Guild Wars 2

Consider the new altruism runes as well.
I recently switched to those in favor of my old centaurs because I feel they offer even more useful support in most situations, they’re practically made for engineers.

Also: always post the full url for links, because this forum doesn’t forward to some of the more complex ones. It makes it easier to copy&paste:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalIqyUnuSiF1LJyIFdGpBqAgJqQ+95Bb9gQIA;TkAqmMNJay2krJZTDLOZMzA

Pingulicious.8270:

Not to mention that the builds people end up using to do decent damage without the versatility are EXTREMELY boring to execute. Why are bombs and grenades SO stale?

I think this is mentioned far too little amidst all the talk about min-maxing for damage; these kits are purely from a gameplay perspective some of the worst I have ever seen in an MMO and certainly in GW2, where in general so much effort has been put into making weapons interesting and fun.

I honestly wish they just rework or remove them completely because having to even consider them as an option for balancing a class is forcing that class to endure some of the most stale and boring gameplay imaginable in GW2.

WithoutAssumption.7936:

Can I get some clarification, I thought PvE skills weren’t allowed in WvW.

WvW is technically classified a PvE zone, so when you read about nerfs specific to PvP (as with most of the grenadier rebalancing for instance) they’re talking about s/tPvP only.

Czar Peter.7961:

Static discharge is the only build that has what OP wants, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Unlike the glass cannon rifle warrior (which still has heavy armor even with no toughness) and the glass cannon thief (stealth), the static discharge build has very little utility.

Static discharge builds can make excellent use of the toolkit, which offers a fair amount of utility imo, certainly not as much as what a more balanced or tank’ish engineer build can bring, but a lot more than a rifle warrior I would say.
I run a slightly more tanky tesla build myself in W3 from time to time (goggles, traited toolkit, rifle turret) and it offers me a lot more options when things go pair-shaped than my warrior has in a glass cannon setup.

I do agree that if your number one focus is to do single target dps a static discharge build (with or without grenades) will be most suitable.
I would consider at least 20 in firearms and 20 in tools, the rifle turret and the toolkit a must, beyond that it’s whatever floats your boat.

I’m rarely in favor of increasing damage because there’s too much emphasis on burst as is imo, the real issue with this skill is it only works decently in shorter range than melee; basically you have to be standing on top of your target.

Considering it already has a small drawback to offset the decent dps (the 1/2 second cast time) I really don’t understand why it doesn’t have at least a 200 range, which should increase to 300 when traited.

I was wondering why there is absolutely no personal (or guild) gain for upgrading structures/camps in W3?
I don’t mean claiming a location, which technically has nothing to do with upgrading it.

To anyone that has spent some time in W3 it should be clear this is one of the most valuable things a single person can contribute.
Yet there is no personal incentive, not even an achievement or title, which is odd considering almost anything you do in GW2 has some achievement linked to it.

In theory “doing it for the good of the server” sounds great, but let’s be honest; MMORPGs are built around (personal) reward systems.
I find it odd that such an integral part of W3 is one of the few activities in the entire game that offers the player no tangible reward, and a rather costly activity at that.
(for the purpose of this discussion I’m considering virtual goods and titles as being ‘tangible’, whereas “because it gives you that fuzzy feeling from knowing you’ve done something right” is intangible).

tl;dr: I feel buying upgrades should at the very least have an achievement + title linked to it and hopefully in the future more specific rewards (guild rewards).

The best gap closer we get is [magnet] imo on the toolkit, of course it can be dodged/outranged/nullified by stability, but when it lands you have your target laying right at your feet ready to eat bombs.
If you time it well with glue bomb it could be fairly lethal I imagine.

I’d consider going 10 in tools for kit refinement instead of alchemy though; you get an extra bomb and lower cooldown on your heal and BoB.

I haven’t done any extensive testing on [Elixir Infused Bombs] or anything, but I think it healed for around 200 per explosion.
A little bonus if you’re turtled up and hitting a lot of friendlies, but not worth building for specifically imo.

