Guild Wars 2

Engineer and revenant say welcome to the club!

czerwoni.9563:

Is engie zerker or condi and what about scrapper and the holosmith

In PvP and WvW, running zerker on engineer will get you killed faster than you can yell “Elixir S!” I wouldn’t do it unless you really like high risk, low reward. In PvE, zerker engi can be useful for the power bomber build.

Condi engineer is primarily useful in PvE as well, and boasts one of the highest theoretical DPS’s, although in practicality it’s near impossible to achieve without being a perfect robot. That said, it is more robust and versatile than the power bomber build.

Scrapper is pretty poor in PvE, given its low damage. It’s tanky in PvP and WvW, and virtually a necessity in those two modes if you don’t like to die frequently.

Holosmith seems intended to be a high-damage, power spec, but I’m not sure how well that will actually play out.

It looks like they are finally taking some steps in the right direction, but it’s not enough. Most of the builds that are currently viable will remain that way, but it looks like at least gadgets are starting to get some love.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Genesis.8572:

leviathan.2148:

IMO the new heal seems to be actually competitive with Healing Turret.

Is it? Every single engineer build on Metabattle, save one PvP build rated at a 60 rating that uses Elixir H, has the Healing Turret equipped. It’s simply too good to not have. It has far more functionality and healing than the other healing skills.

Eh, it’s not really so much that. Elixir H is pretty competitive with the Healing Turret. The problem is just that Elixir H has a full 1-second cast time and gets interrupted very easily.

Elixir H also doesn’t remove conditions either. I used to play Elixir H a lot back in the beginning, but I came to realize the condi removal from healing turret was too valuable to pass up.

I’m actually most interested in seeing whether or not AED makes an entrance with the elite specialization. The big problem before with it is that good players would see you activate it and then not kill you. But with the new overheating mechanic with Holosmith, it’d be very easy to self-inflict enough damage to kill yourself, causing AED to activate.

The only problem is that it’s a gadget, and it would require Gadgeteer to be a bit less cumbersome to use (ups to 8-second duration with ~22 second cooldown when Gadgeteer is active).

I was going to say — AED is only more useful if its cooldown time matches the healing turret. Otherwise, it’s still way too finicky to be as useful.

Are you worried that everyone will jump to the Engineer class now and claim it as their main just because of Holosmith?

Nope.

People aren’t going to learn one of the already most complicated classes just to play something that looks vaguely cool.

Ivantreil.3092:

Iozeph.5617:

I’m just waiting for the follow-up to this thread.

Engineer: The Final Solution

Allow us to be healer engineers?

I think you missed his reference.

insanemaniac.2456:

if they fix the existing issues, especially in a way that isnt your vision, i think youll have a hard time accepting it. and youll just find new issues in another couple months anyways.

That’s certainly possible. I’m just not going to hold my breath for this next balance patch until I see it.

LilBiM.3581:

Vagrant.7206:

Are.1326:

Sounds like every issue you have is with the core class and should be solved with a balance patch, not a new elite spec.

That’s kind of my point, actually. Since elite specs still make use of core specs, they’re still slapping a bandaid on top of an existing issue. Without fixing existing issues, our shiny new toy will simply feel hollow.

I see what you did there at the end… still. Base Engineer used to be really good at dueling as opposed to stalling. Can we get back to that? The good at dueling part not the camping. I keep hearing this jack of all trades talk which there is some truth to that but it was good at something (blowing people up in 1v1) and people seem to forget that.

In theory Holosmith will do that, but thief seems to be more oriented towards that playstyle.

Bomb kit, obviously.

Are.1326:

Sounds like every issue you have is with the core class and should be solved with a balance patch, not a new elite spec.

That’s kind of my point, actually. Since elite specs still make use of core specs, they’re still slapping a bandaid on top of an existing issue. Without fixing existing issues, our shiny new toy will simply feel hollow.

Frightlight.3796:

Wait till we can test the spec. You may end up loving it.

