Guild Wars 2

steelheart.7386:

The problem is that for some reason the higher rated players in NA play less trying to protect there rating versus there EU counterparts. I don’t think the raw numbers of top player are significantly less.

But there are more EU players in legendary/platinum than there are in NA. The top 250 in EU finishes out at 1853. At the time of my writing this post, the NA top 250 finishes out at 1695.

https://gw2armory.com/leaderboards/pvp/na
https://gw2armory.com/leaderboards/pvp/eu

Ratings are completely arbitrary when taken out of the context. You can’t, for example, say that someone that’s 1850 in EU is actually better than someone that’s 1750 in NA, as a given rating is meaningful only when compared to other ratings relative to the same data set (e.g., an 1850 EU player is better than a 1750 EU player).

It does, however, represent that there are more players in EU with a higher rating than those in NA, which snowballs a lot of the problems NA players deal with that EU players might not.

Simply put, it is much harder to actually stay in legendary in NA than it is in EU when all other aspects of glicko are considered (i.e., team rating deviations), and this makes people like Kratos work a lot harder than they actually should to stay there.

The fact that today’s mass-purge on the leaderboard resulted in the top 250 ending under 1700 shows just how thin the population is at the top, which makes matchmaking so difficult to be accurate and all the more punishing.

Evan Lesh.3295:

If point gains were arbitrary as you describe, then there would be no upper bound on MMR, and you would see people who play a lot with 10k rating at the top of the leaderboard. This is not accurate and just takes us back to seasons 1-4.

The reason you are gaining very little is because you are expected to win all those matches and your rating is already accurate. When you lose a match you are expected to win, you take a decent hit. Your history shows that you can easily maintain your rating, which is good. If you’re already one of the best players, why do you need your rating to continually rise?

It’s simply too difficult for most people to actually stay in legendary and even platinum, which exacerbates population problems even more and just encourages people to AFK for days and forcibly decay their accounts for larger gains. I think you’re doing the right thing to place an upper bound on the leaderboard, but it just feels like the matchmaker is trying to force a bell curve too heavily.

No one is questioning “why” the scrapper line lacks damage. Everyone knows it’s a PvP-oriented specialization, and everyone knows it’s a defense-oriented trait line.

It’s not up to me that we take a DPS-over-all approach, but when raid bosses have enrage timers, it’s the number one determining factor of a raid group’s success that everyone maximizes their damage output while running the bare minimum level of support needed for people to stay alive and maintain group buffs.

In truth, the scrapper just doesn’t compare to the supportive elements of the chronomancer, PS warrior, or druid … so there’s just not much reason to take it.

In more relaxed environments like fractals, you’re welcome to take the scrapper specialization … but the condi build is much preferred in T4s, and really doesn’t gain anything by taking the scrapper trait line.

Professor Sprout.1560:

To continue the scrapper discussion, my theory is that role expectations have a big part to play in how people perceive the spec. If you look at hammer mainly as a source of DPS as part of a power DPS build you may find it effective but rather boring since as has been noted the rotations are rather simple. If however you see it more as a supplement to your kits it is actually a rather fun weapon: skills 2 to 5 are packed with reflect/evade/block/interrupt effects that will thwart your enemies and keep you alive in challenging content whilst also providing great DPS.

But it doesn’t, because taking the Scrapper traitline by default reduces your damage output because you’re giving up Explosives, Firearms, or Tools, which all have incredibly powerful (and arguably irreplaceable) damage-oriented traits. There’s just nothing in the Scrapper line that compares to Shaped Charge, Excessive Energy, High Caliber, or Hemetic Focus that blanket-lifts your entire damage output as effectively as they do. The only thing that comes close is Applied Force, which is still incredibly mediocre in comparison.

Taking the Scrapper line is a reduction in damage output no matter how you look at it.

Stand The Wall.6987:

why are people putting up these threads in different profession forums. every class is basically fine, they need their useless traits/skills buffed, but nothing as drastic as a redesign.

It gives people something to talk about, I guess. I don’t think anyone actually seriously believes ArenaNet would do anything as radical as anything promoted in this thread. All of the core trait lines and utilities are staying exactly as they are.

If ArenaNet is going to adjust the mechanics of the profession moving forward, it will only be through elite specializations, which is why I suggested the idea of taking away kits in our next elite specialization but giving us weapon swap. Such changes aren’t very incremental and are quite striking, but are balanced enough in a way to give a new elite specialization a distinct, new flavor.

Manuhell.2759:

Phineas Poe.3018:

To be honest, I think our next elite specialization should lock us out of kits but give us weapon swap.

It wouldn’t work. Not after several years in which everything else has been balanced over the use of multiple kits. Our gadgets are terrible, and the few that got some niche use got even nerfed to the floor (hello, slick shoes). Elixirs are but measle self-buffs that have no use in party settings (other classes can provide those boons far better, and at the whole group). Turrets…that they’re used just to be detonated says enough. And even our weapons were balanced over kits, anyway (something we know due to some balance note released back then). And being a new specialization we wouldn’t be able to use gyros and hammer. We would have to rely on new weapons, and only those. But all the old things would end up being too weak for the aforementioned reasons.

If they ever did a redesign, they would have to decide what to do with kits. They can’t be optional and yet impact so heavily over the balance of the class in its entirety.
If they balance them so, they should end up being the class mechanic – something the class always has at their disposal. Or delete most of them and put the remaining ones as elite skills (thus limiting the amount of kits available at a time as a single one). Maybe that could be enough to not have to balance everything over kits, dunno.

I’m not so sure. We were incredibly dependent on kits prior to Heart of Thorns, but the only ones that regularly see usage in PvP and WvW these days are the Elixir Gun and, to a much lesser extent, the Tool Kit. The only reason kits are still dominant in PvE is simply because they’re a damage increase over any other choice—and that’s pretty much how it always will be.

But imagine if we got a weapon as strong as the hammer, that truly stands out on its own, but could be used alongside the rifle, pistol, and shield? Lesser used utilities like Elixir U and Utility Goggles might actually have a place with them having more room to breathe, and would give us a much more offensively-minded specialization that works in tandem with the defensive-minded scrapper specialization, while still giving us an alternative to kit-spam builds that core engineer, as you’ve said yourself, is kind of stuck with for balance reasons.

I’m not even expecting such a radical move for the new specialization, but if ArenaNet wanted to do something really different, completely forcing us out of kits and giving us weapon swap (and obviously powerful utilities to complement their disappearance) would make me drop $30-60 on the new expansion faster than anything else I can think of … and would be a much cleaner and balanced decision than a lot of the pipe dream ideas being promoted in this thread.

It would also offer a pretty healthy mid-point on the gradient scale in profession play styles between core kit engi spam and the passive-heavy gyro/scrapper faceroll, and help normalize engineer in comparison to other professions. After all, haven’t we been complaining for years that kits are way too important? Maybe forcing us out of them with a new elite specialization would give ArenaNet a prime opportunity to reimagine our profession and give us some toolbelt skills that are far more interesting.

Foefaller.1082:

Spending the last two weeks or so thinking on this.

Pretty much the one thing I feel strongest about is that a cap on the number of kits you can have slotted is a must. There has never been a happy medium between kits and the other skills for as long as I’ve played (which is just under 4 years) Either you have nothing but kits (and Supply crate/Healing Turret) or something like classic Static Discharge or spvp turrets that eventually gets a whole line of skills getting nerfed. If the rest of the engineer utilities are no longer directly competing with kits for a skill slot, then Anet won’t have to dance such a delicate dance of trying to make a utility with two skills as good as as one that brings six without out being broken.

Now, whether that means removing or cribbing the Tool Belt and making kits like legends and attunements, or simply preventing the player from slotting more than 2 of them I’m not sure, I think there are pros and cons to both. But I really think this is one of those cases where removing actual choice (i.e. bringing more than 2 kits) would translate to more effective choices in terms of builds and meta.

To be honest, I think our next elite specialization should lock us out of kits but give us weapon swap.

I see a few problems with this setup.

First, you’re taking Elixir X, but what good is it doing for you with 4% crit chance? You just won’t really make much use of it with your stat distribution.

Second, you have almost zero condition cleanse and no stunbreakers…

Third, you’re taking Invigorating Speed … but not Streamlined Kits? I just can’t see how you’re making the most of that trait over Protection Injection even if you’re leaping through and blasting your Thunderclaps.

Third, Shedder Gyro … Why?

Anyway. This is what I run in WvW right now.

If I’m running with a guardian in my group I’ll drop Elixir B for Bulwark Gyro and take Iron Blooded.

scorekeeper.6524:

I actually disagree about PvP Phineas, we can 1 v 1 every class except necro. We can even 1 v 2 certain situations as well. We can’t win these matchups, we rely on a plus 1 from our teammates, but we can at least delay and contest nodes until a teammate arrives. I don’t feel scrapper is a good teamfighter but a small skirmisher and node pusher.

