Guild Wars 2

Aegael.6938:

On a final note…WHY THE HECK is Tool Kit’s third auto chain OBJECTIVELY worse than the first two?! It takes twice as long of a windup while dealing BARELY more than the two autoattacks would. However, it doesn’t apply vuln and also doesn’t cleave. It’s actually WORSE in most situations to use the third attack in the chain! Most good engineers will cancel the last cast with a pry bar or a throw wrench. This needs to be changed!

“If you actually look at the table for damage calculations”: http://pvx.gw2buildcraft.com/Damage_Calculations#Kits you will find that Thwack is not objectively worse than Smack and Whack – in fact, it is more than double the Power scaling of the first and second auto. It actually has more power scaling than even Warrior Greatsword’s third attack in the chain, which is pretty hilarious.

That being said, I do agree that the third attack does need to cleave in the absence of applying any other special effect like Warrior’s Mace inflicting Weaken. I believe that if Warrior’s Axe and Mace’s, can cleave, so should Toolkit. (Axe does a ludicrous 2.55 total scaling as a reward for 1.5sec channel and cleaves)

Anymras.5729:

We’ll be getting more weapons soon; their intention is reputed to be to give every class every weapon.

Other than that, I think many of the issues (at least dealing with Turrets) could be handled by, I don’t know…fixing the bugs. The fire rate bug (if it’s not intended, not that anybody seems halfway interested in bothering to tell us so), in particular, is holding turrets back.

@dunnberry, @petespri;
Arenanet has already mentioned that they intend to give Engineers hammers at some point ; with more weapon options across all classes coming in the future as the game’s updates are pushed out. There have been no specific dates given, which is situation normal RE: Anet, but generally if they commit to something it does happen eventually.

I still stand by my belief that Engineer’s pre-existing weapons could do with some tweaks, however. If the new weapons come and they are great, that’s fantastic – yet another option for us to try out and a (hopefully) viable melee option to complement our ranged abilities.

That being said, pushing a new weapon out to us still does not redeem the fact that as a class our main hand weapons do have issues.

@Anymras;
I feel that any discussion of turrets should always make mention of the AI of turrets. Damage or fire rate mean nothing if the turret does not fire upon what the engineer is firing upon; or at destructible terrain when valid targets are in range.

However, I think that is better discussed in your thread rather than in mine.

Aegael.6938:

tl;dr: Turret traits need to be vastly improved, Gadget skill line needs more traits, MH weapons could use numbers changes and quality-of-life buffs, but they aren’t in the dreadful situation that some of Engineer’s utilities are in right now.

So I mentioned earlier that I would endeavour to find the threads where I posted suggestions along with Swagg on how to improve Turrets and Gadgets. Even back then, my focus was largely on the skills rather than Traits, as I felt that trait changes were insufficient if the baseline skill was awful anyway.

This is Swaggs Thread

This is my turret suggestion thread. I start off with traits, but I feel that skill reworks are probably the way to go halfway through. This thread didn’t get a lot of traffic (none of my threads do) but I do feel it did have some effect.

Have a read through. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find me and Swagg’s brainstorming useful.

A true melee build would be focused largely on melee range – 130 – with skills designed to reach this range, keep it, and lastly, have a way to escape it if things get too hot.

Toolkit has 2/3 criterion met in this respect – being able to pull a foe to you lets you reach melee range, whilst Box of Nails lets you keep it. Gear Shield arguably lets you escape, but as it has no distance component, I feel it doesn’t qualify.

Now as for whether Toolkit is truly viable for a true melee build, I don’t think it is for the most part. 2/5 skills deal no damage, which really cripples the overall Power coefficient. As a kit, it uses a “steady” 969 Power constant of its own rather than using Weapon damage. Therefore it can never scale as high as possible because your rate-limiting factor is the steady 969 constant. If Ascended weapon stats hit in the future, this will become even more apparent.

Now, this being said, what damaging skills there are on Toolkit have very handsome damage scaling. Its scaling coefficients are actually comparable to Guardian’s Greatsword, which explains people’s observations of obtaining 3-4k crits with Pry Bar when running Power/Crit damage builds. On the other hand, the 1 other damaging skill, Box of Nails, does Condition damage and has no Power damage of its own. Couple that with a long cast and it’s actually counterproductive to cast Box of Nails if you want to melee. It’s better to simply run Power Wrench if you want anti-kite.

So that essentially pares Toolkit down to 2 skills for dedicated melee – The auto-attack chain, and Pry Bar. This is absolutely terrible for a Melee weapon because having only 2 “true melee” skills really cuts down on your tactical flexibility.

As it stands, Toolkit, although just-barely viable as a “melee” weapon, is still not quite there. Box of Nails should probably have some kind of pulsing Power-based damage instead of just pulsing Bleeds. If you’re looking for melee, try Bombs instead.

Aegael.6938:

tl;dr: Turret traits need to be vastly improved, Gadget skill line needs more traits, MH weapons could use numbers changes and quality-of-life buffs, but they aren’t in the dreadful situation that some of Engineer’s utilities are in right now.

Whilst I concur with you that Turret Traits and Gadgets need more improvement, I still am of the opinion that as long as Main Hand weapon skills have these longstanding problems, Kit-less builds will be suffering more than they need to and as a result they will be less attractive given how much Kits offer the Engineer.

Let’s look at what a single Kit offers to the Engineer:
5 more cooldowns + 1 autoattack
Enables Weapon Swap (And voila, an entire line of Sigils opens up)
Enables animation cancelling and cast while channelling – Has improvement ramifications for Jump Shot, Poison Dart Volley and (now patched) Static Shield.
These bottom 2 features alone push Engineers to Kits – accessing a weapon Swap sigil is child’s play considering the plays you can open up.

For a Kit-less build to begin to be viable, you must make the weapon skillset more viable than it is now.

As I mentioned earlier into my posts, I feel that improving the Main hand weapon choices is the easiest thing that can be done right now. It is apparently trivial using Arenanet’s tech to prototype new skills and I feel that buffs to skills are simpler than something deeper like traits. One has to look no further than the Rifled Barrels fiasco where the old version of Rifle Jump Shot with its huge aftercast was reintroduced when traited.

As a beneficial side effect, non-kit builds are globally improved, whilst reworks of Turrets and Gadgets and introducing new traits would still only target specific subsets of skills.

On a side note, I did make a thread and I did contribute to a thread that Swagg made with regards to Turrets and Gadgets a while ago. I’ll try to find it because Swaggs thread in particular I feel had some pretty cool ideas.

Pistol/X is in a terrible place right now because there was little thought given to the rest of Pistol’s Kit when Pistol 1 was nerfed into the ground. Pistol-only builds that did not rely on Might Stacking relied upon its autoattack (should be obvious) to apply pressure with bleed stacks that built up over time.

Explosive Shot
Before the introduction of an aftercast that was basically doubling the cast time, Pistol 1 might have been still viable after the bleed application and damage nerf. Adding a hidden cooldown basically invalidates tooltip information and this is a bad thing. As it stands, there is nothing worthy left aside from Static Shot. The aftercast must go.

Poison Dart Volley
I wish I could like this skill for its intended purpose of Poison application. When I can actually apply poison more reliably at all ranges using Sigil of Doom this entire skill is invalidated outside of its pure damage component. Which is terrible anyway unless you Might Stack.
The Conal AOE must go. I would actually use Poison Dart Volley if it was similar to Volley – No spread – no tricks – just a channelled multi-hit skill that has counterplay by forcing dodges.

Static Shot
I have nothing against Static Shot.

Blowtorch
The conal AOE must be increased in radius to something similar to Fire Grab. I understand thakittens maximum range is 600 and inflicting AOE Burn for 2 seconds on potentially 5 targets would be easier with a radius buff. That being said, I believe that a majority of complaints about poor tracking would be solved more easily with a radius buff over, say, recoding Blowtorch’s animation.

Glue Shot
Glue Shot’s projectile speed is just shy of player’s default movement speed in combat, and that is not okay. For a 30 second cooldown it is exceedingly difficult to setup a condi-burst using Glue Shot and in fact I find it easier to simply use Glue Bomb. When a Kit easily supersedes a Main-hand weapon skill there is a problem here.
I understand that any AOE Immobilise requires some kind of delay for counterplay but the speed is simply not there.

Pistol
Before I even begin going through the skills of the Pistol I will first mention 1 overarchingly important thing: Pistol’s Bleed application and damage was crippled in the August 2012 patch. This will colour my commentary of Pistol Skills for the rest of my posts.

Explosive Shot
As soon as people discovered the hysterics that was Coated Bullets Pistol’s autoattack was nerfed into the ground for Bleed application. Bleed time was halved and damage nerfed by 12.5% from the 135 to the 118 that we see today. This is why we see +Condition Duration and/or Might Stacking builds like P/P HGH or Teldo’s Burning damage build – the nerf to both damage and condition application made using Pistol 1 outside of such builds a liability.
The patch also introduced crippling aftercast to Pistol 1 – Its activation time is now closer to 0.8 seconds as opposed to the 0.5 advertised on the tooltip. It now fires as slowly as a rifle but without any pressure potential outside of crit-proc condition builds.
For Pistol to even be considered worthy outside of something you weave in between Kit cooldowns, the aftercast must go. Doing so will finally allow pistols to stand on their own without Might stacking or Incendiary Powder.

Poison Dart Volley
This skill is interesting because it actually did little-to-no damage in Beta . It’s only in recent times that a damage component was added and increased . However, outside of triggering crit-procs, its actual intended purpose of Poison application utterly falls down at ranges beyond 300-400 depending on opponent movement.
The RNG cone pattern that the darts fire in has excessive spread for a skill that has 900 range. I find myself never even using its cooldown unless I can get within 300 range because I know I will not get a viable Poison application otherwise. It’s actually bad enough that it’s more reliable to use Sigil of Doom instead. This is a bad thing because again, it pushes Engineers towards Kits to be able to get that proc. Any skill that cannot stand on its own without Kits for Engineer is probably not worth using.

Static Shot
This skill is the only reason why Pistol Shield is viable. There, I said it. A potential 5 target Blind on an instant cast with Confusion on top is the only thing that makes Main Hand Pistol worth taking. With 2 out of the 3 Main Hand Pistol skills being utterly worthless, having a multiple target Blind redeems some of Pistol’s awfulness.
Its slower travel time with target tracking gives it counterplay (dodgeable) without making it over powered.
I have nothing bad to say for this skill. It is the only thing worth picking up Pistol for.

Blowtorch
Again, this is another skill that makes Pistol worth taking. 600 range potentially, but we all know that the real hurt comes with the <200 range, 6 second burn. This is a strong skill with good reward for getting in close and playing like Engineer is meant to be played – just outside of melee’s 130. Its small hitbox allows for counterplay, without a crippling cooldown.
That being said, I feel that increasing the cast time in return for widening its cone AOE is what will make it worth taking over Pistol/Shield. It will also silence the concerns of poor tracking. At 200 range, the spread is simply too small to hit more than 1 target and it is even harder to land than Fire Grab because at least with Fire Grab, you can set it up with CC or gap closers.

Glue Shot
One would think that landing Glue Shot would make it easier to hit Blowtorch, and you would be right, except that Glue Shot travels so kitten slowly. At 700 max range it is nigh impossible to land on an alert player, and even then, its speed is so slow that the dodge window for it is ludicrously big.
I am all for increasing its speed so that it is actually a viable threat and setup for Blowtorch.

