I guess people just refuse to adapt to whatever they’ve given to work with.
Take Megaman as an example, in the very first versions (as compared to later and more advanced ones) he can’t charge his attack, can’t slide but still people beat the game.
And the games were balanced with those limitations in mind.
Here the camera is supposed to work well, yet it doesn’t. And so there are problems.
Sounds like a crazy, sadistic villain (like the Joker).
I can’t wait!So, the one who opposes the self absorbed megalomaniac monarch with a knack for bloodsports, who erected a gigantic colosseum over the burnt down homes of canthan refugees is the crazy sadistic villain?
Yes. Because Scarlet is actually Jennah…from an alternate timeline!
Any game with forced scrolling or leaps of faith.
Except they’re supposed to work like so, and “balanced” in that scope.
Unlike this game’s camera.
Also, the situational awareness of those platformers and this game can’t even be compared. When the camera scrolls, you still see a large portion of the screen around you. Here, when the camera goes wrong, you can’t see almost anything near you.
I think a lot of people playing GW2 would have an aneurysm if they were raised on SNES/Genesis games where everything was a OHKO and if you didn’t make leaps of faith you’d restart the entire game lol
We usually didn’t have terrible cameras in SNES/Genesis games, to put it fairly.
Imagine playing an old Mario game where the visuals zoom in when you’re near pipes or the border of the screen and you can’t see anything around you. Or enemies that due of some bug are immune to the fireballs every now or then. Or platforms that can kill you and whose appearance differs from normal ones for just a slightly different shade of color.
Not that fun, isn’t it?
I have to somewhat agree with Gates… It isn’t that random. When an orb appears you have a good 3 – 4 seconds to destroy it before it pulls you after that it is your fault for taking so long. All of these solo boss fights have been quite entertaining. I still haven’t beat Liadri, but I am pretty sure I will get it done before Friday.
Except not all the weapons work at range toward the orbs – some attacks are “obstructed” all the times. So if they spawn near you it is quite an advantage – you haven’t got to bother going physically near them despite AoEs and enemies.
And that depends purely on luck.
And they still haven’t fixed the camera issues…
Frankly speaking, i see the whole gauntlet as a gold sink gone wrong (for them). That’s why they’re nerfing the profitable ones and not fixing any real issue, imho.
Oh well, not that i’ve still got much to do there (i have no intention to do the 8 orb achievement, and i’ll take my time on the meat one).
I think it’s been confirmed that the Living Story takes place after the Personal Story. They can do whatever they want to alter the world beyond the Personal Story. The Personal Story is past events which are preserved by instancing.
Mh, did i miss some devs’ comment about that perhaps? Cause i had never read something about that.
It can’t be Cantha or Tengu because both of those would require a new zone and Colin said no to that this year. Unless they are going to leave us hanging for the rest of this year, the story will remain in the current world.
It all depends on what they mean as a “zone”. A tengu city wouldn’t necessarily be bigger than the labyrinthine cliffs, yet those were introduced (and removed) as well.
The Dominion of Winds isn’t that big anyway, according to the world map.
Since we are talking about some event that:
1)Cannot invalidate personal stories (thus no “Queen Jennah or Countess Anise is actually evil” revelation)
2)Should be important from a political standpoint (i doubt there would be a speech from the queen herself otherwise)
i would assume that this is either related to Cantha, or with the Tengu.
Probably the latter. Maybe she’s about to announce an alliance with them. Something that would later make them as a playable race.
I hate Elixir X not just because its a bad elite but because its lazy. We didnt even get a unique Elite we just got a copy/paste elite from 2 other professions with a coin flip to descide which one we come out as this time.
I want Elixir X to be a unique Elite, to be an Elite that fits Engineers. Make it a powersuit or make it a transformation but into something different like some alchemical abomination. Without the stupid RNG.
Imho, a “Mr. Hyde-like” transformation would be thematically appropriate for the class. Give him skills worthy of an evil, mad scientist (maybe also something like “corrupt boons”, due of the theme).
And yes, fix Mortar, its worst then most racial elites for godsake… So much wrong with that elite, but there are seperate threads on that special train wreck.
Indeed.
Use a norn and tell me again about the camera.