I’d love to believe that, but unless they make a major balance pass soon that fixes many of our outstanding problems (which I doubt they’ll fix), I don’t see how holosmith will really improve the situation.

Technically you can use it in PvE to get an ally up.

But it’s pretty rare that it will ever be particularly useful.

oneshotflip.7036:

I have been following the information and release, and I know the skill information has been released to some extent. Still, shouldn’t we wait until we get to test it(which is only a few weeks away for those that didn’t hear) before we claim that holosmith is trash and that this class is doomed. Anet is a good studio and they have been working on this expack for a while, so we should give the benefit of the doubt.
Tldr: give holosmith a chance

I’m willing to give it a shot. I’m just not hopeful, considering we’ve been virtually written off for the last two years.

I pray that somebody at ArenaNet will read this, but I doubt that. They haven’t addressed any of our longstanding concerns in the last two years, why start now?

Holosmith is going to land just like Scrapper did. ArenaNet doesn’t seem to acknowledge this, but I’ll address the elephant in the room. Here’s the crux of the problem with Holosmith: Our core trait lines, weapons, utilities are still bungled. Holosmith does nothing to resolve these longstanding issues.

For those cheering on the new elite spec, remember: Holosmith is only one specialization out of three trait lines you must choose. The other two traits lines you pick will be predetermined based on whether you’re power or condi, PvP, PvE, or WvW.

Allow me to explain:

In General:

• All new utilities must compete with the power of kits. As it stands, kits still reign supreme in most game modes when compared to other utilities. How do the new utilities stack up?
• Only hard light arena seems unique enough to be worth consideration in PvE.
• Spectrum shield seems to be the only one worth consideration in PvP, and will be used to replace the bulwark gyro.
• Laser Disk is virtually identical to Procession of Blades, but it doesn’t compare to bomb kit, and will not see much use.
• Photon Wall is approximately Shield of Courage without the stunbreak, and a shorter cooldown. This only seems to be valuable for WvW.

In PvP:

• All engineer builds for PvP require Alchemy currently. That is because it is our only traitline that features any defensive capabilities. Only one trait in the holosmith line addresses this issue. If you are running a power build, this will be your primary minor trait.
• If you are running conditions, I guarantee you will be running Firearms and Alchemy as your two side traits, and there will be almost no exceptions.
• If you are running power, you will probably still have grenades on your utility slot and you will be running Explosives and Alchemy. Nothing in the new profession matches the damage grenades still present.
• Enemies will still be able to run circles around us unless you are in the Photon Forge mode.

In PvE:

• Current PvE builds will likely remain as the top competitors.
• For power builds, sword will not present enough of a damage boost when compared to the bomb kit. That’s right, you’ll still be playing Bomberman if you’re a power engi in PvE. Photon Forge will grant access to some variety, at the very least.
• For condi builds, sword does little and we’ll still be using P/P. We’ll see our rotations become more complicated thanks to the burning of photon forge, and it’s pretty likely that we’ll be playing an even longer opera (assuming the burning is worth the time).

And I don’t know enough about WvW to say, but it looks like holosmith doesn’t resolve the issue of ranged AoE damage that engineers are still lacking. At least it fixes the mobility issue to a limited extent.

Meanwhile:

• Turrets and gadgets (and associated traits) will continue their long descent into the irrelevant abyss.
• Potions (and associated traits) will still remain situational and prone to random chance.
• Rifle (and associated traits) will remain underpowered.
• Glitches with the class will still be unaddressed. (Don’t see your legendaries now? You won’t in Photon Forge either!)
• Other QoL issues will not be addressed.

tigirius.9014:

Have to completely agree with this post.

We need the “Balance Team” to take time off from buffing warriors and nerfing thiefs to spend some real time with the engineer trait lines to make them complete.

This class has been neglected since beta in a serious way. It was even obvious in how much time they took to display the holosmith on the latest launch video. Seriously it was like 10 seconds of time compared to the rest of the time the other classes new specs were talked about. How disappointing.