Vitality doesn’t reduce the absolute damage of conditions, but it does reduce the relative damage (the percentage of health you lose on each tick), so vitality does indeed help you survive longer when conditions are applied and it also helps you survive longer vs. direct damage.
Since Toughness only helps against direct damage and doesn’t scale remarkably better than Vitality it’s considered to only be helpful if you already have a decent health-pool and/or considerable healing & condition cleansing on a low cooldown (this is partly why guardians can be so survivable even though they have no more base health than a thief).

tl;dr: As a thief I would choose Vitality over Toughness unless for some strange reason you already have a lot of Vitality and don’t want more damage.

Oglaf.1074:

Schwahrheit.4203:

But Warriors definitely DPS better whether its AoE or boss fights.

And all other classes DPS way better than a Warrior.

In PvE AoE dps the only thing that comes close to a warrior is a grenadier engineer. Admittedly the engineer can offer more dps for the team as a whole, by keeping up a constant 20+ vulnerability stacks, but I would still prefer 1 engineer + 1 warrior to 2 engineers for PvE.

Oglaf.1074:

You’re talking out of your behind.

People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

I wouldn’t go 30 into inventions if they gave me a free legendary to do so, especially in W3.
Apart from that as Kimbald says you can’t really judge a build without at least seeing the utilities (although I can guess you want to go with grenades from those traits, which in W3 I would pair with a rifle instead of pistol/shield).

Few options are ideal, which is what you’re looking at for tPvP (or sPvP facerollage) I guess, but then most classes only have 1 or 2 builds that are competitive there, if that. Engineer does have some fairly differing options if you’re not obsessed by min/maxing your potential.

From a more support oriented ‘elixir/pistol/elixir gun’ build to a bursty ‘rifle/toolkit/static discharge’ build for instance (and everything in between), there’s some distinct tactical choices you can make.
Turrets offer an even more unique and different option, although personally I’m not a fan and in their current state they aren’t of much use outside of niche builds for sPvP imo, but the question wasn’t: “Are engineers bugfree/completely balanced?”.

So yes, compared to the other classes I’ve played most (warrior, thief to 80, guardian otw), I’d say engineer has some very distinct, interesting and varied gameplay.

It would either have to be such a small heal/buff as to be virtually pointless or completely unbalanced; imagine a guild golem with a bunch of engineers healing/buffing it, it would be unstoppable and make engineers more useful in WvW than any other class (although I do find that mesmer skills also shouldn’t affect golems, but that’s a different story).

The ideal group setup to assault anything would literally be nothing but engineers, with a few mesmers and siege.

LoreChief.8391:

That’s a valid point. We can’t be able to go back and forth between weapon-kit/side-arm kit. Normal bundle overlays? Certainly, keep the no cooldown factor. Whatever side-arm you have selected, that has normalized stats and sigils, will fall under the same category as everyone elses weapon kits, with the same cooldown. You can still equip your utility bundles while weapon swap is on cooldown, just not your side-arm kit.

But then if I understand it correctly you want this added to the engineer without touching any of the class mechanics we currently have. It would be a straight buff.

I don’t feel like my engineer is so underpowered he needs a buff of this magnitude tbh. This would simply be adding another utility slot.
Granted one that only a kit could fill and has no toolbelt, but still a huge buff to the class.

Kits need fixing as far as stats and sigils go, but this suggestion adds more than a fix for kits, it adds a serious buff to the class as a whole and that is not needed imo.

I agree that the absence of stats and sigils from kits is an issue (my number 1 issue with the engineer), but in this change: what do you do with the weapon-switch cooldown?

At the moment kit-switching has a 1 second cooldown (practically 0 in other words), which is a large advantage to many builds.
Simply turning kits into an offhand and retaining this low cooldown would probably be considered overpowered.

The low cooldown and toolbelt skill are to offset the fact you use up a utility, which in itself is a good and interesting mechanic I think. The only basic problem I see is we also give up sigils and stats comparable to an exotic and (apart from traited grenades) that puts kits below a secondary weapon.