They didn’t test it with the bigger races, that’s for sure.
The combination of the orbs’ random (albeit in a set of coordinates) spawn location, the lack of a clear situational awareness due to the issues with the camera and the problems with the orbs themselves (the “obstructed” one, to be clear) make the rng an important part of the fight. Thus some luck is actually needed.
(and i’ve beaten her; but i still consider the fight badly done and terribly tested).
The whirl placement is dependent on the arena, i.e. the charr arena has thw hirls by the border as close asit can get, the asura/sylvari/human arena have it close but not up your back close
I know that, but i would suppose that they tested each one at least some times.
Still, i doubt that they had never gone near the border during a test anyway, even if to test the border themselves.
The gauntlet is a poorly tested terrible mess of cheap gimmicks with the only purpose of being a giant gold sink. That’s all. And that’s also the reason why they were so quick on “fixing” subject 7, but the camera is still terrible and the orbs still bugged.
Hoping that an orb won’t respawn on the other side of the room cause you can’t hit it with your ranged weapon isn’t skill, it is just luck. And you have to rely on it.
It is just frustrating. I will be relieved when i’ll have finished it only because i won’t ever, ever have to do it anymore. There is no fun here.
The first thing they should do is actually test the content.
Cause this wasn’t tested at all. The second whirl is near the border, so they would have seen how bad the camera was in that position.
And they would also have noticed how the orbs weren’t destructible by some weapons.
And they would have seen how the floor makes the aoe rings difficult to see.
And they would have noticed how with norns and charrs the camera is even more terrible.
So either they didn’t actually test it, or they ignored every opinion given by the testers.
Either way, this is a frustrating, terrible mess.
Oh we definitely need more gimmicky one shot bosses who completely ignore toughness and vitality. Because we all know zerker is the way to go in pve anyways.
She do normal atacks…
…and you will be killed due to the time limit even if you survive, cause you couldn’t dps her fast enough.
They removed the trinity to replace it with a single factor: dps.
I’d say you’re significantly oversimplifying things, but you’d probably just argue about that too, anyway. If you got a bone to pick about how the Static Discharge build is played then that’s an issue you gotta iron out yourself. Point is, the build exists.
Oh, so a single build that doesn’t use kits despite all i’ve said before and doing it only because it fully depends on toolbelt recharge times and not in the utilities themselves means all is fine and well, oh silly me.
I’m pretty sure it does, actually. Unless you’ve come across a different definition for “long range,” I’m pretty sure the Grenade Kit is equal to the Ranger Longbow in shot yardage, and isn’t tethered to shooting from 1000+ range for maximum damage, either.
Guess we have different concepts for “long range capabilities”, me, you and the devs.
They can shoot up to 1800 when traited anyway (but that may be a bug). And use pets to make the enemies stay at that range. And if after this the enemy comes near…well, they just have to switch weapons to fight in melee range. And guess what, they aren’t even using utilities to do that.
Still, if we talk about utilities, they can also set traps beforehand to cripple the enemy and fight at the proper range. Traps that work quite better than a mine with a terrible radius for that matter, i may add. Muddy terrain also works definitely better than our glue shot, even with a lower recharge. And if needed, there is still Entangle.
They can fight at long range, and maintain that range. And despite what you say, we don’t have those same capabilities.
Hate to say it, but I think they need to replace their testers. Their current ones have missed glaring issues is most every update that are obvious to everyone except them for some reason. They are either not doing their job, not capable of doing the job, or choose to not do the job all of which warrant replacement.
Got to quote this. I mean, no one of them had ever gone near the border?
And it makes me wonder if they even tested with norns and charrs. You can’t see anything with the firsts.
It would fine enough if they fixed the puppy (kitten is overused) camera. I can’t understand how during their tests no one even said anything about it.
For a fight where everything can kill you, having your visibility greatly reduced near the borders is terrible.
I don’t understand how this refutes anything that I said.
Static Discharge is a viable build that requires zero kits to be effective.
A single build out of everything else. And whose whole mechanic is “get the toolbelt skills with the fastest recharge and spam all of them together”. Heh, the utilities themselves don’t even matter at all, you even slot a turret to never use it, basically – cause the toolbelt is all that matters.
