Just curious why you say the FT is seriously underpowered?
I don’t think it’s “seriously” underpowered. This is mainly from a damage point of view it’s not that great. Bad scaling. It simply will not come close in damage as a pure rifle setup or grenadier build.
There are obvious issues such as the limited range and having to constantly make sure your camera angle is in line with the mob properly. The utility abilities are fine. Flame field has very obvious uses. AoE Knockback & AoE Blind can be lifesavers if mobs are piled up on you or someone. #2 Napalm.. it’s great damage if both components hit but you need to manually “aim” it and even then it really only works well on “flat” surfaces curved terrain will give you a lot of obstructions. With FT Autoattack if you manually aim via camera angle you’ll avoid misses commonly associated with the weapon. It can and does have its uses even in WvW it’s great for burning people through gate doors/columns/walls there also applies to PvE allowing you take safety around various objects to avoid damage while still hitting the target. It’s also worth noting that the toolbelt skill Incendiary Ammo you get by having a FT slotted is a very nice burn even without any kind of heavy+condition gear.
As long as you don’t mind quirky camera angles to mitigate lots of “misses” from the flame thrower and lower damage you do pick up some useful abilities. I occasionally run it with my Grenadier/Rifle build and use it for the situational utility.
Well I’m guessing one of the things holding them back from making sigil and weapon stats work on kits is the balance. If they just did it without doing anything. Nades would get even more out of hand.
I’m sure this is largely part of it since there are many kits and a lot of testing to be done with each one if stats/scaling is adjusted. However even if they allow stats from a weapon to come through with a kit equipped that can be compensated for by simply reducing the scaling ratio to an acceptable figure which is still a “time” issue as it needs to be tested. However it’s just conjecture on our parts they haven’t really communicated anything to us. There are definitely a lot of ways to deal with the issue it would just be nice if they spoke with us on it.
It also needs to be kept in mind not everyone is using weapons for damage stats too some people rely on toughness/vitality on weapons as well you can lose literally thousands of HPs switching from Standard Weapon -> Kit and if you’re low on health all ready when that happens it’s not pretty.
Apparently he has. I should test it out. As I’m probably gonna end up some sort of Support Engi.
I would tooltips are deceptive. Seems that the turret still has issues though. I’m not sure if it was mentioned in that thread but the turret periodically applies a water field when it applies it’s aoe regeneration it only lasts for about 0.5s but if you detonate that turret during this time you get “Area Healing” water field combo heals others pretty well even with no +healing.
Where those confirmed or was he just basing those off the tooltip changes? I know a lot of abilities reflected the +healing in the tooltip but during activation it was still baseline. I’m pretty sure the turret is still borked in that regard too.
I tested it in the mist. Looks like its healing for the impact heal amount when it is pulsing instead of the pulse heal amount. Looking at AN track record wont be fixed anytime soon lol
Who knows it may have even been an intentional bandaid to compensate with the fact the pulse never scaled with +healing which may be a larger issue to solve. It’s nice none the less, for now.
The damage reduction is only in spvp/tpvp and it was necessary it’s all ready the highest sustained damage ability in the game it has an inflated scaling ratio to compensate for the lack of weapon stats/sigil.
Grenades now travel faster to hit their targets it is very noticeable and grenade barrage now properly benefits from traits. Both of which directly increase our damage output.
Ahh, but how many of us do you think will remember to pull out our wallets?
Hopefully a lot unless you don’t want to support an MMO without a monthly fee.
Like the store in other ncsoft published titles such as the original lineage the store actually nets far more income than the monthly fee. We have the gem store here same concept built around the same model. They have a stream of income produced by the game its a different business model. So in reality there is no excuse to have to purchase an expansion for bug fixes.
You are right, but why didn’t they do some extra beta weekend events or stress test to fix some major bugs.
I agree but sometimes the producers(anet) are slaves to their publishers(ncsoft) they’re given a date they have to release with little to no flexibility.
Traits for all classes should have been fixed before anything else imho. Everything after that is icing on the cake so to speak. Poor kit scaling is my biggest complaint that 1 thing is pigeon-holing the damage specs.
Agreed, but their priorities are a bit skewed at the moment, and their methods of balancing is questionable at least.