Now, this being said, I feel that Engineer Rifle is actually in a pretty good place, but, there are a few changes necessary to make it a true “Main Hand weapon”

First, it lacks sustained pressure once you actually get to close range. Second, whilst its long cast time skills are well designed to allow counter play, some rewards are insufficient for their range

It’s all well and good to control the opponent’s distance to you in 4 of the 5 skills, but the main skill for applying sustained pressure – Hip Shot auto attacks – does not scale with decreasing range. I feel that this is the most important change that will bring Rifle Engineers back from the Beta days.

Making the auto-attack scale in damage with decreasing range would also harmonise it with the rest of the kit. At long ranges, Hip Shot could be a threat – if you plinked away for a long time. But I believe thakittens 0.9 sec cast time including aftercast should be rewarded for being up close.

Hip Shot
Increasing Hip Shot’s damage by 10% at 600 range, then by another 10% at <130 range should be sufficient. Alternatively, make it stack 2xVulnerability on targets <300 range for 4 seconds. This would finally make Hip Shot something worthy to spam at close range rather than switching to bombs with its superior 1.25 scaling, 5x AOE limit at traited 180 radius, 120 untraited.

Blunderbuss
I would also propose normalising the Bleed Stacks that Blunderbuss inflicts at ranges beyond 100. Blunderbuss’s damage is not only halved at >100 range, its scaling is reduced by 0.6 to a mere 1, and Bleed stacks to a mere 1. This is too much punishment for a skill that has poor tracking. Normalising the bleed stacks to 4 at all ranges would again, make Rifle apply consistent pressure at shorter ranges after its burst.

Overcharged Shot
Those of you that use rifle will recognise that your character lays on the ground for far longer than is actually normally inflicted by Knockdown. This is due to Aftercast. Coupled with Overcharged Shots 400 range, this will place an opponent in Melee a mere 800 range from you, and an opponent at max range at 1000 – still well within the threat envelope of most Ranged weapons, and well within gap closer range for Melee weapons. As I mentioned earlier, this makes Overcharged shot only a fight reset, NOT an escape. I feel that reducing the Aftercast of Overcharged shot can do much to make it feel less clunky and actually give it potential as an escape tool.

Jump Shot
As I mentioned earlier, Jump Shot’s speed is simply excessive for the distance it travels. 0.25 seconds activation, +1 second travel time +aftercast makes this skill one of the slowest Leaps in the entire game. I feel that nothing less than a 0.75 second cast total casting time + minuscule aftercast is enough to justify its longer 20 second cooldown. Jump Shot’s GTAOE nature also ultimately constrains its range to the tooltip maximum without animation cancelling because you cannot abuse terrain unlike other leaps. Buffing its speed will do much to compensate this massive loss of flexibility if you do not run a kit.

Engineer was billed as a class that was a mid-range fighter that could control the battlefield with Turrets and be impactful in “close in fights”.

For the most part, this statement by the developers has largely proven to be true. Engineer as a class becomes progressively more dangerous to fight the closer it comes, and much of its damage – both Power and Condition damage based – scales inversely with distance to target.

This is coupled with skills that can control range (Elixir Gun Acid Bomb, Rifle Jump Shot, Net Shot and Overcharged Shot, Shield Magnetic Inversion, FT Air Blast, BK Glue bomb and Big Ol’ Bomb, TK Magnet Pull and Box of Nails, Net Turret and Net Toolbelt) which allow the Engineer to control the opponent’s position to allow the optimal delivery of damage.

That being said, Engineer main hand weapons are still unworthy of being the go-to weapon and it is exceedingly rare to find a build in WvW that does not incorporate at least 1 kit. By enabling weapon-swap sigils and providing an extra 6 skills for the 1 utility slot, Kits overshadow many other utilities and in a way has superceded the Toolbelt as a class mechanic.

What is 6 cooldowns for Kits vs the 3 for Turrets and 2 for Gadgets? Opportunity cost doesn’t even begin to describe this disparity in utility, damage potential, and defensive potential.

I truly feel that this is an unfortunate state for the class to be in and whilst reworks of Turrets and Gadgets could do much to bring non-kit builds into “meta”, the easiest place to tackle this problem is in Main hand weapons.

Any discussion of damage should first look at this because as it turns out, Engineer Main hand weapons aren’t that bad – they’re just clunky

Rifle
The Rifle’s kit is for the most part dedicated to controlling range. It is the source of burst for many Power/Crit damage builds and for the most part it does this well.
Hip Shot at 1000 range provides steady DPS, and is actually superior to Warrior’s Rifle in that it pierces without trait. It has good base values but suffers from a lack of synergy with the rest of the kit
Net Shot is a powerful immobilising skillshot with 1000 range. Although easy to sidestep at long range, it is a threatening opener to Rifle burst at shorter ranges. I don’t have a problem with the skill as it’s well designed – it fits with the Kit and has counterplay.
Blunderbuss does monstrous damage with good reward for the risk of melee range. Its long cast time with windup animation allows for counterplay and its cooldown isn’t crippling. Alas, it suffers from a terrible hitbox.
Overcharged Shot is one of those skills with overloaded utility. It cleanses snares (Immobilise, cripple, chill), has instant cast, short cooldown, and inflicts Launch which is the most powerful stun in the game. Its scaling is pretty kitten decent for a kiting skill. However, it suffers from a long aftercast and short range, meaning that you get up at the same time as an opponent. This means it is merely a tool for resetting a fight, not an escape.
Jump Shot fulfils multiple criterion of being a gap closer, mini-escape, and burst opener. It fits well with the kit, and recent buffs to aftercast have finally made the gap closer component viable. The tooltip’s cast time is inaccurate as the skill has 1 second air time, not just the 0.25 activation. I do like the skill, but its speed is simply unacceptable for its 700 range. Elementalist’s Burning Speed is only 0.75 seconds to travel 600 range, whilst Warrior Savage Leap travels even farther: 900 range in 0.75 seconds. This is another area that should be looked at.

JinDaVikk.7291:

Haha that’s great underwater combat works better for SD than above ground…

Seriously though what about the question on OP?

Would giving sd more variety make it op or just viable?

I mean this in a pvp setting not pve.

Power Engineers are already a rare breed given how much more risk a Rifle engineer undertakes going in to burst someone compared to condition Grenades or Bombs. Fixing SD procs to actually fire at targeted foe would not be OP at all – the proc already occurs – it is just a matter of actually making the proc useful instead of firing at the ground.

One solution I have found as a semi-workaround is using Right mouse to Camera look until the proc when triggered will fly parallel to the ground. This will lock your aim for skillshots much better and actually allows for use of the Pistol 1 without a target. (Why you are auto-attacking with Pistol 1 is besides the point)

After that, use Left mouse to camera look back to a comfortable elevation.

There is a problem with this and that is, every time you use Right mouse to swing the camera around, the aim is relocked to the ground and your SD procs and skillshots go haywire again. If you can quickly realign it though, the world is your oyster.

Grenadier isn’t required for Grenade Kit as long as you are using Grenade Kit purely as a utility kit just like Elixir Gun. You still get a nice AOE Blind and Freeze and Poison field which can then be blasted for AOE Weakness, so GK isn’t toothless untraited, it’s just that it’s almost pure utility.

That being said, if you’re running Grenade kit, why not Grenadier? Not only do you get +50% damage and a much larger AOE to your attacks, but you also stack Vulnerability 50% faster.

I will agree that Reserve Mines is probably one of the worst Minor traits in the game, but it really is nothing compared to Acidic Elixirs, which is in the same trait line and takes up a Major slot and is literally wasting 1 potentially great Major trait possibility.

@Kain Francois:
I wouldn’t be averse to a remake of the Grenade Kit so that it has 3 grenades by default, as long as one of the primary routes of Engineer’s damage does not get nerfed. 33% damage nerf across the kit was quite a lot already – and it affected untraited Grenades also, making Grenadier even more mandatory. Until Engineer mainhand weapons are strong enough to stand on their own – I’m holding out for Hammer to be the end of Engineer’s Hybrid Tax – I feel that any remake of the Grenade Kit or Grenadier will likely result in an overall nerf – just as the “remake” of Kit Refinement killed off the only Kit-agnostic trait for Engineers.

I levelled my engineer largely with Rifle and Bombs; eventually switching over to Pistol Shield when I got to 60 for Grenadier. Levelling after that was a breeze.

Engineer’s time to kill in PvE is relatively high, but using Rifle and Bombs should make it easier as they require relatively few traits to be effective, and have good Power scaling, which is really all you need until you’re level 80.

The only traits that I view as top priority for Engineer are Speedy Kits (10 points tools) and Invigorating Speed (10 points Alchemy). After that, just beeline towards whatever other trait will boost your current build. For Rifle and Bombs, the next traitlines I used were 10 into Firearms and Explosives.

For levelling purposes, aim for some kind of kit first. I actually don’t recommend Grenade kit because as good as it is in PvP and WvW when traited, untraited it just isn’t competitive with untraited bomb kit or untraited Rifle for damage; especially so after that 33% nerf.

I did use Flamethrower for a while but found that for all the smoke, there was no fire, so to speak, in the FT kit. Granted, this was before you could detonate Flame Blast and the buffs to FT1 getting bonus damage from Burning foes. I still don’t use it because I simply find its PvE time to kill excessive compared to just manning up and going into PBAoE range with bombs and toolkit. It’s pretty good for tagging mobs in Orr, but since I don’t farm Orr anymore, there’s not much point to it. And since I find zerging up in WvW to be underhanded and unmanning, there’s also little point using it to tag players.

Going further, at mid-levels (30-50), I hit upon Static Discharge and for a while I ran SD with Bomb kit. It still boasts one of the lower TTK for a mid-level build. Use Rifle with Rifle Turret, Bomb Kit, Either Med kit or Healing Turret, and some other utility. Even before the buffs to Surprise Shot’s damage AND cooldown, SD with Bombs still dealt damage worth respect.

At 60+, there is little left but to just go with Grenadier. I don’t think I’ve ever run with a dungeon group that did not appreciate the 19+ Vulnerability stacks on a boss, coupled with nigh perma weakness from Elixir Gun. If you’re quick enough, you can weave in Tranquilizer dart shots between your Grenade Kit auto-attack without losing Vulnerability stacks, but it’s no longer worth it since the Weakness duration for Tranquilizer dart was nerfed into the ground.

I also fully recommend just taking one day to try to melee things to death with the Toolkit. Toolkit, just like Bomb Kit, is one of those kits that don’t really need traits to do their job fully and I cleared Frostgorge Sound largely hitting things to death with the Wrench. It wasn’t the fastest map clear, but I’ll be kitten ed if it did not teach me melee spacing and Prybar windups. It’s also a lesser known open secret that Gear Shield is a superior block to Warrior’s Shield block.

You can also do power bombs or grenades. Swagg has a good writeup although the damage is good, it isn’t bursty.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Bombgineer-PvE-PvP.
Engineer traits right now don’t really have anything else except for static discharge for easily repeatable burst.

There is CeiMash’s BoBomber burst build using Big Ol’ Bomb and the Rifle 3, 5, 4 combination, but as I said, nothing really stacks up to the repeatability and ease with which SD can be executed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5-ef0a7pwE

Static Discharge has been a staple of Engineer WvW Power Based roaming builds for a while now. There are tons of variations on the theme, and recent trait changes with the June 25th patch have opened up the variability of SD builds and allowed the incorporation of condition removal, more stunbreaks, and extra kiting potential. It’s up to you to find what works best for you.