Just because their write-up on how they envision the Engineer says otherwise doesn’t change that fact. And Engineers do have the long-range capabilities of the Ranger with the Grenade Kit, so I question taking this paragraph as gospel in the first place.
Sure, and we even have the melee capabilities of the warrior cause we have the tool kit, obviously. There are absolutely no differences between our grenades and ranger’s attacks. Guess what, we also have got the support capabilities of a guardian, cause we can eventually reflect projectiles and heal allies and cleanse conditions. There is absolutely no differences.
Yes, i’m being sarcastic. A single (grandmaster traited) kit doesn’t give us the same long-range capabilities of the ranger. Especially when said kit is prone to miss at longer ranges due to grenades’ dispersion.
Well no. The knife is balanced against the fact that you -can- wield a pistol. The reason that kits aren’t given for free is because they give a toolbelt skill (which are generally very useful on their own) and because there ARE viable non-kit builds.
Every skill we’ve got has a toolbelt – that is, our true primary class mechanic. Beside that…how many non-kit builds have you ever actually seen used, though? The only one i can think of is the static discharge one – and just because of the lower cooldowns of the toolbelts than for the actual skills – and only because kits don’t really have means of burst damage (and that’s right, cause that would make them really overpowered).
Just because your main-hand weapon DPS suffers for a non-kit build doesn’t mean that it’s unviable. You have other skills to equip that may be able to narrow the gap.
Except that, for the most part, they don’t deal in the damage department. They are, as the name itself says, utilities. Sure, an hgh build may give you some nice stacks of might and even fury, but you still are limited by the lack of attacks. And since by design we have a single weapon with reduced dps…either we get kits or we end to use the autoattack of the main weapon for most of the time.
But at the end of the day, if you wan tto achieve certain results, you have to choose certain options. If you want the most efficient damage, you have to choose a kit.
And the whole game is balanced toward doing that efficient damage – you aren’t actually supposed to tank enemies anyway, by design choice (no trinity). Even if we want to support allies, our utilities don’t give a lot of means to do that (aside from the elixir gun – that is, another kit). Even the elixirs have got quite a measle effect on allies, after all. And using those to buff us up it is quite useless if we then lack the attacks to use them with.
Turrets have a whole lot of problems by themselves, but beside that…they still have to rely on a kit if we actually want to repair them. Not that it is much needed, seeing as they often crumble even before we can think about that, but still…
Gadgets instead are very situational utilities. There are situation where they can help, and they will be good in doing so (mainly for defensive purposes). Still…you can’t avoid an enemy forever, and the low dps will make the fight quite longer.
However, to put some points on your side of the argument, I do question why it’s necessary to kitten Engineer weapon damage because they have versatility. I’m fine with Grenade Kit being the best DPS solution for Engineers, I just wonder why that can’t be true AND the mainhand weapon can’t do full damage.
My problem with kits is that they are balanced as if they were the primary mechanic (the one every member of that class will ever have) even if they aren’t one.
Due of the single weapon slot, we’ll inevitably use our weapon skills before they can be cyclically recharged; on top of it there is the lack of dps.
That means that either we get kits, or we’re stuck with the (weak) autoattack for most of the time.
Either way, plenty of Engineer builds focus on pistol attacks and whatnot, so it’s not like their weapons are worthless.
More often than not, those builds are focused on spamming anything on the enemy and overwhelm him with conditions, though. By also using kits – our pistols alone wouldn’t be enough (the only heavy damaging condition there is burning, after all). Poison Dart Volley misses far too much to rely on it for damage purposes instead…
… So then use a kit.
Then give me a kit for free, instead of making me spend an utility slot on top of having already paid two prices.
If you know the design intends for you to use something and you’re stubbornly not using it because you don’t feel like it, then you’re stubbornly choosing to be bad and demanding that it make you good.
And what i’m criticizing is exactly that design choice, for the reasons mentioned above – we’re forced to pay a price for something that may even not use.
Either that price should be optional – as in, balance the kits themselves.
Or give us a kit for free – so that we get what we’ve paid for in any case.
This is like going onto a first person shooter and deciding to only use the knife, then complaining that you’re not doing as well as the people with sniper rifles and machine guns.
