Guild Wars 2

Can we also mention that engineers lose all their legendary effects when they use a kit?

Can I just point out how kittening annoying that is? I’m working on Flameseeker Prophecies right now, and I don’t know if I’ll bother playing even when the expansion decides to come out. Too many longstanding issues that they’ve collectively shrugged their shoulders at.

I wonder how many “engi farmers” were actually engi mains.

I never touched the farm and I main engi.

Also, since they fixed the farm, can they finally address how bad the turrets are? They’re a godkitten ed joke. ArenaNet, would YOU PLEASE KINDLY LOOK IN THE ENGINEER FORUM?

It really depends on the weapon and the skill.

Engineer pistol generally fires in straight lines, except for pistol 3 (which has mild homing to it). Engineer rifle fires in straight lines, but the net shot also has a slight homing effect.

Ranger generally fires in straight lines, but the projectiles are so fast that they’re kind of hard to dodge anyway.

Warrior ranged weapons seem to fire in completely straight lines, except their pin down skill.

Most caster ranged weapons have some sort of homing effect, particularly mesmer.

Ashen.2907:

Asura dont rule the world because they taste like beer nuts to norn.

Norn aren’t exactly known for working together, either.

That seems to be a predominantly human, charr, and sylvari trait.

Ashantara.8731:

For numbers, see attachment.

• shorter coats (2)
• more vests, jackets (1, 3)
• more chest visibility (3)
• less arm coverage (unless jacket)
• no neck covers (2, 3)
• more half-length gloves w/ cut fingers (1, left hand)
• more straps (1, 3)
• more bags & pouches (1, 2, 3)
• more ranger accessories (hunting dagger, bags, pouches)
• more hoods (2)

Hi there! Engi main here.

Just wondering if there were more than three or four armor sets devoted to us.

Martym.6971:

It can be challenging and time consuming but nowhere near impossible, and achievable by the average player.

Compare this:

to this:

And tell me you can achieve the same DPS reasonably. Even if you’re somehow perfect in your rotation and placement and have no lag (which is a lot of assumptions), the fight relies on movement. Our high DPS builds rely on targets being stationary (or mostly stationary).

This isn’t about making assumptions about player skill level. This is about the very mechanics of the combat — DPS reliant on stationary enemies will drop significantly if those enemies move. And that’s ignoring perfectly timing your rotation, your placement of AoE’s, projectile flight times, etc.

As mirifrost said: Benchmarks are the roof, not the floor. And the floor for most of the other classes is a lot higher than ours, just by their combat mechanics. We have to put in a lot more skill to even reach the same level of DPS of a much simpler class. We have to be absolutely perfect (and I’m not being hyperbolic) to outperform them in the way benchmarks suggest we can.

This is why benchmark DPS comparisons are not useful. Benchmarks look at our upper bounds, not at the realm of normal playability.

Lucky Charmz.5089:

That really stinks.

Does that mean, though, that if I don’t care as much about DPS, and I’d rather build a bit more supporty (not exclusively supporting with the med kit, mind you. I still want to do some damage haha), rather than max DPS…I wouldn’t need the kits?

You’ll still probably need at least one kit — either bomb kit or grenade kit being our main DPS. The problem is that your DPS will be subpar even if you’re not playing for DPS without at least one kit.

Martym.6971:

Vagrant.7206:

TexZero.7910:

Engineer has problems but turrets aren’t it.

The real problem engineer has is the fact that kits are better in every situation because they are the generalist tool for the generalist class.

This.

We’re still severely hamstrung by kits. Our core weapons are underwhelming without assistance from kits (protip to ANet: Reverse the trend, and buff the hell out of our core weapons and reduce kit effectiveness). This limits our builds massively (practically requiring kits), making them significantly more complicated and less fun.

Last time I checked p/p kit engi is one of the highest dps specs in the game if played properly.

Don’t mistake benchmark tests for reality. Watch those benchmark tests and tell me you can reproduce them in a real gameplay scenario.

The other thing I would point out is to not miss the forest for the trees. Most other classes have options with build design on the high end (particularly warriors), while we’re mostly limited to 2 builds in high-end PvE and 1 build in PvP.

Well if benchmark isn’t reality, then this applies to all classes. And Engineer would still be one of the top dps.

As Mirifrost pointed out, we have one of the most complicated DPS rotations of any class (at least condi does). Several of our core damage-dealing skills have long cooldowns and static placements. Add in projectile flight times (IE Grenades) and we’ll miss a significant chunk of our DPS if the target is moving or fighting back.

