Elixir gun is defiantly one the best options in the game for removing conditions from your team. That said it might be hard to change without making it too good. Moving fumigate’s removal of conditions and putting that on healing mist would probably be the best. Sometimes its awkward to spray your team (you also miss out on applying vulnerability and poison on the monster at times), its certainly easier to simply stand in the middle of your team, even on the move and hit them with healing mist.
I wonder why they changed the Mine Kit to Throw Mine in the first place?
*Overlapped with bomb kit.
*5 blast finishers lead to some crazy stealth stacking back in the day
*Was almost never used outside of blast finisher combos that were too strong
*Required excessive traits in a profession that needs to specialize in most kits for effectiveness to begin with.
*Was just plain awkward to use, since all 5 skills were the same, had no way to tell which mine was which if you placed them and then need to detonate a specific one in the middle of a fight.
Throw mine is better as it gets the knock back and boon removal without traits (you had to trait for both for the mine kit), and still functions largely the same. Thus, it freed up traits letting the devs further improve the class by adding things like incendiary powder.
Anet has stated way back that warriors have troubles with conditions and that they should look to their teammates for assistance in their removal.
Funny how this is still a main roadblock influencing their viability.
I think one of the big missteps in balancing was the broad nerf in various forms of passive condition mitigation. Melandru runes really helped keep warriors in top shape back in the day before they were nerfed.
Move while channeling+ shorter channel → fixed. They can even reduce the damage at that point if they need too.
Pretty much every weapon set a warrior can take is viable in pve. Most are still viable in pvp, it just takes an appropriate approach to using the weapon and adjusting play style/ team comp to take advantage of your build.
Change it from confusion to blind/weakness/or 5 stacks of vulnerability on interrupt and it would be far better.
I would say the current S/d +D/P build is too strong at the moment. Dagger plus the pistol gives you easy access to stealth all the time, Sword and dagger gives you a lot of evasion coupled with high damage.
This is a problem because initiative exist. Most classes are punished by skillful counter-play cause at least if you avoid key skills, they are on cool down. But that isn’t the case with thieves because they don’t have cool downs on their weapon skills, and the cost of said skills isn’t prohibitively high. It doesn’t matter how good someone is at dodging if you just get to throw more attacks anyway.
I would like for more skillful play both with and against thieves that what’s currently in game.
This has been discussed to death – players only like to focus on the positive part of initiative.
Remember, every non thief class gets access to 2 distinct weaponsets (except Ele and Engi, who gain access to even more), each with their own unique cooldowns. Initiative is a shared resource between both a thieves weaponsets. If you go nuts with weapon 1, you can switch to weapon 2 and have fresh CD’s. If a thief goes nuts with weapon 1…weapon 2 is out of juice too.
An additional restriction most don’t recognize is spammable attacks = weaker effects on said attacks. Thieves don’t get KD/KB/Blowback on their weapon skills, nor any buffs on hit. Any stun/immob/daze is extremely short duration. This is because the attack can be spammed – it’s perfectly fair, but something most overlook when hating on the thief class. There are benefits AND costs associated with how initiative works – you can’t kitten about the benefits and ignore the costs when crying for it to be nerfed.
You make it sound like traits such as quick pockets don’t exist, or other ways to fuel initiative. In beta it was far harder to manage because of how slow initiative regen was, its not that hard to make sure you always have enough to get the job done these days, especially with a proper build.
Initiative is a difficult mechanic to balance around and thieves have had a fair share of skills get reworked because of it, even when those skills wouldn’t have been an issue if they were cool down skills. While thieves don’t have extensive access to various control with their attacks they still have access to both good movement effects, as well as evasion. Thief attacks are not weaker than other professions but different than others in what they offer.
I would say the current S/d +D/P build is too strong at the moment. Dagger plus the pistol gives you easy access to stealth all the time, Sword and dagger gives you a lot of evasion coupled with high damage.
This is a problem because initiative exist. Most classes are punished by skillful counter-play cause at least if you avoid key skills, they are on cool down. But that isn’t the case with thieves because they don’t have cool downs on their weapon skills, and the cost of said skills isn’t prohibitively high. It doesn’t matter how good someone is at dodging if you just get to throw more attacks anyway.
I would like for more skillful play both with and against thieves that what’s currently in game.
Warriors should be redesigned IMO. Anet can buff their skills, but if the warrior doesn’t land a hit these buffs are useless.