I resign to the belief that engineer plays perfectly fine in PvP, but we aren’t a meta profession. We can troll people 1v2 at far and can win a lot of 1v1s, but we’re just not an optimal choice—especially for, as you say, team-fighting, which is what my “headless chicken” comment was largely referring to. You just get much larger gains counter-comping the enemy team by picking anything else.

My bigger concern lies in our PvE performance, either way.

MCBiohazard.4057:

I think the issue is that you also self identify as a Spike and right now that concern is overriding any joy you’re deriving from playing a unique class.

I’m not very familiar with Magic the Gathering outside of what’s common knowledge, so I don’t really fully understand your “Spike” or “Johnny streak” terminology. So I apologize if my reply doesn’t adequately address the real substance of your response.

But I think you have this all backwards. My concerns aren’t overriding the joy I derive playing my engineer. The lack of joy I derive playing my engineer drives my concerns.

We don’t hard-counter anyone in PvP and we don’t offer anything integral to a raid group. If anything, I feel like engi has switched roles in PvE and WvW in that engi used to be this fringe profession in WvW that, while useful, never contributed to the level a guardian, warrior, elementalist, or necromancer in either the hammer train or pirate ship metas. But with the scrapper, engi actually offers something useful versus both compositions that is incredibly difficult to replicate on other professions. We’re still not a meta class there, but there is still the occasional situation where I magnet pull the enemy zerg’s commander and I’m thanked for being there over Teamspeak.

The truth is, there is almost no situation in which the engineer is given an opportunity to flourish, and it’s almost always the impacts of others that determine our success. There are so many PvP matches I’m in where I do 23-25% of our team’s damage, running around like a headless chicken, bending over backwards to revive my team fight after fight in a match we end up losing, all because the classes that are actually responsible for downing other players can’t do their jobs.

MCBiohazard.4057:

I think, however, I’m going to agree with Obtena’s general view that A-Net shouldn’t balance based on player perception of the current metagame. Instead, I just think they should start regularly throwing wrenches into everything for the competitive scene while tamping down outliers.

Change for the sake of change is never a good idea.

MCBiohazard.4057:

No shame in that, except if you really want to Johnny and Spike at the same time in which case, you’ll have to be patient and wait for the winds to change.

I do play the engineer no matter what and that has managed to get me two accounts into platinum, but that’s neither here nor there. Telling me to play other classes is kind of an empty suggestion and doesn’t really change anything or help anyone. Heck, telling me to “wait for the winds to change” implies that ArenaNet makes balance changes regarding professions without player complaints or feedback, but the past 4 years have shown exactly the opposite.

There was a time and place when engineer did nothing but spam grenades in dungeons and fractals. We begrudgingly did it, and while guys like Nike and Guanglai proudly championed this I’m sure you remember me as one of the more vocal proponents to having the bomb kit and flamethrower have a bigger place in the meta and make multiple suggestions. The power build now spams bombs and the condi build runs both. I’m not saying this to claim that I individually made this happen so much as to establish that community feedback matters. As a community, together, we made a very real and convincing statement to ArenaNet that there are more desireable ways to play the engineer than just spamming grenades—and they listened.

ArenaNet may not make every or even most decisions based on player feedback, but changes are absolutely made based on popular opinion, and absolutely buff and nerf skills based on “player perception” and the meta-game. Telling people to effectively “shut up and wait patiently” is about the least constructive course of action, because it reduces the community’s role in the development process and removes valuable opportunities for ArenaNet to receive our feedback.

Obtena.7952:

Whatever you want to call it, I still don’t see the fixes that you claim this non-meta status deserves if Anet balances according to performance like you say they do. Tell me, how long has Engi not been meta?

I feel I cannot answer that, as I’ve been playing Black Desert and World of Warcraft for the past 9 months and not really keeping up to date with what was going on in Guild Wars 2. If I hadn’t have had an old guildie reach out to me through Steam that season five was solo/duo-only I actually wouldn’t even be here.

I can say, however, that things are definitely not as good as they were when I quit around this time last year or when I returned for a brief stint in April.

Though the way you word your post seems to make it appear as if I’m arguing ArenaNet intentionally kicked engineer out of the meta, that’s not at all what I’m suggesting. The scrapper specialization was absolutely overpowered when Heart of Thorns first launched and deserved a lot of what it received; all of the elite specializations were egregiously overpowered to some capacity and needed to be reined in (and the biggest offenders have been in my absence).

What I think was less intended were the ramifications the PvP nerfs put on us in PvE, even when we weren’t running the scrapper specialization. The truth of the matter is that a lot of our core traits were redesigned around the scrapper specialization existing, and because Heart of Thorns content is also largely designed around the elite specializations and not core specializations, because we don’t run it in PvE, we’re objectively disadvantaged.

What happened to us over the past year is just a huge oversight that first revealed itself in the 2015 trait overhaul—the effects of which are still being felt today.

Obtena.7952:

Yup, so what I said stands. There are two possibilities … Anet doesn’t balance like you think, or they can’t do it… I don’t really care why because it’s not relevant. I mean, you’re just acknowledging what I’ve already said a few times … WITH a reason. If this is the most balanced meta this game has ever had after all the balancing patches we have seen … and we still don’t have most classes relevant to the meta that you claim is a relevant measure of balance … should make you wonder about what you think is true or not. You know you might be right thought. Maybe in 10 years, Anet might just achieve balancing class performance at the pace they are currently ‘achieving’ things. I can’t wait … LITERALLY.

If you think this is bad I really think you owe it to yourself to play other MMORPGs. Guild Wars 2 is among the most balanced of any I’ve played in the past five years—and I’ve played a lot of them.

Even a game like ArcheAge that touts itself for having literally hundreds of class combinations ultimately revolves around how many skullknights and revenants you can cobble together in land PvP. Outside of a couple clerics, literally nothing else matters.

Obtena.7952:

That’s nice and all, but that doesn’t answer my question…. you say anet is balancing for performance and engi is terrible

This is you strawmanning again. I never said “engi is terrible.” I said that engineer is not a participant of the meta-game. I think the worst thing I said is that the engineer has always been a pretty mediocre PvE profession outside of high level fractals, but that we made up for that by being amazing in PvP. So to promptly respond to:

Obtena.7952:

Choose a class that is ‘bad’ in PVE … is it true they are awesome at PVP? I don’t think so.

Necromancer and, prior to Heart of Thorns, engineer are both pretty obvious examples of this. It’s bizarre you ask that question when I’ve already shown how this is the case.

It might help if you actually read my posts before you respond.

Obtena.7952:

… I mean, those things can’t be true in the same universe. I mean, forget engi altogether … there are 8 more classes you can look at and ask yourself the same question. Even when they do a balancing patch … are you going to sit there and tell me that all the sudden, all classes fixed and balanced? They should be according to you … I’ve yet to see that happen … and we have had numerous balancing patches in the history of this game. So again … we’ve HAD balancing patches … yet I’m still seeing things not balanced according to performance. Gee, how does that happen?

Well, it happens for a number of reasons.

First, Guild Wars 2 is an incredibly different game from how it was when it launched. While introducing new content like fractals, raids, and stronghold have absolutely convoluted the balance process, it’s important to note that there have been a number of macro-level changes made to the game. They’ve added and removed stat combinations, runes, and sigils; they’ve overhauled trait lines and the very trait system itself; they’ve added elite specializations and new weapons; and they’ve changed how boons like quickness and stability work, while adding new boons like resistance to the game.

This shifting of the goalposts has resulted in ArenaNet being in a perpetual catch-up state with regard to balance, and it’s important to identify that a lot of the balance problems the game was dealing with in 2012-2013 with regard to dungeons aren’t quite the same problems the game is dealing with in 2017 with regard to raids. Guild Wars 2, like many cooperative and competitive online games, is in a constant state of flux. There will never be a point in which balance is perfect in any online video game.

Even a game like World of Warcraft that is over 10 years old is still struggling to make every profession equally relevant in every aspect of the game. It’s just not possible, so you should at least aim for them all to be useful somewhere—which aside from the status quo of revenant and engineer, has historically been done fairly well by ArenaNet.

Second, balancing an incredibly complex game like Guild Wars 2 is an awful lot like the phenomenon referred to as “spaghetti code.” With three different game modes, balancing Guild Wars 2 without skill splitting will result in completely unintentional buffs and nerfs to professions, and will introduce some bugs as well.

A really great example of this is what happened to Symbolic Avenger, where my guild and I killed Tequatl with 14:11 remaining.

Obtena.7952:

So, ultimately, Nothing we say really matters … we can both look at the game and make the same observations. I just don’t know how you come to the conclusions you have if you are seeing the same things I’m talking about here.

Or we can do as we always have and continue to make suggestions and recommendations to make the class better, rather than coming in here and arguing with me over stupid kitten.