Contrast this with, say, a thief, which can land almost all of its DPS pretty consistently, and it becomes clear that we will be outmatched in DPS in most real world scenarios.

This is why I run a modified condi build — not because it’s better DPS-wise (in benchmarks, it’s considerably worse than the ideal benchmark), but because it accounts for reality (I get DPS above most other people I’m playing with).

Jerus.4350:

You mean they ignored an underwater skill? The outrage, surely it’s just to spite engineers!

Nah, just that they implemented a change without remembering any other class that might use said skill.

I’ll eat my hat if they do.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir_X

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plaguelands

Notice anything?

Update: Latest patch (6/20/17) excluded engineers and mesmers. What a surprise!

Undo.5091:

Pleeeeaaaase. Blast gyro is amazing. I’ve learned to love the broken AI on it when I watched the gyro wait for a revenant’s shield 5 to go away before CC’ing him.

Just don’t use the blast gyro near its hard-counter… stairs.

Blast gyro + any imperfect terrain = tears

TexZero.7910:

Engineer has problems but turrets aren’t it.

The real problem engineer has is the fact that kits are better in every situation because they are the generalist tool for the generalist class.

This.

We’re still severely hamstrung by kits. Our core weapons are underwhelming without assistance from kits (protip to ANet: Reverse the trend, and buff the hell out of our core weapons and reduce kit effectiveness). This limits our builds massively (practically requiring kits), making them significantly more complicated and less fun.

Last time I checked p/p kit engi is one of the highest dps specs in the game if played properly.

Don’t mistake benchmark tests for reality. Watch those benchmark tests and tell me you can reproduce them in a real gameplay scenario.

The other thing I would point out is to not miss the forest for the trees. Most other classes have options with build design on the high end (particularly warriors), while we’re mostly limited to 2 builds in high-end PvE and 1 build in PvP.

draxynnic.3719:

Vagrant.7206:

Thing is, the benefits you’re touting in PvE are designed to help bad and/or incompetent players. Rezzing people from a distance is only useful if the player goes down, and that’s generally because they screwed up or aren’t good players. What you’re suggesting then is that our elite spec is great for bad players.

The damage buffs provided by scrapper are relatively small compared to the boosts the other classes. The support is for bad players.

Phineas’s entire point is that not everybody plays exclusively with perfect players. When you’re playing with players who are less experienced with the content, either because you’re training them up, you have a couple of subs, or that’s just who you happen to have, being able to offer that extra safety net can be useful. And everyone has their first time in a raid or other difficult content.

Right, but all the other elite specs both help newbies and perfect players. Ours primarily helps newbies. That’s my point.

He said himself that if you’re confident in your team, then the core engi is the better way to go. And there’s nothing wrong with that – the elite specs weren’t supposed to be clear upgrades that are better than core-only specs in every respect.

The problem with that statement is that almost every other class did in fact have a straight upgrade in both PvP and PvE. Take a look at most of the builds people are running:

• You never see a base guardian, warrior, mesmer, thief, or tempest any more in either game mode.
• Necro occasionally will opt for purely core in PvE, but this isn’t common.
• One ranger raid condi build is purely core.
• Revenant didn’t have a pre-HoT experience, so it’s hard to say.

Nirvana.8659:

The Engineer community is likely suffering the “stockholm syndrome”.

Looks like we get used to troll updates , and when we ask for buffs we tend to say “to don’t make it OP”.

Honestly, that’s not Stockholm Syndrome. It’s wisdom from experience.

Every time ANet has nerfed engineer, they didn’t do it gently. We ask for “balanced” fixes because we don’t want to experience ANet overcompensating their balance yet again.

Take for example… Turrets. Went from being potent area defenders to mostly trash. Instead of just reducing their overall damage or survivability slightly, they nerfed the hell out of both, then threw in extra AoEs and condis into the mix.

Or what they did to gyro stun — they completely removed their daze ability in addition to reducing the number of leaps we do with rocket charge, which reduced our stuns even further. They could have just reduced the daze time or reduced rocket charge’s leaps, but they went ahead with both, and didn’t bother adjusting our traits to compensate.

It’s offensive towards Engineer players leave a CORE WEAPON unchanged when in such a bad shape after all that time.

I don’t know of any class that have it’s CORE WEAPON in a such bad spot.