This video by HAiMaiNeIm showcases what is possible running full GC, although it is possible to tweak your gear more if necessary.

^
What Phineas Poe said.
It’s also worth noting that if your gear currently has a surfeit of Power and/or Precision, putting Celestial gear into your Shoulders, Gloves and Boots gives you more effective health and hybrid DPS with a minimal sacrifice to your Power based damage.

I would also advocate reading this:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84216-new-celestial-armor-does-it-work-with-the-engineer/

On the other hand, I don’t think that Celestial Jewelery offers quite enough in the way of Toughness and Power to be justifiable outside of using the Ascended Celestial Amulet. I have Szygy because it is the most stat-efficient item for the slots in my build (Running 30/5/0/20/15 4kit Grenadier). Certainly with my current Gear setup of mixed Soldier’s/Rabid from Karma Vendor and full Rampagers Rings/Trinkets I could swap out my armour for much better hybrid DPS (+20% crit damage with also +2% critical hit chance, another 100 condition damage and losing 100 vit but gaining 50 toughness is ridiculously good).

On the other hand if I instead took out all my Rampagers Rings and Trinkets and instead put in Celestial Rings and Trinkets I would lose 10% critical chance which would be an overall loss in DPS.

I think that whilst Celestial Armour is pretty good for the investment, Trinkets, especially the exotic ones, aren’t worth it right now considering that they are time gated. If you did your dailies you could even buy the Ascended stuff which doesn’t actually cripple you, but you’d need ectos for that which could be better spent on Armour instead.

In the end it depends on what you currently run; and especially what you have in your Armour slots. If it’s suboptimal like mine, go for it. But if you have a good Trinket setup already, don’t change it. Any gains in hybrid DPS and Effective health really aren’t worth it for the Exotic trinkets right now aside from the Amulet.

I think that the June 25 patch did a lot to bring Engineers into viability, especially the changes to Elixir Gun and Rifle aftercasts. I know I’ve been using them a lot more, and the changes to the Thumper Turret and Rocket Boots have done much to bring them back into prominence, although I don’t use them myself that often.

Having also played Elementalist, there was some irony in having an RtL-like skill being implemented for Engineers, without the downside of a 40s CD if not used to strike a target. The improvements to Burst Ele more than outweighed the other changes, though.

I also think that it’s interesting that Engineers are now considered one of the possible “Meta” classes for sPvP. I don’t play PvP much myself, but the so-called “Teldo build” that relies so heavily on Burning damage was largely made possible by the change to Rocket Boots.

That being said, Engineers still have a long way to go. Grenades are still the king of PvE due to Grenadier and Steel Packed Powder being simply too good compared to anything else. People will bring up Static Discharge, but in a class that has crippling hybrid tax on Mainhand Weapons, there is still too much risk for the glassiest of builds for the return in safe, sustainable DPS. (Only a single condi cleanse that doesn’t work against Immobilise, and also one of the higher cooldown burst rotations that simply does not compare in gap-closing/opening, CC and survivability to the Burst Ele)

I think that the hybrid tax has also done a lot to push most Engineers in PvP and WvW towards Condition Damage builds. I know that I’ve gotten a lot more kills in WvW from my Conditions than I have using direct damage from my Rifle when I run with Rifle and Grenades. And I can routinely reach ~2600 power due to Might stacks, so it’s not for a lack of direct damage.

As I see it, Engineer still has 3 main places for improvement:

• A better return for the risk of closing to melee-range with the Rifle.
  Despite Aftercast buffs to Jump Shot, Rifle still feels slow.
  Blunderbuss is most definitely NOT a 0.75sec cast, more like 1-1.25sec, and still has shoddy hit detection.
  Overcharged shot really should grant Evasion and not self-knockback.
  The addition of ICD to Sitting Duck has also crippled my pre-patch Bomb kit-Elixir Gun-Net Turret-Rifle Immobilisation Troll build.
  I also feel that there should be a trait that grants bonus %damage for being at less than 600 range with Rifle as a counterpoint to Scope.
  Hell, I’d even be happy if the Rifle auto-attack was reduced in range to a 600 range, 10 degree conal cleave attack with 3 maximum targets. It would go a long way to harmonise Rifle with the rest of the skills. Make damage scale with decreasing distance and I would finally take it over Pistol/Shield.

• Turrets are still the exclusive purview of 1v1 dueling builds and have little place outside of that in PvE and WvW.
  There’s a lot wrong with Turrets right now, from hitboxes, to AI, to the design flaw that often they’re much better detonated than picked up and preserved. (See: Healing Turret and Rifle Turret, the only 2 worth taking, and NOT worth keeping on the field).
  I think that making the AI prioritise Turrets targeting what you’re hitting is mostly what’s holding them back. Any step to fix Turrets should first implement this to see what balance ramifications this has. Remember that Turret Damage was buffed by a lot a few patches ago.

• I still feel that Gadgets are not worth taking. The changes to Slick Shoes and Rocket Boots were good starts, but as someone who is routinely used to playing with 3+ kits, there is simply way too much utility sacrificed for the investment in a utility slot. Gadgets also remain the only skill category to incorporate zero generalised condition removal outside of Rocket Boots.
  I feel that Engineer as a class has quite enough launches and toolbelt Projectile Finishers already, and would not be averse to Launch Battering Ram (Battering Ram toolbelt) transferring conditions to target struck. PBR is also kind of a crappy Updraft-analogue of the Elementalist, and it’s not helped by Rifle not being sufficiently rewarded for being up close.
  Despite the presence of CDR traits for Gadgets, there still remains very little done for them in the way of traits. I also feel that this is one of the major reasons why Gadgets have been consistently overshadowed by skills like Elixirs and Kits, which have greater utility and synergy in traits. I hope that with the addition of new traits in the future that this will be fixed, but honestly, there are so many junk traits for the Engineer that replacing some of them with Gadget traits (Acidic Elixirs, looking at you) would go a long way.

@Macros:
I ran a 4kit build like this, with Altruism runes and everything, and was contemplating getting the Celestial ascended trinkets along with the amulet. My build was balanced more around Grenadier over Bomb kit, and took Tool Kit over the flame thrower. I think that whilst Celestial Armour has its merit and sacrifices little over, say, Knight’s armour, Celestial trinkets grant too much Vitality, too little Precision and too little Power for the investment of time-gated Quartz crystals.

This is what I eventually settled on after cobbling together everything as I did not have much gold and I wanted a build with acceptable DPS for dungeoning whilst having acceptable survivability in WvW

I used the Karma Armour, 4 runes of Altruism and 2 Runes of Water, Rampagers and Knights Pistol and Shield, and Rampagers trinkets with the Celestial Trinket that I bought with Laurels.

The build could be much, much better balanced and have a higher hybrid DPS ceiling if I replaced all my Karma Armour with all Celestial armour owing to the much greater Critical hit % and Critical Damage % possible; although Toughness and Vitality suffer a little as a result.

As to whether it is worth the time investment of an entire month’s worth of transmuting Quartz and 30 ectos, it’s debatable. I can simply invest in Boon Duration food to stack my Might up to the 25 stacks possible and get similar Effective Power and Effective Condition Damage, so why bother? There comes a point where Min-Maxing simply is not cost effective, especially in my case where I could be spending the time and gold to be levelling and gearing other alts.

Engineer’s build variety is pretty much unrivalled amongst the classes. There comes a certain point in mastering any class when you realise that pretty much most skills and utilities are “worthy” of slotting on your bar. The only “bad” skills are the ones that are outclassed by other skills in the same category.

For Engineer, what you put in slots 6-9 defines how you play, unlike other classes where it is usually weapons and associated traits. Many skills and utilities are also counterintuitive when first picking them up, which doesn’t help when levelling an Engineer blind. Rifle, for example, shines most when used up close. Counterintuitively, Pistol/Shield is the mid-long range favoured weapon while Pistol/Pistol is strong at mid-short ranges.

In terms of traits, Engineer traits are a minefield of uncontested best-in-slots like Incendiary Powder or absolute bombs like Autotool Installation. On the plus side, Engineers aren’t as trait dependant as other classes unlike Mesmer, where what you trait literally defines what you should then slot best in utilities.

In terms of skill floor and skill ceiling, Engineer’s skill floor is quite high, and it is easy to feel like you do no damage or are simply outclassed in other aspects without fully exploiting the mechanics of a skill. You will not do well by auto-attacking with any weapon save for traited Grenades. Even then, there are tons of activations you can slot in between large cooldowns to boost your own damage or survivability or team support. You haven’t played engineer until you have more than 1 kit, that’s for sure.

Engineer’s also one of the few classes that boasts animation and GCD cancelling to a large degree. Before the nerf to Kit refinement, Guanglai Kangyi’s GCD cancelling Kit refinement build boasted one of the highest sustained DPS achievable to the Engineer, although you probably needed a macro mouse or inhuman APM to achieve it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=del9A5Erb40

You can also GCD and animation cancel the following:
Swap to med-kit -> Swap to weapon kit: This bypasses the 1 second kitswap requirement introduced with the Kit Refinement nerf and can even be used while autoattacking. Used commonly to trigger Enhance Performance (Explosives X) with the Sigil of Battle to get 6-9 stacks of Might to empower the next attack. GW2Guru’s Grenadier build should explain it.

Channelled skills on associated kits -> Stow kit: You can channel Flamethrower’s #1 (although why anyone does that is beyond me), press the kit’s slot # again to stow the kit, then use other kits or weapon skills. You can also do the same to Elixir Gun’s Fumigate and Toolkit’s Gear shield and Magnet Pull. This is good to hide burst combos from other players in WvW and PvP, as well as queueing up your next burst skill in your rotation. Look up the “Bo-Bomber” build for a video explaining how to use this trick.

Animation cancelled movement skills: Jump Shot used to have awful aftercast which was remedied by swapping to another kit. You can still do it, but it’s less necessary now. Elixir Gun’s Acid Bomb leap can be cancelled mid flight by spamming “Drop bundle” when you want to land. The dodge at the end of Rocket Boots can be realigned in direction by flicking your camera to the desired direction of your roll before your flight completes.

imaginary.6241:

A little bit OT but so that Posion Dart Volley isn’t just me? I though it happened especially with Coated Bullets but didn’t look into it any further yet.

Poison Dart Volley’s random spread is well known and is just one of the vagaries of the skill. I wouldn’t recommend using it at all unless you’re within 300 or so range just to make sure that more than half the shots hit. Past that range, just stick to Static Shot or the auto-attack. You won’t get much out of it otherwise.

Eh, the thread I started didn’t seem to garner much interest before it fell off the front page.

As a class we are still lacking in actual weapon skill diversity, which is really reinforcing our utter dependance on Kits right now; for everything from using Kits to trigger On Weapon Swap Sigils; to kits as a complete weapon replacement despite having non-scaling damage that will only be exacerbated when Ascended Weapons with their higher damage ranges come in.

Feel free to necro it with your own ideas or even better crosspost them into this newer thread if you think some of the suggestions work.

Right now Engineer is severely lacking in 2 things:

• True retreats: None of our leaps backward grant Evasion frames. Acid bomb from Elixir Gun grants none, neither does Rocket Boots. Overcharged Shot is also a self-Knockback (NOT a Launch – this is a Push backwards) without Evasion frames

• True Gap closers: The only “Gap closer” we have is Jump Shot on Rifle, but the Hang time often precludes any followup skill usage; unlike any other gap closer in the game.