If the “Balance Team” takes some serious time on the engineer in the next stream and upcoming trait/balance patch I’ll have hope about their skills again but until then they have severely disappointed the Engineer community with their lack of concern for the class.

You’ll also notice in the trailer video, holosmith was the only class where a weakness of some sort was mentioned (the overheating). It’s like they go out of their way to make us different in a bad way.

Yeah, shield actually has some really strong CC’s to accompany it. The problem is, we only have one mainhand weapon (pistol) and it’s pretty terrible as far as damage goes.

TwiceDead.1963:

I wonder how this’ll affect piano players…

We’ll have far less carpal tunnel, that much I’m certain of.

Well it’s not like shield dishes out good dmg.

It actually has very good CC though. CC + Power = Winning

I suspect the toolbelt skills will become our new holo kits.

Also, time to start working on the Shining Blade.

fashion.6712:

First oft, i play since the beginning. My first 80 was the engineer. I love the concept. But after a long break i hit a brick wall with hot.

I am dying left and right. I am one, two shotted by everything that moves.

I tried full vit and tough scrapper. I couldnt outheal the damage. I couldnt escape. I couldnt distract with anything like necro or mesmer ofc.

I tried full condi pistol pistol. Damage didnt kill fast enough, couldnt outheal the damage.

Full power feri scrapper, all the same.

Please enlighten me how to engineer. I just love the class too much to quit it for my necro or mesmer (who just kitten the mobs in the junge, even Champions).

Blinds baby, blinds. The enemy can’t hurt what it can’t see.

Pistol 3 + Bomb 4 + Mortar Kit 4 + Grenade Kit 3 + Flamethrower 5 = enemies are nearly permanently blinded unless they are champs or higher, in which case you shouldn’t try to solo them.

And that’s just if you want to play defensively. If you want to play more offensively, you should be up in their face making them miss all their attacks.

guildabd.6529:

Hoping it will be WvW and PvE focused spec.

I hope they won’t work on it the least, like they seemed to last time.

This seems like too much of a stretch.

She’s wearing gladiator armor, but there’s no evidence that’s a margonite.

Panda.1967:

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

Turrets and eng bundles should have racial skins IMO. Planty sylvari, semi-magical asura, steampunk charr. Norn, idk, stick some runes or knotwork on them; there’ll be room since they’ll be extra-large. Humans can keep the base skins since they receive 10000x more attention for every other type of graphic in the game.

The turrets we get as Engineer currently are of Charr design… The Engineer class as a whole is largely of Charr design… I originally wanted to make an Asura Engineer… but the turrets were so jarringly out of place on an asura I just couldn’t leave her as an Asura.. Then when I went to make a Charr I found “hey Engineer could totally fit with the Charr” and so I made a Charr Engineer and as I roamed around I noticed… “hey, these Engineer Turrets are quite obviously of Charr design”

I was going to say… from a lore perspective, the engineer class comes from the Charr. So technically all the turrets are Charr in design.

The other thing is that engineers (as a whole) use mechanical apparatuses, not magical ones. Asuran turrets use entirely different underlying mechanics (they are magical in nature, not mechanical).

Yeah, my engineer got targeted a lot more when I had more toughness. I still tend to get targeted due to my high precision/high DPS, but generally if they’re targeting you without having done anything… that’s usually a toughness thing.

LilBiM.3581:

Doesn’t work for Mortar Kit for some reason. Could be pretty cool with hammer #5 with a little imagination. Explosions could also do something with quicksilver… Hammer #2 isn’t interesting, Hammer #3’s landing could be awesome too with a little quicksilver on landing. Hammer #4’s block could be quicksilver shield/drill that pierces the heavens.

Opportunities lost. Nothing ventured… nothing gained.

Overall it just looks like they meant to add in grenade barrage. Not a whole lot else seems to have changed.

Would be kind of cool if they made a “Splatoons” minigame out of the effect though.

They… work.