You’re welcome to just not participate in that process if you think it’s pointless, though I’m not sure you’d contribute much in the way of thoughtful feedback in the first place unless you actually raid or play PvP semi-competitively—which at this point seems not to be the case. Or is it? You’re so talkative and yet you’re suspiciously quiet on these topics.

I also think it’s fairly important to note that while rev and engi feel kinda “meh” this season, this is the best and most balanced meta ArenaNet has cobbled together since at least before the Celestial amulet was added to the game in 2013. This may be the most balanced meta this game has ever had.

Obtena.7952:

If Anet balances according to performance AND Engi’s are as bad off as you want us to believe, for whatever reason ….
… where are the fixes that should result from the product of both of those things being true?

I have been told a fairly large balance patch is coming next month and includes some major QoL/balance fixes for the engineer. You’re welcome to not believe me; it makes no difference to me. In time you’ll know the truth of the matter.

Obtena.7952:

Think about that for even just a second … tell me how you reconcile the fact that Engi hasn’t gotten enough balancing fixes to make it balanced for performance relative to other classes, even though you insist those two things are true. Something doesn’t make sense with what you are telling me.

Part of the problem is that ArenaNet, for the majority of this game’s life, didn’t balance PvE and PvP separately. They didn’t really have to, as PvE was really easy and having 5-man content dominate both game modes made class identity easy to maintain. They also didn’t really have to because it’s not a big deal if one class doesn’t do well in one game mode when it’s a meta profession in another. It’s fine that engineer, for example, is a mediocre PvE class so long as it’s incredibly valued in PvP.

So to really get to the crux of what you’re suggesting here: the engineer does get the balance fixes to make its performance relative to other classes, but it’s almost exclusively directed to how we perform in PvP.

The problem is that since the Heart of Thorns launch most of these balance fixes have been nerfs, and these nerfs further reduced any potential value we could have had in PvE. To make matters worse, our “jack of all trades” design just doesn’t translate well to 10-man content as well as it does to 5-man content. This is something I’ve already explained to you:

Phineas Poe.3018:

A team’s success is measured by the sum of its parts. Not to so heavily switch gears from PvP, but I think this is best represented in higher-end PvE content.

If one class, say necromancer, does less damage than a staff elementalist, you are directly hindering your group’s performance playing the former over the latter. Skills and buffs may be dispersed over multiple members of the party, but professions are favored over who disperses these best and elevates the party’s DPS the most.

Even though support builds like a PS warrior, a chronomancer, or a druid don’t top damage meters, they’re still very much sought-after in any half-decent group composition for this reason. Individually a druid doesn’t do much DPS, but between Grace of the Land, spirits, and fury they greatly elevate group DPS while providing substantial healing support. The same goes for warriors with their banners and might, and chronomancers with their alacrity. As such these builds present themselves as being invaluable to any raid group, elevating the team to be greater than the sum of their parts, rendering them essentially irreplaceable. You just won’t get the same group performance without them.

You could complete all three wings without having a chronomancer, druid, or PS warrior on your team, but it wouldn’t be smooth, and it absolutely wouldn’t be worth the struggle and headache. Their absence would be … noticeable.

But just to reiterate something, though: an engineer historically was brought to dungeon and fractal groups pre-Heart of Thorns because of its ability to stack might, vulnerability, and stealth. Conceptually speaking we didn’t provide as much stealth as a thief did and we didn’t provide as much might as a warrior did, but we brought enough to cover the bases and the grenade kit’s absolutely ludicrous vulnerability stacking potential made us incredibly valuable in fractal 50 runs (and to a lesser extent level 100 runs today).

Our vulnerability stacking has since become entirely replaceable thanks to Heart of Thorns power creep and the fact that vulnerability is capped at 25; it’s not hard at all for a raid group to almost instantly hit and keep 25 stacks of vulnerability on a raid boss. Additionally, while we still stack might as well as we did before, we do so running a build that presents substantially less DPS than a PS warrior brings to the table. Stealth, on the other hand, has lost a lot of its appeal due to fractal island redesigns and raid instance layouts lessening the need for it and dungeons now being absolutely faceroll.

When Heart of Thorns came out we still retained some degree of utility through Slick Shoes to break defiance bars, but when the utility was nerfed we were almost immediately brought to heel by revenants and their staff/Shiro elite.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t build strawmans around people playing with fire.

And yet all you’ve done is strawman throughout this entire thread. For example:

Obtena.7952:

So you can correct me but basically … too much buttons to press in PVE and is too easy to play in PVP/WvW … have I got the basic jist? Those aren’t the hallmarks of a class that has poor performance.

You say that “even if some details are debatable, that doesn’t make me wrong,” but you can’t even come up with five examples—or even a single one—to substantiate what you’re talking about.

Worse yet, you double-down on your assertions that I am wrong despite giving you multiple layered posts full of evidence to support what I’m arguing:

Obtena.7952:

Therefore, using meta as a reason to request class changes is ridiculous, for that reason, as well as many others that everyone wants to ignore.

It’s just comical at this point. You claim that you’re not wrong with no evidence to support your position but I am “ridiculous” for requesting class changes based on the meta when that’s what they’ve done for the past four years—with plenty of examples already shown to support that. I’d even be happy to run down the list of most major changes made to the engineer in the past year like Rocket Charge, gyro daze, Rapid Regeneration, and Slick Shoes and show how every single one of those nerfs was made entirely because of our performance.

Cue the laugh track.

Obtena.7952:

The fact is simple, Anet doesn’t make changes to chase meta … or if they do, they are so bad at it that you wouldn’t even know that’s what they are aiming to do (as you’re point about turrets actually illustrates really well).

So now you’re not only continuing to assert that I’m wrong despite the now-hilarious lack of evidence in any of your posts to support such an assertion, you’re now insulting ArenaNet’s balance team over things you obviously don’t understand—or aren’t willing to understand.

ArenaNet was very clear and descriptive why turrets were nerfed, and it’s something the PvP community almost unanimously demanded.

“Fire and forget” builds never survive very long in PvP/WvW simply because they’re just not fun to play against. At least with ranger pets there’s a level of micromanagement, but with engi turrets, necromancer minions, guardian spirit weapons, warrior banners, or ranger spirits, it’s simply winning through pet AI. There have been multiple stages in which these types of builds dominate the meta, and they’re almost always taken down swiftly.

What ArenaNet did to engineer turrets is just another plot point of an obvious (and desirable) trend and wasn’t at all a sign of incompetence. It just always sometimes ends up where buffing/nerfing something unintentionally overpowers something else. It’s why we refer to the process as “balance.” It’ll always be a balancing act, and ideally speaking it’s how it has to be.

steelheart.7386:

Phineas Poe.3018:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Phineas Poe.3018:

suffish.4150:

Spoichiche.1290:

“Tell me what’s the point of playing?

1. It clearly isn’t fun".

The post should just end here. There’s no point in playing if you don’t enjoy it.
I don’t believe anyone with half a brain would play a game that they don’t find fun, or enjoy in some way.

If you truly think this then you are not a competitive or really an ambitious player. I have played over 650 games this season already and, trying to be as accurate as possible, I would say 70% of those I really, REALLY did not want to play. I have spent over half this season absolutely hating pvp and feeling like quitting the game after many of my losses. But I don’t just stop playing because I don’t enjoy it. I don’t play this game for fun. If I did I would not even have half of the 5.2k hours I have invested in this game. No matter if it is pve or pvp, I play to achieve a target and I will not stop playing, however much I hate what I am doing, until I have done what I want to. To be honest, I WISH I could think in the way you do, it would make me a lot happier, but me and many other simply can’t.

And it is not just me who thinks like this, I know that many people would keep playing when they hate this game like I sometimes do just so they can achieve what they want. When you see a thread like this with someone saying how much they hate the game yet they continue to play, it means that they are a person who thinks like me and will keep going even if they don’t like what they are doing. Pvp, especially this season, does encourage people to think in this way more than ever.

That, or they have literally nothing else to do with their life. Or both.

This sounds like incredibly destructive behavior and was honestly very depressing to read.

Video games are a hobby. Unless you’re a YouTube content creator or a Twitch streamer, you’re probably not even making any money playing this game. It’s a good and healthy thing to always strive for improvement when it comes to your hobbies, whether that’s gaming or otherwise. My wife is a ferocious knitter and always challenges herself by taking on more ambitious projects; I too play video games with much the same energy, and am always striving to improve as a player.

But at the core of that ambition is the pursuit of play, not work.

I hope your life turns around at some point and you eventually see the error in this approach.

His view isn’t destructive in the slightest. You are just saying words with no understanding of what you are saying, talking by cliche.

His enjoyment (FUN) is to get better and achieve something in the game. So the end goal is the fun.

That is something a lot of people do, people who are DRIVEN to succeed in various aspects of life. It is not destructive at all, it is a personality trait he has and it is a desirable one in some ways.