When its blatantly obvious that some classes get far more attention for polish than others, and those classes are the ones that are already rather polished it begs the question how competent the development team actually is.
I can’t argue with that statement in the least. However from a business point of view If you had 2 choices at any given moment based on your current man power and resources available you could make 95% of your customers happier or make 5% of your customers happier which would you choose?
All be I’m sure we’re much smaller than 5%. There are not a lot of engineers we’re such a minority that I’m sure that is to some level a contributing factor to us being lower on the priority list.
It’s all purely conjecture but even if the above were completely true I couldn’t personally argue with that logic since we’re not being “completely” ignored and have a couple builds that work well enough. Does it make me happy though? Hell no.
I don’t think that is quite what he intended to mean. It’s just do to the lack of the application of complete stats + sigil the scaling on weapon kits from a “damage” point of view is very poor they scale horribly and are not competitive with other abilities or classes attacks. The only kit from a damage point of view that scales well enough to be competitive is grenades(even then you almost have to go full glass to be competitive dmg with it). Everything else pales in comparison to other classes and weapon choices again from purely a damage point of a view. The utility in most kits is fine. All be it some of the healing abilities do not scale at all with +healing the “tooltip” changes and shows increased values but when activated it’s still baseline.
There was a statement made by ANet shortly after the game was released that they were looking into how to implement weapon stats/sigil with kits. It’s fundamentally a major code issue since they are not classified as weapons. They got around this issue with elementalists by adding stats to their conjured bundles in order to fix the exact same scaling issue we’re having in this patch. There are inflated ratios on scaling for things like the Elixir gun which is higher than the pistol which I assume is there to compensate for the lack of the stats but its such a small increase that it doesn’t even remotely come close to compensating for it. If they upped the scaling ratio on the damage for all kits that would probably be enough imho for the time being .
It certainly needs to be addressed and as new gear comes out and weapon stats further increase the larger the disparity is going to become until it’s changed and all thats going to do is continue to pigeon-hole builds for the class.
I have not once seen my healing turret remove anyone’s conditions – even while standing right on top of it. Can anyone else confirm this?
After you summon your healing turret it’s the triggered ability it has just press 6 after your turret is out and stand next to it. It’s a very small radius and there seems to be a delay before it’s triggered(turret rotates and sprays a few seconds after the ability is triggered) but it certainly does remove a condition. The delay seems like it’s “purposely” coded in kind of like the delay in jump shot.. both delays need to be removed. That or it’s possibly caused by a function where it executes the ability only after an animation is completed. If thats the case adjusting that would fix a lot of issues by adjusting that function or fixing the timing on the animation.
i understand the stacking issue only too well on large scale events – but if your doing high condition damage then you will get in that stack
i dont know anyone that agrees with the way condition damage works re max stack and the simplest fix would be that c/d does d/d when the stack is maxed
i’m merely pointing out (having watched lots of fights from lots of hilltops) that (some) people, when attacked by multiple mobs, tend to target and kill one mob at a time( the mobs got 10+ bleed stacks very little health – the bleeds would be enough to kill it, but they’re still shooting at it- those “hits” could of been used on a new mob,
and im not saying that just one thing or one way is right cos its all situational – just when i’m solo ori farming in orr i tag mobs and end up with a nice group (of mobs) around me i tend to dot then swap target or burn n swap as i say
In those types of situations yes it can work and I understand what you’re saying in regards to fire and forget on conditions once stacked but it’s really unrealistic due to the psychology of most players they’ll keep at it until the mob is dead. As any kind of condition build you have to deal with that and it limits your contribution as a side effect(not an issue for a solo player though).
Yes, you can still get into those stacks large scale when they’re approaching max but it’s usually only going to be 1-3 stacks typically which isn’t going to be that effective with damage contribution wise when you could still be doing potentially 3k+ damage every 1s that is an insane amount of disparity between grenade/rifle vs. other builds.
I just want to see the other specs more viable I’d like to be able to rely on pistols/conditions and other kits for similar damage. Unfortunately even a lot of engineers are not even aware of the level of disparity between some builds or classes and just accept things as they are which is probably why we’re getting pushed down on the priority list those that whine the loudest on these forums seem to get updated and fixed more frequently.