Just kinda strange. Grenade barrage now produces a splash of quicksilver globs instead of nades.

insanemaniac.2456:

I remember when it didn’t black out utilities and i was sad when they changed it (boy was that a long time ago)

unfortunately anet doesn’t really do about faces. to their detriment.

At the time it seemed reasonable. Now it just makes me sad.

A /resign feature would be better.

The way it worked in GW1 was the whole team had to /resign to forfeit the match. This way one person couldn’t opt out at and say “Nah screw you I’m throwing the match.” Occasionally people would be jerks and not /resign, but generally most people would acknowledge when a fight was unwinnable.

The /resign function from GW1 worked just fine. I don’t see why they couldn’t reimplement it in GW2.

Twigifire.8379:

Rifle doesn’t need such a large work-over to be a viable choice in pvp/wvw. Evade on jump shot, making the punishment of OS not as harsh, and some general damage increase either to the 3, 5, and/or to the auto, will go an immense way to making it competitive in pvp for both dueling and conquest purposes.

I would highly recommend making overcharged shot unblockable, to add onto this.

I just had two matches in a row with all kinds of wonkiness…

First one we were clearly facing high/top level players, they coordinated very well and wrecked us. While I was 1v2’ing (on my scrapper, don’t get excited), they murdered my team 3v4.

Second matchup… we lose a player 1/4 the way through the match (DC’ed), and we still won 4v5 560 to 240 on the ship map.

What is going on?

I play a meta engi in PvP currently.

Most classes cannot beat me in 1v1. The closest it comes are really good necros (with impeccable senses of timing) or thieves with duelist builds. Mender engi currently has the most staying power.

However, if you want to kill someone in a duel… that’s a different story. Thief is good for that at the moment. Revenant is also capable if played well. I’ve never struggled on my Meditrapper DH.

Also, I fully expect scrapper to get nerfed soon and then us engis will have no viable builds.

Not as useless as thief downed state in PvE, I’ll say that much. At least we can CC bosses so people can get us back up.

TBH most classes have crap down states. I think the most useful I’ve seen are mesmer’s and ranger’s.

scorekeeper.6524:

The catch-22 then either: nerf kits to promote the use of other utilities = heavily nerf the capabilities of the class
or: buff kits = now the class REALLY has to use kits all the time or else it is shooting itself in the foot by not taking any

Honestly, I think the biggest part of the problem is that our primary weapons are so dang weak. If you use at P/P, P/S (hah!), or Rifle and you try to play without a kit, your damage will be absurdly weak compared to other classes. None of these weapons are good, forcing us to use multiple kits, which do have damage that is good (typically bombs and/or grenades).

If they actually want to fix the problem of being stuck using kits, they need to buff our primary weapons to where they are competitive and nerf certain kits to reduce their effectiveness.

You’ll notice that Scrapper in PvP only uses one kit, and that’s because the primary weapon isn’t half bad. Sure, it’s still not on par with some of the more powerful weapons out there, but it’s got some heft to it, and some of the utilities built into it that you would otherwise need a kit for.

Obtena.7952:

So how does a lack of build diversity for all classes mean that Anet doesn’t care about Engi? Logically, you can say a lack of build diversity means Anet doesn’t care about any class …

What it REALLY sounds like to me is that you just want change for changes sake. I see no compelling reason for that.

I refer to Panda’s point, and the point that has been made many times:

We have been shoehorned into the same builds we have been using for years. Our PvP meta has been virtually the same since HoT launched, and before that, our PvP meta was pretty stagnant as well — I think the flamethrower condi was the meta after our turrets got nerfed to hell (and flamethrower condi still sees some use today, although it’s wimpier thanks to power creep).

As for PvE… we’re still running builds that have been around since launch (after people figured out how to properly build, of course). That’s incredibly stagnant gameplay for engineers.

This is not an argument for change just for change’s sake. But when gameplay remains this stagnant for this long… is it really any wonder when we barely see any engineers outside of PvP? If you want people to play a class, you have to treat it like ANet currently treats warriors.