Do you think climbing Mount Everest is “fun” whilst you are doing it? Or do people do it for the end goal, hoping in the end they will achieve something which gives them satisfaction.

It is similar in a ton of games and all areas of life. For some people the end goal is so desirable that they will go through an non-fun portion to get to it.

I am actually kind of like you in my outlook on life. But you have to realise that not everyone is the same.

Not sure what you’re rambling about. He literally said in his post “I don’t play this game to have fun.”

You are making a judgement call on someone motivations for playing based on your own and thats pretty presumptious of you. People play for different reasons whether you find them valid or not. Thats what he is saying I think.

Just because people play for different reasons that doesn’t mean they’re all defensible. Someone could boot up Guild Wars 2 simply to troll other players and make everyone else have a bad time around them.

Besides, I am not “presuming” anything. His actions and opinions are quite defined and obvious. He literally says he doesn’t play the game to have fun. I personally find that to be incredibly destructive behavior.

A judgment call is absolutely being made here, but the evaluation isn’t based on conjecture. I am stating an opinion and you are welcome to disagree with it.

This is a dumb conversation, so you’re welcome to continue it without me.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Phineas Poe.3018:

suffish.4150:

Spoichiche.1290:

“Tell me what’s the point of playing?

1. It clearly isn’t fun".

The post should just end here. There’s no point in playing if you don’t enjoy it.
I don’t believe anyone with half a brain would play a game that they don’t find fun, or enjoy in some way.

If you truly think this then you are not a competitive or really an ambitious player. I have played over 650 games this season already and, trying to be as accurate as possible, I would say 70% of those I really, REALLY did not want to play. I have spent over half this season absolutely hating pvp and feeling like quitting the game after many of my losses. But I don’t just stop playing because I don’t enjoy it. I don’t play this game for fun. If I did I would not even have half of the 5.2k hours I have invested in this game. No matter if it is pve or pvp, I play to achieve a target and I will not stop playing, however much I hate what I am doing, until I have done what I want to. To be honest, I WISH I could think in the way you do, it would make me a lot happier, but me and many other simply can’t.

And it is not just me who thinks like this, I know that many people would keep playing when they hate this game like I sometimes do just so they can achieve what they want. When you see a thread like this with someone saying how much they hate the game yet they continue to play, it means that they are a person who thinks like me and will keep going even if they don’t like what they are doing. Pvp, especially this season, does encourage people to think in this way more than ever.

That, or they have literally nothing else to do with their life. Or both.

This sounds like incredibly destructive behavior and was honestly very depressing to read.

Video games are a hobby. Unless you’re a YouTube content creator or a Twitch streamer, you’re probably not even making any money playing this game. It’s a good and healthy thing to always strive for improvement when it comes to your hobbies, whether that’s gaming or otherwise. My wife is a ferocious knitter and always challenges herself by taking on more ambitious projects; I too play video games with much the same energy, and am always striving to improve as a player.

But at the core of that ambition is the pursuit of play, not work.

I hope your life turns around at some point and you eventually see the error in this approach.

His view isn’t destructive in the slightest. You are just saying words with no understanding of what you are saying, talking by cliche.

His enjoyment (FUN) is to get better and achieve something in the game. So the end goal is the fun.

That is something a lot of people do, people who are DRIVEN to succeed in various aspects of life. It is not destructive at all, it is a personality trait he has and it is a desirable one in some ways.

Do you think climbing Mount Everest is “fun” whilst you are doing it? Or do people do it for the end goal, hoping in the end they will achieve something which gives them satisfaction.

It is similar in a ton of games and all areas of life. For some people the end goal is so desirable that they will go through an non-fun portion to get to it.

I am actually kind of like you in my outlook on life. But you have to realise that not everyone is the same.

Not sure what you’re rambling about. He literally said in his post “I don’t play this game to have fun.”

suffish.4150:

Spoichiche.1290:

“Tell me what’s the point of playing?

1. It clearly isn’t fun".

The post should just end here. There’s no point in playing if you don’t enjoy it.
I don’t believe anyone with half a brain would play a game that they don’t find fun, or enjoy in some way.

If you truly think this then you are not a competitive or really an ambitious player. I have played over 650 games this season already and, trying to be as accurate as possible, I would say 70% of those I really, REALLY did not want to play. I have spent over half this season absolutely hating pvp and feeling like quitting the game after many of my losses. But I don’t just stop playing because I don’t enjoy it. I don’t play this game for fun. If I did I would not even have half of the 5.2k hours I have invested in this game. No matter if it is pve or pvp, I play to achieve a target and I will not stop playing, however much I hate what I am doing, until I have done what I want to. To be honest, I WISH I could think in the way you do, it would make me a lot happier, but me and many other simply can’t.

And it is not just me who thinks like this, I know that many people would keep playing when they hate this game like I sometimes do just so they can achieve what they want. When you see a thread like this with someone saying how much they hate the game yet they continue to play, it means that they are a person who thinks like me and will keep going even if they don’t like what they are doing. Pvp, especially this season, does encourage people to think in this way more than ever.

That, or they have literally nothing else to do with their life. Or both.

This sounds like incredibly destructive behavior and was honestly very depressing to read.

Video games are a hobby. Unless you’re a YouTube content creator or a Twitch streamer, you’re probably not even making any money playing this game. It’s a good and healthy thing to always strive for improvement when it comes to your hobbies, whether that’s gaming or otherwise. My wife is a ferocious knitter and always challenges herself by taking on more ambitious projects; I too play video games with much the same energy, and am always striving to improve as a player.

But at the core of that ambition is the pursuit of play, not work.

I hope your life turns around at some point and you eventually see the error in this approach.

You not only ignored everything I said and just responded to the first line of my post, you doubled-down on the very argument I’ve already proved is not just completely false but doesn’t even make sense from a development perspective. You can’t buff or nerf a skill without taking into consideration how it affects the health of the profession or its performance relative to those around it. To do so is just incompetent.

Obtena.7952:

I’m going to let you think about it a bit because there are many changes that have nothing to do with class balance.

Really? So we’re going from “the majority” to “many” changes. That’s some progress in my book. I originally planned to ask you to list one such change, but considering I listed the FGS, Black Powder, Time Warp, One Hundred Blades, and Incendiary Powder as examples of inter-profession trait/skill/utility balancing (directly related to the meta-game), I think it’s only fair that you list five examples of ArenaNet making changes to professions that have “nothing to do with class balance” to better substantiate your point.

If there are truly “many” changes to draw from, it shouldn’t be that hard to do.

I eagerly await your reply.

Obtena.7952:

This is part of the reason that I believe that Anet, for the majority of the instances, does not balance by performance relative to other classes.

Erm, what…?

ArenaNet didn’t nerf quickness in 2013 for any other reason except that it made Time Warp way too powerful an elite skill and placed a disproportionate importance on mesmer in dungeons. It’s the same reason they nerfed the Fiery Greatsword on elementalist, One Hundred Blades on warrior, and Black Powder on thief.

These changes did not affect the “flavor” or “concept” of the class. They literally only addressed each profession’s performance relative to those around them. Hell, Time Warp, Hundred Blades, Black Powder, and the Fiery Greatsword all still do the same things they always have. They just nerfed them because they made the above classes hilariously overrepresented in dungeons.

There was a point in time when people ran four warriors and one mesmer in dungeons, and the fact that you think this just magically overnight was changed “for flavor” is incredibly short-sighted and just plain false. ArenaNet doesn’t want one profession completely dominating a single game mode, and they want profession balance to be healthy enough that every class is worth bringing to something and contributes something unique (but not individually superlative) to the group. They want us to make competitive choices regarding our builds and compositions, and they absolutely balance this game around what is and isn’t currently participating in the meta-game.

It’s the same reason Incendiary Powder was nerfed, buffed, and moved around the Explosives line for three years until they just made it a grandmaster trait in the Firearms line in 2015. Even though the issue with IP was much less a macro issue than meta-game balance between professions, all the changes made to the trait over the years were about giving us stronger trait diversity in Explosives (and now Firearms) and enhance tier/tree trait competition.

Moving it around didn’t change anything about the “flavor” or “concept” of the engineer; it was purely to address the fact that the tier was a god amongst peasants no matter how much they nerfed it, and that only by placing it with Mod Ammo did it finally end up in a tier with competitive alternatives.

And just as Incendiary Powder was buffed, nerfed, and moved around because of its strength relative to its tiers, the nerfs to Time Warp, Black Powder, Hundred Blades, Fiery Greatsword, and the other hundreds if not thousands of both drastic and minute changes to utilities, traits, and weapons across all professions in the game since 2012 were each made relative to what everyone else was doing and how everyone else was performing at the time.

To attempt to argue otherwise is just silly, and the deeper implication you’d be making with such a statement, that ArenaNet would somehow make balance changes to traits, weapons, and utilities in a vacuum is just asinine.