It’s interesting, but I feel you’re trying to fix one problem by creating another one.

KirinDave.6451:

Like the guardian skill, this is a 100% stomp defeater and can stop multiple people.

I don’t disagree with most of your point, but the guardian’s skill is not on par with the mesmer’s, it compares best to the ranger’s; both are AoE, yet both can be negated by stability or a well timed blind, which still makes them inferior to that of the thief, elementalist and mesmer which can interrupt multiple stomps even if those boons/conditions are used.

coglin.1496:

Most of us have tried them. Engineers are great. What other professions have AoE knock backs? What other professions have a down skill that does the decent AoE damage booby trap does? Now what class has the AoE knock back and good AoE damage in one skill?

The #3 skill is a good skill, the problem is that most other classes have a multiple stomp interrupt on the #2 and against people that know what they’re doing (even in a 1v1), you will rarely be downed long enough to get to use #3.
You can’t balance the #3 from one class against the #2 from another.

[Disclaimer] I look at downed state balance mostly in respect to how well a class can interrupt stomps, because imo that is the most important ability to have by far (in PvP of course, I’ve never known an npc to try and stomp me).

Karast.1927:

I still do not understand why people are so negative about tool kit dps. It is a little bit low compared to grenade and bomb, that’s true, but it is a great kit.

The dps is simply lower than the rifle’s (if you build for the rifle), on top of that it’s melee, so inherently more risky.
You can’t make up for the loss in stats that exotic weapons give but kits don’t (apart from grenades because of one specific trait and the great scaling).

I love the toolkit and am happy with the changes, which is why I use the toolkit in my rifle build. For the utility in #4 & 5 and to a lesser extent #3 & 2, not for the dps because it’s simply sub par (and the auto-attack is just awkwardly slow).

The main issue is simply that some classes have a #2 skill that may interrupt a single stomp (if no stability is used), some classes have a #2 that may interrupt an entire group from stomping and then there are classes that have a #2 that will interrupt an entire group from stomping no matter what they do.

You can’t balance on the #3, because the classes that can’t reliably interrupt multiple stomps with #2 will rarely get to use it.

I don’t consider the downed state to be that important for overall balance, but in itself it is completely unbalanced from one class to the next because of this.

Recently.1043:

Are you sure rune of the water triggers on a shouts heal? My instinct says no, because the description says “when you use a ‘healing skill’” not “when you use a skill that heals”. To me that’s an important distinction since “healing skills” are essentially a category of skills, like utility skills, elite skills, etc.

Your instincts are correct, all those “effect on healing” traits and effects only work on your actual main heal and nothing else.
It’s a distinction that’s not very clear from the tool tips in game.

Which stats you want to focus on depend as much on your build as the situation (if not more so) imo.

For instance: if you’re building for elixirs and/or Elixir Gun, conditions shouldn’t worry you much so toughness will trump vitality.
Do you spec for vigor on speed (1 trait in Alchemy)? You can dodge a lot more so passive defense from toughness matters less.

That said; Power/toughness/vitality pieces are fairly easy to get (many ways to get them) and are ok with most builds although not perfect imo.
If you’re not yet entirely sure what you want to do/be as an engineer though, that’s the set I’d start with.

If you like the look of them, they’re definitely worth it.
My Sylvari warrior for instance is wearing a full T2 cultural set and looks awesome!
All transmuted to 80 exotic of course because as far as functionality goes you can get far better for far less investment, at 80 and while levelling.

As a rule I wouldn’t worry too much about your gear while levelling up anyway.
Going from green to yellow won’t make you that much more powerful, so unless it’s like your third alt, you have the appropriate craft or just money to burn; save up for when you’re level 80.

If you go so far as to trait your shouts for healing, I would consider that to be a support build more than anything.
In my opinion nothing will improve your support more than having every shout you do remove conditions from everyone near you (it’s arguably much more helpful than having your shouts heal even), so superior rune of the soldier without a doubt.