Rocket Boots is in the position to fulfil one of these roles. Personally, having played Elementalist, I firmly believe that Rocket Boots should be a GTAoE true gap closer like Lightning Flash or Mesmer Blink.

Increase the cooldown or remove the soft CC cleanse; but make it a non-instant true gap-closer and the Gadget will finally fill a hole missing from many Engineer builds; which is what Anet really should be looking to do with any Gadget update.

MrForz.1953:

First get it fixed, that will already be one step in the right direction. -.-

I’m not sure if you realise this, but Rocket Boots is actually working as intended. Rocket Boots is a self-inflicted Launch with Condition cleansing triggering After the Launch. It grants no Evade frames.

• This means that if you are Immobilised, you go no-where because you cannot move while Immobilised.
• It means that you can be damaged and CC’ed in mid-air after your Launch because Rocket Boots provides no Evasion frames
• If you have Stability, only the Condition Cleanse and the Stunbreak trigger. You do not go anywhere because you cannot be Launched.

This means that any change to Rocket Boots will not be a bug fix, but a change in the mechanic of how Rocket Boots works entirely.

I just finished watching the guildwars2pro.com 1v1 tournament, casted by Teldo for EU and it is quite interesting because it featured the Turret engineer in particular.

Feel free to skip through a lot of duels but the important one featuring the Turret engineer (Doll Vegas) starts at 32:22 and 38:00. Here you can see the Turret Engineer akittens best: in 1v1. The strong repeatable CC of Net Turret combined with a possible chain knockdown combo with the Rocket Turret Overcharge could completely destroy an opponent caught in a single immobilise out of position. This is where Grackleflint is coming from when he speaks of his home point defender Turret build; where strong CC and clever Turret positioning can obliterate opponents.

You will notice in the second duel that the Engineer takes on a BM Ranger. With the addition of another target and with Turret AI only targetting the closest target you can clearly see that the Ranger had a strong advantage despite playing a build with an amulet that was not optimised for it. (Shaman’s Amulet was banned out). The victories the Engineer scored were once again due to clever positioning and pushing the Ranger into CC range of the Net Turret to win.

The footage shows that Turrets are in a not too poor position right now. Direct damage was certainly not lacking as there was significant direct damage pressure put on the Ranger despite using a Carrion Amulet, not a Soldier’s or Berserker’s.

The weaknesses of Turrets were however, magnified, especially in the Ranger fight. With the addition of a single additional target, Turret presence is essentially negated. Even though the Ranger elected not to kill off the Turrets, he still came out on top because of this.

If you watch the whole tournament (The second half of the VOD is Team Paradigm doing Tournament queues.) you will notice that at the end Teldo comments that it seems like the strongest 1v1 builds right now use a lot of AI. Minions, Turrets, Phantasms (The Phantasm Mesmer was crushing faces in this tourney, and Xeph elected not to play it because he felt it was cheesing), even Rock Dog summons dominate this kind of play. The reason being that having a summon essentially adds another amount of EHP and damage to your build.

Players have to play around either negating that additional damage and not do damage to yourself (more EHP); or try to kite and avoid the damage of the summons on top of your own sources of damage and CC (more damage). You will notice that summons have 2 clear sub-categories: Those with high uptime, but crippling downtime if negated (Turrets, Ranger Pets, Rock Dog from Ogre Runes), and those with low uptime, but are essentially disposable (Mesmer Illusions/Phantasms)

Anet has seen to it that nigh on all summons have sufficient HP and damage to at least be significant in the cases of the “permanent” summons. Herein lies the crux of Turret balance and issues.

It is clear that Anet intended Turrets to be the High uptime, crippling downtime if killed summons. They have strong features on the field especially with Overcharge. But here is where you have a design break.

• Anet clearly did not want Turrets to be as strong as Ranger Pets, nor as controllable; so they leave the Turrets at relatively low base HP and allow no targetting options. Imagine being able to target a 30%-40% uptime, repeating Immobilise – cries of “Nerf” would surface immediately.
• Despite all this, Anet wanted Turrets to still have high uptime as summons, but wanted a similar mechanic to Ranger Pet Attacks. So you now have Overcharge. But you also want these strong attacks to be on a long cooldown to prevent CC chaining abuse. The balancing factor for the strong Overcharges is that they have a firing delay, and foes can move out of range.
• Now you have 2 balancing quandaries: You want Turrets to be a high-uptime summon, and you want them to deal significant damage, but you also don’t want the strong Overcharge mechanics to be too overwhelming.
• Anet then remembered that Engineers actually had a Toolkit and hurriedly designed some Tack-on, very very low uptime skills.

Fast forward 9 months and you only see Engineers taking Turrets in 1v1 PVP tournaments. They are almost completely absent in PVE and WVW, where strong, repeatable cleave and AOE from foes is omnipresent and crushes the design break of “Strong, high uptime, crippling downtime”.

This is why a new paradigm is required. Turrets need to be balanced around “Strong, low uptime, mediocre downtime”.
It worked for Phantasm and Shatter Mesmers. And it may yet work for Engineers.

Engineer is in a good place right now, surprisingly; in PVP and WvW, Engineers see play at all skill levels and all roles. This is something that not even Elementalist can do right now with the nerf to RtL and other aspects of Elementalist sustain.

Our build variety is actually pretty up there and I would say on par with Mesmer; whilst having more versatility. Mesmers have the most builds, but each build is one-note and has its weaknesses. We are one of the few classes, Elementalist aside, that can bring long range (900+) damage, short range (>600) damage, sustain, condi cleanse, and stunbreak in a single build.

Where we fall down is in our traits and our Power Scaling. We are also extremely dependant upon Kits which is really our limiting factor right now. Our kit replacement utilities – Gadgets and Turrets – are almost universally useless with the exception of a few.

Our power scaling seems to have almost been designed with Might stacking in mind, and many skills and utilities like Grenade Kit or Flamethrower really come into their own only within the presence of Might. This is why you see a lot of Engineers running Condition Damage, especially in PvP and WvW where Boon stripping, stealing or corruption can be a liability.

I would actually put Engineer in the middle right now in terms of viability in all 3 arenas of play – PVP, WvW, PvE.

Full Power builds, like Static Discharge, give up a lot of survivability options for less rewarding decrease in Time to Kill (TTK) compared to the ease with which other classes can pull their burst and sustained damage. Condition builds still retain a modicum of Toughness or Vitality (Rabid or Carrion) whilst retaining good condition cleanse.

I also wouldn’t class Thief as a high-impact class in WvW. Thieves melt in zergs to incidental AoE (Stealth does nothing); so they are relegated to roaming. Then again, I haven’t really met any highly skilled Thieves in WvW, so for all I know they could solo a Keep Lord after abusing Infiltrator’s arrow to get past the gate.

Phineas Poe.3018:

3. Boost the base damage of the Flamethrower and Elixir Gun by 15% and re-design Deadly Mixture. Maybe make it so Flame Jet has a Cripple or Acid Bomb ensnares. Make it have some utility than just bolster DPS.

This. There are way, way too many dull %damage traits in the game right now.
%Damage complicates balance without increasing class depth.

Guess which classes have the most %damage traits? Warrior, Thief
Guess which classes have balance that sits on a knife edge? Warrior, Thief
No other two classes have engendered so much pointless discussion as those two classes around balance. Warriors/Thieves do too much/too little damage, etc. etc.

I suppose I wouldn’t really be talking about Engineer specifically in this case, but seriously. % damage is lazy and dull and complicates balance without increasing class depth.

Get rid of the few % damage traits that Engineers have so we can have properly balanced skills.

The next Trait that merits discussion is Inventions IV – Stabilised Armour.
The mechanic is “You take 5% less damage if your Endurance is Full”.

This trait would have merit if we were actually playing a game where Dodging wasn’t actually so important for survival. But we are not. Every aspect of the game from PVP to WVW to PVE is predicated on timely dodging to avoid damage. To then add a trait that discourages that for a mere 5% return on damage reduction is simply absurd.

To get an idea of simply how silly the trait is, consider a boss fight, any boss fight, in PVE that features Red Circles™. With the number of One Shot Red Circles™ in the game, now think about adding 5% EHP to eating Lupicus burst in Arah or Cave Troll Shockwave in AC to the face.

Will 5% EHP actually save you?
The answer is unequivocally no. The same goes for PVP/WVW. Eating an Immobilise, or a Stun, or a Launch to the face that is then followed up by a repeatable burst that 100%s you or forces you to burn utilities is far, far inferior to simply Dodging the burst in the first place. Dodges are every 10 seconds, 5 if you run Vigor. Utilities are 30+ seconds.

There is simply far too much opportunity cost giving up dodging for a mere 5% damage reduction when dodging can avoid 100% of a burst.

Proposed Changes

• It’s not often that I advocate 25% health procs for Engineers because most of them are actually pretty terrible for Engineer and do little to enhance your survival. But I believe that one is in order for Stabilised Armour.
  New Mechanic – Engineer gains 5 seconds of Stability at 25% health.
  This change would finally bring non RNG Stability back to Engineers, even if it is at 25% health. It would also offer an actually competitive choice versus Protective Shield or Cloaking Device. I can see certain Bunker Builds coming back with Stability – Elixir Gun in particular for the Sustain Bunker.

• Instead of making not dodging the mechanic for Stabilised Armour, why not make Dodge part of it?
  New Mechanic – Gain Protection for 3 seconds when your Endurance reaches 0%. 20 second cooldown
  This change would be a secondary “oh kitten” trait to take for Engineers. It also takes up a Major trait slot. Compared to the 2 seconds of Protection on Rangers on Dodge in a Minor trait slot that has no ICD, I feel that this could be a viable alternative to the current state of affairs.

I think that anybody complaining about requiring an Autoattack for Grenades is probably still binding “1” to keyboard rather than Mouse. Yes, the problem then becomes a hardware issue and I don’t think that any sane balance decision should be based on whether or not people have mice with more than the default 2+scroll wheel/clickwheel.

Auto-attack on Grenades is pretty much a luxury change at the moment anyway.

When you look at the number of Junk Traits that engineer suffers from I don’t think that having AA on a skillshot kit should be a #1 Priority.

Engineers need:
1: A pass over the buggy and unused traits.
The only reason you see most Engineers run Grenades is because most everything else takes on too much risk for almost parity in reward. Gadgets are not supported by Traits properly. And Turrets require 60 points of investment for disappointing outcomes. Only Kits and Elixirs Remain – and this is reflected in the builds for Engineer.

2: Revert a certain degree of the Weapon Skill nerfs.
As a class we are way, way too dependant on Kits right now, for Swap Sigils on ICD, whilst having crappy mainhand skills.
Pistol Mainhand #1 was not only crippled in its Power damage early on, but later the max # of bleeds you could stack with it were also crippled. You wouldn’t even use it for conditions unless you were Might stacking or had 100% Condition duration, and even then, Elixir Gun applies a superior Bleed with superior base Power damage.
As for Rifle, Blunderbuss and Overcharged Shot missing at Point Blank range still remain issues since launch; whilst the hang time of Jump Shot curtails the only GTAoE movement skill Engineer has

3: Turrets. Seriously. Everything from lack of stat scaling to borked hitboxes to terrible Toolbelt skills condemns this entire set of utilities to the trash.
Except Healing Turret, but even that is better used and exploded rather than kept on the field.
Either leave them as is and rebalance cooldowns to be predicated on them being Fully Disposable, or make them a legitimate area control tool to be left on the field.
Turret Toolbelts are mostly damage and no utility with punishing cooldowns as well. I’d like to see improvements to the utility of Rifle Turret, Flame Turret, Thumper Turret and Rocket Turret toolblet abilities beyond simple damage.