Exactly my point. Buffs here and there won’t do, class needs a major overhaul, possibly completely changing how it plays. No other class needs to use 2-3 utilities just to land its damage on target, and it should not be acceptable on Warrior either.
I recently changed to Thief and was blown away by the possibilities. All the tools I need to stay on target are built into weapon sets, leaving utilities free to be used for escape tools/team support/even more damage. It’s like I can do twice as much while putting forth half the effort.
So yeah, Warrior needs a rework. There were dozens of ideas over the months Anet could use. 3rd weapon set, Stance dancing similar to ele’s attunements, increasing range of meele skills slightly… Just stop trying to tweak numbers and actually do something that will matter…
The reason Warrior has such a hard time is because they are very well balanced. They lack any sort of overwhelming anything to bring to the table when compared to other professions. In beta Warrior was all about damage, you did a lot of damage, all the time, and it was attached to a fairly rugged body. Warriors are designed around killing first and just being a doom train of pain. Unfortunately since the meta-game in conquest revolves so much around bunkers, which stall out warriors, or heavy area of effect damage, which they lack, they are sub par.
They should try reverting some of the damage nerfs Warrior has gotten over the course of the game, because that’s what the class is about. They don’t have plentiful escapes, strong defensive boons, or gimmicks. Warriors kill to live and they don’t seem to kill enough these days. That’s due to a combination of factors including; limited (though not necessarily bad) condition removal (forcing your team to support you in this aspect), low sustained healing (fine as long as you kill quick enough), no innate defense other than high armor/hp.
People forgot venom share exist.
Thief: because its ok if they dodge, you don’t have to manage cool downs.
Personally I liked thieves back in beta were spam meant you had no initiative. They actually needed to manage skills and their usage like other professions. I understand that hampered pve however.
Here’s a video: “http://youtu.be/LE7T4vq8JoM”
For those thinking “oh you’re bad if you just spam skills through it” consider this; confusion triggers on all skills, including your condition removal, and skills that trigger on dodge roll.
Getting hit with a massive stack of confusion is pretty much a lose/lose for the victim. For example lets say you get hit with it a large stack, dodge to avoid some other large incoming damage, take 4k for dodging, then eat another 4k cause you try to clean it off. Sure you could not do anything, but that means potentially taking more damage from just face tanking a skill, and waiting it out isn’t exactly the best choice either if confusion came bundled with other conditions.
Heck, I remember back when shatter bomb was all the rage, one of the most frustrating things was getting bombed, then almost killing your self from trying to defend yourself.
Fort Aspenwood/ Jade Quarry is something that needs to be recreated in gw2. Not only were they both good objective based modes, they required a surprising amount of strategy and teamwork, while being very causal friendly. If Anet wanted to draw in new blood to pvp, providing something like this would be good because the focus would be mainly on the npc’s, giving new players time to acclimate to combat against other people.
Plus Jade Quarry would get all those LoL people to hush it.
If you’re quick enough you can: overcharge shot →grenade barrage → jump shot.
My thoughts on kits:
Flamethower- flame jet needs more damage (at least 50%), flame blast needs to be self detonated, vent smoke needs to make a small smoke field.
Toolkit- twack needs a shorter animation speed (1/2 or 3/4).
Traits need some consolidation.
Team up with a hammer guardian with “stand your ground!” and watch people crumple to your excessive control.
The self knockback isn’t bad though since you can use it to maintain spacing and avoid things.
I think the issue isn’t directly pacing, but the fact that the over emphasis on extreme builds throw it off. Burst should be a well timed thing you do to seal the deal, not be blowing someone up from full hp to 0 outside of team spike. Conversely bunkers create a need for such high damage because many builds stall out on them. This causes a very binary feel to game play at times that can be very unsatisfying.
In general the more you compensate for a lack of player ability via abilities/ect, the less competitive your game is. Players should be learning the game and it’s mechanics, and the game should do what it can to facilitate that. Things like high power/low skill abilities do the opposite. They give a player the illusion of skill, and they’ll tend to desperately cling to the crutch rather than explore other options. Casual players will, on average be at the mercy of those who put some effort behind their play, and that is balance. The more skilled player will win.
Match-making is far better as a solution. Its like chess, you play people within your rating, and maybe challenge a few out of your league to see something interesting/learn something new.
The could change it so you always get “revealed” when stealth ends or after any attack (even if you miss).