More like, you will hit for less damage with your pistol because you can eventually use a knife (assuming you don’t get something else instead).
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
An engineer has got a single weapon slot and a reduced dps on the main weapon whether he uses kits or not, thus he’s actually hurting himself if he doesn’t use kits.
And yet Static Discharge is one of the highest damage builds across all classes in the game and uses zero kits.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-December-14-2012/999247
Third post, Class balance philosophies
Engineer
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.
I would suppose devs know how they balance more than you.
So, yeah, we are hurting ourself if we aren’t using kits – it is clearly written there we are paying a price anyway.
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
Imho, the only real problems are in the terrible camera (especially with norns and charrs) and in issues on actually seeing the AoEs (due of the lack of contrast – red rings on a red grid…).
I would really like to know how many people won the fight using a norn or a charr in the end. That would be interesting…
Disclamer: i use a norn (that could explain the first problem).
And i can’t see anything around me if i’m even slightly near the borders of the dome. And it isn’t like i can stay at the center all the time, the white whirls will spawns on the sides, eventually.
I can’t even see the AoE rings on the floor decently – putting RED rings on a RED grid-like floor strains my eyes quite a bit. And it isn’t like i can do anything about that.
Same for the orbs, after all. You haven’t got a clear view of the arena while fighting, so it is quite easy to get pulled by some orb you couldn’t even see.
Basically, for a fight that requires you to be aware of everything around you – cause everything can and will kill you – i feel the camera and gui are actively working against the player.
The toolbelt is your class-specific skill. Kits are absolutely a class mechanic and absolutely should be considered as part of your balance as it contributes to an engineers potential ability, whether you personally use it or not.
To be correct, the toolbelt is the “primary profession mechanic”.
“Primary” is the keyword, here.
You must balance taking the toolbelt in consideration. The engineer always has that.
But you cannot balance taking for granted that engineers will always use kits. Cause those are optional.
And when you balance taking for granted that one can use a particular set of skills, you are actually forcing them to using that set of skills. That is exactly what is happening with engineers and kits.
We have already got penalities on our main weapon because of kits – both in dps and in the lack of a second weapon slot.
But both of them are given in account on something that we can choose to use, rather than something the class has by default.
An elementalist will always have his four attunements; thus he has got a single weapon slot to compensate for it.
An engineer has got a single weapon slot and a reduced dps on the main weapon whether he uses kits or not, thus he’s actually hurting himself if he doesn’t use kits.
I may just give one single important hint:
9 /10 of my attacks are not autoattack. Engineer auto attacks are middle /low damage. Only bomb auto-attack is worth it. Just fill your time with skills apart from auto-attack and youa re on the right track.
And how many kits are you using for that purpose?
Kits that, i should add, aren’t our class mechanic – cause that is the toolbelt – and so shouldn’t be assumed as a baseline regarding our balance.
Tip to the developers:
if you have to do a boss where avoiding AoEs is quite important
don’t make us fight on a RED floor.
I can’t even see the circles well…
And according to the patch notes, turrets still haven’t been fixed…
I would say, make a survey. Put the choice exclusively on what of the two fractals would have been preferred. A choice where only those matter, and no other benefit or character is involved.
And let’s see what happens. I don’t pretend to change what already happened – we’ll have that thaumanova fractal.
But the votation was seriously biased for the start, and even people who weren’t interested in fractal were able to influence – and i suspect rather heavily – such a crucial decision. So…i would just like to see. See if this is what fractal users wanted, or if non-fractal users had so much influence in a choice so important, but that didn’t matter for them anyway.
A survey ingame, if possible, maybe done when you finish a fractal, so that only people interested in that content can vote. A simple question: what of the two fractals would have you preferred, with a small description for both of them.
And let’s see what people wanted.
As far as the fractal choice go, it was biased from the start.
The Abbadon fractal was truly the only reason one would have voted for Evon.
On the other side we have a likeable character already known to the players that offers a discount on waypoints. And lot of people who would rather get it than a fractal they don’t care anyway.
Fractal users got screwed out by a biased choice, basically.
But i would say, make a survey. Let’s see what fractal would have won if it wasn’t for the biased choice that was given ingame.
We had the politics. Can we get to the cutthroat part now?