Let’s be honest. Warrior has always been ArenaNet’s golden child, even since GW1. They have done their best to make sure warrior has everything it needs, other classes be kitten ed. And since engineer’s the last thought in their minds, they almost never do anything about us.

coro.3176:

Twigifire.8379:

Rifle needs quality of life changes not a complete overhaul. It’s a very fun risk vs reward playstyle at the moment with a little too much risk involved.

There’s a lot of risk you can’t mitigate with smart play. Specifically, if you hit someone with Overcharged Shot, and they have an on-cc trait equipped, you usually lose the fight or have to disengage.

Last Stand procs – Warrior hits you with cc burst chain instead. You die.
Shared Anguish procs – Ranger hits you with staff or bow to trigger Ancient Seeds while you’re knocked back from your own attack. You would normally clear immob with OC shot, but you can’t because it’s on cooldown. You die.
etc. etc. (although, those 2 traits are the worst offenders)

See also OC shot into unexpected reflect, Jump Shot over traps or guard lines, Net shot just being completely ignored by Warriors & Thieves.

Yep. Many of the “control” skills rifle offers are simply underwhelming and dotted with huge weaknesses that most other weapons don’t have to deal with. Combine that with woeful damage and the whole weapon needs a total overhaul to bring it back in line with its original usefulness.

• Imagine for a second if charged shot acted like berserker’s headbutt, and had piercing rounds (and no knockback). Obviously that’s a bit OP, but closer to its original usefulness. At the very least, charged shot should not be blockable.
• Or put a pulsing immobilize/cripple on net shot (IE 2s first pulse, 1s every following pulse). Then it might be more dangerous to thieves.
• Or blunderbuss had even greater damage (get rid of the bleeds ANet) and a short cripple.
• Or jump shot had an evade built into the flying animation, bringing it inline with revenant sword 3/thief staff 5.
• Don’t want to buff the rifle damage? Ok, put in a cripple to the base attack. Now it’s clearly a power/control weapon.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Vagrant.7206:

Did you not read his post?

Of course I did. The bulk of my post was referring to when he said

> It is by far the worst elite spec mechanic

in reference to the function gyro. And considering I cleared Vale Guardian on the first day it came out as a scrapper, I can’t help but disagree. The ability to resurrect players while on the move literally salvaged my kill run. If people actually sat down and crunched the number difference between core engi versus scrapper they’d come to realize the damage difference isn’t even that much, especially when the upswing in utility is almost immeasurable. I view it simply as: the worse a situation gets, the better scrapper becomes. If I’m with an experienced fractal or raid group I don’t need it, but if I’m pugging content or with less experienced players, its defensive attributes carries parties through content.

T4 Mai Trin, for example, is a complete joke when you can res someone completely across the room with your f gyro while you hold her aggro … or when you can just drop it on someone during bomb phase and potentially get them back up.

The simple fact of the matter is that as far as PvE is concerned for a lot of players: if it isn’t first in DPS, it’s last. Which is why, in any content where DPS isn’t such a concern (e.g., WvW or PvP), or in any content where people actually die (inexperienced raid groups and T4 fractals in general) I don’t consider the scrapper “by far the worst elite spec” or even a little bit. It’s a dominant, well-designed specialization that excels at precisely what it is designed to do. It’s not ArenaNet’s fault the community-made meta is so stringently rigid and driven by a great deal of arrogance that people never make mistakes or play suboptimally.

The title of worst elite spec goes to Herald, if anybody—with Tempest or Berserker having the worst mechanic.

Thing is, the benefits you’re touting in PvE are designed to help bad and/or incompetent players. Rezzing people from a distance is only useful if the player goes down, and that’s generally because they screwed up or aren’t good players. What you’re suggesting then is that our elite spec is great for bad players.

The damage buffs provided by scrapper are relatively small compared to the boosts the other classes. The support is for bad players.

The core engi build is an effective DPS machine, but that’s literally all it is. Core engi won’t keep anyone alive (or even yourself) if the group plays suboptimally, and it depends on a great number of boxes to be checked off to even reach its maximum potential.

I disagree.

I find myself often healing just below the druids in my raids with my condi engi (Healing Turret + Detonate + Big Ol’ Bomb). I also find that my condi engi is great at CC (Big ol bomb + air blast + soft cc’s) and controlling spirits (in Gors) with chills, immobilize, and cripple. Core engi offers way more than just DPS, whereas scrapper mainly seems to offer some tankiness and benefits for bad players.

Thanks guys. I’ll take a look through these.