About the ascended gear btw; I’ve read it will only be a few jewels (rings?) and the backpiece coming this patch, so your main exotic gear shouldn’t be outdated yet anyway.

Also: isn’t the trading post cross server? I’m not sure about that one, but I thought the market was global (not that it makes any difference to the OP :p )

Braxxus.2904:

-Engineer
Magnetic Shield 3 30 Create a magnetic field that reflects projectiles and can be released to push back foes.
Magnetic Inversion Release the magnetic field to push back nearby foes.
~Projectile reflection standard and an AOE knockback as long as you remember to detonate it before it expires. Variable usage and utility.

Their CD’s are bigger; I don’t see how the fact 20% gives them more flat reduction is an advantage? The CD’s are still longer if you take the trait and in fact it makes the trait even more of a must have for engineers.
But most of all: magnetic shield is an immobile skill and it only blocks ranged attacks.

I play 3 classes endgame, 2 of which are my 80 engineer and my 80 warrior and I’ll take the warrior shield over the engineer one any day, not just in a straight comparison of the skills, but also because of how well it synergizes with certain builds.
I might be slightly biased towards my warrior though (it’s the only one I have in full exotics at this time).

As to the main topic; I guess a reduction in duration for a reduction in CD could be nice.
Although a 2 second block on a 16 second CD (traited) might be a bit OP.

Thorquist.8126:

My bet is that we, rangers, are punished because of bots and that’s the main reason why people hate this class now.

As I understand it it’s mostly a legacy of early Beta stages when rangers (especially longbow at max range) did fairly great damage, coupled with combo fields they were apparently seeing whole groups of rangers just standing at max range pew pew’ing with a few others thrown in for the odd combo field back then (in W3 tests anyhow).

I suppose seeing the whole flashy, complex combat system reduced to a max range pew pew spam-fest led to some serious nerfing.

It’s always difficult balancing ranged damage though, ‘cause the risk is lower so should the reward be.
What surprises me is that I don’t see more complaints about the ranger’s melee options tbh, because that’s where you really got hosed imo (not just weapons, but synergy with traits and utilities as well).

Toolkit could actually be pretty good with a few tweaks (and if they give kits the ability to make use of weapon stats/sigils).

Auto-attack is a bit too slow for my taste, but it does pack a wallop (maybe slightly decrease the base damage for an increase in speed).
The 1 second cast-time on box of nails is again a bit long imo, but an excellent skill to have on a melee set.
Pry bar is just lovely as is the shield block (although I wouldn’t mind being able to trait it for reflect like a warrior can ) and magnet is a little unreliable, but in essence another great skill for melee.

tl;dr: if they fix kits in general to be on par with normal weapons and make the toolkit slightly more speedy/responsive I would definitely play around with a high power melee/rifle build.

Actually when it comes to self healing (as the previous poster in part points out) very few classes can match the engineer. Even discounting all the extra healing options we get and just looking at our main heals.
All our main heals do average to good healing compared to most classes.

Elixir H: 20 second CD when traited (and I really can’t see anyone taking it if they don’t trait elixirs) which is among the lowest CD for a heal apart from a very few exceptions.
Funnily enough 2 of those exceptions are also engineer heals:

Med kit: 20 – 15.5 second CD (not counting the bandages, which are fairly situational)

Healing turret: 15 second CD if you pick it up (20 second if you blow it up, I would advise against leaving it out in almost any situation), which is basically the lowest CD a heal can have apart from traited assassin’s signet (offers no utility and poor healing).

The excellent low cooldown healing is why I gear my engineer mostly for toughness instead of vitality in fact (that and the fact traited elixirs + EG make it so conditions slide off me like water off a ducks back).

Now as to which one I run with? Med kit; mostly because I run with runes of the centaur (100% AoE swiftness in W3? yes please) and the extra fury on #5 is always nice.

Healing turret should net you a bit more healing though, as well as sharing some of that healing.