Why can’t people vote for temporary content? If someone waypoints around constantly and likes the idea of a discount but doesn’t play fractals, why can’t they vote for Ellen Kiel?
The duration is irrelevant.
And that’s exactly why fractals being tied into the vote is wrong.
You didn’t care about the fractals – you just wanted cheaper waypoints – yet your choice had a lasting impact on them.
This is ridiculous. Voting for waypoint discounts is perfectly valid. However, that promise couldn’t be separated from the fractal. Given you don’t care about anything else, each benefit is an equally valid reason to vote on a particular candidate.
Except for the part where one of those is a temporary bonus while the other is a content that won’t be ever made due to the votation.
People should have been able to vote for the fractals independently from the candidate chosen. As it is, fractal users got screwed by people who don’t care a bit about fractals.
Am I the only person who voted for Ellen Kiel because I thought she’d make a better council member than Evon Gnashblade?
And that would have been perfectly fine…if the fractal choice didn’t depend on the candidate chosen.
Since the fractal users are a minority, we got basically screwed by the votes of people who don’t care a bit about fractals.
So, basically, you’ll have to go full dps on the Gauntlet to be able to finish it. Play as you want…as long as you’re using berserker equip and burst damage classes. Quite annoying.
Exactly how many 1500 range weapons do we need? Do you understand how rare that is? Rangers have to trait for it too. Eagle Eye is a 20-point trait in the Marksmanship tree, though it’s obviously not as powerful as Grenadier is, anyway.
One that consistently hits at that range, seeing as we’ve got to specifically trait for it.
Guess i’ll simply repost that entire paragraph, cause you’re willfully ignoring the other parts:
[…]grenades are our only 1500 range weapon and it needs an heavy investment to even do so, and if even then you can’t reliably hit nicely at that range, then it isn’t that useful as far as a long-range weapon go.
Warriors don’t have reliable and active means of getting Protection either, and I stand in melee for 99% of PvE with full Berserker gear on mine. And he doesn’t have permanent Vigor like my Engineer does, so the armor and HP differential balances out.
But neither they need to stay close to the enemy all the time to sustain their dps – they’ve got burst damage. Unlike us.
And even then they’ve still got better armor and hp.
Also they’ve still got means to get that vigor (the warhorn is a fine example: even untraited and without boon duration it gives 50% uptime to both him and allies). Obviously you’ve got to give up something else – we’ve got to spend 20 points for that vigor for example – but the choice is there.
My Flamethrower has 425 range, but I usually stand at 100 or so, so that I can immediately swap out to my Rifle, Blunderbuss, and swap back for maximum damage potential.
Feel free to do that, it could also work wonders. But i also explained why the juggernaut trait is inconsistent with this use, even if you didn’t reply at that specific paragraph.
You’re supposed to be getting Protection from Guardians, anyway, which is why people bring them in the first place. If there’s only one Guard in the group, they should be using the Hammer with Writ of Persistence. This is like Dungeon Running 101.
Oh, didn’t know that they were mandatory in a party. I still thought we were supposed to play as we want, no trinity, no fixed roles, such things. Oh silly me.
So we are fine in that regard cause someone else can give us protection, seems logical.
I suppose that if they remove healing altogether from the guardians they’ll be fine as well, they can use my medkits for healing themselves after all.
And what am I optimistic about? I’m simply being realistic.
The Engineer doesn’t need heavy armor, and the only assertions that indicate that we “need” it only cite the wiki saying that at one point in time in the Engineer’s development it once had it.
I don’t see how this makes me the optimist so much as you the pessimist. I’m enjoying the game, enjoying the class, and enjoying my build. You can sit here and wallow in self-pity about how we don’t have everything every other class has if you want, but I’m not. And I don’t see how I’m somehow at fault for that.
Oh, i don’t exactly hide that i’m quite a pessimist, but i don’t see that as a problem; rather, i’m just better at pointing out the flaws in the class, cause i also take in account the worst cases instead on focusing only on when they can work well -something you do, and that isn’t realistic at all.
Because the best case rarely happens, if never (like with the supposed perma-protection with protection injection, whose uptime is based on being disabled every 5 seconds to be able to maintain it).