Phineas Poe.3018:

coro.3176:

The Scrapper traitline is all but mandatory for pvp/wvw – even for non-hammer builds. If you don’t take it, you’re at a huge disadvantage losing access to function gyro. It is by far the worst elite spec mechanic – useless in pve, but good at what it does in competitive game modes.

It also comes with some decent defensive traits and gives you access to sneak + purge gyros.

Coro, you’re crazy man. Gyros are by and far among the most powerful utility skills introduced in Heart of Thorns. They give stability to function as safe stomps and resses, they function as minor healing skills through Final Salvo, and they offer tons of condition cleanse, damage reduction, and projectile hate. The only thing that makes them “useless” in PvE is the fact that they do no damage — and that scrapper by extension doesn’t improve the engineer’s damage.

Did you not read his post?

Those things you mentioned are great for PvP and WvW. They’re what make Scrapper so powerful for PvP.

And almost completely worthless for PvE. Stability is rarely needed. You never stomp (toxic alliance excluded). Most rezzes are done by the whole group. Condi cleanse is rarely necessary (most enemies deal at most two conditions). Damage reduction generally is not that helpful (and protection is more abundant). Projectile hate can be done better by other classes or core engineer (not that projectiles are a big problem in PvE in the first place). Hammer can deal okay damage when mixed in with kits, but it’s not a big step up.

Add these things together — gyros are not useful (compared to kits) in PvE, and hammer is not great. Therefore, the entire spec is not useful in PvE. Take a look at most of the PvE builds people are building for engineer — they almost exclusively use core specs.

Hey guys!

So I mostly only play thief in PvP. Never really done much exploring with it. But I’m in the process of making a legendary, and I need a gift of exploration, and thief is my next class best fit for the task. So does anybody have good suggestions for a PvE roaming build?

Remember when engineers couldn’t see their legendary effects when they equipped a kit?

Oh wait.

Mork vom Ork.2598:

Vagrant.7206:

If you want a high DPS power build that incorporates a turret, you may want to try this one out:

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Power_Bomber_Raid

Actually this build incorporates the toolbelt skill Surprise Shot, the turret itself is utterly useless.

Well, the turret does add a negligible amount of DPS, but yeah.

draxynnic.3719:

Vagrant.7206:

• Most gyros have single-target functions, or their functions serve extremely limited roles. This cripples their usefulness in PvE (besides sneak gyro in limited situations)

Bulwark has its uses – keeping people alive is keeping people alive, and the reflect shield can also be useful. Blast gyro… eh, Air Blast will usually do the job. Purge Gyro… I’ve rarely felt the need to bring heavy condi removal in PvE. Shredder Gyro is just terribly designed full stop.

Sneak Gyro has the issue that… well, does Detection Pulse actually do anything at all in PvE? Maybe against skelk, I guess, but most HoT enemies with stealth work by the Nuhoch mastery mechanic instead.

True. I sometimes forget Bulwark Gyro. It essentially functions as temporarily stronger form of protection (by 17%), but never lasts very long, and its cooldown makes it significantly weaker than protection. In PvE, the reflect shield isn’t too helpful — toss elixir u functionally does the same thing, and if you just need a quick reflect, air blast can do that.

And yeah, the detection of sneak gyro is completely worthless in PvE. Hell, its usefulness in PvP is also quite limited given its small AoE.

The adage of “Show, don’t tell” comes to mind.

Exposition is boring. Don’t waste time with it if you can just show what you mean, or include it with the action.

Many of what would be flat cutscenes (in the past) are now dialogue that plays while you run around. This is great for people who don’t care about the story (they don’t have to hit skip as fast as possible) and great for people who do care about the story (you can see how the action ties into the dialogue).

Lend.7250:

I think all of the old Infinity Tools should also get the unbound Magic Gathering.

I just got the new set of tools and its really lovely, however i see no reason for people to buy any of the old sets now.

I have got quite a collection of tools (Trying to get all my caracthers with a diferent set of infinity tools) but i cant help to feel that feels silly the old sets not giving the unbound Magic as well.

Hope u adress this soon as there will be no reason for players to get any of the older tools and that feels like a waste to me.

I bought infinity tools (Consortium Scythe, Molten Pick, Nightmare Axe) back in season one before they introduced the watchwork axe. And I’m still somewhat miffed that they haven’t done anything retroactively to make old tools more appealing.

Killyox.3950:

So I’ve played Scrap Rifle Field Test and kinda wondered why our #1 isn’t like in that scrap rifle. Tbh I had more fun playing with that than our normal rifle and dmg was actually what I would expect from it as well.