LameFox.6349:

I know that I’m pretty much gonna have shake it off no matter what, so I might as well get the most out of shout traits/runes rather than divide between them.

These 2 signets + Lyssa runes allow you to take balanced stance instead though and still have some counter to conditions.
Now that I have both a full Lyssa and a full Soldier set I keep going back and forward between those 2 builds and it’s not an easy choice imo.

In a shout build you’ll remove conditions from others as well and as you say, signets aren’t instant as shouts are, which sucks a lot.

On the other hand the stability from balanced stance (I wanted to abbreviate, but calling it “BS” seemed a little harsh) comes in very handy (mainly to get stomps off) and SoS and SoR then remove all conditions.
I hate it when I got a bunch of conditions on me, I blow ‘shake it off’ and it doesn’t remove the immobilize :/

It’s hard to make gadgets work in a pistol build imo (granted I don’t like gadgets that much, so I may be biased).

If you’re going for burst with gadgets and pistols you’re kittening yourself I’m afraid (giving up all the survivability and utility that elixirs offer to end up with sub-par burst compared to most other classes).

You could use gadgets mixed with turrets for control in more of a ‘bunker build’ (net turret, bathering ram, slick shoes, …) with pistol/shield.
Works very well in sPvP, but I’ve never tried it in PvE or W3; it would lack the mobility that is often so important there I think.

Gear-wise I tend to take power/precision on jewels at least, even though pistols scale poorly compared to most weapons, it still offers more than the alternatives I feel.

Engineers have a few grandmaster traits (top tier, you won’t get access to them until level 60) that can help dps greatly; namely “Grenadier” for grenades and “Coated Bullets” for pistols.
Although how much Coated Bullets helps depends greatly on the situation; on large groups the dps increase can be significant, if you’re at max range it helps (even on single targets you will get a double hit with your auto-attack), single target close to medium range it does little to nothing.

Consider going p/p though; #4 is the biggest dps you’ll get from a pistol (close range anyhow) and especially in PvE you won’t lose much by dropping the shield imo.
Personally I also really like the Elixir Gun because of the 1200 range it gives (when traited), reasonable single target dps and constant debuffing/healing.

In most situations you won’t get close to a warrior’s dps no matter what you do however, especially PvE (where his big moves shouldn’t miss).

Kit refinement auto-casts a specific spell for each kit; for EG it’s super elixir which is pretty great (so when you equip it, it automatically drops a super elixir on your location. It does have a cooldown which differs from kit to kit, about 10 seconds for EG iirc).
If you want to be supporty (and even if you don’t imo) this is a great trait to pair with EG.

About condition damage: because of how it stacks (2 condition oriented people attacking one target will probably overlap dps, 3 most certainly will; effectively “wasting” damage) and because of it’s poor scaling (especially compared to the synergy between power + precision + crit damage increase) I would advise against building for it.
If it happens to overlap with some of the traits you want? Great.
But gearing for power/precision/+crit will simply yield much better damage in most situations (especially for jewels you just get so much more, to the extent that I’m afraid rubies are going to get nerfed some day).

Auesis.7301:

It didn’t need a nerf, Quickness in general did. It’s a stupid boon that imbalances everything the moment it’s used. 33% speed increase cap in GW1 was fine. Double speed is unbelievably bad.

Worse: it’s not a boon (it’s an effect) so it can’t even be ripped, stolen or transmuted by your opponent.

bettadenu.5483:

They will need to completely overhaul the Thief profession, because the golden rule for Thieves is: Kill it before it kills you!

I think you’ll find that’s the golden rule for everyone.

bettadenu.5483:

If we are no longer able to quickly kill something then there is no reason to roll any build for Thief, because we do not have the support other classes have. If you look at your skill arsenal everything screams DPS DPS DPS DPS IT DOWN.

Apart from the utilities that scream blind, stealth and mobility you mean? You know the ones that let us choose when to engage and direct the flow of combat (much like for instance CC does for other classes; I’m not saying others don’t have their own mechanics to do the same, but that’s only fair).