I imagine if someone like Irenio read your post he’d have a stroke, if he even made it that far through this thread.

Obtena.7952:

I believe their main goal is to maintain the class flavour. This thinking is not a stretch of the imagination.

Really? They come out with an expansion where mesmers have wells, necromancers have shouts and swing a greatsword, guardians use traps and have access to stealth, and you think their main goal is to maintain class flavor?

You really just don’t have a freaking clue, man.

Besides, the word you’re fumbling around isn’t “flavor” or “concept” but aesthetic.

We’re the goofball tinkerer whose turrets break down when overcharged, consumes elixirs with random effects, and even has his own gyros explode on him. This aesthetic sticks with us regardless of whether or not we’re invited to raids, just like the aesthetic that guardians do a bunch of blue things with swords and crosses, or that necromancers do a lot of green things and run around with a bunch of phallus monsters.

It’s a cool feature, and it’s a nice thing that ArenaNet should be commended for, but it has nothing to do with class balance and just because I like the way my engineer looks that doesn’t mean I automatically like the way it’s currently playing.

Lordrosicky.5813:

8, No new maps. So the game has been out 4 years and skyhammer is the only new map in ranked in 4 years. Awesome. I hope on the reviews of their 4 years of work the anet management see how much of a factual failure this is

Temple of the Silent Storm wasn’t in at launch, either.

Obtena.7952:

Right … so finding a class that works for you that you like to play is completely stupid …

No, it’s not completely stupid to find a class that works for you and to find one that you like to play. What’s completely stupid is you failing to figure out I went through that process in 2012.

What’s also completely stupid is you making such a suggestion to someone that has already told you they’ve put 7,000 hours into this game over the past 4 years, with 4,000 of that being on their engineer. By performing a little bit of deduction you can figure out I have spent a cumulative 3,000 hours playing other classes in this game.

Maybe those figures aren’t sinking in for you yet, but essentially over 40% of my play time in Guild Wars 2 is spent not playing my engineer.

Again, just for redundancy’s sake: nearly half of my play time is not playing my engineer. So yes, telling me to try other professions is, well … not a good suggestion.

I enjoy other professions; I have close to 1K hours played on my guardian alone. But that doesn’t at all change the fact that the engineer is my main, and shifting play time from my engineer to my guardian doesn’t at all address any of the problems I’ve raised in this thread.

Therefore, your assertion that I should “try other professions” or that I “chose the wrong class” is just beyond words. There’s no way I could describe my reaction to such a response without being offensive, so I won’t—but I think I speak for everyone here in saying that your reply is indefensible, and clearly no one here is going to side with you on this.

Obtena.7952:

Asking Anet to revisit the class concept for the class you (and they) have invested so much time into so you will like it again … that’s completely logical and intelligent.

Ostensibly you’re being sarcastic, but what’s the alternative? Push people to play a different profession and let the least-played profession in PvE become even less so? Why does that make good business sense?

I hope you understand that many of the decisions ArenaNet has made regarding our profession over the past two years has pushed some of its best players to literally quit the game. In no scenario or circumstance is it a good thing that guys like Chaith are leaving your game in droves.

Obtena.7952:

Ok well, at least I know which one of us won’t be back here in 4 years complaining about the same issues and playing classes they don’t like. Anet isn’t going to tell you any different either. They give you choice to exercise for a reason. If you decide the most effective option for you to solve this problem is one you aren’t going to exercise, there isn’t much more to say.

Stay stubborn and angry I guess.

Angry? Over what? I just finished solo-queuing my alt account from silver 2 to platinum in ~100 games. I’m beginning to seriously think you lack the mental acuity to understand what it means for a class to be “fine” but “not meta.”

But given the fact that you repeatedly fail to answer my questions regarding your PvP/raiding experience, I’m not entirely sure if you even understand why we classify things as “meta” in the first place, or what being in the meta even means.

If we’re all being honest between ourselves here, the only one being stubborn here is you.

scorekeeper.6524:

We’re asking “Why?” and “Can we please have our original class utility back?” But no, we’re told by Mr. White Knight “Go play another class.” We here are not Johnny-Come-Latelys, we’ve played this class enough to know when we are getting the short end of the stick in nearly all content.

This is the crux of the issue. You don’t tell someone that has been playing a class for over four thousand hours that they chose the wrong class (seriously wtf?) or that they should just up and main another profession just because we are currently undertuned in PvE and call them wrong for requesting to give us back the utility the profession used to have.

“The busyness is intentional.” What a joke. Who intentionally designs a build that does less DPS than half the classes in the game and yet is the hardest build to play conceivably in any game mode in the entire history of this game, especially when the power build literally runs in circles spamming bombs on auto for near identical damage. Condi engi was almost universally panned by the community when HoT came out but at least we had value in wing one that made up for it.

It’s a terrible build and ArenaNet knows it. That’s why there is an overhaul in the development pipeline. They can even keep us running three kits if they have to but if it doesn’t DPS to the level of a staff elementalist on all bosses the build will continue to be passed over for other classes for reasons that are obvious to anyone that has stepped into a raid.

Maybe Obtena wasn’t aware of or active at the time so I forgive him, but the PvE community almost unanimously asked for our elite spec to finally get us away from using kits. Little did we know at the time that not only would we not even use the spec in PvE but we were forced into a build that put even more kits on our bar. The truly sad thing is that ArenaNet was actually successful in getting us away from kits with the scrapper; they just failed at making scrapper worth taking in PvE instances.

The Slick Shoes nerf to this day also completely baffles me. The skill was terrible for over three years and when it finally had a use it got completely gutted.

This is why I asked if he even raids or PvPs. There’s just so much ignorance mixed with arrogance in this thread.

Obtena.7952:

My suggestion to play other classes was dismissed pretty hard … but be honest and tell me that’s not why those other classes exist with the variations in playstyles they have … it’s absolutely the answer to this problem.

Your suggestion was dismissed because it’s frankly a stupid suggestion. Many of us here have been playing this game for four years and have hundreds of hours on every profession. We’ve already tried every profession and the simple fact of the matter the engineer was chosen to be our main for various reasons. So please don’t come in here and act like you have something new to teach us or hold some unearthed insight on ArenaNet’s design philosophy on the engineer when we’ve written more words on this class between here and GW2Guru than you’ve probably written to get your college degree.

You just seriously doing have an effing clue of what you’re talking about when you suggest that “Anet isn’t going to change the concept of the class” when that’s exactly what they did and that’s why we’re irritated with the status quo. I went over in detail why engineer was historically a valued profession in both PvE and PvP and that concept has since been utterly destroyed. The reason why so many people felt so defeated by the “purity of purpose” nerf is because they literally forced us into running gyro builds in the first place.

You don’t read what anyone else is saying and you simply bunker down on the same talking points as one person after another only repeats the same issues I brought up. Maybe it’ll eventually sink in that there’s a problem here for you, but probably not.

I’m just going to cut to something a little harder and faster by asking a few questions that I think will reveal to us the difference in perspective: have you actually done raids? Do you do them regularly? Do you PvP or WvW? Do you do fractals daily? What exactly is it that you do in this game with your engineer that leads you to think the engineer is not just in an acceptable state but a defendable one?

Yannir.4132:

Leveling an engi without tomes was the most grueling experience I’ve had in GW2.

I think this is partly our fault for not giving you the resources to guide you through the leveling process properly. There is no up-to-date leveling guide that I know of, and I’m not entirely sure how the new leveling process operates as I just tomed my revenant to 80 and I leveled all classes previously to 80 back in like 2013—but I imagine it can be quite confusing to know which traits and utilities to unlock, especially since what we run in raids isn’t very survivable or solo-friendly.

I do hope you didn’t use the Metabattle build to level to 80, as it doesn’t have any real survivability traits. If you did, that might be why it was such a grueling experience.

Ideally speaking, you should take Inventions and/or Alchemy when doing open world content, and you shouldn’t use your rifle or pistol all that much. While you do use skills like Hip Shot and Jump Shot on CD, you should be spending the majority of your time using the Bomb Kit with power builds or the Grenade Kit with condition builds.

Obtena.7952:

Have I got the basic jist?

Not even close.

But it doesn’t matter. I know you tried your best.

Emdrix.6124:

At high rating PvP id dying

I think the number of players willing to forcefully decay their accounts, queue dodge, or play on alts for a relatively meaningless title and leaderboard shows that not only is PvP not dying but that people are taking it more seriously than they have in years.

This thread makes no sense. People don’t exploit a system en masse they don’t care about winning.

PvP is more than fine, and there are people in my guild genuinely interested in improving for season six that I never would have otherwise expected to see outside of Auric Basin, Silverwastes, or Fractals.

Yes, there are a lot of PvE players that farmed their matches for free ascended, but a decent percentage of them have stuck around and vowed to improve.

Obtena.7952:

As Phineas has already pointed out, in his experience, he was bored because he was so successful with the class. So … is that really a not-meta problem … or is Eng just one of those classes that really rewards highly capable players and leaves scrubs behind?