Wouldn’t mind some changes to our rifle – a mix between scrap rifle’s and our skills

Most rifle users have had this gripe for a long time. Our rifle is probably one of the weakest ranged weapons out there (although ranger short bow users might disagree). With the addition of projectile hate with HoT, it’s been relegated to uselessness in most modes, because its focus was on controlling the battlefield, which it could no longer do effectively.

Rifle and shield are two (out of our 3) core weapons that need serious overhauling to bring them back to where they should be. Pistol is still in good shape in PvE, but suffers from projectile hate in PvP.

coro.3176:

The Scrapper traitline is all but mandatory for pvp/wvw – even for non-hammer builds. If you don’t take it, you’re at a huge disadvantage losing access to function gyro. It is by far the worst elite spec mechanic – useless in pve, but good at what it does in competitive game modes.

It also comes with some decent defensive traits and gives you access to sneak + purge gyros.

That’s because it was almost exclusively designed for competitive game modes. Think about it:

• Function gyro only works on downed state enemies/allies. The situation where that would be most useful is in competitive modes. When allies are downed in PvE, generally the whole team picks them up, rendering the gyro unhelpful at best, a distraction at worst. If it had a “search and rescue” function to scan an area for downed allies, it might be more useful. And in PvE, almost no enemies enter a downed state (besides the Toxic Alliance).
• Hammer is tanky, but not a good team support tool. That makes it great for controlling areas in competitive situations, but underwhelming in PvE where other classes can provide good team support AND tanking ability (mesmers, warriors).
• Much of scrapper is designed around short dazes/interrupts (no matter how much they nerfed it). While CC bar does matter for some things, other classes do it better in PvE (mesmer/necro)
• Scrapper was the last elite spec they designed. That meant that they had limited time to choose where to focus its development. Since ArenaNet was largely pushing for eSports, that meant they were going to focus its development on PvP over PvE. And it shows.
• Most gyros have single-target functions, or their functions serve extremely limited roles. This cripples their usefulness in PvE (besides sneak gyro in limited situations)
• They did very little (if anything) to supplant or provide an alternative to the DPS provided by kits. Kits have been our biggest damage dealers since day 1, and still are. And in DPS Wars 2, biggest numbers are best numbers.

DirectorHaruhi.4125:

I just bought the game, and made my character an Engineer thinking that I’d enjoy using the turret skills, but so far have not found them useful. I’m almost level 40, and it feels like the only way to use turrets is to place them and detonate them when the overcharge is done. I feel pretty squishy, but at the same time also feel pretty weak, both in PvE and PvP.

Are turrets just not viable now? What should I do to either give myself better sustain/healing or higher DPS?

I had two level 80 characters on an old account about a year and a half ago, but abandon that one as I hated the account name and it was a f2p account, so I didn’t really lose anything, so I don’t think it’s too much to do with game knowledge or not being used to playing GW2.

One word: Kits

Most of the high DPS builds currently rely on the bomb kit and grenade kit to deal a significant amount of damage. Those are our big DPS, regardless of whether you’re running condi or power.

Turrets have never been a particularly big deal in PvE besides farming (their damage was underwhelming even before they were nerfed hard), and generally our gadgets are lackluster. Our weapons generally underperform (except pistol for condi, and hammer for PvP) compared to most other classes, and so we’re stuck with kits until ANet even bothers to give us attention.

If you want a high DPS power build that incorporates a turret, you may want to try this one out:

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Power_Bomber_Raid

Odokuro.5049:

I have three 80’s already, those being a DH, Temp, and DD. I used to play Engie a while ago, really liked him, he was my main for a very long time. Then I quit, came back, leveled up those other three classes/specs, and really want to get back to my roots, the engineer!

I was wondering how we stand in areas such as, fractals/raids/WvW ect? Are there power-based builds that work well, or am I forced to knuckle-under and join in with the condi-craze?

Thanks in advance!

Fractals/Raids: Yes, we are meta in these. There are power and condi builds for both of these. I use a modified condi build emphasizing the burning, mainly because it’s simpler to apply and follow a rotation, while maintaining good DPS in realistic scenarios.

WvW: Play a different class. We don’t even show up under the meta category of metabattle.

PvP: Scrappertank is about your only option. Everything else leaves you woefully underpowered.

Lahmia.2193:

Clearly you missed out on the cancerous pvp turret tank meta a few months before traits were changed to specializations.