I disagree with the title. I ran almost nothing but Tool Kit for the last 4 hours in WvW and it was amazing. The new pull almost makes me feel OP.
You’re now capable of doing something other classes in the game could do all ready and it makes you feel OP. Do you comprehend the level of disparity between engineers and other classes now?
I absolutely agree. People always tell me “be patient, it’s an MMO, be patient they are busy”.
Is till plan to be patient. Being a programmer by trade and having directly worked in this industry I know for a fact how much of a pain in the kitten even a seemingly minor change can be. With that said I think that they’re failing to do proper communication on the matter and its that lack of communication and acknowledgement which is making people unhappy and distraught.
I’d be happy as long as they posted something like “we acknowledge the problems with A,B,C,D”, “Fixes are in the work some require major code changes and may take longer than others” etc.. Wouldn’t take long and they probably all ready have these lists compiled.
Even some things that may seem simple may require code to be change that effects multiple things i.e. some form of dependency or function that is shared between classes/npcs if thats the case it can turn into a major time consuming change to fix 1 seemingly minor issue. That is simply the way it is when it comes to any kind of complex code even if you’re keeping everything modular. If they communicated things like this properly people would not get as distraught.
Does this note from the Patch Notes affect Super Elixir?
•Many skills, items, and traits were applying healing to an infinite amount of targets and have now been limited to 5 targets.
From what I’ve seen it does but it really doesn’t make it any less useful considering the small radius it has but people are constantly moving in and out of the field as it is so it won’t make much difference.
being a fan of dot (and healing) has taught me not to look for/at the big numbers as its the over time bit that counts. . put conditions on a target and then swap targets – no need to waste extra energy attacking that 1st mob as the over time damage will kill it . . .of course thats only pve as players are so much more intelligent than computer mobs lmao
Even in PvE unless it’s a boss type mob your conditions duration isn’t even going to do optimal damage in a bursty group. Then you have issues with stacking lets say you’re a condition build an then you have a condition thief/war in the group. The thief alone is maintaining 15stacks of his own bleed easily and more.. there is a maximum of 25 allowed stacks the warrior could potentially put up close to that amount too.. now you have 25 stacks all ready any bleed damage you do isn’t happening at all.
Burning is a different clusterkitten all together burning will do its damage in order of application. Additional burning applications have it’s duration stacked on to the end by extending the duration so there is a chance that the damage you’re contributing there may not hit at all if you’re with another class with higher condition damage + condition duration in the group. The entire design for condition stacking/duration in the game needs to be revamped imho. Works great solo, small-scale though and if you’re the only condition build in your group its not “that bad” but still inferior to all other options from a purely damage point of view.
i disagree having run dungeons and small group (champion)events using kits (f/t and e/g) and p/p people are surprised and grateful for the extra’s. i find myself pairing up with a thief and we duo champs very easily – im not sure if it would be as easy with grenades but worth trying after the weekend event
In niche situations everything can be potentially useful to some extent. If you’re making it work it’s simply because you’re a good player knowing when to use your utility at the right time. They’re still by far “damaged goods” that need to be re-tuned. There are some nice control options and utility in the kits that are not effected by scaling issues so much and thats usually only 1 or 2 buttons out of that kit/weapon set, those abilities are fine.
Why do you chose to assume they do not care? Sounds kind of a tantrum like attitude to me. Find me one MMO without similar issues in it. You won’t. By your claim, no devs in any MMO care. Its is more likely that they are having a coding issue not syncing up.
I think a lot of the class feel that they are given a much lower priority than others even if that is “possibly” not the case. We don’t even find out about our changes, updates, bug confirmations etc.. via our forums with official posts like pretty much every other class in the game does. Part of the problem the class design team that tests/comes up with the changes is 2 people. Which realistically when you consider that they actually get a lot done. However they still need to address and communicate things better.
^Yeah, it’s painfully obvious how bad the scaling is on the kits. The current scaling on them does not even come remotely close to making up for the loss in stats. It’s exactly why everyone is forced into rifle/grenade builds(in PvE) if you play anything else you’re holding others back unless you’re solo. If you are not that you’re not doing even half your potential damage output. Which is sad because the class has so much variety thankfully in t/spvp we can put a little bit more of that variety to use though.