SD gives up 1500 range and condi impunity with CF409 of the HGH Grenadier; for superior burst at Melee range, without the safety of Stealth or a secondary movement skill to break focus.

It’s certainly safer to run HGH Grenades than it is to run SD.

Rifle is said to be “Bad” because it is a high risk, high reward weapon. The skills randomly missing at Point Blank range don’t help either.

Is SD Rifle bad? No, it’s just different and requires taking on higher risk, rewarding you with lower TTK.

I will say though, that the SOAC Tournament showed the weaknesses of SD rifle far more than it did HGH Grenades. Too often the SD engineer was shut out of the fight from incidental AOE or was shut down by condi pressure, whilst the safety and relative condi impunity of HGH Grenades could shine on the Point Capture format of PVP.

In WVW where fights are a lot more mobile in terms of room to maneuver, the options open up. SD is certainly viable for roaming, but is probably a bad idea to take into ZergvZerg as lack of sustain healing and close range translate to a short lifespan with all the AOE being thrown around. It’s the opposite for HGH Grenadier.

If they ever fix the buggy SD procs for Elixir Gun, Healing Turret, Big Ol Bomb though, I could see a pig disgusting Sitting Duck/Static Discharge hybrid burst happening when comboed with Net Turret.

25 stacks of Vulnerability without Steel Packed Powder or Analyze, then quickly covering with Burn/Confuse/Bleed on top of SD procs could open the way to builds utilising SD beyond Rifle Turret/Toolkit/Utility Goggles.

Kimbald.2697:

MonMalthias.4763:

• Low Health Response System should instead apply Protection for 3-5 seconds if the Engineer is struck below 25% health. This would prolong our death against Power damage. Internal cooldown could be anywhere from 45-60 seconds.
• Low Health Response System instead cleanses 1-2 conditions at 25% health. I like this change better because Inventions is the Turret trait line, and as we all know, Turret builds have pretty poor condition mitigation. With Turrets as they are, every little bit helps. Internal cooldown could be anywhere from 45-60 seconds.

Either of these could work very well.
The condition removal is probably best given it’s already the high toughness trait line.
But I could live with a protection proc, that would be pretty awesome actually.

Condition removal has been a sore spot for Engineers ever since the Kit Refinement nerf also removed 2 Condition cleanses from FT and EG. But Turret Engineers had to struggle with a 60 second CD Condition cleanse that took 10 seconds to activate, and only cleansed 2 conditions anyway; until recently. It completely turned me off Turrets and honestly I still have a hard time fitting them into builds as a result.

I also agree with your assessment that some traits appear poorly designed, with the worst offender at current being Kit Refinement. But I’ll save that for until I get to the Tools line.

Moving on to the Major Traits of the Inventions line:
I actually have fewer criticisms of the Inventions trait line than what would be expected, but that is because some traits here are actually worth taking; just that they are, as you put it Kimbald, “not good enough”. My beefs are primarily with Metal Plating, Stabilized Armour, Power Shoes, Autotool Installation and Rifled Turret Barrels. You will note that I actually dislike even more traits than my assessment of the Explosives trait line, but that is because Turrets and Turret traits are so awful they deserve mention.

I’ll start with Inventions III – Metal Plating.
There is a saying that goes, “You can’t polish a [piece of faecal matter]” and if there is a trait that encapsulates this in GW2’s trait system, it is this one. Well, aside from Necromancer traits. But that would be in a different forum.
Metal Plating reduces damage dealt to Turrets by 30%. It would at first seem like a solid trait to take in a Turret build, until you look at the HPs of Turrets.
Thumper Turret: 11950 (x1.3 = 15535)
Flame Turret: 8960 (x1.3 = 11648 EHP)
Rifle Turret: 7470 (x1.3 = 9711 EHP)
Net Turret: 7470 (x1.3 = 9711 EHP)
Rocket Turret: 7470 (x1.3 = 9711 EHP)
Healing Turret: 5980 (x1.3 = 7774 EHP)

Please note that this is after the Turret Buffs of March and April. Turrets have no player scaling of Toughness or Vitality and have no inherent Power damage reduction through Toughness themselves. I would bring up Ranger Pets, but the mere mention of Bear pets having 26k Health should be sufficient, I think. As it stands, Turrets even with Metal Plating will still die easily to 1 AOE spell; unless you’re Grackleflint.

Proposed Changes

• Honestly, Arenanet should simply rework Turrets to be entirely disposable if they’re going to continue to make them lack player scaling, or even assign them Vitality or Toughness values. Make the Cooldown of turrets begin to tick down when they are placed, then make them self-destruct at the end of the CD, ready to be placed again.

• Metal Plating would therefore require little change. I would still recommend Anet actually assign them proper Vitality and Toughness values like Ranger pets, however. The mechanic of Metal Plating would then actually be useful because there is now a Toughness value to assign a multiplier to.

• Metal Plating should then be consolidated with Autotool Installation to reduce Trait bloat. A full Turret build requires 60 (!!!) points of investment with little return. Consolidation would bring back some Trait flexibility on par with other builds.

• If everything about Turrets is to be left in its current state, then Metal Plating should then instead contribute: 25% of the Player’s Effective HP (i.e. after Toughness and Vitality modifiers) to the total HP of the turret. Turret Engineers should be rocking around ~25-30% damage reduction already if they have 30 points in Inventions. This change would therefore contribute extra Vitality to Turrets, which is sorely needed.

Anyway, I’d like to move on to the Inventions trait line; starting off with the Minor Traits, once again. The Minor traits for the Inventions trait line are: Low Health Response System, Automated Medical Response and Performance Enhancement.

My issues with the Inventions trait line are manifold, but the Minor trait that rankles me is definitely Low Health Response System. It’s kind of just there on the way to Elixir Infused Bombs because let’s be honest, no-one in their right minds would take Rifled Turret Barrels, anyway. On the other hand, I have no beef with Automated Medical Response or Performance Enhancement.

Low Health Response System grants Regeneration for 10 seconds if you are attacked while under 25% health. It sounds reasonable enough but IMO it is even weaker than Evasive Powder Keg. My reasoning as follows:

• Engineer as a class has many, many 25% health procs, most of them bad. This is another one.
• If you’re at 25% health, and taking Power based damage, an extra 130-280 HP/sec (Range of 0 Healing Power – 1200 Healing Power) really isn’t going to do you much good in a world where even the worst of the Auto attacks easily exceeds that.
• If you’re at 25% health, and taking Condition based damage, Regeneration is not going to be sufficient to stop yourself from Burning, Poisoning, or Bleeding out.

The only case where the Regeneration might save you would be if the Foe could only apply 1, maximum of 2 stacks of bleeding, with negligible Power damage accompanying that. And by negligible, I mean a foe hitting you for less than 88 damage per second. The trait might have been good if Regeneration stacked in intensity, and not duration, but that’s for another thread.

Proposed Changes
As Inventions is the “tanking” trait line, it would be far better for the trait to at least prolong your survival against one particular type of incoming damage, especially at such a low threshold of 25%; rather than doing neither.

• Low Health Response System should instead apply Protection for 3-5 seconds if the Engineer is struck below 25% health. This would prolong our death against Power damage. Internal cooldown could be anywhere from 45-60 seconds.
• Low Health Response System instead cleanses 1-2 conditions at 25% health. I like this change better because Inventions is the Turret trait line, and as we all know, Turret builds have pretty poor condition mitigation. With Turrets as they are, every little bit helps. Internal cooldown could be anywhere from 45-60 seconds.

Kimbald.2697:

When there is a healthy discussion between players who find a trait useful, and those who don’t, I think that already says the trait isn’t ‘useless’.
I would reserve the term useless for those traits discussed here already, that we all agree on are extremely weak.

The others might need some work here or there, but aren’t exactly useless.

I add this here because I like the many opinions on these traits, but the discussion is going all directions a bit.
Which doesn’t mean any of those directions isn’t really interesting, but we’re often no longer discussing ‘useless’ but more ‘not strong enough’ or ‘not how I would do it’.

I will say that after the Smoke Bomb nerf, I have virtually seen Autodefense Bomb Dispenser disappear from most posted builds I see. Whilst there is always a component of “not good enough” when discussing traits, there do exist traits that no-one takes, and there are builds that are simply not possible at the moment because of those junk traits.

I started this thread to spur discussion on Junk Traits that no-one uses. You’ll also notice that I mentioned that people should speak up when they did use a trait that I thought useless. This thread is as much a thread aimed at diversifying build possibilities for the Engineer as it is one to encourage more builds by mentioning traits that are under-appreciated. I was made to swallow my words on Shrapnel, for instance.

The next traitline up for discussion is Firearms
I’ll be honest – this may actually be one of the Engineer’s strongest traitlines. It’s clear to me why I would pick any one of the traits in Firearms – each and every single trait has a purpose in a particular build; be it Pistol or Rifle or FT or EG.

My only complaints about Firearms are the persistent bug that occurs with Rifled Barrels that seems to give Rifle Jump Shot an inordinate amount of air time. Other than that, Firearms is a good solid trait line in a profession that seems to suffer from far too many junk traits.

I do still have issues with Pistol auto-attack being nerfed into the ground, both Power wise and Condition Damage wise, as well as Poison Dart Volley missing entirely too much, even at point blank range. But that is more to do with the actual weapon balance and coding than it is to do with Firearms itself.

Raijinn.9065:

Lol no one gonna mention that rangers get protection on dodge with no cooldown, and in the same tier (minor adept) 50% endurance regeneration? We get robbed at every level compared to other classes.

Class by class comparison is hardly a way to go about balance, because each class is supposed to have differentiating traits so they fulfil different design goals. If all classes were given trait parity along the same lines, you’d begin to see class builds that all look startlingly familiar profession to profession.

Engineer can be evasive in a 30 Tools build, but the 50% endurance regeneration is to balance out the Minor traits on the way to 30 Tools: Adrenaline Pump and Enduring Damage. That being said, a Grandmaster, build-defining trait really should do more. In any case, it’s a lot easier to get 100% Swiftness and Vigor through Invigorating Speed and Speedy Kits (10 Alchemy, 10 Tools).

@Guy kittenes:
Penguin.5197 and Berengar.6951 have it. Sigils with a cooldown share ICDs, taking the ICD of whichever proc happened to occur. Running 2 proc sigils is not recommended; whilst running 1 proc sigil and 1 stack sigil, or 1 proc sigil and 1 flat boost sigil are fine.

RE: Shrapnel
The response to this trait was unexpected, but in retrospect it does make sense in the context of the Condition Duration Grenadier. I mainly play with either Power Grenades or Might Stacking; so I use Incendiary Powder as that gives the most bang for my buck (A strong DoT) for the minimum amount of Condition Damage invested in my Hybrid Gear.

With respect to Evasive Powder Keg negating blind, that is indeed useful against Thieves and Mesmers. However, I would still like the double Confusion Proc to be addressed. The recent nerf to Confusion is merely a Band-Aid fix. A full pass of Confusion-Proccing traits and Skills must be done.