Its an easy metric yes, but that doesn’t mean its good or valuable, especially when evaluating a profession which isn’t made to shove out large amounts of damage constantly. It great for warriors and elementalist however.
Its a hold over from an older era of rpg gaming were damage or healing were the only things that mattered. There is more to the game than just raw damage output over time, and hence I’m baffled why people still get caught up in it. If it is that much of an issue, play axe warrior and sit on things with chop > double chop > triple chop.
Is engineer damage at an acceptable level? Yes it is, if you played during beta 1 you know exactly what dealing no damage was. Do engineers have the highest DPS? no, and they never will. Is that ok? Yes because not all professions fill the same roles the same way. A damage orientated engineer isn’t going to be burning things down like a staff ele or a warrior but they bring other options to the table to support the team.
The only time I really felt stability to be an issue is when you have two guardians maintaining it with [Stand your ground!], that doesn’t hurt engineers specifically, but any control based build. If you’re a hammer guardian you’re still gonna have the same issue, half the time your skills are ineffective cause of all that stability. (On a side note, I think stand your ground is just way too good, thanks to its short cool down. Hallowed ground has a long cool down, and battle standard lost its passive AoE stability.)
I’m fine with engineers not having stability because of all the stun breaking options they get. They can still maintain spacing or avoid damage with their access to blind, immobilize and various movement skills, they also have great access to vigor and swiftness. If you build correctly you’re still hard to catch even if the person can’t be knocked back.
I think kits need a middle ground, they need to be solid on their own, and better when traited. The grenade kit for example is always going to balanced around grenadier and how much it boost the power of that kit. Just make it base line in function, and give a new grandmaster to the explosives line. Obviously there needs some re-balancing in there but the point is that you should be able to splash a kit without feeling like you’re using an inferior version of a kit. This helps pve and pvp.
I would be much rather interested in hearing the developers comment on what they want engineers to be able to do, and how comfortable they feel with their current ability to fill those roles.
I currently think they are in a good spot (minus the bugs), but some traits definitely need replacing. Far better than beta though…
.
Turrets, in general however, are much more viable than a majority of this board seems to be willing to believe.
A lot of forum posters show an “all or nothing” mentality. Like you need to have all turrets, all gadgets, or all kits, ect. You can mix and match and still be effective. There is also the fact people seem to think you should be dropping them every engagement rather than when they would be useful (when you need to hold a position).
I think the cool downs are long because turrets get 2 tool belt skills that are independent of each other, the “stowed” version and “deployed”. It still doesn’t justify having a 90 second cool down on something like [Shockwave] for the thumper turret. Honestly most of them could be reduced to at least 20-30s and not cause any problems while buffing static discharge builds by giving them more options to play with.
Hmm can’t seem to use multiple images to illustrate my point. Please forgive the multiple posts.
Illustrating the FT miss bug.
I moved literally one inch and all four of my next attacks became misses, what’s more is the guy right next to my target didn’t get hit by anything. Usually when they are that close together they get hit by cone attacks.
They need to adjust the hitbox of the flame plume to match the visual effect. Flame jet also needs to be more responsive.
Elixirs are strong when traited for, they are fine. Your changes would make them stupidly overpowered. I think the secret to making turrets more appealing would be to improve the tool belt skills they grant when not deployed. Some are pretty cool but have really long cool downs that don’t match the general power of the skill.
That isn’t to say engineers don’t have their share of issues. But the constant complaint of “I’m an engi and I’m sad because I don’t do excessive amounts of DPS” needs to stop. The profession was not designed to put out huge amounts of dps like some other professions, but there pressure is pretty solid.
I’m curious how you define pressure without DPS. Last I knew, consistent high DPS (especially aoe) was considered good pressure, and applying high burst damage was considered good spiking. From what I can tell, Elementalist is better at applying pressure and support. I’m uncertain about their ability to spike, though.
The deal is people are getting caught up in a metric that has little value in some situations. Damage per second is great when dealing with long drawn out fights, were you can average things together its also great for condition damage, as it does do damage per second. But time to kill or how many hits it takes to kill a target are much more useful for shorter engagements (and pvp). Method of delivery matters as well, is it many small strikes, or a few large packets of damage? I measure pressure as the ability to deal a reasonable amount of damage per strike to the target that results in it’s death and to maintain it for the duration of combat. This means high damage AoE is great pressure in static engagements but worthless for mobile fights.