I’m really surprised that we never see any real information here. We get ANet posts in other class forums and we always end up hearing about things for our class in other forums or through 3rd party screenshots from people who ran into anet employees in game that have said something about the class. Good luck on any official responses in here.
It’s like they’re intentionally trying to not communicate with engineers. I know that is probably not the case but that is exactly how it feels.
The poor kit scaling / lack of weapon stats is what has pigeon-holed everyone into rifle / grenade builds. All other configurations absolutely pale in comparison and do almost less than half the damage in some cases regardless of how fun they may be you’re basically slowing down everyone else. Our supposed “support” is largely unnecessary and people that play it are largely playing it solely for the aesthetic or the idea of being that. Not to mention all the broken traits we’ve had since day 1 that have not been addressed or even commented on by ANet at all yet they do so in other class forums.
I love the class. It’s fun.. I think rifle/grenade builds are by large fine at the moment. However there is so much potential outside of that spec that really needs to get looked into. Anything else is a joke. Condition builds are good solo but in group situations they’re worthless because of stacking limitations. Yet they seem to have spent so much time on largely unnecessary low priority changes in this patch for engineers.
Currently engineer gear does not apply stats to engineer kits
Kits receive stats.Just not from weapons or sigils. With that said the scaling that the kits “do” have based on stats could still be vastly improved. Not having the stats from weapons/sigils is indeed quite a loss thats a lot of power/precision/crit etc.. (or whatever your prefered stats) that you are not getting.
What about rune of the engineer? Gives decent toughness+vit without sacrificing damage from the dmg bonus while holding a kit.
I’d say your choice really depends on the play style and what it is you’re trying to accomplish. I’m mostly power/precision and crit bonus with some toughness/vitality mixed in a bit. I swap out a lot situational gear too. So if you can be more specific on your play style and what it is you’re trying accomplish as your engineer we can give everyone much better feedback.
I always kind of felt like this should be natural to the class as well. Kind of how you can use the toolkit to repair turrets. Apply the same thing to siege weapons but require supply.
With perma swiftness available to run the supplies and this it could be useful in a number of situations and especially due to the supply requirement I don’t see this being unbalancing at all. Especially considering everyone can repair walls/gates etc.. as it is.
I only just now realised how painful it must be for people that have to use WASD and spam 1 at the same time.
I don’t know what I’d do without my movement thumbstick
Ya thats exactly why I set it up to be a mouse click. I can easily understand why people hate and can’t stand grenades when they’re stuck playing that way especially if they’re playing without auto cast ground targeting. Just a minor change via mouse click or gaming pad makes it so effective even against moving targets.
What I meant to say was that I don’t see this disparity on the pvp side of things comparing a rifle warrior and a rifle engineer. They are definitely different given the range differential, but the burst potential is there for both (although more involved for the engineer), yet you have more options for control as an engineer.
If you say it that way yes I agree. Engineers have far more survivability than the OP gives them credit for that extra HP and Armor really means next to nothing vs. the utility at the engineers disposal.
I can’t agree 100% on the burst potential though killshot can do 14-24k+(depending on gear and armor of target) on a 10s cooldown from 1500 range as long as you’re in a situation that lets you maintain constant adrenaline levels. To achieve anything similar it would require the combination of jump shot in melee range+grenade barrage and maybe a blunderbuss if they’re dumb enough to still be in range and with the traits for lightning on toolbet skill use and you’re looking at longer cooldowns and higher risk potential. Not that it bothers me mind you the warrior has to give up A LOT to be able to achieve that and killshot is easily avoided if you see the war taking aim and at least on the higher end pve mobs will evade it too.
I agree with you it doesn’t to me either. However that is just how it is they designed it that way it has been that way since the beta builds and will probably continue to be like that it’s a matter of accepting it.
Kill shot is a bit insane for 100% glass builds I honestly would not be surprised if it gets nerfed at some point. To be an effective rifle warrior going 100% glass is really your only choice and the utility skills and lack of cc that setup has makes you very dead if anything jumps you before you jump them even in pve engineers still have the advantage.