Yep. That was pretty awful. As a main engineer, I was pretty ashamed of that meta. It was disgracefully easy.

Buuuuuuut that’s no excuse for their woeful state now. As it stands, only healing turret is of any use, and that’s because it’s a healing bomb. Rifle turret is only taken for the DPS boost of surprise shot.

Fiddle Irk.9710:

necros shroud 4 is channeled skill as well

It’s their 5 skill that is tethering.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tainted_Shackles

I will say (personally) that it’s kind of weird to give so many other classes a blanket reveal and not us as well, but I can see their reasoning. When I play Guardian in PvP, it is a bizarre thing to pull a stealthed character with chains of justice.

Just wait til this post gets moved and never read!

Only happens with engineers and eles — because we don’t have weapon swaps.

ArchonWing.9480:

Anyhow, I play most classes besides warrior, and I have to say that if I were to rate the elite specs, I would have to say their direction with scrapper is undoubtedly the worst. Every other classes seems to have gotten a unique take on what they were. Well, I guess Revs are in an awkward position.

Like I said, it’s really because we’re always the last one in their thoughts. Scrapper was the last elite spec in HoT, and it was clearly rushed:

• There’s no real synergy with the core skills. Scrapper is almost like an entire class apart from engineer, and not in a good way.
• Scrapper is only really useful in PvP or WvW. In PvE, it severely underperforms compared to core. And when compared against other elite specs, it’s a joke in PvE.
• They never even bothered to follow up with our feedback in the forum. It wasn’t until last month that Gaile un-pinned the BWE3 thread.
• The traits are a broken mess because they rushed out a nerf to gyros. I guess they’re consistent about making sure our traits are broken, because the meta is always more important than a vision when it comes to engineers.

If you ever played GW2 before condis were fixed (years after launch, btw), the meta was zerker everything. In fact, it still mostly is. Condi represents a break from that trend, as you can be condi with more than purely offensive stats. Whereas, if you took anything that wasn’t zerker, you were clearly losing out on DPS.

The reason they’ve been pushing condi harder is because it encourages more diversity in stat selection.

I played condi even when it was bad. Let me tell you: One condi (bleeds) was the only one that mattered, as the rest were all basically capped at a few stacks (or 1, in the case of burning). If you were a condi player against a world boss, you might never actually deal much damage because your “stacks” were simply added to a timer that might never run out. You couldn’t have more than 1 condi player in a dungeon, or you were wasting people’s DPS.

There’s still remnants of the times when ArenaNet truly despised condi. Many creatures you find in the core game (including fractals) feature some kind of immunity to specific conditions (dredge – blind, fire eles – fire, etc). These are absolutely debilitating immunities that power players never had to (and still don’t) deal with. Heck, the burning effigy in the Molten Boss fractal is still immune to fire, which never ceases to annoy me (on a condi engi).

Here’s the thing: We know they are aware of the engineer’s problems. I’ve seen multiple dev comments where they point out that rifle is underwhelming, that kits are simply way more useful than most of our other skills, and the traits are a mess. There’s other issues they are aware of too, like legendaries and kit interactions. They have seen our complaints. They are aware of the issues.

And yet they have done nothing to address these problems in the past 2 years. This last “balance” patch for engineers looks like it was cobbled together the night before they implemented it. Whatever their team is doing, they’re not devoting the time they need to fix these issues. It honestly feels like engineer is an afterthought in their minds — we were the last class to be added to the core game, and we were the last (rushed) specialization added to HoT. They continue to demonstrate that we’re last in their minds.

My hope is fading extremely fast. I’m not a naturally pessimistic person, but I find myself growing angrier and less interested in playing Guild Wars every day (I only log in for dailies now). Unless they do some serious balancing before the next expac, I’m not sure I’ll want to buy it.

I’ve documented many of the issues in my post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/The-Engineer-Injustice/first . I didn’t bother telling them how to fix the issues because it’s their job, not mine.

Many people seem intent on arguing that our DPS is meta, but I would argue that they’re equating the weather with the climate. The winds have been temporarily kind to us, but history has shown that we almost always get nerfed in the harshest ways possible. Take turrets and gyros, our two big selling points. Because they were seen as “OP”, they got nerfed so hard that they’re significantly less useful (if useful at all). There’s no gentle nerf stick for the engineer. We get the nerf mace. And then the skills are left in obscurity until they inconvenience someone on the dev team.

Liewec.2896:

(obviously they’d have to give healing turret a tinker since its main use is to spawn it, overcharge it and blow it up, removing detonation would make that impossible.)

