constantly nerfed (the concept is very difficult to balance we have to agree with it), it is up to ANet to decide where the fine line between fun and disgrace is before ruining it completely. Three or four patches like the last one and this class will be worst than necro ever been.

My main in GW1 was paragon… so I know what’s coming.

Ross Biddle.2367:

ManCaptain.3154:

Ross Biddle.2367:

David Sirlin wrote the book Playing to Win. Whenever I come to these forums I can’t help but think of him.

Yeah I think about that book too when I see people kidding themselves that all weapons are equally viable “you just need to play them the right way”.
You know what Sirlin would have said? “Ditch this weak kitten weapon”. A major part of playing to win is using the most powerful tool available, regardless of hipster cred (“I’m not using staff because everyone else is using it, I’m using scepter/torch because I want to be unique” is not playing to win.

You remind me of all the Sirlin references where he mentions players who’ve found nitch, often disregarded characters (in street fighter), and figured out things about them that very few other players have, and have used them to win. Suggesting I, or others who play with success using the scepter are simply looking for “hipster cred” is scrub talk. No offence intended.

Lol success… you’re killing stuff and you think that massive success. If you’re playing with scepter you’re playing a suboptimal build. If you weren’t a scrub you’d know just how inferior scepter is. No offence intended.

One of the biggest imbalances in regards to thief is the Mug trait that applies damage on steal. I’ve been hit for 6.5k before. This is obscene amount of damage, especially since the skill includes a teleport and is very likely followed up by another 5k+ hit before you can even react. It’s pretty sick.

Edit: and thieves guild elite gives thief 2 NPCs who hit for 4k each and just stealth and let the NPCs go to down on you. When you turn to assault the npcs he pops out of stealth with a backstab… gg.