I’d really like you to elaborate on what exactly you’re suggesting here. I’d hate to put words in your mouth.

That people complain about d/d thief is seriously hilarious.

Artasqweroldy.7458:

Can anybody give me a brief update on how to play condi engineer (including rotation ofc) ) or tell me where to find a good Build guide?

Thanks in advance!

The condi engineer build doesn’t really have a rotation. You’re just hitting most of your skills as they come off CD. Obviously there’s a bit of finesse there, but it’s something figured out just through practicing vs. the golem.

And don’t use Metabattle. Use http://qtfy.enjin.com/engineer.

Obtena.7952:

You chose the wrong class.

Okay I think I’m done here.

Take care.

shagwell.1349:

Yes, it’s possible. I posted it in Helseth’s thread already. I’m gold 3 on my main and dropped into bronze on my 2nd account and I can’t get out any more.

I haven’t experienced it as egregiously as this, but I will say it is much harder to move up divisions compared to how it was toward the beginning of the season. After my placements I finished in gold 3. It wasn’t really hard to push up into platinum, capping out somewhere around 1800. I felt that’s probably about the highest I’d get. I’m blind as kitten and I was mechanically very rusty when I returned to the game. My build was also completely wrong for a while, so I went through some ups and downs—but I’ve spent the vast majority of the season in platinum.

Unfortunately I fell out of platinum about a week or so ago after a string of REALLY bad games and poor performance on my part. Like an idiot I thought mashing solo-queue on my engineer would just naturally fix the problem. Instead what I learned from that experience is that solo-queuing on engineer, especially during off-peak hours, is a hilariously efficient way to tank your rating, having at one point fallen to gold 2.

I’m still reaping the stupidity of that moment, doing what I can to climb out of gold and back into platinum, but the rate in which I am progressing is far slower than the rate it took at the beginning of the season, and it isn’t just because MMR fluctuation is more controlled at this point.

Just to make it clear: I never really believed in “Elo hell.” I’ve always thought player skill naturally fluctuated over time (in ways better and worse), and it’s not unreasonable to expect someone to win 60%+ of their games to pass through divisions. But what I’ve experienced in these two weeks in gold comes about as close to what I’d imagine “Elo hell” to be, and I am now a firm believer that it to some capacity exists.

Gold 3 is in this weird position where you’re high enough to get queued versus literally top 10 players but you’re low enough to where you’re thrown into games with keyboard turners. I’ll have a few games where everyone knows what they’re doing and things go smoothly, sometimes winning but sometimes losing—only to have a complete blowout match where I’m 1v2ing a necro and revenant at far (neither of which I have much business winning a 1v1 against when well-played as a scrapper), or spending the entire game picking my teammates up from the floor.

There’s very little match-to-match consistency, which makes games feel incredibly easy at times but incredibly difficult at others. This problem is only further exacerbated by the low population due to the season ending soon and most fair-weathers having gotten their ascended armor already. You end up seeing a lot of the same names and faces match after match, and when it’s the keyboard turners on your own team it feels absolutely hopeless and frustrating.

The only way I’ve really managed to get through gold was by literally blocking problem players and staggering my queue times to avoid them. I’m now probably about five wins out of platinum, and while it’s nice to steadily see my win/loss rating even out, I can’t say that I’m honestly playing any better or worse than I was at 1800 despite being 200 rating lower.

The matches just feel off.

My post was getting a bit long so I split it up. I also just wanted to return to something you said before:

Obtena.7952:

Non-thriving state isn’t going to be a reason to fix anything.

I think it’s really important that you disregard the belief that just because you don’t find value in being a part of the meta, that doesn’t mean the meta itself actually lacks value. Just because you approach this game more casually and without much concern for our status in the meta-game, that doesn’t inherently mean my emphasis or desire to see engineer more so a part of it is “wrong” or misguided.

I have guys and gals in my guild who do nothing but farm Auric Basin, Silverwastes, and Molten Duo for hours on end; that is the entire game to them. And while that content absolutely bores me to tears, I admire their tenacity and it would be completely out of place for me to drag them into PvP and tell them the content I enjoy is more important than theirs. Additionally, I certainly would never jump into a Teamspeak channel of one of our raid groups and tell them that what they’re doing or what they care about is less important than what it is that I do in PvP and WvW these days. My guild is a very large and diverse group of people of varying skill level and interest. If you asked them what was the most important feature of Guild Wars 2 and what would be done to improve it, you’d get dozens of different answers.

It’s why I’ve been both a member and officer of it for the greater part of four years, and it’s why what you said absolutely drives me up a wall.

How you play the game isn’t the way how everyone else should play it, and how I play the game isn’t necessarily how or why you play it. I don’t care if you don’t think engineer being “non-thriving” is a good enough reason to fix anything. As I said previously, it seriously doesn’t matter to me if you think engineer in a good state or not; it only matters to me that you seem to think it’s beyond ArenaNet’s interest to address profession imbalances and popularity perceptions in practice.

I am a min-maxer and theorycrafter in every game I play. Games like Path of Exile and Diablo are literally crack to me, giving me the opportunity to come up with unique build concepts and ideas and push them as far as I can. When a build doesn’t work, or when I eventually hit the highest I can with it, I shrug my shoulders and try something else. I’m the guy that toggles on ironman mode on any game that offers it, and I almost always play games at their highest difficulty to start.

That mixture of challenge and experimentation is entirely what drives me to play video games, and that pursuit of betterment is what encourages me to log into these forums when I actively play this game to make suggestions and provide feedback to struggling players trying to grapple with this profession and how it all works.

Maybe it’s not important to you that engineer is among the least represented professions in the top 250, with almost zero of them solo-queuers. Heck, maybe hitting platinum isn’t even an aspiration for you. Maybe being just “fine” in fractals and raids is good enough for you. And you know, maybe you’re the type of person who’s OK with playing games on their normal difficulty.

But not me. And before you hit that reply button again, consider that what we’re asking for doesn’t at all threaten your more casual interests; there is no downside to making the engineer a stronger profession with a more apparent role and/or class identity. And it’s not too much to ask for that we actually bring something valuable to a raid group that doesn’t require playing the piano on near-stationary targets.

LUST.7241:

Again, you do have a point if you run pure DPS (for Rampage). But I don’t think one should be ignorant to why Engi’s meta isn’t DPS. While you are thinking my suggestion is soley a buff Engi’s damage…it’s not.

The deeper argument I’m getting at is that we could use some survivability or damage adjustments so that Marauder isn’t a death sentence vs. a lot of compositions; it’s not Elixir X that needs buffing so much as other choice elements surrounding it.

That we’re forced into still running all three of our defensive trees over a year after Heart of Thorns and after five seasons of ranked PvP says enough about where the real problems of this profession lie.

Obtena.7952:

Yup it does, but that in itself is even less of a reason for Anet to do anything to adjust Engi because in a team, any specific skill or buffs are dispersed over many people and success is dependent on the whole team, not just one individual.

Therefore, it’s even less reasonable for any particular class to be proclaimed in need just because it can’t do any particular thing exceptionally well in a team. I would in fact argue that classes that bring lots of many things are way more important in a team than including a class for any singular thing. There is more than one way to complete team content so solutions that involve the “exceptional at one thing” classes are not particularly compelling agents for change.

A team’s success is measured by the sum of its parts. Not to so heavily switch gears from PvP, but I think this is best represented in higher-end PvE content.

If one class, say necromancer, does less damage than a staff elementalist, you are directly hindering your group’s performance playing the former over the latter. Skills and buffs may be dispersed over multiple members of the party, but professions are favored over who disperses these best and elevates the party’s DPS the most.

Even though support builds like a PS warrior, a chronomancer, or a druid don’t top damage meters, they’re still very much sought-after in any half-decent group composition for this reason. Individually a druid doesn’t do much DPS, but between Grace of the Land, spirits, and fury they greatly elevate group DPS while providing substantial healing support. The same goes for warriors with their banners and might, and chronomancers with their alacrity. As such these builds present themselves as being invaluable to any raid group, elevating the team to be greater than the sum of their parts, rendering them essentially irreplaceable. You just won’t get the same group performance without them.

You could complete all three wings without having a chronomancer, druid, or PS warrior on your team, but it wouldn’t be smooth, and it absolutely wouldn’t be worth the struggle and headache. Their absence would be … noticeable.

But just to reiterate something, though: an engineer historically was brought to dungeon and fractal groups pre-Heart of Thorns because of its ability to stack might, vulnerability, and stealth. Conceptually speaking we didn’t provide as much stealth as a thief did and we didn’t provide as much might as a warrior did, but we brought enough to cover the bases and the grenade kit’s absolutely ludicrous vulnerability stacking potential made us incredibly valuable in fractal 50 runs (and to a lesser extent level 100 runs today).