So I’m not a revenant player. I’ve never seen this in PvP before.

But today a revenant was absolutely preventing me from staying on a point by doing some kind of massive knockback with the tablet. It pulsed almost every 3 seconds and the stability from my gyros was pretty quickly removed. It was evadeable, but not blockable. It was, however, completely ridiculous. I couldn’t get near the rev or the point for very long.

So what the heck is going on? I read up on energy expulsion, and it says a 10 second cooldown and it destroys the tablet — but this revenant’s tablet was persisting, and the knockback pulses were much more frequent. All this on top of a healing/tank rev and I could barely do any damage nor keep the point uncapped.

Can somebody explain this to me?

insanemaniac.2456:

inferring that engi has not seen meaningful changes in either the balance patches or the expansion as a justification for your flagrant and constant angryposting.

it is so patently obvious that the basis of your argument is wrong that i shouldnt even have to point to the elite spec itself or the nerfs in nearly every balance patch to help you see that making such a broad statement as “engi deserves meaningful changes because other classes have gotten them” is ridiculous and out of touch. engi got its meaningful changes. engi wasnt in a bad place, some of its skills are but engi has always had a place in the metas of all game modes after about 2012 (until the slick shoes nerf that made raiding pointless on engi). in fact, this elite spec was so good at its intended niche that weve had 2 years of nerf after nerf after nerf to the dominant engi pvp build.

You should probably also learn what context means. I pointed out that there have been many negative changes to engineer over time. When I said meaningful, I meant critical analysis from the devs where they rethink a lot of the old/broken/useless things we have and improve their viability.

so i mean sure you can say “taking away gyro daze” or “adding cast times to gyros” are not meaningful functionality buffs, but that is literally what moving the goalposts is:

Moving the goalposts is an informal fallacy in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded. That is, after an attempt has been made to score a goal, the goalposts are moved to exclude the attempt.³ The problem with changing the rules of the game is that the meaning of the end result is changed, too.

stop accusing me of logical fallacies when you dont even know how to wield or avoid them.

Just highlighting the things you seem to be missing about what moving the goalpost means. I didn’t ask for evidence, nor did I ask for more, greater evidence. I clarified my post because you seemed to misunderstand it or misrepresent it (the former being a communication error, the latter being a straw man).

and stop being so angry.

And for goodness’ sake, don’t introduce another fallacy.

Obtena.7952:

That doesn’t really answer my question: You claim Anet balances classes according to what other classes do, but if that was true, then all the balancing efforts after 5 years should have resulted in … class balance. Clearly that’s not the case and it’s not due to Anet not ‘doing things’. I mean, you haven’t really explained how that works.

If what you say is true, then Engi should be just as good as Warriors because Anet does make changes to both classes. Yet you claim Warriors are good, Engi’s are not. You have a conflicting situation; reality does not match what you claim is how things work.

Holy cow, where to start with this. I never made the point that ANet hasn’t balanced classes. That’s what they’ve been doing. The meta is currently stable and relatively balanced, and I never made the argument it wasn’t. Don’t misrepresent my position.

What I’ve been arguing is that we’ve been shoehorned into a few very small builds because all our other options have become non-viable. Other classes have experienced revivals and improvements to less-played traits/skills/weapons, and yet we sit here for years asking they make rifle less trash, or gadgets more useful, or traits less randomly thought out.

The latest balance patch highlighted this problem — they decide to make improvements to warrior rifle and axe (both of which saw occasional play in PvP) when I rarely heard warriors calling for it. Meanwhile, engineers have been griping about the state our rifle has been in for years, and we get bupkis.

Let me put it this way: You say favouritism by the Devs on Warrior and Ele is your observation that Anet are balancing to create equivalent performance between all the classes. That makes no sense at all. I can’t imagine at all how favouring specific classes to remain top performers demonstrates that Anet balancing goal is to achieve equivalent performance between the all classes.