An example to illustrate my point, homing torpedo fires slow but hits hard. The warrior spear gun fires much faster but does far less damage per shot. Over time the warrior’s weapon is going to fair better for damage over time, but if you’re fighting things like standard monsters that’s largely irrelevant because homing torpedo just kills in far fewer strikes in the same amount of time (and sometimes less). Or a condition build that deals say 1k dps, but takes time to get to that level, vs a vanilla build that does say 700 dps but drops targets in less time because it never has to ramp up, or just hits harder per shot and thus kills faster.
My other issue with DPS is that it’s a metric that isn’t natural. While I’m sure some people keep a mental tally of their DPS and fuss over it, it seems far more intuitive to see how much damage you deal per attack. When looked at it that way, engineer damage is most certainly fine. In pve this means they deal fine with trash, but can fall behind against some bosses. That however frees you up to support the team in other ways, by either boosting teammate damage (combo fields, and stacking vuln with steel packed powder), or improving teammate survivability (elixir R and S are both great for saving lives, elixir gun, using control methods).
I actually had a similar conversation with a friend just the other day about how they should make portal an elite (though I suggested removing time warp, since I feel haste shouldn’t be in the game).
People can only do this if you stand and turret. Since movement is so pivotal to game play if you’re standing around just tossing projectiles you should be constantly working to line up the shot rather than just standing around. You can also manually aim shots (go figure).
The guardian scepter is the most extreme case, as the orbs travel so slow you can actually just run directly away from them and they can’t hit you.
(edited by Numot.3965)
Engineer is a strong example of a difference in how the class is perceived by some players vs. what they actually are in game. Much like rangers (who insist on sitting on nothing but bows all day) there seems to be a vocal base of players that just want things to suit their taste, rather than working with the current class design and giving some constructive feedback.
Engineers are mid range combatants. They have the ability to start a fight at a distance, but they shine at around 600-300 range were they are out of reach of melee and can make the most use of their skills. They can maintain spacing and the tempo of the fight if played properly, and bring a lot of control. They deal damage at a steady constant pace, while their various control mechanisms keep foes from fighting back. Their versatility lies not just in kits, but in skills themselves as many can be used for many purposes. Jumpshot for example can be used as a gap closer, damage dealer, and escape mechanism. Not all of that utility is obvious and going to scream “USE THIS SKILL WHEN X HAPPENS”.
That isn’t to say engineers don’t have their share of issues. But the constant complaint of “I’m an engi and I’m sad because I don’t do excessive amounts of DPS” needs to stop. The profession was not designed to put out huge amounts of dps like some other professions, but there pressure is pretty solid.
Wintersday event, vacation, and holidays. Its like you people forget that the game doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
free tournie requires only 40 people to pop and is region wide. regardless of whatevers goin on you figured there would be 40 friggin people wanting to do tournies during prime time. pvp is borderline dead. hot join is 90% thief/mesmer
Except the pvp base is small so events and situations that draw from that group are going to have a strong effect.
this isn’t any different from a thief who BS out of stealth
Again that is a separate issue that needs to be addressed in a different thread.
The topic here is about mesmer’s current high burst in a specific spec.
I do not get your argument, should we be constantly running extreme setups with huge gaps that in turn attempt to exploit some huge gap that other team is having? So you lose the first fight in the mid, you reconfigure come back and win the second. Then they reconfigure, come back and win the third….etc….is that how it is supposed to go? Sounds lame to me.
Yea.
Queuing up as a full condition team and running into a full anti-condition team is much better.
Guess the guys who randomly queued into a hard counter got outplayed.
If you run a gimic and run into a counter, you deserve that loss. Run balanced team setups so you have something for what you think are going to be prevalent in the tournament.
This isn’t a thread about thief burst, this is a matter of the mesmer burst in question. Is it too high? certainly, since even heavily armed targets can take the same level of damage from a full combo, and its hard to actually counter attack/punish/ avoid. Thief and warrior burst damage is fairly easily avoided or negated, and then can be punished. It is much more difficult to do this to the mesmer’s burst build at the moment.
dude how hard is it too see the illusions running towards you for MW compared to an instant thief steal + BS combo?
When you normally shatter combo its a pointblank shatter and you have the target immobilized. That person is gonna eat your damage most the time. Shatters are fine outside of that instance, except for the fact they are rather awkward to dodge to begin with, since there is a small window to avoid the shatter, or else the illusions chase back into range. You can intentionally use this to things like stagger dazes on people with diversion.