Our vulnerability stacking has since become entirely replaceable thanks to Heart of Thorns power creep and the fact that vulnerability is capped at 25; it’s not hard at all for a raid group to almost instantly hit and keep 25 stacks of vulnerability on a raid boss. Additionally, while we still stack might as well as we did before, we do so running a build that presents substantially less DPS than a PS warrior brings to the table. Stealth, on the other hand, has lost a lot of its appeal due to fractal island redesigns and raid instance layouts lessening the need for it and dungeons now being absolutely faceroll.

When Heart of Thorns came out we still retained some degree of utility through Slick Shoes to break defiance bars, but when the utility was nerfed we were almost immediately brought to heel by revenants and their staff/Shiro elite.

What this has resulted in is exactly as I stated before: we’re a profession that’s B-average in a lot of areas in an environment littered with builds and professions that are S-tier in specific roles. And like I said before: if you disagree with me about the state of the engineer that’s one thing, but your implication that the engineer doesn’t have to have any perceptive value in PvE doesn’t sit well with me; unlike druid, warrior, or chronomancer, our absence is not only completely ignorable—our attendance is in many respects an affront to more ideal group compositions.

LUST.7241:

The majority of the suggestion doesn’t even bother addressing damage. I’m talking about the consistency of the utility of the skill.

These were your proposed changes to Juggernaut:

LUST.7241:

Auto Attack – Faster. You only have 15s. Think “Hulk Smash”
Number of Targets – All increased to 5 from 3.
Shorter Cooldown
Dash – Longer travel range. Enables Engi’s more mobility when running builds that don’t have that much mobility.

Every single thing you suggested is a buff to its damage. Better cleave, faster auto-attack, shorter CDs, and better mobility. None of these are necessary. You can already 1v2 a lot of match-ups with Juggernaut when running Marauder.

LUST.7241:

If the only option is to run a damage amulet to make it effective…for at least 15s…at a very specific place and time…every 105s (by default)…That’s a problem plus makes you a handicap to your team if you are just a one-trick-pony.

It’s a transformation skill. I’m not sure what you’re really expecting, or that you should be expecting more than we’re currently getting from it. It will always only be good at a very specific place and time—and only when you’re actually running a damage amulet will it actually be threatening.

LUST.7241:

Damage isn’t the the only reason or way Elixir X is used. As a utility skill, to really support your team with it (which isn’t just glass cannon damage), it falls short of what it can do for your team and really make Engis keep up with the current state of the overall meta.

Maybe pre-Heart of Thorns we took it for reasons other than damage, but what “support” does it give compared to other options we have currently? Mortar Kit gives you a heal/water field, access to frost armor/chill, blind, and poison. Sneak Gyro gives you stability and stealth. Nothing Elixir X has compares to them.

It’s a damage elite, and it should only be used as such.

LUST.7241:

Running Marauder in this meta is such a risky move…especially when the biggest benefit is an elite that is based on RNG, timing, and positioning. Couple that with the limited time you have and it’s cooldown?

Risky or not, I’m just making the argument that Elixir X with a damage amulet absolutely trashes people. It doesn’t need a buff.

I disagree. Wearing a Marauder amulet, a Tornado proc of Elixir X can literally wipe teams with proper positioning and timing.

I don’t think it needs to be touched at all. Elite skills is the one area where engineer is absolutely stacked. While most classes are left with only one real choice, the Mortar Kit, Elixir X, and Sneak Gyro are all quite dominant at what they’re designed to do.

Sinmir.6504:

I’ve never seen win trading before when playing. Never offered it or been offered. Was it done between groups?

It was between full groups queuing at the same time during off-peak hours. Because of the relatively small player base that actually queued for Stronghold, it was common to face the same teams quite a lot. It was a gigantic problem, and is just another reason why I stopped playing the game and moved over to Black Desert then Legion for a time.

If ArenaNet didn’t force the solo/duo-queue system and if they didn’t separate Conquest progression from Stronghold, I simply wouldn’t have come back. I’d still be spamming RBGs.

Sinmir.6504:

About rewards though, most rewards you get doing ranked PvP are account bound. Is it really important to other players if somebody gets a reward for doing Stronghold that they earned through Conquest?

It’s less an issue of people getting rewards for winning in Stronghold so much as that they simply got rewarded for avoiding Conquest. While there’s a number of players that prefer Stronghold, there was a pretty noticeable population of players that queued Stronghold-only simply because they avoided having to fight pro league players to reach Legendary.

It was a substantially easier road to Legendary queuing for Stronghold, and yet the end reward was the same. That’s what we generally took exception to. I’m not sure I agree with the decision to remove Stronghold entirely from ranked PvP, but I absolutely am grateful that we’re headed in the right direction, even with all the alt/decay shenanigans this season.

Anyone who calls this the “worst” season has short-term memory or wasn’t around when Heart of Thorns actually launched. Season one and two were both absolute disasters.

Obtena.7952:

Furthermore, how strong or weak other classes are in any particular element has no bearing on the overall performance of another class, ever.

No, but it does have bearing on a team’s overall performance.

What you’re saying would be convincing if PvP was a 1v1 game mode, but it’s not. Having a bunch of classes that are A- or S-tier in their specific roles is far better than having a bunch of classes that are B-tier in everything. Smart players rotate around their deficiencies and play to their strengths—and don’t throw themselves into situations where they’d be at a disadvantage.

Your quote phrasing is kind of strange, so forgive me if I don’t hit everything you asked/said.

Ryze.2891:

Why is this a bad thing?

It’s not a bad thing. I actually happen to like the rock-paper-scissors balancing act of GW2 (and GW1) PvP because it’s far more cerebral; certainly rotations and mechanics play a huge part in your success, but game knowledge is the number one determining factor of your success. Knowing what traits, skills, and weapons to run versus certain team compositions is part of the challenge of being successful at GW2 PvP, and it’s why I’ve stuck with the engineer profession specifically since the game launched. We’re a bag of tricks and we’ve always had something up our sleeve to provide an edge no matter who we’re facing—but it feels like that is no longer the case, or at the very least is less the case.

Ryze.2891:

Things change with time, learn to accept it.

This is kind of an empty, non-particular statement and not really representative of a direct response to anything I’ve said. I am aware that things change with time; I am literally advocating change here.

I’d appreciate it if you could be a bit more specific with regard to what you’re referring to here.

Ryze.2891:

That doesn’t necessarily mean you win the game.

No, but it gives you the greatest odds of victory. In a solo/duo season, you can’t rely on having better comms to win games, and unless you’re playing with people you know (which happens a lot in platinum, granted) you just don’t know what the weak points of your team are. As such, you pretty much have to tell yourself that you have to be the difference; you have to switch your build/class around to best prepare for your opposition and give your team the edge.

Sometimes that means I am forced to swap to druid or warrior versus guardian or necromancer heavy teams.

I don’t mind doing this, and I don’t mind that engineer isn’t always the ideal choice; I mind that my engineer is never the ideal choice.

Ryze.2891:

You could team up with one of your friends and duel against the builds you suffer most. I did that when GS/mace became a thing and with skirmish guard build. It really makes a difference practicing it.

I have been, and this has been immensely helpful. I do feel like I’ve gotten a lot better fighting against warriors and guardians in this way, specifically. But it still doesn’t change the fact that it’s an uphill battle for us, and that engineer isn’t currently in a state one would say is thriving.

Sinmir.6504:

Stronghold was allowed for people who didn’t like Conquest.

Allowing people to play Stronghold in ranked seasonal play was the biggest mistake ArenaNet ever made. Even ignoring the issue of rampant win-trading, you can’t have players hiding in Stronghold earning the same titles and rewards players get queuing Conquest. They’re completely different game modes with completely different levels of competition. Most of the hardcore PvPers avoided Stronghold, so hitting Legendary queuing for Stronghold alone was substantially easier than queuing for Conquest.

I don’t oppose bringing Stronghold back in some capacity, perhaps with a separate leaderboard (or some form of automated tournaments), but it should never be mixed together with Conquest in seasonal play.

David.5974:

Engi in spvp is at good state, we have good package of various skills. We don’t hard counter anyone, but we are not hard countered too(only necro for me). Great at 1v1, decent team support, good dmg, great unblockable (acid bomb) some aoe heal… In pvp I don’t see problem and if you look on engi describe, we should be celestial. If you want to be hard counter – roll other class.

This is all well and good, but the fact that we hard-counter nobody is a genuine problem and a serious oversight in our class design. Everyone counters someone. Rangers counter guardians. Warriors counter necromancers. And necromancers counter rangers.

We used to hard-counter thieves and guardians. We also used to hard-counter longbow ranger before Signet of the Wild became popularly ran.

This rock-paper-scissors design is the bedrock of Guild Wars 2 PvP, and is conceptually what the meta-game is all about. The only reason boonstrip necro ever became a thing is solely because the popularity of rifle engi and d/d elementalist demanded it; the meta-game isn’t something you “chase.” It’s something you learn through game knowledge and experience.