Thieves, like rogues in most games, don’t offer that much support for others besides dps, no. Mostly because stealth is a fairly selfish mechanic.
It’s also one of the most useful mechanics to have access to in pvp (rivaled only by clones imo).

Doomdesire.9365:

They win in DPS, they lose in DPM.
The point I’m trying to make it that everything, every last trait and every last skill is put into a chain that has a 1 second execution time and 60 second cooldow.

You’re talking about a very specific build (based around haste I assume, because it’s one of the few utilities that actually has a 60 second CD, untraited) that is in no way the only way to deal very high burst damage.
And even in this build if you should choose to blow every single utility you have (which is in no way necessary to have good burst), you will still have enough initiative to cloak & dagger/backstab again for some very respectable damage or cloak & dagger/Hide in Shadows to stealth away.

There are classes that have to trait and build very specifically to do well in PvP, effectively kittening many of their other options; thief is not one of these classes.
On my thief I can choose to do an insane Alpha-strike, blowing everything I have (on semi-long cooldowns) or just as easily choose to do a very good Alpha-strike and still have plenty of utility/initiative left to slip away and/or slip in and out of the fight for quick bursts.

tl;dr: Making out like a thief’s only option is to blow everything and then hide for 60 seconds or die is facetious at best.

I like the general feel of the offhand and as has been pointed out it allows for some diversity when choosing traits (you’re not forced to take 10 in explosives and/or take the FT, like you are with p/s if you want to compete).
The long cooldowns on the shield and the fact the reflect basically roots you (often making it a delayed death sentence really) makes it a lot less attractive in many situations.

That said the hit or miss nature of blowtorch can be annoying as heck (not so much a skill-fix as a bug fix I guess) and glueshot is underwhelming.
In many ways it is on par with or even better than netshot as you say Casia, but netshot is arguably one of the worst CC’s in game in it’s own right with how incredibly easy it is to miss/be avoided.
Couple that with a 24 sec cooldown on glue and it needs fixing.

Improving the range to at least 900 is not out of order and even a slightly lower cooldown (18-20 seconds traited?) wouldn’t be OP imo considering it does take some skill to land it.

Apart from that I feel the effective ranges for some moves could stand to be tweaked; 200 on blowtorch not to mention 100 to make full effect of blunderbuss, that’s less than melee for pete’s sake.
“Rifled barrels” should affect these skills imo: turning the effective range on blowtorch to ca. 300-750 and blunderbuss (I know it’s a pistol thread but it deserves a mention :p) to ca. 200-600.

Sigil of Earth does have an internal Cooldown though.
Even though it is not mentioned, all sigils have some sort of a cooldown iirc and most of these cooldowns are shared.
For this sigil it’s quite low though, 2 or 3 seconds I believe, but it would still prevent any sort of stacking.

[Edit] by “all sigils” I mean all sigils with an active effect, there of course isn’t a cooldown on a sigil that adds a flat 3% crit chance or something, which is why you should probably just take on of those on one weapon if you’re dual wielding.

I enjoy the wide array of weapon choices and that my passive survivability is quite decent even if I build to push my dps.

Some of the things that disappointed me most/feel like a misrepresentation of the class:

- weapon-switching: warrior is a weapon master, as such we get a trait that reduces that cooldown. However this trait is in a very lackluster trait-line (discipline) and since most (all?) ‘weapon-switch sigils’ have a 9 second SHARED cooldown anyway, it offers little advantage.
→ proposed change: lower the ‘weapon-switch’ cooldowns, or make it so they don’t share a cooldown. This is hardly unbalancing and would actually make a weapon-switch build an interesting option.

- Burst-skills: Our class mechanic, which has been quite seriously nerfed since beta. Not without reason, but what we are now left with is a system that usually favors not using burst skills to keep the passive traited effects of a full adrenaline bar.
And again: the discipline trait-line which revolves around it is quite poor.
→ proposed change: rework the entire discipline trait-line for a starter. There is so much wrong with it I don’t know where to begin; from the basic buffs (3% damage increase to my burst skill for 30 points invested?) to the top tier traits.