Honestly, if they plan on keeping this change, healing turret needs to be changed into healing bomb.

Because that’s what it functionally is now. At the very least have the honesty to admit it.

It’s a problem in PvP scenarios too, where sometimes you can’t even see that the water field has laid down.

coro.3176:

Confirmed the overcharge thing is a problem. I jumped in WvW was at low health, mashed the heal button. Detonate went off before overcharge. I got 2.5k heal instead of ~7k heal + condi cleanse. I died.

Went back and reviewed the video – sure enough, overcharge isn’t going off before it’s destroyed.

This doesn’t happen every time. It’s maybe 10-20% of the time I heal in combat, but it’s common enough that I have to slow down my heal a lot and it’s getting me killed.

Edit – Video Proof: https://youtu.be/-KNeJwMlYwk

It’s because the delay is 1/2 a second, and the overcharge takes 3/4 of a second. There’s 1/4 of a second where you can detonate without the field up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyer%27s_remorse

The problem is that the overcharge is 3/4 of a second, and the delay is 1/2 of a second. That leaves 1/4 of a second where it can be detonated without overcharge.

Seriously? They couldn’t log onto an engi char to check this?

Obtena.7952:

Not sure if you have thought of this but perhaps that’s the way Anet wants them used;

Uhh…

Using a healing turret instead of a healing bomb? Don’t you think they would have made it a healing bomb instead of that was its intended design? They’ve been making the case for “purity of purpose” (such as in FT kit), and then they go design the turrets to be better at blowing up? That’s a weird “purity” if you ask me.

To be frank, I think people aren’t really thinking about the fact that this is an improvement, even if it’s not the one you want.

In what sense is this an improvement? People who use power bomber aren’t going to lay down the rifle turret anyway, given that its damage is weak and the other turrets aren’t worth taking. The healing turret will require a significant amount of unlearning for a slightly more intuitive design that constrains our options.

I also don’t see option reduction as generally a big problem, especially in this game where it’s inferred there is no attempt to balance options equally to achieve a diversity that would result from equivalent options.

I present to you your own words:

The whole point of the change is that it gives choice. Why are people always so angry when they get choices?

Maybe I’m reading the changes wrong, but this is my perception of the most recent balance changes that we have waited months (MONTHS) for. Is this anybody else’s feeling as well?

Obtena.7952:

The choice is you can take advantage of an overloaded turret immediately or keep them up … you didn’t have that choice before. If you think the turrets are useless, then you have decided to use your turrets that way …. a CHOICE you make. Maybe you shouldn’t assume everyone thinks as you do to pretend this isn’t better than the way it was.

I mean, are you going to tell me the old way was better or that this new way is not? I think that’s clearly not the case. It might not be the improvement you were looking for, but it is an improvement.

I’m ok with the overcharge off the bat (and not using up a toolbelt skill for detonate), but here’s the problem with your logic:

The turrets are made objectively weaker by this decision. Instead of using them to defend a position (like they were intended), they’re now most useful if you place them down and then detonate them after overcharge. This change actually gives us fewer options on how to use the turrets (despite how weak they were, and still are). At least before, you could overcharge a turret MULTIPLE times before its timer ran out. Now, you get the one and done.

It wouldn’t have been difficult for them to simply make the turret overcharge on its own timer repeatedly. Yet they failed to even do that.

Additionally, this affects our most useful turret too, the healing turret. Before, it could overcharge heal teammates in an area on a semi-regular basis. You could choose to do that or the healing bomb. Now, they’ve virtually guaranteed that it’s only a healing bomb.

Panda.1967:

Maybe they should have made overcharge function on an automatic interval…

Yeah, I don’t understand why they didn’t do this.

Samug.6512:

Vagrant.7206:

Bravo ANet! Fix a single glaring issue with turrets and call it a day. Nerf the meta, and we’re golden.

What about some real balance adjustments? Rifle has been languishing in obscurity. Our traits are a mess. Most of our gadgets are a joke. This is what has taken the balance team so long?

What came to my mind today is, they have made some time ago a looong, long list of possible balance changes. Now all devs are working on the next expansion, so there’s no HR for real balance team – they just pick some stuff from the list.
3 months later from now, with the next balance patch, we’ll see adjustments to Turrets toolbelt skills, to make them viable with the change they introduced today.