It’s counter-classing and structuring your build around what you tend to expect. There are always “non-meta” builds in the mix and these choices are completely viable. You can play a Marauder Elixir X Scrapper or a P/P Condi build on your engineer and be successful with it, as I certainly have at points—but the truth is that the Paladin Final Salvo build with Sneak Gyro was heavily favored at the start of the season because condi necro and dragonhunter were popularly faced early on, and neither the condi or Elixir X variants properly handle them as effectively as a triple gyro scrapper does through condi cleanse, reflects, and stealth.

So sure—we handle most professions and builds just fine 1v1. But the simple fact is you can list any class you’re versus and I can give you another profession that’s far better suited for it than we are. And in a solo/duo queue season scheme, counter-comping has never been more important.

It makes engineer the non-ideal choice in most circumstances, where another class can provide more to the team. And at higher tiers, having things like two engineers on your team literally loses games. No matter how decent our team support or damage is, we don’t replace a warrior’s damage or a druid’s healing output. What results often is the situation in which your team lacks stopping power or sustain to win heavy team fights versus warrior+necro+ele comps that more effectively counter the other members of your team.

I’m happy there are people like Ryze that are far better skilled than I am and are finding success with the profession and reaching legendary with it in spite of these difficulties. I don’t even honestly think I’m that great at PvP these days, and I’ve accepted I’ll probably finish the season around Platinum 1.

But I’ve spoken with a number of engineer mains I’ve befriended over the years and the unanimity is startling; across PvE, PvP, and WvW, we’re just not valued in our guilds. It’s the same unenviable situation that revenant is in. A good revenant still gets the job done in PvP, but they’re just not a favored profession at the moment in any aspect of the game. It’s a problem and it needs resolving—not rerolling.

There are a lot of unfamiliar faces in threads these days, and I understand that I haven’t been around much these days, but I find it kind of offensive that people would even suggest that I should play something else just because the engineer isn’t in a state I agree with. It’s just absurd.

Stand The Wall.6987:

last time I checked the duration portion (minor) did not function at all. maybe a stealth nerf?

I’m sure it’s just a tooltip error. I don’t remember it ever having a five-second duration, and it doesn’t really need one. The instant conversion between the toolbelt and utility skill is already strong enough as it is, especially when there’s no necro on the other team.

scorekeeper.6524:

It’s funny because you’re the only one here claiming we are “chasing a meta”.

I was the one who brought up the meta. I said that engineer isn’t a meta profession in PvP or WvW because we hard-counter no one and bring pretty much nothing essential to the team.

Obtena believes that this is the “wrong” way to look at profession balance and health, instead opting to think:

Obtena.7952:

I would start to worry about Engi profession health if some other profession started encroaching on the things that make them unique as a class.

What Obtena failed to realize then and continues to is that while the playstyle of an engineer is different from every other profession, what we actually bring to the table is completely replaceable.

Other classes deal more damage than us.
Other classes dish out more healing than us.
Other classes are better duelists than us.

All a scrapper realistically brings to a PvP team is CC through Thunderclap and Blast Gyro (which a DH, while doing more damage, also provides substantially more unblockable and unevadeable crowd control with the longbow and their F1), some condi cleanse with Fumigate and Purge Gyro (which an elementalist, while doing less cleanse, offers substantially more overall team sustain), and the function gyro to res people (which a druid, through Search and Rescue, actually does much faster).

Ryze.2891:

Engineer can hold against most classes on a node: druid, mesmer, ele, theif, guardian, warrior.

Druid, mesmer, and ele yes. Guardian is a washout based on what weapons they’re using. Staff thief when well played is also 50/50. Usually I just whittle them down and they leave. Good thieves don’t die needlessly.

But warrior? Absolutely not. You can 1v1 them, sure, but not “on point,” especially if they’re power.

I think rev is a substantially easier match-up than warrior, and they’re surprisingly left off your list.

zomgbuffalo.5276:

Having that ability to be flexible in many situations and bringing your party back to operation mode is not that bad.

Of course it isn’t a bad thing—but like I said, the core engi build is where all your support is coming from, and you do much more DPS with it than you do with any scrapper variant.

Need condi cleanse? Have it.
Need raw healing? Have it.
Need might? Have it.
Need vulnerability? Have it.
Need stealth? Have it.
Need 25K DPS? Also have that.

This versatility is why engineer has pretty much always been a top-tier profession for FOTM 50 when that was the max and now FOTM 100 today. All scrapper brings to the table is the function gyro and a bunch of selfish buffs to our sustain. Running something like the Sneak Gyro as your elite in fact only lessens your contributions to the party.

Scrapper is an amazing specialization and one that’ll continue to be valuable even after our next elite specialization is released; but that value extends only to WvW and, now to a lesser extent, PvP.

Aizza.4950:

How does PvP, with normalized stats get an ascended reward system, when WvW doesn’t have one?

How? By being a PvP season reward. The only remote comparison to PvP seasons in WvW are the tournaments they did in 2013 and 2014. I’m sure if WvW tourneys made a return they’d implement an identical reward scheme, just with ascended versions of the Mistforged Hero gear.

Ultimately, it’s in ArenaNet’s best interest to tap into the greater PvE population if they want to make PvP seasons popular and keep the game mode alive. It’s a great idea, and I think most would agree it’s been a pretty resounding success.

zomgbuffalo.5276:

For example, today my fractal party was wiped in Snowblind @last boss and I was the only one alive left. I popped my sneak gyro, ressed my allies sneaky beaky like, we carried on. We won. Engineer GG.

First, I just want to point out that your story began with “my fractal party wiped.” If your group sucks I’m sure scrapper has some perceived utility, but in a smooth run where everyone knows what they’re doing, a scrapper just brings nothing to the table and really only slows the run down.

Second, the best support utilities engineer has are the Elixir Gun and the Mortar Kit, neither of which need scrapper to be used. In all seriousness you really shouldn’t ever run the Sneak Gyro over the Mortar Kit in fractals. Frost Armor, a big water field, and a blast finisher all in one slot. It’s so money and you don’t even know it.

Third, the core engineer has access to plenty of stealth. You could replicate exactly the same scenario and outcome without running the scrapper specialization.

I’m happy that you enjoy the scrapper specialization and it saved your engineer from deletion, but it’s just not a valued trait line in semi-serious PvE content in pretty much any capacity.

fishball.7204:

MM is broken on a fundamental level and creates unfun matchups for us quite often in Plat 1-2/Gold 3. I’ve given up having fun/even PvP matches.

I agree that this is a problem. I just had a match today where I was paired with nobodies vs. three top tier players.

But it’s not a matchmaking problem. It’s a population problem. Most PvErs have gotten their ascended gear, so they’re back to dragonslaying, and a lot of platinum players are letting their accounts decay to try to skip positions toward the top of the leaderboard.

Simple fact is: the season is almost over, and like any seasonal system the number of people playing declines the longer a season continues. And let’s be honest: if the decay system wasn’t in place, population problems would be far more extreme than they currently are.

The best solution to the problem, then, is overhauling the decay system so that it keeps people honest. Get rid of the +100 per game played when you return, get rid of the inflated rating gain/loss upon return, and make people actually lose progress if they AFK for more than a few days. It would probably be a good idea to adjust it so players aren’t dropping two full divisions after a week of not playing, but decay absolutely has to be more penalizing than it is in its current form if it’s to remain for season six.

The other solution is to simply get rid of it. Ditch the decay system, and allow people to simply play out as many games as they want to so long as it satisfies what they’re looking for like things were previously. It’ll exacerbate the population problems toward the end of the season, but people won’t feel so obligated to keep playing just so they keep their rank.

The top 250 would still be jockeyed for, and in an ideal system, if someone simply AFK’d the rest of the season after landing in the top 10, they’d eventually get overtaken by those that kept playing (and winning). They could also prevent this as a problem by requiring a set number of games to be played before placing on the leaderboard.

In any case, as someone that’s recently returned to the game I’m having a ton of fun this season—even though I’m exactly the type of person you talk about getting farmed by duos. It helps me improve as a player to regularly face against them, and at least the system makes a point to recognize imbalanced match-ups and readjust gains/losses accordingly. The example match I had today resulted in only a loss of 8 points on my rating, and I imagine they didn’t gain much from that win either.

fluffdragon.1523:

No particular builds, really, as I play PvE and Fractals exclusively, the latter when a few guildies or friends are up for it.

Then there’s really no point to unlock the scrapper. It’s a PvP/WvW specialization, with literally zero value in PvE.

As for the engineer at large, it is a valuable profession in fractals. Both power and condi specs are great there, but you want to drop a utility for the Tool Kit or Elixir Gun in some of the more challenging instabilities/levels.

Outside of wing one, however, engineer isn’t all that great in raids.