Also, whereas i argument about flaws and inconsistencies, you either skip them or reply just to parts of them to make them seem flawed – like with the grenades above, or all the parts regarding flamethrower and juggernaut. Or the whole comparison to the baseline defensive compartment of the medium classes.
It seems that more than really argument, you just want to force your point, avoiding any discussion or part of it that proves you wrong. You are free to do that, but i will rather bail-out. I won’t spend my time by writing walls of text that will be ignored for the most part.
Then use Infused Precision.
I can, and i would still spend a total of 20 point to do so. Not what i would call a small investment, but still better than getting Adrenal Implant anyway.
Albeit, i find swapping kits every 5 second for that sole purpose annoying to say the least. I would rather prefer having it applying swiftness similarly to the flamethrower’s might than the current activation. But that’s just a personal preference.
Also: How are kits not our class mechanic? No other class has them, and they’re easily the most recognizable aspect of the Engineer compared to other classes.
Because our class mechanic is the toolbelt, not the kits.
It would be like saying that stances are the warriors’ class mechanic or that wells are the necromancers’ class mechanic or, well, take any different thing a class can do from the wiki and write that.
But unlike all those other classes, the penalities we get (main weapon dps reduction and lack of weapon swap) are for something we don’t have for granted, but rather for having those kits in our skillset.
Every elementalist has to bear the use of a single weapon, but all of them have got 4 attunements to make up for it. Whereas we already pay two prices for having the choice of spending utilities on kits, and the penalities are still there even if we don’t use kits at all.
Maybe he doesn’t love kits or swapping them every 5 seconds. We shouldn’t be forced into using kits altogether, after all (despite being penalized by default for something that isn’t even the class mechanic).
The problem with the pull skill…is that it pulls. If you are in the situation of using it as it is available, you are guaranteeing the enemy a stomp after that due of the recharge time of the third skill. They don’t have to walk like a fear would do and neither it knockdowns them – something that gives you some precious seconds to charge up the third skill – and are instead already in place to stomp you.
Rifle Engineers can blind their targets every ten seconds, and can blind them again when struck by a melee attack. Never mind the fact that we have access to a three Smoke Fields between Smoke Bomb, Smoke Screen (Flame Turret), and Toss Elixir U.
And then there’s Smoke Vent and Flash Grenade.
Thieves can blind everytime they stealth with an adept major trait. Rangers can get 50% endurance regeneration with 5 points (and even get protection after a dodge with the minor master trait of that same tree). And those fully depend on the player, unlike our acidic coating (that requires you to be hit to begin with, and even then it is a chance) or don’t require a specific weapon (like the rifle one).
Even if we can get a sort of perma-vigor, that requires us to use almost a third of our points and to use kits, so it still shoehorn us versus using certain utilities and in a constant kit swap (just to maintain swiftness and thus vigor).
Also, for the most part, their evasive skills are embedded in the weapons themselves, thus giving them more versatility in the defensive compartment (and being able to swap them, they also have access to multiple sets of them). The thief itself just requires initiative to use them and they’ve got quite many possibilities to speed it up (both with stealth and weapon swaps, for example).
Ours are for the most part fragmented into the different utilities – thus either we get those specific ones – again in contrast with our supposed versatility – or we miss out on the defensive compartment at all. And there is still another matter…
But why does this comparison matter, anyway? We are one of the best bunker classes in the game, so we clearly don’t need more evades. And we obviously don’t need heavy armor either.
…that is, all of this talk is about PvP. All the game is balanced toward PvP. And therein is the problem: the game works differently in PvE. Our survivability is balanced toward us using those CC skills for defending ourself, yet the PvE part introduces defiant stacks that conflict with that purpose.
It basically neutralizes a good part of our defensive capabilities.
Unlike evades and blind, that can’t be neutralized as far as PvE goes.
And in WvsW we’re totally ignored as a whole.
OP dislikes kits, dislikes medium armor, feels abandoned—I think he’s better off just re-rolling a different class. And I think you need to take a few moments and re-examine our capabilities before replying to this post. Because we have no need for any built-in evades, we blind just as good as any other class, and the Bomb Kit and Grenade Kit both have very little if any drawbacks. They’re just a play style different from yours.