Despite the heavier armor / base hp comparatively to a warrior a engineer has more tools at it’s disposal for survival even with glass grenadier setups. Micromanaging trait swaps and changing kit utilities between fights to achieve this can be annoying at times but thats part of being an engineer imho.
I’d spec in to the burn on crit and stack some precision gear even at your level. It’ll help if you’re using pistols instead of rifle using elixir gun kit may help if you can get it just for the #2 low cooldown cripple and #4 makes a nice little scape mechanism as well. Other than that dodging and keeping distance works well. Healing turret can actually help as well to get mobs attention and keep them off you for a short while at that level.
If you want easy mode kite with bomb kit for melee mobs just run in circles and drops bombs it’ll kill any melee easily.
Csaj im sorry but when i use grenades i only get 200 damage per hit.
Are you 80? Are you exotic geared right for high dmg? Mine hit for 1k+ a piece most of the time with a hybrid gear setup I’m sure they hit even harder for 100% glass. My grenade barrage does crazy amounts of dmg if it hits properly as well far more than what you’re describing.
Other classes that hit that hard with autoattacks and other cooldown abilities are going to be heavily berserker geared as it is.
I’m not sure what you’re doing wrong or thinking but grenadier full glass is highest sustained damage in the game. As there is no cooldown on it’s not-so-auto-attack. There are definitely classes and builds with higher potential burst in a single cooldown but the games mechanics do not revolve around that.
The Warrior Sniper Versus Engineer Sniper is peculiar on both sides of this fence.
I guess I’m just not seeing it on the pvp side of things.
You won’t see to many warrior rifle builds in spvp/tpvp but they do show up and kill shot hitting for up to 20k+ dmg in 1 shot is brutal (i’ve seen 24k+ on light armor glass). In WvW you’ll see a lot of sniper warriors though and their attacks pierce including kill shot so it’s a bit more common there than t/spvp. With that said good ones in t/spvp do great as well it’s just not as popular as the easier to play faceroll builds.
Engineers don’t make good sniper setups especially since their rifle skills are more midrange. However engineers still have the highest sustained potential dmg in the game but it’s very gimmicky and given the fact that kits scale poorly the better the gear that comes out the further it’ll all fall behind especially with the new ascended geared coming out unless some engineer scaling issues are addressed in that patch too.
Kits “do receive stats” but not from “weapons or sigils” even still what they do receive from base stats is poor from a scaling point of view.
With all that said engineer still has a lot to offer imho and can still be tanky with good damage(for now) i realize that there is no holy trinity or class specific rolls “intended” for the game but engineers definitely fit the roll of flexible utility+dmg more so than most other classes.
There are definitely some issues and I’m sure they will be addressed at some point but engineer is definitely not the “sniper” class if that’s what you want i wish engineers were as it feels very out of place on a heavy armor warrior but that’s just how it is. .
I agree 100% it would be nice if there was some form of visual progression.
On that note though I wish kits/turrets were themed different for Asura as a race all together given their back-story, superior technology, and sense of superiority over all races I just can’t see an Asura engineer “depending” on char & human technology. It feels so out of place and kills the immersion.
this also works with ft aa, it hits in the direction of camera not direction character is facing so for example if you are getting miss miss miss on a inanimate object trying adjusting your camera angle to look down, no more miss miss miss
^This 1000 times over. Manual targeting fixes most of the problems people associate with the Flamethrower skills. It’s extremely competitive damage geared properly and due to the stream of hits it triggers the “on crit” traits non stop. Excellent weapon very underrated and f`n love it in WvW during tower/keep defenses oh the joys of shooting the flamethrower through the gate and watching the kids melt. It rains loot bags.
However if you find yourself in 1v1 situations a lot in WvW you’re doing it wrong_ unless you’re just roaming for fun and don’t care about WvW in general.
Soloing camps, picking off reinforcements?
Engineers are one of the best roamers/hit and run objective takers in the game. You can be helpful in WvW outside of zerging doors down.
I absolutely agree 100% I love doing it too however 9/10 times when doing this it’s never 1v1. At least the servers we play against it’s busy 24/7 small groups roam between the camps all the time and 1v1 rarely comes up. It’s usually groups of 2-5 people. So if you’re riding alone completely solo against equal level geared 80s in exotics you’re going to end up being a stain on the ground. If they’re up-leveled you can probably mow them down especially if they stay close together.. but its generally always smarter to roam with at least 1 other to increase chances at success especially if you plan on contributing.