- Physical utilities: thematically they fit very well and the idea of more control is appealing. In practice however many of these skills are unreliable, counter-intuitive and have far too long cooldowns (that can only be reduced with a top tier trait) to build around.
→ proposed change: make the cooldown-reduction/damage-increase a master trait, change kick to a pull (why would I want to increase the distance to my target? Most of my weapons are melee and the rifle already has the same skill on #5) and perhaps add secondary effects/conditions (if traited?).

tl;dr: Our class mechanic was as I once understood it supposed to be all about burst and weapon-switching, in truth most viable builds revolve around shouts; pigeonholing an already tactically limited class even more.

Rework the discipline line, burst skills and weapon-switch sigils or give the class more access to stability/protection so we can withstand slower melee fights.

You may want to consider “Fear me” instead of “For great justice”, since with those runes SoR will already give you 48 out of 60 seconds of Fury and a measly 3 extra might doesn’t compare to a skill that can reliably stop an entire group from rezzing/stomping imo.

Although I would never use runes that invest so heavily into healing power myself ‘cause I find it a very weak stat in general and especially if you’re not aiming for a total support build (and you want dps I gather) since as a stat it only affects skills you use once in a while (although arguably it’s never as useful as in a shout build).

Full Rune of the soldier just synergizes so well with full shout builds it’s very hard not to take them (combined with the horn it would make you and everyone around you practically condition immune).

Krathalos.3461:

It truly is one of the easiest elites to counter. The daggers are thrown at random, so the reflection is actually the most dangerous part about it. They also move a lot slower than normal, so the complaint of not being able to catch up to them because of stability is terrible.

The daggers also cripple for 2 sec; still not the worst skill to counter if you’ve got some melee and a gap closer, but not quite as easy as “running up to them”.

As for the rest of Darkeh’s comments; I don’t think he’s too far off, although I do believe the burst can be a balancing problem when you take quickness into account (but that is true for any burst/quickness build really, apart from maybe rangers) and some of the +crit damage scaling (but that isn’t a thief only issue).

Stealth is a utility, you could say it’s the thief’s greatest utility.
Most classes have to build very specifically for their utility (instead of maxing burst or condition dps for instance) but it hardly requires a thief to give up anything.
You can have both the excellent utility that stealth provides and at the same time build for great burst or condition damage or …
That is an issue.

[Disclaimer] I have a 79 thief that I’ve almost exclusively leveled in WvW since 50 (apart from some crafting xp).
I’m not superl33t, but I’ve seen and experienced enough to say my thief can be more lethal with the right build than almost any amount of defense can withstand, and most often I can just walk (read: stealth) away after < I admit: I’ve had my juvenile fun with it, but it’s not balanced by any measure.

Remove the cast-time.
The ability to chain-cast an unbreakable multi-second stun (through venom-sharing builds) was a bit cheesy and needed a tweak idd.
But now it’s still a stun with a 1 second cast-time, however one that can be instantaneously negated by a normal utility skill from pretty much any class.

Even if the CD would have to be tweaked a bit, the cast-time makes this skill under-perform vs. most normal utility venoms.
That isn’t right, especially considering this isn’t just one of our elites: it’s the only one we can use underwater.

I find it weird everyone complains about hundred blades and/or pistol whip, etc. and rarely about quickness.
Since that is the real culprit in these insane burst builds imo.
They realized it was powerful so they gave it a drawback, only the drawbacks are too little.
I don’t think they realized what an increase in potential quickness would give to builds that completely min/max for it.

Also: they made it an effect instead of a boon and as such completely un-removable. A major mistake imo.