I’m not even sure you’re still replying to me, but i’ll reply anyway.
We shouldn’t be forced to use kits to start with, and neither we should be penalized as we are for being able to get them – as far as the class design goes, our dps with the main weapon is reduced due to kits and as far as i know we lack a second weapon slot for that same reason, even if we haven’t got any kit for free and we still have to spend utility slot for them, basically forcing us to take at least one to make up for the penalities we would get anyway.
We can’t evade, a part of our defense -CC- doesn’t even work as supposed in PvE and we need to spec either via traits or utilities to get those blinds – whereas the other adventurer classes get either blinds or evades with just their weapon sets and can get some more speccing, making them quite more versatile than us in that regard.
Also, you are seriously belittling the drawbacks of our kits – grenades are our only 1500 range weapon and it needs an heavy investment to even do so, and if even then you can’t reliably hit nicely at that range, then it isn’t that useful as far as a long-range weapon go. And while the bombs delay is a small issue in PvE, staying at melee range versus bosses to sustain that damage – we have no burst damage with them after all – isn’t exactly beneficial for our health (especially since we lack reliable and active means of getting protection (and the reactive ones don’t really work in PvE; also, we shouldn’t spend all the traits just to make up for the drawbacks – again, it hampers with our supposed versatility).
Imho, you’re far too optimistic regarding the class and see us with rose-tinted glasses, to speak frankly.
Beware: here comes the Wall Of Text. There will be no TL;DR.
I disagree completely.
The Bomb Kit’s “small” radius is not a drawback. It’s a strength, given that it’s an AoE while pretty much every other weapon in the game is either single target, piercing, or cleave.
A small AoE with a delayed activation, though. Something that makes them easily avoidable even in PvP, even if they’re balanced in that purpose – something that all classes have in common, but that bites us especially due to the nature of a good part of our defensive capabilities (more about that later).
While what you said about direct damage may be true about the Bomb Kit, that definitely is not true about the Grenade Kit. Shrapnel Grenade and Freeze Grenade do significantly more direct damage than Grenade (#1) does on the Grenade Kit.
You’re right about this; still, most of the direct damage capabilities of the grenade kit depend on its grandmaster traits. Maintaining those stacks of vulnerability does a great deal about that purpose. Still, it needs quite an heavy specialization into that tree to do that – let’s speak frankly, it is quite lackluster without those traits – and that works quite in contrast with the versatility of the class.
When people say “you’re not supposed to use Flame Jet,” what they’re really saying is “you’re not supposed to rely on Flame Jet as your primary DPS.” Between maintaining Might stacks with Napalm, triggering Acid Bomb every 12 seconds, and dropping Healing Turret, Elixir R, Elixir U, or whatever for your group, you’re not really going to be standing there spamming Flame Jet very often versus triggering two Flame Blasts between every Blunderbuss with your Rifle.
Compared to a kit like the Bomb Kit, which, like you said, doesn’t do a whole lot of damage around its auto-attack, an FT (and EG) Engineer has many different skills to rotate instead. People tell you that Flame Jet isn’t that great because with the FT/EG build you’re dishing out 2500+ DPS before even taking Flame Jet into consideration thanks to Acid Bomb and Flame Blast. And that’s a conservative estimate.I’ve been pretty clear on this point for several months now; if you’re still confused, you’re welcome to discuss it with me in the appropriate thread. There are several.
And this is where our opinions differ. The juggernaut trait give us two bonuses.
The toughness one that requires you to be in that kit while you get hit, and the might stacks that require you to stay in the kit for them to be charged up and maintained.
Why giving us bonuses that force us to stay in the kit for them to work if we aren’t supposed to stay in the kit due of us being useless if we do so (after all the only skills we can really use to attack are the first and the second one, and the autoattack is really bad)?
Still, the flamethrower itself was designed with other skills and other traits – that toughness had sense with the old juggernaut trait since both the bonuses were instant ones, they didn’t force you to stay in the kit like the current might one does – and with the old skills – when you can pull enemies to you, having additional toughness to not get mauled is quite good.
While the current ones, imho, make no sense together. Either it should be viable to stay in the flamethrower – thus the flamejet should be a bit stronger – or the trait itself should be changed in something that doesn’t require you to stay in the kit (like giving a larger amount of stacks with an higher internal cooldown).