Now you’re putting words in my mouth — I didn’t even mention ele! I mainly focused on warrior and guardian, ANet’s two favorite classes.

Favouritism is in fact the opposite of achieving that balance goal.

You’re conflating two ideas which are separate. I specifically said that their favoritism means they spend more effort/attention on a class. It has little to do with keeping a meta balanced.

Here’s an example since you don’t seem to get it:

If I have two children, and treat both (relatively) fairly, it might be reasonable to think I don’t favor one over the other. But it will show in subtle actions — saving that piece of food for the favored child, spending more time with the favored child. Neither child gets denied a good upbringing, but one can still be favored.

Also, this analogy is only good for the purposes of separating favoritism/balance. This is not my position about warrior/engi, just a metaphor to explain why favoritism does not inherently mean imbalance.

Ivantreil.3092:

Our meta builds today:

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Engineer

Our meta builds almost a year ago:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160628142642/http://metabattle.com:80/wiki/Engineer

Just give it a look and see how kittening kitten stale our pve builds are…. THEY ARE THE KITTEN SAME.

Amen. And notice how our PvP builds have shrunk in that time too.

Obtena.7952:

Sure, go and make all the comparisons you want. Is that relevant to what Anet does? What do you see ingame that convinced you that’s how Anet does things … after 5 years?

So you worded in this in a weird way, but to answer your questions: Yes, and through observation.

It’s not uncommon wisdom to examine a person’s or company’s motivations by looking at how they treat other people. If someone spends a lot of time and effort making sure that somebody is well taken care of, then that person is probably important to them (the reasons can vary). Likewise, if somebody pays very little attention (or very negative attention) to somebody else, they probably don’t care about that person or feel negatively about them.

And that’s what I’ve observed with class balancing. Warrior has been ArenaNet’s favorite class even since the days of GW1. They spend more time balancing and rebalancing warrior than any other class, suggesting that it is the class they care about the most. There are many possible reasons for this, but I’m not going to presume.

Then you look at engineer, and what we’ve seen have been primarily nerfs. Take a stroll through the forums, and people will sometimes cheer that we don’t get mentioned in balance patches — that’s how common engineer nerfs are. Does that mean they don’t care about engineers at all? No, but their “care” about us is largely antagonistic, if it’s even there.

So when I say they are “apathetic” about our class, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think they’re trying to screw us over. I think that they’re just not investing the time on the class that they spend for the other classes, and it shows.

You suggest the method that Anet uses to balance between classes, yet it conflicts with the reality of class balance in the game. That can’t be right can it?

I’m not quite clear what you mean by this, could you rephrase?

MrForz.1953:

It… it can’t be neglect. No dev team would leave a class, especially when there aren’t that many of them, buried six feet under. That simply doesn’t do anyone or anything any good.

Alright, what’s your alternative then? I’m seeing apathy, but it could be something else.

insanemaniac.2456:

somehow i knew you would move the goalposts.

You should probably learn what moving the goalposts means. I’m not asking for evidence or proof and then backing up when that particular requirement is met.

I’m clarifying that you missed my point and presented my argument as a straw man.

Wikipedia

Moving the goalposts is an informal fallacy in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded.

Wikipedia

A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent’s argument, while refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent.

I’d point out that kits still screw up legendary weapon effects, but that doesn’t directly count as skill. Somehow infusion effects on weapons persist though, which is confusing.

Magnet pull on toolkit doesn’t reveal. Yay kittening into the ether!

Speaking of magnet pull, the physics behind it are really wonky. I’ve seen it launch people into the sky, and if they lag it will often fail to pull them, but their character will appear nearby for a short period before teleporting back to their actual location.

Underwater Elixir X still features Plague, which has since disappeared from necro bars.

Static discharge behaves erratically based on the target method of the toolbelt skill instead of having a consistent behavior.

Have they ever bothered to look at underwater Rocket Boots since they found the physics bug with it? I do miss those rocket boots.