I’ve built my engie at least in part specifically to counter that and I think I can say 8 times out of 10 I get away and at least give myself a fighting chance, that said I also think it is ridiculous I have to build specifically to counter this one mechanic from a very specific build in only a couple of classes.

tldr; quickness is responsible for so many of these ridiculous situations:
- overcharged golems taking out doors in no time? check
- 100b warriors ripping your health before most people know what’s happening? check
- same deal with pistol whip thieves? check

Your build seems to revolve almost entirely around AoE dps, which is inherently weak vs. single opponents and you forgo any skills that directly buff your dps (elixir B, goggles, …) instead taking bombs and a flamethrower which cán give excellent utility however.

Trait-wise:
I find vulnerability on crits quite weak; it doesn’t last long (1-2 seconds iirc) so multiple stacks will be hard with pistols and one stack is a pitiful 1% increase.
Going to 30 in firearms and taking coated bullets gives a significant dps increase to pistols ime, but again, mostly when you’re fighting more than 1.

Gear-wise:
+power is a very poor stat to invest in with pistols, the direct damage they do (which power buffs) is some of the poorest of any weapon in game.
+precision and +condition damage will yield the best results for pistol dps normally.

Utilities:
You’re using fun utilities, but none that directly increase your dps; elixir B can be good, but because you’ve invested in tools rather than elixirs ‘utility goggles’ might be better.
Goggles give fury (+crit, excellent for getting more fire/bleed procs) and the toolbelt skill gives 10 stacks of vulnerability with a short CD (20 seconds untraited iirc).

tldr; I’d look at gadgets for a trait setup like yours, or if you want to completely rethink it all: remember the rifle does a lot more single target damage than the pistols and it does scale well with power (since you have that gear).

^ What AndrewWaltfeld said; this can be a major advantage if you don’t mind quick and nervous combat (and isn’t that what GW2 is all about?).

I run with the flamethrower or elixir gun and being able to jump in and out of them quickitteno get that knockback, AoE blind, cripple, healing-field, etc. can be a big advantage.

The only real fix needed is sigils/auto-attack imo, but that’s been mentioned plenty and I’m sure it’ll be fixed Soon™.

[edit] Why in the world is the word “quick-ly” being censored to “quickitteno”?

kit’s auto-attack and sigils have been mentioned plenty I’d say sooo:

Fix: The number 2 skill on both flamethrower and elixir gun are supposed to be ‘lobbed’ projectiles, unfortunately they appear to be obstructed by the tiniest pebble or rise in the landscape.
I feel my engineer should be able to lob a big great ball of fire over something less than a foot high.

Change: Make the shield more viable.
Un-traited the shield has a very long cooldown; 30 and 40 seconds makes it the longest cooldown off-hand in the game (together with focus for guardians) and it is our only defensive weapon option.
I use the shield and do love it (the skills are awesome and the animations great imo) but traiting for the shield requires me to go to the second rank in the inventions line, which goes directly against traiting for pistol use (my only option with the shield).
Although the pistol performs admirably heavily traited for it, it is one of the poorest weapons in game if you do not build for it.

I feel I am being pushed towards a very un-focused build for pistol/shield by this, which I think points at a larger problem: the engineer feels un-focused in general trait-wise (apart from a very few, very specific builds, almost all revolving around either grenades and/or bombs, or dual pistol condition builds).

Yes, you can. A couple of slightly different ones even. I’m not exactly sure at which levels, but I know I crafted a yellow (rare) one with a karma bought recipe for level 50 and/or 60.
Karma bought recipe just from any leatherworker master, it’s the noble set.

fyi: stealth trap gives 5 seconds of stealth, on a mere 30 second CD (24 if traited for traps and as said 6 seconds duration if traited for that). More than enough for a decent thief to either run away or get at your back.

If they don’t run away though: bombs. I’m not a huge fan of bombs myself, but they do work a treat against melee thieves (confusion bomb + #3 pistol = a joy).
Elixir S works best for me to get out of the initial burst (you can also trait auto-elixir S at 75% as an extra safety).

Most thieves forgo any condition cleaning for maximum burst though, so lay on the conditions and they melt.