The problem isn’t shatter’s themselves, its a combination of factors that come together for a large spike of hard to avoid damage while being very safe to execute.
This isn’t a thread about thief burst, this is a matter of the mesmer burst in question. Is it too high? certainly, since even heavily armed targets can take the same level of damage from a full combo, and its hard to actually counter attack/punish/ avoid. Thief and warrior burst damage is fairly easily avoided or negated, and then can be punished. It is much more difficult to do this to the mesmer’s burst build at the moment.
Wintersday event, vacation, and holidays. Its like you people forget that the game doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Engineers rely a lot more on outplaying opponents than other professions overall, because they are so control orientated. That’s not to say you don’t benefit from smart plays on other professions, cause you do, but you can brute force kills with most of the other ones. Engineers really don’t. They need to leverage their ability to control the pace and spacing of the fight for their advantage to maintain the upper-hand to be successful. Knowing how to do that is not an easily learned skill.
I find playing engineer to be like blue control in Magic the Gathering, you’ll win, at your own pace, while shutting down chances of victory for your foe.
People need to learn that there is more to the game than just making numbers pop up on the screen.
I would take the rifle over the pistol shield since it will do more damage with all that attack you have. I think explosive powder would be a better choice over Autodefence Bomb Dispenser.
Here is a random build I made: http://tinyurl.com/c72owca
Kite things around with bomb kit, shoot everyone else in the face. Power shoes (yes power shoes) for when you’re not swapping all the time. You can change the traits for grenade kit if you wanted to and rain pain on people if that’s your thing.
I disagree with points 4, 5, and 6.
Engineers can have some impressive survivability when played correctly, both with and without kits. Their damage is fine, but it isn’t bursty like some professions. Engineers do sustained pressure fairly well, both with power builds, or condition builds. I don’t think kits are weak, I do think some are a little awkward to get the most use out of.
Shattered strength is not the main factor in why the dominate build is so dominate. The real question is why didn’t they address the issues that make the current dominate build so over the top.
2nd in versatility, 1st in utility.
Waaaaayyyy back they mentioned something like adding more levels, but the levels don’t do anything (just a number). That was like in beta though. I’m still against that though.
I can maintain 12 stacks of might with just mirror blade. Honestly shattered strength isn’t broken.
If you wanna complain about shatter mesmer, complain about legit issues:
Shatters are very awkward/difficult to dodge, even when not dealing with movement impairing effects. Because illusions run to the target, then shatter while in range, even if the target moves away from their original position. Once in range there is a about a .5 a second to dodge the actual shatter, otherwise they’ll just walk back into range and you’ll take damage. Or you can dodge part of a shatter, but not the whole thing depending on positioning.
Mind wrack, diversion, and cry of frustration all look the same till they pop, then have a unique particle effect…when it’s too late to dodge. This means a target will have to treat each shatter as potentially being life threatening, when you may be able to save your dodge for something more dangerous. Honestly this is probably one of the biggest issues. You can just juke a shatter combo by throwing out cry of frustration or diversion first, then actually blow someone up with mind wrack, and mix it up every time. Your target has to guess what it is, unless you take illusionary persona, in which case you give yourself away. Even then the effects for each shatter are fairly similar, when compared to other skills. While I understand the value of mind games, this over the top since the game is based around recognizing key animations of skills and acting appropriately. A player shouldn’t have to guess which shatter is going to hit them.
The standard shatter combo is very safe, as blurred frenzy provides immunity during the combo, and shatters are instant speed; they cannot be interrupted. The risk taken to execute is low because even if you fizzle you cannot be punished for it thanks to blurr, and escape utility built in via stealth and distortion. Warriors and even thieves can be punished for poorly timed burst, especially in team-play were someone else can interrupt a burst sequence, but you can do nothing to foil a mesmer who blindsided your teammate. The only time to act is prior to the combo actually goes off, and thanks to utilities like decoy a mesmer can just reset the fight and wait again, or muscle though by using timely distortion.
Of any mmo-rpg I’ve played, Gw2 has probably the best pvp. I enjoy the fact my personal skill makes a far larger impact on my performance than my build. You don’t auto lose to certain classes. I don’t need to run some gimmick for effectiveness. Movement and positioning is important, combat feels fluid and dynamic. I’m not dice rolling to hit people.