Anyway, back to the Explosives trait line.
The last trait I would like to talk about in the Explosives Trait Line is Autodefense Bomb Dispenser.
This trait drops a Smoke Bomb upon being disabled by: stun, daze, knockdown, knockback, launch, float, sink and fear. It has a 60 second Internal Cooldown.

This is an interesting trait to discuss because unlike many of the other traits discussed so far, it actually did have a place in Bomb Kit Bunker builds. However, Smoke Bomb was not only nerfed in terms of the duration of its effect, but also the pulses of Blind it was able to apply. The old Smoke Bomb blinded 4 times over its duration and had a base AOE of 240 units.

The nerfed Smoke Bomb now only blinds twice over its duration and needs to be traited to have an AOE of 240 units.

The ICD of Autodefense Bomb Dispenser was balanced around the old Smoke Bomb, when dropping one essentially negated a melee burst entirely. After the nerf, however, the ICD of 60 seconds makes it no longer as attractive to take over something like Short Fuse in combination with Explosive Powder and Forceful Explosives in a dedicated Bomb build.

As a Grandmaster trait, it was the trait to take for Bomb Kit Bunker. Right now, it is overshadowed by better choices; and that isn’t even getting into the trait bloat of separating Forceful Explosives and Explosive Powder.

There are a few ways to bring it back into prominence:

• Revert the Smoke Bomb Autodefense Bomb Dispenser drops to the pre-nerf smoke bomb, whilst retaining the new, nerfed Smoke Bomb for the Kit proper.
  This will still allow a strong counter-burst GM trait without over-empowering the Bomb Kit.
• Change the mechanic to a new trait: Impact Fusing Bombs now detonate without delay. Big Ol’ Bomb’s detonation delay is halved.
  This is primarily a PVP focused trait to make Bomb kit a true PBAoE. Bomb kit attacks are now impossible to dodge – you must kite away from the AOE. In addition, the BOB detonation delay being halved will change the way you use BOB and it is now an even bigger threat to clear people off points.
• Change the mechanic to a new trait: Flash Pot. Bomb Kit attacks now Blind foes for 2 seconds for every for every fifth Bomb dropped.
  A new spin on the old Smoke Bomb that brings a new dynamic to Bomb Kit Bunker. Simply auto-attacking will get you a Blind every 2.5 seconds, before Smoke Bomb. This will allow Blind-tanking and still offers the counter-burst of the old Smoke Bomb, but you can still take damage if key components of melee burst still connect. Blind uptime of 80% will shut down slowly attacking foes like Hammer Control Warrior.

Just as a comparison of Engineer Weapon choices against other professions;

Warrior: Hammer, Greatsword, Longbow, Rifle, Axe, Sword, Mace, Shield, Warhorn, Harpoon Gun, Spear
Guardian: Hammer, Greatsword, Staff, Mace, Scepter, Sword, Focus, Shield, Torch, Spear, Trident
Ranger: Greatsword, Longbow, Shortbow, Sword, Axe, Dagger, Torch, Warhorn, Harpoon Gun, Spear
Thief: Shortbow, Sword, Dagger, Pistol, Harpoon Gun, Spear
Elementalist: Staff, Scepter, Dagger, Focus, Trident
Mesmer: Greatsword, Staff, Scepter, Sword, Focus, Pistol, Torch, Spear, Trident
Necromancer: Staff, Scepter, Axe, Dagger, Focus, Warhorn, Spear, Trident

Engineer: Rifle, Pistol, Shield, Harpoon Gun.

That’s right. Engineer has the least weapon variety of any profession in the game. This is followed by the Elementalist, then the Thief.

You may argue that Engineers have Kits, and therefore that means that they have more “weapon” skills available to them. If you want to be really pedantic, you could also make the case that the 4 kit engineer not only has 5 weapon skills, but also 20 Kit skills along with 4 Toolbelt skills. But you’re missing one thing: Engineer Kits are utility skills.

As a Utility skill, Kits take up a Utility slot. They offer no scaling off Weapon Damage. In fact, expect Kits to be indirectly weakened by the introduction of Ascended Weapons because of this very fact. Consider also that no kit offers a tool for gap closing – that domain is covered by Rifle only. You could count Elixir Gun’s leap, but that means you have to take Elixir Gun.

Add all this up, and you get a profession that is almost entirely dependant upon ranged attacks. Bomb Kit is PBAoE, but that entails getting to PB (Point blank) range in the first place. Stability is the downfall of Engineers; because we can’t Magnet Pull them. We have plenty of Snares, which would be great if not for the fact that almost every Profession takes a movespeed Signet, and the preponderance for easy snare cleansing and the presence of movement skills that Teleport.

Our one and only movement skill is Jump Shot. It’s also almost as fast as running to a target.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.0|4.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1b.0.1c.0|1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1c.0.1c.0|u378.a2.0.a1.k26|0.0|2c.2e.2v.2r.0|e

Above is the same build with all Karma Vendor Armour and Trinkets. You will notice that the Effective Power is quite low, but that is before factoring in the +10-15% damage from Vulnerability. Effective Power also doesn’t matter too much when you’re using a combination of the highest Base Damage skills in the Engineer Profession. On the other hand, your Effective HP is quite large, and this high EHP will be what allows you to fight outnumbered with bad gear.

For levelling purposes, aim straight for Speedy Kits and Invigorating Speed. Pick up Sitting Duck next, then Forceful Explosives. At Master Level, pick up Explosive Powder, then Static Discharge. Get Short Fuse at Grandmaster Level.

With this sort of build you can take underlevelled Fine and Masterwork gear into Orr with a decent chance of survival, and with a respectable TTK. One would think that fighting outnumbered is a bad idea with this build, but it isn’t, not really. Glue Bomb, Concussion Bomb, Fire Bomb, then Bomb Kit auto-attacks lay waste to multiple mobs. If you’re taking too much damage, lay down a Healing Turret, overcharge, Blast it a few times. Make sure to leave Acid Bomb as your last blast Finisher so you can then also drop Super Elixir on yourself as well for some healing over time; and leap backward if it really is too hot.

The build also works with Pistol/Shield, however, whilst you gain a Blast Finisher and a very strong Blind/Confuse, you also lose 2 of the highest base damage skills the Engineer has with Jump Shot and Blunderbuss. Expect your TTK to increase because you’ll be missing 11 potential stacks of Vulnerability in your skill rotation.

Gizmoitus.7241:

Your problem with your TTK is purely due to not having good or even decent gear. I am full condition Engi and if my TTK was anywhere close to 30s I would cry. You need to at very least get rares and that is at very very least. Exotics would be a massive leap. Greens and blues on any class and your TTK will not improve much.

This, so much. Engineers may very well be one of the most gear-dependant professions given how low our base and scaling values are because we are supposed to chain together long combinations of skills to deal optimum DPS. Warriors on the other hand just need a few %damage traits and Fine or Masterwork gear to deal competitive damage.

If you are going Condition Damage, this gear dependancy is even more important, because if you’re playing without Condition Duration Runes, it becomes significantly more difficult to stack your DOTs up.

There is, however, a better way to get your TTK down whilst remaining relatively gear agnostic and that is through Vulnerability stacking. 1 stack of Vulnerability can increase a Foe’s damage taken by 1%; stacking up to 25% for a boost of extra 25% extra damage taken.
Consider the build below:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.0|4.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|u378.a2.0.a1.k62|0.0|2c.2e.2v.2r.0|e

Using Sitting Duck together with Rifle Net Shot, Jump Shot, Net Turret, Net Attack and Glue Bomb +/- Elixir Gun’s Fumigate, it is possible to put up to 25 stacks of Vulnerability on a target in a single combo; then maintain 10 stacks at a time using Rifle’s Net shot on cooldown and with the Net Turret’s turret attack.

Jump Shot and Blunderbuss of Rifle have very handsome base damage and power scaling even without Power-Centric gear. Jump Shot will land 3-6 stacks of Vulnerability on target to boot. I would recommend holding off on Blunderbuss until 15+ stacks of Vulnerability are on target.

Whilst Rifle skills are on cooldown, switch to Elixir Gun and drop and Acid Bomb on the immobilised target. Spam a kitswap to animation cancel your backwards leap. Acid Bomb is extremely strong and even more so if a target is immobilised on it. Then switch to Bomb Kit and drop the Fire Bomb and the auto attacks. Bomb kit’s auto attack has very solid base damage and very strong power scaling; and Fire Bomb has a strong power damage component that kicks in before Burning damage.

As for the other traits, Static Discharge is just there for extra DPS on initiation.

This build retains strong evasion through Speedy Kits and Invigorating Speed. Strong Condition cleanse through Healing Turret Overcharge and Super Elixir. Strong sustain by offering 2 Water Fields to Blast with Net Turret Detonate (Not recommended if you want your Vulnerability stacks, but in a pinch…), Healing Turret Detonate, Big Ol’ Bomb and Acid Bomb.

Unfortunately, it’s also a single target focused, melee range build. Fortunately, the build retains 30 points in Explosives if you wish to lob Grenades from 1500 range instead. Here the build is relatively safe, although you may wish to swap out Sitting Duck for Precise Sights and Net Turret for Utility Goggles.

Empowering Adrenaline
Yet another disregarded trait in the Explosives Trait Line is Empowering Adrenaline. Offering 5% bonus damage when Endurance is not full, Empowering Adrenaline is once again, largely overshadowed by Incendiary Powder for Bomb Kit and Grenade Kit builds.
If using a less kit-heavy build such as Rifle Control or an SD variant, it would also see relatively little use since Invigorating Speed in Alchemy is so good for those glassy builds.
The trait’s uselessness is compounded by the fact that Engineer as a class is largely reliant upon active defenses for survival; as we lack Boon-based survival through high Protection uptime, or a reliable Stealth mechanic to break focus. Playing a Rifle Build compounds these problems further and emphasises Dodge rationing.

The trait would be decent if Evasive Powder Keg would also be decent; offering bonus damage whilst within your Evade frames to foes. I could see a Bomb Kit build using Empowering Adrenaline, Speedy Kits and Invigorating Speed that is highly Evasive in Melee range, but Evasive Powder Keg is very lacking at the moment. In addition, Endurance for dodges is something to be rationed, and not having a double dodge for a situational increase in damage can be deadly.

(That is, unless you are playing this joke build:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Joke-Build-Dodge-for-Days )

Proposed Changes
Honestly I have no idea how to make Empowering Adrenaline good. The Combat
system of GW2 emphasises player mobility, and careful rationing of Endurance and dodges for player survivability. As with other less used Explosive line traits, it is easily overshadowed by traits that are less situational, and have greater synergy. If Evasive Powder Keg did significant damage, the trait might approach usability in some crazy melee dodge-proc build with Bombs. Unfortunately, Engineer as a class lacks a significant amount of dodge procs and in fact some defensive traits i.e. Stabilised Armour are actually dependent upon not dodging at all.

Now that the Minor Traits in Explosives are done away with, let’s look at some of the Major Traits that don’t see much use.

2 traits in the Explosives line that I rarely see use of are Shrapnel (II) and Empowering Adrenaline (IV).

Shrapnel
Taking up the Adept Major slot, Shrapnel offers a 15% chance to cause 1 stack of Bleeding for 12 seconds from explosions. The chance is unmodified by Critical Chance. As far as Adept level traits go, this would seem like a usable trait. One could easily envision its use in Grenadier builds due to the copious amounts of explosions that result.