3. Engineers are not “low damage.” The Bomb Kit has one of the hardest hitting auto-attacks in the game, and the Grenade Kit has some of the best sustained DPS through a mixture of both conditions and direct damage.
And both of them have got drawbacks – bombs’ delay/small base radius and grenades’ accuracy on ranged attacks, for example (also, speccing for grenades is basically needed, they’re so bad otherwise). Also, the autoattack is the only power-based attack for both of them – the direct damage on the other skills is negligible, they basically only do conditions. This also means you’ve either got to raise both power and condition damage, or rely heavily on might. But i would say, every class would do wonders with high might stacks.
Regarding the autoattack themselves, how comes every single time i make a critique about the terrible flamethrower autoattack i get told that we aren’t supposed to use it – even if the juggernaut trait is supposed to make us stay in that kit to both maintain and use the bonuses – but it is fine for grenades and bombs instead, who haven’t got similar bonuses? Just because the autoattacks are already nice, even if what i would like on the flamethrower is exactly that, a decent autoattack?
Also, due of the hybridness of those kits, we really haven’t got much choices for power builds.
Regarding the heavy armor on engineer, well…imho, it should have been maintained, seeing as the class itself lacks the baseline evasive possibilities of the other adventurers’ classes.
Rangers have got evades on their weapon sets, but also a pet that can tank for them.
Thieves have got some evades as well, but also some good sources of blinds.
And both of them can swap between weapon sets to use them. We aren’t even talking about utilities here.
On the other side we have got some immobilizes and control skills on our weapons, plus a 2s block on a 40s cooldown. But unlike evades or blinds, our CC skills are blocked by stability and defiant stacks, thus nullifying their defensive capabilities. Also, no swap – so we’ll have either an immobilize or a block, plus the control skills (that suffer of the problem mentioned above).
Even if we talk about kits, the problem is still there. The ones that require us to go near melee range have got at most either a single blind or a block (but at least the gear shield is good). Still, we have no real bursts there, so we’re supposed to stay near the enemies to sustain our dps even when those few defensive skills are on cooldown.
While in PvP this isn’t that much of a problem, in PvE this is quite problematic. Our CC skills can’t do anything versus enemies with defiant, whileas evades and blinds would still work. And the damage of their attack is also on another scale compared to PvP, thus having to stay in melee to sustain that damage isn’t that good for engineers’ health. Sure, we can trait to reduce those problems, but so can other classes – and they will still have better defensive capabilities than us.
And this is why i think heavy armor would be more appropriated than the medium one.
The solution is simple indeed. Make enemies able to receive just a finite amount of direct attacks per second (let’s say 2 or 3) so they’ll both work in the same way.
Yeah, i’m being sarcastic. I wonder why they implemented the condition system as is, knowing that it doesn’t really work with groups.
And i still can’t understand why they introduced an additional condition after all.
Uhm, considering that there already was an inventor – Uzolan – associated with the Caudecus’ Manor storyline, i would say he’ll return during this event and he will use the watchknights to kidnap the queen, maybe with the help of the separatists.
The problem is that as it is presented, that item is either absolutely useless or terribly harmful for the game itself.
Make it even a bit expensive, and no one will use that.
Make it cheap and you’re removing value from a class, even if just a bit. The problem isn’t strictly about it, but more like setting a precedent.
Ok, there are already engineer’s kits here and there, but that’s kinda also the point of the class.
If they really wanted to give other classes access to portal-like skills, they could have done so during an update that actually added skills to all the various classes. Giving it this way…well, it won’t be satisfactory in any way, imho.
More like, people whining cause they can’t farm CoF anymore.
I don’t see whining.
I do, however, see many people trying to figure out if dungeons got rewards nerfed enough that they are no longer viable for repeated farming.
I would say that’s kinda the point of the whole update – nerfing the rewards you get for doing the same path repeatedly, especially if they’re considered easy (thus CoF 1 will have, like, the minimal reward). And giving better rewards to dungeons that aren’t being used much cause they aren’t easy and farmable as CoF 1.
More like, people whining cause they can’t farm CoF anymore.