To those who say there is a shortage of builds, I strongly disagree. While there are many builds, you’ll only ever see a handful represented at the top levels of play due to a combination of raw effectiveness, and people simply copying builds they find on the net because they can’t craft their own. Its a lot like MTG, you have the top 8 decks that make up the tournament meta, but that doesn’t stop you from making anti-meta or meta invariant builds to power through with something unique. Doing so requires knowledge of the game and it’s mechanics that is far deeper than most players put into the game.
If you want more builds, make them and learn to play them. Stop asking for people to give them to you.
Then everything would have been too strong. The issue is people became fixated on the grenade kit so strongly they can’t even see their other options. This change partially forces you to do so if you hadn’t prior or didn’t use grenades.
Requires actual thought and planning, hence under-utilized by most players.
Simple as that.
I think the solution is obvious….
Nerf Engineers.
I will still play mine and get rage tells from killing people in spvp if they do this.
Not a bad as the room I was in that was nothing but thieves and mesmers (both sides). Having to worry about a stealth zerg the whole time is a little unnerving.
(edited by Numot.3965)
Except, engineers still do good damage outside of the grenade kit. People have pointed out a few times that rifle, bomb, and heck even the flamethrower now that we have sigils (though targeting can be buggy) do good damage when built properly. The grenade kit still does solid damage now, just not so much as it used to, and still stacks vulnerability like a champ, improving everyone’s damage.
The key to using elixirs is to use them in general situations were anything you get is useful, or to trait utility into them, or both. Untraited the most useful tosses are probably Toss R, Toss C, Toss S, and then toss U.
If you’re tossing elixirs for a specific effect out of the ones they give you, you’re using them wrong. You must be willing to: accept what you get, and make use out of it. This requires a pretty good deal of thinking on the fly and its not very intuitive. You have to go in using stuff to just benefit you, rather than counting on a specific effect.
A general list of when to toss, when you want a ‘general’ effect.
Toss H- defensive boon (these all are used to offset damage, vigor lets you flat out avoid it, regen helps recover from it, protection mitigates it)
Toss-B combat boon (offensive, all of these are giving your more damage potential, swiftness indirectly through positioning)
Toss- S escape or stomp or combat wild card (not bad for reviving your teammates as well)
Toss-U avoid ranged attacks (if you get veil they can’t target you once you slip through it.)
If they want to buff tosses, I say turn a prior bug into a feature: make toss H and toss B grant 2 random boons instead of one. For the whole month that was the case those 2 abilities were fantastic thanks to boon generation alone.
If they wanna make elixir X actually be useful, change it from being a transformation, to granting you a random Aura for 10-15s, and give it a shorter cool down. The devs get their random kick, the elite has a clear purpose (use it when you’re being attacked). Or make it so your attacks randomly inflict burn, poison, or confusion for a duration. Still random, still powerful.
Random abilities are not bad, random abilities that don’t have an overall theme (opposing situational usage) are cause they really can get something you can’t make any use of. This is why elixir X has been historically terrible. Each transformation has a very different ideal situation and that means that you have a solid chance of just getting something sub par. While on land you can pretty much go “pop this to knock at least one person around” that doesn’t fix the issue of rampage being focused on one target, vs tornado’s group clearing ability. The water version is still bad because whirlpool can flat out kill people who get stuck in it, while plague tickles people and stalls out. While disruption or stall could be the link there, that still doesn’t account for the issue pointed out ages ago. You have one form that supports conditions and one that’s more power oriented.
Despite their quirks, I still use them, do just fine with them, and heck, I have grown to love them and the random nature (save for X, I stay away from that thing, crate forever). This is probably because my build is built around elixirs and boons, so the issues encountered when using them are offset by traits. I would say that they are not the most splash friendly utilities outside of R, C, and S.
Engineers have a lot of versatility and utility at their fingertips at all times compared to any other profession. Nearly every ability they have can be used for several different effects if you’re clever and they never have to worry about locking themselves out of skills like an elementalist does. That is why engineers pay for their versatility somewhat.
Playing an engineer effectively is realizing what you’re capable of and being inventive and creative, even the simplest of skills, like throw mine have many uses behind them. From interrupting key skills, knocking foes away from teammates, positioning enemies into fields, and just plan ol stripping a boon. All of that, in just ONE skill.
Engineers are a very strong profession as well as very adaptable, I love em.