Unfortunately, Shrapnel is easily overshadowed by Incendiary Powder. Recent changes to Incendiary Powder have further compounded the issue. Previously, Grenadier Builds would have an ideal Critical Chance % of approximately 40-50%, to keep Burning uptime on target at 66%+. The change to Incendiary Powder, inflicting burning for 4 seconds on 10 second ICD with every critical, has lowered the ideal Critical Chance % threshold and has further emphasised Condition Duration for Condition Damage Grenadier builds. Grenadiers running Incendiary Powder now have 50% Burning uptime on target even without running Condition Duration, at a much lower Critical Chance % requirement.

Further compounding the issue is the presence of Sharpshooter, the Adept Minor Trait in Firearms. Engineers running Rabid/Rampager’s gear can easily stack more bleeds, and for much higher, without sacrificing the slot for Incendiary Powder.

Proposed Changes
To be honest, Shrapnel would be a good trait, if only Bomb Kit builds didn’t depend upon Explosive Powder/Short Fuse and Forceful Explosives. A Bleed stack to cover Burning and Confusion for Condition Damage Bomb Kit users would be nice, if it weren’t for the Sigil of Geomancy. As for Grenadier Builds, Incendiary Powder is just too good to pass up; and Bleed Stacks from Shrapnel Grenade are easy to build up and maintain.

I would like it if perhaps the chance was increased, and made conditional to Bomb Kit – i.e. *Bombs have a 30-50% chance to inflict Bleeding for 12 seconds.* The net effect would be the use of the trait as a cover condition in Condition Damage Bomb Kit builds. The possibility of multiple stacks should also be considered to further incentivise taking a Major Trait slot versus a Sigil of Geomancy.

@Super Riceman:
Acidic Elixirs certainly ranks up there in terms of useless in the Explosives line. It might have seen some use with the HGH Grenadier if it had actually done something aside from 100 damage at level 80 that does not have any scaling whatsoever.

I remember someone on this forum once saying that the most ironic way to buff it was to make it inflict a random condition upon striking a foe within its AOE; so that we could RNG whilst we RNG’d with Elixirs.

As it stands, it’s pretty much the worst trait possible in the Explosives line. There are no builds that it can possibly fit into, and that is ignoring the fact that Elixirs that are thrown usually have a buff attached to its impact; which would probably be a Bad Thing for HGH Engineers to try to use to both buff themselves and damage the enemy.

Proposed Changes

• RNG whilst we RNG: Random Condition inflicted on Foes struck by a Thrown Elixir. This proposal would be pretty flavourful for the Engineer, and adds some offensive utility to the Throw Elixir toolbelt skills. As it stands, though, the presence of Cleaning Formula 409 and HGH makes this trait significantly less attractive.

An oft-discussed option on this forum would be to implement a combo field associated with the flavour of Elixir. Thus:

• Elixir H generates a Water Field for 3 seconds upon impact
• Elixir B generates a Fire Field for 3 seconds upon impact. Alternatives could include the Lightning field (For swiftness).
• Elixir C generates a Light field for 3 seconds upon impact. Alternatives include an Ethereal Field due to the random boons flavour.
• Elixir S generates a Smoke Field for 3 seconds upon impact. Alternatives include an Ethereal Field
• Elixir R already is a Light Field
• Elixir U already RNGs Smoke wall, or Light wall.

As it stands this proposal retains the offensive and defensive capabilities of Tossed Elixirs, whilst adding additional functionality and flavour.

Another proposal could be to implement opposite effects to foes struck by the Elixir.

• Elixir B inflicts Bleed, Weakness and Cripple for 5 seconds to foes struck
• Elixir C corrupts 3 boons into Conditions to foes struck
• Elixir H inflicts damage and Vulnerability to foes struck
• Elixir R inflicts a random condition with every pulse
• Elixir U inflicts Chill and Weakness to foes struck
• Elixir S inflicts Revealed to foes struck

Now you have to think about sacrificing a strong utility thrown at your feet against debilitating your foes. It adds a different dynamic to thrown Elixirs.

@Phineas Poe:
I’ll be honest with you; I have and always had run a Multikit Engineer. So I’m used to swapping kits all the time. And herein lies my bias: Juggernaut encourages me to stay in FT, but my instinct is always to swap away after 2-3 spells. You may have also noticed that I play Elementalist in my signature. So it is safe to say that I am not the best person to talk about FT; playing as if I am staying in that one kit for extended periods of time.

If I slot FT, it is for the control. PBAoE Blind, AOE knockback/projectile destruction and Fire Wall is very handsome. Running P/S, or even Rifle, along with Med Kit, EG, and Grenades, it is impossible to stay in one kit as it will destroy my survivability and my DPS.

You mention Sigil of Strength, which is very much a strong Flamethrower Sigil; although if you want strong crit procs, you really can’t go past Sigil of Fire. I’ll be honest, I don’t play with Sigil of Strength. According to your own guide on FT and EG Strength yields 7 stacks of Might at 45% Boon Duration; whilst Battle would average out about 9.

Given the 10x pulse nature of Strength, then absolutely, FT would be the auto to go for as it would be ideal to proc Strength on ICD. I run Battle, and always have, even when I was running FT Juggernaut. So my Might stacks are slow to build up, but I absolutely require them to come off slowly so I have that free time to spam skills.

You mention “Weakening your Flame Blast or Acid Bomb” in the same vein. Again, I would not be weakening anything if I swap out. Sigil of Battle gives me the time I need to swap to those skills, use them so they do damage at that specific level of Might, then swap back. This was true even when I was playing FT Juggernaut with Sigil of Battle.

With regards to the Double Sigil thing, yes. I myself currently run with P/S due to it’s utility and extra slot. You mention stacking Sigils, however, and swapping weapons at maximum charge. That can also be done with Rifle. I personally prefer running Rifle with FT because when I run Juggernaut FT, I run Sitting Duck and Net Turret to even approach Vulnerability parity with Grenadier builds.

Ultimately our argument comes down to playstyle. You want to run FT like it was designed; using the auto attack to maximise Crit-proc. If you’d read the earlier post on Conditions of the Flamethrower, you’ll have noticed that I mentioned Precise Sights only giving ~4-5 stacks of Vulnerability.

Compare this with the easy 25 stacks on enemy players in WVW and PVE enemies below Champion level, and 12-13 on Champions and Legendaries, without taking Precise Sights at all thanks to Grenadier. If you want Vuln Stacking, you won’t find it with the FT autoattack’s crit proc. You will need Sitting Duck and Rifle/Net turret for something approaching parity; and even then, you’re burning cooldowns whilst the Grenadier is simply burning his auto.

Like I said, FT is in a strange place right now. The way I play it is for its control, as a supplementation to a Multikit build. Below I’ve outlined some of the issues I have with the kit as a primary weapon; although I’m sure most of it has been said already by previous posters.

• FT isn’t in a bad place, but the Auto attack really needs that extra something, like Burning on First pulse, or upping individual pulses damage whilst only pulsing for 5-8 so we don’t kill ourselves with Retaliation. It’s got acceptable DPS, but you’d be patently wrong to say it has parity with Grenades or Bombs; or the kiting ability with Grenades or Bombs.
• As a Mid-range kit, there are no gap closers or openers that come with it, nor is there a reliable anti-kiting tool unlike Freeze Grenade and Glue Bomb.
• Flame Blast is tasty damage, but just like Elementalist Shatterstone, it precludes you from using any other abilities until it can detonate.
• Napalm is technically a very handsome Fire Field, but no FT skills or the Napalm skill itself can induce a foe to stay in it.
• As an FT engineer, you undertake significant risk facing true Melee foes that can bend you over their knee once your other CCs are on CD. High mobility classes like Ranger or Thief can elude your auto attack nigh on forever.

So yes, FT does have issues that hold it back from parity with GK or BK. To say so otherwise would be patently untrue.

Proposed changes
Given how pretty much all of Bomb build supporting traits are in Explosives Major Trait slots, and given how there are 4 traits for only 3 Major Trait slots, I’d like one of the Major Trait slot functionalities moved into the Reserve Mine slot at 15 points.
There are 4 candidates:

• Shrapnel
• Forceful Explosives
• Explosive Powder
• Short Fuse

There was a lot of talk back before Grenade Kit came to the forefront how the AOE for Bomb kit increase from Forceful Explosives was supposed to be baseline given how hard it was to hit foes when their radius was reduced from 240 to 180. This could be one possible change.

Bomb kit users running Condition Damage might appreciate an extra Bleed stack for condition cover with the addition of Shrapnel as a minor trait. The HGH grenadier running Condi damage may also appreciate it. As it stands, it is difficult to stack intense bleeds (i.e. 10+) with either Bomb kit or Grenade Kit, although Grenade Kit comes close if you run 100% Condition Duration gear.

The Power Scaling for Bombs is really, quite handsome already, but really comes into its own with Explosive Powder. Making it a Minor Trait may bring Bomb Kit back to the Forefront, especially with ArenaNet “Looking at Grenades” (Nerfing them) on the horizon. Engineer really needs all Kits to be equally as viable as Grenades and making Explosive Powder a minor Trait is a possible step forward to that end.

Short Fuse as a CDR trait will be unlikely to be considered for a Minor Trait slot; as most traits for Cooldown Reduction come at the Master Level as a Major Trait. I think that CDR as a trait mechanic is a terrible concept anyway, because it increases class DPS without increasing class depth, and compounds class balance issues.

One possible new Minor Trait that could be considered over Reserve Mines (Although let’s be honest, anything is better than Reserve Mines) could be the addition of offensive kiting utility through conditions.
New trait: Daisycutter
Bomb explosions inflict Weakness for 1 second. This decreases the risk Bombardiers take upon themselves by going into melee with Bombs. It’s basically an offensive form of Protection, and serves to weaken kiting as well, by reducing Endurance Regeneration.

• It could also affect Grenades, but with the condi-burst of Grenadier as it stands, having even more Conditions to cover the Burn and Bleeds and Poison seems a bit much.

Having listened to the SOAC podcast, and having heard Amadeus complain about the Junk Traits of the Engineer, I thought I’d start a thread bringing up the junk traits of the Engineer and what changes could bring them back to the forefront.

Now, I understand that there have been multiple threads about the traits of the Engineer, but I’d like to bring up particular traits that no-one takes, in any build, for any reason; be it due to bugs, or the trait mechanic being just plain bad.

I’ll start off with the Explosives line, and go on from there. Feel free to post your own thoughts on traits you dislike; especially if you actually take a trait I don’t like. I’d really like to hear how you fit them into builds.

Starting off with the Minor Traits of the Explosives line;
There is Evasive Powder Keg at Adept Level, and Reserve Mines at Master Level.

Everyone that runs Grenadier has to pick up these useless Minor Traits along the way. As Minor Traits, they are supposed to be a filler between the build-defining Major Traits, but they are also supposed to support an Explosives-based build. As it stands, the Minor Traits suffer from several problems.

Evasive Powder Keg

• Evasive Powder Keg makes you proc Confusion twice upon dodge. There is nothing more annoying than fighting a Glamour/Shatter Mesmer in WvW, getting hit with AOE Glamours, then trying to dodge out of the AOE and taking double Confusion damage.
• The actual Bomb itself does negligible damage and has very, very small AOE. It would be an okay Trait with a Bomb build since you’re in melee range already, but it doesn’t offer any kiting/anti-kiting ability.
• I’m pretty sure Forceful Explosives still decreases its AOE down to something negligible, because I’ve never been able to hit with an Evasive Powder Keg with Forceful Explosives slotted.