It’s technically not a bug, but could we PLEASE get a better solution than ground targeting for grenades?

insanemaniac.2456:

engineers have seen meaningful changes in both the balance patches and expansion — scrapper got used in the top echelons of the moste importante pvp competitions and was victorious several times (scrapper was meaningful) and was thenceforth relegated to being nerfed just about every major iteration (and youre complaining about it constantly, so the nerfs must have been meaningful)

You misunderstood what I said. I never said we haven’t been top tier in something — that’s a strawman argument to use, and it’s mistaking the weather for the climate.

What I’m saying was that meaningful changes include redesigns in functionality. An example is how many warrior traits were reworked to provide more meaning and utility. They’ve taken in-depth analyses of other classes (guardian, warrior, etc) and did their best to improve classes where they felt parts were weak or underutilized. They also tried to work out a lot of bugs, kinks, and irregularities in those classes. Most recently, we’ve seen them attempt this kind of fix with weapon reworks for warrior.

What engineers have seen have generally either been nerfs (turrets, gyros, scrapper) or number tweaks. There has been no critical examination of our broken traits and skills or major attempt to correct our outstanding issues. Rifle is 2+ years broken now, shield is [still] worthless because MH pistol is garbage as a damage dealer, many of our traits are outdated or exist to serve a meta which either hasn’t existed in a long time, or has never existed. Most of our utilities get relegated to the trash heap because kits are so much more useful (more useful than our core weapons too).

Panda documented the individual changes over the 5 years of the game. That they can be summed up so quickly is telling. More importantly, there’s a pattern here — Certain classes are favored by the devs (Warrior, Guardian, Thieves) and others are almost never looked at except when nerfs need to occur (ahem Engineer ahem). We still have outstanding bugs that have been never corrected — Kits interfering with legendary effects, static discharge behaving erratically, and the AI glitchiness surrounding turrets and gyros (stairs being the blast gyro’s worst enemy comes to mind).

TL; DR: At launch, engineer was one of the most versatile classes to play with many options. Since launch, we have gradually been shoehorned into fewer and fewer effective builds, to the point where we have 3-5 effective builds, and almost everything else is total garbage (in PvP, PvE, or WvW). Other classes have seen meaningful revamps and redesigns, whereas the best we got was scrapper, which was designed almost exclusively with with PvP in mind.

insanemaniac.2456:

but what would you change

Absolutely nothing, because it’s all perfect.

/s

I’ve had the same issue, basically since they introduced the feature. It also seems to favor other players, even when we tie for the same top stat.

UncleDrew.1763:

Vagrant.7206:

The biggest things I think are needed is a revamp of our traits (they’re a godkitten mess), buffing the rifle so it’s not such trash, improving MH pistol so shield is viable, improving the viability of most of our weapons so we don’t need to rely on kits, buffing gadgets and turrets so they aren’t jokes, and look at reducing complexity of rotations (purity of purpose work with kits).

So basically, the entire class needs a revamp.

Which traits in particular need improvement, and what would you change?

Do you want me to go through each one, one by one?

Firearms: This one is all mixed up between rifle and pistol. Despite promising benefits to rifle, often rifles users will not experience the benefits that pistols enjoy from this tree. Rifle users don’t seem to fit in anywhere in the traits, despite this trait line supposedly including them.

Explosives: Besides alchemy, probably one of the most commonly used trees in PvE because grenades and bombs are our primary source of DPS. While I’m not opposed to this, the whole tree is basically necessary in PvE because our core weapons are relatively weak compared to these kits.

Inventions: Besides a few useful traits for hammer builds, this trait line provides largely useless traits dealing with turrets (which are also currently useless). This tree also provides team healing support which is significantly weaker than any other class capable of team healing support and it needs improvement.

Alchemy: This spec is absolutely required in PvP, or you will die many, many times. The problem is that every build in PvP uses the same three traits — the rest simply don’t stack up to those three, and need buffing to be viable, and some just won’t see use because they rely on certain skills that are not viable at the moment (IE the Med Kit skills).