I too rarely ever miss with the flamethrower when I use it and I do use it quite frequently. With that said I almost never use it vs 1 target unless i’m using the knockback or the flame field combo for someone else to apply burning w/projectiles. I typically will only in situations where the cone based aoe component comes to good use. Since 1v1 scaling on rifle and grenades is going to get more mileage. _However if you find yourself in 1v1 situations a lot in WvW you’re doing it wrong_ unless you’re just roaming for fun and don’t care about WvW in general.
Proper use of combo fields makes the world go round in WvW it makes a huge difference for you and your teammates and engineers have access to many. Smoke fields are god since attacks that come “through” them from the enemy will miss i.e. smoke bomb and smoke screen from flame turret. Not be confused with the smoke+projectile combo blind its different.
In tower/castle assaults and defenses grenades are going to be your best bet for breaking siege on walls and keeping players scattered. Grenades also work fantastic against moving single targets that dodge.. yes I said that. It takes skill and timing but there is absolutely no issues with it vs. single target you have plenty of ways to slow targets down and stop them in their tracks to burst with barrage and squeeze a jumpshot in as well.
Preferences->Combat->Fast-Cast Ground Targeting makes life easier for grenades. Instantly casts under your mouse cursor.
For us to help you effectively you need to be a little bit more specific about what it is “you want to do, what are you trying to acomplish” what is your play style in general… Are you level 80? Being 80 in WvW w/proper gear is important.
Bottom line: Engineers are effective and extremely strong in terms of pure damage, support, and defense. Very flexible and contribute a lot to teams and work great solo roaming too.
Grenade kit defending in WvW as asura . i am not sure if it is because the height of profession , but when i am defending on top of wall in WvW , and ground targeting with grenades i hit the lip of wall or blocked by edge . so i have to get on very edge of wall to toss any down, and get yanked off wall by pulls. if the ground target is green shouldn’t the grenade hit said target? i am not sure if its just a asura thing, but seems like taller profession have little issue . In my eyes its a bug, grenades should have more of a arch to clear things like the edges on walls in WvW.
Asura engineers are royally screwed because of this yes because of our height a lot of time the point from which our grenades are thrown hit the edges of the walls and such in front of us so we have to scoot up to the absolute edge and jump on top of corners to throw grenades which is usually complete suicide in a defense/assault. ALL OTHER RACES as engineer do not have this problem at all.
I have absolutely no interest in re-leveling from 0 with another race just to fix this either. Huge over site that punishes your game play and effectiveness do to race selection.
@CriSPeH Skill #2 is actually good for interrupting abilities this includes a stomp in pvp even if they’re standing on your head it interrupts. In PvE if you’re downed and most of your group is dead and there are multiple mobs on 1 person you can pull one away to help not that it makes a huge difference but it does have some level of value it could use a shorter cooldown imho though
As Cheyenne stated #2 doesn’t work some times this is usually an issue with terrain if the area you’re in is even slightly curved it fails due to obstruction even if it’s clear line of site.
The problem here is that condition scaling and condition stacking limitations are still the primary problem if that wasn’t the case this idea wouldn’t have any merit. The condition system as a whole needs to be reworked first imho. While stacking limitations in small scale doesn’t come up to often unless you have multiple bleed/condition classes the fact that ANet assumed that it would be a non-issue by capping at 25 is just silly.
I have no idea why people complain about PvE with Mesmer. Perhaps its because I run a shatter build and mainly use GS/Staff(for CDs) but never once have i thought I didn’t do enough damage or kill things quick enough and I take little to no damage most of the time even being “glass”. Stack that power & precision even at low levels, dodge strategically and use your shatter abilities!
In real pvp situations in s/tpvp if you even get the chance to use #3 you’re playing against incredibly horrible people. Even in PvE the cooldown it has before it’s use makes it hardly used as well. The interrupt on #2 can be useful sometimes but overall our downed state is garbage in it’s current state. Making it so #3 has no immediate cool-down and cut the reuse time in half would be a decent start.