Reserve Mines:

• Engineer as a class is replete with 25% health procs, and this is one of them. Whilst it would be nice to have a comeback at 25% health, I’d rather not get there in the first place.
• I somehow take multiple hits of Confusion from Reserve Mines as well. You can test this by going to Southsun Cove and fighting the Reef Drakes. At 25% health, the Confusion tick from casting Reserve Mines often takes me the rest of the way to Downed State.
• The Mine Dispersal is honestly one of the worst possible spells ever designed. The dispersal seems to be governed entirely by RNG. They spread out far and wide with AOEs that do not overlap. The Proximity Detonation never triggers. Worst of all, they deal next to no damage. I’ve seen a Reserve Mine detonate for all of 166 damage. You will not rally off Reserve Mines if you go down.
• For a Minor Trait in a Traitline at Master Level, there really is absolutely no synergy with either Bomb or Grenade builds. It doesn’t support the Conditions of Grenades, and it doesn’t support the Damage of Bombs. It’s just kind of on the way there to Grenadier, or for Forceful Explosions/Short Fuse/Explosive Powder for Bomb builds.

@lorazcyk:
With respect to your opening post, no other profession has as many varied and powerful builds compared to the Mesmer. Yes, each build is relatively one-note, but that’s the nature of the Mesmer Class design for you. You can do every thing, but have to specialise in one particular thing at a time.

With respect to your issues with Engineer – having to go through a full rotation and still not killing a target – that’s probably because you’re used to playing Mesmer, which has a pretty low time to kill (TTK) at level 80, although it struggles at lower levels.
Engineer at level 80 in PVE still has a pretty high TTK unless you’re running Power Rifle with HGH or SD, or Rifle/Grenades.

Where Engineer excels is in sheer options it brings to the Table. Try Koroshi’s Condi Damage WvW build and you will see that every single range from Long range to Melee is covered. Sustain and Condition clear, also. The only place where it falls down is in PVE where Condition damage is capped.

PvP and WvW wise, though, you can achieve pretty low TTK with conditions and condi-burst, and in fact the HGH engineer is getting a lot of attention lately because it works as a fantastic bunker-buster in PVP. Power Engineers in PvP have little condition clear, and little sustain, without the focus-fire breaking ability of Stealth like Thieves. So you have a real dichotomy here – Condi damage for PVP and WVW, and Power for PVE.

You can try the opposite, but it is signiicantly more difficult.

Hebee.8460:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Orrian_Truffle_and_Meat_Stew

Is this a good candidate for stacking might? It reads like it does, but it all depends on your endurance regen. Might work well with 30 into tools for “XII-Adrenal Implant” but Im not sure and able to test currently from work.
Was curious if anyone tested this food out?

I’m pretty sure that Endurance Regeneration buffs take the maximum value out of a given number and do not stack additively. Ergo, if you have Vigor and Adrenal Implant, Endurance Regeneration does not regenerate faster than the 100% maximum bonus afforded by Vigor.

In case you didn’t know, Engineers already have a 100% Endurance Regeneration, if you trait for Tools 6: Speedy Kits and Alchemy 1: Invigorating Speed. There is absolutely no reason to go into Tools 30% unless you’re going for the Toolbelt Recharge rate and the Critical Damage% for Static Discharge Builds. And for SD you wouldn’t even be using Might Stacking.

You also want to be rationing your dodges. To gain 1 stack of Might on Dodge, for something that you can only get once per 10 seconds (or every 5 with perma Vigor) means you’re giving up invulnerability frames for 37 Power and 37 Condition Damage. Engineer has far, far more efficient ways to stack might, both faster, and for longer, and much higher, than relying on dodge procs.

Let’s move on to Power Damage.
Here is where FT is more clear in its purpose. The Traits for FT and the recent changes to FT1 clearly predispose it to Power damage over Condition damage

• The Deadly Mixture trait influences the Power Damage component only. That’s significant, because 15% damage is equal to around 5(?) stacks of Might, I think it was. Correct me if I am wrong please.
• FT1 deals 10% more Power damage to Burning Foes. Ah, so now you’re not using FT for Condition damage, but for the %Damage to foes with a certain condition, Burning.
• FT2 is purely Power Based damage. The other 3 skills are for area control and crowd control.
• The Might stacking of Juggernaut is therefore now used to further boost the Power Damage of the FT

So all this would be fine and dandy until you realise the following:

• The 10x pulses have a 0.14 scaling over 2.25 seconds. You might do the calculation and think, hey, 1.4 is pretty strong. So you can then normalise this to 0.62 per second. But then you can compare this to Hip Shot which has a 0.65 second scaling for a 0.75 second attack – which normalises to 0.86 per second, and Pierces – for a qualitative equivalence of hitting up to 5 enemies stacked up. FT has a target limit of 3 but can (in theory) hit up to 30 targets due to having 10 pulses. Even then, Hip shot isn’t far behind because your damage is more focused. As far as Single Target damage goes, however, if you’re doing auto attacks, you may as well use Rifle over FT.
• Deadly Mixture contributes 15% damage. 1.15*0.62 will yield you 0.713 Power scaling, which is getting closer, but not quite there.
• But wait, you say. If the Target is Burning, don’t I get the 10% damage boost?
  Well, yes. But 0.62 Power Scaling per second + 15% + 10% for the Burning boost still only maximises at 0.775 – lower than the 0.86 Power Scaling for Rifle Hip shot. This is also assuming you can keep the target Burning 100%. Why settle for a lower power scaling, and a conditional damage boost?
• Juggernaut would seem to be the saving grace of the FT, giving 7 stacks of Might for a whopping extra 259 Power before Boon Duration. So you might think, hey, I could use that to make up for bad Power Scaling.
• This is until you realise that you can get in 3-4 Rifle Auto attacks before your 7 Might stacks start to tick down. With Boon Duration, you can get in even more. So your Might Stacking is better used to empower your Rifle Hip Shot, if you can stand the micromanagement

So I think that Auto for Auto, FT is inferior to Rifle’s Hip shot, and I think a previous poster has also derived an inferior FT power scaling compared to Grenade Kit 1.

So where does the FT stand? It can’t do condition damage, and it can’t keep up with Power damage. This is where you look at FT3, 4, and 5. All of them are crowd control abilities (Yes, even FT4, because opponents in WvW still avoid it, even if its damage is negligible).
FT excels in Control. The PBAoE Blind can be used as a soft-stunbreak. The FT4 can be placed at your feet and threaten foes in melee. and the FT3 is a very strong pushback that also destroys projectiles.

But I think nakoda is better qualified for talking about FT control.
Just don’t slot FT and expect it to do damage.

So: for Condition damage:

• FT should probably not be used for its Condition damage, due to unreliable burn on FT1. It is also it is difficult to pin foes down onto FT4 unless you’re running Rifle/Net Turret control.
• Burning also does not stack in intensity, only duration, so your condition damage can only do so much, compared to Bleed stacking (Stacks in intensity)

You could use Flamethrower in theory to run a crit-proc condition build given that Firearms gives Condition damage and Precision, but you’d run into several problems, as outlined below.

• The Minor Traits Sharpshooter and Target the Maimed have synergy, sure. But relying on a comparatively low Crit-proc condition (despite the 10x pulse of FT1) will not allow you to stack bleeds up that high, even with significant crit chance. I’ve only noticed bleed stacks of around maximum of 3, but I’ve not run full Precision gear.
• Running Precise Sights, again, gives you only 3 seconds of Vulnerability for a 50% crit proc. Taken together, even at 70% base crit chance (Full Rampagers Weapons, Armour, Trinkets and 30 points in Firearms), and all 10x pulses of FT1 hitting this would average about 3.5 crits per 2.25 sec channel – average of 4-5 stacks of Vulnerability if using FT1 alone. Even if you added 30% condition duration from Explosives, you would only average 5-7 stacks.
• Compare this with Grenadier where you could stack up ~9 stacks of bleed with Shrapnel Grenade on CD alone. (12 seconds -> 30% condition duration -> 15.6 sec bleed duration). The long duration also lends itself to higher stacks for intensity. Grenadier is actually so good that you really only need the 30 points in Explosives. You have 40 points to spend also, which you can then put into the Crit-proc traits for Firearms.
• I won’t go into the FT vs GK debate because it is clear from the above analysis that FT is clearly not suited for Condition Damage build, nor a Crit-proc Conditions build.

I think what the opening post and most of the FT detractors are getting at is that Flamethrower as it stands is in a pretty strange place right now. It is unreliable at getting through either Condition based, or Power based damage. This applies to PVE, PVP and WVW. I am not saying by any means that FT is a bad kit, just that the typical player expectation of the FT is often much higher than the actual performance.

First let’s look at the Traits.
For Flamethrower you have a pretty significant GM trait in the Firearms Tree, that grants Precision and Condition damage, and that is Juggernaut.

• So immediately a buildcrafter will think, hey, FT would be a pretty good Crit-proc condition Kit.
• Juggernaut in its current incarnation stacks Might over time, average at 7 stacks before Boon/Might duration, and goes up from there depending on how other traits are distributed and Runes. So your instinct is to stay in the kit. Now there’s a problem here, because FT1 is pretty junk. It’s far better to use FT as a kit you swap to for FT2, FT3, FT4, and FT5, and even FT4 is pretty junk unless you’re fighting an immobilised or stationary target. So immediately you have this wierd conflict of interest.
• Fireforged Trigger and Precise Sights are pretty strong candidates in the same traitline. Only there’s a few issues with those traits as well, which I’ll go into later.
• Deadly Mixture requires a 20 point investment into Alchemy. The 20% boon duration will push your Juggernaut stacks up to ~9, so there’s synergy here.
• An absolute must have if you want to use FT as a main kit is Incendiary Powder, which is 10 points into Explosives. Recent nerfs have decreased its total uptime to ~40%, however, so you’re going to need other sources of Burning if you want to have the 10% bonus on FT1
• Now you’ve spent 60 points, and gained: 100 Power, 10% condition duration, 300 precision, 300 condition damage, 200 vitality and 20% boon duration. (And 200 toughness whilst in FT). So you’re decently good at Condition damage and decently tanky. Only, for Condition damage you’re going to have some problems if you’re thinking of relying on FT alone for that.

I’ll continue in another post for message length.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Kamahl.3621:

This would be valid, if Bomb Kit didn’t do the exact same scenario better. I always just swap to BK and change out Shrapnel for larger radii, and mindlessly push 1 on top of my teammates. Hits 5 enemies instead of 3, for more damage, in a full 360 degree spread. Don’t have to turn, or reposition, or anything. Just make sure your bombs keep coming.

Because no PvE bosses require you to reposition yourself, ever. They all allow you to stand there and spam #1 over and over. Totally.

I like the Bomb Kit. I really do. I used it a lot while leveling. But once I hit level 80 and started running dungeons, it became a whole lot less efficient. I think that’s a conclusion most other players have made, because I don’t really see any Engineers use it. When I see a kit Engineer it’s either the Grenade Kit or the Flamethrower.

I have to agree. Bomb Kit is one of the riskiest Kits to run in dungeons, and nigh-on worthless in WvW also, because you take on the risks of being in melee whilst lacking a rapid gap closer or creator within the kit. At least with Flamethrower you have the luxury of having an increased reaction window thanks to a greater range, and Air Blast and Smoke Vent for when things go south. Not that it’s utterly worthless – see Amadeus’s Bomb Kit/Net turret confusion stacking build – but it certainly entails taking on significant risk.