Tools: Commonly taken in PvE for the dodge and general utility traits. The thing is, this trait line was designed with the toolbelt in mind, and yet most of the skills for toolbelt are weak or behave in unpredictable, unexpected ways (IE Static Discharge). This trait line also features gadgets and the tool kit. Since gadgets and toolkit are also quite weak right now, the gadget traits and toolkit traits in this line are also weak.

Scrapper: Mostly used in PvP for hammer and gyros. The initial design for this spec was focused on lightning fields and stuns/dazes. However, since they massively nerfed Final Salvo and some of the other sources of daze (turning hammer charge to 2 leaps instead of 3), many of the traits enhancing daze/stun became weak by comparison, as is evidenced by impact savant.

Obtena.7952:

Um no, it means you need to adjust your understanding of what balancing means. If you haven’t got what you believe is balance after 5 years, it’s because Anet isn’t going to give it to you, not because they need to change how they think.

Engineer doesn’t live in a vacuum, you know. There are other classes to compare against, and they have seen meaningful changes in both the balance patches and expansion.

The biggest things I think are needed is a revamp of our traits (they’re a godkitten mess), buffing the rifle so it’s not such trash, improving MH pistol so shield is viable, improving the viability of most of our weapons so we don’t need to rely on kits, buffing gadgets and turrets so they aren’t jokes, and look at reducing complexity of rotations (purity of purpose work with kits).

So basically, the entire class needs a revamp.

Don’t rely on turrets or gyros. Turrets are a joke, and gyros are support abilities meant for PvP. Use a bomb kit or grenade kit for DPS with power builds, and use the hammer as a defensive weapon.

Ivantreil.3092:

LaFurion.3167:

Second is the rifle. Rifle is absolute dog trash, without a DOUBT the worst weapon in the game out of any class.

HA, i think you are forgetting we have a shield my friend, are you sure rifle is the worst?

Actually, shield isn’t that bad. The problem is that we only have one mainhand weapon (pistol), and mainhand pistol is pretty garbage as a source of damage, so we have no use for the shield because we can’t deal damage with MH pistol.

If they’re not going to do something about those (and .. it’s been like 2 years at this point) then they should change rifle so that it’s not shut down so easily. IMO, the biggest weakness is the self-cc on overcharged shot. Changing that to a backward evade or something would do wonders.

The problem with rifle is all the defense and reflects against it. Most classes now feature heavy anti-range ability, making unblockable attacks an absolute necessity — of which the rifle has none. Take a look at DH Bow #3, and tell me that wasn’t designed to deal with the power creep. If overcharged shot was unblockable, it would solve a huge portion of the issue, although not all of it.

The other thing is that its damage is just too weak to be a real threat. Healing also got buffed with HoT, and since the damage on rifle was never anything to write home about in the first place, it’s simply too weak to handle the amount of healing people can do. You have to go full berserker + max might stacks + quickness for its damage to be a threat to people, which is unacceptable.

fashion.6712:

Err…i think you understand something wrong here people.

The Trait Wheel in the leaked picture is RED and thats the color for the Warrior. So Holosmith=Warrior Elite in the upcoming EXP. It was also said on the leaked post that warriors get daggers and the Charr in the pic is clearly holding a dagger.

The engineer wasnt leaked yet but there had been a post saying they get maces.

The wheel looks kinda orange, which is our color, but it is very hard to tell.

They could just have your whole team doing their finishers at the end, pre-scripted. Wouldn’t need to be recorded.

I’ve noticed this happening several times, but often times on the end podium I am not getting credit for my top scores on the team. And when others get the same top scores that I do, the game typically gives them the podium credit. Why?

See attached image.

Rather that than appear unknowledgeable, bitter and unreasonable by assuming some of the least likely, worst cases.

You keep repeating this like it will stick or something.

Ramoth.9064:

I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve seen Obtena being called out for projecting and deflecting.

Oh, got it.