Seriously though, this game needs more frequent balance patches, made by people who actually play the game, at least one person per one profession

What I’m seeing (and this is obviously my opinion) is that they’re balancing for raids and PvP only. The changes to engineer clearly reflect this — raids were affected by the turret issue (despite really not being a big issue), and the nerfs to the pvp meta that made us tankier (and the scrapper worthwhile). These changes don’t realistically affect WvW or the rest of PvE at all.

Meanwhile, they ignore that the whole class is languishing badly with very little as far as different ways to play, in all areas of the game.

Bravo ANet! “Fix” a single, long-standing glaring issue with turrets (that only affects raiders, mind you), nerf the PvP meta (because we’re doing so well), add a meaningless buff to a skill nobody realistically uses, and we’ll call it a day.

What about some real balance adjustments? Rifle and shield have been languishing in obscurity. Our traits are a mess. Most of our utility skills are underwhelming. This is what has taken the balance team so long to come up with? Does anybody on their team play engineer?

Jerus.4350:

I think everyone always fears an awful AI spec. I don’t think ANet would do that to us. I mean if they did it’d just be undeniable proof they’re either kittened or hate us. I’m with you on barricades/shields, when I just heard the name I was picturing Wall of Reflection type skills. Throw up a holographic barrier to protect the team, or augment a weapon with a holographic edge. Personally I was/am hoping for a healing + support spec, but to me holosmith sounds more like a more strait support spec. We’ll help the team by blocking attacks for them while augmenting the damage, and I’m ok with that.

I just really hope it’s not more personal sustain or strait DPS. We have those covered with Scrapper and Condi/power core Engi.

Wouldn’t surprise me if we saw inspiration from the ritualist of GW1 with the weapon enhancement team boons. (IE Splinter Weapon)

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Splinter_Weapon

Jerus.4350:

I thought we were still a meta option for DPS though between solid condi damage and pinpoint distribution, but maybe I’m wrong (hence my post starting with that question )

We are definitely seen as a meta DPS option, at least as far as condi goes, but there are better options (like condi ranger). Pinpoint precision is great for mostly condi teams, but for bosses that emphasize direct damage, we’re pretty hosed.

Infusions make a decent difference, Geomancy sigil is like 1k dps itself, and then some lag/delay and that explains it pretty easily. It’s pretty surprising how fast fractions of seconds add up and drop your damage.

In my benchmarking tests, I’ve noticed this as well. The difference in fractions of seconds is staggering — I can gain or lose 5-10k DPS based on latency alone. The benchmarking videos I’ve seen have no latency, and it (almost) looks like a macro is running the rotation.

mauried.5608:

I really wonder why people play online games.
I play games to have fun.
I play Engineer to have fun.
I coudnt give a stuff how much or how little dps Engineers have or how they compare to other classes, or how useless the skills are.
As long as playing the class provides entertainment , thats all that matters.
Remember you cant win an MMO.

I would agree if I played by myself in a single-player game. Play how you want.

But as you said, this is an MMO. You get rejected for things like raids or fractals if you can’t cut the muster.

Jerus.4350:

Rezzet.3614:

another reason why engineer will never be successful is because everyone else got used to engineer being sub par so if it gets buffed and starts performing good all of a sudden everyone will call for nerfs and that engi is op

Aren’t we meta? Last I saw Engi is now one of the better DPS options with only condi Thief outperforming on small hitboxes in general, but it has it’s own limitations. Condi Ranger being more popular because people are frightened by kits and think the ranger rotation is easier (it is easier than the optimal rotation, but the simple rotation yields similar results but engi has pinpoint).

Benchmark tests are never accurate for realistic scenarios. Tell me the truth — how long can you maintain a perfect rotation while fighting that boss? Because if you’re off by half a second on the benchmark condi engi rotation, you will see massive drops in DPS.

In my guild runs, I tend to score DPS just under the elementalists, but I’m not playing the benchmark meta build, because I realize how ludicrous the proposition is. Instead, I’m playing a modified meta build for more realistic DPS. And this shows when I try to benchmark — I’m 10k DPS below the “benchmark” in the testing area, yet my score in raids is on par or below the elementalists. There is a huge difference between theoretical damage and realistic damage.

EdwinLi.1284:

However, Anet could not finish Scrapper’s original design on time before HoT release, most likely because it was their last Elite Spec to work on once the other Professions were finished beofre HoT, and had to “Scrap” it and make Scrapper into what it is now.

Scrapper as of now is more like a Core profession +1 Elite Spec that brings no real unique mechanics and only add the F button for just long range res and finisher due to being unfinished.

How much you wanna bet this will happen again?